Ah! It's not now, I did agree previously. Hosts file ad blocking is particularly useful in low speed, low memory, low power, battery-based devices. I use hosts file ad blocking in my smartphone, for example.
In my desktop computer however, I don't notice a difference in performance. It's so fast that the difference in ROI between hosts based ad blocking and JavaScript based ad blocking cannot be perceived.
Hmm... I'm curious though: if you're against advertisements, why do you advertise APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit?
True. But that doesn't prevent a combined approach, does it? As in, host blocking file for most ad networks, and a set of browser plugins for the difficult sites.
IF you're concerned about it, build a better tool then yourself.
I guess I'll continue using a combination of uBlock Origin, Tampermonkey and Reek's Anti-Adblock Killer to deal with the Facebook ads that APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit won't be able to block then. It's easier to use those tools than to build a new tool from the ground up myself.
Can you upgrade APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit so that it will be able to begin blocking ads on Facebook once Facebook starts serving ads from its own domain as if they were normal pages?
Can APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit block ads that come from the same domain of the content?
For example, if I'm visiting "https://example.com", and it serves ads sourced from "https://example.com/ads/", can APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit block them?
Because that's what Facebook is going to do to try thwarting ad blocks, including thwarting APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit.
It's like Valve is a hardware store selling paint, and some people use that paint for vandalism. It isn't their fault, and they have no culpability.
In some countries they have. Here in Brazil hardware stores are forbidden from selling spray paint cans to teens, as it's assumed they are going to use them to spray illegal graphiti. If a hardware store is caught selling spray paint cans to teens it pays a fine and runs the risk of being closed.
Sorry, but why should I read something from the bourgeois factory owner Engels, or from his bromance buddy Marx, who lived from the surplus value Engels extracted from his proletarian workers?
Marxist theory, having been written by two members of the bourgeois class, cannot but be just another false consciousness ideological construct to advance the interests of the bourgeois themselves, as is evidenced by the fact over the last 150 years it has led to nothing but the overcoming of one set of bourgeois by another set of bourgeois, the so "avant-garde of the proletariat", which in typical fashion always have everything but actual proletarians.
Wake up. None of these "avant-garde" bourgeois will ever transfer their dictatorial power to the actual proletariat. As all bourgeois ideologues, they want the power for themselves. The proletariat? Convenient excuses for the power grab, if that much.
under ROMs like CyanogenMod, you can install a very _limited_ google apps selection. For example, you can have basically just the google play store, and that's it. No Hangouts, Gmail, Google app, Chrome, Drive, etc, etc.
If you trust your lawyer, you will definitely get screwed. In most legal situations, your primary adversary is your own lawyer, not the opposing party.
This happened to a friend of mine. She lost an arm and part of her vision in an accident, and also got PTSD. The lawyer she contracted to do the work to get her disability benefits showed in court one week after the deadline. Now she's unable to work and unable to receive disability benefits.
She tried then finding a lawyer that would help her get this overturned. No lawyer she contacted wanted to touch the case, because they all said they work for workers' compensation, so they cannot do anything against it. Some said they'd look into it if she calculated for them how much they might earn, which she has no idea how to do.
Then she tried finding one that'd help her sue her previous lawyer for malpractice, and no one wants to help.
So now, thanks to this, she's a one armed, partially blind, PTSD-suffering, mendicant, as she depends on the help of friends to have, among other things, a ceiling and food.
If anyone reading this has a suggestion I could forward her on how to solve this absurd situation, please provide it. It'd be most welcome...
If UBI is a solution to technological growth, meaning surplus growth, and this growth is faster than population growth, then those $800 become able, over time, to purchase more and more due to the deflation inherent to technological advances. The alternative is to practice inflation adjustment so that prices stay stable, and you increase the value paid over time. In the end both things work for the same: increased robotic productivity = everyone becoming able to live better.
The simulation hypothesis is simply the hypothesis that, given "n" identical settings, you don't know in which specific one you are. I fail to see how the question "but where did the settings came from!?" has anything to do with it.
These are three different questions:
a) Knowledge of how many settings 's' there are (we know the lower bound to be 1: us ourselves);
b) Knowledge of which setting we are in assuming 's' is if is greater than 1;
c) Knowledge of the origin of the setting / settings.
Why do you suppose one single hypothesis has to simultaneously cover all three, and cannot restrict itself to dealing with a single one of them? Care to explain why, exactly, one cannot have a hypothesis only about 'a', only about 'b' (as exemplified by the simulation hypothesis) or only about 'c'?
And what is it about emphasizing the word "hypothesis"? Has it turned into a demeaning term all of a sudden? Have philosophers and scientists become forbidden from developing them? How do you propose we advance from no knowledge into theories and mechanics without going through hypothesis first?
Because the hypothesis doesn't explain where the original Earth comes from
Why should it? It'd be like arguing a human child cannot be said to having been born from human parents because that doesn't explain where the first human being came from, and hence that the "human-child as human-born hypothesis" is weak.
What it says is simply that, assuming future (old?) humanity becomes (became) able to perfectly simulate (old) Earth and that 'n' such simulations' clock cross their internal "June 3rd, 2016" calendar date, it follows, by rule of succession, that there's a 1/(1+n) probability we're in the original Earth and, conversely, a n/(1+n) probability we're in a simulation.
For n = 0 the result of the thought experiment is trivial: we're on original Earth, duh. For any n > 0 however the implications become interesting.
For example, consider the ethical implications of us being in "original Earth" and becoming able to create such a perfect simulations, which, being perfect, would necessarily include billions of actual human minds within it. Would it be ethical for us to do it? To increase 'n' from zero to some other value? Would it be advisable for us to have an answer to that question before we reach that point, so that when we do reach it we'll be able to take the ethical path, whatever it is? Or is it better to let the decision be made when the time comes?
None of those implications, of which I mentioned just one, has however anything to do with "explanations" for anything, much less "faith-based", much less about existence. Arguing that to be its point is to construct a straw man.
Of course there is: the infinite regression of where did the uber-advanced civilization come from which created our Universe?
Why would it be an infinite regression? The actual hypothesis stipulates an original Earth, and then a future with 'n' perfectly indistinguishable simulations of that original Earth, so that the probability you're in the original one is 1/(1+n).
At any rate, there is no value in the notion, unless you can derive some theory from it, that'll allow for an experimental test.
"Testing the hypothesis physically
A long-shot method to test one type of simulation hypothesis was proposed in 2012 in a joint paper by physicists Silas R. Beane from the University of Bonn (now at the University of Washington, Seattle), and Zohreh Davoudi and Martin J. Savage from the University of Washington, Seattle.[10] Under the assumption of finite computational resources, the simulation of the universe would be performed by dividing the continuum space-time into a discrete set of points. In analogy with the mini-simulations that lattice-gauge theorists run today to build up nuclei from the underlying theory of strong interactions (known as Quantum chromodynamics), several observational consequences of a grid-like space-time have been studied in their work. Among proposed signatures is an anisotropy in the distribution of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, that, if observed, would be consistent with the simulation hypothesis according to these physicists (but, of course, would not prove that the universe is a simulation). A multitude of physical observables must be explored before any such scenario could be accepted or rejected as a theory of nature.[11]"
No. We know with absolute certainty that it has never been observed, and we have theories that explain with 99.9999999% certainty the phenomena we do observe and predict with the same accuracy new phenomena. These theories are falsifiable and haven't been falsified yet.
However, we also know, and this one is a 100% certainty, which is infinitely more than the above 99.9999999% figure, that no amount of evidence allows one to affirm an induction to be absolutely certain, for Laplace's rule of successionproves that zero evidence in a finite number of observations 'n' in a finite population 'N' still has a probability 0.434294 / ( n*log10(N) ) of being true.
Come back in 10 billion years. I'll be more open to this "absolute certainty" of yours maybe being actually absolutely certain by then.;-)
I think we're done here.
As you wish. But if you'd like to become actually rigorous when it comes to scientistic claims of "certainty", I'd suggest you familiarize yourself with the instrumentalist perspective on the matter, and then contrast it with your realist position.
we will never be able to propel anything with mass to match the speed of light
As far as is currently known. Maybe our grasp of physics is already perfect and that's indeed the case. Maybe it isn't and it isn't. Now, do you know how we can make it absolutely sure, 100% certainty, that it'll never happen? If we shrug, think we've achieved perfection (completeness), and give up searching.
That applies to everything else you said. The fact of the matter is, finite beings' consciousness exists, it's finite, and it had a beginning, if for no other reason than that finite beings themselves had a beginning. Therefore, by definition, it's possible to transition, within a temporal domain, from a state of lack of consciousness to a state of consciousness. If we assume natural selection did it, then our engineering can do it too once our science understand the mechanism by which it arises and how it works. If we assume a god did it, be it a pagan-style lowercase-g finite immanent causal personal deity, be it a monotheistic-style uppercase-g infinite transcendent acausal personal one, be it even a apatheistic-style muological transfinite impersonal ground-of-being, then we may lack the effective means to achieve the same, but that's still uncertain and therefore we should continue looking for them. In any case, there is a how, a how that, just to add insult to injury, might even be formally-causal instead of efficiently-causal, but whatever it is, science won't be complete until we arrive at it.
Therefore, sure, feel free to keep speculative certainties and perfectly realized impossibilities up if you like them. The dreamers will continue trying anyway.
Observing the limits of physics and human technology is not any sort of sweeping generalization.
We're nowhere near those limits. We've just entered the beginning of the S-curve no biotechnology. And while Moore's Law has slowed, it's still an exponential curve, a projected 30 times performance increase per generation instead of the 100,000 times increase observed until now, not counting what will be possible with Quantum computers once they become available.
There's absolutely no way you can know what can and cannot be done in 100, 1,000, 10,000, 1,000,000 and more years of applied engineering.
Then I am certain you are familiar with the argument from authority, or the appeal to authority, and conversly, how to construct non-fallacious argument
Yep, I am.:-)
and you must also be familiar with, or have mastered, the ubiquiotous slashdot strawman
Yep, that too!:-)
What you are fantacizing about is in fact impossible, and will always be in our Universe, until physics itself is broken.
Ah, those sweeping generalizations coming from speculative thinking! They're nice! I did a lot of speculation myself, and read even more of those, during my 4 years majoring in Philosophy. It was fun, particularly because my teachers provided us with top Philosophers who reached diametrically opposed conclusions about basically everything, all of which perfectly argued for. Even better, it turned me into a skeptic about Philosophy's ability to reach actual answers about anything.
On the other hand, it also provided me the one insight on Philosophy's actual usefulness I hold dear: that Philosophers are excellent inquirers, pointing the problems of whatever is assumed by everyone around them. But that's only valid when they start from the state of art on whatever they're questioning. If they they start from anything else, it's useless. As Plato used to say in his day, for one to enter the Academy one must know math. Nowadays, even more so than back then, and not only math but everything that came from math.
That is not at all clear, and in fact, the probability leans quite strongly against it being possible, ever.
Except it doesn't. The OpenWorm project is 20% of the way towards fully emulating the 302-neuron Caenorhabditis elegans, with some already quite interesting results.
"But Moore's law.."
No, no "buts". We try. Over and over and over and over again. If in several centuries, after having built a perfect emulation down to the quantum particles' level we still fail, then well, there's something else to that, and then it'll be time to find what that is. If however we succeed, all arguments to the contrary will always have been moot.
By all means, keep questioning. But do so from an actually knowledgeable position. Armchair guessing is too 1400's for current circumstances.
Basic income is a concept created by people that want to stifle capitalism and devalue education and personal initiative to better one's self.
Er... not really. Some of its advocates are famous libertarians, such as Friedrich Hayek. And if there is one thing one can never say about libertarians is that they want to stifle capitalism.
The thing is, the worst for capitalism, far worse than taxes, is all the interference by big government itself, and basic income works against this. It allows us to downsize and dismantle entire governmental sectors by simply giving the money that would have gone into them directly to the people, who in turn would use it by purchasing from capitalist companies. Additionally, as more and more of those governmental bodies were dismantled, we could start transferring to the people part of the taxes that went into them, thus also lowering taxes overall. In the end, you get a small government, more freedom, and a functioning society that, while still relying on money from taxes, does it in a most definitely "non-welfarian-statist" manner. Also, less crime, because those who want to use cocaine, crack, heroin or whatever will have the money to engage in that and will be able to do so at home in a manner that would be safe for most everyone.
There's no practical downside to this proposal. It diminishes government, it lowers taxes, it lowers crime, it incentives business, it provides welfare without being actual big government-style welfare, and it requires just a small chunk of all the surplus generated by an exponentially-growing economy. In fact, wealth for those who work will continue expanding exponentially, just a little less exponentially than it might otherwise. It's cheap, and it's effective.
From an evolutionary perspective, periodic diseases that kill 10% of the human population are a huge win. The surviving 90% have stronger genes, therefore causing the species to become stronger.
From the individuals' perspective, particularly those that die in such situations, or get health issues for years after managing to survive, there's no win in it.
Bringing an evolutionary perspective to any ethical discussion amounts to leaving ethics behind. Individuals can be ethical subjects and objects. They can feel pain, suffering, fear, loss etc., therefore making them into objects of ethical consideration (or lack thereof). Species, on the other hand, cannot. A species, by itself, has nothing at all approaching a mind. Only its members do, and even there, only members of species that have central nervous systems or, preferably, brains.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah! It's not now, I did agree previously. Hosts file ad blocking is particularly useful in low speed, low memory, low power, battery-based devices. I use hosts file ad blocking in my smartphone, for example.
In my desktop computer however, I don't notice a difference in performance. It's so fast that the difference in ROI between hosts based ad blocking and JavaScript based ad blocking cannot be perceived.
Hmm... I'm curious though: if you're against advertisements, why do you advertise APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit?
True. But that doesn't prevent a combined approach, does it? As in, host blocking file for most ad networks, and a set of browser plugins for the difficult sites.
Except when it comes to blocking self-hosted ads, correct? In that case they're a good ROI.
IF you're concerned about it, build a better tool then yourself.
I guess I'll continue using a combination of uBlock Origin, Tampermonkey and Reek's Anti-Adblock Killer to deal with the Facebook ads that APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit won't be able to block then. It's easier to use those tools than to build a new tool from the ground up myself.
But I want to block ads on Facebook.
Can you upgrade APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit so that it will be able to begin blocking ads on Facebook once Facebook starts serving ads from its own domain as if they were normal pages?
Can APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit block ads that come from the same domain of the content?
For example, if I'm visiting "https://example.com", and it serves ads sourced from "https://example.com/ads/", can APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit block them?
Because that's what Facebook is going to do to try thwarting ad blocks, including thwarting APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit.
It's like Valve is a hardware store selling paint, and some people use that paint for vandalism. It isn't their fault, and they have no culpability.
In some countries they have. Here in Brazil hardware stores are forbidden from selling spray paint cans to teens, as it's assumed they are going to use them to spray illegal graphiti. If a hardware store is caught selling spray paint cans to teens it pays a fine and runs the risk of being closed.
Sorry, but why should I read something from the bourgeois factory owner Engels, or from his bromance buddy Marx, who lived from the surplus value Engels extracted from his proletarian workers?
Marxist theory, having been written by two members of the bourgeois class, cannot but be just another false consciousness ideological construct to advance the interests of the bourgeois themselves, as is evidenced by the fact over the last 150 years it has led to nothing but the overcoming of one set of bourgeois by another set of bourgeois, the so "avant-garde of the proletariat", which in typical fashion always have everything but actual proletarians.
Wake up. None of these "avant-garde" bourgeois will ever transfer their dictatorial power to the actual proletariat. As all bourgeois ideologues, they want the power for themselves. The proletariat? Convenient excuses for the power grab, if that much.
under ROMs like CyanogenMod, you can install a very _limited_ google apps selection. For example, you can have basically just the google play store, and that's it. No Hangouts, Gmail, Google app, Chrome, Drive, etc, etc.
Not true. Check Delta Gapps With Modular Addons (All DPI). You're welcome.
Except you don't have to find a sucker who will give you real goods and services for your printed paper currency first.
FTFY.
Idiot.
If you trust your lawyer, you will definitely get screwed. In most legal situations, your primary adversary is your own lawyer, not the opposing party.
This happened to a friend of mine. She lost an arm and part of her vision in an accident, and also got PTSD. The lawyer she contracted to do the work to get her disability benefits showed in court one week after the deadline. Now she's unable to work and unable to receive disability benefits.
She tried then finding a lawyer that would help her get this overturned. No lawyer she contacted wanted to touch the case, because they all said they work for workers' compensation, so they cannot do anything against it. Some said they'd look into it if she calculated for them how much they might earn, which she has no idea how to do.
Then she tried finding one that'd help her sue her previous lawyer for malpractice, and no one wants to help.
So now, thanks to this, she's a one armed, partially blind, PTSD-suffering, mendicant, as she depends on the help of friends to have, among other things, a ceiling and food.
If anyone reading this has a suggestion I could forward her on how to solve this absurd situation, please provide it. It'd be most welcome...
If UBI is a solution to technological growth, meaning surplus growth, and this growth is faster than population growth, then those $800 become able, over time, to purchase more and more due to the deflation inherent to technological advances. The alternative is to practice inflation adjustment so that prices stay stable, and you increase the value paid over time. In the end both things work for the same: increased robotic productivity = everyone becoming able to live better.
The simulation hypothesis is simply the hypothesis that, given "n" identical settings, you don't know in which specific one you are. I fail to see how the question "but where did the settings came from!?" has anything to do with it.
These are three different questions:
a) Knowledge of how many settings 's' there are (we know the lower bound to be 1: us ourselves);
b) Knowledge of which setting we are in assuming 's' is if is greater than 1;
c) Knowledge of the origin of the setting / settings.
Why do you suppose one single hypothesis has to simultaneously cover all three, and cannot restrict itself to dealing with a single one of them? Care to explain why, exactly, one cannot have a hypothesis only about 'a', only about 'b' (as exemplified by the simulation hypothesis) or only about 'c'?
And what is it about emphasizing the word "hypothesis"? Has it turned into a demeaning term all of a sudden? Have philosophers and scientists become forbidden from developing them? How do you propose we advance from no knowledge into theories and mechanics without going through hypothesis first?
Because the hypothesis doesn't explain where the original Earth comes from
Why should it? It'd be like arguing a human child cannot be said to having been born from human parents because that doesn't explain where the first human being came from, and hence that the "human-child as human-born hypothesis" is weak.
You could also describe it as a modern form of faith-based explanation for existence
I think you're reading too much in it. Much like the Drake equation and the doomsday argument, the simulation hypothesis isn't an "explanation", it's an interesting inferential thought experiment.
What it says is simply that, assuming future (old?) humanity becomes (became) able to perfectly simulate (old) Earth and that 'n' such simulations' clock cross their internal "June 3rd, 2016" calendar date, it follows, by rule of succession, that there's a 1/(1+n) probability we're in the original Earth and, conversely, a n/(1+n) probability we're in a simulation.
For n = 0 the result of the thought experiment is trivial: we're on original Earth, duh. For any n > 0 however the implications become interesting.
For example, consider the ethical implications of us being in "original Earth" and becoming able to create such a perfect simulations, which, being perfect, would necessarily include billions of actual human minds within it. Would it be ethical for us to do it? To increase 'n' from zero to some other value? Would it be advisable for us to have an answer to that question before we reach that point, so that when we do reach it we'll be able to take the ethical path, whatever it is? Or is it better to let the decision be made when the time comes?
None of those implications, of which I mentioned just one, has however anything to do with "explanations" for anything, much less "faith-based", much less about existence. Arguing that to be its point is to construct a straw man.
Of course there is: the infinite regression of where did the uber-advanced civilization come from which created our Universe?
Why would it be an infinite regression? The actual hypothesis stipulates an original Earth, and then a future with 'n' perfectly indistinguishable simulations of that original Earth, so that the probability you're in the original one is 1/(1+n).
At any rate, there is no value in the notion, unless you can derive some theory from it, that'll allow for an experimental test.
"Testing the hypothesis physically
A long-shot method to test one type of simulation hypothesis was proposed in 2012 in a joint paper by physicists Silas R. Beane from the University of Bonn (now at the University of Washington, Seattle), and Zohreh Davoudi and Martin J. Savage from the University of Washington, Seattle.[10] Under the assumption of finite computational resources, the simulation of the universe would be performed by dividing the continuum space-time into a discrete set of points. In analogy with the mini-simulations that lattice-gauge theorists run today to build up nuclei from the underlying theory of strong interactions (known as Quantum chromodynamics), several observational consequences of a grid-like space-time have been studied in their work. Among proposed signatures is an anisotropy in the distribution of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, that, if observed, would be consistent with the simulation hypothesis according to these physicists (but, of course, would not prove that the universe is a simulation). A multitude of physical observables must be explored before any such scenario could be accepted or rejected as a theory of nature.[11]"
Simulation hypothesis
Actually we know for absolute certainty
No. We know with absolute certainty that it has never been observed, and we have theories that explain with 99.9999999% certainty the phenomena we do observe and predict with the same accuracy new phenomena. These theories are falsifiable and haven't been falsified yet.
However, we also know, and this one is a 100% certainty, which is infinitely more than the above 99.9999999% figure, that no amount of evidence allows one to affirm an induction to be absolutely certain, for Laplace's rule of succession proves that zero evidence in a finite number of observations 'n' in a finite population 'N' still has a probability 0.434294 / ( n*log10(N) ) of being true.
Come back in 10 billion years. I'll be more open to this "absolute certainty" of yours maybe being actually absolutely certain by then. ;-)
I think we're done here.
As you wish. But if you'd like to become actually rigorous when it comes to scientistic claims of "certainty", I'd suggest you familiarize yourself with the instrumentalist perspective on the matter, and then contrast it with your realist position.
Things are never simple. Anyone who thinks they are is under Dunning and Krugger's spell.
we will never be able to propel anything with mass to match the speed of light
As far as is currently known. Maybe our grasp of physics is already perfect and that's indeed the case. Maybe it isn't and it isn't. Now, do you know how we can make it absolutely sure, 100% certainty, that it'll never happen? If we shrug, think we've achieved perfection (completeness), and give up searching.
That applies to everything else you said. The fact of the matter is, finite beings' consciousness exists, it's finite, and it had a beginning, if for no other reason than that finite beings themselves had a beginning. Therefore, by definition, it's possible to transition, within a temporal domain, from a state of lack of consciousness to a state of consciousness. If we assume natural selection did it, then our engineering can do it too once our science understand the mechanism by which it arises and how it works. If we assume a god did it, be it a pagan-style lowercase-g finite immanent causal personal deity, be it a monotheistic-style uppercase-g infinite transcendent acausal personal one, be it even a apatheistic-style muological transfinite impersonal ground-of-being, then we may lack the effective means to achieve the same, but that's still uncertain and therefore we should continue looking for them. In any case, there is a how, a how that, just to add insult to injury, might even be formally-causal instead of efficiently-causal, but whatever it is, science won't be complete until we arrive at it.
Therefore, sure, feel free to keep speculative certainties and perfectly realized impossibilities up if you like them. The dreamers will continue trying anyway.
Observing the limits of physics and human technology is not any sort of sweeping generalization.
We're nowhere near those limits. We've just entered the beginning of the S-curve no biotechnology. And while Moore's Law has slowed, it's still an exponential curve, a projected 30 times performance increase per generation instead of the 100,000 times increase observed until now, not counting what will be possible with Quantum computers once they become available.
There's absolutely no way you can know what can and cannot be done in 100, 1,000, 10,000, 1,000,000 and more years of applied engineering.
Then I am certain you are familiar with the argument from authority, or the appeal to authority, and conversly, how to construct non-fallacious argument
Yep, I am. :-)
and you must also be familiar with, or have mastered, the ubiquiotous slashdot strawman
Yep, that too! :-)
What you are fantacizing about is in fact impossible, and will always be in our Universe, until physics itself is broken.
Oh, is it?
and its unlikely we ever will.
Ah, those sweeping generalizations coming from speculative thinking! They're nice! I did a lot of speculation myself, and read even more of those, during my 4 years majoring in Philosophy. It was fun, particularly because my teachers provided us with top Philosophers who reached diametrically opposed conclusions about basically everything, all of which perfectly argued for. Even better, it turned me into a skeptic about Philosophy's ability to reach actual answers about anything.
On the other hand, it also provided me the one insight on Philosophy's actual usefulness I hold dear: that Philosophers are excellent inquirers, pointing the problems of whatever is assumed by everyone around them. But that's only valid when they start from the state of art on whatever they're questioning. If they they start from anything else, it's useless. As Plato used to say in his day, for one to enter the Academy one must know math. Nowadays, even more so than back then, and not only math but everything that came from math.
That is not at all clear, and in fact, the probability leans quite strongly against it being possible, ever.
Except it doesn't. The OpenWorm project is 20% of the way towards fully emulating the 302-neuron Caenorhabditis elegans, with some already quite interesting results.
"But Moore's law.."
No, no "buts". We try. Over and over and over and over again. If in several centuries, after having built a perfect emulation down to the quantum particles' level we still fail, then well, there's something else to that, and then it'll be time to find what that is. If however we succeed, all arguments to the contrary will always have been moot.
By all means, keep questioning. But do so from an actually knowledgeable position. Armchair guessing is too 1400's for current circumstances.
Mind only comes from healthy, living brain.
And we cannot make brains to very narrow specifications with these and those features because...?
And those designed brains cannot be made from silicon instead of carbon because...?
Basic income is a concept created by people that want to stifle capitalism and devalue education and personal initiative to better one's self.
Er... not really. Some of its advocates are famous libertarians, such as Friedrich Hayek. And if there is one thing one can never say about libertarians is that they want to stifle capitalism.
The thing is, the worst for capitalism, far worse than taxes, is all the interference by big government itself, and basic income works against this. It allows us to downsize and dismantle entire governmental sectors by simply giving the money that would have gone into them directly to the people, who in turn would use it by purchasing from capitalist companies. Additionally, as more and more of those governmental bodies were dismantled, we could start transferring to the people part of the taxes that went into them, thus also lowering taxes overall. In the end, you get a small government, more freedom, and a functioning society that, while still relying on money from taxes, does it in a most definitely "non-welfarian-statist" manner. Also, less crime, because those who want to use cocaine, crack, heroin or whatever will have the money to engage in that and will be able to do so at home in a manner that would be safe for most everyone.
There's no practical downside to this proposal. It diminishes government, it lowers taxes, it lowers crime, it incentives business, it provides welfare without being actual big government-style welfare, and it requires just a small chunk of all the surplus generated by an exponentially-growing economy. In fact, wealth for those who work will continue expanding exponentially, just a little less exponentially than it might otherwise. It's cheap, and it's effective.
From an evolutionary perspective, periodic diseases that kill 10% of the human population are a huge win. The surviving 90% have stronger genes, therefore causing the species to become stronger.
From the individuals' perspective, particularly those that die in such situations, or get health issues for years after managing to survive, there's no win in it.
Bringing an evolutionary perspective to any ethical discussion amounts to leaving ethics behind. Individuals can be ethical subjects and objects. They can feel pain, suffering, fear, loss etc., therefore making them into objects of ethical consideration (or lack thereof). Species, on the other hand, cannot. A species, by itself, has nothing at all approaching a mind. Only its members do, and even there, only members of species that have central nervous systems or, preferably, brains.