The legal system uses a mixture of(at least) two models:
- the old "crime and punishment" system which is derived from a morality where a guilty person has to suffer to pay for a sin, whatever the consequences. It's not fair to punish a lunatic.
- And the more pragmatic approach, where the effect of punishment is taken in account. Can punishment have a correcting effect or not? Should this person be taken out of circulation?
Good clarification.
But the American legal system, for most intents and purposes is punative and based on the first model.
From my (admittedly poor and second hand) understanding of things, it makes very little attempt to actually reform people. US corretional institutions just don't live up to the name.
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to patent and copyright violations."
Maybe I should a intelligized it up for your sake.
Or posted links to journal articles?
It seems kindof strange to me to argue that a concept or model "is an illusion."
I'm guessing, based only on the book jacket (which is a poor source, I know), that "The Illusion of Conscious Will" is actually trying to make a more scientific argument - that there is a model for human action which is more predictive than the belief in a single, unified, "will."
The second article seems to divide the brain into conscious and unconscious components, and claim that only the conscious portion is capable of having "will."
How we employ the concept of free will seems very conditional on the context in which it's being used.
A lawyer would probably argue for a more holistic version of "free will" that treats all congnitive processes as a single entity. The unconscious mind can be punished just like the conscious mind (and presumably it can remember the punishment). For legal purposes "free will" still exists.
The book jacket, on the other hand, brings up the notion of 'determinism.' Technically speaking, the brain is non-deterministic.
Personally, I'd like to see them try and incarcerate the left half of a person's brain for a crime committed by their right hand.
The latter scientists seem to equate "free will" with "conscious mind" (and, to echo another poster, argued that the conscious mind is capable of preventing or overriding the subconscious mind before an action is made.)
< generality > Genius is an abnormality in every sense of the word.
There are a lot of good ideas that sound irrational. Its a good thing that intelligent people are willing to defend odd ideas. Some of them are very successful and we all benefit.</ generality >
But I buy what this guy says; If you want to prevent stupid ideas, get the 'smart mistake makers' in a room with other smart guys who have the ability to challenge what they say based on some rational basis.
Put the person in a situation where trying to bully their way into being right will not bring them their desired ego trip, which is a strong motivation for persisting with their bad idea.
but modern brain science is showing that decisions are an illusion
Yes, it said that last week in the journal of "Modern Brain Science."
The brain is non-deterministic and self altering. It would be next to impossible to prove what you claim. Decisions have a physical basis. You can correlate certain physical states with certain mental states. But you simply can't prove what you're claiming.
That decisions are an illusion is an assumption that some scientists are working under. I'm not sure what "an experiment to test whether we actually have free will or whether we just look like it" would look like. I'm not sure what a scientific definition of free will would even be. Some scientists are going to operate under the assumption of physical determinism. I'm sure the evidence for it will increase. Maybe it's correct. But that's not the same thing as having proved that assumption. At the very least, we can show that the brain is non-deterministic and self altering. Science can have a hard time at predicting this kind of system. Whether "free will" is true or not, it's still a useful model and will remain so for a while.
Worst of all, science runs into problems when systems are self altering like this. It doesn't deal as well when you go beyond linear cause --> effect models, to where you have feedback and randomness. Chaotic systems are hard to predict. If everyone believes that people have no free will, or that their free will is somehow corrupt or not valid, that may alter how people behave as a society. The belief in rational self interest went hand in hand with the rise of early democratic capitalism. The waning of that belief may go hand in hand with its alteration or destruction.
Isn't that what they feed everyone in school; "You can do anything if you just put your mind to it"?
I thought they fed people "here's your grade. You fall in this classification."
In my younger years, I took this to mean "Do everything, because you can". Now that I'm in college, that entire lesson was bunk, and now I'm stuck with a bunch of what I'd consider useless knowledge.
I think you misunderstood the phrase "You can do anything if you put your mind to it." The saying advocates focus. I.E. Put your mind and heart and dedication into a task and you can acomplish it.
Nobody's saying "you can do everything if you put your mind to it."
Young teachers think they can change the world. The best old teachers know that they have to do things one class or one book at a time. Basically your conclusion.
Most of what you learn in High School IS bunk. For some reason, the good teachers, the good books, that would allow a person to take their learning to the next level are just hard to find at this stage and it's a damn shame. This is changing because of the internet, but was very true while I was growing up. (not so long ago)
How much of this post is your ego talking, though?
There are always going to be problems bigger than you are. Many of them won't even be explicit. If you have intelligence, direct it to identifying these unstated problems, understanding them, and then changing them if you can.
One talent that people with intelligence often lack is the ability to sell, in the broad sense. The people who can sell are the ones who understand how other people think and spend their time getting along with other people because they don't know how to do the techie stuff.
The irony is that, unless you know how to sell what you're doing and advocate your ideas, and work with people, you will end up wasting a lot of your efforts.
Most geeks learn sales well enough to do well in life, but not well enough to fulfil their true potential.
Serves me right for replying to a troll, but what the hell.
I was complaining about episodes 1 and 2 which I did watch. The dialogue was horrid and noone's saying otherwise. With all the effort that Lucas put into hyping ep #3 he deserves to get critically burned for allowing such a major flaw and not giving the details to someone else to write.
FYI - being a mindless drone while you bitch and complain about something you know nothing about doesn't get you far in life and just makes you look stupider.
You sound like you're an 18 year old or somthing. Here's a clue, Being "cool" doesn't matter jack once you get out of college.
But if having no standards or critical sense is your seceret to success 'in life' (it's just a movie, for God's sake. Don't act so damn hurt if someone criticizes it ) then best of luck to you.
I make a good salary, my company pays full health and dental as well as my housing. "Getting far in life" is not too far up on my list of worries.
I haven't seen episode 3 yet. So tell me, has Lucas realized he can't write dialogue and gotten someone better to do it for him? Not surprising that the best line in episode 5 (second in the original), when Leia says "I love you" and Solo says "I know" was not actually in the script. Harrison made it up on the spot. (He seems to do a lot of that, no?)
What really makes Star wars is the spin off industries.
Forget Industrial light and Magic for a moment. Who wouldn't pay a fortune to have Lucas's PR agency hype their movie?
What do you think will faster in air: a pound of feathers all tied together with dental floss, or a 1-inch ball bearing?
Assuming wind resistance is held constant and is non-zero, increasing mass increases the rate at which an object falls. See my other post on terminal velocity for more detail.
Weight has nothing to do with how fast an object falls in either air or water (disregarding the obvious effects of density).
Your statement basically says "weight has nothing to do with anything except... oh yeah... it does."
Consider the equation for terminal velocity
Mathematically, terminal velocity is described by the equation
V_t= sqrt(2mg / Cd * rho * A)
where
Vt is the terminal velocity,
m is the mass of the falling object,
g is gravitational acceleration,
Cd is the drag coefficient,
rho is the density of the fluid the object is falling through, and
A is the object's cross-sectional area.
Notice that when an atmosphere is involved, increasing the mass increases the object's terminal velocity.
Weight is related to how fast an object falls in air or water.
Slashdot edited out my rho symbol. I'll write it out as text
V_t= sqrt(2mg / C_d * rho * A)
Vt is the terminal velocity,
m is the mass of the falling object,
g is gravitational acceleration,
Cd is the drag coefficient,
rho is the density of the fluid the object is falling through, and
A is the object's cross-sectional area.
Clarification, denser objects tend to fall faster.
It has NOTHING to do with weight, and everything to do with aerodynamics.
Weight plays a role in overcoming wind or water resistance. The phrase "it has nothing to do with weight" is incorrect, so long as there is air or water. Acceleration is uniform for all objects, regardless of mass. But acceleration is not the same thing as "the speed at which the object falls."
Consider the equation for terminal velocity
Mathematically, terminal velocity is described by the equation
V_t= sqrt(2mg / Cd * * A)
where
Vt is the terminal velocity,
m is the mass of the falling object,
g is gravitational acceleration,
Cd is the drag coefficient,
is the density of the fluid the object is falling through, and
A is the object's cross-sectional area.
Notice that when an atmosphere is involved, mass IS part of the equation.
you can't prove that the sun does not "go around the earth"
You can if you accept that gravity works the same everywhere.
Um, no. You can develop mathematical models which describe the motion of the planets with the earth at the center. They are going to be dramaticaly more complex than a heliocentric universe.
Fred Hoyle wrote:
The relation of the two pictures [geocentricity and heliocentricity] is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view (Hoyle, 1973)
The problem is that a geocentric universe is drammatically more complex, mathematically. But again, Occam's razor is just a useful convention. It is not, in any way, a law.
The sun may be closer to the center of mass of the solar system than the other planets, being one foci of the planet's orbit. But that has nothing to do with whether the earth goes around the sun or vice versa.
You have to laugh at the whole abstinence-based sex education thing, or else you are liable to cry. It would be like if in drivers ed they told people not to drive, because they might get into a car accident. That would be absurd. Just about everyone is going to drive anyway....This is how sex education classes should operate as well.
If you have to drive, take your first training lessons with someone older than you. Don't carpool. Always use an airbag. Remember, red means "stop." Don't go too fast. Use your mirrors. And be careful, because objects behind you are closer than they may appear.
It was "common sense" that the sun went around the earth, it was "common sense" that a heavier object would fall faster than a lighter object (all things being equal), and that an object that was moving would do so only as a result of a continuing force, and on and on.
Of course, two of things are, in their own way, true.
In air or water, heavier objects do fall faster. People's experience just didn't cover vacuumes, nor did it accuratly account for the effect that weight and wind resistance had on the speed of falling objects.
Also, phrased as you have it, you can't prove that the sun does not "go around the earth". It's mathematically simpler to describe a heliocentric universe, but occam's razor is just a convention, not a law.
Yeah, why are there so many beautifully done movies with horrible storylines? You think if they cared that much about the graphics they'd at least find a good storyline to go with it.
What I want is open source creation of resources. Sharing 3D models, for example. Public domain music for the soundtrack, etc.
Heck, look at all the free advertising that anime gets via AMVs.
It'd be nice if you could buy an extra DVD of film footage with the actors walking in front of blue screens before the background was put in. Or a Golem skeleton that you could attach your own 3D model to and re-render the scene for a video.
I hope NASA compresses his ashes into diamond using technology previously discussed on Slashdot and sends him off with the next probe.... Come to think of it, Paying to have your ashes made into a diamond is much better than being kept in an urn.
Slashdot Mirror
The legal system uses a mixture of(at least) two models:
- the old "crime and punishment" system which is derived from a morality where a guilty person has to suffer to pay for a sin,
whatever the consequences. It's not fair to punish a lunatic.
- And the more pragmatic approach, where the effect of punishment is taken in account.
Can punishment have a correcting effect or not? Should this person be taken out of circulation?
Good clarification.
But the American legal system, for most intents and purposes is punative and based on the first model.
From my (admittedly poor and second hand) understanding of things, it makes very little attempt to actually reform people. US corretional institutions just don't live up to the name.
Who modded this a troll?
Reliable testimony that proprietary liscensing schemes support terrorism!
/sarcasm >
Just as alchol fueled the brutal reign of Al Capone and his lawless mobsters, current copyright restrictions are helping support America's enemies.
<
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to patent and copyright violations."
with apologies to
Thomas De Quincey
Yup. Except it's not just the left wing. BOTH parties are authoritarian.
I'm old enough to remember when the Republicans wanted to "get government out of our lives."
i.e. before they had all the power in government.
Maybe I should a intelligized it up for your sake.
Or posted links to journal articles?
It seems kindof strange to me to argue that a concept or model "is an illusion."
I'm guessing, based only on the book jacket (which is a poor source, I know), that "The Illusion of Conscious Will" is actually trying to make a more scientific argument - that there is a model for human action which is more predictive than the belief in a single, unified, "will."
The second article seems to divide the brain into conscious and unconscious components, and claim that only the conscious portion is capable of having "will."
How we employ the concept of free will seems very conditional on the context in which it's being used.
A lawyer would probably argue for a more holistic version of "free will" that treats all congnitive processes as a single entity. The unconscious mind can be punished just like the conscious mind (and presumably it can remember the punishment). For legal purposes "free will" still exists.
The book jacket, on the other hand, brings up the notion of 'determinism.' Technically speaking, the brain is non-deterministic.
Personally, I'd like to see them try and incarcerate the left half of a person's brain for a crime committed by their right hand.
The latter scientists seem to equate "free will" with "conscious mind" (and, to echo another poster, argued that the conscious mind is capable of preventing or overriding the subconscious mind before an action is made.)
< generality > Genius is an abnormality in every sense of the word.
There are a lot of good ideas that sound irrational. Its a good thing that intelligent people are willing to defend odd ideas. Some of them are very successful and we all benefit.</ generality >
But I buy what this guy says; If you want to prevent stupid ideas, get the 'smart mistake makers' in a room with other smart guys who have the ability to challenge what they say based on some rational basis.
Put the person in a situation where trying to bully their way into being right will not bring them their desired ego trip, which is a strong motivation for persisting with their bad idea.
but modern brain science is showing that decisions are an illusion
Yes, it said that last week in the journal of "Modern Brain Science."
The brain is non-deterministic and self altering. It would be next to impossible to prove what you claim. Decisions have a physical basis. You can correlate certain physical states with certain mental states. But you simply can't prove what you're claiming.
That decisions are an illusion is an assumption that some scientists are working under. I'm not sure what "an experiment to test whether we actually have free will or whether we just look like it" would look like. I'm not sure what a scientific definition of free will would even be. Some scientists are going to operate under the assumption of physical determinism. I'm sure the evidence for it will increase. Maybe it's correct. But that's not the same thing as having proved that assumption. At the very least, we can show that the brain is non-deterministic and self altering. Science can have a hard time at predicting this kind of system. Whether "free will" is true or not, it's still a useful model and will remain so for a while.
Worst of all, science runs into problems when systems are self altering like this. It doesn't deal as well when you go beyond linear cause --> effect models, to where you have feedback and randomness. Chaotic systems are hard to predict. If everyone believes that people have no free will, or that their free will is somehow corrupt or not valid, that may alter how people behave as a society. The belief in rational self interest went hand in hand with the rise of early democratic capitalism. The waning of that belief may go hand in hand with its alteration or destruction.
Just my 2 c.
So how'd I do incorporating the tactics from TFA?
Isn't that what they feed everyone in school; "You can do anything if you just put your mind to it"?
I thought they fed people "here's your grade. You fall in this classification."
In my younger years, I took this to mean "Do everything, because you can". Now that I'm in college, that entire lesson was bunk, and now I'm stuck with a bunch of what I'd consider useless knowledge.
I think you misunderstood the phrase "You can do anything if you put your mind to it." The saying advocates focus. I.E. Put your mind and heart and dedication into a task and you can acomplish it.
Nobody's saying "you can do everything if you put your mind to it."
Young teachers think they can change the world. The best old teachers know that they have to do things one class or one book at a time. Basically your conclusion.
Most of what you learn in High School IS bunk. For some reason, the good teachers, the good books, that would allow a person to take their learning to the next level are just hard to find at this stage and it's a damn shame. This is changing because of the internet, but was very true while I was growing up. (not so long ago)
How much of this post is your ego talking, though?
There are always going to be problems bigger than you are. Many of them won't even be explicit. If you have intelligence, direct it to identifying these unstated problems, understanding them, and then changing them if you can.
One talent that people with intelligence often lack is the ability to sell, in the broad sense. The people who can sell are the ones who understand how other people think and spend their time getting along with other people because they don't know how to do the techie stuff.
The irony is that, unless you know how to sell what you're doing and advocate your ideas, and work with people, you will end up wasting a lot of your efforts.
Most geeks learn sales well enough to do well in life, but not well enough to fulfil their true potential.
Serves me right for replying to a troll, but what the hell.
I was complaining about episodes 1 and 2 which I did watch. The dialogue was horrid and noone's saying otherwise. With all the effort that Lucas put into hyping ep #3 he deserves to get critically burned for allowing such a major flaw and not giving the details to someone else to write.
FYI - being a mindless drone while you bitch and complain about something you know nothing about doesn't get you far in life and just makes you look stupider.
You sound like you're an 18 year old or somthing. Here's a clue, Being "cool" doesn't matter jack once you get out of college.
But if having no standards or critical sense is your seceret to success 'in life' (it's just a movie, for God's sake. Don't act so damn hurt if someone criticizes it ) then best of luck to you.
I make a good salary, my company pays full health and dental as well as my housing. "Getting far in life" is not too far up on my list of worries.
Finding well scripted sci-fi is a bit harder.
Geeks have lots of words that noone else uses. "Stereochemistry, Hexadecimal, Defrag"
We don't need to make stuff up to be misunderstood.
I haven't seen episode 3 yet. So tell me, has Lucas realized he can't write dialogue and gotten someone better to do it for him? Not surprising that the best line in episode 5 (second in the original), when Leia says "I love you" and Solo says "I know" was not actually in the script. Harrison made it up on the spot. (He seems to do a lot of that, no?)
What really makes Star wars is the spin off industries.
Forget Industrial light and Magic for a moment. Who wouldn't pay a fortune to have Lucas's PR agency hype their movie?
What do you think will faster in air: a pound of feathers all tied together with dental floss, or a 1-inch ball bearing?
Assuming wind resistance is held constant and is non-zero, increasing mass increases the rate at which an object falls. See my other post on terminal velocity for more detail.
Weight has nothing to do with how fast an object falls in either air or water (disregarding the obvious effects of density).
Your statement basically says "weight has nothing to do with anything except... oh yeah... it does."
Consider the equation for terminal velocity
Mathematically, terminal velocity is described by the equation
V_t= sqrt(2mg / Cd * rho * A)
where
Vt is the terminal velocity,
m is the mass of the falling object,
g is gravitational acceleration,
Cd is the drag coefficient,
rho is the density of the fluid the object is falling through, and
A is the object's cross-sectional area.
Notice that when an atmosphere is involved, increasing the mass increases the object's terminal velocity.
Weight is related to how fast an object falls in air or water.
Slashdot edited out my rho symbol. I'll write it out as text
V_t= sqrt(2mg / C_d * rho * A)
Vt is the terminal velocity,
m is the mass of the falling object,
g is gravitational acceleration,
Cd is the drag coefficient,
rho is the density of the fluid the object is falling through, and
A is the object's cross-sectional area.
Clarification, denser objects tend to fall faster.
It has NOTHING to do with weight, and everything to do with aerodynamics.
Weight plays a role in overcoming wind or water resistance. The phrase "it has nothing to do with weight" is incorrect, so long as there is air or water. Acceleration is uniform for all objects, regardless of mass. But acceleration is not the same thing as "the speed at which the object falls."
Consider the equation for terminal velocity
Mathematically, terminal velocity is described by the equation
V_t= sqrt(2mg / Cd * * A)
where
Vt is the terminal velocity,
m is the mass of the falling object,
g is gravitational acceleration,
Cd is the drag coefficient,
is the density of the fluid the object is falling through, and
A is the object's cross-sectional area.
Notice that when an atmosphere is involved, mass IS part of the equation.
you can't prove that the sun does not "go around the earth"
You can if you accept that gravity works the same everywhere.
Um, no. You can develop mathematical models which describe the motion of the planets with the earth at the center. They are going to be dramaticaly more complex than a heliocentric universe.
Fred Hoyle wrote:
The relation of the two pictures [geocentricity and heliocentricity] is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view (Hoyle, 1973)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliocentric_theory
The problem is that a geocentric universe is drammatically more complex, mathematically. But again, Occam's razor is just a useful convention. It is not, in any way, a law.
The sun may be closer to the center of mass of the solar system than the other planets, being one foci of the planet's orbit. But that has nothing to do with whether the earth goes around the sun or vice versa.
You have to laugh at the whole abstinence-based sex education thing, or else you are liable to cry. It would be like if in drivers ed they told people not to drive, because they might get into a car accident. That would be absurd. Just about everyone is going to drive anyway....This is how sex education classes should operate as well.
If you have to drive, take your first training lessons with someone older than you. Don't carpool. Always use an airbag. Remember, red means "stop." Don't go too fast. Use your mirrors. And be careful, because objects behind you are closer than they may appear.
It was "common sense" that the sun went around the earth, it was "common sense" that a heavier object would fall faster than a lighter object (all things being equal), and that an object that was moving would do so only as a result of a continuing force, and on and on.
Of course, two of things are, in their own way, true.
In air or water, heavier objects do fall faster. People's experience just didn't cover vacuumes, nor did it accuratly account for the effect that weight and wind resistance had on the speed of falling objects.
Also, phrased as you have it, you can't prove that the sun does not "go around the earth". It's mathematically simpler to describe a heliocentric universe, but occam's razor is just a convention, not a law.
lol.
Of course, the mennonites have some awsome pornographic wood carvings. *nods*
Yeah, why are there so many beautifully done movies with horrible storylines? You think if they cared that much about the graphics they'd at least find a good storyline to go with it.
Ever check out anime music videos?
I think that small artists benefit from sharing and larger artists with significant marketshare are hurt by it.
Does anyone know of a halfway decent video editing program that's GPL?
Currently looking at Zwei-Stein. Is there anything out there better than that?
What I want is open source creation of resources. Sharing 3D models, for example. Public domain music for the soundtrack, etc.
Heck, look at all the free advertising that anime gets via AMVs.
It'd be nice if you could buy an extra DVD of film footage with the actors walking in front of blue screens before the background was put in. Or a Golem skeleton that you could attach your own 3D model to and re-render the scene for a video.
I hope NASA compresses his ashes into diamond using technology previously discussed on Slashdot and sends him off with the next probe. ... Come to think of it, Paying to have your ashes made into a diamond is much better than being kept in an urn.
Why was your comment modded a troll?
This would make sense since high stress can induce ovulation, from what I've heard anecdotaly.
I will google for it.