Regardless of what you say (or I for that matter), Pakistan is still a backwards shithole, this lawyer is still a certified idiot, Muhammed was still a pedophile, and Islam is still not a religion of peace. Deal with it.
Nowhere did I say that was the only thing. They should also be ashamed of luring people unsuspecting people into giving up any idea of privacy they may have had, among other things.
That's a completely different story however, and they absolutely should not be ashamed of offending a bunch of koran thumping hicks.
Thing about Piss Christ is even that barely offended most people. Hell, you even have nuns on the record saying it's a legitimate piece of art. Piss Christ and Draw Mohammed Day are worlds apart in reaction, and it is a great demonstration of how the magnitude of people's reactions is what is really important.
Just goes to show that people who draw try to draw comparisons between modern day Christianity and modern day Islam in an attempt to vindicate Islam are really off their rocker.
Christianity not being a "religion of peace" (no news here, don't think you are so terribly insightful) doesn't mean that Islam is. Both are free to be ridiculed at the same time.
On the other hand, this article is definitively about Islam, so that is what's being discussed.
More likely: "we're a bunch of weenies who are willing to bow to pressure from intolerant koran thumping hicks who say they want to behead us for exercising our rights."
Pointing out the absurdity of people being offended by stupid things is nothing to be ashamed about. Here, I'll even do it right now: 8===D O: That is Muhammad sucking a massive cock, for those unaware.
What facebook should be ashamed of is that they bowed to pressure from these lunatics.
Strictly speaking, if the brain is a computer, then "what we are" would be the software. Our teaching, reprogramming, and going crazy are all, or could be all, software 'features'. Any strictly "hardware" features that might be present in the brain could be simulated in software just as easily.
Computers are stable because we program them to be, and there are certainly plenty of examples of software that is anything but stable:)
Any computer with a hardware RNG device, such as one that keeps track of radioactive decay, can take advantage of non-deterministic quantum effects. Just as you claim the human brain is unpredictable, a computer can be made to be so.
Furthermore, I hardly consider the influence of outside quantum effects to be a sufficiently satisfying explanation of "free will". To me "free will" means the ability to non-deterministically decide without outside influence (which quantum mechanics would qualify as in my book). Mathematics tells us that such non-determinism cannot be arrived upon.
Anyways, this entire discussion about the existence of free will is pretty firmly in theological territory. Without a scientifically quantifiable reason that brains are not computers, we can only reasonably continue under the assumption that they are.
Changes in hardware, which do happen, can equally be described as changes in software. A Turing machine that is able to change it's own hardware is not more powerful than one that cannot, since it is quite trivial to simulate a TM that modifies it's own hardware on a TM that cannot.
Nobody is arguing that the human brain and a computer are the same styles of computer, just that they are both computers (and therefore not as different as many would like to think).
On a theoretical (read: computational theory) level, they are both the same. As Von Neumann stated: "Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." Human brains, like computers, exist in the real world and have to obey the same set of rules. Baring the existence of the soul, they are both completely deterministic (with the exception of randomness from quantum mechanics, which both can take advantage of). Humans are not Turing Oracles, if anything we are less computationally powerful than the computers we have created.
Your statement: "brain does not just execute the same simple instructions over and over again" is incorrect. The human brain may be an computer architecture with which you are unfamiliar (it is almost certainly not a modified harvard architecture, like you probably think of when you think of computers), however that does not mean that it is intrinsically more powerful than any other computer, or that it cannot be reduced to simpler computer models. Unless you have discovered something completely unknown about what exactly the brain is (in which case, do please share), than "executing the same simple instructions over and over again" is exactly what the brain is doing.
Consider this thought experiment: Scientists restrict their study to that of a single human neuron. They study every aspect of this neuron, building a complete theoretical picture of how it operates, and how it responds to different stimuli. Then, with the wonders of nano-technology, they build their own. A completely synthetic "robot neuron", that happens to be able to report back it's state to a central computer. They then remove a similar neuron from a human test subject, and insert this robot neuron in it's place, matching their internal states as closely as allowable. Surely the human test subject is still human, correct? You'll lose orders or magnitude of your own neurons in a modest night of drinking, so of course he isn't any less human for the loss of a single. Now repeat this experiment over and over again, until you have replaced the entirety of the brain. At no one point was the human's stream of consciousness interrupted, but his brain is now entirely synthetic. Furthermore, a snapshot of his brain can now be obtained, and simulated, on a sufficiently powerful computer.
Furthermore, efforts to simulate brains on computers are getting further every day. Scientists can simulate neural networks of equivalent power of rodents on super computers right now.
What exactly is so different between a brain and a computer? Brains might still have an edge in the parallel market right now, but don't expect that to last forever. Both are computers, and both should theoretically be capable of the same things. Who's to say that in the future we won't be emulating wetware on massive synthetic computation substrates?
The only possible reason for human intelligence to be some sort of un-reachable goal for computers is some sort of non-scientific concept of a "soul". If you are going to bring religion or spirituality into it (which you are welcome to do), it seems wise to hold off of the chastising of those who don't.
Actually, people who talk about AI bug me too. It implies that there will be something fundamentally different between the various types of intelligences that will emerge. Getting "racist" about it before it even happens strikes me as ill-advised.
There are plenty of examples of "IRL" self replicating organisms that do in fact die after they are done replicating, so I'm not sure what you think your point is.
Perhaps the trick is that this thing can _teleport_ itself a few cells away, without passing through the intervening space, but again, that seems kind of an arbitrary and unimportant distinction.
Agreed. Kind of like all of the commonly accepted scientific definition of "life". Requirements that lifeforms be made of cells or have a metabolism seem incredibly silly in face of the possibilities computation has presented us. The entire topic is wishy-washy and not terribly objective. People just make up the requirements as they go to allow them to classify things as they had been before.
I don't know why you're taking medical advice from a physicist though.
Because I'm not arguing that children that live closer to power lines don't have higher likelyhoods of developing leukemia. I'm arguing that EMF is not the cause, and physicists are infinitely more qualified to speak on that matter.
As stated here, "there is no biological mechanism to explain the higher risk". Correlation does not imply causation, and in this case there is a very very notible absense of scientifically sound proposed mechanisms for causation.
If you want to play this just by references, then here you go. Courtesy of the paper I previously linked to you, I'd suggest actually reading it instead of dismissing it for being writting by a physicist (what could a physicist possibly know about EMF after all?). I think this trumps some article in Times..., have fun:
Brodeur P. Currents of Death: Power Lines, Computer Terminals,
and the Attempt to Cover Up the Threat to Your Health. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1989.
Brodeur P. The Great Power Line Cover-Up: How the Utilities
and Government Are Trying to Hide the Cancer Hazard Posed by
Electromagnetic Fields. (Little-Brown, 1993, hardback). There
is also a 1995 paperback edition.
PBS Frontline.
Currents of Fear. Program #1319, originally aired June 13, 1995.
Davis JG and others. Health Effects of Low-Frequency Electric
and Magnetic Fields. Oak Ridge Associated Universities, 1992.
National Research Council Committee on the Possible Effects
of Electromagnetic Fields on Biologic Systems. Possible Health
Effects of Exposure to Residential Electric and Magnetic Fields.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1997. [Press
release] [Complete
book]
Lower energy UV, while not ionizing, for all intents and purposes causes harm by cooking you. The UV band in general is absolutely considered to be ionizing.
Furthermore, talk of UV in general is highly irrelevant, it's on the complete opposite side of the visible light spectrum from the microwave radiation used by cellphones for fucks sake. We are talking the difference between a centimeter band, and a nanometer band, 7 whole fucking orders of magnitude different.
They're scary. Seems as though some people have an RF phobia. Probably stems from them never taking a physics class in their life, I blame the public school system.
Slashdot Mirror
Says the man e-raging on slashdot.
Regardless of what you say (or I for that matter), Pakistan is still a backwards shithole, this lawyer is still a certified idiot, Muhammed was still a pedophile, and Islam is still not a religion of peace. Deal with it.
Nowhere did I say that was the only thing. They should also be ashamed of luring people unsuspecting people into giving up any idea of privacy they may have had, among other things.
That's a completely different story however, and they absolutely should not be ashamed of offending a bunch of koran thumping hicks.
The point is that facebook should be ashamed, but not for the reasons that you suggest. They should be ashamed because they did not go far enough.
Also, I really don't give a shit what you think of facebook as a useful website. That is completely irrelevant.
Thing about Piss Christ is even that barely offended most people. Hell, you even have nuns on the record saying it's a legitimate piece of art. Piss Christ and Draw Mohammed Day are worlds apart in reaction, and it is a great demonstration of how the magnitude of people's reactions is what is really important.
Just goes to show that people who draw try to draw comparisons between modern day Christianity and modern day Islam in an attempt to vindicate Islam are really off their rocker.
Christianity not being a "religion of peace" (no news here, don't think you are so terribly insightful) doesn't mean that Islam is. Both are free to be ridiculed at the same time.
On the other hand, this article is definitively about Islam, so that is what's being discussed.
More likely: "we're a bunch of weenies who are willing to bow to pressure from intolerant koran thumping hicks who say they want to behead us for exercising our rights."
Pointing out the absurdity of people being offended by stupid things is nothing to be ashamed about. Here, I'll even do it right now: 8===D O: That is Muhammad sucking a massive cock, for those unaware.
What facebook should be ashamed of is that they bowed to pressure from these lunatics.
There are realistic ideal worlds, and there are unrealistic ideal worlds.
Strictly speaking, if the brain is a computer, then "what we are" would be the software. Our teaching, reprogramming, and going crazy are all, or could be all, software 'features'. Any strictly "hardware" features that might be present in the brain could be simulated in software just as easily.
Computers are stable because we program them to be, and there are certainly plenty of examples of software that is anything but stable :)
Any computer with a hardware RNG device, such as one that keeps track of radioactive decay, can take advantage of non-deterministic quantum effects. Just as you claim the human brain is unpredictable, a computer can be made to be so.
Furthermore, I hardly consider the influence of outside quantum effects to be a sufficiently satisfying explanation of "free will". To me "free will" means the ability to non-deterministically decide without outside influence (which quantum mechanics would qualify as in my book). Mathematics tells us that such non-determinism cannot be arrived upon.
Anyways, this entire discussion about the existence of free will is pretty firmly in theological territory. Without a scientifically quantifiable reason that brains are not computers, we can only reasonably continue under the assumption that they are.
This. Synthetic is a far less emotionally loaded word, and it sounds like it means the same thing you are trying to convey.
Changes in hardware, which do happen, can equally be described as changes in software. A Turing machine that is able to change it's own hardware is not more powerful than one that cannot, since it is quite trivial to simulate a TM that modifies it's own hardware on a TM that cannot.
Nobody is arguing that the human brain and a computer are the same styles of computer, just that they are both computers (and therefore not as different as many would like to think).
On a theoretical (read: computational theory) level, they are both the same. As Von Neumann stated: "Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." Human brains, like computers, exist in the real world and have to obey the same set of rules. Baring the existence of the soul, they are both completely deterministic (with the exception of randomness from quantum mechanics, which both can take advantage of). Humans are not Turing Oracles, if anything we are less computationally powerful than the computers we have created.
Your statement: "brain does not just execute the same simple instructions over and over again" is incorrect. The human brain may be an computer architecture with which you are unfamiliar (it is almost certainly not a modified harvard architecture, like you probably think of when you think of computers), however that does not mean that it is intrinsically more powerful than any other computer, or that it cannot be reduced to simpler computer models. Unless you have discovered something completely unknown about what exactly the brain is (in which case, do please share), than "executing the same simple instructions over and over again" is exactly what the brain is doing.
Consider this thought experiment: Scientists restrict their study to that of a single human neuron. They study every aspect of this neuron, building a complete theoretical picture of how it operates, and how it responds to different stimuli. Then, with the wonders of nano-technology, they build their own. A completely synthetic "robot neuron", that happens to be able to report back it's state to a central computer. They then remove a similar neuron from a human test subject, and insert this robot neuron in it's place, matching their internal states as closely as allowable. Surely the human test subject is still human, correct? You'll lose orders or magnitude of your own neurons in a modest night of drinking, so of course he isn't any less human for the loss of a single. Now repeat this experiment over and over again, until you have replaced the entirety of the brain. At no one point was the human's stream of consciousness interrupted, but his brain is now entirely synthetic. Furthermore, a snapshot of his brain can now be obtained, and simulated, on a sufficiently powerful computer.
Furthermore, efforts to simulate brains on computers are getting further every day. Scientists can simulate neural networks of equivalent power of rodents on super computers right now.
What exactly is so different between a brain and a computer? Brains might still have an edge in the parallel market right now, but don't expect that to last forever. Both are computers, and both should theoretically be capable of the same things. Who's to say that in the future we won't be emulating wetware on massive synthetic computation substrates?
The only possible reason for human intelligence to be some sort of un-reachable goal for computers is some sort of non-scientific concept of a "soul". If you are going to bring religion or spirituality into it (which you are welcome to do), it seems wise to hold off of the chastising of those who don't.
Actually, people who talk about AI bug me too. It implies that there will be something fundamentally different between the various types of intelligences that will emerge. Getting "racist" about it before it even happens strikes me as ill-advised.
There are plenty of examples of "IRL" self replicating organisms that do in fact die after they are done replicating, so I'm not sure what you think your point is.
Agreed. Kind of like all of the commonly accepted scientific definition of "life". Requirements that lifeforms be made of cells or have a metabolism seem incredibly silly in face of the possibilities computation has presented us. The entire topic is wishy-washy and not terribly objective. People just make up the requirements as they go to allow them to classify things as they had been before.
Because I'm not arguing that children that live closer to power lines don't have higher likelyhoods of developing leukemia. I'm arguing that EMF is not the cause, and physicists are infinitely more qualified to speak on that matter.
As stated here, "there is no biological mechanism to explain the higher risk". Correlation does not imply causation, and in this case there is a very very notible absense of scientifically sound proposed mechanisms for causation.
If you want to play this just by references, then here you go. Courtesy of the paper I previously linked to you, I'd suggest actually reading it instead of dismissing it for being writting by a physicist (what could a physicist possibly know about EMF after all?). I think this trumps some article in Times..., have fun:
The UV band is 10 nm to 400 nm. Under radiation under about 120 nm is ionizing. Ergo, the part of the UV band is ionizing.
From a health standpoint, it just cooks you. Still nothing new.
Oh come on, that "power lines cause cancer" shit has been known to be bullshit for years now.
Lower energy UV, while not ionizing, for all intents and purposes causes harm by cooking you. The UV band in general is absolutely considered to be ionizing.
Furthermore, talk of UV in general is highly irrelevant, it's on the complete opposite side of the visible light spectrum from the microwave radiation used by cellphones for fucks sake. We are talking the difference between a centimeter band, and a nanometer band, 7 whole fucking orders of magnitude different.
If only 95% of applications are approved in the first week, then as far as I am concerned they have a 1/20 failure rate, not 1/1000.
Furthermore, comparing a cellphone to, literally, rocket science is just absurd.
I love how slashdot is so anti-intellectual these days that mentioning facts is considered to be trolling.
I don't get it mods, why is this funny? It really would be nice to have this in the US.
You really think that is all they fuck up? Really? That is just the number that they fuck up that are big enough to make slashdot.
I don't care why it is hard for them to do it correctly, I care that they do it at all.
Ultraviolet light is ionizing radiation, and those others are burns.
Care to revise your statement?
They're scary. Seems as though some people have an RF phobia. Probably stems from them never taking a physics class in their life, I blame the public school system.