I think free will gets to the nature of what "thought" is. And of course that has implications for AI. For example, if you buy into the whole duality thing (that a soul somehow can affect your brain) then AI would seem to be a fools dream. God didn't give souls to computers, right? But, if human thought is deterministic then AI seems much more plausible.
If the world is deterministic - if I recall my free will philosophy class from many years ago - then you are unable to to choose differently. All your actions, all events even, are determined by causal agents, which in turn were themselves determined by causal agents.
And we can't turn to quantum mechanics for the source of free will. Primarily b/c it is a system that is not predictable (uncertainty) and is apparently random. And, a random process cannot be the locus of free will. Free will connotes control - and by definition things randomly occurring are not controlled.
I believe that someone like Dan Dennett would somewhat agree with you - that we can have something like free will (it looks that way to us) in a deterministic world. But he's written more than a few books to argue his compatibilist viewpoint - I'm not even gonna try b/c I couldn't do it justice.
At the end of the day, I see arguing about free will to be little more than mental masturbation. I feel free. I believe that I am able to make decisions. Why worry about crap that better minds than me have been stumbling over for millennia. No need for any existential funks - fuck it.
Only that you need better sources; Chinese or not, the People's Daily is the CCP's official party newspaper. It'd be like trying to argue for the justice of American policy based on Voice of America stuff. Or using Pravda to argue the same thing for Russian stuff.
The use of those kind of sources is that it illustrates the position of the respective government.
Living right down the road from a very large Bass Pro (in the Ozarks) I have an observation to make: it's like a mall that has had a crazy taxidermist set loose - towering stuffed bears, tourists lost amongst fake natural scenery, and cheap handgun ammunition. They do, however, have cheap boots that proclaim 'Made in the USA.' Sometimes they even have little plastic flags over them.
According to numbers from a few years ago, DoD spends double the amount on space R&D than NASA - along with being able to co-op developments made by NASA. Rest assured that the DoD folks have a fairly focused mission, to protect US access to outer space and deny potential enemies access to same.
Nothing at all IMO. However, if this indeed is true, I question a strategy to get funding which casts doubt on US control over its nuclear weapons technology - especially given past incidents.
Well, the legislators will claim that they are the ones who are protecting free speech. And there certainly is no "establishing of religion" in this bill. I'd suggest that people turn their attention away from stupid resolutions which have no power in law and look instead to the way legislators and the courts have eroded our protection against real government threats to our rights, such as the increasingly ludicrous "reasonable" searches and seizures carried out by our nation's law enforcement.
I hope everyone realizes that this is a resolution - not a real piece of legislation. Thus, no one's speech is being limited. Really all this bill will do, if passed, is call for sending letters to university officials telling them about the resolution. And, since it doesn't call for any particular body, institution, or member to send such letters, I doubt that it would get posted anyway.
lol nice! Maybe we can put together (in the best of the crowd-sourcing tradition) a montage of 'mid-sen...' endings - then post it to ireport.com as evidence of the serious personal and societal repercussions of writer's block.
Disregarding any ad hominem attack that may exist in your post, I don't believe I've seen any TV or film that ended in mid sentence. Seriously, the montage is the height of 'we don't give a fuckism.' Since I like campy movies I'm fine with them, but I would hardly characterize them as 'special.'
I know a lot of people who have suffered disasters which required insurance. Cancer, heart attacks, car crashes, etc. I know NO ONE who has won any substantial money from the lottery. Thus, based on my observations, your comparison of the frequency of 'disasters' with the frequency of winning the lottery are pure hyperbole.
Also, I call BS on your claim that a pacemaker operation only cost 8k. Don't believe it, and a quick look thru google seems to back me up.
Yeah dude, for healthy and cautious people insurance is to cover disasters. You're cherry picking the instances where insurance is not useful and ignoring the times when it can keep you from bankruptcy. But that'll never happen to you, right...
I don't think your memory is serving very well. If you'll recall, there was a lot of anger over the 2000 election. Only the rally 'round the flag effect kept him from catching more shit early on.
Settle in? One phone call from him could end this. The only mitigating factor in his favor is if he knows this is occurring in the first place. And judging by his DOJ picks and Biden's history of pimping for the RIAA, its hard for me to accept that this one flew under his radar. Once again, I don't think it's too much to ask that he stick to what he said. Also, I hope you're not suggesting that since he's new in office that we leave our critical thinking at the door. Hopefully, as I think you're getting at, his performance will increase. Regardless, I feel no special loyalty to politicians of any stripe. They took the job and they can take people bitching about them. In fact, one could make an argument that bitching (especially in great numbers) acts as feedback to the blackbox we call the White House.
Maybe cause we don't want our government to grind to a complete standstill everytime Capitol Hill cocks get their feathers ruffled. Now, not really wanting to get into the pros and cons of proportional voting versus 'single member district plurality voting,' I just don't think that's the root of our problems.
Give him a break? You do know that the DOJ takes its marching orders from the president. While Obama is certainly not the messiah it is certainly not too much to ask that he abide by statements he made about conducting policy and decision-making. So far, I've been unimpressed with Obama. From the "OMG! sign this bill quick or you're not an American" rhetoric, the vaunted vetting process, lack of transparency, or this shit about the RIAA. Another year or so of this and we may look back fondly on our previous overlord.
Slashdot Mirror
Null hypothesis FTW!
haha
I think free will gets to the nature of what "thought" is. And of course that has implications for AI. For example, if you buy into the whole duality thing (that a soul somehow can affect your brain) then AI would seem to be a fools dream. God didn't give souls to computers, right? But, if human thought is deterministic then AI seems much more plausible.
If the world is deterministic - if I recall my free will philosophy class from many years ago - then you are unable to to choose differently. All your actions, all events even, are determined by causal agents, which in turn were themselves determined by causal agents.
And we can't turn to quantum mechanics for the source of free will. Primarily b/c it is a system that is not predictable (uncertainty) and is apparently random. And, a random process cannot be the locus of free will. Free will connotes control - and by definition things randomly occurring are not controlled.
I believe that someone like Dan Dennett would somewhat agree with you - that we can have something like free will (it looks that way to us) in a deterministic world. But he's written more than a few books to argue his compatibilist viewpoint - I'm not even gonna try b/c I couldn't do it justice.
At the end of the day, I see arguing about free will to be little more than mental masturbation. I feel free. I believe that I am able to make decisions. Why worry about crap that better minds than me have been stumbling over for millennia. No need for any existential funks - fuck it.
Only that you need better sources; Chinese or not, the People's Daily is the CCP's official party newspaper. It'd be like trying to argue for the justice of American policy based on Voice of America stuff. Or using Pravda to argue the same thing for Russian stuff.
The use of those kind of sources is that it illustrates the position of the respective government.
Living right down the road from a very large Bass Pro (in the Ozarks) I have an observation to make: it's like a mall that has had a crazy taxidermist set loose - towering stuffed bears, tourists lost amongst fake natural scenery, and cheap handgun ammunition. They do, however, have cheap boots that proclaim 'Made in the USA.' Sometimes they even have little plastic flags over them.
OMG - a citation for your pro-China stance from the official newspaper of the CCP! Profound.
According to numbers from a few years ago, DoD spends double the amount on space R&D than NASA - along with being able to co-op developments made by NASA. Rest assured that the DoD folks have a fairly focused mission, to protect US access to outer space and deny potential enemies access to same.
Nothing at all IMO. However, if this indeed is true, I question a strategy to get funding which casts doubt on US control over its nuclear weapons technology - especially given past incidents.
Or, what seems to me most likely, this is a ploy to get approval for the modernization of nuclear weapons that defense and co. have been wanting. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/04/AR2008120403555.html
Don't you guys realize that this resolution has NO legal effects? It's just dudes' blowing hot air.
Well, the legislators will claim that they are the ones who are protecting free speech. And there certainly is no "establishing of religion" in this bill. I'd suggest that people turn their attention away from stupid resolutions which have no power in law and look instead to the way legislators and the courts have eroded our protection against real government threats to our rights, such as the increasingly ludicrous "reasonable" searches and seizures carried out by our nation's law enforcement.
I hope everyone realizes that this is a resolution - not a real piece of legislation. Thus, no one's speech is being limited. Really all this bill will do, if passed, is call for sending letters to university officials telling them about the resolution. And, since it doesn't call for any particular body, institution, or member to send such letters, I doubt that it would get posted anyway.
lol nice! Maybe we can put together (in the best of the crowd-sourcing tradition) a montage of 'mid-sen...' endings - then post it to ireport.com as evidence of the serious personal and societal repercussions of writer's block.
Disregarding any ad hominem attack that may exist in your post, I don't believe I've seen any TV or film that ended in mid sentence. Seriously, the montage is the height of 'we don't give a fuckism.' Since I like campy movies I'm fine with them, but I would hardly characterize them as 'special.'
A video montage is supposed to be special lol
Son and Co. claim to have unearthed notes and whatnot left by Frank concerning Dune.
Funny enough, the clip at the bottom of the post features Ricky Nelson in 1985 - the year of his death.
I know a lot of people who have suffered disasters which required insurance. Cancer, heart attacks, car crashes, etc. I know NO ONE who has won any substantial money from the lottery. Thus, based on my observations, your comparison of the frequency of 'disasters' with the frequency of winning the lottery are pure hyperbole.
Also, I call BS on your claim that a pacemaker operation only cost 8k. Don't believe it, and a quick look thru google seems to back me up.
Yeah dude, for healthy and cautious people insurance is to cover disasters. You're cherry picking the instances where insurance is not useful and ignoring the times when it can keep you from bankruptcy. But that'll never happen to you, right...
I find that bathing regularly is a good conversation starter.
I hope you're joking. His change.gov site was far more extensive than merely a 'contact us' form.
I don't think your memory is serving very well. If you'll recall, there was a lot of anger over the 2000 election. Only the rally 'round the flag effect kept him from catching more shit early on.
Settle in? One phone call from him could end this. The only mitigating factor in his favor is if he knows this is occurring in the first place. And judging by his DOJ picks and Biden's history of pimping for the RIAA, its hard for me to accept that this one flew under his radar. Once again, I don't think it's too much to ask that he stick to what he said. Also, I hope you're not suggesting that since he's new in office that we leave our critical thinking at the door. Hopefully, as I think you're getting at, his performance will increase. Regardless, I feel no special loyalty to politicians of any stripe. They took the job and they can take people bitching about them. In fact, one could make an argument that bitching (especially in great numbers) acts as feedback to the blackbox we call the White House.
Maybe cause we don't want our government to grind to a complete standstill everytime Capitol Hill cocks get their feathers ruffled. Now, not really wanting to get into the pros and cons of proportional voting versus 'single member district plurality voting,' I just don't think that's the root of our problems.
Give him a break? You do know that the DOJ takes its marching orders from the president. While Obama is certainly not the messiah it is certainly not too much to ask that he abide by statements he made about conducting policy and decision-making. So far, I've been unimpressed with Obama. From the "OMG! sign this bill quick or you're not an American" rhetoric, the vaunted vetting process, lack of transparency, or this shit about the RIAA. Another year or so of this and we may look back fondly on our previous overlord.