Re:Offered his brain for further scientific study
on
The Unforgettable Amnesiac
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I'm not familiar with the details of this case, but most likely he was declared unable to manage his own affairs due to his mental status, in which case a caregiver (usually a family member) would be assigned to make decisions for him. It may not be ideal, but it's probably the best way we have of dealing with informed consent in cases of patients who are unable to give fully informed consent.
I think the guy you mean is Clive Wearing. Whenever showed his earlier writings, he denied being responsible for them. Over time his caretakers learned to always speak to him in terms of the immediate present, and to never refer to their past time together.
If you don't have the knowledge to experiment, the equipment to manifest the phenomenon, or even a useful clue, then what exactly do you have besides your personal desire to find something? The early quantum physicists didn't start out with some wishy-washy, intangible sense that 'something' was amiss--they started out with hard data that didn't fit their models. Like Rutherford shooting shooting alpha particles at gold foil--the existing theory said one thing would happen, but what he saw was inconsistent. Any other scientist operating under comparable conditions could do the same work and get the same results. Around this anomaly a new model of the atom was built. But most fringe science can't do that--they don't have data, they have anecdotes. And I'm sure you'll bleat about all the data being ignored by mainstream scientists, but guess what: if your data is compelling, people will pay attention to you, even if your theory sucks. The fact that nobody is interested in psi-crap is because it fails to generate any worthwhile data worth digging into more deeply. It has nothing to do with academic oppression and everything to do with failure to put out.
Modern science may be a long way off from what was accepted 500 years ago, but the fact is that 500 years ago there was some kind of consistently observable phenomenon that somebody made note of. Somebody studied it, and thought about it, and theorized about it, and new conclusions were established. Somebody else carried the work a little farther, or maybe new technologies allowed greater insights than previously possible. But eventually, science advances.
Contrast this with what we currently consider pseudoscience, where despite the best efforts of many people, there's almost nothing to observe: no experiments you can do, no verifiable, measurable examples to provide the seed of a hypothesis, much less a basis for an entirely new branch of science. For something to be understood, first it has to be, you know, REAL.
And comparing modern science to any church just proves your stunning ignorance. There's nothing scientists love more than tearing down old theories and replacing them with something new, and there's no quicker way to get your name in the history books. It may take time for new ideas to catch on (as it should--it takes time to build evidence and persuade people) but valid concepts don't get buried just because they're inconvenient. Spend some time with any real scientists and see if you're still willing to make such an inane statement.
That's a load of horseshit, and the fact that you'd make such a claim suggests to me that you have very little contact with people doing actual science. When I was a grad student hanging around the bio department, the folks in the department are some of the cleverest, most engaged individuals you're ever likely to meet, and they're all hungry to dig out new concepts and ideas. Imagine being the guy who creates an entirely new field of study--even if you died penniless and unsung, you'd be a legend. Many, many scientists would be willing to pursue long shots for such an opportunity.
The problem with 99% of the so-called supernatural is that there's not the slightest damn bit of evidence to support new fields of study. There was a lab at Duke University for at least 20-30 years for the study of psi phenomenon like ESP, telepathy, etc. Now, granted, I'm sure they weren't the most highly funded department, but in all the time they were active they never found a damn thing. If these phenomenon were real, wouldn't you expect to see SOMETHING? And if you found solid evidence of some hitherto fantastic phenomenon, wouldn't you trumpet it from the rooftops even if mainstream scientists ignored you? Yet no good evidence seems to exist.
It's a very handy position for the fringe crowd: blame mainstream science for marginalizing your ideas, and if a real scientist does produce data contradicting your claims, just keep clamoring for more money and more research, regardless of how little support you may have for your claims.
One explanation has some grounding in what we currently know about science. The other assumes things, like the existence of souls, or of some kind of afterlife, which has no real scientific substatiation. Which do you think a scientist is more likely to embrace?
I mean, hell, if you want to make shit up, why not suppose that these 'ghosts' are really leprechauns fucking around with us? That's not really any more unlikely than ghosts, is it?
Societies are more stable than you might guess. Reciprocal altruism, which doesn't require anything nearly as intense as love, is a powerful force for motivating socially positive behavior. Likewise, there have been studies that show that people have built-in desire for fairness in dealings with others (coupled with a willingness to punish cheaters, even if doing so is costly). It's very rational, and very effective, and it doesnt' require anything nearly so grandiose as love for ones' fellow man.
To be honest, this just sounds like a 'no true Scotsman' argument. 'Love' is defined as only those parts of love which are positive, uplifting, and nuturative, and the potentially nasty baggage (possessiveness, obsession, etc) are wtritten off as something separate.
Nor would I necessarily agree that love is the basis of all human society. I live in a big city where there are fairly consistent patterns of behavior which you'd consider polite and civil (folks hold doors for each other, say excuse me when they bump into someone, offer subway seats to the elderly or infirm, etc). I don't think this is due so much to some hidden wellspring of love for our common man as much as a desire to keep things running smoothly--I treat you with a certain amount of respect and politeness, and you do likewise. For all I care you might be thinking about how nice it would be to strangle me, but as long as you keep your behavior civil we can get along. It's more 'social contract' than 'love'.
"Why are these two sentences placed here, and in this way? To make it perfectly clear that the blame for problems caused by "armies" that refuse to carry their arms openly, that hide behind civilians and use them as shields, is on the head of the party using the human shields."
I agree with most of what you're saying, but the problem is that most people don't really care if technically we're in the right when we drop a bomb that kills noncombatants. We still look like the bad guys.
As for Bush...well, you've said yourself that the rules of engagement our troops work under are absurd. As the commander in chief, doesn't Bush take some responsibility for that? I know plenty of people who would argue that going to war was the right decision, but that Bush (and his subordinates) botched the whole thing horribly--wouldn't you consider overly restrictive ROEs to be a part of that?
This would excite me more if I could send a remote command that would detonate a small brick of C4 in the laptop. Why disable the computer when you can disable the thief?
I'm glad you're man enough to admit it. If I could just get you to attach a picture of yourself bowing to my obvious superiority, that'd be super, thanks.
I didn't realize you had said anything worth refuting, to be honest, seeing as your primary criticism seems to be, "he writes too complicated-like for me." Hey, that's cool--to each his own. Some folks, such as myself, enjoy the complexity and find it stimulating. Other folks don't. But to refer to his writing as 'ejaculate' or the ravings of a mental case seems to bely a certain lack of sophistication on your part. Hence my offer of something more your speed--Dick and Jane, maybe? Or is the subtle characterization too much for you?
Re:I'm over Stephanson
on
Anathem
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Aw, poor baby. Hang on, maybe I can find you something with smaller words and more pictures.
Your point is taken--I guess I just assumed most of the folks who are in default are so not because they entered the loan with fraudulent intentions, but because they took loans which were really too large for their repayment potential and simply couldn't manage the economic downturn. I guess I need to be more cynical when it comes to people.
Blaming the subprime borrowers seems kind of silly--after all, me, Joe Six-pack, defaulting on my mortgage isn't going to kill a bank. However when you've got one of those mortgage mills that churns out bad loans for a percentage, and banks that buy up those mortgages as assets and employ feable risk mitigation...well, they're the ones I'd blame. An individual bad loan is an oily rag. A financial institution packaging them and using them securities is like an idiot stuffing a trashcan full of oily rags.
Maintain some perspective: she's not making the choice to face down the tanks in Tianaman Square. She's choosing not to switch numbers because doing so is a pain. If nobody is taking her seriously, and her only recourse is to hire a lawyer, or get into a battle with the telco, then it's fair to point out that the aggravation associated with her 'stand' may be far greater than just switching numbers.
Eh, the kid was there for like 2 minutes, and his death wasn't much of a shock. My apologies if I ruined one insignificant mid-arc episode of a TV show for you.
He was awesome in the episode where he played a father...and then when Claire and her goons accidentally off the kid, you looked at him and thought "Oh shit...this is gonna be really ugly."
Ah, well, since we're talking about things that don't exist, I'm a proponent of pastaventriloquism, a metaphysical process by which the Flying Spaghetti Monster animates our mere flesh by ramming His Noodly Appendage up our butts. So obviously, a computer could only truly have a human grasp of its surroundings if it has an appropriate socket for His Noodly Appendage.
What you describe as 'feeling' is observable to an outsider as a pattern of electrochemical activity in your brain. Likewise, you could certainly monitor a computer to see how its observable electronic states vary in response to different inputs. To an outsider, these are essentially indistinguishable. What you're calling the experience of qualia is something that takes place inside your head, and there's no reason to assume something similar couldn't happen inside a computer.
It's different because most employment is 'at will' meaning that I can be fired for pretty much any reason that doesn't involve, for example, my age, race, gender, or sexual preferences. Depending on how much oversight my manager experiences, he can fire me because he doesn't like my taste in clothes, or because I chew too loudly at lunch.
But public schools are not like that. As a taxpayer, if I want to send my kids to the local public school it is my right to do so. Only if the student's behavior at school warrants does the principle have the authority to suspend or expel him.
And lastly, libel is irrelevant here--if the principle thinks he has a case, then he's welcome to fiel suit against the kid, and the court will decide whether or not a crime has been committed. But the fact that he has chosen not to do this doesn't give him the right to levy his own punishment--if you punch me in the nose and I don't press charges, the law doesn't allow me to slug you back as a smaller punishment.
Your point is well taken, but I'm not sure I even see this as a free speech issue (however it might be spun). If I'm at a restaurant with some friends, and I say "boy, principle X sure is a pedophile, isn't he?" and principle X happens to be sitting at the next table, why should he be able to retaliate against me using the authority of his position? I could see a case for some kind of preemptive action if I was, say, coordinating a future act of disruptive behavior, but that doesn't seem relevant here. And if the speech is of the sort that could be considered slanderous, then fine, there are laws to punish me for that, but again, that's not what's happening here.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not familiar with the details of this case, but most likely he was declared unable to manage his own affairs due to his mental status, in which case a caregiver (usually a family member) would be assigned to make decisions for him. It may not be ideal, but it's probably the best way we have of dealing with informed consent in cases of patients who are unable to give fully informed consent.
I think the guy you mean is Clive Wearing. Whenever showed his earlier writings, he denied being responsible for them. Over time his caretakers learned to always speak to him in terms of the immediate present, and to never refer to their past time together.
If you don't have the knowledge to experiment, the equipment to manifest the phenomenon, or even a useful clue, then what exactly do you have besides your personal desire to find something? The early quantum physicists didn't start out with some wishy-washy, intangible sense that 'something' was amiss--they started out with hard data that didn't fit their models. Like Rutherford shooting shooting alpha particles at gold foil--the existing theory said one thing would happen, but what he saw was inconsistent. Any other scientist operating under comparable conditions could do the same work and get the same results. Around this anomaly a new model of the atom was built. But most fringe science can't do that--they don't have data, they have anecdotes. And I'm sure you'll bleat about all the data being ignored by mainstream scientists, but guess what: if your data is compelling, people will pay attention to you, even if your theory sucks. The fact that nobody is interested in psi-crap is because it fails to generate any worthwhile data worth digging into more deeply. It has nothing to do with academic oppression and everything to do with failure to put out.
Modern science may be a long way off from what was accepted 500 years ago, but the fact is that 500 years ago there was some kind of consistently observable phenomenon that somebody made note of. Somebody studied it, and thought about it, and theorized about it, and new conclusions were established. Somebody else carried the work a little farther, or maybe new technologies allowed greater insights than previously possible. But eventually, science advances.
Contrast this with what we currently consider pseudoscience, where despite the best efforts of many people, there's almost nothing to observe: no experiments you can do, no verifiable, measurable examples to provide the seed of a hypothesis, much less a basis for an entirely new branch of science. For something to be understood, first it has to be, you know, REAL.
And comparing modern science to any church just proves your stunning ignorance. There's nothing scientists love more than tearing down old theories and replacing them with something new, and there's no quicker way to get your name in the history books. It may take time for new ideas to catch on (as it should--it takes time to build evidence and persuade people) but valid concepts don't get buried just because they're inconvenient. Spend some time with any real scientists and see if you're still willing to make such an inane statement.
That's a load of horseshit, and the fact that you'd make such a claim suggests to me that you have very little contact with people doing actual science. When I was a grad student hanging around the bio department, the folks in the department are some of the cleverest, most engaged individuals you're ever likely to meet, and they're all hungry to dig out new concepts and ideas. Imagine being the guy who creates an entirely new field of study--even if you died penniless and unsung, you'd be a legend. Many, many scientists would be willing to pursue long shots for such an opportunity.
The problem with 99% of the so-called supernatural is that there's not the slightest damn bit of evidence to support new fields of study. There was a lab at Duke University for at least 20-30 years for the study of psi phenomenon like ESP, telepathy, etc. Now, granted, I'm sure they weren't the most highly funded department, but in all the time they were active they never found a damn thing. If these phenomenon were real, wouldn't you expect to see SOMETHING? And if you found solid evidence of some hitherto fantastic phenomenon, wouldn't you trumpet it from the rooftops even if mainstream scientists ignored you? Yet no good evidence seems to exist.
It's a very handy position for the fringe crowd: blame mainstream science for marginalizing your ideas, and if a real scientist does produce data contradicting your claims, just keep clamoring for more money and more research, regardless of how little support you may have for your claims.
One explanation has some grounding in what we currently know about science. The other assumes things, like the existence of souls, or of some kind of afterlife, which has no real scientific substatiation. Which do you think a scientist is more likely to embrace?
I mean, hell, if you want to make shit up, why not suppose that these 'ghosts' are really leprechauns fucking around with us? That's not really any more unlikely than ghosts, is it?
Societies are more stable than you might guess. Reciprocal altruism, which doesn't require anything nearly as intense as love, is a powerful force for motivating socially positive behavior. Likewise, there have been studies that show that people have built-in desire for fairness in dealings with others (coupled with a willingness to punish cheaters, even if doing so is costly). It's very rational, and very effective, and it doesnt' require anything nearly so grandiose as love for ones' fellow man.
To be honest, this just sounds like a 'no true Scotsman' argument. 'Love' is defined as only those parts of love which are positive, uplifting, and nuturative, and the potentially nasty baggage (possessiveness, obsession, etc) are wtritten off as something separate.
Nor would I necessarily agree that love is the basis of all human society. I live in a big city where there are fairly consistent patterns of behavior which you'd consider polite and civil (folks hold doors for each other, say excuse me when they bump into someone, offer subway seats to the elderly or infirm, etc). I don't think this is due so much to some hidden wellspring of love for our common man as much as a desire to keep things running smoothly--I treat you with a certain amount of respect and politeness, and you do likewise. For all I care you might be thinking about how nice it would be to strangle me, but as long as you keep your behavior civil we can get along. It's more 'social contract' than 'love'.
"Why are these two sentences placed here, and in this way? To make it perfectly clear that the blame for problems caused by "armies" that refuse to carry their arms openly, that hide behind civilians and use them as shields, is on the head of the party using the human shields."
I agree with most of what you're saying, but the problem is that most people don't really care if technically we're in the right when we drop a bomb that kills noncombatants. We still look like the bad guys.
As for Bush...well, you've said yourself that the rules of engagement our troops work under are absurd. As the commander in chief, doesn't Bush take some responsibility for that? I know plenty of people who would argue that going to war was the right decision, but that Bush (and his subordinates) botched the whole thing horribly--wouldn't you consider overly restrictive ROEs to be a part of that?
This would excite me more if I could send a remote command that would detonate a small brick of C4 in the laptop. Why disable the computer when you can disable the thief?
I'm glad you're man enough to admit it. If I could just get you to attach a picture of yourself bowing to my obvious superiority, that'd be super, thanks.
I didn't realize you had said anything worth refuting, to be honest, seeing as your primary criticism seems to be, "he writes too complicated-like for me." Hey, that's cool--to each his own. Some folks, such as myself, enjoy the complexity and find it stimulating. Other folks don't. But to refer to his writing as 'ejaculate' or the ravings of a mental case seems to bely a certain lack of sophistication on your part. Hence my offer of something more your speed--Dick and Jane, maybe? Or is the subtle characterization too much for you?
Aw, poor baby. Hang on, maybe I can find you something with smaller words and more pictures.
Your point is taken--I guess I just assumed most of the folks who are in default are so not because they entered the loan with fraudulent intentions, but because they took loans which were really too large for their repayment potential and simply couldn't manage the economic downturn. I guess I need to be more cynical when it comes to people.
Blaming the subprime borrowers seems kind of silly--after all, me, Joe Six-pack, defaulting on my mortgage isn't going to kill a bank. However when you've got one of those mortgage mills that churns out bad loans for a percentage, and banks that buy up those mortgages as assets and employ feable risk mitigation...well, they're the ones I'd blame. An individual bad loan is an oily rag. A financial institution packaging them and using them securities is like an idiot stuffing a trashcan full of oily rags.
That's MY official policy.
Sincerely,
Batman
Maintain some perspective: she's not making the choice to face down the tanks in Tianaman Square. She's choosing not to switch numbers because doing so is a pain. If nobody is taking her seriously, and her only recourse is to hire a lawyer, or get into a battle with the telco, then it's fair to point out that the aggravation associated with her 'stand' may be far greater than just switching numbers.
If I'm the one getting angry calls because my number was spoofed, then my problem is solved by getting a new number.
Eh, the kid was there for like 2 minutes, and his death wasn't much of a shock. My apologies if I ruined one insignificant mid-arc episode of a TV show for you.
He was awesome in the episode where he played a father...and then when Claire and her goons accidentally off the kid, you looked at him and thought "Oh shit...this is gonna be really ugly."
Ah, well, since we're talking about things that don't exist, I'm a proponent of pastaventriloquism, a metaphysical process by which the Flying Spaghetti Monster animates our mere flesh by ramming His Noodly Appendage up our butts. So obviously, a computer could only truly have a human grasp of its surroundings if it has an appropriate socket for His Noodly Appendage.
What you describe as 'feeling' is observable to an outsider as a pattern of electrochemical activity in your brain. Likewise, you could certainly monitor a computer to see how its observable electronic states vary in response to different inputs. To an outsider, these are essentially indistinguishable. What you're calling the experience of qualia is something that takes place inside your head, and there's no reason to assume something similar couldn't happen inside a computer.
See, you're joking, but somebody above suggested exactly this and defied someone to tell him why it wouldn't work. Poe's law in action!
It's different because most employment is 'at will' meaning that I can be fired for pretty much any reason that doesn't involve, for example, my age, race, gender, or sexual preferences. Depending on how much oversight my manager experiences, he can fire me because he doesn't like my taste in clothes, or because I chew too loudly at lunch. But public schools are not like that. As a taxpayer, if I want to send my kids to the local public school it is my right to do so. Only if the student's behavior at school warrants does the principle have the authority to suspend or expel him. And lastly, libel is irrelevant here--if the principle thinks he has a case, then he's welcome to fiel suit against the kid, and the court will decide whether or not a crime has been committed. But the fact that he has chosen not to do this doesn't give him the right to levy his own punishment--if you punch me in the nose and I don't press charges, the law doesn't allow me to slug you back as a smaller punishment.
Your point is well taken, but I'm not sure I even see this as a free speech issue (however it might be spun). If I'm at a restaurant with some friends, and I say "boy, principle X sure is a pedophile, isn't he?" and principle X happens to be sitting at the next table, why should he be able to retaliate against me using the authority of his position? I could see a case for some kind of preemptive action if I was, say, coordinating a future act of disruptive behavior, but that doesn't seem relevant here. And if the speech is of the sort that could be considered slanderous, then fine, there are laws to punish me for that, but again, that's not what's happening here.