3.5 down, 1.5 to go...

oog...

At 12/6/09 10:25 PM, Elfer wrote: Seriously? This happens to people on this planet. Yes we construct rudimentary tools for ourselves no matter what, but what I mean is, all biological evolution is inherent to every human no matter where they're born or when. Technology is something that has to be given or grafted on, which means there needs to be a supporting environment and a history that allows it. If the advancements of the past generation aren't voluntarily handed down to the present generation, they're just lost, and this has happened in the past.

You're arguing two things here which support my point of the inability to purify the human from the tool. You claim we can exist without tools then claim we will always construct tools no matter what. Which one is it? You're falling into the very modernist trap of trying to separate things that cannot be separated, yet sneakily attempting to stick them back together in order to make sense of the world. Certain tools can be lost to a person or to a people if the network that holds them up breaks down (i.e. penicillin doesn't work in the high andes because there isn't electricity to keep it refrigerated). However, tool use is a fundamental part of the human being. The brain even sees tools as extensions of the body.

Georges Canguilhem even goes so far as to say that tools may be considered organd of the human body. Organs are items that perform functions that allow the body to do certain things. Many of the biological ones we have govern our ability to live, some allow us to move, percieve, think and feel. We create organs that allow us to build, to drive nails, to create art, to unlock the universe. We will always build these tools. Even the most primitive, even the man who is tossed naked on a deserted island will fashion tools. Without our tools we are not human, building them is as inherent to our selves as our DNA. Even if one was the cause of the other, both are required for a human to exist.

At 12/5/09 09:47 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: I also take issue with the whole computers being more intelligent than humans. Moore's law is coming to an end, and I, even being a computer scientist find it hard to believe we'll finally even get a machine to pass a turing test soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfbOyw3CT 6A&feature=related

Just found this. Enjoy! :)

At 12/6/09 05:14 PM, SkunkyFluffy wrote: If I told you, I'd have to kill you.

Or give you a master's degree in English. Either way.

Potayto, potahto.

It STILL hasn't snowed here. it's snowing on the other side of the state, but here in the Ann Arbor/Detroit area, the most we got is a few sleety bits a couple weeks ago. I don't expect it to last, because it's pretty damn cold now, but still... wtf.

At 12/5/09 09:47 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: But realistically, this probably won't happen in the good old U.S. of A. unless its for combat troops or disabled people.

I think this is the guise it will take on at first: attempts to help those who are disabled in some way. However, eventually similar tactics will be brought into the general populace, still as ways to fix disabilities, like ADHD and stupidity. I think for the most part it will sneak in under the political radar, and once it is known, it will already be so ubiquitous as to be impossible to speak out against.

I think we're over estimating how quickly this can really take effect, especially since each body is extremely unique, especially in the brain.

Except, structurally, they aren't. Individual wiring patterns of each brain are unique, but the methods by which those patterns are made are not. Similarly to how a gas is made up of a collection of individual particles, whose individual movements and rules and interactions might be too complex to try and compute in order to determine how the gas works, and yet we have other rules that allow us to model how gasses work without thinking about the particle rules (even though they be at the center of, and the cause of, the gas' behavior). We are already making great strides in mapping neural function (the resolution of which is doubling every 12 months), and in reverse-engineering the brain. We even know which brain cells control our emotional intelligence, how many of them the human brain has, and are starting to unlock how they work.

Intel already has in the works a neural implant that will be able to use gadgets like cell phones and personal computers. They expect it to gain widespread use by 2020. They also say that by 2040 humans will completely internalize our "personal computers".

Critics of the Human Genome project claimed that at the pace at which the genome was being sequenced that it would take hundreds of years to finish the project, but we finished slightly ahead of the 15-year schedule. ALL advancement is accelerating, and when you plot the pace at which it is doing so, 2045 is the magic number for what people call the Technological Singularity.

Yes, some of the basic schematics on what a neuron is are the same, but there's no such thing as a standardized way to build a brain. Conservatively, I'd say 100 years to 150 unless there is a huge breakthrough. It also depends on cost and whether it is allowed to be privatized.

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_art icle.aspx?id=17111

If we approach it the way we approached industry, the car or the internet I could believe you. But its more likely going to be like our space program. Pushing along a little bit at a time, reigned in by expenses.

Except, unlike our space program, the amount of money being spent on technology is increasing exponentially, doubling every 10-11 months, the price/performance of computation halves every 10-11 months, the number of US nano-related patents is growing exponentially, the internet backbone with which we share our data is increasing exponentially. This is an area the government has little to no control over. Politicians don't yet realize that we will soon be able to do with nanomachines what they think a pipe dream with stem cells.

I also take issue with the whole computers being more intelligent than humans. Moore's law is coming to an end, and I, even being a computer scientist find it hard to believe we'll finally even get a machine to pass a turing test soon.

The narrow, literal take on Moore's Law involving transistors is, indeed, ending... but only because we're beginning to move into a new paradigm of computing: 3-dimensional nanoscale. Carbon Nanotubes (though not without their problems at the moment) are the likeliest new tech that will allow our continued exponential growth. These new chips will be able to do the very things that our current chips cannot, and that makes them fall short of the human brain: parallel computing, self-repairing/rewiring (plasticity), emergent properties, combining of digital and analog phenomena, and some other things as well. It's really not as far off as you think.

I do agree, memory enhancements, internet links, and cyborg-prosthetics are likely to be very prevalent by 2045. But that's only because of the type of technology it is. I'd imagine it'd take another 50 years an a generation adjusted to the technology before we'd see full adoption by any significant portion of society, and that's a big IF and relies on there not being a religious or moral uprising against.

I think the move will be so subtle, so widespread and so fast that most organizations won't have the time to raise any real opposition to it.

Either way, the next 30 years are going to be fucking COOL!

At 12/5/09 09:14 AM, Ravariel wrote: Hah, no. Human Genetic engineering on the scale of actually evolving the human genome is maybe a decade or two away at the most.

I should qualify this. IF (and I know it's a big if) political opinion is swayed toward allowing human genetic modification, and there is free reign for scientists to work on the problems, THEN it should only take 10-20 years. Add a few years for the more realistic situation where there will be heavy poitical opposition.

At 12/4/09 01:51 PM, Elfer wrote:

At 12/4/09 01:12 PM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: technology is part of human evolution.

In a way, yes, but it should be noted that it's more like modifying the environment to suit ourselves than changing ourselves to suit the environment, since changes due to technology aren't inherent and they don't stick the way biological changes do. If I misplace my safety glasses, I lose the ability to make my eyes hard enough to withstand impact from a flying piece of metal. If all the airplanes blew up tomorrow, we'd lose the ability to fly.

And if all hearts or kidneys exploded tomorrow, we'd all die. Our tools, our technology is a part of what makes us human, as much as any other limb or organ. Neural studies have shown that the brain considers the tools we use as extensions of our own bodies. Our tools are organs of the human being and vice versa.

We haven't changed ourselves at all, we've set up and environment for ourselves that's more convenient. We've got clunky cans that we can climb into and order around, but we can't independently travel at a hundred kilometers per hour.

Again, you can't separate the tool from the user. There is no distillation, no purification, where the biological human could even exist without tools. We CAN travel at 100 kph if we so desire, and soon, I expect, the means to do so will shrink and become portable enough for a person to carry, and eventually become internalized within.

Now, once we get into genetically engineering humans, THEN we'd be talking. Unfortunately, that's a couple hundred years off yet.

Hah, no. Human Genetic engineering on the scale of actually evolving the human genome is maybe a decade or two away at the most. Though most scientists and thinkers who consider the situation believe that it will be through nanomachines and computational implants that we will "evolve" the human species. In a decade we will have computers that are more powerful than the human brain, in 20 we will have computers that are more powerful than all human brains, ever, and a few years after that they will become cheap enough for an individual to own. In a similar timeframe, we will have advanced biotech and nanotech to a degree that we will be able to do all sorts of cool, and seemingly fantastical, things, such as increase an individual's intelligence, memory capacity and recall accuracy and speed, rebuild the degraded DNA strands that cause aging, eliminate disease, etc. Conservative estimates for this mergeance of humans and their technology is 2045.

I do have a shit-ton of sources to prove all of those conjectures, too, if anyone wants them. I am actually thinking of writing a book on the subject and exploring the socio-political ramifications of the tech as it advances... it would likely be my Master's Thesis if I decide to do Grad school. Currently I am writing a 20-page paper on the cyberization of humans and cyborgs in fiction. I just want to make clear the fact that I am not pulling this shit out of my ass willy-nilly.

And everyone loves working with turpentine for long periods, amirite?

Poor Mother Teresa seems to have passed gently into that good night.

At 11/27/09 11:38 PM, Mechwarrior300 wrote:

At 11/27/09 09:38 PM, Ravariel wrote:

At 11/27/09 07:26 PM, Mechwarrior300 wrote:

If all dimensions incorporated the same time and had no beginning, then time itself must be infinite, and that is not possible.

Why not?

Because time is defined by finite value. You cannot measure infinity in hours for example.

...

.......

.........seriously!?

That's your answer to that question!? No wonder... y'know.. fuck it, I'm done. You're just too stupid to even try to reason with.

At 11/27/09 07:26 PM, Mechwarrior300 wrote: Ah, I see what you mean. But isn't the idea of multiple dimensions still finite?

Not necessarily.

If all dimensions incorporated the same time and had no beginning, then time itself must be infinite, and that is not possible.

Why not?

If you will permit me to say so, God is infinite and above all things we see in the physical realm.

If it's not possible for time to be infinite, why is it possible for God to be so?

At 11/27/09 05:36 PM, aviewaskewed wrote:

At 11/27/09 02:35 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: we should abolish state-recognised marriages completely :O :O

But since that will NEVER happen...may as well open up the benefits (and headaches) to everybody.

A girl can dream...

At 11/27/09 04:46 PM, Mechwarrior300 wrote: There are many different forms of the theory. Most DO involve explosions.

Expansion =/= explosion.

As far as I am concerned, all BB theories incorporate an infinite timeframe before the cause.

Except they don't.

In most atheist versions, matter was eternal before the BB.

Wut? Since when?

In this case, they seem to readily accept eternal figures when not dealing with a supreme being.

We have no problem with the infinite at all, really... just the idea that the universe "must" have a "beginning" and that those rules don't apply to the explanation for that beginning.

Also, we know that matter is neither created nor destroyed.

Except it can be.

Therefore, saying that every type of atom existed before the BB is ignoring the known chemical reactions that would have happened long before the BB (assuming infinity is involved).

"chemical" reactions make atoms? News to me.

Now most forms of the theory claim that there was absolutely nothing. Then, out of nowhere there was something and it began to balloon into what we know of as space (Not an explosion). Most people think of an explosion because it "makes since" to them. But in reality, nearly every BB idea seems to say "it just happened on it's own for no reason".

Except they don't say that at all. Physicists might not claim to know the reason, but none of them say there isn't one.

Similarly, we cannot prove creationism. Creationism depends on faith, and it can only be proven by disproving the theories that the science community comes up with. Then again, nearly all origin theories cannot be proven. They rely completely on faith.

You with your misunderstanding of the words "theory" and "proof" and the relationship between the two...

[mass becomes dense substance and explodes.]
[nothingness spawns a dense substance and explodes.]
[eternal mass finally decides to expand.]
[mass becomes dense substance and expands rapidly.]
[nothingness becomes matter spontaneously.]
[two colossal heavenly bodies collide with one another in an epic event horizon.]
[every form of matter appears and expands.]
I've heard many different ideas. I'm not sure which one you are thinking of exactly.

None of those matches with even the most simplified versions of our current theories.

Google and study these terms: Hawking Radiation, Quantum Foam, No Boundary Proposal, M-theory, Loop Quantum Gravity... Hell, everything you can find on theories of the early universe, including cyclical ones. Any or all of those issues pretty much clears up every problem you've stated with the current theories.

At 11/26/09 11:25 PM, Mechwarrior300 wrote: Logically, it makes more sense for everything to have been intricately designed much like a computer rather than an accidental, random happening. You realize how unbelievable the odds are against this? [1 in 10^340M]. And that's just for the simple cell.

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.

~Douglas Adams

See, Pro... that's how you kill a conversation! ;-)

At 11/22/09 09:47 PM, Proteas wrote: What? Y'all act like you've never seen a giant single celled amoeba monster the size of Wal-Mart before.

You leave my sister out of this!

At 11/18/09 09:24 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: Unpredictability =/= Indeterminable

Huh? The very nature of something being unpredictable is that it's future states cannot be determined from previous ones.

And Cellular Automata doesn't really prove that or appear to be nondetermined. The fact that it has rules means it is. And from what I've seen 1 state always leads to another specific state. Otherwise spaceships couldn't exist inside of it. Just like the Game of Life, the rules set out a pattern of behavior that must happen.

Except that, like i said, even with the same rules and the same starting values, the outcomes differ. The basic tenet of determinism is that if you know the rules of the game and the starting values of all actors in it, then you can calculate the outcome of ever action therein. By being able to actually concoct an "experiment" that allows for this idea to be tested, we see that it is, in fact, very simple to create undeterministic events with rigid rulesets.

However, as long as state A can only go to one specific other state B, then it is a determined system and I don't see how what you have suggested proves otherwise.

Again, rigid rules, state A to different following states on different run-throughs. If determinism were a fact, the ruleset could only ever produce a single pattern, as each starting state could only produce one resultant state based on the rules. State A can go to multiple states, as evidenced by the different patterns the ruleset produces. Granted this is an extremely simplified illustration of the possibility of a ruleset to allow for multiple options when moving from state to state.

The point here is not that this proved free will, merely that it suggests an easy way that it could be possible. Randomness has little to nothing to do with free will, it merely states that among possible options, one is not bound to a single choice. As the automata illustrates... even without a conscious "will", a set of "deterministic" rules can produce different outcomes. Thus as long as the "rules" governing our thoughts and logic, are as complex as rule 110, we can make choices.

I'd like to introduce you all to a little thing called Cellular Automata and Rule 110.

Simple set of rules that creates an ordered, yet UNPREDICTABLE outcome. Same rules each time, same starting value: different outcomes.

Suck on it, determinists. :D

At 11/16/09 07:26 PM, SevenSeize wrote: WHAT ELSE DO THEY WANT????? :-(
...order them all assasinated. Hit play. Guards will come and kill everyone in front of the palace, lulz ensue.

I think I may have found your problem >_>

At 11/11/09 06:24 PM, Korriken wrote: speaking of which, how would one go about getting his stories copywrighted so no one can find my work and steal it?

One of two ways:

1) Submit the story to the US Copyright office to be copyrighted. They store it in the archives and register the copyright. It costs money.

2) Print the story, with the little c in the circle in the title, along with the date, then mail it to yourself. Viola, copyright'd. As long as you can legally prove you wrote the thing before they did, the copyright to the words defaults to you.

You need to teach that bird some new songs :P

At 11/10/09 06:38 PM, Ravariel wrote: Does that help? It'd be easier if I could draw it in real time, and shift the perspective, but that's the basic idea.

In fact, it occurs to me that you don't even need the central assembly to make it all hold together. You could probably throw together a test piece that mimics the outer ring of the pendant and it would hold together. Alternating single and double rings (doubles sandwiching the singles) then, connect the doubles by rings that fit inside the singles and viola. Then just build the central assembly and Bob's your uncle.

At 11/9/09 10:01 AM, Proteas wrote: I wanted to post this last night but my connection was acting weird. I found this chainmaile pendent I wanted to try and make, but I can't quite figure out part of it. So I'm going to post a picture of the pendent here with an explanation, if anyone want's to take a crack at it, it would be greatly appreciated.

Looks fairly simple to me, honestly. Then again 3-D puzzles have always been easy for me. Here's the gist:

1) The double-rings you indicated as being "no problem" sandwich the single rings you're having trouble with.

2) The double rings connecting the "no prob" rings are INSIDE the "problem" rings, as is the single ring connecting them to the central assembly.

3) Thus the "problem" rings are trapped in their positions without ever actually being interlocked with another ring.

Does that help? It'd be easier if I could draw it in real time, and shift the perspective, but that's the basic idea.

At 11/10/09 03:16 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: If Private Health insurance is notoriously "Bad" They can buy the government plan. It's that fucking simple.

The problem with this is that health care is not like a car. When you buy it, and it turns out to be shit, with the car you're stranded for a short time, and out some money... with insurance, you're out a life savings and pretty well fucked... possibly dead. Finding out you've bought a lemon with insurance basically ends you when you need it most. Lack of any regulation whatsoever will allow companies to perpetuate scams and sharking to a level unheard of before. Regulation and competition act as a system of checks and balances that let neither the State nor the COmpanies to stray far from the lawful path and gain too much power.

I'm wondering why this has devolved into an all-state or all-company debate, as if there isn't any middle ground to be had? Just as much as we need private companies and competition to maintain and even improve the price and quality of the product, we need regulation to keep companies in check (if you trust them so implicitly with the welfare of their customers, you're as naive as the people who think that the State will be perfect), and we need the State to provide options for people who legitimately cannot afford insurance. I don't pretend to know the perfect plan or resolution to the competing perogatives, but there is one in there.

At 11/10/09 05:43 PM, poxpower wrote: We're not talking about ethics, we're talking about laws.
And laws are based on objectivity as much as possible

They are? News to me.

The law shouldn't be made in accordance to how people are currently being stupid.

Welcome to the world where people are not emotionless, bias-less robots. Enjoy your stay!

Your very idealism about how things SHOULD be runs counter to your claim that everything should be perfectly rational. Nevermind trying to figure out exactly what "rational" is.

At 11/5/09 09:35 PM, Korriken wrote: wtf is this world coming to?

Best part? Graduated from V Tech.

I'm going to hell for thinking that's funny.

At 10/31/09 09:31 AM, Proteas wrote: Well, I'm probably going to get some hate mail over this.

Shit, even the videos are remarkably similar...

I wonder how long that question will keep popping up...

At 10/25/09 08:43 AM, HarryControl wrote: At lest believing zealously on one side is better than being on the fence.

How so?