bascule

Yes, rather than utilizing Occam's Razor, they introduce the unparsimonious element of explosives planted in the tower (and yet no 9/11 survivor ever saw this happen)

The closest is Searle's Chinese Room. Searle argues at the same time that there's some sort of bidirectional causality between an epiphenominal process arising from our biological brains (an idea he calls "biological naturalism") while at the same time arguing it's impossible for computers to do the same thing. Penrose tried to use Godel's Incompleteness Theorem to prove that consciousness is non-computable (by a universal computer). His proof was thoroughly debunked by Stanford mathematician Solomon Fefferman (also a neutral monist like Penrose): http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-07-feferman.html

It's hard to say what the 9/11 Truth Movement actually represents. About the only consistent claim they make is that the government isn't telling the whole story about 9/11. That's something I believe as well. However, in terms of the 9/11 Commission and the official reports released by engineers, physicists, and others who investigated the accidents, I believe the reports to be largely accurate and corroborated by hundreds of not thousands of independent scientists, engineers, and other specialists who can corroborate the official report. However, there's more to the 9/11 Truth Movement than government omission of details. I think it's safe to say that 9/11 Truthers believe at least one (if not all) of the following things: - The Pentagon was hit by something other than American Airlines Flight 77, possibly a cruise missile - World Trade Center 7 was demolished by a controlled demolition - The Twin Towers were demolished by controlled demolition Also: They have all seen Loose Change About the best synopsis I can give is trying to summarize a debate between two editors of Popular Mechanics, who have comprised a comprehensive defense of the official account of 9/11, and the creators of Loose Change, who engaged in a debate on Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/11/1345203 Not to strawman, but here's a strawman summary: Popular Mechanics: "But what about the technical details of..." Loose Change: "YOU'RE PART OF THE CONSPIRACY!" I'm sure many will see merit in the arguments of the creators of Loose Change. The entire debate essentially consists of both groups talking past each other. Both sides are clearly frustrated. So what's to be made of this? If there is anything to the 9/11 "Truth" movement, why are their ideas relegated to a particularly vocal minority, and why have they managed to gain little-to-no traction among the scientific and engineering community?

You can't look at neurons as being "steps" If you want to compare them to something from computer science, compare them to Actors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model

Conclusion: It's impossible for a entity to have all positive properties If IMM were still around, she'd probably bring up the example of "Is God simultaneously 4 and 6 feet tall?"

http://reddit.com http://google.com/reader These two sites eat up more of my free time than I care to admit Also, http://willitblend.com is awesome

Yes, consciousness involves "seeing into the future", in the form of prediction. The primary functions of consciousness really boil down to two activities: 1) Remembering 2) Predicting These two functions form a continuous feedback loop. We remember what we predict, and predict from what we remember. You seem to be on a completely different tangent though. By "seeing into the future" I mean using only what you remember to make predictions. I stuck "computational" into my post for a very important reason. I think consciousness is computational (or possibly hypercomputational, although I seriously doubt that). This means I believe consciousness can do no more or less than what can be done with any universal computer (or possibly hypercomputer)

Earlier animals movements were the result of fixed action patterns (i.e. "preprogrammed" movement sequences), thus more akin to a robot than what we would consider to be the volitional movements of animals with a neocortex. I would wager that animals which lack a neocortex or a functionally equivalent structure (such as in birds) are incapable of perception.

I invite you to go back and reread my post. Apparently the concept of an analogy eludes you.

Are you familiar with the concept of a non-sequitur?

For an example of a quantum algorithm, see Shor's algorithm, which could be used as an attack against the RSA public key cryptographic algorithm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor's_algorithm

The IPCC is using the output of general circulation models to draw their conclusions. As far as I can tell, you're trying to apply a layman's "as I see it" sort of approach to the problem. As a similar example I could ask why physicists would conclude that two objects of different masses dropped from the same height in a vacuum will hit the ground at the same time. If we have a 5g object and a 10g object then it's really a matter of simple math to conclude that t = d / m, and therefore the 10g object will clearly hit the ground in half the time it takes for the 5g object. Now we can ask why the physics community does not have any number like this? I believe it is obvious, because the methodology employed in the calculation is completely flawed. That's simply not how physical systems behave. But from an ad hoc, "as I see it" layman's perspective it seems reasonable. Your calculations are wrong because the climate system does not behave in the manner you expect it to. Unfortunately it is calculus, and the behavior of the system is non-linear. Forcing responses often depend on the state of the entire climate system, and altering one does not have the sort of linear response you want to ascribe to it. This is why it takes a general circulation model in order to derive these figures. This is why you can't have simple, easy-to-swallow explanations directed at laymen. The climate system is a monsterously complex system riddled with non-linearities and feedback loops, which requires the knowledge of a vast multitude of scientific disciplines to even begin to understand.

I think machines can be people. They aren't yet. When machines become people they should get the same rights as people.

Seth Lloyd gave it a thumbs up: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/quantum-leap It's 16 qubits now, but the creators say they can expand it to 1,000 by next year

In its literal form, Moore's Law will be dead soon, since Moore's Law applies to transistor counts and the useful life of the transistor as the heart of microprocessors is nearing its end. The world's first commercially viable quantum computer was just launched, for example: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/quantum-leap Regarding the OP, yes it's wrong for Kurzweil to stick any kind of date on the Singularity. It could happen tomorrow or it could be 100 years.

Does anyone else get the general feeling that the public is becoming increasingly aware of global warming? It seems to me that the overall number of news articles and general Internet banter about not only GW but at-home ways to lower CO2 emissions have increased dramatically following the publication of IPCC AR4 (as has the controversy surrounding AR4) I certainly do

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/deepjungle/episode2_nicholas.html

Understanding consciousness does change your perceptions of the world. Sometimes you can almost feel what's actually happening. Perhaps one of the most difficult things to grasp is that the same cortical structures dealing directly with sensorimotor impulses, restricted to only the input that senses a small part of your visual plane, or one of the muscles in your left toe, is the same type of cortical structure responsible for higher level thought. Consciousness (if you accept materialism) is made out of the millions of neocortical columns which comprise our neocortex, the (volumetrically) largest and most densely connected part of our brain. The neocortex is arranged hierarchically, with lots of NCCs handling sensing or motor control, with a continuous feedback loop (what our lowest level NCCs think they're sensing is both a combination of the signal they receive and what their higher-ups think they're sensing) At the top of the neocortical hierarchy sits the hippocampus, the center of short-term memory. It's job is to receive and store patterns that didn't get handled anywhere lower in the hierarchy, then repropagate them back down the hierarchy so they can be learned. That's paraphrased from Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence

These seemed potentially revolutionary to me, when I first heard them announced (circa 2000 I believe) Rather than burning fuels like gasoline or ethanol, they could be converted to a chemical that can be run through a fuel cell which generates electricity. So it'd be like a hybrid, only much more efficient (thanks to a fuel cell rather than a gas-burning "heat engine") and also emit minimal CO2 in comparison, with water vapor as its only waste product. And while water vapor is also a greenhouse gas, it has this tendency to precipitate, as opposed to CO2... we don't see it doing that very much. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone knew about the state of this idea. The most recent design I've seen dates June 2006. It's from Renault, and can apparently run on gasoline, ethanol, or diesel: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/06/renault_to_show.html I tend to get the feeling that hybrids are "false pretenders" and this technology will be the true successor to the century-old internal combustion engine.

His CV certainly doesn't look like that of a crackpot. If anything he's making the Thomas Aquinas mistake: a non sequitur in terms of how he goes from singularity => God

So back to my original question: Couldn't the same setup as a Bell test experiment be used to produce a shared random pad? Wouldn't this approach make snooping literally impossible?

We used to have a great system around here: bars could have separate indoor smoking sections with isolated ventilation systems. If drinks were dispensed in the smoking area, employees couldn't be forced to work that bar: it was opt-in. This system was a wonderful compromise! Unfortunately a few years later state law came along and banned even these.

Most of the average surface temperature changes in the past half century are due primarily to anthropogenic greenhouse gasses, yes. (Most scientists try to avoid the term "global warming" anyway) And your evidence for this position is... Maybe because you're saying the scientific evidence is wrong. So you prefer pulling things out of your ass to peer reviewed scientific research? No wonder you're confused. Man doesn't cause 90% of GW. That's probably confusion stemming from IPCC's statement that they are over 90% certain that anthropogenic forcings are predominant.

So here's where I'm confused: How does that not violate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?

http://richarddawkins.net/article,985,God-Exists-A-Formula-Proves-it,KCTV5-News According to the magic forumla: Quantum Mecλanics + General Relativity => GOD EXISTS