padren

Just a note on this: The algorithm alone does not allow prediction, it is that combined with the data that does. For data to be useful, it has to be organized in some fashion in a model, which requires more information than the simple sum being modeled. Therefore, it's impossible for a predictive system to make absolute predictions from within the system because it cannot model all the data that comprises it's own existence. So it could make predictions, but only predictions that did not take it's own existence into account. Just mentioning it as a side note because I've seen it come up a lot.

Hey - entomologists tend to agree that "pestilence kittens" are just the cutest things ever! Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Didn't mean to imply that connection though I see how it could be - just found it to be an interesting bit of information regarding memory which Bascule had addressed, but I didn't intend to make the leap to a fish processing pain in the same manner as humans.

I do agree with you, but I did run across an interesting link on new findings in fish behavior: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/17/fish-intelligence.html According to the article at least, it appears to support the idea that some fish are capable of social learning and selective use of gathered information.

I absolutely agree - which I do thank our legal system, enforcement and general culture for. My point in general is about trust, because if we don't trust the average businessman not to take advantage of abuseable power we really can't blame people for mistrusting politicians who have much higher access. I may be completely off, but I would suspect the highest position of 'ethical credibility' would like in judges in the US. Perhaps not the ones that are elected off campaign contributions and of course they are often individually seen as corrupt in certain cases - but I suspect that position holds some of the highest respect in our society.

Okay, but if you had to put a percentage figure on how many Americans would take advantage of all three, what would you guess? Keep in mind they are assured in confidence that this will never get them in trouble and no one will need to know - just simple, albeit dirty money. What percentage do you have confidence would hold to at least your ethical standards, recession and all?

I can't help but to pose a bit of a question when it comes to ethics... at least in our social view of each other as Americans, how many of us feel our normal, regular fellow Americans would choose the "high road" and turn down a (sure fire, not going to get caught) little benefit through a lucky connection, such as: 1) Insider trading - would you take a tip from a friend that had insider information, if it couldn't be traced? 2) Tax sheltering advice from an IRS agent friend - dodge paying what others would have to, thanks to a good connection? 3) Allow a councilman to "favor" your company in a city bid? Regardless of being asked if you would engage in such activity - even knowing you couldn't be caught, how much would you trust your fellow Americans not to engage in such activities, if the opportunity arose? How much do you think the average American trusts the average American not to engage in such activities? I don't know if we really have enough faith in each other to believe we wouldn't use such advantages if they came up - elected people are powerful, connected people with a lot of such opportunities. We may see each other as more honest as a result of assuming "normal" people just don't have the same opportunities to abuse.

Bascule's response pretty much sums up what I feel about the topic, but just to add my own words: It's not about whether we want Republicans to recover, or even if they can, (I am sure they will in time) it's about whether or not right now they are a "sad pathetic parody" of their former party. I definitely have some bias, as I feel like they solidified under the Bush years around a series of key highlights that are directly opposite of what I feel politics should be about: politicized religion, unilateralism, and dangerously unregulated markets among other things. So where as many who support those things may feel the Republicans "truly came together" in that time I feel they hijacked the party. I am sure there are also others who looked at those things in a similar way to how most Democrats "put up" with Pelosi's antics - with disfavor but not too much concern. All said, it does appear they are seriously hurting due to the course they took, and I would like to see them achieve something far more like you describe about Florida - which I doubt they did by simply vilifying and opposing Democrats. Most of the prominent personalities in the Republican party right now do not fill me with a lot of confidence, but I do believe they can find a better direction to head in...and we certainly want at least a two party game or we are all in trouble.

Essentially the "measure" appears to be whether or not the individual person can "empathize" by projecting their own feelings, thoughts and experiences upon the animal in question and deduce that if they themselves experienced something as that animal with their own level of consciousness that they would find it bad. Aside from that, they are using the "seakitten" BS as an intentionally disingenuous campaign to manipulate people's emotions and natural disfavor for hurting things that are "cute" with no regard for whether that animal is conscious. The irony, is that PETA is an organization that deplores the idea of using "cuteness" as a measure in whether an animal should have rights - they all should by their own philosophy. But since they already have no respect for what people in the general public think and feel on the topic of animal rights, I suspect they have little issue with trying to disingenuously manipulate the general public by trying to "cutify" fish in this manner. I find it all rather sad.

I am pretty sure crime is a social issue, not so much an enforcement one... at least in first world nations - but in poorer countries they just need regular cops and/or to clean up corruption, cyborgs are pretty much beside the point.

Um, actually I don't, it's mostly hearsay. Intuitively I find the idea of a quantum impact unlikely considering the nature of the mechanics, but that's nothing to go on.

Which would at most render our choices random at a quantum level - not allow for free will. Though, it does not appear our brains operate in a fashion where the circuitry is impacted by quantum factors - the design of our circuitry (through evolution, distribution of mass since the big bang) is.

Sorry for the inconvenience -- God

As Glider said, I included the 'if' for that reason. Quite often the question of "free will" arises as the question of whether our choices are free to choose how to modify the environmental conditions, or if the environment conditions locks in our choices to one possibility resulting in one possible subsequent environmental set of conditions. That is the question I suppose of "absolute free will" which is why I briefly covered that context. Once that caveat is out the way, we can discuss the other ways we can define free will, and explore those ideas.

If the question is between either free will or determinism then determinism wins. Our choices are the result of natural laws interacting with the components of our individual systems and the environment. However, from our perspective we appear to have free will. When we contemplate many options, we always choose the best one - even if we think we are choosing a poor option, we are simply failing to understand the totality of our choosing process. When we try to use 'creativity' to pull out a 'very random option' to feel like we have free will - we are simply utilizing the black-box of our subconscious to do the heavy lifting in the selection process, so as to hide the predictability from ourselves and fool ourselves into feeling like we are capable of more than choosing the best option possible. I consider the idea of metaphysical free will to be dead, but subjective free will to exist as it has a much narrower definition. We can't know our own processes fully, and we will always contemplate choices from our subjective perspective in which we fully appear to have free will, even if it is not true in the objective sense.

I have to share this, especially here: http://xkcd.com/585/

Something else has to be in the equation then: I mean, either light is shining through the two open barn doors from a light source behind it (because they are both open at the same time) or it is not. If there was a bomb that was set to go off with a light sensitive trigger it either blows up or it doesn't. One person can't see the light hit the trigger and the other not, so how is this reconciled?

I recall some time back catching something on one of them "learn'n" tv channels about a method where the initial exhaust from the cold start of the engine gets caught, and reburned at a higher temperature after it's warmed enough to allow a far more efficient breakdown of pollutants. It apparently did a lot of good in reducing emissions, but would be totally ignored in a pure mileage metric. It could also be one of those things that changes between now and 2016... but has the benefit of pushing the auto industry towards that goal.

Perhaps I am just confused on how everything manages to ultimately match up consistently in the end, but if you had doors on either side of the barn, and someone outside and someone inside disagreed on when which were open - either both are open at the same time and light can pass through the barn, or the doors aren't open at the same time and light can't. Are you saying both will agree that both are open or closed in synchronicity or not, but disagree on the time, or will the two parties disagree on the timing of both, allowing one to see the doors close in synchronicity and the other not? I hope I am not belaboring it - but just want to be sure - I assume you are saying they disagree on the 'when' but it will be the 'when' of when both doors open/close in synchronicity.

All that political entity has to do is be willing to abide by the ruling - but is never required to agree with it. For instance, if a case was about who was at fault and had to pay a victim - it would be hypocritical to demand payment upon winning, yet refuse to pay upon loosing. You can continue to bemoan the verdict of course - and honestly, if people didn't continue to challenge issues after SCOTUS rulings, how could we ever improve upon them?

So essentially, what gravity does to space, relative velocity per-frame-perspective does to spacetime? So really, when we look at ladders from different frames or any such event that could raise an apparent contradiction - in actuality this is simply caused by distortions in space/time that all still add up to a single, consistent set of variables. Just a quick question: I recall my physics teacher in high school saying as you approach the speed of light, it takes more energy to accelerate at a constant rate, because you get heavier, and you'd eventually get so heavy you'd collapse into a black hole. Is that true/false/unrelated to issues of frame or oversimplified? If it's too off topic for here I apologize.

First, I just want to say I think everyone has the right to be somewhat hypocritical, just that they should admit they are and understand why others may not be persuaded by hypocritical arguments. The reason I feel that way is that we don't always understand why we feel how we feel. Sometimes we feel a certain way and all the logic we have at our disposal doesn't help - in those cases, it's important to continue to try and reconcile our thoughts and feelings, but it does not unilaterally invalidate our feelings on a topic. What we often see as hypocrisy is actually the result of not understanding the shades of gray that honestly differentiate two issues. To claim for instance, that being "pro death penalty" and "anti abortion" is hypocritical grossly oversimplifies both issues. Even if someone does not have the clarity of mind at the moment to express why they can hold both positions, it does not mean they objectively irreconcilable. It does mean that individual would probably loose a social debate on that topic, but it does not invalidate their own personal feelings on the topic. And just to be clear: I do not think that unreconciled emotional feelings should have much weight in legislation - social policies should be the result of well reasoned logically consistent positions. I only mean to say that it is not inherently wrong to be hypocritical in one's views. I am unconvinced - every generation has faced a national death by decadence, apathy, and a refusal to adjust to a changing world. Final chapter's do come - as the decline of Rome and the beginning of the Dark Ages attest to, but I don't think it is entirely possible to see it coming when it does, because every generation sees this coming. I am sure doomsayers were decrying the fall of America immediately after the Revolutionary War, up to and after the Civil War, seeing the apocalypse of the "failed experiment" in every boom and bust cycle, pointing to the civil rights unrest and citing the drug crazed youth of the sixties and the threat of the Soviet Empire as evidence that we have since hit our peak - it's all nothing new. Maybe we are there now, and I for one do no see how we can possibly reconcile the issues that currently divide us, but that's part of being in the present in any given moment in history - only when looking back are things obvious. Lastly - it's come up in other threads, where you state the equivalent of "And even when it's been interpreted unambiguously, such as with Roe v. Wade, there are still institutions that reject the SCOTUS interpretation of that matter, which seems a little un-American to me." When that sentiment has come up previously, I think it was pretty much universal that you are alone in that position - which is fine, that is your right, but it will probably be universally critiqued, since most people (here at least) will say that is one of our strengths, and that we've always combined a respect for the laws that have been past with decent and focused effort to change those laws that we disagree with - even when decided by the SCOTUS. The fact that we believe that even the highest court in the land can get things wrong allows us to question and improve upon those rulings. While I consider any move to overturn roe vs wade to be a step backward, we have to allow that possibility for us to have the possibility to step forward, such as fundamental changes in our society as impacting as recognizing the right of women to vote. Without descent, one ruling would forever block the potential of future change - as it would suddenly be "un-American" to suggest the court was wrong. This way, any ruling can be questioned, but must be done through vigorous debate. As long as we demand quality debate then future changes should move us forward more often than it moves us backwards, but the flexibility is required for any movement to be possible.

Hope I am not adding to the confusion, but there's something I'd like to understand: Say you have bomb, that is in a perfect cube, and the detonation is triggered due to physical distortion. Just as a mechanical visual, say inside the cube (viewed from the side, as a square) half way along the bottom, is a laser that shoots inside at 45 degrees, to hit the center of the left wall, and a mirror, to reflect it to the top, and another mirror, to reflect it to the right wall, and another mirror, that hits a "receptor" positioned to intercept it right next to the beam generator on the bottom. So, you have a box, and a light beam bouncing around touching the exact middle of each side. If the beam is not detected by the receptor, it blows up. Now, from the bomb's frame - it's at rest, there is no length distortion, and the bomb is happy not to explode. From an observer's frame, it's contracted due to it's relative velocity, and no longer a cube causing the light beam to fail to touch the receptor. Now, I assume the observer would not see the bomb explode - instead, it would see the light inside the box also distort. So I guess what I am asking is, how does the real observations made by the observer, impact the observer's frame? I seems the only logical explanation is from the observer's frame, all physics inside the observed frame all also appear to react in a "distorted way" thus allowing things such as the bomb not going off when it should. But then we throw in something like say - the traveling bomb is just large enough to fully eclipse a light source in the background unless it's distorted to the observer. I take it that the observer does not see the light source fully eclipsed when the object moves past.... but according to the object's perspective, it would see the observer fully "eclipsed" and in the dark for a moment? Then there is the issue of how many photons hit the object as it passes - depending on if it's compressed or not. Is it safe to assume, since the light is stationary to the observer, but not to the object traveling, that the light source then appears distorted to the traveling object, and as a result only has 'x' photons to shed, which happens to exactly match up with the photons observed by the original stationary observer, who sees the photon count being the result of the object's speed vs. the stationary light? I've never been able to fully wrap my head around relative frames - but I assume it's not unlike the distorted topography of space due to gravity described by the old "bowling ball on a foam mattress" analogy. That is, you can paint a grid on it, then place a bunch of weights and "distort it" but all the lines still line up in the end. If you don't "see" the whole distorted grid, and just measure 4 points near a mass and measure 4 points far from the mass, you'd see the squares have different sizes and ask "how can they both be right?" and why you don't end up with a bunch of broken lines, since a bunch of squares of slightly different sizes can't possibly make a perfect continuous grid. Thankfully, we can see the grid example in it's entirely, and we can say "ah ha" and easily conceptualize it. I think relative frames operate the same way (abstractly, not literally), but are much harder to visualize, so when you just take measurements from one or another it becomes really hard to see how it could all add up together in the big picture. Take the "two clocks" example where one is put in orbit and flies around the earth a lot, and comes back slightly slower, having aged less than the clock that was relatively stationary: A question like "How many photons hit the stationary clock vs the moving clock, since both were exposed to the same sunlight?" seem to imply either one frame is right and the other is wrong, or both are broken - when in reality, because of all the factors that get distorted, observations from either frame will result in consistent observations. Since it can't be visually described on a nice little grid painted mattress, it's harder to see how it works out, but mathematically and physically, it still does. Do I have that right?

I never said their argument was sound, just that it was not a matter of hypocrisy. I absolutely agree the basis of their argument is weak and dangerous to base any legal argument on. If they said "It's not like a fetus is a person - but we just don't like the idea of someone having that right" then it would be hypocritical. Instead, they are making an argument that is simply flawed. That said I am sure there are people who do view abortion as something that should be illegal and would definitely take issue with their stance being trivialized as nothing more than "fundy antics" but I think we've covered that debate in the past many times over.

First, you are largely confusing diversity with hypocrisy... and to a lesser degree using your own judgments as a defacto standard to "draw lines" that others place elsewhere: Largely different groups: Some accept homosexuality as well as gay marriage, others tolerate homosexuals (unless you are in Utah) reluctantly, and oppose gay marriage. A small percentage hold views of both genuine acceptance of gays and opposition to gay marriage - and do so based on views that (while arguably flawed) seem consistent and not hypocritical to the owner. False dichotomy: We have free choice in our democracy but we cannot freely choose to murder, which is how those that oppose abortion feel about the issue. Just because I think they are wrong, doesn't make them hypocrites. Those competitions measure different things. I do believe the continuing damage to the body done by performance enhancing drugs generally is considered far worse than one-time breast augmentation. If beauty pageants were called 'natural pageants' then it would be hypocritical but they only measure how a woman looks - not how she came to look that way. Your own bias against implants doesn't change the nature of their competition. Another complex issue. We legalize guns for many reasons (questionable and arguable ones) dating back to the drafting of the Constitution and the second amendment. While it may be based on bad information - marijuana is illegal because it's viewed as far more dangerous than the other items cited, and often argued to "hurt" society at large far more than the others. I personally feel it should be legal, but I'm not 100% sure it's all hypocrisy. Again, it's due to diversity that we differ on opinions: Do you really think that the administration's goal is to "resuscitate industrial dinosaurs at great cost to future generations" or that they believe they are trying to protect future generations? Please understand there is a difference between how you feel about an issue, and how those acting view their actions. We also don't uphold "the free-market principle of Darwinian economics" but have always found a middle ground that involves regulation, even when some advocate a far more unfettered economic model. All they have is a far more visually homogeneous society - which is probably far more homogeneous internally but also remember minority views are afraid to be shown publicly in those cultures. What you call ambiguity I call diversity, and yes - it does have a cost. We do spend a lot of energy trying to get "our views" to out-battle "their views" leaving a lot less left over to get anything done when someone wins. But that is far from a weakness - it's a strength in my opinion. While we still get crazy now and then we do have a culture where debate is constant. What we need is for more people to engage in the debate and to become more interested and educated in the issues - not more homogeneous in our views. If we can step up the caliber of our arguments, we'll have the best peer reviewed policies ever conceived. We are not there right now, but it is not hypocrisy that is the issue. I do have to echo other thoughts here: Arrogance, entitlement, and the concept of a Amero-centric universe are our biggest threats. That, and a strange proclivity to frame issues in black and white when far more nuance is called for.

I wasn't trying to say they are both of equal footing, I was just saying they both fall short of established scientific rigors and as such "P&S" makes a good grouping for both types of ideas.