John Cuthber

Perhaps I should rephrase the question. What has philosophy done in the last 50 or 100 years which made my life better?

"Is there any technology that could disable all electronics in a house or small building?" Yes Is there any technology that could disable all electronics in a house or small building legally?" No, at least, not unless it's your building.

Many years ago, almost any sort of "thinking" would have been termed "philosophy" even if it was about something that would these days be considered as some other subject- perhaps physics or maths- maybe even literary criticism or theory of art. However today those subjects stand in their own right. It's my (unevinced- and presented here so that it might get shot down-) belief that the bits of thinking that remain part of philosophy are the bits that nobody else found a use for. What has philosophy done in the last 50 or 100 years which made my life better?

Well, here's what you said about it at the outset. "Well, I agree CO2 warms the planet, but by far less than the consensus agrees to. A new paper has the sensitivity for CO2 at 0.43 degrees / doubling. http://www.scipublis...ad/3001-846.pdf Years back, I looked at the absolute maximim possible for CO2 sensitivity to be 0.55 degrees. This paper also quantifies the solar changes to well over what the consensus says, and also is more in like with my assessments years back." And, while you didn't explicitly say you thought it was the truth, you did say it gave results that tallied better with those you had calculated- so presumably you thought those were the truth. But that's hardly the point; if you didn't think it was true, why did you cite it?

OK, progress at last. You accept that it might, or might not, be true. Well, if it might not be true, you shouldn't use it as evidence should you? That's not a logical fallacy is it? So there's no basis for the name calling is there?

If I chose, I could set up a web page (it would probably cost me a little money if I didn't want it too plastered with adverts). And then I could post more or less anything I liked on it. I could even get my friends to say that they agreed with what I posted. I could get them to post other stuff that's not true too. But the fact that the stuff was published on a web page wouldn't make it trustworthy, or accurate. It certainly wouldn't be a valid source of evidence for a scientific debate. How is that different from vanity publishing.

"What should we get these otherwise unemployed philosophers to do?"

Are you deliberately missing the point? Why would you need a loop if all the outputs are stored, and it's just a matter of referring to the one which corresponds to the inputs?

It's OK, you can do everything with just NAND gates

Or not... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OP But lets not bother to throw dictionaries at each other. It's clear from what I wrote that I meant a post not a person I wrote "The OP didn't ask about speed or efficiency, but it did accept that this uses a lot of memory." Not "The OP didn't ask about speed or efficiency, but it he did accept that this uses a lot of memory." In any event the question in the first post here was about whether or not something is possible, not about speed or practicality "Is there some law of computation which states that `if` statements are unavoidable?" Why not try answering it? try and come up with a program that can't be replaced by a huge look-up table.

You are quite correct in your first line there- all the stuff that follows is, indeed, wrong. OK, so, you don't know that an Or gate is different from a CPU and you don't know what OP stands for in this context. Have a look at the question I actually asked " does an OR gate or AND gate count as a conditional branch?" That's a question about logic gates not a CPU (or even an ALU if we want to get into a bit more detail). It hasn't got anything to do with BEQ because BEQ isn't an option available to an AND gate is it? Re "Do you want me to also explain you how ADD operation looks like from point of view of logic gates?" No thanks I learned that some time in the late 70s and it hasn't changed. The even better reason for not bothering is that it doesn't have anything to do with the question. As I said, you can create a look up table in a ROM. So anything to do with the PC is irrelevant- a ROM hasn't got one. You seem to have become fixated with the idea that you have to use a CPU. I'm pointing out that there are other ways to do it- and they don't need an if statement because an if statement relates to control flow and you can sidestep that with a table. There's only 1 operation which is "retrieve the data from the cell that's being addressed". That's it. No control flow so no need for an if statement. Since OP stands to Original Post, anything that was stated in any subsequent post hasn't got anything to do with it. Post #5 isn't post #1

With a look up table stored in memory there is no explicit choice to make. the operation is "retrieve the data at the address specified by the inputs". It will work with any finite set of inputs as long as the output is determined solely by those inputs. There is a deeper question, does an OR gate or AND gate count as a conditional branch? I'd say no, because there's no clear branching- but I think it's a matter of semantics.

The OP didn't ask about speed or efficiency, but it did accept that this uses a lot of memory. So any discussion on those points is pretty well beside the point. On the other hand, it did ask an interesting question. "Is there some law of computation which states that `if` statements are unavoidable?" Now, I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that I think the answer is no. It might be impractical, or even bloody mindedly stupid, but that's not the question here. Can anyone actually show that I'm wrong? Not that it matters, whether or not a look up table is faster depends on how it's organised and how much memory you can squander. Imagine that I want to produce a 1 byte output that is some arbitrary combination of 2 single byte inputs. I can write the look-up table into a single 64K rom and use the two inputs as the high and low bytes of the address. The poutput of the rom can be programmed to be the output of the look-up table. The delay in calculation is equal to the clocking time of the memory. That's roughly 1 clock cycle. How fast can you write that with "if" statements?

"Hydrogen H2 requires first to split to two separate H, it's taking approximately 4.52 eV to do so. Then each H requires 13.6 eV to ionize. So overall you have to spend 4.52 eV + 2*13.6 eV = 31.72 eV per H2 molecule." No. you can make H2+ http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.40.496 15.37 Volts

Sensei. Yes, I do programme on a daily basis, and I have programmed stuff for decades. In some circumstances - for example when the problem is specified as a table of inputs and outcomes, it's easier and clearer to code the problem as a look-up table rather than a set of conditions. However the question wasn't asked as a day to day issue, but as a matter of principle and, the answer is that you can do without if statements. And showing that the If function is implemented at a machine code level is not that same as showing that it is needed.

It is nonsense to claim that something which happened in May (which is before any event in October) happened between two events that both happened in October. Did you really need me to explain that?

I often find myself wondering why people defend the position against the evidence for AGW. The analogy (and I have used it before so I apologise for repeating myself) seems to be We know that there were 3 blankets on the bed. We know that we put another one on. We know that it's warmer We don't believe that there's a causal relation between our adding a 4th blanket, and the rise in temperature.

This is because he claims that something (The introduction of discussion of deaths due to heatwaves) which happened in May changed the goalposts between two posts he made in October. That's clearly nonsense and making nonsensical assertions won't get him anywhere in a scientific discussion- because people will see that it doesn't make sense (or, perhaps, they will not and they will give him rep points for it.) The thing about "less liveable" is that, since life and death are essentially intertwined, it has to do with death. Perhaps he did. However it may have been more helpful to explain what his intentions were (preferably without invoking time-travel).

How much later? http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/57883-who-here-is-a-global-warming-skeptic/?p=808349 Don't claim that history changed the goal posts. It's not going to get you anywhere. And if you say "less liveable" is nothing to do with death then you are twisting the definitions of words to an absurd degree. Can't you make your point without doing that sort of thing? I note we are in a tospy truvy world where you can get negative rep points for simply quoting back what someone said, but positive points for a post including an assertion that last May happened sometime during this October and whether something is liveable has nothing to do with death.

There are in fact people who have lost loved ones to these heatwaves. There is, on this site, discussion of the death toll. Wild Cobra's response was laughter. That's a pretty shameful way to behave no matter how you spin it.

It's not an assumption.

" Al Capone would be alive today if he had taken Pascal's wager. He'd be 137, but at least he'd be alive." No, he would be dead. And it isn't possible to take Pascal's wager because you can't know which religion to follow. It's not a good teaching tool except as a reminder that even clever people like Pascal make stupid mistakes

In the context of "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now. " yoiu don't think they mean the changes are serious when they say "significant. OK the costs of reducing ghg emission are not trivial. Why do you think they say we must reduce them if the consequences of not doing so are not "serious"? Why .