Shadow

I can't tell you that, but I can tell you that Photoshop is not a modeling program... 3DSMax, or Maya are.

Yup, God just sprinkled us all over the planet

Thanks, didn't think of it that way

I was torn between North America and Europe. While the latter is where I was born, where I grew up, the place I know most and the place where I spend all of my days, America is where I holiday, where my father's half of the family lives, and it's...well...great. But I chose Europe anyway

Nice... just a question, how did you get [math]\Delta y = \sqrt {x + \Delta x } - \sqrt x[/math]?

Not much anymore, although I did for almost a week...is there anything else the symptoms remind you of? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedWell, I went to the ear doctor today, and they were clueless...the only thing they could think of was what you said Mokele.

To get straight to the point, I got caught in a storm yesterday and got pretty wet and cold. Once I got inside, both my ears were sort of like when you yawn, except permanently. It was like that for most of that day, and at the beginning it was actually painful, although that went away. This morning I got up and my left ear was fine, but my right ear is still experiencing the same thing. I've since figured out that if I hold my breath and try to exhale (ie. elevate the pressure in my head) it helps until I let my breath out, rarely for longer periods. What really helps is if I lean forward, so my head is low. That removes the "open" feeling for up to a minute or two after I get back upright (if I stay down it's fine), but swallowing, yawning, maybe other things I haven't noticed yet, sometimes bring the feeling back, but not always. There's no pain. I also got a slightly sore throat and a cold. Also noteworthy, I was diagnosed with haemophilus, but the major symptoms (ie. fever) disappeared last Wednesday and even the sore throat dissapeard by Saturday. Only the cold remained, and the throat started yesterday evening. I'm going to see a doctor tomorrow, but I was just curious if anyone has an idea what this could be. I searched the internet, but none of the symptoms I could find matched what I was experiencing.

Anyone who uses IE is just begging for something like that to happen. And anyone clicking on SPAM links with IE is, well, stupid.

I just found out that SFN has a Facebook page, and judging by the number of fans, I probably wasn't the only one who was unaware of it's existence, since it's so niftily hidden away in Forum Announcements. So I thought I would do a little advertising; for those of you who didn't know and want to join (which should be every single member with Facebook)...

You'll have to be more specific. The answer to your question is "via keyboard"... First you have to know which physical law you want to implement. Then, depending on the program, you implement it. For example, here is the pseudocode of a way to introduce gravitation movement in a number of objects: For every Object 0 to x For every object ahead of CurObject //In the list of objects Acceleration = NewtGravConst * NxtObject.mass / DistanceBetween[CurObject, NxtObject[math]]^2[/math] Velocity = Acceleration * DeltaTime Displacement = Velocity * DeltaTime EndLoop EndLoop

Didn't find Stephen Wolfram on the first try though... But yeah, things that "learn" are always better, which is I guess why Akinator stunned me so much. I guess the people who make the stuff usually just don't want to pay for the memory...

Intelligence? Yes. Humanness/consciousness? No. There's a difference in the two. The Turing test tests whether a computer can fool a human. You have to have some measure of intelligence in order to fool anything. But you certainly don't have to be human or conscious. And that's what chat bot's are about; they fool. When a computer passes the Turing test, it only means that it has a vast database of responses, and that the programmers used clever and thorough algorithms. But it'll still be a computer. It'll still be dumb, clueless about it's own existence. Another thing I don't like about the Turing Test is that it depends a lot upon the type of person chosen, questions asked, etc. The conversation could be influenced by little things like weather, and that in itself could decide whether or not the computer passes the test. But no, I don't have a better idea. I think Cleverbot is definitely an accomplishment, if only because I've never heard of this type of response generation in another bot. And every advancement is an accomplishment. Another chat bot I like, just out of principle, is iGod. Also, even though it's not a chat bot, check out Akinator, the web genius. I think the principles upon which it operates are related to those Cleverbot uses, so it warrants a mention. On top of that, I think it's pretty good.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/45004/title/Baby_Milky_Way_modeled I've never heard of a Galaxy model that incorporates black matter into the simulation. I guess this couldn't be considered as full blown proof of dark matter, but could it at least strongly suggest that dark matter exists?

One thing worth knowing is that you can choose the base of the logarithm, ie. instead of getting [math]\log 8^{x^2 - 2x} = \log 0.5[/math] you can get [math]\log_2 8^{x^2 - 2x} = \log_2 0.5[/math]. So then in Capn's last step, instead of [math]x^2 - 2x = \frac{\log 0.5}{\log 8}[/math] you get [math]x^2 - 2x = -\frac{1}{3}[/math]. Alternatively you can also get this result by using [math]\frac{\log a}{\log b} = \log_b a[/math]. So [math]\frac{\log 0.5}{\log 8} = \log_{8} \frac{1}{2}=-\frac{1}{3}[/math]. Just my two cents

Doesn't have an analytical solution. You can use approximation methods to get an approximate result. Sucks, doesn't it?

Where I live, math courses aren't divided like this. All of us, like it or not, take one big general math course for the duration of our studies. Some people hate it because they have to take math, others because we progress at the speed of the slowest. I was just curious as to how it worked in other places, and how much of "pre-calc" they're still going to teach us. And the result is pretty surprising, since we're done with those things (except limits) but still don't take calculus for another year...depressing.

I don't think it would. I don't think it could. Not unless preprogrammed with the appropriate responses. I wonder if a being devoid of emotions would retain the ability to learn...?

No offense intended, but this made me smile:

It as in the consciousness? Or it as in the being harboring that consciousness? In any case, I agree with bascule. Try to spend today thinking about which of your decisions and memories aren't influenced by emotion. If you come back with three examples I'll concede your point. You need emotion. You need it for prioritizing, for filtering, for remembering and even for forgetting, or so I would assume. Yes, a being without emotion may be better in some ways, but what good would that be in the case we're discussing? We're talking about human consciousness. Not a robot that will act as our neutral personal diary. To talk about a human consciousness without emotion is about as meaningless as talking about a home computer without a graphics card. Yes, we could use that extra space for another processor, but that's not the point.

Just a question, what do they teach in pre-calc?

Unfortunately, they don't make them in the Czech Republic. I used to have them every single day back when we lived in France, but ever since we moved my taste buds have been severely malnourished...

I haven't had one of those in ages...oh....

Noticed it about 3 seconds before I read your post That depends on how you define consciousness. And that really applies to all the posts. IMO, consciousness, as in 'the thing in humans' includes emotion. If you want to talk about Consciousness v1.01a which does not include emotion, then fine, but I think this is an extremely important distinction, if only because I just cannot fathom an emotionless consciousness. By the way, anyone ever heard of Pribram?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be confusing reflection with memory. If I understand correctly, you want a computer to have "senses" and then for it to store the information perceived through those senses. That would be equivalent to taking a normal PC, plugging a webcam, microphone, some modification of a touch display etc. into it, and set it all to record. All that would ever happen is you're HD would filled up. Another view on this I like, even though it's fiction, is presented in the novel Emergence by Ray Hammond.

Continuation of this thread: Back when I was thinking about it I discussed it at length with my father, who has experience in the psychological/neurological field. But that was a long time ago, and I don't remember the arguments anymore. I wrote him a message, and I'll post his reply here. From a purely layman point of view, I believe that you do need emotions for consciousness. When I think of the brain processing information, I divide it into 3 sub processes; 1. Input: Be that sensory input, some kind of experience, anything. I even consider a though to be an input, even though it's self generated. 2. Categorization: The brain runs the input through some "filters" to determine the category the input falls into. For example, if we take a bite from an apple, the input will be the taste, texture, etc. of the apple, among other things. That would then, in most people, fall into the categories "sweet", "solid", "juicy", maybe even "good". This is the part where emotions are necessary, because emotions are the filters I talked about earlier. It's also one of the most fundamental differences between your random person A and random person B. To some people (like person A), the taste of the apple will fall into the categories "good, tasty", to others (like person B) it will fall into the categories "bad, tasteless". The input is the same in both cases, but it is this part that changes the "output". 3. Storage in memory: Depending on the previous process, we will remember that apples are either good and tasty, or bad and tasteless. This will pretty much alter our future life, from little things such as "What will I have for desert today" to decisions like "Should I go to that 'Apple's only' party". Person A will go, and maybe meet the partner they will spend the rest of their life with. Person B won't, and as a result will get killed by an elephant getting dropped on his house from a plane. I'm sure you'll agree those are life altering situations. I know the examples were pretty lame, but the point was to express how even if person A was identical in every way to person B except for his tastes in fruit, the effect of that difference can be vast indeed. It also means that were it not for emotions, every person would be identical to the next one. Every single piece of information would be processed in the same manner. To be honest, I'm not even sure if a being without emotions could process information in the same way we do. Evey person having the same emotional responses to a given situation seems a little more "realistic" to me. What has this to do with consciousness? Well, isn't consciousness, or at least a part of it, to be able to distinguish yourself from others? And self awareness as being aware of your uniqueness? And how do you distinguish yourself if you're not different from your neighbor? This is just my opinion, and isn't backed by any solid evidence. It's just my thoughts on the subject. If one were to think of consciousness as being a state of mind that can only be achieved through millions of years of evolution and not be artificially reproduced, you can rest assured that were it not for emotions, namely fear, we would have died out long before we attained consciousness. Or one could make, for lack of a better term, a "religious" argument, saying "if it wasn't needed we wouldn't have it" which is quite frankly enough for me . Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedHere's my father's reply: