Prometheus

There are plenty of land-locked city-states: San-Marino, Vatican City, Lesotho. Guess it depends on whether the rest of UK would seek cooperation or punishment and just where the city borders are drawn.

Surely universal translators are more likely? Google translate already does a reasonable job, it can only get better. And once text based translation is improved work will progress on verbal based translations.

In the wake of Brexit there have been growing calls for London to declare independence from the rest of the UK. I've lived in London for over 10 years and have heard such calls before, but now they seem a little more appealing. If we had a referendum tomorrow I would vote to leave the UK, preferably in favour of the EU. However, i'm aware that this may just be an emotional reaction: also i am not too versed in politics so would like to know some opinions on the matter. Does the idea have potential or is it a non-starter? How would you vote and why?

That may be true, but the internet, particularly social media, might provide an alternative. Instead of labelling ourselves by geographical region, we can label ourselves however we choose online. We might find that we have more in common with someone half-way around the world than our own neighbours. Much like i find many fine people on this forum who can restore my faith in fellow brits, and humanity in general, when most of my family voted for brexit. Whether a world divided like this is better than one divided geographically i don't know, but it is an appealing possibility to me.

But with machine learning there is no attempt to match the model to nature; there is no underlying theory to motivate the use of any particular mathematical techniques: you just grab a big a data set as possible, split it into two subsets, 'train' the data on one subset and see how well it performs in predicting the other subset. Maybe it is another subject, i just thought it might be pertinent because it seems to be a method entirely focused on prediction with no regard for any underlying theory why the method might make good predictions - it seems to be quite a fundamental shift away from traditional modelling approaches and one that negates the question of whether the model is reality.

I know we won't officially leave for a few years but the campaign to reinstate the UK into the EU starts now.

How do you think machine learning fits into this? As i understand it prediction is all that counts - it just attempts to find whichever model produces the best predictions, but this model itself doesn't aid our understanding of the phenomenon under investigation. This contrasts with traditional models which are predictive and provide a framework to understand something. Could it then be said that, even though machine learning has uses, traditional modelling is better in that it also provides a framework which we can understand?

Even though i disagree with the outcome, to not act on it would be a travesty to democracy. A large part of the disillusionment with the EU in the UK is that the ruling elite does not listen to normal people. Ignoring this referendum outcome would simply confirm these suspicions.

With a 72% turnout there is a strong mandate from the people to leave: no one could renege on that without significant upheaval.

Looks certain the UK will leave the EU. If so I'm leaving the UK. Fortunately my wife is Australian so it won't be too hard for me.

It is at least possible (though i have no idea how likely) that science could sufficiently progress to explore pre-big bang. The question will then be what came before that and so on... I think there will always be something we do not know about. Personally, rather than say godditit i would rather say dunno, but each to their own. I'm not sure there are enough conservative religious people on here to get their view on that. I can offer an anecdote from my childhood: in science class a muslim friend of mine and i were banished to the naughty corner, so we used to just talk between ourselves. He explained once that he thought both the story of Adam and Eve and evolution was true - Adam and Eve were monkeys and then later evolved into humans. Not quite anti-science but it shows how religion provides a framework in which people understand things which could subvert a proper understanding of something.

I agree it doesn't: i misread your statement as something else (and gave you a -1 so bad was my reading: would be awesome if someone reading could chuck a +1 in there.) But this is a step forward for now we can place god in that category of things that cannot ever be disproved, like the Taoists have always done.

If that is the only claim made by about a god then i agree. We think of it as the only claim of most moderate people's god because science has set limits on what can be said about god. No longer can people say, 'yes, god just came along and parted that massive sea over there'. Surely science would have something to say about that?

Probably, but science does have something to say about the issue. I think It's important because science can do religion a massive favour here: by giving limits on what religion should be talking about. They don't have to worry about how the universe came to be, or the nature of of celestial bodies. Science has it covered, and if there gaps in a knowledge the track record of science gives us every confidence that it is the correct method to plug the gap. This liberates religions to consider more important things like how best to bring communities together, and how best to live the lives we are given. Consider, it is only because of the progress science has made that you can say god is outside the remit of science. Before such progress religions were free to make up all sorts of claims about how their god influences the world. Science has in effect defined what god cannot be: that is very important. So while i agree with you that scientists can say "We have no need of that hypothesis,"for religious people what science has to say about what cannot be is extremely important.

In other words, this is what is to come.

Well, transubstantiation is still official Catholic belief: surely we can test that quite easily. It might seem a small point but in religions making all sorts of claims, influencing a large swathe of people i think it is important that they outline whether all, some or none of their scriptures are to be taken literally - and if some, specifically which ones. Else violent verses could be taken to be commandments from god.

Maybe you have to go along with the quantum world.

Yes, the best way to know what someone feels is to ask them. But how reliable are any quantifications based on this? For instance does the likert scale really capture an emotional state to a useful degree? I know I can flitter between extremes on this scale based on a nuanced feeling. Are we able to build any useful mathematical models based on such quantification? The biochemical measures are interesting, but i wonder how they compare to the 'ground truth'. How do we verify just how much cortisol produces how much of a feeling of stress - i guess an experiment was initially needed to ask people how much stress they felt and to correlate this to cortisol levels? Maybe i'm just too dualistic in my thoughts: i can accept that every emotional state has some physical correlate. It seems we first attempt to measure the mental state first, then look for physical correlates - but i just cannot imagine that mental states can be accurately measured, whereas the physical correlates can.

Do you know any details? I'd be interested to know what emotional content can and cannot be measured. I imagine there must be limits to what can be quantified?

Why do only people with their own 'theories', disproved by carbon dating, ever ask that? Then they would not have been extinct. Because humans are frigging smart and can achieve colossal things when we put our minds to it.

Damn you're hard to to impress. Is that what i said?

Yeah, it's awesome isn't it? No one knows the whole story, but we do know enough to suggest this is how things are. As for the rest we have top people working on it. Top people. God no, you're not the only one. Just about every religion posits there must be something more. Why? Because there simply must be. Not great reasoning, but it convinces many people. Apparently being a part of a universe that has become self-aware such that it can ponder the fact of its own existence is not amazing enough. Maybe a shift of perspective is needed: you are not in the universe - you are it: as much as any one drop is the ocean. What more do you want - to be more important than 'just' a drop?

So... aliens can cure disease but humans can't?

Ironically, by my definition, yes. Man, who would study the philosophy of art!

I somehow skipped your post: i completely agree. Just to add another scrap to the mess; there is work to get algorithms to appreciate and even create art (i don't actually like this particular piece, but i would not have thought it was computer generated). Are we to say these are not art (even though they look/sound very similar to human created art) - or can we say that as a human created the algorithm then intent was inherent? Could we even one day say the algorithm does possess the intention to communicate something?