EdEarl

Men and women may think different things are important, but it is incorrect to think women do not prioritize important things.

It is an opinion, perhaps form their legal department. However, the government may not follow that exact plan, and the law of unintended consequences may play a role.

I suppose in 8 days Obama decides which programs go unfunded or we continue with the current shutdown, until Congress can pass a bill and Obama signs it, or Congress makes it unnecessary to have Obama's signature.

You are welcome. I suppose we could use the mirror test, but IMO it is not important whether we consider robots as being conscious or not. Everyone seems to understand what it is, but no on can precisely define it. I think the mirror test is only a test to determine whether an organism recognizes a mirror, and that every organism has some measure of consciousness; although, it depends on how one defines consciousness. For example, even an ant feels pain when it is inured, and that is a kind of consciousness--being conscious of pain. Being conscious of ones thoughts is similar, and I suspect all animals are conscious of their thoughts. Although, some animals only have primitive responses with limited learning ability and no reasoning. But, I am not a scientist, and scientists do consider consciousness important. You are probably right about the ambiguity of robot consciousness confounding scientists.

There are a couple of functions to compare strings in C, including memcmp().

During the Civil War and afterward, I believe Southern Republicans became Democrats, because Lincoln was a elected as a Republican for his first term in office. I remember my family, who had been life long Southern Democrats switching to Republican when Kennedy first ran for president, because he was Catholic. Being Catholic to them was worse than being Republican. I don't know how many of them remembered that Lincoln had been a Republican, if any. Being a Democrat was tradition.

Try if you wish, but in the end you will fail. There is no such thing as free energy or perpetual motion.

For a comprehensive introduction to computers and programming, do the project on the nand2tetris site. It is the kind of background that gave me the ability to learn the syntax and semantics of any language from a reference manual and a few days practice. However, languages come with libraries of programs that take much longer to master. And, to learn the art and science of programming is a life long endeavor, as there is much more to programming than learning a programming language. But, it is the first step.

Everyone has their favorite cost cutting measure. One of mine is based on the experience we had from the 18th Amendment (prohibition) and 21st Amendment (repeal), which demonstrated that prohibition is not only expensive and creates criminals, but is futile. Similarly, the war on drugs is futile and expensive, it should be stopped. Addicts are people with medical problems, putting them in prison is IMO cruel and inhumane. I believe we could save considerable sums by paying drug counselors rather than prison guards, and giving drug addicts supervised access to drugs, to prevent them from killing themselves. This idea, of course, pushes an "Oh, my God NO," button with the moral majority and will never be done. I find it hard to believe they are willing to spend another $ Trillion on the war on drugs, but it seems inevitable.

I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, and provided a device to help my breathing at night. During the my sleep study, I awoke 183 times in 6 hours, not enough to regain consciousness but enough to take a breath. When fully asleep I stopped breathing. Consequently, I was not functioning very well when I was awake, because I always needed more sleep. If your room mate suffers from sleep apnea, it can cause serious consequences even life threatening consequences, and she really should see a physician about it.

Temple Grandin makes a case that people with autistic tendencies tend towards careers in science and engineering. Since there are 4:1 male:female autistic people, it may explain the preponderance of males in science and engineering. I agree with iNow that discussions are (or at least should be) independent of gender, and that the relevant issues are logical. Nonetheless, I believe men and women sometimes have different logical perspectives, and that more women would improve the quality of discussions.

Stonehenge, Nazca lines, crop circles, and the Pyramids all have several explanations from various people, including man-made and alien-made. Correlations are often interpreted as causal rather than random, because people want an explanation, and the same is true of political and economic events. In general, I believe politics and economics affect each other, but they are also affected by other things, which leads to uncertainty. Unfortunately, people become convinced that their belief is fact, and political battles ensue that lead to group-think decisions, which are almost inevitably poor ones. Perhaps some day we will be able to analyze the social, political, economic weather, predict storm tracks, and ways to avoid them. In the mean time, we are locked in battles that seem to be perpetual and sometimes inane.

Wikipedia is a good start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar They are thought to be black holes in the center of a galaxy consuming matter, and ejecting some of the excess.

On this forum one may express dissatisfaction or satisfaction with reputation arrows. In face to face conversation, one has more tools available, for example a petulant remark may elicit a grimace and an insult may elicit a slap in the face. I consider the red down arrow a virtual slap in the face, and the green arrow a virtual pat on the back. Other people seem to use the down arrow as a virtual grimace. People have given me red arrows for misunderstanding an ambiguous question, and for an honest disagreement with their position. As a result, I have become selective how I respond to various people, because I don't like red arrows. It is not a perfect system, but it does allow a novice poster to look at the reputation of posters to help them gauge the quality of replies to their questions. Anyone who visits this forum regularly will know other regulars on a more personal basis, which minimizes the value of a reputation score. I think the reputation is good, because it allows quick feedback, and it is anonymous to avoid flame wars.

There are programs that learn, for example Watson, but none exist that anyone considers to be a thinking program. However, work is progressing on several fronts to make Artificial General Intelligence that can pass the Turing test. One of these programs is a complete simulation of the brain using physiology from research currently being done. When (if) the Singularity occurs, a program will be able to write programs.

I'm not familiar with java Hashmap, but both Java and C are equally complex. Simplicity is more a personal choice; although, sometimes available tools can make a difference. .

I think it depends on how you define think. When one chess master beats another, we tend to say the winner thought through the moves better. But, when a computer wins, we tend to say the machine computes better. But, really, what is the difference; in other words, can you precisely define "think" and "compute" in terms that are not anthropomorphic and not self referential in such a way that the set of things included as "thinking" do not intersect with the set of things included in "computing?" It is possible to say thinking is biological and computing is not, but I think that is not precise and borders on being anthropomorphic.

The only difference is the number of jobs being taken by automation and the fact that more and more skilled workers are being replaced. In one limit, all workers are replaced, no one has a job, and the reason for having a business disappears, except businesses do not want to force themselves out of business. So what expectations are reasonable.

I don't know the answer to this question, but when I worked, there were salary surveys that gave that kind of information. You should try to find one.

Some companies do require a degree. Even if you can get a job without a degree, your starting salary will be less without a degree. Although programming requires knowing at least one programming language, there are other subjects that are important too, including data structures and algorithms. Programming is required for many disciplines, including communications, physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, business, game development, robotics, and many more. Different disciplines require different skills, some of them calculus, numerical analysis, linear algebra, and other kinds of mathematics. Robotics and artificial intelligence work sometimes require using languages such as Lisp and Prolog.

I don't know, some say yes, some say no. The answer to your question partly bounds the answers to my questions. The various technical issues are complex, but the social issues are more abstruse. I hope some of the brilliant minds here can contribute ideas, because it is beyond my capability.

I believe we are spending too much on the wrong things, and not enough on the right things. The wars on drugs, in Iraq and in Afghanistan have been extremely expensive and have been a waste of money. If that money had been spent on infrastructure, we could have lots of green power, safe bridges, better roads, etc. In turn, our economy would be stronger and our debt might be smaller.

Not every employee can be an engineer, and corporations do not need as many engineers as there are people in the world. Thus, I think, the question my questions are yet unanswered. The first round of robotics now being developed will replace many manual laborers, such as line workers that assemble and sew and construction workers that lay bricks and frame houses. As these workers become underemployed and unemployed, what will happen to them. Eventually another round of robotics will be developed to replace technical workers, such as accountants, mechanical repair people, transportation drivers, and airplane pilots. Some of these people, who are more skilled may reeducate themselves to become creative workers such as engineers and designers, but again the workplace does not need all of them. Finally, as after the singularity, there may be no need for any employee, which sets stage for my questions in the limit.

As this trend continues, corporations will be able to make less and less expensive products by replacing payed employees with less expensive robot labor. With fewer employees there will be fewer people able to buy expensive things; thus, the less expensive products are necessary to offset less paid employment. Will the reduced cost of things outpace less pay, so that the majority of people better off economically, or will fewer people be able to afford the necessities of life? How will this trend affect politics, will conservatives decide social programs are necessary to support more and more unemployed people, or will unemployed and underemployed people become an ever larger forgotten homeless population? What are the social and political consequences of robots replacing humans in corporations, first doing manual jobs, then technical work, and eventually creative endeavors?

The drugs alcohol, morphine and hydrocodone have two phases of effect, initial and hangover. The initial effect of alcohol and morphine/hydrocodone are different and of short duration (hours), with the hangover being similar for all three. Initially one feels OK or perhaps high (although, I've only had prescription doses of morphine and hydrocodone that did not make me high). However, the hangover makes one feel rotten in all three cases. Some drugs have those two phases, including antihistamines, barbiturates, narcotics, and cocaine. The psychedelic drugs LSD and mushrooms do not make one feel ill. My source is a drug addict relative.