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Showing content with the highest reputation on 08/08/20 in Posts

  1. What do you mean by beyond body or matter? It similar or related to dualism* ? Note: artificial intelligence in science and engineering started in the fifties as far as I know. In my opinion that is not "new". Minor note: I would say that the recent successful applications of machine learning is not only due to improved hardware. There is quite a lot of progress in software. And the available amount of data has increased as well. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind–body_dualism
    2 points
  2. Are you sure you know what you're arguing about? You seem to agree on this... But you don't seem to know what rehabilitation is, nor the role of the police in its execution, i.e. none... Now you're just talking bollox... Look, a cops interactions with a civilian has to start with respect (just like any other civil interaction); being a cop is not a get out of jail free card, this isn't monopoly...
    2 points
  3. It think the basic issue for the lengthy argument that leads nowhere is that the assumption being made (more police interactions automatically lead to more negative interactions) fails to address the second dimension of the quality of interactions. If you reduce the likelihood of a negative outcome per interaction, you can obviously increase the number of interactions without also increasing the number of negative interactions. A simple example is looking at other countries where police shootings are extraordinary rare events. They reduce their issues not by having a smaller police force (in fact in many cases they are on average larger than the US) but by having a different system of policing. I suspect if that is not being acknowledged, we will go another round of identical arguments for a couple more pages.
    1 point
  4. Using an appropriate vocabulary for a productive discussion is not an obsession, but a prerequisite for advancing that discussion. Why are you so afraid of the word? I haven't taken a position. I've simply challenged you to elucidate yours - something you seem unable to do. And yet we saw the example where, a police chief in the US, prior to the riot beginning, defused the situation by offering to walk with the protestors. As you say, a thesis can easily be disposed of by a single, contrary example. Done and dusted. If you can make the request without the misapplication of emotive adjectives, I shall be happy to track down a link to the example mentioned above. Note: looking through your posts it seems you have an inclination to be disagreeable. IF you continue with that attitude with me then my side of the conversation is at an end.
    1 point
  5. So I will try to answer my own question since you didn't. Google tells us that the diameter of our visible universe is 8.8 x 1026 metres. Suppose this ship flew left to right across our visible universe, what would its relative velocity be to us to compress the diameter of our universe to 1m ? IOW at what speed would it bypass us ? Applying the Lorenz contraction [math]\sqrt {\left( {1 - \frac{{{v^2}}}{{{c^2}}}} \right)} \left( {8.8*{{10}^{26}}} \right) = 1[/math] Square both sides [math]\left( {1 - \frac{{{v^2}}}{{{c^2}}}} \right)\left( {77.4*{{10}^{52}}} \right) = 1[/math] Rearrange [math]\left( {1 - \frac{{{v^2}}}{{{c^2}}}} \right) = \left( {\frac{1}{{77.4}}*{{10}^{ - 52}}} \right) = 1.3*{10^{ - 54}}[/math] Rearrange again [math]{v^2} = {c^2}\left( {1 - 1.3*{{10}^{ - 54}}} \right)[/math] Take square root both sides [math]v = \left( {\sqrt {1 - 1.3*{{10}^{ - 54}}} } \right)c[/math] Wolfram alpha cannot give me this square root the result is so close to c
    1 point
  6. If you genuinely have no model then you are just farting into the wind and your comments may be disregarded. However, i think you do have a model, it is just over-simplified. I suggest you reflect on the meaning of the word 'model' in a scientific context. You should then, readily, recognise that you do have a model. I say your model is over-simplified since you fail to consider, for example, having police deployed with 'social workers', or psychologists. Or having improved physical safeguards for the protection of property. Or adjusting the training of officers to reduce or eliminate harmful interactions. And those are just some of the options that are ignored in your simple model, or, as you call it, your "abject truth". So, I should like to understand on what basis you reject these (and similar) examples. Unless you are able to do so your argument is refuted.
    1 point
  7. That is an opinion, to which you are fully entitled. I offer my opinion that a sensitively developed and implemented AI, taking advantage of the improved understanding of developmental psychology we might reasonably anticipate over the next couple of centuries, would offer a vastly more human and humane upbringing than is available to many in this century. The same thing all children are for. The continuance of the human race. The difference would be that, unlike many children born to day, they would be intended, they would have extensive support, and they would have awesome opportunities. I'm quite happy to give you the opportunity to withdraw a remark that is beneath you. If you wish to leave it aside why raise it? You will realise that your personal incredulity is not a persuasive argument. Interstellar colonistation, if implemented, will necessarily be a very long term effort. (I suspect that if we are unable to make truly long term plans then our species is doomed anyway.) Do you doubt the ability of purely robotic probes to thorougly investigate potential systems before humans are dispatched? Why do you ignore the possibility of robotic terraforming of barren planets prior to human settlement? Without effort I can imagine a handful of other approaches that address your reservations. Strawman. Why not? We couldn't, perhaps using von Neumann replicators, investigate a world's oceans in detail? The technological gap between 1520 and 2020 is vast, yet that is only half a millenium. Do you expect the advances to cease, or even reverse in say ten millenia?
    1 point
  8. Oh, but there is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donaldson's_theorem https://mathoverflow.net/questions/47569/what-makes-four-dimensions-special#:~:text=A comment is that 4,live in 4-dimensional cohomology. 4-dimensional manifolds codify important topological properties of any n-dimensional manifold. The latter is my clumsy attempt at re-phrasing what I see. There are more special things about dimension 4. I'm no expert. Most technicalities go over my head. My intuition is that 1+3 codifies something very specific about how anything that merits being called an observer (whatever the definition is) needs to "do" to represent the universe around in itself. That's how I understood Markus and that's why his comments drew my attention so strongly. But I'm stepping on very slippery ground. I may be neither making much sense, nor understanding other people's comments here.
    1 point
  9. The Terrible Sea Lion: http://wondermark.com/1k62/
    1 point
  10. You can often get examples from google by selecting the 'images tab for example Fourier series https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Fourier+series&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQ-IDVo4zrAhVWiFwKHSePAjIQ_AUoAnoECBIQBA&biw=1366&bih=646 This should keep you busy.
    1 point
  11. Black Holes have no more gravitational effect than the equivalent mass at the same distance. The fact that it's a BH does NOT make it more attractive. Your new religion is bound to fail because it cannot provide what current Religions provide. How do facts and information provide hope, or 'meaning', and purpose for life, when life has lost meaning ? Current Religions provide this for those so inclined ( you might say delusional, but you haven't walked in their shoes ). How does a BH do this ???
    1 point
  12. Sorry, I am still not sure if I am getting the point of this. I can only guess that by ‘derivation’ what is meant is the steps involved in formally solving an equation on paper (as per Strange’s comment). However, that’s just an arbitrary human activity, it is in no way, shape or form a structure inherent in the maths themselves - because each and every statement within such a derivation is mathematically precisely equivalent to all other steps. We’re essentially just formulating the same mathematical statement in different ways; of course, the process of doing so takes time, but that isn’t inherent in the maths themselves, it’s down to the linear nature of our mind and the limitations of our body, which is quite separate from the maths at play here. Consider the mathematical statements \[2x+4=0\] and \[x=-2\] There is neither a temporal nor a causal relationship between these; the relationship between these statements is in fact one of mathematical equivalence. Of course, as humans, we can take pen and paper and manipulate these statements in any number of arbitrary steps (according to the usual rules governing such manipulations) to show that they are equivalent - but there is no requirement or necessity to do this, in a mathematical sense; the statements are equivalent whether we choose to write down intermediary steps or not. There is no cause-and-effect to this, it’s essentially just set theory. Also note that a) there is no one preferred way to get from one statement to the other, and b) you could in principle put an arbitrary (even infinite) number of steps between them, and c) you can run any such sequence of steps both backwards and forwards and it will still be correct. So there is no notion of causality or time-ordering implicit in any of this - such notions arise only extraneously from our linear thinking, and the physical limitations of our bodies or computational machine. They are not inherent to the maths itself in any sense.
    1 point
  13. Have to factor in expansion as well. For distant destinations, the distance is growing at a rate faster than the ratio c.
    1 point
  14. I don’t know about tennis players, but this site contains a number of visualisations of what happens when relativistic kinematics become relevant, and also some GR stuff (click on ‘continue’ at the bottom of the page). Perhaps this might be of interest for you. You can use the time-ordering operator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path-ordering
    1 point
  15. Curiously enough, the picture started to change at about the same time that we realised that we Europeans may have up to a 5% of their genome. We never learn.
    1 point
  16. Automation would be essential, in my opinion. Developing it to an adequate level is unlikely to be a challenge given a century or two to develop. (Airline pilots are really only there to deal with emergencies and point out interesting things to see out the right hand window.) In terms of how you get people there, some options: Hibernation Generation ships Frozen embryos We could update the technology - or at least the knowledge of the technology - via a radio link, but my concern was not technological differences, but cultural and pschological contrasts. It is a cliche that senior citizens are perplexed by i-phones, computers and on-line banking. Amplify that by the changes over a couple of millenia rather than a couple of decades and you have the potential for a move to suicide territory. Certainly, our ability to explore, exploit and colonise the solar system will be an essential prerequisite to interstellar travel. However, thinking about it is both essential and great fun. Plus, manned exploration will always be preceded by extensive robotic probes. We can be thinking about those now, and we are: https://www.wired.com/story/nasa-is-getting-serious-about-an-interstellar-mission/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot True, but there are several candidates.
    1 point
  17. One important reason why 5-fold approximate symmetry is interesting is that you cannot tile the plane with regular pentagons for a very special reason. It's some kind of peculiar geometrical frustration. If N is the number of sides of a regular polygon. You have, Triangles (N=3) --> You can tile the plane Squares (N=4) --> You can tile the plane N-gones, N>5 --> You cannot tile the plane because angle is too big N=5 is special because you still have angle left, there's no angular "deficit", but there is a mismatch. Penrose re-discovered this tiling, which appears in some mosques and other religious buildings. The idea is that it creates the illusion of symmetry, but the pattern does not really repeat itself. Here's an interesting lecture by John Baez on number 5, and why it is an amazing number: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oPGmxDua2U He mentions Penrose tilings, but it's about number 5 in general. I'm not aware of any practical use, but approximate 5-fold symmetry does appear in Nature. Baez mentions diffraction patterns in some crystals as another example.
    1 point
  18. But this is untrue and remains a false dichotomy regardless of how frequently you reintroduce it
    0 points
  19. No, it doesn’t. At least here we can finally agree
    0 points
  20. No I’m really not bothered by being at odds with just about anyone, especially not with the political classes. I also am not refusing to acknowledge anything. I’m simply poking at obvious holes in your rather remedial and illogical arguments. As I said. I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you. Would it perhaps be easier for you if I used fat crayons and construction paper instead?
    0 points
  21. More interactions with police increase the odds of a poor interaction occurring. That does not, however, mean additional interactions lead to negative outcomes. It’s not a function in the way approach, technique, and style of police engagement are. Hundreds of thousands of cops manage to have positive outcomes every day and often across their entire careers, so now you’ve added the hasty generalization error and confirmation bias to your use of fallacies. Just because you hear more about negative interactions on the news does not mean they’re occurring everywhere all of the time, yet that’s the core of your current position. While I acknowledge it’s more common in some communities than in others, violence with the police is the exception yet you keep asserting it’s the rule. I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.
    0 points
  22. Those outcomes are not a function of how many police there are or how many interactions with police there are. Those outcomes are a function of how the interaction goes and what steps the officers take to de-escalate. I’m hearing / reading you just fine, but merely repeating inaccurate points and incorrect assertions doesn’t magically render them valid. Perhaps, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with rehabilitation or the original point you were trying (and failing) to make. Stop trying to move the goal posts.
    0 points
  23. Or hire more social workers and substance abuse & related counselors (or all of the above)
    0 points
  24. More police bring more people into the system. Rehabilitation begins after the system has been entered. This isn’t exactly rocket science. Also, property can be protected in other ways. More police is not the only option.
    0 points
  25. No, it's actually not. Hmm... I'm surprised it's that low, TBH
    0 points
  26. No, they are not. You're introducing a false dichotomy.
    0 points
  27. Of course you can. Why do you keep asserting otherwise?
    -1 points
  28. 1×1=?+1=?÷1=?-1=? 2×1=?-1=? 1×1=? 1-1=?×1=? 1-?=?
    -1 points
  29. The police do not perform rehabilitation, but if their interaction with the suspect occurs prior to the suspect receiving said rehabilitation then receiving that rehabilitation is conditional upon a risky encounter with the police! That is why Americans are talking about sending social workers rather than police to certain domestic calls. I feel like I'm interacting with people who have zero sense of logical deduction here, it's so frustrating. Just because you cannot understand it does not mean it's "bollox". Here, let me bring out the big crayons and construction paper, as iNow likes to say. Let's say you can either spin a dreidel with 4 sides numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4, or you can roll a 6-sided die instead numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. The number it lands on determines the number of marshmallows you can eat. Mmmm yummy marshmallows! Now I tell you if you wait one hour, you can instead roll the six-sided die or an eight-sided die numbered 1-8. Again, the number it lands on determines the number of marshmallows you can eat. Now if you decide to eat your marshmallows immediately, you can maximize your potential locally by choosing to roll the die rather than spin the dreidel. However, you have made a choice that decreased your global potential to each as many marshmallows as possible, since if you had waited one hour you could have rolled the eight-sided die instead.
    -2 points
  30. Poor analogy, I am not figuratively following anyone into their house. This is a space to debate, and if you cannot do that properly then you are free to leave and I will not "follow you".
    -2 points
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