Mart

Originally Posted by 5614

Palestinian terrorists just want to kill Israeli civilians because they are Israeli civilians.

You're sure about this? Is that because they're terrorists or Palestinians or both. Or maybe people with a justifiable,at least to them, POV and rock-bottom available unsavoury tactics? Does the US-Israeli alliance have no case to answer? Do powerful alliances take any notice of countries with no obvious political or economic assets?

Originally Posted by ecoli

In Israel, the religious Jewish population is actually quite small. You obviously have no idea what's going on over there or what the country is actually like.

What proportion of the US supporters of Israel do you think have first-hand knowledge of the "state" of Israel?

5614, the reason why the Israelis don't have to adopt the tactics of the Palestinian terrorists is because they don't have to. They can use more sophisticated warfare strategies to achieve their ends.

Originally Posted by bascule

One possibility, which I have conjectured, is that there are no "truly" non-terminating programs because "apparently" non-terminating programs all exist as subroutines within a terminating program.

I believe Turing addressed this problem when he proved that there were no terminating programs which included non-terminating subroutines.

Originally Posted by ecoli

Israeli violence is always in retaliation to some suicide bomber

Wrt to overt military violence then agreed. But political acts which are produced by a state which has vastly superior assets can be a covert form of violence. Faced with this as a reality then those on the receiving end have little in the way of bargaining power. Is it helpful to call a suicide bomber a "terrorist" and deny any form of terrorism by a state - even if it deems itself democratic?

This can be done. Person A passes their rope through the rope ring sorrounding person B's wrist in the direction of their elbow to their wrist and then over B's hand. You will need to do it to see it work. Try it slowly at first.

Originally Posted by ecol

I haven;t seen the film, and i don't plan on doing so

If you don't see it first-hand then your opinions on what Spielberg is trying to convey will be second-hand, at best. Is that what you intend or do you have other specific reasons for not seeing the film?

originally posted by Sisyphus

I don't expect that we'll ever have meaningful communication

If the minimal level of meaningful communication is via such tools as radio telescopes then we could be in for a longish wait. OTOH if we lower our standards somewhat then we already have meaningful communication with some other species. Naturally, the other species aren't too interested in communicating their thoughts (if they have any) about what they would label (if they could) arcane issues (which, incidently, most humans don't give a FF for).

The question of whether there are extraterrestrial intelligences like ours (ie using sophisticated tools) might depend on how evolution as a process works. We can argue that since humans exist there has to be an unbroken line of ancestors to at least the first living forms. Looking forward from the POV of the first of these forms we could ask whether the possibility of human-type intelligence already existed or whether this possibility itself changes according to circumstances.

originally posted by DV8 2XL

The more likely case is that thought is inconsistent and thus cannot be deterministic.

Some of my thoughts are consistent and deterministic and complete and so I would have to reject your hypothesis in it's general form while allowing that I may be an exception that fails to prove the rule. What would you need to know so that you could allow someone to dismiss the Limitive Theorems lightly? Or even with a struggle?

Originally Posted by bascule

You're describing a Direct Neural Interface (DNI), an Intelligence Amplification device which will lead to a Singularity scenario

I am? You know what? I didn't know I was that clever. I think I'll change my user name to . . . imasmartguy. Tell me more about the Singularity scenario. Is is dangerous? Will it cure my piles? Will I have to wear a special unifiorm?

originally posted by brad89

If a million tiny electrical signals travel between neurons in certain patterns, we can identify them as thoughts.

If that's the case then since electrical signals are physical it follows that thoughts are physical. One day someone will invent a thought-rendering contraption. It will save some typing.

for(n=0; n<11;n++)

cout<<10 * ((int)sin(n))

This will always produce the same output whenever it's run.

Originally Posted by 1veedo

I'm still not getting it. If you make a program

 

for (n=0; n < 11; n++)

out 10 * (sin(x));

 

 

then the output would vary each time?

No, the output would not vary each time. This code would generate an error because the value of x is not defined. The output depends only on the value of x. Using Int(sin(x)) adds nothing to a hoped for random output.

Originally Posted by bascule

Consciousness is made out of neurons.

If this is taken literally then consciousness should be physically detectable.

Originally Posted by Kedas

"I move using my legs, If you damage your legs, moving is likewise impared"?

No, it would be:

"I move using my legs, If you damage your legs, moving with legs is likewise impared"

one word : mescaline

From Tom Mattson's last post.

Tom thinks:

I don't suffer fools gladly.

Saint makes me suffer..

Therefore Saint is a fool.

From the tenor of Tom's posts I conclude that his insults (aimed indirectly at Saint) are the result of Tom's irritable disposition interacting with his faulty logic to produce the rude fellow syndrome (RFS).

The carrier of the RFS is frequently reported in the literature as being visually identifiiable by the curled lip, the beetled brow and the bulging eye, a rubification of the facial tissue and an above average tendency to escalate minor confrontations via physical force.

Anders and Cholmondly, in their most recent study, postulate that all RFS victims (sic) are "convinced that logical and reasonable argument is insufficient as a persuasive device". This is not universally accepted by members of the scientific community and vigorous discussion of the condition continues, marred, one has to say, by frequent evidence (see Postwaite, Mathers and Flock (2004) ) of RFS.

Only two things that appear strange to me.

A diagram generated by a mathematician I met who showed me something about numbers that I would have never(?) found on my own and a packet of peyote seeds given to me by my kids as a birthday present.

Originally Posted by Tom Mattson

Of course it's an analogy. I stated it as a counterexample to Saint's argument, which is:

 

P is used to build Q.

Therefore, P is not necessary to achieve Q

Saint said:

P is used to build Q

U is not Q

Therefore U is not P

If you claim that Saint said :

P is used to build Q.

Therefore, P is not necessary to achieve Q

then this is a misrepresentation of Saint's argument.

If I parse your last paragraph correctly you are saying:

Using valid logical arguments requires standard textbook study

V is not a valid logical argument

Matson used an invalid argument

therefore it is probable that Saint has not studied standard textbooks.

Using a faulty argument you claim that Saint's use of logic is not to be judged on it's validity but on whether Saint has the book-learning. You sound like the person who, when presented with a message, doubted its value because the messenger was a lazy knave who didn't know his letters.

Originally Posted by Tom Mattson

It should be obvious. Understanding of physics is built with mathematics, and automobiles are built with tools. You ought to be able to figure it out from there.

I get the bit that mathematics is a tool. But understanding of physics is like a car? How? What's the connection? Is that a metaphor, an analogy, what?

Originally Posted by Tom Matson

Cars are built with tools, and yet a car is not 'tools'. Does that mean that tools are not necessary to build cars? If you tried to convince any auto builder of that he would laugh you out of the room.

Is that last sentence your opinion, a fact or just a put down or what?

Cars are built with tools. Saint made the distinction between understanding and tools. Saint wasn't talking about cars but if he had been then maybe he would have said that understanding is like a car's destination. In what ways do you think understanding is like a car?

What makes one product better than another?

Science does have a problem with emotion because it's subjective. But useful inferences can be made by crafty post-Behaviourist psychologists.

Looked at from a survival POV emotion serves to distinguish positive, neutral and negative states of the body that may need action. Heroin users have reported that "the pain's still there but it don't hurt".

Guy gets washed up unconscious on a desert island. When he comes to he finds Kylie Minogue next to him. They get talking and after a few days they're quite friendly. Before long they've set up house and she's cooking for him. Then, he's over the moon because she agrees to share his bed. He's going around with a big grin on his face.

One day she notices that he's really down in the dumps. This continues the next day and the day after. Kylie asks him what's up but he won't say. She persists and he says that if she'll do something for him then he'll get over it. She's a bit reluctant but agrees to listen. "All I want ", he says, "is for you to mess your hair up a bit, put some mud on your face and then walk clockwise round the island. I'll walk anti-clockwise and we'll meet halfway".

"OK" she says and she does the cosmetics and they set off in opposite directions. When she's gone a fair distance she sees him coming towards her and he's running really fast. He comes racing up to her, all out of breath but with a big grin on his face, and shouts "Hey! You'll never guess who I'm shagging! Kylie Minogue!

I keep having problems with the reply process. Frequently I log on, it lets me compose my reply then denies that I'm logged on and then insists that I log on.