padren

What is the sim half doing while this is happening? Wouldn't it sleep too, since it is a sim of the physical half?

Also, if your goal is different experiences for the left and right half, and see which "win" in the end, then tests on this in epileptic patients who have had the surgery tell us that, the person will experience both - it just depends on what side of the brain you ask.

This is why these subjects are taught coping mechanisms like "talking across information" whereby they speak something they know out loud, so both sides of the brain can know about it and stay in relative synch.

Can you explain the experiment in a bit more detail? I think I am missing part of it.

...and here I thought no dialog could appear more staged and hokey than a presidential Town Hall meeting.

When will the Atomic Christ-Force be peer reviewed?

Both of you seemed to have missed something critical from my original statement.

 

Boundary interactions take place between the digital copy and its real life counterpart.

 

In the example regarding your hand' date=' blood flowing into the "portal" via your arteries would be transformed into virtual blood. Similarly, blood which enters the simulation's counterpart of the boundary would be reconstructed in the real world as real blood and would be injected by the "portal" back into your real veins.

 

Nerve impluses traveling through your hand would reach your virtual fingertips. If someone in the virtual world were to hand you a ball, you could manipulate it with your virtual hand and sensory information would be relayed back as virtual nerve impulses until they hit the boundary, where they would be retranslated by the quantum constructor/destructor layer and made into real nerve impulses.

[/quote']

 

I did understand this - that your hand would have your blood flow up to the point of virtuality, get decontructed, have its continuation virtually calculated, and that it would come back through via reconstruction where the veins flowed back into the physical body.

 

My point is though, if instead of destroying the matter and only simulating it, you allowed the physicality to continue to exist, with a virtual counterpart (and if it was good enough at calculating, it should be near identical with simple things like blood flow and nerves).

 

Then you would be copied as you moved into the portal gradually, just as you specified. The only difference would be some calculations would have different results than the real circulatory system and even more with the virtual mind, and as those results were used for fresh input, you would have an enlarging gap between physical and virtual versions of you, creating some discord in the copy process.

But lets say the virtual copy, while it could simulate...at first measured the entire physical body quanta that was past the gate, and mirrored it exactly. Then it would be kept in perfect synch with the body until its entirety passed through the gate, before switching to simulation mode.

 

In short, if you moved through a gate that was non-destructive in that fashion but equally progressive in its process, would the physical version still contain your consciousness?

 

Since it would, how does adding a simple destructive factor, change the system?

The only thing I can be sure of, is the mind would not realize it was loosing its functionality, because as it was being destroyed, virtual prostetics would be picking up the slack, right down to the point of personality and consciousness. Even though there is consciousness in the emerging copy, how could it be the same consciousness? Its emerging in a databank somewhere, while your physical body is being copied and/or destroyed.

 

I will say, its the best idea I have heard so far. I like the idea that you would have complete continuity, but it still sounds like a clever way to simulate transfer than achieve it.

 

I'd like to ask you what you think your consciousness is "tied" to in terms of a real-world manifestation. Surely it isn't tied to the specific atoms which make up your brain' date=' because these are constantly being replaced.

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I have to agree its not the atoms, and I have no idea what it is, or how it works. It may be a complete and total illusion in the first place, and there is no difference at all between an original and a copy of a person, even if both co-exist (creepy thought actually).

 

Still, if it may be something more real, I hesitant to do anything that could really screw it up, since we would never be able to tell the difference if we did. If there is something - then it must have survived the atom-replacement test...because if it hasn't then it really is just an illusion. I am certain that if I back up my brain to disk, jump off a cliff, and get reborn in a clone, that the clone would be a new person with my personality, and my personal last experience would be death-by-cliff followed by nothing or whatever.

So, since I have no evidence to evaluate a "ghost" nor can I prevent atomic replacement, I feel like the safest thing to do is stick to undergoing physical phenomina that I can't avoid anyway, at least till some fundamental leaps in the understanding of consciousness are made.

What if we are considering a purely non-materialistic world with no sense of time...are girls still evil?

That is tough, they may not even exist ( girls=0)

However, I am more concerned about the profound implications as to the nature of both sugar and spice.

In fact, if I recall, then everything nice will also have to be rethought.

I hate to say it, but I still don't think you would transfer. I tried to play with similar ideas a while back, but I came to the same conclusion. If your left half entered the system, your right half would be kept alive via a "virtual prostetic" left half of a brain.

As you continued on into the portal, you would be more and more replaced by the prostetic until the original ceased to exist.

In any transfer process, the main question I would ask is, "Is it a copy process in which a destructive element is added out of convienance, so that it resembles a transfer?"

If the exact same portal didn't destroy the physical components, but still did the virtual copy part of the work, where would your conciousness be? Its safe to assume I think, that unless all continuity is a pure illusion, then your original consciousness would still be in your physical body in that case.

Therefore, how would adding a destructive element, actually change that factor?

The only thing I can see it doing, is ensuring the copy is convienced he is in fact, the original having transferred, instead of being newly born with identical knowledge.

Do you think my qualifying test question, about the destructive process is a fair one? I am interested in new ways to think about this topic, but still can't get over how convienant just throwing in an extra "delete the original" step is in attempting a transfer of consciousness, even if it is clever and gradual.

bascule' date='

Time [b']and[/b] money is not time times money. Wouldn't the 'solution' to this 'problem' be more like '2 moneys', seeing as 'time is money'.

 

aguy2

If you have four times the money, it takes a quarter of the amount of time. If you have half the money you should, it WILL take you twice as much time.

I definately think this demonstrates a time*money relationship.

Of course, things get really interesting when you increase both time and money.

As much as I do everything I can to keep up with the serious aspects of life, I also try and just enjoy my dumb luck of having a front row seat to something as amusing as my own personal plain old human folly. Its been incredibly entertaining so far.

I've also adopted the motto "Ignorance is Bliss" to help with depressing situations.

I tried that and I came to learn over time that it is not a very effective mechanism for....wait, I probably shouldn't spoil it for you.

"It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long the grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched tv. But then the winter came and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns! And also, he got a racecar! Is any of this getting through to you?"

3ch

If we don't allow people to parade about naked in public (forcing them into "colonies")' date=' then why would it be any different for public web sites or other public venues?

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I think the big difference is that there are no websites that are forced on anyone.

If MSN had a feature of "user pic of the day" then of course naked user pics would be as problematic as a naked person on a subway, but what you propose is like saying you can't have an art gallery with naked art behind closed doors that is accessed via a public street.

Yeah, when you look at it's affect on the cost of health care for everyone, it would make sense to make it illegal. Alcohol should be illegal too. So should pop and saturated fats. It just depends on where you draw the line.

I don't have the exact study sorry, but I heard from a relative that they did a pretty major one in Canada, which turned up that despite the costs of care at the end of their lives, the early end itself more than compensated in terms of expense. They did it to try and find out how much smokers were costing health care in an anti-smoking campaign, and quickly dropped that approach when they realized the evidence was pointing the other way.

Besides, you make alcohol illegal and you will turn me into a criminal.

Either a bootlegger or a rioter, I am not sure, probably the latter if I am no good at the former.

The radioactivity in cigarettes results from the use of calcium phosphate fertilizer which contains the alpha emitter polonium-210.

Did you say polonium-210? More like bullonium-210

Sorry' date=' once in a while I can't resist a bad pun, which has nothing to do with any challange to the validity of the comments above.

I would consider theoretical legistlation that put caps on the profitability of things like cigs and other "poisons of choice" as I think part of the problem is these corporations grow to cartoonish levels of political influence. I am not sure how something like that would work though.

I am not in favor of banning cigs or anything really.

Self destruction is a time honored route to self discovery, I think cultures that try to fight that just end up more messed up in the head than if they'd relax a bit.

I certianly think there needs to be regulation, and selling addictive harmful products requires lots of oversight just like mining uranium does.

A side note: Considering gambling addictions tend to make people loose their entire life savings and homes, why do we say its up to them to have self control, yet try to protect everyone else from harmful chemical addictions? Maybe Nevada [i']will[/i] legalize crack, who knows.

wow. What a great laugh. Really.

 

What can I say' date=' I'd panic too.[/quote']

 

The thread - it lives!

 

Well actually that was a pretty funny thread. I have to wonder if someone's little brother found a poor guy's SFN account and thought it was fun to play a joke.

 

One thing you always learn with age:

 

Best to get professional help at the first sign of any kind of plumbing problem. No exceptions = no regrets.

I've had a few thoughts on this subject lately, my general take is you can measure the volatility of a system, based on how many unlikely conditions need to be met in order for a small influence to have a large effect and to what degree of amplification.

I think its worth suspecting that our social system is very volatile, and if it wasn't for the very wide array of means by which the culture can adapt to change and compensate for any given change we'd have a lot of trouble getting by. (Of course we still have a lot more people quitting smoking than we have nuclear wars, so its not that volatile.)

A system like the oceans, would be very non-volatile, since basically every major effect (tsunamis etc) can be traced to other large causes, such as earthquakes, which have causes such as continental drift.

Systems like weather systems, while fairly complex and more volatile than the oceans (macroscopically) still don't appear to be so volatile that factors as small as butterflies are likely to have much effect.

So as far as volatility goes, social systems appear the most volatile (imo) and things like the oceans would be some of the least. Its not a measure of what is possible, but what is likely and how likely.

I think the butterfly effect pertaining to weather is more interesting because of the truth behind the fact we really don't know how to trace a weather system back very far - its volatile enough that it may as well have been a butterfly (no matter how unlikely) because we just can't track what will and will not turn into a storm to earlier than a couple of super-cells.

The only way I can think of to devolve would be to be managed as a species and bred for food, like most domestic animals today. We control their breeding, and select those that are more docile or otherwise have traits that make us happy instead of enchance the independant survivability of that species.

Granted, that is not a process of evolution (with mutation) but a selective breeding program whereby IIRC resessive genes that already are there.

Still, the result is that of a genetically inferior "devolved" subset of the species.

I would assume genetic evolution has greatly slowed in humans because what we learn has become exceptionally dominant in our survivability and success. Even a genetic advantage will not likely help a human with a poor education over another with an advanced education.

Regarding the pyramids...I am sorry, but they really are just stacked rocks. Mixed cement ones at that. They are just not worth building today, but its more than doable.

Also, don't be too quick to jump on people that don't buy the "we killed off the dinos when we came from mars" argument - you have to admit that is rather far fetched. This is a speculation forum area but people will still be critical, its just here if you defend speculations without affording strong evidence, the thread doesn't get moved or closed.

Well, I am a firm believer in the importance of corporate ethics, just because they are often abandoned doesn't mean they should be given up on.

Still, with google, and specifically with China, I would really like to see them more dependant and tied into western based services. If they can get better telecom through our satilites, use more western based web services for finance and research, I'd say all the better.

The more both the US and China can benefit from bridging the divides the more costly potential future conflicts and isolationist movements would be.

There is room for improvement, and I definately have a very different point of view on the sale of military goods to dictatorships. (Don't those nations always end up overthrowing their dictators, then somehow get stuck with the national debts chalked up by those same dictators to keep guns at their heads? How do we end up looking them in the eye while we deliver that bill anyway? /wayofftopicrant)

Humans are not so fast, they have very poor hearing and scent comparing to most animals, without fur they are susceptible to cold, their muscular power is many times smaller than that of most apes, their stomack cannot digest hard food etc., etc. Looks like humans evolved not because of natural selection but CONTRARY to it. Yes, primal humans could make fire and knives, but animals just don't need fire, having got a fur, likewise they don't need knives, having got claws and fangs. Imagine you provided gorillas with fire. Would they benefit from it in their environment? Not sure.

What you say is contrary, is IMO, more an indicator of when roughly we branched off towards intelligence as the strongest survival aid. Bigger brains trumped bigger teeth and claws...so the humans with bigger brains did better than the ones with bigger teeth and claws. The moment we could make and wear clothes and weapons, there was no evolutionary pressure to evolve towards having fur or claws. Interestingly, a theoretical mutation that caused us to have worse "fur" would actually be a survival aid, as we would be smart enough to wear animal furs in the cold, yet be adaptable to hot areas. I am really not sure how much general mutating went on from the time we became intelligent till now, since I think humans with our intelligence are very new on an evolutionary time scale (a biologist would know more).

A Gorilla evolved to deal with its environment based on its raw physical form and instinct, with limited learning skills. It got good enough at it unless it's environment changes significantly, there will be no evolutionary push towards utilizing tools including fire.

You noticed my attempt at poetry ). I did not use the exact phraseology of Lorenz' date=' because i was making a general statement that small changes can have large consequences. It seemed a more appropriate metaphor than say, "the straw that broke the donkeys back". Sometimes a simple poetic line can save a lot of words. Sorry it didn't work for you. Currently i have not formed an opinion about the validity of the "butterfly effect" specifically. Common day experience provides enough examples of small changes having large expected and unexpected consequences, to convince me that small changes can lead to large changes, unexpected or not. This happens whether they fit into some known equation or not.

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Thats fair, and I do understand what you are saying. I also agree that small factors can influence the triggering of large results. The melting of fresh ice water into the north atlantic and its impact on the convection currents (popularized and somewhat abused in the movie "day after tomorrow") is a good example.

 

Its not unlike the straw that broke the donkey's back because it is an example in which straw is continually added to an inevitable conclusion.

 

Earthquakes are probably a good example of the straw scenario, though the triggers are natural and likely not man-made.

 

The way I think of the butterfly effect, is that while in nature such situations can be "setup" (ie, volitile thresholds) that there is a relationship between the impact multiplier vs. the likelihood of the setup, which equals the volitility of the system.

 

So, if you could have butterflies causing tornados, and we observe there are far far far more butterflies than there are tornados, and even more "equal or greater" influences similar to butterflies (wasps, birds, etc) within the system, we can deduce we have a fairly non-volatile air system, or at least that it would have to be far far more volatile before we could observe such effects, and if such effects could be observed due to the volatility, then we would likely see half our earth's atmosphere shrug off into space whenever a volcano erupts.

 

Ecosystems are far more volatile. Introducing a few critters of a new species into an ecosystem can wreck largescale havoc.

 

Whatever opinion i or others have on the matter' date=' does not alter the fact that small changes, such as the increased level of aerosols in the atmosphere can cause large changes in the ecosystem:eek: .

 

Human-produced Aerosols in Many Arctic Clouds Contribute to Climate Warming

 

The link didn't work for me, but the real question is causation vs correlation. We have found polution from China over Utah, for instance, but that doesn't mean chinese polution is likely to increase the chances of people adopting mormonism.

 

I am not saying its a pure coincidence, just that it is not known. Last I heard the concern about aerosols was they damage ozone, not cause clouds.

 

I agree entirely with the point you are making' date=' although i don't know anything about your poetic "hermit crab fart".

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My point was less poetic, just that a single bubble would not cause a tsunami because we understand the fluid dynamics of water so well...ie, its a very non-volatile system. We can easily predict the maximal impact a bubble is likely to have.

Granted...its possible that an air bubble could float up into a cave system, cause the water level in an airpocket to drop a little...just enough that some shift in the cave causes a collapse, causing a sympathetic frequency that upsets a fault line...etc.

 

Its just an issue that due to low volatility you need extremely unlikely conditions to create such effects, and as such you may as well ignore anything that small when you want to examine large effects that do occur in nature.

 

Are you implying that Nature does not setup such situations?

 

Just that such situations are unlikely, and when they do occur, they become near-inevitable, because any number of equal or greater triggers are likely to set off the volatile condition.

Bisexuality aside, I think that from what I gather, the average gay individual is as turned off by the idea of sleeping with a woman as most men are turned off by the idea of sleeping with another man.

I think if more homophobic people thought about that from that perspective, they would be a lot more sympathetic to homosexuals, instead of assuming they are just "choosing" not to "get with the program" or some such.

From what I've lightly gathered there are genetic reasons that are associated with that.

I would say that homosexuality is unnatural for hetrosexuals, but that it is perfectly natural for homosexuals.

Still, I don't think the "natural" argument is a good way to evaluate any behavior. Nature is barbaric in at least as many cases as its elegant.

Just a few notes:

Its a hard question to answer, and I can at best render a personal opinion. I'd say "yes" because the question starts with "can" instead of "will" and therefore only needs the possibility to be valid. I don't think anyone can crunch the numbers on our survivability regarding the potental threats that are yet unknown, or the ones you mentioned.

Also, its been mentioned before that the "butterfly effect" isn't very valid. Its poetic, but not very well founded on any working theory. A hermit crab fart isn't any more likely to cause a tsunami than a butterfly's wings are to cause a hurricane.

Its like saying its true a worm can crush a village, but only if that worm is wiggling under a boulder that happens to be very unstable on a mountain that happens to be prone to avalanches and just about ready to go that happens to be right above a village. You need a very exacting setup for it to happen, and such an unstable one its actually as likely to happen by any other number of causes (breeze, falling leaf, tempurature contraction/expansion had the worm not been there) as it is by the noted source cause.

I think you could argue there is a difference between recreational drugs and get-through-the-work-day drugs. People smoke cigs because they can't cope with the stress during the day as part of its normal use. With Alcohol, you drink recreationally on your own time when you are not otherwise required to perform in some capacity.

People taking stims to stay awake driving rigs are more frightening to me than a guy at home smoking pot eating a bag or two of dorritos.

I think our culture is more suseptible to "get-by" drugs because we are a bit of a quick-fix pill culture. We'd rather get by with numbed symptoms than stop and treat a problem. (/gross generalizations)

I do think we are better off with the alcohol laws we have now, than we did under prohibition. By policing bad behavior from chemical abuse is the best solution IMO, instead of banning them outright.

There is very little reasoning if you assume that the politician is trying to state a factual case.

In most cases, I think politicians on both sides simply state whatever statements they reason will resonate in the manner they want, towards the ends they want to forward.

When viewed as a strategy, its often quite rational. Its when you view the content of the statement itself on the assumption its based on direct fact, it appears to make little rational sense.

Anyone old enough to remember playing this old Orbiter?

http://www.mobygames.com/game/orbiter (was my first or second computer game growing up)

(I had the mac version, with the graphics on the left)

I am going to have to try out this new version, 20 years can make a lot of difference.

Dating is fine to do, and you can have a great relationship without the expectation (assuming its on neither side) that its the One Perfect Person deal...and you'll probably enjoy life a lot more than if you date no one because no one is absolutely perfect.

I recommend going out at meeting people in any sort of group activity you enjoy doing. Rock climbing/kayaking/hiking/chess club/knitting/squash/tennis etc. You'll increase your social circle and likely the chances of running into someone that holds your attention.

The first thing that comes to my mind in determining natural human behavior, is to seperate out localized derivations of human behavior, and try to evalute the common trends across almost all even seperate cultures.

I am pretty sure, there are not human social orders based on solitary behavior similar to say a tiger. Hense I'd say that grouping is a very basic element of base human nature.

Its very hard to define in this regard because humans pan out to be so highy adaptable, and tend to apply a wide range of social behavioral permutations to adapt to an environment instead of physical ones.

To me one of the strangest commonalities is nearly every culture appears to adopt rituals over time, so much so that the rare absense would seem to be more likely an environmental adaption than the opposite.

Would it be fair to define "natural" as the behaviors that emerge regardless of localized environmental adaptations?

I think the meters you are using to evaluate good government are not the best milestones. For me, the most important function of a government is to maximize the capacity a person has to execute their own choices in life in peace. You obviously can't let one guy be free to beat on people randomly as it messes with another person's ability to do their own thing, so there are laws and national defense and such.

So people organize public utilities, law enforcement, national defense, criminal justice, consumer protections, health care (in an odd way I do consider federalized healthcare a base requirement for maximization, which I know is debatable), and whatnot.

The problem with a socialistic system, is people like me don't really fit in - I've chosen to take large risks in hopes I'll get very productive (I really don't care that much about the money) results.

The only places I could fit in within a socialist system would be organized crime or underground resistance.