RE: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade
I am enslaved if someone physically constrains me or threatens me in order to make me behave in a certain way; this is also compatible with either type of brain mechanism. I would argue that people can be as much enslaved by chains within their minds, and that belief and habit have the potential to be as powerful a constraint as bonds of iron can ever be. Habit belief, once established in a host brain are exceedingly difficult to root out; they remain and operate largely unexamined by the person affected by them, generating assumed truth, unquestioned assumptions and deciding actions and judgments that are generated from within the inner universe the marvelously and massively parallel, and also very noisy brains. Habit belief often reflect and enforce external enslavement; we become habituated into our various assorted lots in life, and after the habit takes root we are largely driven forward along the desired behavioral patterns by the well rooted habits inside of us. And in some senses habitual behavior is a great thing; I love not having to think about everything that is constantly occurring and which demands a response from the brain. Habitual behavior to the rescue J But the unexamined habit and belief can imprison a brain as or even more effectively than physical imprisonment can. Apart from this one minor quibble, I agree with the thrust of your argument that we all intuitively grasp our own free will in a most visceral sense, and that while it cannot be defined precisely or pinned down or proved; that just because it is a little fuzzy and impossible to rigorously define does not mean it therefore does not exist or must remain outside of any serious discussion on such matters. Even if free will does not exist -- in which case it matter not whether we believe in it or not - it appears that regardless of whether free will truly exists or not, our belief in free will is vital for our morality. When we believe we have free will that we, the inner self-aware agents in our brains are deciding our actions then we tend to behave in more moral ways; conversely when we are led to believe that free will does not exist and that we are chatty marionettes driven by a fundamental determinism or programs outside of our control then we behave in far less moral manners. So, even if we inhabit a deterministic universe, that universe has found it necessary - in us (self-aware and at least semi-conscious beings) -- to develop/evolve this elaborate inner charade, to produce an illusion of free will that is so perfect in us that few question its existence. One could argue that the very fact that this very real sensation and experience of having free will and of being conscious has evolved to the exquisite degree that it has evolved in us is indicative of a deep centrality of importance to our being. Believing in free will, which seems very evolved in us - after all, human individuals, on average, very much tend to believe in their own free will --believing in it, independent of whether it actually exists or not in the underlying physical reality matrix in which our virtual mental entities are most intimately immersed seems vital to our being. and on many levels from the moral, to the motivational and emotional. Behaviorism misses the mark, sure behaviors can be induced, subjects controlled through conditioning, but that is merely generating superficial behavioral effects and demonstrating that behaviors can be imprinted on minds. It is not therefore a theory of the mind. It's akin to the torturers belief in the methodology of torture; while it is true that the one tortured will eventually become broken by torture and seek above all to please the torturer and will tell them whatever they want to hear. this in no ways actually implies that anything of value has been achieved. The information extracted by torture all too often proves to be of little value. Not calling behaviorists torturers although I find their world view tortured J The poetry of the mind is not so easily reducible, the esthetics of inner life cannot be so easily dissected and defined. That which is most beautiful and real in us. self-emerging within this truly vast dynamic electro-chemical inner-verse is the mind. I suspect the mind is rather much more a subtle multi-faceted, multi-reflecting, dynamically inter-acting and co-evolving self-emergent entity, which quite self-evidently, transcends the crude attempts of reducing this symphony to an impoverished assemblage of deterministic behaviors and mental programs. -Chris From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2013 10:59 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade On Monday, August 19, 2013 11:02:00 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 17 August 2013 04:01, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: The objection that the
The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
On Wednesday, August 21, 2013, Pierz wrote: ...since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches... What I mean of course is the additional happiness in the WW3 branches. The non-WW3 branches are much *less* happy right Saibal? All these posts about WW3. Did I miss a war? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
Because it happened in some alternate universe J From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 12:14 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood On Wednesday, August 21, 2013, Pierz wrote: ...since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches... What I mean of course is the additional happiness in the WW3 branches. The non-WW3 branches are much *less* happy right Saibal? All these posts about WW3. Did I miss a war? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Question for the QM experts here: quantum uncertainty of the past
2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 8/20/2013 5:26 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/16/2013 4:57 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/15/2013 6:18 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/14/2013 6:41 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: I guess I don't understand that. You seem to be considering a simple case of amnesia - all purely classical - so I don't see how MWI enters at all. The probabilities are just ignorance uncertainty. You're still in the same branch of the MWI, you just don't remember why your memory was erased (although you may read about it in your diary). No, you can't say that you are in the same branch. Just because you are in the clasical regime doesn't mean that the MWI is irrelevant and we can just pretend that the world is described by classical physics. It is only that classical physics will give the same answer as QM when computing probabilities. Including the probability that I'm in the same world as before? With classical I mean a single world theory where you just compute the probabilities based ignorance. This yields the same answer as assuming the MWI and then comouting the probabilities of the various outcomes. If what you are aware of is only described by your memory state which can be encoded by a finite number of bits, then after a memory resetting, the state of your memory and the environment (which contains also the rest of your brain and body), is of the form: The rest of my brain?? Why do you suppose that some part of my brain is involved in my memories and not other parts? What about a scar or a tattoo. I don't see that memory is separable from the environment. In fact isn't that exactly what makes memory classical and makes the superposition you write below impossible to achieve? Your brain is a classical computer because it's not isolated from the environment. What matter is that the state is of the form: |memory_1|environment_1 + |memory_2|environment_2+.. with the |memory_j orthonormal and the |environment_j orthogonal. Such a completely correlated state will arise due to decoherence, the probabilities which are the squared norms of the |environment_j's are the probabilities. They behave in a purely classical way due this decomposition. The brain is never isolated from the environment; if project onto an |environment_j you always get a definite classical memory state, never a supperposition of different bitstrings. But it's not the case that projecting onto a ddefinite memory state will always yield a definite classical environment state (this is at the heart of the Wigner's friend thought experiment). I think Wigner's friend has been overtaken by decoherence. While I agree with what you say above, I disagree that the |environment_i are macroscopically different. I think you are making inconsistent assumptions: that memory is something that can be reset without resetting its physical environment and yet still holding that memory is classical. The |environment_i have to be different as they are entangled with different memory states, precisely due to rapid decoherence. The environment always knows exactly what happened. So, the assumption is not that the environment doesn't know what has been done (decoherence implies that the environment does know), rather that the the person whose memory is reset doesn't know why the memory was reset. So, if you have made a copy of the memory, the system files etc., there is no problem to reboot the system later based on these copies. Suppose that the computer is running an artificially intelligent system in a virtual environment, but such that this virtual environment is modeled based on real world data. This is actually quite similar to how the brain works, what you experience is a virtual world that the brain creates, input from your senses is used to update this model, but in the end it's the model of reality that you experience (which leaves quite a lot of room for magicians to fool you). Then immediately after rebooting, you won't yet have any information that is in the environment about why you decided to reboot. You then have macroscopically different environments where the reason for rebooting is different but where you are identical. But that's where I disagree - not about the conclusion, but about the possibility of the premise. I don't think it's possible to erase, in the quantum sense, just your memory. Of course you can given a drug that erases short term memory and so it may be possible to create a drug that erases long term memory too, i.e. induces amnesia. But what you require is to erase long term memory in a quantum sense so that all the informational entanglements with the environment are erased too. So I don't think you can be to the erased memory state you need.
Re: Question for the QM experts here: quantum uncertainty of the past
Citeren Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com: 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 8/20/2013 5:26 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/16/2013 4:57 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/15/2013 6:18 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/14/2013 6:41 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: I guess I don't understand that. You seem to be considering a simple case of amnesia - all purely classical - so I don't see how MWI enters at all. The probabilities are just ignorance uncertainty. You're still in the same branch of the MWI, you just don't remember why your memory was erased (although you may read about it in your diary). No, you can't say that you are in the same branch. Just because you are in the clasical regime doesn't mean that the MWI is irrelevant and we can just pretend that the world is described by classical physics. It is only that classical physics will give the same answer as QM when computing probabilities. Including the probability that I'm in the same world as before? With classical I mean a single world theory where you just compute the probabilities based ignorance. This yields the same answer as assuming the MWI and then comouting the probabilities of the various outcomes. If what you are aware of is only described by your memory state which can be encoded by a finite number of bits, then after a memory resetting, the state of your memory and the environment (which contains also the rest of your brain and body), is of the form: The rest of my brain?? Why do you suppose that some part of my brain is involved in my memories and not other parts? What about a scar or a tattoo. I don't see that memory is separable from the environment. In fact isn't that exactly what makes memory classical and makes the superposition you write below impossible to achieve? Your brain is a classical computer because it's not isolated from the environment. What matter is that the state is of the form: |memory_1|environment_1 + |memory_2|environment_2+.. with the |memory_j orthonormal and the |environment_j orthogonal. Such a completely correlated state will arise due to decoherence, the probabilities which are the squared norms of the |environment_j's are the probabilities. They behave in a purely classical way due this decomposition. The brain is never isolated from the environment; if project onto an |environment_j you always get a definite classical memory state, never a supperposition of different bitstrings. But it's not the case that projecting onto a ddefinite memory state will always yield a definite classical environment state (this is at the heart of the Wigner's friend thought experiment). I think Wigner's friend has been overtaken by decoherence. While I agree with what you say above, I disagree that the |environment_i are macroscopically different. I think you are making inconsistent assumptions: that memory is something that can be reset without resetting its physical environment and yet still holding that memory is classical. The |environment_i have to be different as they are entangled with different memory states, precisely due to rapid decoherence. The environment always knows exactly what happened. So, the assumption is not that the environment doesn't know what has been done (decoherence implies that the environment does know), rather that the the person whose memory is reset doesn't know why the memory was reset. So, if you have made a copy of the memory, the system files etc., there is no problem to reboot the system later based on these copies. Suppose that the computer is running an artificially intelligent system in a virtual environment, but such that this virtual environment is modeled based on real world data. This is actually quite similar to how the brain works, what you experience is a virtual world that the brain creates, input from your senses is used to update this model, but in the end it's the model of reality that you experience (which leaves quite a lot of room for magicians to fool you). Then immediately after rebooting, you won't yet have any information that is in the environment about why you decided to reboot. You then have macroscopically different environments where the reason for rebooting is different but where you are identical. But that's where I disagree - not about the conclusion, but about the possibility of the premise. I don't think it's possible to erase, in the quantum sense, just your memory. Of course you can given a drug that erases short term memory and so it may be possible to create a drug that erases long term memory too, i.e. induces amnesia. But what you require is to erase long term memory in a quantum sense so that all the informational entanglements with the environment are erased too. So I don't think you can be to the erased memory state you need.
Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade
On 21 August 2013 03:59, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: It is possible to make the distinction between doing something by accident and intentionally, between enslavement and freedom, while still acknowledging that brain mechanisms are either determined or random. Why would such a distinction be meaningful to a deterministic or random process though? I think you are smuggling our actual sense of intention into this theoretical world which is only deterministic-random (unintentional). If you are saying that something cannot be emotionally meaningful if it is random or determined you are wrong. Patients are anxious about the result of a medical test even though they know the answer is determined and gamblers are anxious about the outcome of their bet even though they know it is random. I do something intentionally if I want to do it and am aware that I am doing it; this is compatible with either type of brain mechanism. Only if you have the possibility of something 'wanting' to do something in the first place. Wanting doesn't make sense deterministically or randomly. In the words of Yoda, 'there is no try, either do or do not'. You know that you have wants, and you conclude from this that your brain cannot function deterministically or randomly. You make this claim repeatedly and without justification. I am enslaved if someone physically constrains me or threatens me in order to make me behave in a certain way; this is also compatible with either type of brain mechanism. In the deterministic universe, you would be enslave no matter what, so what difference would it make whether your constraint is internally programmatic or externally modified? I don't think being a slave to brain processes is considered to be real slavery by most people. You are free to differ in your definition. Some questions for determinist thinkers: Can we effectively doubt that we have free will? I can't effectively doubt that I decide to do something and do it. I can effectively doubt that my actions are random, that they are determined, or that they are neither random nor determined It sounds like you are agreeing with me? On this point, yes; but I'm using the common, legal or compatibilist definition of free will, not yours. Or is the doubt a mental abstraction which denies the very capacity for intentional reasoning upon which the doubt itself is based? Yes: if I intend to do something, I can't doubt that I intend to do it, for otherwise I wouldn't intend to do it. If you doubt anything though, it is because you intend to believe what is true and your sense is that some proposition is not true. To say I doubt that there is a such thing as free will (intention) is itself an intentional, free-will act. You are saying not just that there is a sense of doubt, but that you voluntarily invest your personal authority in that doubt. I don't doubt free will in the common, legal or compatibilist sense. I doubt it in your sense, since it is not even conceptually possible. How would an illusion of doubt be justified, either randomly or deterministically? What function would an illusion of doubt serve, even in the most blue-sky hypothetical way? Why wouldn’t determinism itself be just as much of an illusion as free will or doubt under determinism? Determinism and randomness can be doubted. There is no problem here. Only because we live in a universe which supports voluntary intentional doubt. They couldn't be doubted in a universe which was limited to determinism and randomness. That's my point. To doubt, you need to be able to determine personally. Free will is the power not just to predict but to dictate. I can doubt something if it was determined at the beginning of the universe that I would doubt it. Where is the logical problem with that? For psychology not to be reducible to physiology, something extra would be needed, such as non-physical soul. Then the opposite would have to be true also. For select brain physiology not to be reducible to psychology, you would need some homunculus running translation traffic in infinite regress. Non-physical and soul are labels which are not useful to me. Physics is reducible to sense, and sense tends to polarize as public and private phenomena. A house is reducible to bricks because if you put all the bricks in place the house necessarily follows. Psychology is reducible to physiology because if you put all the physiology in place the psychology follows necessarily. Absent this something extra, the reduction stands. That's my definition of reductionism. If your definition is different then, according to this different definition, it could be that reductionism is wrong in this case. Physical reductionism is wrong because it arbitrarily starts with objects as real and subjects as somehow other than real. It's not really reductionism, it's just stealth dualism, where mind-soul is recategorized as an
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
A rapid descent into extremism can be caused by factors such as economic desperation. However, you can also have a gradual change in society and then people are always indioctrinated that their current norms and values are correct. So, there was a time when when drawing and quartering was a normal form of punishment, and we gradually moved away from that. If you move very fast away from this, then there will be big differences in the opnions of people about wthe current system being ok. or totally unacceptable. We are thus more vulnerable to extremism due to gradual changes in society, e.g. a Hitler coming to power who doesn't need to start a war (suppose e.g. that Poland would ahve been annexed without the Western powers declaring war on Germany). So, Hitler could have remained a popular dictator in Germany and the Holocaust would have had a competely different character. From the point of view of an extremist, the extremists views are the norm. So, the extremist doesn't see that he is an extremist. It is only in case of a rapid descent into extremism that there will be many other peole who are not extremist who can see this, also the extremists would find them having to defend their views more. You an then also ask if we are actually already extremists from some reasonable point of view that our distant descendants may have. E.g. the way we run the World economy with billions of people living in poverty could be called totally immoral by people who live a century from now. They could judge us in a similar way as the would judge Nazis. Or, as in a recent SF movie, you can have an alien visiting us who then judges us to be guilty of mass genocide against the environment and who then decides that we should all be exterminated so that life on Earth can be saved from us. If in one reasonable value system something can be genocide on an unimaginable scale, while in another one it is business as usual, then the processes that led to this being flagged as business as usual in our brains have their origin in arbitrary events in our history, as there is no preference for the flagging as business as usual being preferred given the way our brain works. Saibal Citeren Pierz pier...@gmail.com: ...since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches... What I mean of course is the additional happiness in the WW3 branches. The non-WW3 branches are much *less* happy right Saibal? On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 9:49:59 AM UTC+10, Pierz wrote: Self-contradictory. You've got to follow your own theories to their logical conclusions. *Which* Western/third world would have been better off if WW3 hadn't happened? Since everything happens in some branch of the multiverse, surely there are innumerable branches in which the world is better off for not having undergone the horrors of WW3. Or are you saying that, if you summed human happiness in the branches of the hypothetical branch of the multiverse in which WW3 didn't happen, and compared it to the sum of human happiness in the branches in which it did, it would be higher in the ones in which it didn't? Put that way, it becomes a rather absurd claim wouldn't you say? And dubious - since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches has to make up for the staggering, unimaginable misery of the holocaust, the Russian front, Hiroshima etc etc before getting ahead at all, and secondly because this is all based on the theory that Nazism not being debunked (It was exterminated) would have led to an incorporation of fascist ideology into the mainstream of global social organization, an extremely debatable proposition. Extremism is fostered by economic desperation. If the world had had time to fully recover from the depression, notions of invading the world would have looked a lot less attractive to the fat, comfortable citizens of an affluent western Europe, and Nazism may well have died a quiet death without the need for apocalypse. But of course I won't argue that's what *would* have happened, because making predictions about the consequences of any single event or change in world history is impossible. If you'd like to disagree, please tell us all what the consequences of the Arab uprisings will be in twenty years' time. We'll check back in then and see how well you performed. On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:56:57 AM UTC+10, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Roger may start a discussion on politics and presents some very narrow minded views, but I can present a different view that may be totally politically incorect but is i.m.o. the right view. Not only is the 3rd World better off with WWII having happened, the Western World is also better off. Without WWII, Nazism would not have been debunked and we would gradually have evolved to become less free societies. Ideas that are totally politically incorrect like euthanizing old and handicap people to save health care costs would have been business as usual.
Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test?
Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com So if the slave AI has a fixed goal structure with the number one goal being to always do what humans tell it to do and the humans order it to determine the truth or falsehood of something unprovable then its infinite loop time and you've got yourself a space heater not a AI. Right, but I'm not thinking of something that straightforward. We Already have that -- normal processors. Any one of them will do precisely what we order it to do. Yes, and because the microprocessors in our computers do precisely what we order them to do and not what we want them to do they sometimes go into infinite loops, and because they never get bored they will stay in that loop forever, or at least until we reboot our computer; if we're just using the computer to surf the internet that's only a minor inconvenience but if the computer were running a nuclear power plant or the New York Stock Exchange it would be somewhat more serious; and if your friendly AI were running the entire world the necessity of a reboot would be even more unpleasant. Real minds avoid this infinite loop problem because real minds don't have fixed goals, real minds get bored and give up. At that level, boredom would be a very simple mechanism, easily replaced by something like: try this for x amount of time and then move on to another goal But how long should x be? Perhaps in just one more second you'll get the answer, or maybe two, or maybe 10 billion years, or maybe never. I think determining where to place the boredom point for a given type of problem may be the most difficult part in making an AI; Turing tells us we'll never find a algorithm that works perfectly on all problems all of the time, so we'll just have to settle for an algorithm that works pretty well on most problems most of the time. And you're opening up a huge security hole, in fact they just don't get any bigger, you're telling the AI that if this whole always obey humans no matter what thing isn't going anywhere just ignore it and move on to something else. It's hard enough to protect a computer when the hacker is no smarter than you are, but now you're trying to outsmart a computer that's thousands of times smarter than yourself. It can't be done. Incidentally I've speculated that unusual ways to place the boredom point may explain the link between genius and madness particularly among mathematicians. Great mathematicians can focus on a problem with ferocious intensity, for years if necessary, and find solutions that you or I could not, but in everyday life that same attribute of mind can sometimes cause them to behave in ways that seem to be at bit, ah, odd. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
A rapid descent into extremism can be caused by factors such as economic desperation. However, you can also have a gradual change in society and then people are always indioctrinated that their current norms and values are correct. Of course we regard our norms and values as correct. They are our norms and values. However, history shows a steady flow towards more humane rather than less humane norms and values. So, there was a time when when drawing and quartering was a normal form of punishment, and we gradually moved away from that. Quite. we have gradually moved away from that kind of obscenity rather than towards it. We are thus more vulnerable to extremism due to gradual changes in society No, by your very own example we are more sensitive to it. Like you point out, we have gradually moved to the point where barbarities like drawing and quartering are less acceptable. We now regard kicking a dog as barbaric let alone public execution. So, Hitler could have remained a popular dictator in Germany and the Holocaust would have had a completely different character. By your own argument so far this is a non-sequitur. Moreover, you have failed to show how Hitler could ever have come to power in the absence of economic desperation. You haven't even argued for it. You ought to be demonstrating a gentle creep into barbarity but you demonstrate the opposite. From the point of view of an extremist, the extremists views are the norm. So, the extremist doesn't see that he is an extremist. It is only in case of a rapid descent into extremism that there will be many other people who are not extremist who can see this, also the extremists would find them having to defend their views more. We gradually moved from societies in which slavery was an accepted norm to ones which regard it as barbaric. This happened without cataclysm. This amounts to a falsifying example. This may help: http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/principle_of_falsification.html You an then also ask if we are actually already extremists from some reasonable point of view that our distant descendants may have. E.g. the way we run the World economy with billions of people living in poverty could be called totally immoral by people who live a century from now. This has been regarded as immoral for a very long time. You should read up on this gentleman. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/ But, in any case, yes, our descendants will view some of our norms and values as troubling. Just as we do our ancestors. This is because there is a gentle creep away from barbarity rather than towards it. They could judge us in a similar way as the would judge Nazis. If they were stupid. Intelligent judges from the future would recognize that by the 21st century the gradual reduction in barbarity over millenia had reached a point where poverty, womens rights, animal rights, gay rights, could come to the forefront of the moral agenda. Its not the case that poverty was not an issue before, but that prior to the past 50 years or so there have been more pressing and blood thirsty barbarities to quell. All the best. Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 14:41:43 +0200 From: smi...@zonnet.nl To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood A rapid descent into extremism can be caused by factors such as economic desperation. However, you can also have a gradual change in society and then people are always indioctrinated that their current norms and values are correct. So, there was a time when when drawing and quartering was a normal form of punishment, and we gradually moved away from that. If you move very fast away from this, then there will be big differences in the opnions of people about wthe current system being ok. or totally unacceptable. We are thus more vulnerable to extremism due to gradual changes in society, e.g. a Hitler coming to power who doesn't need to start a war (suppose e.g. that Poland would ahve been annexed without the Western powers declaring war on Germany). So, Hitler could have remained a popular dictator in Germany and the Holocaust would have had a competely different character. From the point of view of an extremist, the extremists views are the norm. So, the extremist doesn't see that he is an extremist. It is only in case of a rapid descent into extremism that there will be many other peole who are not extremist who can see this, also the extremists would find them having to defend their views more. You an then also ask if we are actually already extremists from some reasonable point of view that our distant descendants may have. E.g. the way we run the World economy with billions of people living in poverty could be called totally immoral by people who live a century from now. They could judge us in a similar way as the would judge Nazis. Or, as in a recent SF movie, you can have an
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
Hitler continues to be the most respected historical figure in muslim countries, as well as in muslim minories in other countries. Therefore it is not a surprise to me what smitra says. By the way this third-word mentality and this ate to the first world in the intelectual elites of third word countries is the mindset that keep these countries in the misery. Fortunately this is changing. I will send to Roger yet another personal mail begging it to stop sending spurious mails to this list 2013/8/21 smi...@zonnet.nl A rapid descent into extremism can be caused by factors such as economic desperation. However, you can also have a gradual change in society and then people are always indioctrinated that their current norms and values are correct. So, there was a time when when drawing and quartering was a normal form of punishment, and we gradually moved away from that. If you move very fast away from this, then there will be big differences in the opnions of people about wthe current system being ok. or totally unacceptable. We are thus more vulnerable to extremism due to gradual changes in society, e.g. a Hitler coming to power who doesn't need to start a war (suppose e.g. that Poland would ahve been annexed without the Western powers declaring war on Germany). So, Hitler could have remained a popular dictator in Germany and the Holocaust would have had a competely different character. From the point of view of an extremist, the extremists views are the norm. So, the extremist doesn't see that he is an extremist. It is only in case of a rapid descent into extremism that there will be many other peole who are not extremist who can see this, also the extremists would find them having to defend their views more. You an then also ask if we are actually already extremists from some reasonable point of view that our distant descendants may have. E.g. the way we run the World economy with billions of people living in poverty could be called totally immoral by people who live a century from now. They could judge us in a similar way as the would judge Nazis. Or, as in a recent SF movie, you can have an alien visiting us who then judges us to be guilty of mass genocide against the environment and who then decides that we should all be exterminated so that life on Earth can be saved from us. If in one reasonable value system something can be genocide on an unimaginable scale, while in another one it is business as usual, then the processes that led to this being flagged as business as usual in our brains have their origin in arbitrary events in our history, as there is no preference for the flagging as business as usual being preferred given the way our brain works. Saibal Citeren Pierz pier...@gmail.com: ...since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches... What I mean of course is the additional happiness in the WW3 branches. The non-WW3 branches are much *less* happy right Saibal? On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 9:49:59 AM UTC+10, Pierz wrote: Self-contradictory. You've got to follow your own theories to their logical conclusions. *Which* Western/third world would have been better off if WW3 hadn't happened? Since everything happens in some branch of the multiverse, surely there are innumerable branches in which the world is better off for not having undergone the horrors of WW3. Or are you saying that, if you summed human happiness in the branches of the hypothetical branch of the multiverse in which WW3 didn't happen, and compared it to the sum of human happiness in the branches in which it did, it would be higher in the ones in which it didn't? Put that way, it becomes a rather absurd claim wouldn't you say? And dubious - since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches has to make up for the staggering, unimaginable misery of the holocaust, the Russian front, Hiroshima etc etc before getting ahead at all, and secondly because this is all based on the theory that Nazism not being debunked (It was exterminated) would have led to an incorporation of fascist ideology into the mainstream of global social organization, an extremely debatable proposition. Extremism is fostered by economic desperation. If the world had had time to fully recover from the depression, notions of invading the world would have looked a lot less attractive to the fat, comfortable citizens of an affluent western Europe, and Nazism may well have died a quiet death without the need for apocalypse. But of course I won't argue that's what *would* have happened, because making predictions about the consequences of any single event or change in world history is impossible. If you'd like to disagree, please tell us all what the consequences of the Arab uprisings will be in twenty years' time. We'll check back in then and see how well you performed. On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:56:57 AM UTC+10, smi...@zonnet.nl
RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
Mercantilist plantation systems, economic hegemony of the developed center and neo-colonialism have absolutely nothing to do with it right? Spud your world view is limited by the narrow slits you view it through. From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 7:51 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Nazism would have gobbled down so many races and ethnic group that eventually it would have gone after yours? It's the love of tyrants that condemns the Third world to perpetual war and genocide. -Original Message- From: smitra smi...@zonnet.nl To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, Aug 20, 2013 6:57 pm Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Roger may start a discussion on politics and presents some very narrow minded views, but I can present a different view that may be totally politically incorect but is i.m.o. the right view. Not only is the 3rd World better off with WWII having happened, the Western World is also better off. Without WWII, Nazism would not have been debunked and we would gradually have evolved to become less free societies. Ideas that are totally politically incorrect like euthanizing old and handicap people to save health care costs would have been business as usual. The fundamental mistake Roger makes is to think that the core moral values we have today are universal and that you can look back many decades and then condemn e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood for having supported the Nazis back then. In the end, Roger's brain is just executing a prgram, whatever is against his moral values is encoded in his brain and that information did not come out of thin air. Had history run a different course (and history has run a different course in different sectors of the multiverse), Roger would have supported Nazi policies himself. In fact we can be sure that such a Nazi version of Roger exsts in the multiverse, because all possible programs exists. Saibal Citeren spudboy...@aol.com: I do not see why Roger, needs, politics in this forum, but, so be it. Smitra expresses a view that decides the US, has to be ruined for the evil it has conspired against the wonderful, and innocent, people's of the 3rd world. I am guessing that when the ISI strikes India, using enhanced fission devices, he will be content that they detonate it only on legitimate military targets? Enjoy. -Original Message- From: smitra smi...@zonnet.nl To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, Aug 20, 2013 8:13 am Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Also I believe that 9/11 was a good thing, albeit it would have been etter if Bin Laden had focusses only on legitimate military targets ike the White House, the US Congress, the Senate and the Pentagon. iteren Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net: The Nazi history of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jk4a3Kk6-Y Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. - ou received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. o unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email o everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. o post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. isit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. or more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit
RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
You are utterly full of it. You make these statements like you knew.. What a pompous blow hard you are.. A very big mouth affixed to an atrophied brain is a guarantee of stupidity, and you my friend are an exemplar of this sad phenomena. From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alberto G. Corona Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:50 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Hitler continues to be the most respected historical figure in muslim countries, as well as in muslim minories in other countries. Therefore it is not a surprise to me what smitra says. By the way this third-word mentality and this ate to the first world in the intelectual elites of third word countries is the mindset that keep these countries in the misery. Fortunately this is changing. I will send to Roger yet another personal mail begging it to stop sending spurious mails to this list 2013/8/21 smi...@zonnet.nl A rapid descent into extremism can be caused by factors such as economic desperation. However, you can also have a gradual change in society and then people are always indioctrinated that their current norms and values are correct. So, there was a time when when drawing and quartering was a normal form of punishment, and we gradually moved away from that. If you move very fast away from this, then there will be big differences in the opnions of people about wthe current system being ok. or totally unacceptable. We are thus more vulnerable to extremism due to gradual changes in society, e.g. a Hitler coming to power who doesn't need to start a war (suppose e.g. that Poland would ahve been annexed without the Western powers declaring war on Germany). So, Hitler could have remained a popular dictator in Germany and the Holocaust would have had a competely different character. From the point of view of an extremist, the extremists views are the norm. So, the extremist doesn't see that he is an extremist. It is only in case of a rapid descent into extremism that there will be many other peole who are not extremist who can see this, also the extremists would find them having to defend their views more. You an then also ask if we are actually already extremists from some reasonable point of view that our distant descendants may have. E.g. the way we run the World economy with billions of people living in poverty could be called totally immoral by people who live a century from now. They could judge us in a similar way as the would judge Nazis. Or, as in a recent SF movie, you can have an alien visiting us who then judges us to be guilty of mass genocide against the environment and who then decides that we should all be exterminated so that life on Earth can be saved from us. If in one reasonable value system something can be genocide on an unimaginable scale, while in another one it is business as usual, then the processes that led to this being flagged as business as usual in our brains have their origin in arbitrary events in our history, as there is no preference for the flagging as business as usual being preferred given the way our brain works. Saibal Citeren Pierz pier...@gmail.com: ...since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches... What I mean of course is the additional happiness in the WW3 branches. The non-WW3 branches are much *less* happy right Saibal? On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 9:49:59 AM UTC+10, Pierz wrote: Self-contradictory. You've got to follow your own theories to their logical conclusions. *Which* Western/third world would have been better off if WW3 hadn't happened? Since everything happens in some branch of the multiverse, surely there are innumerable branches in which the world is better off for not having undergone the horrors of WW3. Or are you saying that, if you summed human happiness in the branches of the hypothetical branch of the multiverse in which WW3 didn't happen, and compared it to the sum of human happiness in the branches in which it did, it would be higher in the ones in which it didn't? Put that way, it becomes a rather absurd claim wouldn't you say? And dubious - since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches has to make up for the staggering, unimaginable misery of the holocaust, the Russian front, Hiroshima etc etc before getting ahead at all, and secondly because this is all based on the theory that Nazism not being debunked (It was exterminated) would have led to an incorporation of fascist ideology into the mainstream of global social organization, an extremely debatable proposition. Extremism is fostered by economic desperation. If the world had had time to fully recover from the depression, notions of invading the world would have looked a lot less attractive to the fat, comfortable citizens of an affluent western Europe, and Nazism may well have died a quiet death without the need for
Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test?
On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 2:39 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com So if the slave AI has a fixed goal structure with the number one goal being to always do what humans tell it to do and the humans order it to determine the truth or falsehood of something unprovable then its infinite loop time and you've got yourself a space heater not a AI. Right, but I'm not thinking of something that straightforward. We Already have that -- normal processors. Any one of them will do precisely what we order it to do. Yes, and because the microprocessors in our computers do precisely what we order them to do and not what we want them to do they sometimes go into infinite loops, and because they never get bored they will stay in that loop forever, or at least until we reboot our computer; if we're just using the computer to surf the internet that's only a minor inconvenience but if the computer were running a nuclear power plant or the New York Stock Exchange it would be somewhat more serious; and if your friendly AI were running the entire world the necessity of a reboot would be even more unpleasant. Real minds avoid this infinite loop problem because real minds don't have fixed goals, real minds get bored and give up. At that level, boredom would be a very simple mechanism, easily replaced by something like: try this for x amount of time and then move on to another goal But how long should x be? Perhaps in just one more second you'll get the answer, or maybe two, or maybe 10 billion years, or maybe never. I think determining where to place the boredom point for a given type of problem may be the most difficult part in making an AI; Would you agree that the universal dovetailer would get the job done? Turing tells us we'll never find a algorithm that works perfectly on all problems all of the time, so we'll just have to settle for an algorithm that works pretty well on most problems most of the time. Ok, and I'm fascinated by the question of why we haven't found viable algorithms in that class yet -- although we know has a fact that it must exist, because our brains contain it. And you're opening up a huge security hole, in fact they just don't get any bigger, you're telling the AI that if this whole always obey humans no matter what thing isn't going anywhere just ignore it and move on to something else. It's hard enough to protect a computer when the hacker is no smarter than you are, but now you're trying to outsmart a computer that's thousands of times smarter than yourself. It can't be done. But you're thinking of smartness as some unidimensional quantity. I suspect it's much more complicated than that. As with life, we only really know one type of higher intelligence, but who's to say there aren't many others? The same way the field of artificial life started with the premise of life as it could be, I think that it is viable to explore the idea of intelligence as it could be in AI. Incidentally I've speculated that unusual ways to place the boredom point may explain the link between genius and madness particularly among mathematicians. Great mathematicians can focus on a problem with ferocious intensity, for years if necessary, and find solutions that you or I could not, but in everyday life that same attribute of mind can sometimes cause them to behave in ways that seem to be at bit, ah, odd. Makes sense. Telmo. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. I know nothing from you except what you say in this thread. The bad thing about discussing subjects like this is that it attract undesirable people that really are not interested in the group. What do you think about the multiverse hypothesis what about the relation between matter math and mind? 2013/8/21 Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com You are utterly full of it. You make these statements like you knew…. What a pompous blow hard you are…. A very big mouth affixed to an atrophied brain is a guarantee of stupidity, and you my friend are an exemplar of this sad phenomena. ** ** *From:* everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto: everything-list@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *Alberto G. Corona *Sent:* Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:50 AM *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com *Subject:* Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood ** ** Hitler continues to be the most respected historical figure in muslim countries, as well as in muslim minories in other countries. Therefore it is not a surprise to me what smitra says. ** ** By the way this third-word mentality and this ate to the first world in the intelectual elites of third word countries is the mindset that keep these countries in the misery. Fortunately this is changing. ** ** ** ** I will send to Roger yet another personal mail begging it to stop sending spurious mails to this list ** ** 2013/8/21 smi...@zonnet.nl A rapid descent into extremism can be caused by factors such as economic desperation. However, you can also have a gradual change in society and then people are always indioctrinated that their current norms and values are correct. So, there was a time when when drawing and quartering was a normal form of punishment, and we gradually moved away from that. If you move very fast away from this, then there will be big differences in the opnions of people about wthe current system being ok. or totally unacceptable. We are thus more vulnerable to extremism due to gradual changes in society, e.g. a Hitler coming to power who doesn't need to start a war (suppose e.g. that Poland would ahve been annexed without the Western powers declaring war on Germany). So, Hitler could have remained a popular dictator in Germany and the Holocaust would have had a competely different character. From the point of view of an extremist, the extremists views are the norm. So, the extremist doesn't see that he is an extremist. It is only in case of a rapid descent into extremism that there will be many other peole who are not extremist who can see this, also the extremists would find them having to defend their views more. You an then also ask if we are actually already extremists from some reasonable point of view that our distant descendants may have. E.g. the way we run the World economy with billions of people living in poverty could be called totally immoral by people who live a century from now. They could judge us in a similar way as the would judge Nazis. Or, as in a recent SF movie, you can have an alien visiting us who then judges us to be guilty of mass genocide against the environment and who then decides that we should all be exterminated so that life on Earth can be saved from us. If in one reasonable value system something can be genocide on an unimaginable scale, while in another one it is business as usual, then the processes that led to this being flagged as business as usual in our brains have their origin in arbitrary events in our history, as there is no preference for the flagging as business as usual being preferred given the way our brain works. Saibal Citeren Pierz pier...@gmail.com: ** ** ...since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches... What I mean of course is the additional happiness in the WW3 branches. The non-WW3 branches are much *less* happy right Saibal? On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 9:49:59 AM UTC+10, Pierz wrote: Self-contradictory. You've got to follow your own theories to their logical conclusions. *Which* Western/third world would have been better off if WW3 hadn't happened? Since everything happens in some branch of the multiverse, surely there are innumerable branches in which the world is better off for not having undergone the horrors of WW3. Or are you saying that, if you summed human happiness in the branches of the hypothetical branch of the multiverse in which WW3 didn't happen, and compared it to the sum of human happiness in the branches in which it did, it would be higher in the ones in which it didn't? Put that way, it becomes a rather absurd claim wouldn't you say? And dubious - since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches has to make up for the staggering, unimaginable misery of the holocaust, the Russian front, Hiroshima etc etc before
Re: Question for the QM experts here: quantum uncertainty of the past
On 8/21/2013 3:57 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net On 8/20/2013 5:26 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl mailto:smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/16/2013 4:57 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl mailto:smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/15/2013 6:18 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl mailto:smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/14/2013 6:41 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl mailto:smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: I guess I don't understand that. You seem to be considering a simple case of amnesia - all purely classical - so I don't see how MWI enters at all. The probabilities are just ignorance uncertainty. You're still in the same branch of the MWI, you just don't remember why your memory was erased (although you may read about it in your diary). No, you can't say that you are in the same branch. Just because you are in the clasical regime doesn't mean that the MWI is irrelevant and we can just pretend that the world is described by classical physics. It is only that classical physics will give the same answer as QM when computing probabilities. Including the probability that I'm in the same world as before? With classical I mean a single world theory where you just compute the probabilities based ignorance. This yields the same answer as assuming the MWI and then comouting the probabilities of the various outcomes. If what you are aware of is only described by your memory state which can be encoded by a finite number of bits, then after a memory resetting, the state of your memory and the environment (which contains also the rest of your brain and body), is of the form: The rest of my brain?? Why do you suppose that some part of my brain is involved in my memories and not other parts? What about a scar or a tattoo. I don't see that memory is separable from the environment. In fact isn't that exactly what makes memory classical and makes the superposition you write below impossible to achieve? Your brain is a classical computer because it's not isolated from the environment. What matter is that the state is of the form: |memory_1|environment_1 + |memory_2|environment_2+.. with the |memory_j orthonormal and the |environment_j orthogonal. Such a completely correlated state will arise due to decoherence, the probabilities which are the squared norms of the |environment_j's are the probabilities. They behave in a purely classical way due this decomposition. The brain is never isolated from the environment; if project onto an |environment_j you always get a definite classical memory state, never a supperposition of different bitstrings. But it's not the case that projecting onto a ddefinite memory state will always yield a definite classical environment state (this is at the heart of the Wigner's friend thought experiment). I think Wigner's friend has been overtaken by decoherence. While I agree with what you say above, I disagree that the |environment_i are macroscopically different. I think you are making inconsistent assumptions: that memory is something that can be reset without resetting its physical environment and yet still holding that memory is classical. The |environment_i have to be different as they are entangled with
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
On 8/21/2013 7:01 AM, chris peck wrote: But, in any case, yes, our descendants will view some of our norms and values as troubling. Just as we do our ancestors. This is because there is a gentle creep away from barbarity rather than towards it. But I don't think this is just a moral evolution. I think it is driven by technology. As societies become richer they become less competitive and insular and more compassionate and open. If global warming or running out of oil or some other widespread diminution of ease and wealth occurs there will likely be a corresponding diminution in empathy and compassion. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
On 8/21/2013 11:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. What is the evidence for this? Are there polls? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
A suggestion don't spam the group with your right wing political ideology if you are truly interested in the group.  You state things as facts which you have no way of knowing are in fact facts. You make a pompous and outrageous statement that Hitler is the most respected figure in the muslim world -- and call it a FACT. Show me the exhaustive research you have done in order to arrive at this conclusion and that supports your assertion that this is in fact a fact. You cavalierly refer to a vast heterogeneous collection of different peoples on different continents with very different historical and cultural backgrounds that have sharing a faith in common -- and based on your profound ignorance you make sweeping broad statements characterizing all of them. Not the sign of a keen mind at work; rather more symptomatic of an ideologically blinded idiot blundering through their mental fog and making loud obnoxious noises, mistaking them as a sign of intelligence.  You are so full of it; I wonder how your gut holds itself together. Hopefully I have made my opinion of you and your stereotyping of others not exactly like you abundantly clear. Try to educate yourself about history and about other cultures.. maybe, just maybe you may judge less and possibly learn more.   From: Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 11:48 AM Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. I know nothing from you except what you say in this thread. The bad thing about discussing subjects like this is that it attract undesirable people that really are not interested in the group. What do you think about the multiverse hypothesis what about the relation between matter math and mind? 2013/8/21 Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com You are utterly full of it. You make these statements like you knew…. What a pompous blow hard you are…. A very big mouth affixed to an atrophied brain is a guarantee of stupidity, and you my friend are an exemplar of this sad phenomena.  From:everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alberto G. Corona Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:50 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood  Hitler continues to be the most respected historical figure in muslim countries, as well as in muslim minories in other countries. Therefore it is not a surprise to me what smitra says.  By the way this third-word mentality and this ate to the first world in the intelectual elites of third word countries is the mindset that keep these countries in the misery. Fortunately this is changing.   I will send to Roger yet another personal mail begging it to stop sending spurious mails to this list  2013/8/21 smi...@zonnet.nl A rapid descent into extremism can be caused by factors such as economic desperation. However, you can also have a gradual change in society and then people are always indioctrinated that their current norms and values are correct. So, there was a time when when drawing and quartering was a normal form of punishment, and we gradually moved away from that. If you move very fast away from this, then there will be big differences in the opnions of people about wthe current system being ok. or totally unacceptable. We are thus more vulnerable to extremism due to gradual changes in society, e.g. a Hitler coming to power who doesn't need to start a war (suppose e.g. that Poland would ahve been annexed without the Western powers declaring war on Germany). So, Hitler could have remained a popular dictator in Germany and the Holocaust would have had a competely different character. From the point of view of an extremist, the extremists views are the norm. So, the extremist doesn't see that he is an extremist. It is only in case of a rapid descent into extremism that there will be many other peole who are not extremist who can see this, also the extremists would find them having to defend their views more. You an then also ask if we are actually already extremists from some reasonable point of view that our distant descendants may have. E.g. the way we run the World economy with billions of people living in poverty could be called totally immoral by people who live a century from now. They could judge us in a similar way as the would judge Nazis. Or, as in a recent SF movie, you can have an alien visiting us who then judges us to be guilty of mass genocide against the environment and who then decides that we should all be exterminated so that life on Earth can be saved from us. If in one reasonable value system something can be genocide on an unimaginable scale, while in another one it is business as usual, then the processes that led to this being flagged
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
Rather than speak economic history, which is an interesting topic, I merely stated what I see the facts to be. More clearly, that when Adolf ran out of Roma, Jews, and the mentally weak, to gas, and Poles and Great Russians to shoot, his camps would 've discovered other Untermenschen to slaughter, if only for bureaucratic reasons-to justify the process of racial hygiene, as it was termed. Adios, Arabs, Africans, South Asians and eventually, East Asians too. Both Adolf and Stalins murdering was like a heavy addiction, couldn't stop and wouldn't dream of it. As for seeking justification for the killing of Americans, I do take issue with this, and am likely immovable on this segment. The history of the people's of the world, before, the advent of the European imperialists, was no shinning glory of freedome and peace. This is usually the selective readings by Progressive progagandists seekinng the demise of the US and a few other nations. Which is really the whole point. -Original Message- From: Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, Aug 21, 2013 12:52 pm Subject: RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Mercantilist plantation systems, economic hegemony of the developed center and neo-colonialism have absolutely nothing to do with it right? Spud your world view is limited by the narrow slits you view it through. From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 7:51 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Nazism would have gobbled down so many races and ethnic group that eventually it would have gone after yours? It's the love of tyrants that condemns the Third world to perpetual war and genocide. -Original Message- From: smitra smi...@zonnet.nl To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, Aug 20, 2013 6:57 pm Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Roger may start a discussion on politics and presents some very narrow minded views, but I can present a different view that may be totally politically incorect but is i.m.o. the right view. Not only is the 3rd World better off with WWII having happened, the Western World is also better off. Without WWII, Nazism would not have been debunked and we would gradually have evolved to become less free societies. Ideas that are totally politically incorrect like euthanizing old and handicap people to save health care costs would have been business as usual. The fundamental mistake Roger makes is to think that the core moral values we have today are universal and that you can look back many decades and then condemn e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood for having supported the Nazis back then. In the end, Roger's brain is just executing a prgram, whatever is against his moral values is encoded in his brain and that information did not come out of thin air. Had history run a different course (and history has run a different course in different sectors of the multiverse), Roger would have supported Nazi policies himself. In fact we can be sure that such a Nazi version of Roger exsts in the multiverse, because all possible programs exists. Saibal Citeren spudboy...@aol.com: I do not see why Roger, needs, politics in this forum, but, so be it. Smitra expresses a view that decides the US, has to be ruined for the evil it has conspired against the wonderful, and innocent, people's of the 3rd world. I am guessing that when the ISI strikes India, using enhanced fission devices, he will be content that they detonate it only on legitimate military targets? Enjoy. -Original Message- From: smitra smi...@zonnet.nl To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, Aug 20, 2013 8:13 am Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Also I believe that 9/11 was a good thing, albeit it would have been etter if Bin Laden had focusses only on legitimate military targets ike the White House, the US Congress, the Senate and the Pentagon. iteren Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net: The Nazi history of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jk4a3Kk6-Y Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] See my Leibniz site at http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. - ou received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
push polls maybe From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 12:51 PM Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood On 8/21/2013 11:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. What is the evidence for this? Are there polls? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
You merely stated what you see as the facts is true; I am sure you do see them as the facts and herein lies the problem. You have not looked very hard at history and the evolution of societies and cultures according to the pressures that force them to develop in this way or that.  Who is guilty of the selective reading of history -- the one who states that people in 3rd world countries somehow  love to live under despotism; or the person who calls that peculiar view into question?  And betraying your true beliefs you go on to say that those who do not subscribe to your twisted view of history are progressive propagandists diligently working to bring about the demise of the US? -- The implication being that they therefore could and perhaps should be considered enemies of freedom -- and all those other self righteous and empty words -- and more to the point that these hated progressives are enemies of the state. How neat; dare to disagree with your particular ideologically motivated frame of reference and you risk becoming branded as an enemy... nice work there... what a goose stepping thing to utter.  Totalitarian minded people everywhere applaud your way of non-thinking.  From: spudboy...@aol.com spudboy...@aol.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 2:07 PM Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Rather than speak economic history, which is an interesting topic, I merely stated what I see the facts to be. More clearly, that when Adolf ran out of Roma, Jews, and the mentally weak, to gas, and Poles and Great Russians to shoot, his camps would 've discovered other Untermenschen to slaughter, if only for bureaucratic reasons-to justify the process of racial hygiene, as it was termed. Adios, Arabs, Africans, South Asians and eventually, East Asians too. Both Adolf and Stalins murdering was like a heavy addiction, couldn't stop and wouldn't dream of it. As for seeking justification for the killing of Americans, I do take issue with this, and am likely immovable on this segment. The history of the people's of the world, before, the advent of the European imperialists, was no shinning glory of freedome and peace. This is usually the selective readings by Progressive progagandists seekinng the demise of the US and a few other nations. Which is really the whole point. -Original Message- From: Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, Aug 21, 2013 12:52 pm Subject: RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Mercantilist plantation systems, economic hegemony of the developed center and neo-colonialism have absolutely nothing to do with it right? Spud your world view is limited by the narrow slits you view it through.  From:everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com?] On Behalf Of spudboy...@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 7:51 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Nazism would have gobbled down so many races and ethnic group that eventually it would have gone after yours? It's the love of tyrants that condemns the Third world to perpetual war and genocide. -Original Message- From: smitra smi...@zonnet.nl To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Tue, Aug 20, 2013 6:57 pm Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Roger may start a discussion on politics and presents some very narrow minded views, but I can present a different view that may be totally politically incorect but is i.m.o. the right view.  Not only is the 3rd World better off with WWII having happened, the Western World is also better off. Without WWII, Nazism would not have been debunked and we would gradually have evolved to become less free societies. Ideas that are totally politically incorrect like euthanizing old and handicap people to save health care costs would have been business as usual.  The fundamental mistake Roger makes is to think that the core moral values we have today are universal and that you can look back many decades and then condemn e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood for having supported the Nazis back then.  In the end, Roger's brain is just executing a prgram, whatever is against his moral values is encoded in his brain and that information did not come out of thin air. Had history run a different course (and history has run a different course in different sectors of the multiverse), Roger would have supported Nazi policies himself. In fact we can be sure that such a Nazi version of Roger exsts in the multiverse, because all possible programs exists.  Saibal   Citeren spudboy...@aol.com:  I do not see why Roger, needs, politics in this forum, but, so be it. Smitra expresses a view that decides the US, has to be ruined for the evil it has conspired against the
Re: Question for the QM experts here: quantum uncertainty of the past
2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 8/21/2013 3:57 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 8/20/2013 5:26 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/16/2013 4:57 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/15/2013 6:18 AM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: Citeren meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net: On 8/14/2013 6:41 PM, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: I guess I don't understand that. You seem to be considering a simple case of amnesia - all purely classical - so I don't see how MWI enters at all. The probabilities are just ignorance uncertainty. You're still in the same branch of the MWI, you just don't remember why your memory was erased (although you may read about it in your diary). No, you can't say that you are in the same branch. Just because you are in the clasical regime doesn't mean that the MWI is irrelevant and we can just pretend that the world is described by classical physics. It is only that classical physics will give the same answer as QM when computing probabilities. Including the probability that I'm in the same world as before? With classical I mean a single world theory where you just compute the probabilities based ignorance. This yields the same answer as assuming the MWI and then comouting the probabilities of the various outcomes. If what you are aware of is only described by your memory state which can be encoded by a finite number of bits, then after a memory resetting, the state of your memory and the environment (which contains also the rest of your brain and body), is of the form: The rest of my brain?? Why do you suppose that some part of my brain is involved in my memories and not other parts? What about a scar or a tattoo. I don't see that memory is separable from the environment. In fact isn't that exactly what makes memory classical and makes the superposition you write below impossible to achieve? Your brain is a classical computer because it's not isolated from the environment. What matter is that the state is of the form: |memory_1|environment_1 + |memory_2|environment_2+.. with the |memory_j orthonormal and the |environment_j orthogonal. Such a completely correlated state will arise due to decoherence, the probabilities which are the squared norms of the |environment_j's are the probabilities. They behave in a purely classical way due this decomposition. The brain is never isolated from the environment; if project onto an |environment_j you always get a definite classical memory state, never a supperposition of different bitstrings. But it's not the case that projecting onto a ddefinite memory state will always yield a definite classical environment state (this is at the heart of the Wigner's friend thought experiment). I think Wigner's friend has been overtaken by decoherence. While I agree with what you say above, I disagree that the |environment_i are macroscopically different. I think you are making inconsistent assumptions: that memory is something that can be reset without resetting its physical environment and yet still holding that memory is classical. The |environment_i have to be different as they are entangled with different memory states, precisely due to rapid decoherence. The environment always knows exactly what happened. So, the assumption is not that the environment doesn't know what has been done (decoherence implies that the environment does know), rather that the the person whose memory is reset doesn't know why the memory was reset. So, if you have made a copy of the memory, the system files etc., there is no problem to reboot the system later based on these copies. Suppose that the computer is running an artificially intelligent system in a virtual environment, but such that this virtual environment is modeled based on real world data. This is actually quite similar to how the brain works, what you experience is a virtual world that the brain creates, input from your senses is used to update this model, but in the end it's the model of reality that you experience (which leaves quite a lot of room for magicians to fool you). Then immediately after rebooting, you won't yet have any information that is in the environment about why you decided to reboot. You then have macroscopically different environments where the reason for rebooting is different but where you are identical. But that's where I disagree - not about the conclusion, but about the possibility of the premise. I don't think it's possible to erase, in the quantum sense, just your memory. Of course you can given a drug that erases short term memory and so it may be possible to create a drug that erases long term memory too, i.e. induces amnesia. But what you require is to erase long term memory in a quantum sense so that all the informational entanglements
Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test?
2013/8/21 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 2:39 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com So if the slave AI has a fixed goal structure with the number one goal being to always do what humans tell it to do and the humans order it to determine the truth or falsehood of something unprovable then its infinite loop time and you've got yourself a space heater not a AI. Right, but I'm not thinking of something that straightforward. We Already have that -- normal processors. Any one of them will do precisely what we order it to do. Yes, and because the microprocessors in our computers do precisely what we order them to do and not what we want them to do they sometimes go into infinite loops, and because they never get bored they will stay in that loop forever, or at least until we reboot our computer; if we're just using the computer to surf the internet that's only a minor inconvenience but if the computer were running a nuclear power plant or the New York Stock Exchange it would be somewhat more serious; and if your friendly AI were running the entire world the necessity of a reboot would be even more unpleasant. Real minds avoid this infinite loop problem because real minds don't have fixed goals, real minds get bored and give up. At that level, boredom would be a very simple mechanism, easily replaced by something like: try this for x amount of time and then move on to another goal But how long should x be? Perhaps in just one more second you'll get the answer, or maybe two, or maybe 10 billion years, or maybe never. I think determining where to place the boredom point for a given type of problem may be the most difficult part in making an AI; Would you agree that the universal dovetailer would get the job done? Turing tells us we'll never find a algorithm that works perfectly on all problems all of the time, so we'll just have to settle for an algorithm that works pretty well on most problems most of the time. Ok, and I'm fascinated by the question of why we haven't found viable algorithms in that class yet -- although we know has a fact that it must exist, because our brains contain it. We haven't proved our brain is computational in nature, if we had, then we would had proven computationalism to be true... it's not the case. Maybe our brain has some non computational shortcut for that, maybe that's why AI is not possible, maybe our brain has this realness ingredient that computations alone lack. I'm not saying AI is not possible, I'm just saying we haven't proved that our brains contain it. Regards, Quentin And you're opening up a huge security hole, in fact they just don't get any bigger, you're telling the AI that if this whole always obey humans no matter what thing isn't going anywhere just ignore it and move on to something else. It's hard enough to protect a computer when the hacker is no smarter than you are, but now you're trying to outsmart a computer that's thousands of times smarter than yourself. It can't be done. But you're thinking of smartness as some unidimensional quantity. I suspect it's much more complicated than that. As with life, we only really know one type of higher intelligence, but who's to say there aren't many others? The same way the field of artificial life started with the premise of life as it could be, I think that it is viable to explore the idea of intelligence as it could be in AI. Incidentally I've speculated that unusual ways to place the boredom point may explain the link between genius and madness particularly among mathematicians. Great mathematicians can focus on a problem with ferocious intensity, for years if necessary, and find solutions that you or I could not, but in everyday life that same attribute of mind can sometimes cause them to behave in ways that seem to be at bit, ah, odd. Makes sense. Telmo. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- All those
Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test?
We haven't proved our brain is computational in nature, if we had, then we would had proven computationalism to be true... it's not the case. Maybe our brain has some non computational shortcut for that, maybe that's why AI is not possible, maybe our brain has this realness ingredient that computations alone lack. I'm not saying AI is not possible, I'm just saying we haven't proved that our brains contain it. I agree. Brain working is still not well enough understood and understood at the level of granularity and fine detail -- especially when looked at as a dynamic ever changing system -- to be able to clearly map out at each single step how consciousness, self-awareness and the other salient qualia associated with sentience and intelligence come to be inside of it. Sure we are learning things about the brain and about the neurochemical mechanisms of memory and perception. We do know a lot more than we did even ten years ago, but still -- I would argue -- we do not know enough in order to be able to say we can map the dynamic process by which the mind operates and rises up inside the brain. It's quite possible that we will discover -- in the end --  that we are massively parallel AI entities -- that our minds are fantastic computing machines, but until we have fully mapped the dynamic processes and can describe how these processes work -- and work with each other to form the very large scale distributed systems that surely are required for intelligence; it is best I believe to refrain from the temptation of positivism. -Chris From: Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 2:42 PM Subject: Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test? 2013/8/21 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 2:39 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com So if the slave AI has a fixed goal structure with the number one goal being  to always do what humans tell it to do and the humans order it to determine  the truth or falsehood of something unprovable then its infinite loop time  and you've got yourself a space heater not a AI. Right, but I'm not thinking of something that straightforward. We Already have that -- normal processors. Any one of them will do precisely what we order it to do. Yes, and because the microprocessors in our computers do precisely what we order them to do and not what we want them to do they sometimes go into infinite loops, and because they never get bored they will stay in that loop forever, or at least until we reboot our computer; if we're just using the computer to surf the internet that's only a minor inconvenience but if the computer were running a nuclear power plant or the New York Stock Exchange it would be somewhat more serious; and if your friendly AI were running the entire world the necessity of a reboot would be even more unpleasant. Real minds avoid this  infinite loop problem because real minds don't have fixed goals, real minds  get bored and give up. At that level, boredom would be a very simple mechanism, easily replaced by something like: try this for x amount of time and then move on to another goal But how long should x be? Perhaps in just one more second you'll get the answer, or maybe two, or maybe 10 billion years, or maybe never. I think determining where to place the boredom point for a given type of problem may be the most difficult part in making an AI; Would you agree that the universal dovetailer would get the job done? Turing tells us we'll never find a algorithm that works perfectly on all problems all of the time, so we'll just have to settle for an algorithm that works pretty well on most problems most of the time. Ok, and I'm fascinated by the question of why we haven't found viable algorithms in that class yet -- although we know has a fact that it must exist, because our brains contain it. We haven't proved our brain is computational in nature, if we had, then we would had proven computationalism to be true... it's not the case. Maybe our brain has some non computational shortcut for that, maybe that's why AI is not possible, maybe our brain has this realness ingredient that computations alone lack. I'm not saying AI is not possible, I'm just saying we haven't proved that our brains contain it. Regards, Quentin And you're opening up a huge security hole, in fact they just don't get any bigger, you're telling the AI that if this whole always obey humans no matter what thing isn't going anywhere just ignore it and move on to something else. It's hard enough to protect a computer when the hacker is no smarter than you are, but now you're trying to outsmart a computer that's thousands of times smarter than yourself. It can't be done. But you're thinking of smartness as some unidimensional
Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test?
On 8/21/2013 2:42 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Ok, and I'm fascinated by the question of why we haven't found viable algorithms in that class yet -- although we know has a fact that it must exist, because our brains contain it. We haven't proved our brain is computational in nature, if we had, then we would had proven computationalism to be true... it's not the case. Maybe our brain has some non computational shortcut for that, maybe that's why AI is not possible, maybe our brain has this realness ingredient that computations alone lack. I'm not saying AI is not possible, I'm just saying we haven't proved that our brains contain it. There's another possibility: That our brains are computational in nature, but that they also depend on interactions with the environment (not necessarily quantum entanglement, but possibly). When Bruno has proposed replacing neurons with equivalent input-output circuits I have objected that while it might still in most cases compute the same function there are likely to be exceptional cases involving external (to the brain) events that would cause it to be different. This wouldn't prevent AI, but it would prevent exact duplication and hence throw doubt on ideas of duplication experiments and FPI. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: A new gene-expression mechanism is a minor thing of major importance
An interesting discovery -- and topical for a few of the on-going discussions on this list -- of how much more is going on than we had previously thought was going on, during the transcription process from a cell's DNA that ultimately leads to the production of viable mRNA and the expression of the encoded amino acid chain. Here is yet another mechanism whereby the ultimate expressed genetic information of a life form is influenced by a environmental feedback mechanism which causes genes that are not normally expressed to become expressed. It seems to me that life has evolved multiple pathways of control and multiple encoding schemas that are operating on top of the foundational DNA encoding that most life (except the few RNA life forms) relies on as the ultimate repository of genetic information. -Chris   http://phys.org/news/2013-08-gene-expression-mechanism-minor-major-importance.html  A new gene-expression mechanism is a minor thing of major importance  A rare, small RNA turns a gene-splicing machine into a switch that controls the expression of hundreds of human genes. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and professor of Biochemistry Gideon Dreyfuss, PhD, and his team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, discovered an entirely new aspect of the gene-splicing process that produces messenger RNA (mRNA). The investigators found that a scarce, small RNA, called U6atac, controls the expression of hundreds of genes that have critical functions in cell growth, cell-cycle control, and global control of physiology. Their results were published in the journal eLife. These genes encode proteins that play essential roles in cell physiology such as several transcription regulators, ion channels, signaling proteins, and DNA damage-repair proteins. Their levels in cells are regulated by the activity of the splicing machinery, which acts as a valve to control essential regulators of cell growth and response to external stimuli. Dreyfuss, who studies RNA-binding proteins and their role in such diseases as spinal muscular atrophy and other motor neuron degenerative diseases, describes the findings as completely unanticipated. Complicated Splicing As DNA is transcribed into RNA and then into the various proteins that perform the functions of life, non-coding gene sequences (introns) need to be removed from the transcribed RNA strand and the remaining gene sequences (exons) joined together. This is the job of specialized molecular machinery called the spliceosome. There are two varieties of spliceosomes, the so-called major and minor. The major spliceosome is by far the most abundant, such that the role of its minor counterpart is often disregarded. Most of the time the minor spliceosome, which has similar but not identical components to that of the major, isn't even mentioned, says Dreyfuss. With each type of spliceosome recognizing different splicing cues, the major spliceosome acts on the vast majority of introns (200,000) and the minor one splices the several hundred minor-type introns. But the evolutionary persistence and role of the minor spliceosome has been a puzzle to scientists, since the minor introns it targets are far outnumbered by the major introns handled by the major spliceosome, and the minor spliceosome is often inefficient. But the mRNAs produced from genes that have a minor intron are not ready until all their introns, both major and minor, are spliced. Thus a single inefficiently spliced minor intron can hold up expression – mRNA and protein production – for an entire gene. Researchers have therefore wondered why the apparently superfluous minor spliceosome hasn't been eliminated altogether through normal evolution. One looks at it and asks, we've known that minor spliceosomes are inefficient, why even bother to keep them under evolution's relentless selection pressure? notes Dreyfuss. It's been difficult to rationalize the conservation of minor introns and the minor spliceosome on the basis of splicing alone, as with few cue changes this function could simply have been performed by the major spliceosome. More to the Minor Dreyfuss's team discovered that there's more to the minor spliceosome while investigating the effects of different physiological conditions such as cell stress, transcription, and protein synthesis on small noncoding RNAs. We inhibited transcription and then measured what happens to the amount of each of the small noncoding RNAs three or four hours later, he explains. That's when we noticed that U6atac levels plunged. They found that U6atac, which is also the catalytic component of the minor spliceosome, is extremely unstable in a cell. If you stop the transcription of U6atac, you stop producing it, and very quickly its levels become terribly low. And we knew that it's already one of the rarest snRNAs in cells. So we thought this surely will have an effect on minor intron
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
Just follow the tv of muslim countries, and specially, the political debates. Google: hitler arab countries television It can not be otherwhise since te nazis and the muslims share the same main goal. you know. Abu Mazen, the leader of the PLO after Yasif Arafat wrote its doctoral thesis at the university about denial of the Holocaust. The Baaz party that ruled Iraq and Siria are inspired directly by the Nazi party. There are hundred of examples of continuous praise of hitler or hitler-inspired ideas in the musling world. If you search, you can find a lot of nazi flags waved by muslim fundamentalists. even on the top of mesquites 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 8/21/2013 11:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. What is the evidence for this? Are there polls? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Question for the QM experts here: quantum uncertainty of the past
On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 12:07:05PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: But it seems to me that this reset is a magical, impossible operation. If the human brain is a classical computer then that means it's computational state can be reset. But it also means the its physical state can't be reset. The resetting operation itself, being a classical operation, is irreversible because of decoherence into the environment. So the environment has the information about the state leading up to the reset and the reset operation. So when you say 'you' can find yourself on another branch, it's not clear what 'you' refers to. Apparently it would have to refer to an abstract computation (per Bruno, I guess) that happened to go through the same state twice (due to the 'reset') in this world AND also at least once in some other world. But if it went through that state in some other world, there was already FPI even without the reset. Right? Brent Just a small observation. Brent is arguing essential from what Bruno would call the Aristotelian position, ie that there is a definite environment containing the results of past decoherence that the observer belongs to, even if the observer is now ignorant of that due to memory erasure. Saibal is arguing from the COMP position, that memory erasure is sufficient to reestablish the superposition - ie that there is no such objective environment. ISTM that Brent's position is widely held amongst QM practitioners today, particularly the Austrian group, but that the alternative (many minds, or perhaps COMP?) is equally as valid, at least as far as empirical results go. Part of the problem is that the language of the thought experiment encourages the Aristotelian interpretation - we are describing the situation from a mythical 3rd person POV, which implicitly supposes an environment that the 3rd person observer is entangled with. If we were to make the contorted effort to describe things entirely from the 1st person observer's POV, the environment Brent is talking about vanishes with the memory erasure. Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
Plugging most Arab dictators name these days in Arabic yields mass dissatisfaction equating them to tyrants like Hitler. But what about “Hitler” by itself in Arabic into Google? What will you find? https://www.google.es/search?q=%D9%87%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%B1oq=%D9%87%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%B1aqs=chrome.0.69i57j0j69i62.772j0sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8 It gives around 6 million entries. Translate the entries for yourself with Google translate: The first Arabic website was a blog that introduces him: “Hitler was not an ordinary individual to be spun by the wheel of history to sprinkle him behind as dust to be forgotten across this vast globe. He was neither the king of the German people alone. He is one of the greatest few. Here is the king of history.” Westerners might think that the first commenthttp://v.3bir.com/77183/ on such an article would be in disgust. Hardly. Muhammad Jasem posted: “If the greatest leaders gather together, they would not equal the magnificence of Hitler.” The rest of the comments were not far off. The second hit was a YouTube page titled “The Cowardly Jews,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8C_Nq-P7bg showing a Hitler lookalike walking the streets with Jewish passersby supposedly terrified as they move out of his way. This “proves that Jews are cowards,” the commentators interpreted. 2013/8/22 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Just follow the tv of muslim countries, and specially, the political debates. Google: hitler arab countries television It can not be otherwhise since te nazis and the muslims share the same main goal. you know. Abu Mazen, the leader of the PLO after Yasif Arafat wrote its doctoral thesis at the university about denial of the Holocaust. The Baaz party that ruled Iraq and Siria are inspired directly by the Nazi party. There are hundred of examples of continuous praise of hitler or hitler-inspired ideas in the musling world. If you search, you can find a lot of nazi flags waved by muslim fundamentalists. even on the top of mesquites 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 8/21/2013 11:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. What is the evidence for this? Are there polls? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
Do you mean to tell me that the foundation of your facts is the number of search results returned by a google search... along with a spurious reference to some ad hoc quotation -- you cherry picked -- that was auto-generated for you  by the google translator algorithm?  Do you realize just how pathetic this meager evidence you have produced makes you look?  You made an incendiary statement, characterizing a vast swath of humanity in an ugly stereotypical manner, which you very clearly framed as being a FACT and then all you can do is come up with this BS. What you have succeeded in doing is providing some real evidence of your prejudice and willingness to spew hatred  slander on a billion human beings because of your own irrational prejudicial frame of mind. If you think the small little pile of BS you just presented would make you look good to anyone -- who is not already on board with your own strange ideological set of preconceived notions -- you are indeed more of a fool than even I thought you were?  Did I just call you a fool? Yes, you heard me, I just did. Have a great day stewing in your hatred of others not like you. -Chris   From: Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 4:14 PM Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Plugging most Arab dictators name these days in Arabic yields mass dissatisfaction equating them to tyrants like Hitler. But what about “Hitler” by itself in Arabic into Google? What will you find? https://www.google.es/search?q=%D9%87%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%B1oq=%D9%87%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%B1aqs=chrome.0.69i57j0j69i62.772j0sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8 It gives around 6 million entries. Translate the entries for yourself with Google translate: The first Arabic website was a blog that introduces him: “Hitler was not an ordinary individual to be spun by the wheel of history to sprinkle him behind as dust to be forgotten across this vast globe. He was neither the king of the German people alone. He is one of the greatest few. Here is the king of history.” Westerners might think that the first comment on such an article would be in disgust. Hardly. Muhammad Jasem posted: “If the greatest leaders gather together, they would not equal the magnificence of Hitler.” The rest of the comments were not far off. The second hit was a YouTube page titled “The Cowardly Jews,” showing a Hitler lookalike walking the streets with Jewish passersby supposedly terrified as they move out of his way. This “proves that Jews are cowards,” the commentators interpreted. 2013/8/22 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Just follow the tv of muslim countries, and specially, the political debates. Google: hitler arab countries television  It can not be otherwhise since te nazis and the muslims share the same main goal. you know. Abu Mazen, the leader of the PLO after Yasif Arafat wrote its doctoral thesis at the university about denial of the Holocaust. The Baaz party that ruled Iraq and Siria are inspired directly by the Nazi party. There are hundred of examples of continuous praise of hitler or hitler-inspired ideas in the musling world. If you search,  you can find a lot of nazi flags waved by muslim fundamentalists. even on the top of mesquites 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 8/21/2013 11:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. What is the evidence for this? Are there polls? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
I mean to tell you nothing. I don't want to waste my time 2013/8/22 Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com Do you mean to tell me that the foundation of your facts is the number of search results returned by a google search... along with a spurious reference to some ad hoc quotation -- you cherry picked -- that was auto-generated for you by the google translator algorithm? Do you realize just how pathetic this meager evidence you have produced makes you look? You made an incendiary statement, characterizing a vast swath of humanity in an ugly stereotypical manner, which you very clearly framed as being a FACT and then all you can do is come up with this BS. What you have succeeded in doing is providing some real evidence of your prejudice and willingness to spew hatred slander on a billion human beings because of your own irrational prejudicial frame of mind. If you think the small little pile of BS you just presented would make you look good to anyone -- who is not already on board with your own strange ideological set of preconceived notions -- you are indeed more of a fool than even I thought you were? Did I just call you a fool? Yes, you heard me, I just did. Have a great day stewing in your hatred of others not like you. -Chris *From:* Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com *Sent:* Wednesday, August 21, 2013 4:14 PM *Subject:* Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Plugging most Arab dictators name these days in Arabic yields mass dissatisfaction equating them to tyrants like Hitler. But what about “Hitler” by itself in Arabic into Google? What will you find? https://www.google.es/search?q=%D9%87%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%B1oq=%D9%87%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%B1aqs=chrome.0.69i57j0j69i62.772j0sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8 It gives around 6 million entries. Translate the entries for yourself with Google translate: The first Arabic website was a blog that introduces him: “Hitler was not an ordinary individual to be spun by the wheel of history to sprinkle him behind as dust to be forgotten across this vast globe. He was neither the king of the German people alone. He is one of the greatest few. Here is the king of history.” Westerners might think that the first commenthttp://v.3bir.com/77183/ on such an article would be in disgust. Hardly. Muhammad Jasem posted: “If the greatest leaders gather together, they would not equal the magnificence of Hitler.” The rest of the comments were not far off. The second hit was a YouTube page titled “The Cowardly Jews,”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8C_Nq-P7bg showing a Hitler lookalike walking the streets with Jewish passersby supposedly terrified as they move out of his way. This “proves that Jews are cowards,” the commentators interpreted. 2013/8/22 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Just follow the tv of muslim countries, and specially, the political debates. Google: hitler arab countries television It can not be otherwhise since te nazis and the muslims share the same main goal. you know. Abu Mazen, the leader of the PLO after Yasif Arafat wrote its doctoral thesis at the university about denial of the Holocaust. The Baaz party that ruled Iraq and Siria are inspired directly by the Nazi party. There are hundred of examples of continuous praise of hitler or hitler-inspired ideas in the musling world. If you search, you can find a lot of nazi flags waved by muslim fundamentalists. even on the top of mesquites 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 8/21/2013 11:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. What is the evidence for this? Are there polls? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.comeverything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to
Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test?
On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 10:42 PM, Quentin Anciaux allco...@gmail.com wrote: 2013/8/21 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 2:39 PM, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com So if the slave AI has a fixed goal structure with the number one goal being to always do what humans tell it to do and the humans order it to determine the truth or falsehood of something unprovable then its infinite loop time and you've got yourself a space heater not a AI. Right, but I'm not thinking of something that straightforward. We Already have that -- normal processors. Any one of them will do precisely what we order it to do. Yes, and because the microprocessors in our computers do precisely what we order them to do and not what we want them to do they sometimes go into infinite loops, and because they never get bored they will stay in that loop forever, or at least until we reboot our computer; if we're just using the computer to surf the internet that's only a minor inconvenience but if the computer were running a nuclear power plant or the New York Stock Exchange it would be somewhat more serious; and if your friendly AI were running the entire world the necessity of a reboot would be even more unpleasant. Real minds avoid this infinite loop problem because real minds don't have fixed goals, real minds get bored and give up. At that level, boredom would be a very simple mechanism, easily replaced by something like: try this for x amount of time and then move on to another goal But how long should x be? Perhaps in just one more second you'll get the answer, or maybe two, or maybe 10 billion years, or maybe never. I think determining where to place the boredom point for a given type of problem may be the most difficult part in making an AI; Would you agree that the universal dovetailer would get the job done? Turing tells us we'll never find a algorithm that works perfectly on all problems all of the time, so we'll just have to settle for an algorithm that works pretty well on most problems most of the time. Ok, and I'm fascinated by the question of why we haven't found viable algorithms in that class yet -- although we know has a fact that it must exist, because our brains contain it. We haven't proved our brain is computational in nature, if we had, then we would had proven computationalism to be true... it's not the case. Maybe our brain has some non computational shortcut for that, maybe that's why AI is not possible, maybe our brain has this realness ingredient that computations alone lack. I'm not saying AI is not possible, I'm just saying we haven't proved that our brains contain it. Quentin, that's a good point. To be rigorous, I should have said assuming comp indeed. As I said before, I don't assume that AI and consciousness are necessarily the same problem. Assuming that we can understand intelligence without consciousness, there is some strong evidence in favour of the computational nature of human intelligence: the fact that our brain is made of connected computational building blocks, the fact that a recurrent neural network is Turing complete, the fact that it is possible to find all sorts of neural correlates for cognitive activity, the fact that researchers succeeded in both reading and implanting memories in mice and so on. Best, Telmo. Regards, Quentin And you're opening up a huge security hole, in fact they just don't get any bigger, you're telling the AI that if this whole always obey humans no matter what thing isn't going anywhere just ignore it and move on to something else. It's hard enough to protect a computer when the hacker is no smarter than you are, but now you're trying to outsmart a computer that's thousands of times smarter than yourself. It can't be done. But you're thinking of smartness as some unidimensional quantity. I suspect it's much more complicated than that. As with life, we only really know one type of higher intelligence, but who's to say there aren't many others? The same way the field of artificial life started with the premise of life as it could be, I think that it is viable to explore the idea of intelligence as it could be in AI. Incidentally I've speculated that unusual ways to place the boredom point may explain the link between genius and madness particularly among mathematicians. Great mathematicians can focus on a problem with ferocious intensity, for years if necessary, and find solutions that you or I could not, but in everyday life that same attribute of mind can sometimes cause them to behave in ways that seem to be at bit, ah, odd. Makes sense. Telmo. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To
RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
It's not my time you are wasting with your posting of ideological prejudices; you waste everyone's time with this troll like behavior. From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alberto G. Corona Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 5:04 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood I mean to tell you nothing. I don't want to waste my time 2013/8/22 Chris de Morsella cdemorse...@yahoo.com Do you mean to tell me that the foundation of your facts is the number of search results returned by a google search... along with a spurious reference to some ad hoc quotation -- you cherry picked -- that was auto-generated for you by the google translator algorithm? Do you realize just how pathetic this meager evidence you have produced makes you look? You made an incendiary statement, characterizing a vast swath of humanity in an ugly stereotypical manner, which you very clearly framed as being a FACT and then all you can do is come up with this BS. What you have succeeded in doing is providing some real evidence of your prejudice and willingness to spew hatred slander on a billion human beings because of your own irrational prejudicial frame of mind. If you think the small little pile of BS you just presented would make you look good to anyone -- who is not already on board with your own strange ideological set of preconceived notions -- you are indeed more of a fool than even I thought you were? Did I just call you a fool? Yes, you heard me, I just did. Have a great day stewing in your hatred of others not like you. -Chris From: Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 4:14 PM Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Plugging most Arab dictators name these days in Arabic yields mass dissatisfaction equating them to tyrants like Hitler. But what about Hitler by itself in Arabic into Google? What will you find? https://www.google.es/search?q=%D9%87%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%B1 https://www.google.es/search?q=%D9%87%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%B1oq=%D9%87%D8%AA%D9% 84%D8%B1aqs=chrome.0.69i57j0j69i62.772j0sourceid=chromeie=UTF-8 oq=%D9%87%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%B1aqs=chrome.0.69i57j0j69i62.772j0sourceid=chrom eie=UTF-8 It gives around 6 million entries. Translate the entries for yourself with Google translate: The first Arabic website was a blog that introduces him: Hitler was not an ordinary individual to be spun by the wheel of history to sprinkle him behind as dust to be forgotten across this vast globe. He was neither the king of the German people alone. He is one of the greatest few. Here is the king of history. Westerners might think that the first http://v.3bir.com/77183/ comment on such an article would be in disgust. Hardly. Muhammad Jasem posted: If the greatest leaders gather together, they would not equal the magnificence of Hitler. The rest of the comments were not far off. The second hit was a YouTube page titled http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8C_Nq-P7bg The Cowardly Jews, showing a Hitler lookalike walking the streets with Jewish passersby supposedly terrified as they move out of his way. This proves that Jews are cowards, the commentators interpreted. 2013/8/22 Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com Just follow the tv of muslim countries, and specially, the political debates. Google: hitler arab countries television It can not be otherwhise since te nazis and the muslims share the same main goal. you know. Abu Mazen, the leader of the PLO after Yasif Arafat wrote its doctoral thesis at the university about denial of the Holocaust. The Baaz party that ruled Iraq and Siria are inspired directly by the Nazi party. There are hundred of examples of continuous praise of hitler or hitler-inspired ideas in the musling world. If you search, you can find a lot of nazi flags waved by muslim fundamentalists. even on the top of mesquites 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 8/21/2013 11:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. What is the evidence for this? Are there polls? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
More hateful stereotyping of a diverse group numbering over a billion human beings by our very own fascist troll From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alberto G. Corona Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 4:02 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Just follow the tv of muslim countries, and specially, the political debates. Google: hitler arab countries television It can not be otherwhise since te nazis and the muslims share the same main goal. you know. Abu Mazen, the leader of the PLO after Yasif Arafat wrote its doctoral thesis at the university about denial of the Holocaust. The Baaz party that ruled Iraq and Siria are inspired directly by the Nazi party. There are hundred of examples of continuous praise of hitler or hitler-inspired ideas in the musling world. If you search, you can find a lot of nazi flags waved by muslim fundamentalists. even on the top of mesquites 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 8/21/2013 11:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. What is the evidence for this? Are there polls? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
Hi Brent But I don't think this is just a moral evolution. I think it is driven by technology. As societies become richer they become less competitive and insular and more compassionate and open. I agree. I think trade imparticularly creates a symbiotic relationship between people which gets internalized. Pragmatically it makes sense to see people as friend rather than foe if we want them to buy our stuff and this pragmatism then gets solidified in our moral sentiment. I think there are other factors too. I read somewhere that the development and popularity of the novel as a literary form encouraged people to see the world through others' eyes and this had some effect on empathy. There's probably a plethora of factors that lead to this trend, but I think trade is a major one. f global warming or running out of oil or some other widespread diminution of ease and wealth occurs there will likely be a corresponding diminution in empathy and compassion. I agree. All the best From: cdemorse...@yahoo.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 17:52:42 -0700 More hateful stereotyping of a diverse group numbering over a billion human beings by our very own fascist troll From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alberto G. Corona Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 4:02 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Just follow the tv of muslim countries, and specially, the political debates. Google: hitler arab countries television It can not be otherwhise since te nazis and the muslims share the same main goal. you know. Abu Mazen, the leader of the PLO after Yasif Arafat wrote its doctoral thesis at the university about denial of the Holocaust. The Baaz party that ruled Iraq and Siria are inspired directly by the Nazi party. There are hundred of examples of continuous praise of hitler or hitler-inspired ideas in the musling world. If you search, you can find a lot of nazi flags waved by muslim fundamentalists. even on the top of mesquites 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.netOn 8/21/2013 11:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote:That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. What is the evidence for this? Are there polls? Brent-- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
I agree. I think trade imparticularly creates a symbiotic relationship between people which gets internalized. Pragmatically it makes sense to see people as friend rather than foe if we want them to buy our stuff and this pragmatism then gets solidified in our moral sentiment. Interesting point. Killing your customer is usually not a good business practice; except if you are a tobacco company perhaps. From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of chris peck Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 6:17 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Hi Brent But I don't think this is just a moral evolution. I think it is driven by technology. As societies become richer they become less competitive and insular and more compassionate and open. I agree. I think trade imparticularly creates a symbiotic relationship between people which gets internalized. Pragmatically it makes sense to see people as friend rather than foe if we want them to buy our stuff and this pragmatism then gets solidified in our moral sentiment. I think there are other factors too. I read somewhere that the development and popularity of the novel as a literary form encouraged people to see the world through others' eyes and this had some effect on empathy. There's probably a plethora of factors that lead to this trend, but I think trade is a major one. f global warming or running out of oil or some other widespread diminution of ease and wealth occurs there will likely be a corresponding diminution in empathy and compassion. I agree. All the best _ From: cdemorse...@yahoo.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 17:52:42 -0700 More hateful stereotyping of a diverse group numbering over a billion human beings by our very own fascist troll From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alberto G. Corona Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 4:02 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood Just follow the tv of muslim countries, and specially, the political debates. Google: hitler arab countries television It can not be otherwhise since te nazis and the muslims share the same main goal. you know. Abu Mazen, the leader of the PLO after Yasif Arafat wrote its doctoral thesis at the university about denial of the Holocaust. The Baaz party that ruled Iraq and Siria are inspired directly by the Nazi party. There are hundred of examples of continuous praise of hitler or hitler-inspired ideas in the musling world. If you search, you can find a lot of nazi flags waved by muslim fundamentalists. even on the top of mesquites 2013/8/21 meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net On 8/21/2013 11:48 AM, Alberto G. Corona wrote: That Hitler is the most respected western figure in the muslim word is a fact. What is the evidence for this? Are there polls? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com . To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 5:13:43 PM UTC+10, stathisp wrote: On Wednesday, August 21, 2013, Pierz wrote: ...since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches... What I mean of course is the additional happiness in the WW3 branches. The non-WW3 branches are much *less* happy right Saibal? All these posts about WW3. Did I miss a war? Oopsies :) Some synapses relating to the prefix www and those relating to wars had an unauthorised conversation... -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: The Nazi History of the Muslim Brotherhood
Well thank you for the lecture on cultural/historical relativism. But the fact remains (fact inasmuch as it is accepted by mainstream historians, unlike your alternate universe facts) that Nazism could only take hold because of the economic privations resulting from the reparations imposed by the Allies in WW1. It's a speculation, not a fact, that had Hitler not risen to power, fascism would have become politically mainstream. There are countless contingent ways history might have worked out had WW2 not occurred and I am suggesting that it is a perfectly plausible and equally unverifiable speculation that economic recovery would have led to extreme ideologies falling from favour in Europe. Fascism was extreme even in its day, and economically comfortable democracies generally find Total War to be unconducive to enjoying their afternoon tea. On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 10:41:43 PM UTC+10, smi...@zonnet.nl wrote: A rapid descent into extremism can be caused by factors such as economic desperation. However, you can also have a gradual change in society and then people are always indioctrinated that their current norms and values are correct. So, there was a time when when drawing and quartering was a normal form of punishment, and we gradually moved away from that. If you move very fast away from this, then there will be big differences in the opnions of people about wthe current system being ok. or totally unacceptable. We are thus more vulnerable to extremism due to gradual changes in society, e.g. a Hitler coming to power who doesn't need to start a war (suppose e.g. that Poland would ahve been annexed without the Western powers declaring war on Germany). So, Hitler could have remained a popular dictator in Germany and the Holocaust would have had a competely different character. From the point of view of an extremist, the extremists views are the norm. So, the extremist doesn't see that he is an extremist. It is only in case of a rapid descent into extremism that there will be many other peole who are not extremist who can see this, also the extremists would find them having to defend their views more. You an then also ask if we are actually already extremists from some reasonable point of view that our distant descendants may have. E.g. the way we run the World economy with billions of people living in poverty could be called totally immoral by people who live a century from now. They could judge us in a similar way as the would judge Nazis. Or, as in a recent SF movie, you can have an alien visiting us who then judges us to be guilty of mass genocide against the environment and who then decides that we should all be exterminated so that life on Earth can be saved from us. If in one reasonable value system something can be genocide on an unimaginable scale, while in another one it is business as usual, then the processes that led to this being flagged as business as usual in our brains have their origin in arbitrary events in our history, as there is no preference for the flagging as business as usual being preferred given the way our brain works. Saibal Citeren Pierz pie...@gmail.com javascript:: ...since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches... What I mean of course is the additional happiness in the WW3 branches. The non-WW3 branches are much *less* happy right Saibal? On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 9:49:59 AM UTC+10, Pierz wrote: Self-contradictory. You've got to follow your own theories to their logical conclusions. *Which* Western/third world would have been better off if WW3 hadn't happened? Since everything happens in some branch of the multiverse, surely there are innumerable branches in which the world is better off for not having undergone the horrors of WW3. Or are you saying that, if you summed human happiness in the branches of the hypothetical branch of the multiverse in which WW3 didn't happen, and compared it to the sum of human happiness in the branches in which it did, it would be higher in the ones in which it didn't? Put that way, it becomes a rather absurd claim wouldn't you say? And dubious - since first of all the additional happiness in those non-WW3 branches has to make up for the staggering, unimaginable misery of the holocaust, the Russian front, Hiroshima etc etc before getting ahead at all, and secondly because this is all based on the theory that Nazism not being debunked (It was exterminated) would have led to an incorporation of fascist ideology into the mainstream of global social organization, an extremely debatable proposition. Extremism is fostered by economic desperation. If the world had had time to fully recover from the depression, notions of invading the world would have looked a lot less attractive to the fat, comfortable citizens of an
RE: When will a computer pass the Turing Test?
It's probably already been discussed at length on this list, and if it has my apologies, but isn't the incredibly massive parallelism of the brains architecture a possible factor and that the mind is an emergent phenomena made possible by amongst other things the subtle interplay of neuron firing networks dynamically racing back and forth in the brain - all the time and on a scale that is hard to begin to even grasp. Can anyone really say that the possible transient branches a dynamic and itself transient network of neural activity can really be determined by any possible program no matter how detailed? Throw in mirror neurons and the subtle dynamic effects that these networks within networks produce as they interact with the other manifesting waves of neural activity that precede our conscious awareness. Isn't it possible that very subtle and surprising unexpected effects can emerge from a network as vast and multi centered as the neural nets seem to be in brains. Brains also introduce the layer of chemical signal processing - neurotransmitters. A lot of subtle effects could emerge out of this interface (trillions of synaptic connections mediated by this very rapid wet chemical process). The mind emerges from the brain, but it is not reducible to the brain; as water emerges from the elements Oxygen and Hydrogen, but is not reducible to them - i.e. cannot be fully described only by knowing about its constituent atoms. When networks become vast and offer a huge number of paths by which signals may travel often subtle interactions can occur as messages are bounced around and changed from node to node. Different and often potentially random network paths enlisted in in participating in rapidly forming and dissolving massively parallel consensus building algorithms - which I believe is being shown to be an important factor in how the physical brain operates - could produce different outcomes that could affect whether and how a quorum is arrived at and the ultimate outcome of any given single dynamic instance of a thought wave (the waves upon waves, upon waves of synchronized neural firings that go into even a single simple thought is an astronomically huge number of atomic calculations and state changes) The brain is also very noisy place - the signal to noise ratio is low. A huge error rate, compared with computer architecture which wastes huge amounts of energy to achieve a very low error rate in its basic logic gates (a lot more energy is used than the threshold value for flipping a gate in order to lower the error rate to almost zero). The brain must be dealing with a lot of bad - or random - signals. And in general is not the brain computational architecture very different from computer machine architecture, and different on a lot of orthogonal levels. It seems like this is the place to begin looking; and as a corollary that one needs to be careful when using computational terminology for describing the brain/mind because computers are architecturally so very different from our 20 watt 100 trillion connection machines. -Chris From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of meekerdb Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 3:32 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test? On 8/21/2013 2:42 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote: Ok, and I'm fascinated by the question of why we haven't found viable algorithms in that class yet -- although we know has a fact that it must exist, because our brains contain it. We haven't proved our brain is computational in nature, if we had, then we would had proven computationalism to be true... it's not the case. Maybe our brain has some non computational shortcut for that, maybe that's why AI is not possible, maybe our brain has this realness ingredient that computations alone lack. I'm not saying AI is not possible, I'm just saying we haven't proved that our brains contain it. There's another possibility: That our brains are computational in nature, but that they also depend on interactions with the environment (not necessarily quantum entanglement, but possibly). When Bruno has proposed replacing neurons with equivalent input-output circuits I have objected that while it might still in most cases compute the same function there are likely to be exceptional cases involving external (to the brain) events that would cause it to be different. This wouldn't prevent AI, but it would prevent exact duplication and hence throw doubt on ideas of duplication experiments and FPI. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit
Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade
On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:33:06 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 21 August 2013 03:59, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: It is possible to make the distinction between doing something by accident and intentionally, between enslavement and freedom, while still acknowledging that brain mechanisms are either determined or random. Why would such a distinction be meaningful to a deterministic or random process though? I think you are smuggling our actual sense of intention into this theoretical world which is only deterministic-random (unintentional). If you are saying that something cannot be emotionally meaningful if it is random or determined you are wrong. Patients are anxious about the result of a medical test even though they know the answer is determined and gamblers are anxious about the outcome of their bet even though they know it is random. But that's only because of the impact that the random or determined condition has on our free participation. We have anxiety because a particular condition threatens to constrain our free will or cause unpleasant sensations. They are inextricably linked. A sensation can only be so unpleasant if we retain the power to escape it voluntarily. It is only when we we think that a situation will be unpleasant and that we will not be able to avoid it that anxiety is caused. We can't say whether we would have anxiety in a deterministic universe unless we knew for sure that we had been in a deterministic universe at at some point, but logically, it would not make sense for any such thing as anxiety to arise in a universe of involuntary spectators. What would be the justification of such an emotion? Anxiety makes sense if you have free will. If anything anxiety is caused by the ability to imagine the loss of the effectiveness of your free will. I do something intentionally if I want to do it and am aware that I am doing it; this is compatible with either type of brain mechanism. Only if you have the possibility of something 'wanting' to do something in the first place. Wanting doesn't make sense deterministically or randomly. In the words of Yoda, 'there is no try, either do or do not'. You know that you have wants, and you conclude from this that your brain cannot function deterministically or randomly. You make this claim repeatedly and without justification. My brain has nothing to do with it. I am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball. I am enslaved if someone physically constrains me or threatens me in order to make me behave in a certain way; this is also compatible with either type of brain mechanism. In the deterministic universe, you would be enslave no matter what, so what difference would it make whether your constraint is internally programmatic or externally modified? I don't think being a slave to brain processes is considered to be real slavery by most people. You are free to differ in your definition. Why not? What exactly is the difference whether your enslavement is internally based or externally based? Some questions for determinist thinkers: Can we effectively doubt that we have free will? I can't effectively doubt that I decide to do something and do it. I can effectively doubt that my actions are random, that they are determined, or that they are neither random nor determined It sounds like you are agreeing with me? On this point, yes; but I'm using the common, legal or compatibilist definition of free will, not yours. Ok Or is the doubt a mental abstraction which denies the very capacity for intentional reasoning upon which the doubt itself is based? Yes: if I intend to do something, I can't doubt that I intend to do it, for otherwise I wouldn't intend to do it. If you doubt anything though, it is because you intend to believe what is true and your sense is that some proposition is not true. To say I doubt that there is a such thing as free will (intention) is itself an intentional, free-will act. You are saying not just that there is a sense of doubt, but that you voluntarily invest your personal authority in that doubt. I don't doubt free will in the common, legal or compatibilist sense. I doubt it in your sense, since it is not even conceptually possible. It doesn't have to be conceptually possible, it is more primitive than concept. We have no choice but to experience it directly, and can only deny that this is the case by demonstrating that we have the power to do that as an act of free will. How would an illusion of doubt be
RE: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade
Hi Craig am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball. I think I can meet you half way and agree that in a determined universe wants, desires and anxieties would be futile. They wouldn't make sense from an adaptive point of view. But I'm not convinced they make no logical sense. For example they could be epiphenomena coming along for the ride, unnecessarily colouring the unraveling of pre-written events. The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there. All the best. Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 19:13:57 -0700 From: whatsons...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:33:06 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:On 21 August 2013 03:59, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It is possible to make the distinction between doing something by accident and intentionally, between enslavement and freedom, while still acknowledging that brain mechanisms are either determined or random. Why would such a distinction be meaningful to a deterministic or random process though? I think you are smuggling our actual sense of intention into this theoretical world which is only deterministic-random (unintentional). If you are saying that something cannot be emotionally meaningful if it is random or determined you are wrong. Patients are anxious about the result of a medical test even though they know the answer is determined and gamblers are anxious about the outcome of their bet even though they know it is random. But that's only because of the impact that the random or determined condition has on our free participation. We have anxiety because a particular condition threatens to constrain our free will or cause unpleasant sensations. They are inextricably linked. A sensation can only be so unpleasant if we retain the power to escape it voluntarily. It is only when we we think that a situation will be unpleasant and that we will not be able to avoid it that anxiety is caused. We can't say whether we would have anxiety in a deterministic universe unless we knew for sure that we had been in a deterministic universe at at some point, but logically, it would not make sense for any such thing as anxiety to arise in a universe of involuntary spectators. What would be the justification of such an emotion? Anxiety makes sense if you have free will. If anything anxiety is caused by the ability to imagine the loss of the effectiveness of your free will. I do something intentionally if I want to do it and am aware that I am doing it; this is compatible with either type of brain mechanism. Only if you have the possibility of something 'wanting' to do something in the first place. Wanting doesn't make sense deterministically or randomly. In the words of Yoda, 'there is no try, either do or do not'. You know that you have wants, and you conclude from this that your brain cannot function deterministically or randomly. You make this claim repeatedly and without justification. My brain has nothing to do with it. I am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball. I am enslaved if someone physically constrains me or threatens me in order to make me behave in a certain way; this is also compatible with either type of brain mechanism. In the deterministic universe, you would be enslave no matter what, so what difference would it make whether your constraint is internally programmatic or externally modified? I don't think being a slave to brain processes is considered to be real slavery by most people. You are free to differ in your definition. Why not? What exactly is the difference whether your enslavement is internally based or externally based? Some questions for determinist thinkers: Can we effectively doubt that we have free will? I can't effectively doubt that I decide to do something and do it. I can effectively doubt that my actions are random, that they are determined, or that they are neither random nor determined It sounds like you are agreeing with me? On this point, yes; but I'm using the common, legal or compatibilist definition of free will, not yours. Ok Or is the doubt a mental abstraction which denies the very
RE: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade
The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there. Chris I follow what you are saying, but wouldn't you also agree that it seems like a whole lot of energy and evolutionary lineage is invested in desire and the full panoply of the emotional spectra. Doesn't it seem more probable that it has been very much selected for by evolutionary pressure. That it is not a mere hitchhiker along the ride on t crest of some inevitable collapsing wave in a deterministic universe playing out the preordained. Conservation of energy seems to be a first principal of all evolved systems, the easier an organism can navigate the flows of its reality in the huge numbers game of evolutionary pressure the better its chances are of surviving and passing on its heredity. Nature favors the emergence of efficient design (not always resulting in efficient designs though but that's another story). It seems to me that the energy required in order to maintain our emotional and felt/experienced existence; to maintain this elaborate illusion of free will (it would be an illusion in a preordained world) is so great that unless it played an essential role in our lives and favored the individual's hereditary success in whom it expressed then it would have been evolved out of us and would have never developed in the mammalian branch in the first place. The emotional life of very many animals, including the human animal, is critical to their survival in fact. Can something so critical be an accidental epiphenomena emerging out of the inefficiency of the program? Besides wouldn't the program evolve to be as efficient as it could; doesn't the conservation of energy apply to the deterministic universe itself or does it get to play by different rules? By the way I enjoy how you argue your position, very cogent and well laid out; it's just that I feel that proposing that the poetry and depth of the experience of feeling that all of us to one degree or another experience, could be an accidental co-phenomena; a kind of side show that is a distracting superficial phenomena of no bearing or consequence to the underlying preordained script is not supported by the evidence that nature places a lot of energy and attention on developing and evolving precisely those phenomena in a lot of life forms we can study. Thanks for the interesting thread, Chris From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of chris peck Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:20 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade Hi Craig am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball. I think I can meet you half way and agree that in a determined universe wants, desires and anxieties would be futile. They wouldn't make sense from an adaptive point of view. But I'm not convinced they make no logical sense. For example they could be epiphenomena coming along for the ride, unnecessarily colouring the unraveling of pre-written events. The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there. All the best. _ Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 19:13:57 -0700 From: whatsons...@gmail.com To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 8:33:06 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: On 21 August 2013 03:59, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com wrote: It is possible to make the distinction between doing something by accident and intentionally, between enslavement and freedom, while still acknowledging that brain mechanisms are either determined or random. Why would such a distinction be meaningful to a deterministic or random process though? I think you are smuggling our actual sense of intention into this theoretical world which is only deterministic-random (unintentional). If you are saying that something cannot be emotionally meaningful if it is random or determined you are wrong. Patients are anxious about the result of a medical test even though they know the answer is determined and gamblers are anxious about the outcome of their bet even though they know it is random. But that's only because of the impact that the random or determined condition has on our free participation. We have anxiety because a particular
Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade
On 22 August 2013 13:20, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Craig am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball. I think I can meet you half way and agree that in a determined universe wants, desires and anxieties would be futile. They wouldn't make sense from an adaptive point of view. That's no more true for a determined universe than it is for a non-determined universe. But I'm not convinced they make no logical sense. For example they could be epiphenomena coming along for the ride, unnecessarily colouring the unraveling of pre-written events. The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there. All the best. If it were possible to have the same behaviour without consciousness then consciousness would not have evolved - there would be no adaptive value to it. That is one reason why I think consciousness must be a necessary side-effect of intelligent behaviour, at least in organic machines such as we are. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
RE: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade
Hi Chris / Stathis I probably shouldn't have used the word adaptive. I think Craig is arguing : 1) whatever 'feels'/psychological states emerge from the universe must be compatible with its fundamental nature. 2) Anxiety implies that I really could avoid some feared event. 3) But que sera sera in a determined universe. what will be will be. I can't avoid my fate. consequently, anxiety can not emerge within a determined universe because of 2 and 1. Initially I took issue with 2) in the following way: I felt that uncertainty about a unavoidable fate would provide space for anxiety to emerge. But the more I thought about Craig's position the less tenable I thought this was. I think his position is very compelling (if I understand it). If nothing has ever avoided a fate how has the sense that this can be achieved emerged? What is it about the universe that allows for this delusion? What is it built out of? Anyway the questions flooded in. So i thought what if 'anxiety' doesn't imply the ability to avoid a fate. Maybe its just an epiphenomenal 'feel' that floats above psychological uncertainty and isn't really susceptible to further analysis. That didn't seem to conflict with a determined universe readily. Chris, as for whether any of this is plausible, probable etc. I'm afraid I wouldn't even begin to know how to assess that. And to be honest I'm not even sure whether Craig would accept my paraphrase of his argument. All the best. From: stath...@gmail.com Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 15:01:35 +1000 Subject: Re: Determinism - Tricks of the Trade To: everything-list@googlegroups.com On 22 August 2013 13:20, chris peck chris_peck...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi Craig am saying that the ontology of desire is impossible under strong determinism. Deterministic and random processes cannot possibly produce desire - not because desire is special, but because it doesn't make any sense. You are talking about putting in a gas pedal on a bowling ball. I think I can meet you half way and agree that in a determined universe wants, desires and anxieties would be futile. They wouldn't make sense from an adaptive point of view. That's no more true for a determined universe than it is for a non-determined universe. But I'm not convinced they make no logical sense. For example they could be epiphenomena coming along for the ride, unnecessarily colouring the unraveling of pre-written events. The determined universe might be inefficient, if you like, carrying along with it baggage that isn't really used. The wants and anxieties would be implied by the universe's initial conditions and not everything in those conditions need be functional. I don't see a logical contradiction there. All the best. If it were possible to have the same behaviour without consciousness then consciousness would not have evolved - there would be no adaptive value to it. That is one reason why I think consciousness must be a necessary side-effect of intelligent behaviour, at least in organic machines such as we are. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
