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Duncecap's Flamebate Posts
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Girllss... post yer mammary glands!!. . . there are speciality sites that exist only for hosting NSFW personal pictures. In fact, some that only exist to host porn.
google, ****es, have you heard of it? (view post) |
03/24/2010 | |
Pascal's Wager converted me from Catholicism to Agnosticism!I got that impression, I just had to clarify further. Log in to see images!
That research is like that senator who claimed that the ‘soul pictures’ of black and white people were different from his examination of research data, when 1) X-rays are a far cry from ‘soul pictures’. 2) He didn’t have access to the personal info of the patients, nor was racial information stored in the research data, or even in the personal info.
Merely an idiot trying to use ‘science’ to ‘prove’ his own pre-existing beliefs. But at least the soul weight guy was speciest, not racist. (view post) |
02/09/2010 | |
Pascal's Wager converted me from Catholicism to Agnosticism!Drakodan Posted:
Okay, you see my post up there? Where I talked about scientists from Ohio had faked some results for attention and money? THIS IS THAT EXPERIMENT.
They hooked the head’s blood vessels up to a basic dialysis machine, oxygenated the blood, pumped it around. Basic life support stuff. At first the monkey head responded, (as you would expect), then it stopped responding, (after no more than an hour), but showed signs of life, (brainwaves, blood vessel constriction/dilation, etc.), and then died, definitively, after 6 days.
To another monkey body? No. They’ve had to hook up its lungs nerves/controls and its heart’s nerves/controls to the correct places to do that, which would be just as difficult as connecting, say, its arms, or legs. Basically, to say that the monkey was alive, but paralysed just fits in that crack where any thinking person should realize “why so far and no farther?” (view post) |
02/09/2010 | |
Pascal's Wager converted me from Catholicism to Agnosticism!While in the argument there, I was saying that the connections in the brain were the internal state. So i was talking about just having a lump of non-connected neurons as being a blank state.
I may be wrong there, (some evidence suggests that the neurons may change their DNA to store information . . after all, they don’t use it), but for now i believe that the arrangement and connections of the neurons are the programming/storage/etc. The data.
Take in mind how little I know about biology/biochem/the brain in an academic sense, though.
edit1: And @soron, mentioning MacDouglas . . . define the time of death, please? Even if, can you guarantee that no gases leave the body? That study clearly has no merit, in that time of death is ill-defined, and the bodies were not weighed in an air-proof chamber. And I’m sure if I really cared, I could raise half a dozen other valid objections. Sorry, that study always bugs me when someone tries to bring it up.
edit2: @anasi again: True enough, that I wouldn’t be able to think of a non-thought. Let me get back to you on that. (view post) |
02/09/2010 | |
Pascal's Wager converted me from Catholicism to Agnosticism!There have been successful brain transplants?
“A whole-body transplant or brain transplant is a hypothetical operation . . . ” (First result in google states this)
Do you know what hypothetical means? The best available right now, is partial transplants of brain centred nerves on some animals. Which is a far cry from any part of the brain. The most successful has been either the replacement of optical nerves in birds, or the partial replacement of the cerebral cortex in mice, which has so far led to them NOT dying as a result. Neither are very encouraging results.
On another note, some Scientists in Ohio faked some ‘full body transplants’ for fame and funding a while back, but if you look into their papers, they did something wildly different than what they claim in media sources. (What they DID do, is prove that they can keep a brain alive outside of a body, for a few hours, and keep a head alive, and functioning, without a body, for a few days before the head rejected the ‘body’ of machinery. Quite a far cry from a brain transplant)
In any case, there is no need for the ‘soul’ to be non-physical. The part that makes the brain the thinking centre, as previously stated here in this topic, is the arrangement of the neurons and their connections. The brain is hardware; the part that you identify as ‘you’ is the software, and merely an internal state of the brain. Lose that internal state, lose that arrangement, and what is left? The blank hardware. No personality, no memories.
Oh yes, still an experimental theory, (read: not enough evidence to conclude it yet), but it deals with a much decreased amount of additional variables that have yet to be observed. (That’s an Occam’s Razor type argument for cogency). (view post) |
02/09/2010 | |
why does windows xp install 61 updates THEN install SP3?Even script kiddies use MintOS.
Real hackers like to use amiga, or BeOS, or Haiku, just to make things a challenge for themselves. Sometimes you’ll see them using a completely self-made version of linux/BSD/unix.
Using windows is just asking for errors that you can’t fix, or workaround, and often, you can’t even identify errors properly. (view post) |
02/08/2010 | |
Pascal's Wager converted me from Catholicism to Agnosticism!Clarification: All computation seems to me to also be thought. I cannot think of a computation which cannot be thought.
It’s interesting sometimes, but most of the time you just end up reinventing the wheel with a different name and a different number of spokes. Everything I do has to satisfy a constructivist . . . it all has to be mathematically provable from the bumumptions. A lot of computer science is like: “Yeah, we can’t prove it, but you can see where it goes, right?”. Indirect proofs are rarely allowed. So yeah, that guy Dijkstra and his algorithm? That so useful algorithm you could use in every computation ever by defining nodes and edges reasonably? I’m not allowed to use that unless the axioms of choice for graph theory are accepted. Hamiltonian paths/graphs? Same thing. And what if I run into NP complete? I’m not allowed to estimate . . .
But yeah, looking forward to your answer. (view post) |
02/04/2010 | |
Pascal's Wager converted me from Catholicism to Agnosticism!As in, mathematicians and physicists and chemists come to me and say: “We have this really cool model, but we don’t know how to explain it to a computer”. Mostly mathematicians. So I come up with ways to represent the systems in procedural language, and program it for them.
The easiest example is simply using symbolic representation like Maxima or Mathematica. But of course, anything they can do by themselves, they do by themselves, so I never get jobs this easy, although it is within the scope of my job.
The harder stuff is coming up with ways to describe certain mathematical systems, and define the operations between them in a way the computer understands. Stuff that’s already beyond Mathematica/Maxima/Etc. ability to represent and compute.
There’s one job I have hanging now for a couple of months, where the operation between two objects of the same type, cannot be defined in less than a couple hundred lines in english. Wanna bet it’s longer than that in any programming language?
Anyhoo, no, never heard of Hofstadter.
And I would ask what differentiates a thought from other computation? I can think of no computation which is not also a thought. (view post) |
02/03/2010 | |
why does windows xp install 61 updates THEN install SP3?May I suggest any number of linux distros?
Some distros may be very special, but then you can just fork off. (view post) |
02/02/2010 | |
items turning into items turning into itemsNone of my junk has transformed so far, (other than expired medication into black goo after nearly a month from EP2), but it might be a purposely rare happening. (view post) |
02/01/2010 | |
Pascal's Wager converted me from Catholicism to Agnosticism!Ahhh, I see where you’re going now. Yeah, that’s absolutely right.
No, I’ve never heard of this fellow Hofstadter. He wrote something worthwhile, I take it?
I’m a mathematical programmer by trade, that’s where this is all coming from ;p
The question this all sprang from was the legitimacy of thought: If thought is not necessarily legitimate, then we are not a necessary condition for thought. But nevertheless, if thought exists, thought exists.
There also exists the possibility that thought also does not exist, but that is entirely outside, and a few provinces away from, the modality of this argument. (view post) |
02/01/2010 | |
Pascal's Wager converted me from Catholicism to Agnosticism!Intrinsic meaning is not a real thing. I’m sorry, haven’t you gotten that far in your philosophy courses? Meaning is only intrinsic so far as it is intuitive to our interpretation of the universe.
There are infinitely many possible interpretations of the universe that are ‘correct’. The only incorrect ones are the inconsistent ones. There are no ‘non-sensical’ ones that are internally consistent, because they internally make sense. There are ones which our interpreters would view as non-sensical, but that is relative to a part in the system, not the system itself. (Analogy: In math, I could consider number theory, and graph theory. Both are internally consistent. Using number theory on a node graph, however, would not be consistent, and in fact, non-sensical. It is possible to extend areas of number theory onto graph theory using mappings, however. So an area of math containing both graph theory and number theory with no corrective mapping would be an incorrect interpretation. But as far as the larger system is concerned, both graph theory and number theory themselves are correct,) In other words, we can only sensibly perceive interpretations that are consistent with our existing interpreters. (Indirectly: Goedel’s Incompleteness theorem comes into play here)
Our mind, our programming, contains an interpreter. A semi-arbitrary one. Over our lives, this becomes modified to understand the world in somewhat the same way as people around us. (We are able to communicate with other people, (at least, we think we do)). So how can there be any intrinsic meaning, unless you are judging relative to a particular interpreter/family of interpreters/etc.? There is no universal intrinsic meaning. To anything.
But for some family of interpreters, (to answer your question), the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, is intrinsicly part of the period. I’d wager, without proof, that no interpretation we would recognise as consistent would inherently or intrinsicly contain the meaning of life, the universe and everything n that period.
Also, you did not use the word intrinsic before Log in to see images! You used the word “inherent”
Inherent: built-in: existing as an essential constituent or characteristic; Intrinsic: belonging to a thing by its very nature;
Bureaucracy can have an inherent evil side, but have an intrinsic goodness. (Bureaucracy is meant to organise and make easier the tasks of working together with other people in a large system, but it also enables the inpersonal loss and mis-management of data and whatnot.) However, bureaucracy is not intrinsicly evil, (one can imagine a corrected bureaucracy that runs perfectly without abuse or accident, bumuming you have infallible clerks), although it is inherently good.
In either case, it stands that there exists no inherent/intrinsic interpretation of anything unless you are speaking relative to a particular interpreter/family of interpreters. Unless you wish to say that the inherent meaning of [anything] is [everything].
By the definition of a thought as a part of a state of a turing machine (Bit incorrect of you to call it that,since a turing machine is a machine that operates on an infinite piece of tape, but I know that you meant anything that can emulate, or is equivalent to, a turing machine), then the piece of paper will carry the same thought, (the same changes in existing state, relative to the system), but the interpreter will interpret it differently for different people. (They all receive the same input, it means different things to them).
But then, the interpreter itself is also a state of the turing machine; It is also a thought. Existing thoughts in a mind would modify the interpretation of incoming thoughts.
Also I disagree, ANYTHING can be represent a turing machine. Anything. Even abstract concepts. To define a computational device, is merely to define the abstract mapping of the state of something. (To define the methods by which you interpret it).
And also, artificial neuronal networks are exactly as good as real neurons. The methods by which individual neurons work, and the ways they work with their neighbours, are very, very well known. What we’re missing, is the programming. (view post) |
02/01/2010 | |
Why would I even want stronger attacks?Ahhhh . . . . So I guess other clbumes would want more ego or more offence most of the time, rather than more [clbum power]. Makes sense.
I have no alts, I didn’t know. (view post) |
01/31/2010 | |
Why would I even want stronger attacks?Both are modified by your and the forums attack and defence. I don’t see why that’s difficult to grasp, most attack and defence algorithms will result in such things.
Example: Simple soak. A soak of 5, when hit with an attack of 6, will be hit for 1 damage. When hit with an attack of 10, will take 5.
I don’t know the algorithm here, but I do know the numbers that result.
edit: Sensitivities are also a possibility. But reveal pbumword and flipr are both aggressiveness, and I doubt that a number of forums would be more sensitive to pswd than flipr. (view post) |
01/31/2010 | |
Why would I even want stronger attacks?If the forum defence is high, then weaker attacks, (such as flipr), might do 56 or so damage, while the stronger attacks, (such as reveal pbumword), do about 892. (Estimates TOTALLY not based on weighted averaging with mathematica like some kind of math uber-nerd *shifty eyes*)
I’m pwning mid-40’s forums right now, (At the time of posting, level 38), (Gilded pocket, battlethreadz lamebait, salle de bain du vin, ruin-a-wish), and I’m finding that the high power attacks are, in fact, necessary.
edit: Also, with the new equipment, I never have to worry abut running out of processing power . . . 1070 (edit: er, oops. Switched the 7 and a 0 there), total. Isn’t that the same with other clbumes, or do hackers just have a lot more equips? (view post) |
01/31/2010 | |
Boss Thread <SPOILERS>Oh, geez, I was looking in exactly the wrong places. Puzzles bosses, sheathe your sword, searching for “mother”’s entry . That matches earthbound perfectly, yeah. Oh, now I’m going to pray and sing at you! That’s SO useful! Log in to see images!
(Earthbound (english) = mother (translated Japanese). Any of you who haven’t should really play mother 1 (earthbound 0) and mother 3, which weren’t released in english) (view post) |
01/31/2010 | |
Boss Thread <SPOILERS>****bumho Posted: Don’t play many RPGs? That happens in quite a few of them, for some boss somewhere or other in the game . .. Tvtropes has a page about it, but I can’t remember what category it’s counted under. (RPG’s and videogames aren’t the only place it happens) (view post) |
01/31/2010 | |
Pascal's Wager converted me from Catholicism to Agnosticism!To keep relatively on topic, I refuse to believe in god out of pride.
If god prefers good people, then I do not want someone rewarding me with infinite bliss when I die, because that would trivialise my works on earth. I would rather the good I do be out of the good I want to spread in the world. That is, of myself. If god prefers only those people who believe in him, then I refuse to believe in him because he does not encourage truly good behaviour. If god does pretty much anything else, I refuse to believe in him because he’s an arsehole.
Replace ‘god’ with [insert name of god/gods/deities/etc.] to cover all religions. (view post) |
01/31/2010 | |
Pascal's Wager converted me from Catholicism to Agnosticism!To extend on my previous post, (in response to multiple people):
First of all, my argument isn’t existentialism. Certainly existentialism deals with it, (in that existentialism doubts the existence of thoughts themselves),but the root question is not of existence, but of definition. The argument’s conclusion deals with existentialism. It says that there exists a possibility that we do not exist.
(Existentialism does not say that nothing happened if it was not perceived, it says that if something CANNOT be observed, then it does not exist. The big bang is observable.) (Further, on a tangent, the big bang theory does not say that nothing came before it, merely that we have not, (and implies cannot), observe anything from before it. But of course, if you believe in both big bang and existentialism, then nothing came before it, because we cannot observe it).
Okay, take that piece of paper declaring “Here is a thought”, and cast it into space. Imagine that long after humanity dies out, (bumume we do), an alien race finds it, and decodes the message. The message is something external to them. If you want to state it that way, yes, it causes thought in someone else, a thought that would not have occurred if they had not read the message, and it is the same thought as you were thinking when you wrote the sentence.
Even better, take a really large, really complex computer, and get it to simulate a human brain. Can it think? We do indeed have this technology, and we we can, in fact, with a large enough cluster, do exactly this right now. If any of you have heard about “Blue brain”, a couple of research teams are competing against each other with a simulated cat brain to discover more about neuronal interaction. But I digress, the point is, would such a machine be able to think? Now, can a slightly stupider machine think? If no, then would you say that a very special human is incapable of thought?
And certainly we can think of stupider humans than some animals. And certainly we can think of stupider animals.
At what point are they incapable of thought?
I ask the same question of a simpler and simpler computer. At what point is a computer not able to think?
Now, here’s where I blow your mind: A computer does not need to be made of silicon or use electricity. A grid of stones in a field could be a computer, and technically speaking, with enough time, space and stones. run exactly the same software as your computer on your desk. So even once a computer becomes too simple to be held in electronics, we can simplify it further into rocks. Or trees. Or the movement patterns of unladen swallows.
So the root question is: What is a thought? Having defined that, when is a “mind”, (seeing that ANYTHING can hold, represent, contain, change and create a thought), incapable of having a thought? Further if we define something as having a mind if it thinks, than would we have to extend the set of things that have minds to include the universe?
I offer the definition of a mind to be an abstracted arrangement of [anything] that is capable of holding a thought. Than, can there be a thought without me existing? Well, how to define a thought? We don’t need a full definition, merely an inkling, and if you agree that a thought can be had by simpler and simpler computers by comparision with things that are known to have thoughts, then yes, a thought can exist without me as part of the state of a ‘mind’.
There can be an arrangement of say, frogs on lilypads, that form “my” mind, and therefore thoughts, so the thoughts exist. But does the mind, the abstract arrangement of the frogs on lilypads, really exist? It cannot be destroyed, it cannot be created, it can merely enter a different state. The thoughts can all be destroyed: the system can enter the balnk state (The frogs and lilypads all die or move away), But something does exist, though it might not be me, and the thought being a communication, much like the piece of paper, also exists, (it merely needs to be interpreted). Certainly, you can create, destroy, and act upon it. Although indirectly. But I do not necessarily exist. Because the ‘mind’ cannot be created or destroyed, merely ‘defined’.
So yes, for some interpretation of the period at the end of your sentence, it does indeed contain the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Now, try to pick an interpretation that makes sense. (view post) |
01/31/2010 | |
Pascal's Wager converted me from Catholicism to Agnosticism!Write this on a slip of paper: “Here is a thought” Then read the piece of paper: Is it a thought? Does it exist without a mind to hold it?
A much better example from modern times: The computer. It can take a thought, replicate it, and send it to other computers, and even to paper. Does the computer hold a mind, and if so, then from whence is the mind?
Now, if computers can continually create thoughts, then can there exist a mindless state that can create and be a progenitor of thoughts?
The state of a thought without a mind, and even of transmitting and creating thoughts, seems to me to be a simple idea to grasp, given familiarity with todays technology. (view post) |
01/30/2010 |