manicbovine

11 ms·

61.
by manicbovine 13y ago
Metaphysical possibility is a slightly stronger version of logical possibility (although there is some debate about the exact relation.) For example, it is metaphysically possible for information to be transmitted faster than the speed of
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by manicbovine 13y ago
Gödel had an unpublished ontological "proof" [1] that's fairly simple to understand. It hinges on two things: 1.) accepting a logical system in which possibly necessary truths are necessary; 2.) accepting his argument that it's possible f
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by manicbovine 13y ago
In addition to the aforementioned Charlie Rose episode, I recently saw Kevin Dutton talk about this in a short Big Think video [1] (or rather, the converse). I have no idea if it's valid. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUsGDVOCLVQ
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by manicbovine 13y ago
Dennett uses a strong definition of qualia (intrinsic, ineffable, nonphysical) and attempts to demonstrate that, under such a characterization, qualia cannot exist. Dennett's view (at least in the 1980s) is that, yes -- the weak (phenomenal
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by manicbovine 13y ago
Yes, but there are so many brands of materialism. I'm not an expert on Dennett, but I believe he is best characterized as an eliminative materialist. He denies that qualia exist (or at least he used to). As for "mental properties supervene
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by manicbovine 13y ago
> 'Stripping away' is just division in another form... I'd say that the terms "stripping away" and "division" are being used in slightly confusing ways here, and I'm not sure if "stripping away" is "division in another form". But I gues
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by manicbovine 13y ago
Correct, he argues that the formulation is incoherent. That is, certain parts of our physical makeup give rise to experience, and that we cannot entertain a coherent world containing minds that lacks subjective, conscious experience while r
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by manicbovine 13y ago
I want to add that, according to the standard scientific view, it ought to in theory be possible to catalog every component of experience down to whatever level necessary (neuron, molecule, electron... whatever). So, according to the main
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by manicbovine 13y ago
> can you get to a point where you can't subdivide anymore, are there absolute elements of experience? I have no idea. You had previously said: >...But its endless divisibility seems to indicate that there is no such animal. From wh
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by manicbovine 13y ago
No, it's not. There is nothing to vary by Dennett's account. Our two "red qualia" are exactly the same: non-existent. Dennett argues (actually, he just asserts it over and over), that there is no such thing as subjective experience, so to s
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by manicbovine 13y ago
What in the world do you mean by "endless divisibility"? In your previous post, you said that everyone may have a different experience of red, which is more like "endless variation."
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by manicbovine 13y ago
Have you read any of David Chalmers' work? He attempts to provide a framework for thinking analytically about qualia in "The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory." [1] Nearly all of his papers are accessible via his website. [
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by manicbovine 14y ago
I'm not sure why, but I saw the graph differently. The last 2000 years are not chopped off, as you correctly point out.
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by manicbovine 14y ago
> it's naive to believe that the spike didn't play a major part in getting published in Science, or the media attention the article received. Yes, you're right, but now we're talking about science media.
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by manicbovine 14y ago
Ok, I'll continue to show my ignorance here. What is ebay supposed to do for you? They can't verify the transaction, so it'd be foolish of them to start issuing refunds from their own coffers. They can't force the seller to refund (as far a
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by manicbovine 14y ago
The purpose of the Marcott, et al study was to understand what happened during the last 11,300 years. We already know what happened during the last 100 years. (Nonetheless the uptick at the end of their graph is almost certainly a byproduc
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by manicbovine 14y ago
The landing page for Pinterest does not scroll. In fact, the png itself is cutoff: http://passets-ak.pinterest.com/images/signup_splash/loggedo... . Perhaps you're logged in.
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by manicbovine 14y ago
I have never used eBay, so maybe this is a stupid question... by why in the world would you have sent your credit card number directly to the seller?
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by manicbovine 14y ago
Mutt can render html emails via w3m or lynx. Any well-designed html email should degrade gracefully to either of those clients.
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by manicbovine 14y ago
It's trivially easy to setup an email client in such a way that links are accessible via keyboard or mouse.
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by manicbovine 14y ago
Probably because they have -webkit-text-size-adjust:none set in style.css.
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by manicbovine 14y ago
> I remember seeing Perl programs that would have been better written as very short shell scripts. This is really common. Anyone who spends time with code should take the time to learn the *nix toolset. It's a shame to see so many peopl
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by manicbovine 14y ago
I wish I'd read this an hour ago, before I wrote a series of terrible awk, perl, and bash scripts to process several thousand inconsistently formatted pdfs. edit: Nevermind, it wouldn't have helped. I missed the part where automation isn't
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by manicbovine 14y ago
Cherry-picking the article: > .... and to use plain language and a strong design to aid people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities.... How is this measured? This is the most disconcerting part of the article to me. Taking it to
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by manicbovine 14y ago
Based on some of the things I read on her blog and here, it seems like a mix between "developer advocate" and "forward sales". She mentions something about listening to developers talk about ridiculous hours, demands, etc. It's a clever pos
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by manicbovine 14y ago
Well it depends on what you mean by backdoor. Just to pick one... let's take AES. There are a lot of open-source implementations, depending on your platform. Almost all of them are open-source [0]. Furthermore, AES is based on the Rijndael
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by manicbovine 14y ago
Funny enough, I was reading about this last night. There are so many extraordinary claims in the Wired article [1], that I found it all hard to believe. It'd require sci-fi technology to actively mine and decrypt every electronic transactio
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by manicbovine 14y ago
Poor decisions all around.
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by manicbovine 14y ago
> The service that drives more traffic than Google+ was sacrificed because it didn’t meet some vague corporate goals; users — many of them life long — be damned. I think this explains why Reader was killed... It competes with G+. Want
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by manicbovine 14y ago
The Cartesian plane does not contain equations. I think what you mean is that a two variable linear equation over the reals describes a line in the Cartesian plane. Try thinking of a line's slope (as you've described it) as just one measure

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