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Jim Henderson wrote:
> I've been thinking that I need to do more reading - so seems like an area
> that could give me something to engage my brain with. Thanks!
Sci Fi:
Greg Egan (Sort of a PKDick of the brain)
Permutation City
Axiomatic
The first chapter of Diaspora
Quarantine
(in that order of importance)
Brain damage:
The man who mistook his wife for a hat
General how-stuff-works along with how-stuff-brakes:
The Brains of Men and Machines
Basically, a book describing the operation of human
brains and bodies in terms of electronic circuits.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
back to version 1.0."
"We've done that already. We call it 2.0."
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On Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:47:28 -0700, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I've been thinking that I need to do more reading - so seems like an
>> area that could give me something to engage my brain with. Thanks!
>
> Sci Fi:
> Greg Egan (Sort of a PKDick of the brain)
> Permutation City
> Axiomatic
> The first chapter of Diaspora
> Quarantine
> (in that order of importance)
>
> Brain damage:
> The man who mistook his wife for a hat
>
> General how-stuff-works along with how-stuff-brakes:
> The Brains of Men and Machines
> Basically, a book describing the operation of human brains and
> bodies in terms of electronic circuits.
Fantastic, thanks - looks like a trip to the library is in order this
week.
Jim
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Darren New wrote:
> Did you look at the maps I posted, and the links to definitions? I thought
> "southern and midwestern United States where Protestant fundamentalism
> is dominant" was pretty descriptive, didn't you?
>
So you mean that the "Bible Belt" is where "Protestant Fundamentalism"
(another
prejudicial and emotive term) is "dominant" (whatever you mean by that).
Why call it the
"Bible Belt" and what real evidence was used in drawing the maps? And
who drew them? :)
David
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> I don't recall anyone ever teaching me how to interpret those visual
> cues. I just knew it.
You learned it. Visual clues are different in different societies and
the misreading of them
can be a great source of misunderstanding.
David
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Thomas de Groot wrote:
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] san rrcom> schreef in bericht
> news:4a75d21b$1@news.povray.org...
>> I found these to be tedious and silly, myself. It wasn't an interesting
>> view on the nature of God, IMO. There was still all the unexplained
>> supernatural nonsense with a token toss of "science" into the mix.
>>
>
> Really? I enjoyed them. Which shows how people can react differently to
> things :-)
>
> Thomas
>
>
Tried to enjoy them, but there is only so many time you can watch, "The
Blaire Witch Project", remade every week before you just have to sit
back and think, "There people really are idiots." For me.. The threshold
was one episode of morons wandering around going, "Did you hear that!",
with night vision cameras aimed at their faces, and later "analyzing"
the evidence for the same sort of random camera glitches and noise I get
from well.. any camera or my computer speakers, if not grounded
properly, and oohing over the ones that "sounded" or "looked", by random
coincidence, like they where "directed by intelligence". Sadly, imho,
those things seemed to be the only thing on those shows that hold that
attribute. lol
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 02 Aug 2009 22:10:36 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> This is basic child development stuff, sheesh..
>
> Well, you may have a background in child development. I don't. Sheesh.
>
> Jim
Actually, no I don't, but I read **a lot**, especially since, starting
some 20 years ago, I had a fascination with AI, and the logical means to
learn about why it didn't work well, once I found that, is to learn how
the mind worked. My discovery was, sadly, that real brains don't work
much better, they just have a more robust system of, "fill in the blanks
and hope it works".
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Darren New wrote:
> Thomas de Groot wrote:
>> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> schreef in bericht
>> news:4a766292$1@news.povray.org...
>>> There are good ways and bad ways to learn language. That we have an
>>> instinct for it now without being taught how to learn a language implies
>>> an instinctive knowledge.
>>>
>>
>> I doubt this very much. The case of the "wild childs" pleads against
>> this. The "Aveyron child", in the 19th century, was unable to learn
>> language once he was found in the wild. And other cases go in the same
>> direction. So, language is taught by example, and is not instinctive.
>> I am not sure, but I think this is also the common consensus among
>> scientists.
>
> I think people don't have an instinct for a particular language, but an
> instinct to learn whatever language they're around. Much like birds
> learn how to fly, pretty much reliably.
>
> Of course, if you're entire raised around non-verbal beings, the
> instinct to try to learn is going to get frustrated, just like you can
> starve without food even tho you have an instinct to get hungry and eat
> when you need to.
>
What usually happens is that they learn the body language and
vocalizations of the species they are dealing with. In some cases, its
easier to teach them basic signs, than teach them *spoken* language. The
reason being, simply, that often body language, in species with a narrow
range of ability to vocalize, use body posture and the like more to get
across basic ideas. But, you are still dealing with a case where the
person in question is being handed a more "limited" version of allowable
responses, and thus loses the ability to learn more complex ones,
especially dealing with vocal control and interpretation.
Sometimes I think this happens in cases of extreme indoctrination too.
You find people who don't just misread/hear something you said, they
seem to be almost **incapable** of parsing the meaning, based on any
definition of an idea, other than their own, and most of them, a) can't
change their definitions, and b) turn out to have lived isolated from
alternate meanings, often to an unbelievable extent (no TV, no Internet,
no books not approved, no friends outside the indoctrination
environment, no contact with people who have differing views). It seems
to warp their perceptions so badly that its not like they can't
understand the word, but its like... how its sometimes described trying
to learn an Asian language, when all your concepts are Western. Some
things simply **don't** translate, and you end up trying to find a
definition you *do* have, which fits the new word, despite the fact that
no definition you possess fits the real meaning. And, in the case of
*some* people isolated, by faiths, from the rest of humanity, for a long
period of their early lives, unless they snuck stuff, or went to friends
houses and saw it, etc., its like having a Brit ask you where to find
the crisps, or if they can bum a fag. If you have no word for the
former, and your entire universe has never contained a version of the
later than involved tobacco... Only, the sort of problem I am talking
about is actually *worse*, like, "What does the word 'evidence' or
'theory' mean to these people?"
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:59:38 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>
>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> Yes, but that's one of the points of my definition for faith, that it's
>>> based on a certainty that can feel like knowledge that comes from
>>> within rather than from external sources.
>> Certainly. But that doesn't make it knowledge, any more than being
>> deluded into thinking you're Napoleon makes it "knowledge" that you are.
>
> A fair point, still will have to think about this more.
>
>>> There's a distinction between the two (I know this perhaps contradicts
>>> what I wrote earlier in this post even), but "faith" is kinda wishy-
>>> washy, a bit lower on the scale of certainty than "knowledge". There
>>> are some things that I have faith about, but I'm not bothered that the
>>> associated feeling that accompanies that isn't as strong as some things
>>> that I have a certainty about that I can't explain.
>> Still not "knowledge" in my book. "Random stuff I'm sure of without any
>> evidence" isn't knowledge.
>
> Many years ago, I had a very bizzare experience driving home from work.
> As I got on the highway headed home, things seemed wrong, and I had
> absolute certainty that if I went my normal route home, something really
> bad was going to happen. I could even pinpoint where the badness was
> likely to happen - getting off one highway onto another with a very short
> acceleration lane. It was very late at night, so not a lot of traffic.
>
> I changed my route home, I was that sure that something bad was going to
> happen.
>
> To this day, I know that I avoided a disaster that night. Can't explain
> it, but the feeling even thinking about it now is much, much stronger
> than mere faith or belief. I can't explain it. Intellectually, I know
> it's unlikely anything was going to happen, but 15-ish years later, I
> still can't shake the feeling that the change in my route home was the
> right decision.
>
> I suppose it's the sort of thing people who are more religious than me
> would attribute to "the protection of God" or something like that, but I
> don't. I just instinctively knew that I needed to go home a different
> route.
>
There are a lot of people with experiences like this and some who appear
at times to have accurate foreknowledge and knowledge (or perhaps)
perception. I don't think these experiences fit well into any theory of
how the mind
and brain work. But I think you may be using the word "instinctive", in
any but
a very loose sense, to these. Of course one of the common and, I
suppose, legitimate
uses of the word "instinctive" is to describe knowledge or feelings
(learned or unlearned)
that are so deeply ingrained in us that it doesn't occur to us to doubt
it --until after the event,
perhaps. But that use shouldn't be confused with the way a scientist or
a philosopher
would use the term.
David
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 02 Aug 2009 21:54:23 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> Instinctive certainties, however, are wrong more than half the time.
>
> Citation?
>
Uh.. Such numbers are also made up and wrong, more than half the time? lol
Seriously though, I don't know the actual number, or have a cite, but I
*have* seen cases dealing with cognition, where you can not only get
50-50 fails, but even 99% failures. One of the best examples is the,
"two people with a big sign walking rudely between two people talking.",
experiment they run, yearly, at some colleges, for their psychology
experiments. The one where they replace the person asking the question
of some random person with someone the wrong height, dressed wrong, in
clothing some **totally** different color, or even the wrong gender, and
like 90% of the people being "asked", never notice the substitution. The
brain just starts over where it was interrupted, so long as the
conversation "seems" to be the same, and ignore **everything** else. The
replacement could probably be standing their nude and the only reaction
you would get was, "Damn, I didn't realize when you came up that you
where nude.", not, "Where the hell did the original person I was talking
to go?"
The ease by which the mind can be tricked is actually quite scary.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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David H. Burns wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>
>> Did you look at the maps I posted, and the links to definitions? I
>> thought
>> "southern and midwestern United States where Protestant fundamentalism
>> is dominant" was pretty descriptive, didn't you?
>>
>
> So you mean that the "Bible Belt" is where "Protestant Fundamentalism"
> (another
> prejudicial and emotive term) is "dominant" (whatever you mean by that).
> Why call it the
> "Bible Belt" and what real evidence was used in drawing the maps? And
> who drew them? :)
>
> David
>
Same as most such data-
1. Self reporting of religious affiliation.
2. Lists of registered churches.
3. Stated views and objectives of the same, from their own mouths.
4. Self reporting of what the congregation members *in* those places
*say* they believe.
You know, that sort of stuff.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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