That part of the book (Contact) really bugged me. The definition of pi is what determines the digits of pi, FULL STOP. There's no room whatsoever, for any sort of agent to 'leave a message' in those digits. I would…
Why is no one looking at the chance-giver, and considering his motive? One would reasonably assume he'd like to minimize the payout -- so he'd offer you the chance to switch only if you had chosen the richer envelope.…
Recognizing one's subjective experience (SE), entails knowing for certain that it exists. That true statement is definitely not an argument in favor SE; it would be of no evidentiary value to a zombie, for example. If…
Dennett's position makes perfect sense -- if Dennett is a zombie. For a zombie, to whom subjective experience (SE) is not even a thing, the "hard problem" can only mean: why do people talk about SE? So that's what they…
If you start with material mechanisms, you'll never get subjective experience (SE) as a conclusion. Start instead with SE, and then any sort of material universe can be the contents of it.
"you don't have conscious experience, you only think you do." That's what illusionism, the position of Keith Frankish, asserts. Dennett mostly seems to support it, as you note, but more equivocally than Frankish. For…
One somewhat incremental approach, is called a hypercycle: several simple self replicators "form an alliance" wherein they promote each other's self replication. Not specific to RNA. And I'm not a biologist.
I read (I forget where) that the Hindenburg's skin is where it started burning. The skin was fabric, painted with flammable shellac, and the shellac contained a lot of aluminum powder.
Thanks for replying, skohan! Since this item has moved far off the front page, I'm guessing that just about nobody else will be seeing whatever else we write here. If you wish, you can email me at gwkangas@ku.edu .…
> ...the need some people seem to have to reach for an extra-physical domain for the mind to exist in. It's because subjective experience (SE) cannot even be defined in physical terms. Or any terms, really. Instead of…
I believe Chicken & Cyclone both: ..transpile to C for speed, ..have an interpreter (REPL) for convenience, ..use *Cheney on the MTA* to support: ....continuations ....1st generation of GC. If I'm wrong, thx in advance…
The 6809 was 8 bits, in the same way Z80 and 6502 and 6800 were: 8 bit data bus, 16 bit address bus. It had a few 16 bit instructions: arithmetic on data in registers, or loading/storing a 16 bit register (8 bits at a…
I had an 8-bit micro, the Tandy (i.e. Radio Shack) Color Computer ("CoCo"), made in the mid 80s. I got an optional OS for it, called "OS9" but unrelated to Apple's OS9 (which came later). OS9 had capabilities very…
Suggestion: to make the tree self-similar at the vertex point, use [x, y] = t * [cos, sin] ( k * ln(t) ). The constant k determines the tightness of the spiral winding. Another way to describe it: the spiral's uphill…
Oops! I used He's atomic number (2) instead of its atomic mass (usually 4). I believe deuterium fusion events mostly produce He4, occasionally He3 + neutron. So we'd actually produce between 3 and 4 grams.
It would cost a fuck ton! Here's how I figure it: Each fusion event makes one He atom and releases about 17 MeV of fusion energy. Since (one mole) X (one eV) = ~100,000 Joules, fusing one mole (2 grams) of He would…
>This one always stumps people. A good way to "unstump" such people, is to ask, "Is there such a thing, as what it's like to be you? When Thomas Nagel used some such phrase in his essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", a…
That part of the book (Contact) really bugged me. The definition of pi is what determines the digits of pi, FULL STOP. There's no room whatsoever, for any sort of agent to 'leave a message' in those digits. I would…
Why is no one looking at the chance-giver, and considering his motive? One would reasonably assume he'd like to minimize the payout -- so he'd offer you the chance to switch only if you had chosen the richer envelope.…
Recognizing one's subjective experience (SE), entails knowing for certain that it exists. That true statement is definitely not an argument in favor SE; it would be of no evidentiary value to a zombie, for example. If…
Dennett's position makes perfect sense -- if Dennett is a zombie. For a zombie, to whom subjective experience (SE) is not even a thing, the "hard problem" can only mean: why do people talk about SE? So that's what they…
If you start with material mechanisms, you'll never get subjective experience (SE) as a conclusion. Start instead with SE, and then any sort of material universe can be the contents of it.
"you don't have conscious experience, you only think you do." That's what illusionism, the position of Keith Frankish, asserts. Dennett mostly seems to support it, as you note, but more equivocally than Frankish. For…
One somewhat incremental approach, is called a hypercycle: several simple self replicators "form an alliance" wherein they promote each other's self replication. Not specific to RNA. And I'm not a biologist.
I read (I forget where) that the Hindenburg's skin is where it started burning. The skin was fabric, painted with flammable shellac, and the shellac contained a lot of aluminum powder.
Thanks for replying, skohan! Since this item has moved far off the front page, I'm guessing that just about nobody else will be seeing whatever else we write here. If you wish, you can email me at gwkangas@ku.edu .…
> ...the need some people seem to have to reach for an extra-physical domain for the mind to exist in. It's because subjective experience (SE) cannot even be defined in physical terms. Or any terms, really. Instead of…
I believe Chicken & Cyclone both: ..transpile to C for speed, ..have an interpreter (REPL) for convenience, ..use *Cheney on the MTA* to support: ....continuations ....1st generation of GC. If I'm wrong, thx in advance…
The 6809 was 8 bits, in the same way Z80 and 6502 and 6800 were: 8 bit data bus, 16 bit address bus. It had a few 16 bit instructions: arithmetic on data in registers, or loading/storing a 16 bit register (8 bits at a…
I had an 8-bit micro, the Tandy (i.e. Radio Shack) Color Computer ("CoCo"), made in the mid 80s. I got an optional OS for it, called "OS9" but unrelated to Apple's OS9 (which came later). OS9 had capabilities very…
Suggestion: to make the tree self-similar at the vertex point, use [x, y] = t * [cos, sin] ( k * ln(t) ). The constant k determines the tightness of the spiral winding. Another way to describe it: the spiral's uphill…
Oops! I used He's atomic number (2) instead of its atomic mass (usually 4). I believe deuterium fusion events mostly produce He4, occasionally He3 + neutron. So we'd actually produce between 3 and 4 grams.
It would cost a fuck ton! Here's how I figure it: Each fusion event makes one He atom and releases about 17 MeV of fusion energy. Since (one mole) X (one eV) = ~100,000 Joules, fusing one mole (2 grams) of He would…
>This one always stumps people. A good way to "unstump" such people, is to ask, "Is there such a thing, as what it's like to be you? When Thomas Nagel used some such phrase in his essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", a…