BTW, significant data was withheld in the examples given : a) how many dips do you get at the jellybeans ? Do the red ones taste better ? What is their market value with the current weak dollar ? b) 10,000 people overall or 10,000 infected people ? Degree of infectiousness of the disease ? But that's what the affect heuristic is for : taking decisions in situations of incomplete data. 150 people is a single bounded set, 98% of x people sounds as though it just might be a replicable set. Go for it.

Ha, Spock vs McCoy. I think Kirk's position was that it's the affect heuristic that makes us warm, cuddly, and human, data processors, even if it can be faulted in some artificial situations.. This ties in with the other thread about how far we look down possible chains of results in deciding on an action. We're wired to look to proximal results with high affect, and I'm all for it.

Hi Richard, any relation to the punch card guy ? IBM paid my salary for 35 years. Someone in one of these threads got squashed flatter than a pancake for supposedly confusing maps and territories, so let's be careful with models of reality. When I say 'dependant on usefulness', I just meant that the selectivity and level of detail of the map would depend on what you want to use it for. Not much point in going to the doctor and telling him the 'truth' about my finger, which would involve energy fields and dark matter, if what I want from him is a sticking plaster. Lovely article here on what the Romans thought was important in a map, and why it doesn't look like one that we'd find useful, or 'truthful', today. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7113810.stm

I'm left in 'awe and wonder' at the literalism of the debates going on here. The OT is a bunch of mythology and folklore, so, what else is new ? The NT is a heterogenous collection of Roman imperial propaganda, Jewish apocalyptic propaganda, and perhaps, some vague recollections of what a good man once said. So ? What does any of that have to do with logical categories ? Eliezar is guilty, as Anna pointed out, of mixing up the crudest OT literalism with any and every other level of religious experience and expression. I understand that, he was traumatised at age 5. Perhaps that also explains the violence of his reaction to Anna. The only interesting debate on the 'singulsrity' of religion is exactly the same debate as that on the 'singularity' of consciousness. Either there is a 'watcher', in the void, behind all thought and image, which constitutes the irreducible core of my consciousness , as for instance Daniel Dennett would not agree, or there is not. If there is, then there is a basis for religion. If there is not, then there is a basis for saying that we will never know final causes nor final intents, and what the hell.

'Scuse me, but isn't this trivial ? Both pragmatic and epistemic instances depend on available information. If you drive to Carrefour, you need some information to tell you they're out of chocolate. And to see the 'Out of chocolate' sign, you need to have driven to Carrefour. So, dear friends, both instances depend on (a) purpose (b) information relative to the achievability of the purpose. Unless of course your purpose is 'enculage des mouches', in which case, don't go to Carrefour. Go to Tesco. PS Truth does not reduce to usefulness. Truth is a relative concept dependant on usefulness. I asked Schrodinger's cat to contribute but she was busy with her Whiskas.

Forgive me for not picking up on the irony of including corporations and nanodevices in the same sentence. Eliezer is obviously correct in that corporations don't evolve because they don't replicate. A childish wish to gloat has to be held in check so as not to name and shame all those 'child' corporations whose DNA is specifically contrary to their parents'. The anti-wish list for nanodevices, on the other hand, is relevant and necessary. However, it is also entirely superfluous, as we all know, thanks to Dr Denning, that we are in a deterministic universe and that 'Que sera, sera'. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

'Genocide' refers to intentions rather than consequences, but it seems to me just fine to have a National Native American Genocide Day to remind us that sometimes consequences should have been taken into consideration. Even if they weren't, which of course is another question. A bit like Iraq.. (oops !! No Damn !!!! I didn't mean to say that !!!). So let's have a nice polite debate on the Instrumental Values and the Terminal Values in the Iraq war.. I've looked hard but not found any leaky generalisations in the area.....

Eliezar, something of a 'rant' ? 'the people who invented the Old Testament stories could make up pretty much anything they liked'.... overlooking that we're talking about oral traditions committed to writing centuries later. Of course the domain covered by the books of the old testament covers law, social customs, and a whole bunch of stuff which is now the domain of other institutions. Of course ideas have moved on in most of those domains. I'd be more interested in reading your ideas about why the fears, insecurities, and identitiy issues so many of us face in an age of increasing change and complexity are leading to a 'back to the 17thC', 'back to the womb' type increase in clinging to both 'believing' and 'believing in' this particular dragon in the garage. This is not just a US phenomenon, we're seeing it in the UK also. Derision won't help, nor, most certainly, will logical argument.

mtc, you could make a few volumes of Dilbert your required reading, to inform your faith in the 'sane corporation'. In fact, in such high powered company, I'm surprised to see non-qualified discussion of the intentionality of any organisation. Organisations don't have intentionality, individuals do (perhaps... if we don't let the Evolutionary Psychology crowd take it away from us..). As all Eliezer's anecdotes illustrate, these get lost in the wash of large numbers and multiple levels, networks, and gridlocks, so we are left with the dross of the latest organisational mantra which everyone gives lip service to and no-one believes. It is trivial to observe that the dominant intentionalities will be those of the most powerful individuals, but these also are destined to be diluted and lost. However, my personal believe is that inadequate individuation (accepting cultural norms of need and intentionality) is a far bigger problem than such intentionality as we have getting lost. Let's first work out who we are and what we have to say before worrying about our voice getting lost.