What's the point of the up/down votes in the first place? If the object is reducing bias, doesn't making commenting a popularity contest run counter to this purpose?

All analogies are suspect, but if I had to choose one I'd say physics' theories--at best--are if anything like code that returns the Fibonacci sequence through a specified range. The theories give us a formula we can use to make certain predictions, in some cases with arbitrary precision. Video, losslessly- or lossy-compressed, is still video. Whereas

fib n = take n fiblist where fiblist = 0:1:(zipWith (+) fiblist (tail fiblist))

is not a bag holing the entire Fibonacci sequence, waiting for us to compress it so we can look at a slightly more pixelated version of the actual piece.

Also, I don't think it makes sense to say math is part of nature (except in the sense everything is part of nature), though it may be that math is a psychological analogy to some feature of nature--like vision is an analogy to part of the EM spectrum. It would be a strange coincidence otherwise, considering how useful math is helping us make certain predictions. At the same time, many features of nature are utterly unpredictable, so either math only images select parts--we can't see x-ray--or we haven't fully understood how to use mathematics yet.

Incidentally, I think it is true that math--all our secular, materialist pretense aside--is still widely felt to have magical properties. In this regard Descartes' god is still with us.

Yes, it's peculiar that most people think Lord of the Flies model used in mass schooling is the appropriate model for the socialization of children.

Haskell (probably the language most likely to be used for a universe simulation, at least at present technology levels) >follows lazy evaluation: a value is not calculated unless it is used.

In that case, why does the simulation need to be running all the time? Wouldn't one just ask the fancy, lambda-derived software to render whatever specific event one wanted to see?

If on the other hand wholeuniversefromtimeimmemorial() needs to execute every time, which of course assumes a loophole gets found to infinitely add information to the host universe, then presumably every possible argument (which includes the program's own code--itself a constituent of the universe being simulated) would be needed by function anyway, so why not strict evaluation?

And both of these cases still assume we handle time in a common sense fashion. According to relativity, time is intertwined with the other dimensions, and these dimensions in turn are an artifact of our particular universe, distinctive characteristics created at the Big Bang along with everything else. Therefore, it then seems likely givemethewholeuniverse() would have to execute everything at once--more precisely, would have to excite outside of time--to accurately simulate the universe (or simulation thereof) we observe. Even functional programming has to carry out steps one after the other, requiring a universe with a time dimension, even if the logic to this order is different from that of traditional imperative paradigms.

I'm in a similar boat; also starting with Python. Python is intuitive and flexible, which makes it easy to learn but also, in a sense easy to avoid understating how a language actually works. In addition I'm now learning Java and OCaml.

Java isn't a pretty language but it's widely used and a relatively easy transition from Python. But it, I find, makes the philosophy behind object oriented programing much more explicit; forcing the developer to create objects from scratch even to accomplish basic tasks.

OCaml is useful because of the level of discipline it imposes on the programer, e.g. not being able to mix an integer with a floating point, or even--strictly speaking--being able to convert one to another. It forces one to get it right the first time, contra Python's more anything goes, fix it in debugging approach. It also has features like lazy evaluation and function programing, not supported at all in the case of the former (as far as I know) and as a kind of add on in the case of the latter, by Python. Even if you never need or want these features experience with them goes some way to really understating what programs are fundamentally.

Yes. What makes Watson exciting is that it can understand text well enough to prepare the text as inputs for expert systems; in medicine, for example, most expert systems needed an expert as I/O, and so they were of limited usefulness.

Watson is also backed by a huge corporation, which makes it easier to surmount obstacles like "but doctors don't like competition."

It always seemed to me "externality" was just a euphemism to cover up the fact that capitalist enterprise requires <em>massive</em>--not a hand out here or there--state support (and planning) to functional at all. The US is really kind of the odd ball in that we pretend this isn't the case, dressing up subsidy as defense spending or whatever. In Japan, e.g., they just take your money and give it strait to Toyota without all the pretense. At any rate anyone who opposes central planing and "big government" also opposes capitalism in it's extant form.

What would that prove? That a society that values high IQ rewards people with high IQs.

You do realise that it's rare for co-workers to know each other's IQs? Obviously there's a third thing that both IQ and success correlate with.

Let's say IQ test do correlate with success (as measured by conventional standards). What would that prove? That a society that values high IQ rewards people with high IQs. The relevant question is Is IQ a valid measure of intelligence? Well, good luck defining intelligence in a scientifically meaningful way.

"Social intelligence", oh boy... At this point we're just giving common sense wisdoms--flattery gets you everywhere/the socially adept rise higher in social contexts etc--a lacquer of scientistic jargon.

Several thoughts:

a) Isn't the solution to qualify the "libertarian argument" by limiting it's scope to "any terms that don't break the law"? (Of course "libertarian" is a poor adjective choice since a legal contract very much relies on a powerful state backing the enforcement of any breach to mean anything--the concept of a libertarian contract is an oxymoron.)

b) What do suspected ulterior motives on the part of those advancing the "libertarian argument" or the fact that sincere libertarians are a fringe minority have to do with the argument's logical validity?

c) In reality, in the case of marriage, the state isn't merely a neutral enforcer but a party to the contract <em>as well as the contract's enforcer</em>. That is to say, the married couple's rights and responsibilities with respect to the state are modified by the contract. In particular, the way they are taxed changes; so may citizenship or residency status. And it also affects a couple's relationship to fourth parties--e.g., if Bob is married to Ron, Ron may, in some cases, be held liable for Bob's debts.