All of k4ntico's Comments + Replies

while we think of the past as behind us and the future being in front of us they think of the past in front of them (because they can "see" it) and the future behind them (because they can't see it).

FYI I think like them - does it mean I am not part of us? :)

I regularly have disputes over these classical sequences of apish ancestors transforming into men because I place the more recent behind and following the less recent, while the dominant view is to have the modern man lead his ancestors ranked behind him most-recent-first.

2bigjeff5
You obviously don't know much about about the US and its politics, since roughly 50% of the American population agrees with you about the terribleness and destructiveness of war, and seek to eliminate it as quickly as possible. Part of the reason Obama's ratings are so poor in the US at the moment is because he has not pulled the troops out of Iraq/Afghanistan quickly enough. It would be worth spending some time in different parts of the US for a while, or even just reading news from multiple news agencies to get a better picture of the opinions of the American people. Pretty much all of the wars the US has ever been involved in have had this duplicitous nature. It's not so much a double standard as it is multiple personalities. Also, even after reading your post I have no idea what the US's position on war has to do with this discussion on evolution. I don't see why a discussion on evolution should necessarily contain within it any discussion on US military policy. Is there some reason we can't discuss evolution without discussion modern military activities? If so, I don't see it, and you didn't really point it out to me. Lastly, I don't see how we can have a discussion that doesn't involve population genetics, considering it is a critical component of modern evolutionary theory. It's like saying we shouldn't talk about space-time when discussing General Relativity. It really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I'm curious how a process that takes billions of iterations over millions of years to produce anything interesting can reasonably be considered anything but blind and slow. Trying new things at random is kinda the definition of blind in these situations (regardless of how efficient the selection mechansim may be), and taking three and a half billion years to great humans seems pretty slow, subjectively. What alternative process is it quicker and more insightful than? Certainly not a designer that did the job in 6 days (aka Intelligent Design/Creationism).

Probably from being born twin I've long entertained a strong intuition that may be written down as "suppose is typical your choice together with what determines it, and take responsibility for the result". There is a temptation to relate it to Kant's imperative, but there are problems (typically) illustrated by the fact that is obvious the relationship of my version to the topic of this page, while not Kant's.

What I don't understand is so much insistence that Occam's Razor applies only to explanations you address to God. Or else how do you avoid the observation that the simplicity of an explanation is a function of whom you are explaining to ? In the post, you actually touch on the issue, only to observe that there are difficulties interpreting Occam's Razor in the frame of explaining things to humans (in their own natural language), so let's transpose to a situation where humans are completely removed from the picture. Curiously enough, where the same issue oc... (read more)

The introduction, choice of example case, and drift of this post, makes me recall my own "political cartooning" of Bush 10 years ago which is just perfect in this context. It takes the form of the claim that the Python computer language shell passed (a fascinating approximation to) the Turing test with the following patriotic responses to inquiries :

| >>> 'USA' in 'CRUSADE'

| True

| >>> filter(lambda W : W not in 'ILLITERATE','BULLSHIT')

| 'BUSH'

I think it solves lots of problems to view the matter of intelligence as a property of communications rather than one of agents. Of course, this is just a matter of focus, in order to clarify the idea you'll have to refer to agents. Receiving agents first of all, as producing agents are less of a necessity :) Which is in line with the main virtue of the move, that is to reframe all debates and research on intelligence that got naturally promoted by the primitive concern of comparing agent intelligence - to reframe them as background to the real problem whi... (read more)