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cgmg

> to use a real manly brush to do a real manly job

What does manliness have to do with this?

> (and also enabling things like money laundering, drug trafficking, etc.).

If you're trying to take a dig at blockchain technology for its decentralized nature and ability to circumvent government controls, you should be aware that this is considered a good thing. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16702684, for instance. The recent SESTA/FOSTA debacle is one example of why such decentralized networks are needed.

> In technological terms, it is old.

Doubtful. In what sense is it 'old'?

In the words of Roy Amara: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

Re:OpenBazaar 2.0, powered by IPFS on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @11:19PM (#16704268)
International mail is far from being a distributed system like OpenBazaar.
Re:OpenBazaar 2.0, powered by IPFS on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @09:11PM (#16703708)
The recent SESTA/FOSTA debacle is just one example of why such decentralized networks are needed.
Re:OpenBazaar 2.0, powered by IPFS on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @08:49PM (#16703585)
Why do you think that is damning?
Re:Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016) on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @01:35PM (#16699872)
> you rarely engage politically with the world

Why do you think arguing on social media is the only or even best way to engage politically with the world?

> So I'm left confused by your apparent inability to do the same.

Inability to do what?

> Android bastardized Java

> I feel real damage has been done to the health of the Java ecosystem by having billions of devices run fragmented Java-but-not-Java

Your feelings are not a legal basis for punishment.

Re:Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015) on Monday March 26, 2018 @02:43PM (#16681341)
> The "easy-ness" diminishes the quality of interaction.

For you, maybe. For me and others, it makes it easier to organize events and coordinate meetings with friends. Why do you assume your experience is universal? It might be a problem in your circle, but that doesn’t mean it is in everyone else’s.

Re:It all made sense when we found out we were autistic on Monday March 26, 2018 @12:49PM (#16680298)
> Even to this day there are a lot of things that "normal" people do that are utterly foreign to me, like going to clubs or watching sports on TV. My idea of a good time is reading up on quantum mechanics or the ordinal hierarchy.

These are not signs of Asperger’s.

Re:Personal Reason for Hating Facebook (2015) on Monday March 26, 2018 @12:28PM (#16680077)
I’m not sure what you’re trying to argue here. So your value proposition is to make it harder to organize events and find out what’s going on?
So, guilty until proven innocent?
Re:The Declining Value of a CS Master's Degree (2013) on Friday March 23, 2018 @04:25AM (#16656075)
> The Immigration Act of 1990 limits to 65,000 the number of foreign nationals who may be issued a visa or otherwise provided H-1B status each fiscal year (FY). An additional 20,000 H-1Bs are available to foreign nationals holding a master's or higher degree from U.S. universities.

> Those who have the U.S. master's exemption have two chances to be selected in the lottery: first, a lottery is held to award the 20,000 visas available to master's degree holders, and those not selected are then entered in the regular lottery for the other 65,000 visas. Those without a U.S. master's are entered only in the second, regular, lottery.

That is definitely a non-negligible advantage.

Re:Users Abandon Facebook After Cambridge Analytica Findings on Wednesday March 21, 2018 @10:58PM (#16645301)
Do you mind sharing what browser extension this is?
Re:Blocklist Facebook domains on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @08:29PM (#16634161)
Not sure why you were downvoted, but this is correct. Facebook (or anyone else) can easily create more domains.
Re:Macular degeneration: 'I've been given my sight back' on Tuesday March 20, 2018 @02:43PM (#16631339)
> I'm going to guess this dodge is here because you support, or at least wish to avoid antagonising, people who believe that killing other people is a legitimate criminal punishment and so somehow it's not "murder" if the state chooses to do it. Although it's also possible you condone extra-judicial killing, with the same dodge, it's OK to torture somebody to death so long as you know, they're bad guys...

I don't believe killing an embryo is murder, but this comment is a red herring. You're claiming it's possible that ¬innocent ∧ murder. But this is entirely consistent with mjh2539's claim that innocent → murder. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent.

Re:The Best Books on the Philosophy of Mind on Monday March 19, 2018 @11:11PM (#16625730)
This comment is relevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/5hmduk/prof_sch....

> For example, nuclear energy is a real physical phenonenon. It doesn't exist because of various abstract relations - i.e., simulating a nuclear reactor in a computer doesn't mean you have nuclear energy. We know that matter of a specific kind arranged in a specific way creates nuclear energy.

> do strong AI proponents think that causal relationships must be involved to run a program to make it conscious? Or is it enough for the abstract relationships to exist? For example, how about a computer program written down on a piece of paper? Yes or no? Why is the physical running of it important? If so, please explain the physics of how running it in dominoes, water valves or transistors all produce the same phenomenon. If not, does this mean that any abstract set of relations is also conscious - the program on a piece of paper? Doesn't that then also mean that there are an infinitude of consciousnesses since an infinitude of abstract relations exist between all of the bits of matter in the universe?

Analogy: Simulating fluid dynamics on a computer does not mean the computer becomes wet. Simulating a black hole on a computer does not mean the computer starts curving the spacetime around it. Simulating an electric field on a computer does not mean the computer creates an electric field. Simulating a brain on a computer may or may not mean the computer creates consciousness.

Re:The Best Books on the Philosophy of Mind on Monday March 19, 2018 @10:52PM (#16625646)
What does all of this have to do with panpsychism?
Re:The Best Books on the Philosophy of Mind on Monday March 19, 2018 @10:50PM (#16625637)
> Why do you think that?

Your comment implies philosophers think panpsychism is true because it brings them "comfort" (i.e. your example "I want to be loved by a god and live forever"), which is a ridiculous claim you haven't provided any evidence for. If you are going to accuse someone, especially a professional philosopher, of basing their views on pure wishful thinking, you better be damn sure you can back that up.

Your comment also claims panpsychism is "injecting the same old beliefs (?) with new language (?) into whatever narrowing gaps (?) exist in current theories". What is this even supposed to mean?

Why should the person who profits most be held the most responsible? Suppose the person in charge of safety clearance makes less money than the original developer. How does that shift responsibility to the developer, as opposed to the situation where the developer makes less money?
Re:#deletefacebook on Monday March 19, 2018 @01:35PM (#16620674)
I stand corrected.
Re:#deletefacebook on Monday March 19, 2018 @12:30PM (#16619725)
Obama was a senator for 13 years before being elected president.
Re:The Best Books on the Philosophy of Mind on Sunday March 18, 2018 @01:51PM (#16613184)
Why do you think panpsychism "ought to be treated as a reductio"?

Why do you believe panpsychism deserves less time than it receives?

Re:The Best Books on the Philosophy of Mind on Sunday March 18, 2018 @12:54PM (#16612836)
> The mind consists of atoms and molecules.

This is a type error. It's like saying the number 3 is made of atoms and molecules, or Wednesday is made of atoms and molecules.

Re:The Best Books on the Philosophy of Mind on Sunday March 18, 2018 @12:51PM (#16612822)
> Sadly, there are very talented contemporary philosophers who believe in panpsychism.

What saddens you about this?

Re:The Best Books on the Philosophy of Mind on Sunday March 18, 2018 @12:48PM (#16612807)
What does this have to do with panpsychism? The contents of your comment lead me to suspect you didn't even know what panpsychism was when you wrote it.
Re:Deep Quaternion Networks (2017) [pdf] on Sunday March 18, 2018 @02:01AM (#16610639)
In summary: Just as the complex numbers are defined by adding a new element i such that i^2 = -1, the quaternions are defined by adding elements i, j, k such that i^2 = j^2 = k^2 = ijk = -1.
> I am sure once they have died

Just because you want them to “die” doesn’t mean they will.

Re:Tail Recursion Tactics: Fibonacci on Saturday March 10, 2018 @03:34PM (#16560025)
I agree. The scanl version is even more elegant:

  fibs = 0 : scanl (+) 1 fibs
Replacing 0 with 2 yields the Lucas numbers:

  lucas = 2 : scanl (+) 1 lucas

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