winter45

The correct url: http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/03/one-biologist-has-a-great-re...

Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_sc...

You think you are human; this paper seeks to disabuse you of that notion; its unexamined premise is that you are (maybe) one step above reptilian.

Meredith L. Patterson, author of "Okay, Feminism, it's time we had a talk about Empathy" points to her perceived lack of empathy from feminist critics because while they are talking about pervasive gender discrimination she is talking about how good she's had it - it's okay, she is autistic and has "blazingly single-minded focus" that 'just allows her to get on with her work regardless, and other's should too'.

How do you arrive at that conclusion?

Interesting reading.

More of the same at http://tinyurl.com/p3apx37

I'm not a math type, but it looks to me that mrb is saying that the number of computed bitcoin hashes outnumber an estimated number of all of the grains of sand on the world's beaches, and in the world's deserts, by a factor of 10^6th

http://tinyurl.com/hf9aybm http://tinyurl.com/qc59ora

Concerns about consciousness, intelligence,and Stephen Wolfram's use of the personal pronoun aside, I think it reasonable to presume that communication with early stage AI systems will desirably include the development of a vocabulary and syntax structured for 'precision'.

It does seem reasonable that if AIs evolve they will, in their evolution, develop constructs of 'reality' that Wolfram calls "Post Linguistics Emergent Concepts"(1) and that, if they do, until human languages develop deeply "precise" 'words' for each of these PLECs, Spock will have to translate for Kirk; Spock, talking to an AI, will be (mostly?) unintelligible to Kirk.

This raises the question can one reasonably believe that humans are capable of more than 'bare bones' precision in words? Can one be both Kirk and Spock?

On that note it is encouraging that Wolfram appears to think our systems may be (become?) a driving force in our evolution; we may evolve to a point the use of a precise or imprecise language is a moment-to-moment choice.

It may be that these precise and imprecise languages will develop into a single language.

Before that happens, if you were such a dual-linguist, which language would you prefer? Under what conditions would you switch? What would communication be like in a world where the commonly spoken language was a meld of precision and imprecision? Which of the two would have the most influence on the other? Past a certain stage are there generally distinctions in character?

(1) see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMviBl46dXg