Re: Modality Independence

[Craig Weinberg]

On Friday, March 21, 2014 2:11:17 PM UTC-4, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:
>
>
>
> On Friday, March 21, 2014 12:42:13 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>
>> I'm not so much interested in defining CTM, as in exploding the 
>> assumptions from which CTM and other mechanistic, information-theoretical 
>> models of consciousness arise.
>>
>
> OK.  Would you mind defining which assumptions you're thinking of?
>

The assumptions that forms and functions can exist independently of 
perception and participation.
 

>  
>
>>  
>>
>>>  
>>>
 They don't reduce to a binary code like we would expect them to in CTM.

>>>
>>> That is not a prediction of CTM.  Here's a relevant quote from the 
>>> Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Turing himself seems to have been of 
>>> the opinion that a machine operating in this way would literally be doing 
>>> the same things that the human performing computations is doing—that it 
>>> would be 'duplicating' what the human computer does. But other writers have 
>>> suggested that what the computer does is merely a 'simulation' of what the 
>>> human computer does: a reproduction of human-level performance, perhaps 
>>> through a set of steps that is [at] some level isomorphic to those the 
>>> human undertakes, but not in such a fashion as to constitute doing the same 
>>> thing in all relevant respects."
>>>
>>
>> Again, either way the development of modality-dependence in non-humans 
>> and modality-independence in humans does not support the idea that 
>> consciousness is driven by logic and computation. 
>>
>
> Right, modality (in)dependent communication neither supports nor opposes 
> the idea that consciousness is computation.  
>

No, the fact that modality independent communication does not appear until 
human experience does oppose the idea that consciousness is computation, 
since computation is by definition modality independent.
 

> In CTM, brains doing modality-dependent computations would have minds 
> experiencing sense-data qualia, and brains doing modality-independent 
> computations would have minds experiencing abstract qualia.
>
> Argh, CTM has nothing to do with brains. That would be a BTM.

Craig
 

> -Gabe
>

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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[spudboy100]

I understand where you're coming from, Telmo, and yes, the most recent study 
from a NASA sponsored climate analysis does indicate that we are doomed (their 
wording not mine) and I disagree of course. Reducing energy consumption can get 
us through the short term, but the intermediate term, and longer term, 
surrenders the Third World to permanent poverty. Supplying them with clean 
tech, that's cheap, or less laborious then wood gathering and forest chopping, 
seems to be the better path. Geoengineering is interesting, but it terrifies 
me. Who do we trust, what experts, what leaders, and what if they are wrong? 
Why should we trust them, given the ruling classes incongruous political 
behavior, versus their language of 'emergency' cause me to doubt their 
trustworthiness.  

- Given that environmentalists are claiming that it might even be too late to 
advert disaster, why aren't we seriously considering geoengineering approaches, 
as the one proposed by Nathan Myhrvold, which can be easily and cheaply tested 
and turned off at any moment?




-Original Message-
From: Telmo Menezes 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Fri, Mar 21, 2014 12:59 pm
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating







On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:






2014-03-21 17:19 GMT+01:00 John Clark :







On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:












 

The thing I most want to know about  RCP4.5 is what RCP stands for, Google 
seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform" but that doesn't sound quite right. 
It must be pretty obscure, Wikipedia has never heard of RCP  either.









For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction" 




I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure it's not 
"Representative Concentration Pathways"?  





I'm pretty sure you must be dumb as dumb if you really think this... As I see 
we are in a thread talking about climate...




This thread seems to be mostly about politics. To be fair, John seems to be in 
the minority here in wanting to discuss this from a scientific and 
technological perspective.


He raises a number of points that I have raised myself in previous discussions. 
Instead of focusing on such issues, pop culture distractions (Fox News etc.) 
and political tribalism seem to get all of the attention.


- Given the number of climate models and the fact that the majority of them 
failed to predict the climate of the last decade, how confident can we be in 
further predictions?


- With current technology, how much would we have to shrink the global energy 
budget to transition to sustainable sources? What would the human impact of 
that be? This is too serious an issue for wishful thinking. Theres 7 billion of 
us and counting. We need hard numbers here, that take into account the energy 
investment necessary to bootstrap the renewable sources, their efficiency and 
so on.


- What is the probability that a climate catastrophe awaits us vs. the 
probability that an abrupt attempt to convert to sustainable sources would 
create a human catastrophe itself?


- Given that environmentalists are claiming that it might even be too late to 
advert disaster, why aren't we seriously considering geoengineering approaches, 
as the one proposed by Nathan Myhrvold, which can be easily and cheaply tested 
and turned off at any moment?


Also this:
http://theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/328841/why-germanys-nuclear-phase-out-leading-more-coal-burning



Telmo.


 


 using google correctly and not as an asshole... you would have found what you 
were looking for (if you genuinely were looking for it... but you weren't, you 
were trolling as usual). So blabla as usual... no point arguing with you.

 


Wikipedia lists 21 possible meanings of the acronym "RCP" and that's the only 
one that has anything at all to do with the environment. Wikipedia has never 
heard of "Regional Climate Prediction".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCP





> (And I didn't know it before doing the search)




Who did?
 



>  0.5 second of searching on google... and the great John was unable to do it




And still is. 


 John K Clark








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-- 

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy Batty/Rutger 
Hauer)




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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[spudboy100]

I agree with JM on this, because it appears that the higher the quality of 
life, the tendency is for selecting reduced family sizes. But turning away from 
technology and somehow using it sustainably, would, I believe wind up with a 
redistribution of wealth, just using the tech we have now, and siphoning it 
away from the poor to the middle serfs and the rich. Its wiser to use better 
technology and make it attractive (cheaper) for everyone to use. It would 
reduce effluence, and make people's lives better. 


-Original Message-
From: Jesse Mazer 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Fri, Mar 21, 2014 11:49 am
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating





On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 7:20 AM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

Spud,


But reducing human overpopulation IS the main problem facing the planet, the 
ecosystem, and the human species itself.


Assuming that increasing technology will somehow solve the problem is, I fear, 
naive. It is precisely the use of more and more powerful technology that has 
resulted in the exponential destruction of the environment by the exponentially 
increasing number of humans.


So it's not better technology we need, but the wisdom to use it sustainably


Edgar



Most demographers project that the population will level off at around 10 
billion, because of various trends that tend to reduce the number of children 
like populations becoming more urban and women being more educated--see 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Projections for some info. Of 
course predicting human behavior is never purely scientific and there are some 
who think this projection is too optimistic, see 
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/what_if_experts_are_wrong_on_world_population_growth/2444/


Jesse


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Re: Tegmark and UDA

[Gabriel Bodeen]

Others worth a look:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.0589 "Is Eternal Inflation Past-Eternal? And What 
if It Is?" Susskind
http://arxiv.org/abs/0712.0571 "Eternal Inflation, past and future" Aguirre

-Gabe

On Friday, March 21, 2014 2:14:41 PM UTC-5, ronaldheld wrote:
>
> Bruno, I have read several over the years but do not save them. Here is 
> the latest one that I read: 
> http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.1599
> Ronald
>  
> Wednesday, March 19, 2014 7:37:52 PM UTC-4, ronaldheld wrote:
>
>> Assuming chaotic inflation there is no consensus that the multiverse 
>> is past infinite but some papers have try to show it is do. 
>>  Ronald 
>>
>

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Re: Tegmark and UDA

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Mar 2014, at 20:14, ronaldheld wrote:

Bruno, I have read several over the years but do not save them. Here  
is the latest one that I read:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.1599
Ronald


Thanks Ronald, I will take a look.




Wednesday, March 19, 2014 7:37:52 PM UTC-4, ronaldheld wrote:
Assuming chaotic inflation there is no consensus that the multiverse
is past infinite but some papers have try to show it is do.
 Ronald

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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Chris de Morsella]

 From: meekerdb 
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 9:10 PM
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
 


On 3/21/2014 9:59 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:


>
>
>
>
>On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>2014-03-21 17:19 GMT+01:00 John Clark : 
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:
>>>
>>>

>>> 
>>The thing I most want to know about  RCP4.5 is what RCP stands for, 
>>Google seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform" but that doesn't sound 
>>quite right. It must be pretty obscure, Wikipedia has never heard of RCP  
>>either.
>>


For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction" 
>>>
>>>
>>>I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure it's not 
>>>"Representative Concentration Pathways"?  
>>
>>
>>I'm pretty sure you must be dumb as dumb if you really think this... As I see 
>>we are in a thread talking about climate...
>
>
>>>This thread seems to be mostly about politics. To be fair, John seems to be 
>>>in the minority here in wanting to discuss this from a scientific and 
>>>technological perspective.
>
>
>I must disagree with you on this. John injects highly charged political views 
>-- such as insinuating that environmentalists are genocidal maniacs for 
>example, who advocate genocide because of their "green" ideology -- according 
>to his view, not mine. There is nothing scientific about that. I have tried on 
>numerous occasions to get John to engage on specifics -- such as the depletion 
>rates of fracked wells. He avoids talking about hard numbers and returns to 
>his fall back position of equating environmentalists with 1) fools 2) 
>genocidal maniacs 3) Stalinists
>That is not what I would characterize as an attempt to have a reasonable 
>discussion.
>
>
>
>
>>>He raises a number of points that I have raised myself in previous 
>>>discussions. Instead of focusing on such issues, pop culture distractions 
>>>(Fox News etc.) and political tribalism seem to get all of the attention.
>
>
>He also has so far very much avoided addressing the data on the decline rates 
>of fossil energy supplies; the rapidly falling return of capital invested for 
>new fossil energy projects (both traditional and tar and shale); as well as 
>the rapidly falling EROI for these projects.
>
>
>John has an ideological perspective that dominates his replies on this thread. 
>
>
>- Given the number of climate models and the fact that the majority of them 
>failed to predict the climate of the last decade, how confident can we be in 
>further predictions?
"Failed" is a relative term and "decade" is too short to constitute
climate.  So what exactly do you mean by "failed".  My view is that
they were relatively accurate about some things and not so accurate
about others.  They all include a calculated range of uncertainty. 
Have they "failed" if the observed weather is withing the range of
uncertainty.  The deniers and obfuscators seize on uncertainty as an
obstruction to action, but uncertainty cuts both ways.

As for further predictions, it's not as if we have to pick one (or a
set) of these models and make THE prediction.  What we need to do is
figure out why they were inaccurate in to some vaiables and improve
the models.  As has been pointed out, the effect of clouds is a
major source of uncertainty.  Clouds are generally much smaller than
the grid size of GCMs, ~100Km square, and so it's not practical to
directly model them within a simulation.  The technique has been to
use separate models just of cloud formation and dissipation to
determine which GCM state would produce or dissipate clouds.  Those
models are being improved by including the effects of aerosols and
freezing/thawing.  

Another source of uncertainty in *weather* is how the extra energy
absorbed due to greenhouse gases is distributed.  How much goes into
warming the ocean vs the atmosphere?  Model projections have to make
assumptions about human activity too.




>
>- With current technology, how much would we have to shrink the global energy 
>budget to transition to sustainable sources? 
>>Read Donald McKay's book "Without Hot Air", which is free online at
withouthotair.org.  He has detailed estimates of what it would take
for the U.K. to almost eliminate fossil fuel consumption and still
retain the same standard of living.  It takes a lot of change, but
it is less per capita than, for example, the U.S. war in Iraq over a
time scale of a few decades.

Agreed -- the several trillion dollars that the Iraq war will end up costing 
the US over the next decades as the long term costs of veteran disability care 
begin adding up -- presents a massive opportunity cost. That same treasure 
could have literally transformed the U

Re: Entropy and curved spacetime

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Mar 2014, at 20:00, John Clark wrote:


On 18 Mar 2014, at 22:33, LizR wrote:

> Am I right in assuming that in a quantum mechanical universe you  
can trace the history backwards?


Absolutely not because in Quantum mechanics 2 very different states  
can evolve into the exact same state.


You still confuse the 1-view and the 3-view, but in the QM context.

The wave equation is deterministic *and* reversible. So what you say  
is false in the 3p picture.


But it is correct in the 1p picture, where each subject is unaware of  
its counterpart realities, and believe some collapse occurred.

But they are just ignorant, at least in the Everett view.

Bruno





  John K Clark


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Re: Entropy and curved spacetime

[Jesse Mazer]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:15 PM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 21 Mar 2014, at 20:17, Jesse Mazer wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 3:00 PM, John Clark  wrote:
>
>> On 18 Mar 2014, at 22:33, LizR wrote:
>>
>>  > Am I right in assuming that in a quantum mechanical universe you can
>>> trace the history backwards?
>>>
>>
>> Absolutely not because in Quantum mechanics 2 very different states can
>> evolve into the exact same state.
>>
>
> Not if you're just talking about the evolution of the quantum state vector
> according to the Schroedinger equation, which is totally deterministic.
>
>
> Deterministic is compatible with the fact that 2 very different states can
> evolve into the exact same state, making it non reversible.
>
> But the solution of the SWE are more than deterministic, they are
> reversible. In QM (without collapse) 2 different states evolves into two
> different states.
>

True. I spoke too quickly, I guess my mind jumped to determinism rather
than reversibility (which is a type of reverse determinism) because I
figured John was thinking of quantum randomness, which only enters in QM if
you adopt the postulate of a random "collapse" on measurement.



> But John was correct in thinking that determinism does not entail
> reversibility. He gave the example of the game of life. But most
> arithmetical operations are like that too.   2+3 gives 5, but from 5 you
> can't necessarily retrieve 2+3, it might be 1+ 4 or 101 - 96.
>

I agree with what you say, but I was actually the one who brought up the
Game of Life in the discussion with John, because I was using it to make
the point that the second law of thermodynamics is more than a tautology,
that it actually depends on some specific properties of the laws of physics
such as satisfying Liouville's theorem. With the appropriate choice of
macrostates (namely, defining a macrostate by the ratio of live to dead
cells), in the Game of Life the odds can favor a higher-entropy state
evolving to a lower-entropy one (since if you start with a random 50:50 mix
of live and dead cells, after enough time you are likely to end up in a
state where most or all the cells are dead).

Jesse

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Re: Chaitin's Metabiology

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Mar 2014, at 19:18, bs...@cornell.edu wrote:



Are you still interested in talking about metabiology?

http://www.axiompanbiog.com/Pages/Metabiology.aspx

On Wednesday, November 24, 2010 2:10:42 PM UTC-5, thermo wrote:
Chaitin is currently drafting some attemps on metabiology and  
biological evolution of creativity. I read the latest:


http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/darwin.pdf

I found it very interesting in it's simplicity.

Strong features:

 - Abstract and theorems can be proved.
 - Includes algorithmic mutations.
 - Fitness is general enough to enable infinite evolution.

Weak features:

 - Some oracles are used.
 - Biological features such as replication, environment were removed  
favoring more abstract concepts.

 - Evolution is only associated with mathematical creativity, IA?

Can someone can explain how this theory is related to Algorithmic  
Theories of Everything?



It *is* an algorithmic theory of everything, but like digital physics,  
it still assumes a brain-mind identity thesis, which does not work  
when you assume computationalism in the cognitive science. It avoids  
the comp mind body problem, which forces us to derive the core of the  
physical laws from a statistics on all computations.
It cannot work because it implies comp, and comp implies that  
"reality" is a view from inside the space of all computations, and  
this is not entirely reductible to an algorithm.
Like Wolfram, they still don't take into account that a machine cannot  
know which computation support it, and can know she is distributed in  
many computation. They miss the "Everett" aspect of arithmetic or  
computer science. I would say in a nutshell.


Bruno








Cheers,
José.

--
A los hombres fuertes les pasa lo que a los barriletes; se elevan  
cuando es mayor el viento que se opone a su ascenso.

José Ingenieros (1877.1925)

*thermo*
http://www.mechpoet.net

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Re: Entropy and curved spacetime

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Mar 2014, at 20:17, Jesse Mazer wrote:




On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 3:00 PM, John Clark   
wrote:

On 18 Mar 2014, at 22:33, LizR wrote:

> Am I right in assuming that in a quantum mechanical universe you  
can trace the history backwards?


Absolutely not because in Quantum mechanics 2 very different states  
can evolve into the exact same state.


Not if you're just talking about the evolution of the quantum state  
vector according to the Schroedinger equation, which is totally  
deterministic.


Deterministic is compatible with the fact that 2 very different states  
can evolve into the exact same state, making it non reversible.


But the solution of the SWE are more than deterministic, they are  
reversible. In QM (without collapse) 2 different states evolves into  
two different states.


But John was correct in thinking that determinism does not entail  
reversibility. He gave the example of the game of life. But most  
arithmetical operations are like that too.   2+3 gives 5, but from 5  
you can't necessarily retrieve 2+3, it might be 1+ 4 or 101 - 96.


With the combinators, the reduction (Kxy --> x) is deterministic, but  
not reversible, as KKS and KK(K K) will both gives K, and eliminates S  
and (K K) respectively. You can still build universal combinator base  
(set of combinators) which will make computation reversible. We can  
simulate elimination of information with process which don't eliminate  
information (the basic idea consist to put the information in some  
trash, and never "empty" the trash.


I am rather confident that the comp+theaetetus "core physical laws"  
will be deterministic and reversible (fro formal reasons related to  
the "material views").


Bruno



As I said to Liz, non-reversibility only appears if you assume the  
"collapse" of the wavefunction to a new quantum state on measurement  
is a real physical phenomenon distinct from normal wavefunction  
evolution, rather than an approximate description of something that  
happens due to decoherence (as would be true in the many-worlds  
interpretation where the universal state vector is all there is, and  
also in Bohm's hidden variables interpretation which is  
deterministic at all stages).


Jesse


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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[meekerdb]

On 3/21/2014 9:59 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:




On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Quentin Anciaux > wrote:





2014-03-21 17:19 GMT+01:00 John Clark mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com>>:




On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux mailto:allco...@gmail.com>> wrote:


The thing I most want to know about RCP4.5 is what RCP 
stands for,
Google seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform" but that 
doesn't
sound quite right. It must be pretty obscure, Wikipedia has 
never
heard of RCP  either.


For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction"


I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure 
it's not
"Representative Concentration Pathways"?


I'm pretty sure you must be dumb as dumb if you really think this... As I 
see we are
in a thread talking about climate...


This thread seems to be mostly about politics. To be fair, John seems to be in the 
minority here in wanting to discuss this from a scientific and technological perspective.


He raises a number of points that I have raised myself in previous discussions. Instead 
of focusing on such issues, pop culture distractions (Fox News etc.) and political 
tribalism seem to get all of the attention.


- Given the number of climate models and the fact that the majority of them failed to 
predict the climate of the last decade, how confident can we be in further predictions?


"Failed" is a relative term and "decade" is too short to constitute climate.  So what 
exactly do you mean by "failed".  My view is that they were relatively accurate about some 
things and not so accurate about others.  They all include a calculated range of 
uncertainty. Have they "failed" if the observed weather is withing the range of 
uncertainty.  The deniers and obfuscators seize on uncertainty as an obstruction to 
action, but uncertainty cuts both ways.


As for further predictions, it's not as if we have to pick one (or a set) of these models 
and make THE prediction.  What we need to do is figure out why they were inaccurate in to 
some vaiables and improve the models.  As has been pointed out, the effect of clouds is a 
major source of uncertainty.  Clouds are generally much smaller than the grid size of 
GCMs, ~100Km square, and so it's not practical to directly model them within a 
simulation.  The technique has been to use separate models just of cloud formation and 
dissipation to determine which GCM state would produce or dissipate clouds.  Those models 
are being improved by including the effects of aerosols and freezing/thawing.


Another source of uncertainty in *weather* is how the extra energy absorbed due to 
greenhouse gases is distributed.  How much goes into warming the ocean vs the atmosphere?  
Model projections have to make assumptions about human activity too.





- With current technology, how much would we have to shrink the global energy budget to 
transition to sustainable sources?


Read Donald McKay's book "Without Hot Air", which is free online at withouthotair.org.  He 
has detailed estimates of what it would take for the U.K. to almost eliminate fossil fuel 
consumption and still retain the same standard of living.  It takes a lot of change, but 
it is less per capita than, for example, the U.S. war in Iraq over a time scale of a few 
decades.


What would the human impact of that be? This is too serious an issue for wishful 
thinking. Theres 7 billion of us and counting. We need hard numbers here, that take into 
account the energy investment necessary to bootstrap the renewable sources, their 
efficiency and so on.


- What is the probability that a climate catastrophe awaits us vs. the probability that 
an abrupt attempt to convert to sustainable sources would create a human catastrophe itself?


What's "abrupt".  You're raising spudboy's bugaboo.  NOBODY wants to do something 
"abrupt".  It's just a Faux News scare point.  Isn't is obvious that the longer we wait to 
address a problem the shorter will be the time to solve it.




- Given that environmentalists are claiming that it might even be too late to advert 
disaster, why aren't we seriously considering geoengineering approaches, as the one 
proposed by Nathan Myhrvold, which can be easily and cheaply tested and turned off at 
any moment?


It's being considered just as seriously as any other unproven technology to address the 
problem - which is to say, hardly at all. If we started penalizing ExxonMobil, BP, Texaco, 
and Shell for the cost they are externalizing maybe they'd fund Myhrvold's scheme.


Brent

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Re: Chaitin's Metabiology

[Alberto G. Corona]

At first sight it seems to me a bad model starting from good stuff.

A better model would take algorithmic complexity into account, and living
beings as algorithms that utilize universal induction to predict sequences
in the environment  (using solomonoff theory of universal induction).
Fitness would be the best predictors which at the same time mutate to
produce the mimimun algorithmic complexity. the fitness would be a mix of
highest prediction/lowest complexity.

That would be more realistic since living beings are inductors: they
execute algoritms that take inputs from the environment to predict the next
move of the environment in order to take advantage of it




2014-03-21 19:18 GMT+01:00 :

>
> Are you still interested in talking about metabiology?
>
> http://www.axiompanbiog.com/Pages/Metabiology.aspx
>
> On Wednesday, November 24, 2010 2:10:42 PM UTC-5, thermo wrote:
>>
>> Chaitin is currently drafting some attemps on metabiology and biological
>> evolution of creativity. I read the latest:
>>
>> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~*chaitin*/*darwin*.pdf
>>
>> I found it very interesting in it's simplicity.
>>
>> Strong features:
>>
>>  - Abstract and theorems can be proved.
>>  - Includes algorithmic mutations.
>>  - Fitness is general enough to enable infinite evolution.
>>
>> Weak features:
>>
>>  - Some oracles are used.
>>  - Biological features such as replication, environment were removed
>> favoring more abstract concepts.
>>  - Evolution is only associated with mathematical creativity, IA?
>>
>> Can someone can explain how this theory is related to Algorithmic
>> Theories of Everything?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> José.
>>
>> --
>> A los hombres fuertes les pasa lo que a los barriletes; se elevan cuando
>> es mayor el viento que se opone a su ascenso.
>> José
>> Ingenieros (1877.1925)
>>
>> *thermo*
>> http://www.mechpoet.net
>>
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-- 
Alberto.

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Re: Chaitin's Metabiology

[bsm65]

Are you still interested in talking about metabiology?

http://www.axiompanbiog.com/Pages/Metabiology.aspx

On Wednesday, November 24, 2010 2:10:42 PM UTC-5, thermo wrote:
>
> Chaitin is currently drafting some attemps on metabiology and biological 
> evolution of creativity. I read the latest:
>
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~*chaitin*/*darwin*.pdf
>
> I found it very interesting in it's simplicity.
>
> Strong features:
>
>  - Abstract and theorems can be proved.
>  - Includes algorithmic mutations.
>  - Fitness is general enough to enable infinite evolution.
>
> Weak features:
>
>  - Some oracles are used.
>  - Biological features such as replication, environment were removed 
> favoring more abstract concepts.
>  - Evolution is only associated with mathematical creativity, IA?
>
> Can someone can explain how this theory is related to Algorithmic Theories 
> of Everything?
>
> Cheers,
> José.
>
> -- 
> A los hombres fuertes les pasa lo que a los barriletes; se elevan cuando 
> es mayor el viento que se opone a su ascenso.
> José
>  
> Ingenieros  (1877.1925)
>
> *thermo*
> http://www.mechpoet.net
>

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Re: Entropy and curved spacetime

[Jesse Mazer]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 3:00 PM, John Clark  wrote:

> On 18 Mar 2014, at 22:33, LizR wrote:
>
> > Am I right in assuming that in a quantum mechanical universe you can
>> trace the history backwards?
>>
>
> Absolutely not because in Quantum mechanics 2 very different states can
> evolve into the exact same state.
>

Not if you're just talking about the evolution of the quantum state vector
according to the Schroedinger equation, which is totally deterministic. As
I said to Liz, non-reversibility only appears if you assume the "collapse"
of the wavefunction to a new quantum state on measurement is a real
physical phenomenon distinct from normal wavefunction evolution, rather
than an approximate description of something that happens due to
decoherence (as would be true in the many-worlds interpretation where the
universal state vector is all there is, and also in Bohm's hidden variables
interpretation which is deterministic at all stages).

Jesse

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Re: Tegmark and UDA

[ronaldheld]

Bruno, I have read several over the years but do not save them. Here is the 
latest one that I read: 
http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.1599
Ronald
 
Wednesday, March 19, 2014 7:37:52 PM UTC-4, ronaldheld wrote:

> Assuming chaotic inflation there is no consensus that the multiverse 
> is past infinite but some papers have try to show it is do. 
>  Ronald 
>

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Re: Entropy and curved spacetime

[John Clark]

On 18 Mar 2014, at 22:33, LizR wrote:

> Am I right in assuming that in a quantum mechanical universe you can
> trace the history backwards?
>

Absolutely not because in Quantum mechanics 2 very different states can
evolve into the exact same state.

  John K Clark

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Re: Modality Independence

[Gabriel Bodeen]

On Friday, March 21, 2014 12:42:13 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
> I'm not so much interested in defining CTM, as in exploding the 
> assumptions from which CTM and other mechanistic, information-theoretical 
> models of consciousness arise.
>

OK.  Would you mind defining which assumptions you're thinking of?
 

>  
>
>>  
>>
>>> They don't reduce to a binary code like we would expect them to in CTM.
>>>
>>
>> That is not a prediction of CTM.  Here's a relevant quote from the 
>> Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Turing himself seems to have been of 
>> the opinion that a machine operating in this way would literally be doing 
>> the same things that the human performing computations is doing—that it 
>> would be 'duplicating' what the human computer does. But other writers have 
>> suggested that what the computer does is merely a 'simulation' of what the 
>> human computer does: a reproduction of human-level performance, perhaps 
>> through a set of steps that is [at] some level isomorphic to those the 
>> human undertakes, but not in such a fashion as to constitute doing the same 
>> thing in all relevant respects."
>>
>
> Again, either way the development of modality-dependence in non-humans and 
> modality-independence in humans does not support the idea that 
> consciousness is driven by logic and computation. 
>

Right, modality (in)dependent communication neither supports nor opposes 
the idea that consciousness is computation.  In CTM, brains doing 
modality-dependent computations would have minds experiencing sense-data 
qualia, and brains doing modality-independent computations would have minds 
experiencing abstract qualia.

-Gabe

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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Jesse Mazer]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote:

>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2014-03-21 17:19 GMT+01:00 John Clark :
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>>


>> The thing I most want to know about  RCP4.5 is what RCP stands for,
>> Google seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform" but that doesn't sound
>> quite right. It must be pretty obscure, Wikipedia has never heard of RCP
>> either.
>>
>
 For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction"

>>>
>>> I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure it's
>>> not "Representative Concentration Pathways"?
>>>
>>
>> I'm pretty sure you must be dumb as dumb if you really think this... As I
>> see we are in a thread talking about climate...
>>
>
> This thread seems to be mostly about politics. To be fair, John seems to
> be in the minority here in wanting to discuss this from a scientific and
> technological perspective.
>

Only if by "discuss this from a scientific and technological perspective"
you mean cast vague aspersions at various scientific claims (use of climate
models to predict future climates, analyze prehistoric glaciation
thresholds, predict how climate would respond to specific GHG reduction
scenarios like RCP4.5) and technical projections (like the specific plan to
get 69% of electricity from solar by 2050), based on whatever verbal
argument appeals to him and without any expert opinion of his own to cite
in support of this skepticism.



>
> He raises a number of points that I have raised myself in previous
> discussions. Instead of focusing on such issues, pop culture distractions
> (Fox News etc.) and political tribalism seem to get all of the attention.
>

I haven't talked about such political issues at all, although John seems to
have plenty of enthusiasm for politically-based caricature of what
"environmentalists" believe, based on cherry-picking the worst plans he can
find trawling various websites rather than attempting any fair-minded
survey of how many groups and prominent climate activists would agree with
those plans.



>
> - Given the number of climate models and the fact that the majority of
> them failed to predict the climate of the last decade, how confident can we
> be in further predictions?
>


Climate models predict that there should be plenty of statistical
fluctuation on the level of individual decades, so this amount of
uncertainty is already incorporated into the range of predictions made by
an ensemble of such models. And current temperatures do still fall within
the range predicted by models from earlier dates like 2000 and 1988. I
addressed both the issue of how well models have done in their predictions
and the issue of the 15-year warming "pause" (which climate scientists seem
to think they understand the causes of fairly well) in this post:

http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list%40googlegroups.com/msg50488.html

The page at http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-models-are-unproven/(from
the series of responses to common climate skeptic arguments at
http://grist.org/series/skeptics/ ) also has a basic summary of some of the
evidence supporting the reliability of climate models.

More generally, I would repeat the general point that I think the only
Bayesian prior when looking at scientific questions is "assign a high a
priori likelihood that experts in the field are correct when they broadly
agree on the answer to some question, only revise that in light of changes
in expert opinion, obvious failed predictions that don't line up with their
theories, or acquiring enough expertise in the subject yourself to have an
informed opinion on the detailed evidence." So if the experts in climate
science are in broad agreement about climate models being reliable in the
sense that actual temperatures will very likely fall within the *range*
that they predict over many different runs (a statistical prediction rather
than an exact one obviously), given the right emissions scenario, my
default is to trust their judgment. To ignore expert opinion and think that
you, as a layman, are just as qualified to draw conclusions about the
reliability of models in *any* area of natural science seems to me to be a
basically anti-scientific, anti-intellectual attitude.



> - With current technology, how much would we have to shrink the global
> energy budget to transition to sustainable sources? What would the human
> impact of that be? This is too serious an issue for wishful thinking.
> Theres 7 billion of us and counting. We need hard numbers here, that take
> into account the energy investment necessary to bootstrap the renewable
> sources, their efficiency and so on.
>


The usual idea is not to significantly "shrink the global energy budget"
(although some shrinkage may be possible without sacrificing living
standards if we can find more energy-efficient ways of 

Re: Modality Independence

[Craig Weinberg]

On Friday, March 21, 2014 1:04:46 PM UTC-4, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thursday, March 20, 2014 8:48:30 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, March 20, 2014 1:01:43 PM UTC-4, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:16:19 AM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:


 On Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:09:39 AM UTC-4, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:
  

>   It formed increasingly high-level associations between bundles of 
> sensory data, eventually also combining sounds and vocal behavior into 
> those associations.  There's nothing obviously intractable about 
> describing 
> such data input and analysis in computational terms.
>

 If that were true, the oldest words would describe things like danger 
 or food, but they don't. They are concepts like I, who, two, three and 
 five 
 (
 http://media.tumblr.com/8b5d411063f5291737c4a36681474205/tumblr_inline_mmrdbhECQY1qz4rgp.png
 )

>>>
>>> BTW, that chart is about the most-conserved words in the Indo-European 
>>> family of languages.  It says nothing either way about what the earliest 
>>> words were.
>>>
>>
>> Most conserved = earliest words that are still in use.
>>
>
> Indeed, but that doesn't rescue the original point.  The earliest words 
> still in use today don't tell us what the earliest words were. 
>

Right, but it can still tell us something about how communication 
progresses.
 

>  
>
>> Computationalism need not have anything to do with the brain. It's about 
>> consciousness arising from computation, i.e., it supports strong AI, which 
>> would not be about brains.
>>
>
> Ah, that's an important comment.  You are indeed talking about a specific 
> kind of CTM that wasn't clear to me.  Thanks for clarifying.  The usual 
> sense of CTM is that consciousness is literally computation, not that it 
> arises from computation.
>

Either way, we would not expect computations to emerge as 
modality-dependent.
 

>  
>
>> The brain doesn't figure into this at all. My point was that if 
>> consciousness is computation, and qualia are just complex computational 
>> labels, then we should expect languages to develop from simple, 
>> modal-independent forms to modal-dependent forms in which computations 
>> become so diversified that the lose any common vocabulary. Would you agree 
>> that this is precisely the opposite of what is seen in nature?
>>
>
> Yes, I still agree about how we observe language to form.  It's just that 
> your characterization of CTM as making the predictions you mention is 
> wrong.  It only makes those predictions when supplemented with additional 
> assumptions that are not generally part of CTM.
>

I'm not so much interested in defining CTM, as in exploding the assumptions 
from which CTM and other mechanistic, information-theoretical models of 
consciousness arise.
 

>  
>
>> They don't reduce to a binary code like we would expect them to in CTM.
>>
>
> That is not a prediction of CTM.  Here's a relevant quote from the 
> Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Turing himself seems to have been of 
> the opinion that a machine operating in this way would literally be doing 
> the same things that the human performing computations is doing—that it 
> would be 'duplicating' what the human computer does. But other writers have 
> suggested that what the computer does is merely a 'simulation' of what the 
> human computer does: a reproduction of human-level performance, perhaps 
> through a set of steps that is [at] some level isomorphic to those the 
> human undertakes, but not in such a fashion as to constitute doing the same 
> thing in all relevant respects."
>

Again, either way the development of modality-dependence in non-humans and 
modality-independence in humans does not support the idea that 
consciousness is driven by logic and computation. That is clearly a more 
recent development. In the same way, any instance of computation we can 
find can be reduced to a deeper level of sensory-motive interaction. 

Craig


> -Gabe
>

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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Edgar L. Owen]

Jesse,

Sure, I'm well aware of these predictions, but my point is that many 
necessary global resources are being rapidly depleted by just the current 
human population, so even that is not sustainable.

In general the standard demographic predictions don't pay much attention to 
the dwindling resources upon which population is dependent.

Edgar



On Friday, March 21, 2014 11:49:27 AM UTC-4, jessem wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 7:20 AM, Edgar L. Owen 
> > wrote:
>
>> Spud,
>>
>> But reducing human overpopulation IS the main problem facing the planet, 
>> the ecosystem, and the human species itself.
>>
>> Assuming that increasing technology will somehow solve the problem is, I 
>> fear, naive. It is precisely the use of more and more powerful technology 
>> that has resulted in the exponential destruction of the environment by the 
>> exponentially increasing number of humans.
>>
>> So it's not better technology we need, but the wisdom to use it 
>> sustainably
>>
>> Edgar
>>
>
> Most demographers project that the population will level off at around 10 
> billion, because of various trends that tend to reduce the number of 
> children like populations becoming more urban and women being more 
> educated--see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Projectionsfor 
> some info. Of course predicting human behavior is never purely 
> scientific and there are some who think this projection is too optimistic, 
> see 
> http://e360.yale.edu/feature/what_if_experts_are_wrong_on_world_population_growth/2444/
>
> Jesse
>

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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Quentin Anciaux]

2014-03-21 17:59 GMT+01:00 Telmo Menezes :

>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2014-03-21 17:19 GMT+01:00 John Clark :
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>>


>> The thing I most want to know about  RCP4.5 is what RCP stands for,
>> Google seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform" but that doesn't sound
>> quite right. It must be pretty obscure, Wikipedia has never heard of RCP
>> either.
>>
>
 For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction"

>>>
>>> I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure it's
>>> not "Representative Concentration Pathways"?
>>>
>>
>> I'm pretty sure you must be dumb as dumb if you really think this... As I
>> see we are in a thread talking about climate...
>>
>
> This thread seems to be mostly about politics. To be fair, John seems to
> be in the minority here in wanting to discuss this from a scientific and
> technological perspective.
>
> He raises a number of points that I have raised myself in previous
> discussions. Instead of focusing on such issues, pop culture distractions
> (Fox News etc.) and political tribalism seem to get all of the attention.
>

The thing is that I don't know much in climate and I prefer to let persons
in the field handle that, by default I would believe them in these matters,
they have more knowledge than me on these.

I do not believe in conspiracy either... and all the comments about the
"all or nothing" are complete BS... I don't see any point why we couldn't
transition slowly to more sustainable source of energy... I don't see here
in europe the kind of group anouncing doomsday and having a discourse like
spudboy is saying... what he believe is just that beliefs... not facts. The
green parties in europe certainly don't advocate such policies... and
certainly not in my country (belgium) can't talk much for other countries,
but they seems to be more or less the same views... No one is advocating to
transition tomorrow (as in tomorrow tomorrow) to a full solar power (or
other) and shut down all nuclear power plants... they are even people
(green or not) considering the LFTR reactor we were talking about...
climate and policies arount the mitigation of the global warming are not
binary... either we do everything or nothing even if we were really
doomed, that's not a reason not to try to mitigate things... even slowly,
slow extinction seems better than dying tomorrow... and starting today even
if today we thing we're doomed, doesn't mean tomorrow (and because we
started today) we won't find a solution escaping this predicted doom... so
I can't agree with an argument saying we should do nothing just because new
form of energy production cannot currently totally replace the current form
of production.

Quentin




>
> - Given the number of climate models and the fact that the majority of
> them failed to predict the climate of the last decade, how confident can we
> be in further predictions?
>
> - With current technology, how much would we have to shrink the global
> energy budget to transition to sustainable sources? What would the human
> impact of that be? This is too serious an issue for wishful thinking.
> Theres 7 billion of us and counting. We need hard numbers here, that take
> into account the energy investment necessary to bootstrap the renewable
> sources, their efficiency and so on.
>
> - What is the probability that a climate catastrophe awaits us vs. the
> probability that an abrupt attempt to convert to sustainable sources would
> create a human catastrophe itself?
>
> - Given that environmentalists are claiming that it might even be too late
> to advert disaster, why aren't we seriously considering geoengineering
> approaches, as the one proposed by Nathan Myhrvold, which can be easily and
> cheaply tested and turned off at any moment?
>
> Also this:
>
> http://theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/328841/why-germanys-nuclear-phase-out-leading-more-coal-burning
>
> Telmo.
>
>
>
>>  using google correctly and not as an asshole... you would have found
>> what you were looking for (if you genuinely were looking for it... but you
>> weren't, you were trolling as usual). So blabla as usual... no point
>> arguing with you.
>>
>>
>>> Wikipedia lists 21 possible meanings of the acronym "RCP" and that's the
>>> only one that has anything at all to do with the environment. Wikipedia has
>>> never heard of "Regional Climate Prediction".
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCP
>>>
>>>
>>> > (And I didn't know it before doing the search)

>>>
>>> Who did?
>>>
>>> >  0.5 second of searching on google... and the great John was unable to
 do it

>>>
>>> And still is.
>>>
>>>  John K Clark
>>>
>>>
>>>  --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Telmo Menezes]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Quentin Anciaux  wrote:

>
>
>
> 2014-03-21 17:19 GMT+01:00 John Clark :
>
>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
> The thing I most want to know about  RCP4.5 is what RCP stands for,
> Google seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform" but that doesn't sound
> quite right. It must be pretty obscure, Wikipedia has never heard of RCP
> either.
>

>>> For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction"
>>>
>>
>> I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure it's
>> not "Representative Concentration Pathways"?
>>
>
> I'm pretty sure you must be dumb as dumb if you really think this... As I
> see we are in a thread talking about climate...
>

This thread seems to be mostly about politics. To be fair, John seems to be
in the minority here in wanting to discuss this from a scientific and
technological perspective.

He raises a number of points that I have raised myself in previous
discussions. Instead of focusing on such issues, pop culture distractions
(Fox News etc.) and political tribalism seem to get all of the attention.

- Given the number of climate models and the fact that the majority of them
failed to predict the climate of the last decade, how confident can we be
in further predictions?

- With current technology, how much would we have to shrink the global
energy budget to transition to sustainable sources? What would the human
impact of that be? This is too serious an issue for wishful thinking.
Theres 7 billion of us and counting. We need hard numbers here, that take
into account the energy investment necessary to bootstrap the renewable
sources, their efficiency and so on.

- What is the probability that a climate catastrophe awaits us vs. the
probability that an abrupt attempt to convert to sustainable sources would
create a human catastrophe itself?

- Given that environmentalists are claiming that it might even be too late
to advert disaster, why aren't we seriously considering geoengineering
approaches, as the one proposed by Nathan Myhrvold, which can be easily and
cheaply tested and turned off at any moment?

Also this:
http://theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/328841/why-germanys-nuclear-phase-out-leading-more-coal-burning

Telmo.



> using google correctly and not as an asshole... you would have found what
> you were looking for (if you genuinely were looking for it... but you
> weren't, you were trolling as usual). So blabla as usual... no point
> arguing with you.
>
>
>> Wikipedia lists 21 possible meanings of the acronym "RCP" and that's the
>> only one that has anything at all to do with the environment. Wikipedia has
>> never heard of "Regional Climate Prediction".
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCP
>>
>>
>> > (And I didn't know it before doing the search)
>>>
>>
>> Who did?
>>
>> >  0.5 second of searching on google... and the great John was unable to
>>> do it
>>>
>>
>> And still is.
>>
>>  John K Clark
>>
>>
>>  --
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>
>
>
> --
> All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy
> Batty/Rutger Hauer)
>
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Re: Modality Independence

[Gabriel Bodeen]

On Thursday, March 20, 2014 8:48:30 PM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
>
> On Thursday, March 20, 2014 1:01:43 PM UTC-4, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:16:19 AM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:09:39 AM UTC-4, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:
>>>  
>>>
   It formed increasingly high-level associations between bundles of 
 sensory data, eventually also combining sounds and vocal behavior into 
 those associations.  There's nothing obviously intractable about 
 describing 
 such data input and analysis in computational terms.

>>>
>>> If that were true, the oldest words would describe things like danger or 
>>> food, but they don't. They are concepts like I, who, two, three and five (
>>> http://media.tumblr.com/8b5d411063f5291737c4a36681474205/tumblr_inline_mmrdbhECQY1qz4rgp.png
>>> )
>>>
>>
>> BTW, that chart is about the most-conserved words in the Indo-European 
>> family of languages.  It says nothing either way about what the earliest 
>> words were.
>>
>
> Most conserved = earliest words that are still in use.
>

Indeed, but that doesn't rescue the original point.  The earliest words 
still in use today don't tell us what the earliest words were. 
 

> Computationalism need not have anything to do with the brain. It's about 
> consciousness arising from computation, i.e., it supports strong AI, which 
> would not be about brains.
>

Ah, that's an important comment.  You are indeed talking about a specific 
kind of CTM that wasn't clear to me.  Thanks for clarifying.  The usual 
sense of CTM is that consciousness is literally computation, not that it 
arises from computation.
 

> The brain doesn't figure into this at all. My point was that if 
> consciousness is computation, and qualia are just complex computational 
> labels, then we should expect languages to develop from simple, 
> modal-independent forms to modal-dependent forms in which computations 
> become so diversified that the lose any common vocabulary. Would you agree 
> that this is precisely the opposite of what is seen in nature?
>

Yes, I still agree about how we observe language to form.  It's just that 
your characterization of CTM as making the predictions you mention is 
wrong.  It only makes those predictions when supplemented with additional 
assumptions that are not generally part of CTM.
 

> They don't reduce to a binary code like we would expect them to in CTM.
>

That is not a prediction of CTM.  Here's a relevant quote from the Stanford 
Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Turing himself seems to have been of the 
opinion that a machine operating in this way would literally be doing the 
same things that the human performing computations is doing—that it would 
be 'duplicating' what the human computer does. But other writers have 
suggested that what the computer does is merely a 'simulation' of what the 
human computer does: a reproduction of human-level performance, perhaps 
through a set of steps that is [at] some level isomorphic to those the 
human undertakes, but not in such a fashion as to constitute doing the same 
thing in all relevant respects."

-Gabe

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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Quentin Anciaux]

2014-03-21 17:52 GMT+01:00 Jesse Mazer :

>
>
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 12:19 PM, John Clark  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
> The thing I most want to know about  RCP4.5 is what RCP stands for,
> Google seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform" but that doesn't sound
> quite right. It must be pretty obscure, Wikipedia has never heard of RCP
> either.
>

>>> For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction"
>>>
>>
>> I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure it's
>> not "Representative Concentration Pathways"?  Wikipedia lists 21
>> possible meanings of the acronym "RCP" and that's the only one that has
>> anything at all to do with the environment. Wikipedia has never heard of
>> "Regional Climate Prediction".
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCP
>>
>>
> It seems you're correct here, the RCP4.5 scenario I discussed was one of
> four "reprentative concentration pathway" scenarios as indicated by the
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathways wiki
> page.
>

Well then sorry I was the dumb here... I'm too much accustomed that John
says BS...

But anyway this ==>


>  Of course, this doesn't change the fact that you chose to use a
> rhetorical question about the meaning of the acronym as a lame excuse to
> totally duck my point
>

was what John wanted to do and do in every discussion he can have... he
doesn't want to argue, he likes reading himself... he doesn't care if there
is a genuine point of discussion... at least up until now.


> that it shows emissions being reduced in a non-drastic way but with a
> significantly better range of projected temperature rises by 2100 than the
> business-as-usual scenarios. But this was in keeping with your 100%
> non-substantive response which ducked every single issue I brought up, like
> the fact that plenty of people who want to take action on the climate are
> pro-nuclear (your only response was smartass-teenager style mockery of my
> use of the word "strawman", ignoring the actual case I made that your
> characterization of environmentalist views was entirely cherry-picked and
> non-representative), or the fact that water vapor is not a climate forcing
> factor like CO2, or the question of what general standard you use to judge
> the merit of scientific claims in areas you have no expertise in (though
> your various ignorant claims about physics suggest your standard is
> something like "treat scientific expertise as worthless whenever it doesn't
> match what I'd prefer to believe, and place unerring faith in whatever
> handwavey verbal analysis of a scientific question happens to pop into my
> head, arguing for this view with supreme confidence regardless of whether I
> can find any expert support for it").
>
> Jesse
>
>  --
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>



-- 
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy
Batty/Rutger Hauer)

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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Jesse Mazer]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 12:19 PM, John Clark  wrote:

>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
>>
>>
 The thing I most want to know about  RCP4.5 is what RCP stands for,
 Google seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform" but that doesn't sound
 quite right. It must be pretty obscure, Wikipedia has never heard of RCP
 either.

>>>
>> For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction"
>>
>
> I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure it's
> not "Representative Concentration Pathways"?  Wikipedia lists 21 possible
> meanings of the acronym "RCP" and that's the only one that has anything at
> all to do with the environment. Wikipedia has never heard of "Regional
> Climate Prediction".
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCP
>
>
It seems you're correct here, the RCP4.5 scenario I discussed was one of
four "reprentative concentration pathway" scenarios as indicated by the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_Concentration_Pathways wiki
page. Of course, this doesn't change the fact that you chose to use a
rhetorical question about the meaning of the acronym as a lame excuse to
totally duck my point that it shows emissions being reduced in a
non-drastic way but with a significantly better range of projected
temperature rises by 2100 than the business-as-usual scenarios. But this
was in keeping with your 100% non-substantive response which ducked every
single issue I brought up, like the fact that plenty of people who want to
take action on the climate are pro-nuclear (your only response was
smartass-teenager style mockery of my use of the word "strawman", ignoring
the actual case I made that your characterization of environmentalist views
was entirely cherry-picked and non-representative), or the fact that water
vapor is not a climate forcing factor like CO2, or the question of what
general standard you use to judge the merit of scientific claims in areas
you have no expertise in (though your various ignorant claims about physics
suggest your standard is something like "treat scientific expertise as
worthless whenever it doesn't match what I'd prefer to believe, and place
unerring faith in whatever handwavey verbal analysis of a scientific
question happens to pop into my head, arguing for this view with supreme
confidence regardless of whether I can find any expert support for it").

Jesse

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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[spudboy100]

Well, as far as the impact of the extremely wealthy, on our politics, I would 
simply point to this Obama-friendly blog, which has been spun off from the 
Washington Post, also Obama friendly.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/barach-obama-tech-ceos-nsa-104881.html?hp=l1
 

- a few other items on billionaires, greens (reds) and politics. The Koch's 
appear to be amateurs, but why should I trust them either?

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2014/03/02/rich-donors-press-democrats-climate-change/hzqwCqUh4CPz5Voz3abiSL/story.html

http://www.worth.com/index.php/component/content/article/4-live/926-top-10-billionaires-saving-the-planet

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2013/03/20130326-075201.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/18/tom-steyer-2014-elections_n_4809013.html


http://www.mensjournal.com/expert-advice/americas-billionaire-environmentalists-20140210/george-soros
 
Here are your rulers and the Master's funders, and may they rule you well. On 
wood gathering in the third world,by folks who have no other means of cooking 
food, the magic word is deforestation. Often, the 1.7 billion people who need 
wood to cook, also do what the people of the Medieval Warm Period, just before 
the Little Ice Age, did. It was called assarting, and was the expansion of 
croplands into forests, and burn the wood for fuel, and plant crops for 
subsistence agriculture. This does diminish forests and wildlife, just like 
Georgia Pacific does when it does clear cutting, on old growth forests. GP does 
it with technology, Third world folks do it with any means at hand. 
Occasionally, GP plants saplings and the regular folks are too busy taking care 
of their kids to accomplish this. None the less many hands make short work, and 
if the quality of life was improved for these folk, then there is less need for 
wood from forests. If we want less impact on land by agriculture, then we can 
look to the technology of greenhouses, which do not consume lots and lots of 
land. But this is a different topic.


-Original Message-
From: Platonist Guitar Cowboy 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Fri, Mar 21, 2014 11:32 am
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating







On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:16 PM,   wrote:

Tackling thing technically will save lots or preaching, in emails, and public 
speaking. For example, if you cook all your food by wood-gathering, you are 
more likely to disrupt the forests by your gatherings. If you have access to 
cheap solar, wind, and maybe natural gas lines, then the urge for gathering 
wood and chopping trees three times a day diminishes. On the other hand if you 
want Bobby Bureaucrat to run your life, even if his laws don't actively change 
whatever you wish to achieve (air quality?), then you're good with that. 
Looking over the last 20 years, government, rather then being a beneficial 
force, now appears, worldwide, to be a malign force. If you are wanting results 
that please you, then perhaps, despite their promises and guarantees, the 
politicians and the billionaires that own them, have failed mightily. Feel free 
to disagree with this observation.  



What observation?  


Forest gathering? Bobby Bureaucrat? Evil government on every level? Green 
conspiracy of the rich billionaires?

I don't know if I'd call these points arguments. They are more black and white 
cartoons from Hannity, Fox, Limbaugh etc. 

I can't see what you want as you are aware that there is long term need for 
sustainable energy + you praise romantically "sky, forest, oceans etc." and yet 
you checkmate yourself because this would be playing into the hand of the 
green-marxist government conspiracy theory.



Ok, it's easy to call everybody names and defend nothing really, with such 
position. But I do not see "technical observations", a solid position to argue 
from, or where you're going with this. PGC






-Original Message-
From: Platonist Guitar Cowboy 


To: everything-list 
Sent: Thu, Mar 20, 2014 10:32 am
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating







On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 2:55 PM,   wrote:

Very well, go ahead and power it all down. Shut off the cars, kill the lights, 
take a bike. Are you suggesting that we continue to burn filthy coal, or 
horrible uranium, while we try to goose up solar and wind to replace it?!! Why 
that will take decades and the catastrophe is already upon us. The heating of 
the atmosphere and the degradation of the lands and seas, cannot wait (your 
guys tell us). Or what are they really saying, put into motion in real life? It 
comes down to a culture of complaint from the green-reds, rather than actual 
workable solutions. I want technical solutions, but then, I am in the minority, 
as you indicate, and your side (and it is your side) wants people controlled 
and dominated (impoverished) and I see myself as someone who'd rather help 
people, liberate them, rather that 'manage' the

Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Quentin Anciaux]

2014-03-21 17:19 GMT+01:00 John Clark :

>
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
>>
>>
 The thing I most want to know about  RCP4.5 is what RCP stands for,
 Google seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform" but that doesn't sound
 quite right. It must be pretty obscure, Wikipedia has never heard of RCP
 either.

>>>
>> For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction"
>>
>
> I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure it's
> not "Representative Concentration Pathways"?
>

I'm pretty sure you must be dumb as dumb if you really think this... As I
see we are in a thread talking about climate... using google correctly and
not as an asshole... you would have found what you were looking for (if you
genuinely were looking for it... but you weren't, you were trolling as
usual). So blabla as usual... no point arguing with you.


> Wikipedia lists 21 possible meanings of the acronym "RCP" and that's the
> only one that has anything at all to do with the environment. Wikipedia has
> never heard of "Regional Climate Prediction".
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCP
>
>
> > (And I didn't know it before doing the search)
>>
>
> Who did?
>
> >  0.5 second of searching on google... and the great John was unable to
>> do it
>>
>
> And still is.
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
>  --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
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-- 
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Roy
Batty/Rutger Hauer)

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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[John Clark]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

>
>
>>> The thing I most want to know about  RCP4.5 is what RCP stands for,
>>> Google seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform" but that doesn't sound
>>> quite right. It must be pretty obscure, Wikipedia has never heard of RCP
>>> either.
>>>
>>
> For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction"
>

I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure it's
not "Representative Concentration Pathways"?  Wikipedia lists 21 possible
meanings of the acronym "RCP" and that's the only one that has anything at
all to do with the environment. Wikipedia has never heard of "Regional
Climate Prediction".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCP


> (And I didn't know it before doing the search)
>

Who did?

>  0.5 second of searching on google... and the great John was unable to do
> it
>

And still is.

 John K Clark

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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Jesse Mazer]

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 7:20 AM, Edgar L. Owen  wrote:

> Spud,
>
> But reducing human overpopulation IS the main problem facing the planet,
> the ecosystem, and the human species itself.
>
> Assuming that increasing technology will somehow solve the problem is, I
> fear, naive. It is precisely the use of more and more powerful technology
> that has resulted in the exponential destruction of the environment by the
> exponentially increasing number of humans.
>
> So it's not better technology we need, but the wisdom to use it
> sustainably
>
> Edgar
>

Most demographers project that the population will level off at around 10
billion, because of various trends that tend to reduce the number of
children like populations becoming more urban and women being more
educated--see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Projectionsfor
some info. Of course predicting human behavior is never purely
scientific and there are some who think this projection is too optimistic,
see
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/what_if_experts_are_wrong_on_world_population_growth/2444/

Jesse

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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Platonist Guitar Cowboy]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 6:16 PM,  wrote:

> Tackling thing technically will save lots or preaching, in emails, and
> public speaking. For example, if you cook all your food by wood-gathering,
> you are more likely to disrupt the forests by your gatherings. If you have
> access to cheap solar, wind, and maybe natural gas lines, then the urge for
> gathering wood and chopping trees three times a day diminishes. On the
> other hand if you want Bobby Bureaucrat to run your life, even if his laws
> don't actively change whatever you wish to achieve (air quality?), then
> you're good with that. Looking over the last 20 years, government, rather
> then being a beneficial force, now appears, worldwide, to be a malign
> force. If you are wanting results that please you, then perhaps, despite
> their promises and guarantees, the politicians and the billionaires that
> own them, have failed mightily. Feel free to disagree with this
> observation.
>

What observation?

Forest gathering? Bobby Bureaucrat? Evil government on every level? Green
conspiracy of the rich billionaires?

I don't know if I'd call these points arguments. They are more black and
white cartoons from Hannity, Fox, Limbaugh etc.

I can't see what you want as you are aware that there is long term need for
sustainable energy + you praise romantically "sky, forest, oceans etc." and
yet you checkmate yourself because this would be playing into the hand of
the green-marxist government conspiracy theory.

Ok, it's easy to call everybody names and defend nothing really, with such
position. But I do not see "technical observations", a solid position to
argue from, or where you're going with this. PGC

 -Original Message-
> From: Platonist Guitar Cowboy 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Thu, Mar 20, 2014 10:32 am
> Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 2:55 PM,  wrote:
>
>> Very well, go ahead and power it all down. Shut off the cars, kill the
>> lights, take a bike. Are you suggesting that we continue to burn filthy
>> coal, or horrible uranium, while we try to goose up solar and wind to
>> replace it?!! Why that will take decades and the catastrophe is already
>> upon us. The heating of the atmosphere and the degradation of the lands and
>> seas, cannot wait (your guys tell us). Or what are they really saying, put
>> into motion in real life? It comes down to a culture of complaint from the
>> green-reds, rather than actual workable solutions. I want technical
>> solutions, but then, I am in the minority, as you indicate, and your side
>> (and it is your side) wants people controlled and dominated (impoverished)
>> and I see myself as someone who'd rather help people, liberate them, rather
>> that 'manage' them. If I was one of the people who decided things, what
>> would you do?
>>
>
>  You are one of the people who decides things.
>
>  Energy costs are on the rise, no matter our political outlooks. You can
> decide to take a risk to try and mitigate this, which is complex and not as
> easy as listing your political preferences and intolerance.
>
> You talk "I'm in minority", which does not make sense because the majority
> of the world is not taking steps to make energy and environment more
> sustainable. You are in the majority, talking/chatting and not doing. Even
> if you feel you're in the minority: do something.
>
>  You talk "liberating people"... then do it and save us the sermon.
>
>  You talk "anti-state" but you advocate inaction. So basically the right
> for us to live in the effects of our trash/wasteful behavior, complaining
> about powerful interests, that through your inaction and ideological fox
> chanting extend their range by just another person.
>
>  You talk "technical solutions" and you hope for some revolution among
> engineers. Good luck with that, but why judge people with a more nuanced
> and differentiated approach to the problems you state, who will not
> hope/wait for instructions or engineer revolution and start to plan and
> invest in transition means to mitigating energy's rising costs?
>
>  The question has long shifted from your black and white "yes-no" to the
> grey complexities of real life with "how" on local, personal, and global
> levels. If you don't see this, then why keep preaching your political
> stance? Just be as wasteful as you can for as long as you can, before
> somebody shows up and says: "Business as usual will keep costs rising and
> poverty increasing, which we can't sustain long term; this behavior is
> stupid." Join fossil fuel lobby or something. Well paid job and you'll be
> more effective there than on this list, regarding this set of problems. PGC
>
>
>
>
>>  No it doesn't have to... it's not because it can't currently replace
>> everything that it can't replace part of it... and it does thanks you're
>> not the one who decide things.
>>
>>-Original Message-
>> From: Quentin Anciaux 
>> To: everything-list 
>> Sent: 

Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Quentin Anciaux]

I fear the control they "want" only exist in your mind... You should
consult... seriously.

You live in a delusional paranoia.


2014-03-21 12:20 GMT+01:00 :

>  You are picking up the inconsistencies given off by the Greens (red
> greens) and the ruling class that funds them.
> If we are doomed as even he NASA funded report assures us, then what's the
> use?
> If the calamity is not upon us, then we have time to rationally develop
> and install the clean and phase out the dirty.
> If the calamity is not upon us, we also have time to save the forests and
> the seas by technical means.
> But rather then address the problem directly, and seriously, the
> environmentalists, billionaires and their pols demand control.
> The control is rule over the serfs, not to better the serfs lives, or
> sustain the seas and forests, using rational technical means.
> To quote the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, "A crisis is a bad thing to
> waste."
> To wit: If you have a broken toilet, get it fixed, rather than make a law
> about toilet use.
>
>  -Original Message-
> From: LizR 
> To: everything-list 
> Sent: Thu, Mar 20, 2014 9:23 pm
> Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
>
>  Spudboy100,
>
> I'm not sure where you're coming from. You seem to agree that there is a
> looming environmental / resources problem, and that we should use
> technology to make a transition to more renewable energy sources and so on.
> And you agree that we should ideally reduce the population long term (the
> rate at which the population of a country rises appears to be inversely
> proportional to how well educated and equal-opportunities women are, by the
> way). So in other words you sound like an environmentalist ... apart from
> the way you keep fulminating against some idea you have that Greenies are
> secretly plotting to take over the world. It's all a bit confusing.
>
>
>
> On 21 March 2014 13:59,  wrote:
>
>>  Edgar, understood. But this shouldn't be the top of our priority,
>> unless we are spreading homo sapiens to various parts of the solar system
>> where humanity, and biomes, can be sustained for a very long time. Getting
>> away from science fiction, there are things we can do until this golden
>> interplanetary age. I don't see that a Paul Ehrlich response is a good way
>> to go, or even achievable at this point. Hence, I'd prefer the technology
>> path, rather than adopting China's one child policy.
>>   -Original Message-
>> From: Edgar L. Owen 
>> To: everything-list 
>>  Sent: Thu, Mar 20, 2014 7:52 pm
>> Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
>>
>>   Spud,
>>
>>  The best, likely the only, way to protect the environment is to
>> drastically reduce human overpopulation. Down to pre-industrial levels
>> would be a good target ~half to 1 billion...
>>
>>  Anyway if we don't do it ourselves the environment will do it for us...
>>
>>  Edgar
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thursday, March 20, 2014 7:43:35 PM UTC-4, spudb...@aol.com wrote:
>>>
>>>  You have a point, Edgar, and you yourself do not have a bad effect on
>>> the environment. However, a billion and one half fellow firewood gatherers,
>>> might have a more profound impact, and they may do a bit more than chopping
>>> then you do. Following Maslow's hierarchy of needs, when peoples standard
>>> of living improves, they start demanding a cleaner environment, and worry
>>> more about wildlife. You are doing the good because you choose to. Others
>>> are forced to gather firewood and chop trees. I hope nobody advocates
>>> permanent poverty as a method to protect the environment.
>>>
>>> Mitch
>>>
>>> Spud,
>>>
>>>  Using firewood properly done does NOT disrupt the forest. I've used
>>> firewood for heating most of my life including currently. I use only dead
>>> trees from my own property (16 acres), not taking any with nesting holes.
>>> Only very rarely do I cut a live tree when it's clearly on its last legs or
>>> very
>>>
>>> ...
>>
>>  --
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>> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
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>>
>
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Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[spudboy100]

You are picking up the inconsistencies given off by the Greens (red greens) and 
the ruling class that funds them.
If we are doomed as even he NASA funded report assures us, then what's the use?
If the calamity is not upon us, then we have time to rationally develop and 
install the clean and phase out the dirty.
If the calamity is not upon us, we also have time to save the forests and the 
seas by technical means.
But rather then address the problem directly, and seriously, the 
environmentalists, billionaires and their pols demand control.
The control is rule over the serfs, not to better the serfs lives, or sustain 
the seas and forests, using rational technical means. 
To quote the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, "A crisis is a bad thing to 
waste." 
To wit: If you have a broken toilet, get it fixed, rather than make a law about 
toilet use. 



-Original Message-
From: LizR 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Thu, Mar 20, 2014 9:23 pm
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating


Spudboy100,

I'm not sure where you're coming from. You seem to agree that there is a 
looming environmental / resources problem, and that we should use technology to 
make a transition to more renewable energy sources and so on. And you agree 
that we should ideally reduce the population long term (the rate at which the 
population of a country rises appears to be inversely proportional to how well 
educated and equal-opportunities women are, by the way). So in other words you 
sound like an environmentalist ... apart from the way you keep fulminating 
against some idea you have that Greenies are secretly plotting to take over the 
world. It's all a bit confusing.





On 21 March 2014 13:59,   wrote:

Edgar, understood. But this shouldn't be the top of our priority, unless we are 
spreading homo sapiens to various parts of the solar system where humanity, and 
biomes, can be sustained for a very long time. Getting away from science 
fiction, there are things we can do until this golden interplanetary age. I 
don't see that a Paul Ehrlich response is a good way to go, or even achievable 
at this point. Hence, I'd prefer the technology path, rather than adopting 
China's one child policy. 



-Original Message-
From: Edgar L. Owen 
To: everything-list 

Sent: Thu, Mar 20, 2014 7:52 pm
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating




Spud,


The best, likely the only, way to protect the environment is to drastically 
reduce human overpopulation. Down to pre-industrial levels would be a good 
target ~half to 1 billion...


Anyway if we don't do it ourselves the environment will do it for us...


Edgar




On Thursday, March 20, 2014 7:43:35 PM UTC-4, spudb...@aol.com wrote:
You have a point, Edgar, and you yourself do not have a bad effect on the 
environment. However, a billion and one half fellow firewood gatherers, might 
have a more profound impact, and they may do a bit more than chopping then you 
do. Following Maslow's hierarchy of needs, when peoples standard of living 
improves, they start demanding a cleaner environment, and worry more about 
wildlife. You are doing the good because you choose to. Others are forced to 
gather firewood and chop trees. I hope nobody advocates permanent poverty as a 
method to protect the environment. 
 
Mitch

Spud,


Using firewood properly done does NOT disrupt the forest. I've used firewood 
for heating most of my life including currently. I use only dead trees from my 
own property (16 acres), not taking any with nesting holes. Only very rarely do 
I cut a live tree when it's clearly on its last legs or very 

...


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You received this messa

Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Edgar L. Owen]

Spud,

But reducing human overpopulation IS the main problem facing the planet, 
the ecosystem, and the human species itself.

Assuming that increasing technology will somehow solve the problem is, I 
fear, naive. It is precisely the use of more and more powerful technology 
that has resulted in the exponential destruction of the environment by the 
exponentially increasing number of humans.

So it's not better technology we need, but the wisdom to use it 
sustainably

Edgar



On Thursday, March 20, 2014 8:59:36 PM UTC-4, spudb...@aol.com wrote:
>
> Edgar, understood. But this shouldn't be the top of our priority, unless 
> we are spreading homo sapiens to various parts of the solar system where 
> humanity, and biomes, can be sustained for a very long time. Getting away 
> from science fiction, there are things we can do until this golden 
> interplanetary age. I don't see that a Paul Ehrlich response is a good way 
> to go, or even achievable at this point. Hence, I'd prefer the technology 
> path, rather than adopting China's one child policy. 
>  http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating

[Edgar L. Owen]

Spud,

If only dead wood is cut for firewood and cooking you are just recycling a 
sustainable resource. Unlike coal and oil, firewood quickly and sustainably 
regenerates. And basically burning dead wood is just speeding up the 
natural process of the decay of dead trees. 

So burning dead wood for heat is NOT the problem. It's a completely 
sustainable process. The problem is way too many people so they are forced 
to cut LIVE wood and denude forests. So again it's a human overpopulation 
problem, not a firewood problem...

Edgar



On Thursday, March 20, 2014 7:43:35 PM UTC-4, spudb...@aol.com wrote:
>
> You have a point, Edgar, and you yourself do not have a bad effect on the 
> environment. However, a billion and one half fellow firewood gatherers, 
> might have a more profound impact, and they may do a bit more than chopping 
> then you do. Following Maslow's hierarchy of needs, when peoples standard 
> of living improves, they start demanding a cleaner environment, and worry 
> more about wildlife. You are doing the good because you choose to. Others 
> are forced to gather firewood and chop trees. I hope nobody advocates 
> permanent poverty as a method to protect the environment. 
>  
> Mitch
>
> Spud, 
>
>  Using firewood properly done does NOT disrupt the forest. I've used 
> firewood for heating most of my life including currently. I use only dead 
> trees from my own property (16 acres), not taking any with nesting holes. 
> Only very rarely do I cut a live tree when it's clearly on its last le
>
> ...

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Re: Gravity Wave Signature Discovered

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Mar 2014, at 23:07, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:



On Thursday, March 20, 2014 1:12:33 PM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

It looks like you have not yet grasped the UDA.


My post was not about the UDA; your comments are appreciated but  
they miss the mark widely.



You post was not on UDA, but I guess you made a remark incompatible  
with CTM (comp), and I guess my comment was based on the UDA.


 You might be able to make a more specific comment, as I am not sure  
I can see where and how I miss the mark.


Bruno




-Gabe

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Re: Tegmark and UDA

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Mar 2014, at 00:37, Ronald Held wrote:


Assuming chaotic inflation there is no consensus that the multiverse
is past infinite but some papers have try to show it is do.


Interesting. Have some links or references? Thanks.

Bruno




Ronald

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Re: Modality Independence

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Mar 2014, at 18:01, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:




On Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:16:19 AM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote:

On Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:09:39 AM UTC-4, Gabriel Bodeen wrote:

  It formed increasingly high-level associations between bundles of  
sensory data, eventually also combining sounds and vocal behavior  
into those associations.  There's nothing obviously intractable  
about describing such data input and analysis in computational terms.


If that were true, the oldest words would describe things like  
danger or food, but they don't. They are concepts like I, who, two,  
three and five (http://media.tumblr.com/8b5d411063f5291737c4a36681474205/tumblr_inline_mmrdbhECQY1qz4rgp.png 
)


BTW, that chart is about the most-conserved words in the Indo- 
European family of languages.  It says nothing either way about what  
the earliest words were.


Sure, yeah I'm not saying that animals can't reason abstractly, I'm  
pointing out yet another example where the computationalist theory  
fails to match up with what it would predict. If we apply CTM to  
communications, we should expect all language to develop independent  
of modality and develop modal dependence through increasing layers  
of complexity. CTM demands that qualia is complex, not simple - that  
something like pain is not actually a feeling but in fact a  
tremendously complex computation that is labeled as a feeling by a  
complex computation (for no particular reason, other than labels  
could theoretically be feelings).


Pardon?  The computational theory of mind is an attempt to explain  
what the mind is and how it relates to the brain.  It doesn't make  
any predictions about how the brain should function unless you add a  
host of additional assumptions.  To get to your prediction, you'd  
need CTM plus assumptions like these:


* The mind-computation is fundamental and the brain is derivative of  
it.  The brain is a physical reification of the mind-computation  
that "fleshes out" the mind-computation with somewhat arbitrary  
additional physical detail.
* The mind-computation underlying the brain is an indepedent process  
from any computation underlying the brain's environment.


If we keep CTM but reject these assumptions, then we can't conclude  
that language should develop independently of modality and develop  
it due to the outworking of the mind-computation adding increasing  
layers of complexity.  If instead the mind-computation is derivative  
of the brain, as most advocates of CTM suppose, then the brain's  
development would constrain the computation, not the reverse.  If  
the mind-computation is embedded in a larger computation, say, of  
the universe, then there is no reason to expect it to develop  
independently.


All that is to say that I think you're using a very particular  
variation on CTM.  Your conclusions are sensible regarding it, but  
they don't apply to CTM generally.


I agree. In fact CTM, taken seriously, is capable of refuting all the  
CTM metaphors, which are usually based on some working analogy, but  
unprovably so, as it would determine or fix our level of substitution.  
The metaphor can be inspiring, but are conceptually misleading. CTM  
does ask for a counter-intuitive bet.


Bruno







-Gabe

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