reevesr1 Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 I have recently noticed several posters lamenting the frivolity and sarcasm on this board because it interferes with serious issues and conversations. Here is an area for you to discuss serious topics to your hearts content. I would like people to refrain from any sarcastic remarks to the serious people who will discuss serious topics in a serious manner on this thread. Have at 'er boys. Quote
ÜberFly Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 Gee Rick, are you now a wannabe moderator (we all know you are a wannabe fly fisher)! P I have recently noticed several posters lamenting the frivolity and sarcasm on this board because it interferes with serious issues and conversations. Here is an area for you to discuss serious topics to your hearts content. I would like people to refrain from any sarcastic remarks to the serious people who will discuss serious topics in a serious manner on this thread. Have at 'er boys. Quote
Taco Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 I don't like cake anymore, Peter says it leads to certain inadequacies in antique persons. Quote
Taco Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 just for the boys? How 'bout chirpy n00bs?? Quote
Ricinus Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 Are you seriously serious about this? Regards Mike Quote
reevesr1 Posted November 9, 2009 Author Posted November 9, 2009 Girls and noobs ok. If u cant fish, moderate. I'm moderately serious........ Taco, you were sarcastic in your first post. If I could have you banned from this thread, I would. But since I'm only a wanna be moderator, I can't do anything but I can hurl insults at you like.... or if you prefer the original: Click here if the movie does not play. Quote
Taco Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 No...*hit I'm seriously serious...........*hit, did I swear?? Quote
darrinhurst Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 What a horrid display of animal brutality! If PETA gets a hold if this, the thread will be banned for sure! Remove it at once! *EDIT* Almost forgot..... LMFAO Quote
hydropsyche Posted November 10, 2009 Posted November 10, 2009 Wow. There's 2.5 minutes I'll never get back. Quote
dryfly Posted November 10, 2009 Posted November 10, 2009 Let's see now....today is November 9th. By the Ides of March, 2010, things will be pretty be ugly around here. I think I will buy some shares in drug companies that make Prozac and Paxil. Or we could simply discuss some string theory and quantum mechanics to tide us over. Quote
Ricinus Posted November 10, 2009 Posted November 10, 2009 Nah, I'm sorta into the Chaos Theory and Butterfly Effect which kinda explain alot of things happening around here. HARD LEFT TURN. Regards Mike Quote
Weedy1 Posted November 10, 2009 Posted November 10, 2009 Or we could simply discuss some string theory and quantum mechanics to tide us over. Ooooohhh ya, eleven dimensions, just think of the fun? Off track: For anyone interested in string theory check this out. Probably one of the best productions I have ever watched. Real wacky stuff that will make you think. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/ Back on track.......... Quote
Taco Posted November 10, 2009 Posted November 10, 2009 Chaos theory?? Left turn? Na just cranky dutchman stuck in the house for 10 days................................................... Quote
reevesr1 Posted November 10, 2009 Author Posted November 10, 2009 Let's see now....today is November 9th. By the Ides of March, 2010, things will be pretty be ugly around here. I think I will buy some shares in drug companies that make Prozac and Paxil. Or we could simply discuss some string theory and quantum mechanics to tide us over. How about the GUT (Grand unification theory for those of you not serious enough to know)? Quote
Ricinus Posted November 10, 2009 Posted November 10, 2009 GUT ??? Is that a personal attack on all the seniors around here ?( looking down and sucking in deeply) This thread is now seriously heading for the toolies. Regards Mike Quote
dryfly Posted November 10, 2009 Posted November 10, 2009 I was thinking this evening while doing dishes, so jotted a few notes. Let me know what you think rickr. Do you think that your newest acquisition, a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner that traces out its unpredictable paths on your living room floor, is conscious? What about that bee that hovers above your marmalade-covered breakfast toast? Or the newborn who finally fell asleep after being suckled? Nobody except a dyed-in-the-wool nerd would think of the first as being sentient; adherents of Jainism, India’s oldest religion, believe that bees—and indeed all living creatures, small and large—are aware; whereas most everyone would accord the magical gift of consciousness to the baby. The truth is that we really do not know which of these organisms is or is not conscious. We have strong feelings about the matter, molded by tradition, religion and law. But we have no objective, rational method, no step-by-step procedure, to determine whether a given organism has subjective states, has feelings. The reason is that we lack a coherent framework for consciousness. Although consciousness is the only way we know about the world within and around us—shades of the famous Cartesian deduction cogito, ergo sum—there is no agreement about what it is, how it relates to highly organized matter or what its role in life is. This situation is scandalous! We have a detailed and very successful framework for matter and for energy but not for the mind-body problem. This dismal state of affairs might be about to change, however. The universal lingua franca of our age is information. We are used to the idea that stock and bond prices, books, photographs, movies, music and our genetic makeup can all be turned into data streams of zeros and ones. These bits are the elemental atoms of information that are transmitted over an Ethernet cable or via wireless, that are stored, replayed, copied and assembled into gigantic repositories of knowledge. Information does not depend on the substrate. The same information can be represented as lines on paper, as electrical charges inside a PC’s memory banks or as the strength of the synaptic connections among nerve cells. Since the early days of computers, scholars have argued that the subjective, phenomenal states that make up the life of the mind are intimately linked to the information expressed at that time by the brain. Yet they have lacked the tools to turn this hunch into a concrete and predictive theory. Enter psychiatrist and neuroscientist Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Tononi has developed and refined what he calls the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness. An integrated theory is based on two axiomatic pillars. First, conscious states are highly differentiated; they are informationally very rich. You can be conscious of an uncountable number of things: you can watch your son’s piano recital, for instance; you can see the flowers in the garden outside or the Gauguin painting on the wall. Think of all the frames from all the movies you have ever seen or that have ever been filmed or that will be filmed! Each frame, each view, is a specific conscious percept. Second, this information is highly integrated. No matter how hard you try, you cannot force yourself to see the world in black-and-white, nor can you see only the left half of your field of view and not the right. When you’re looking at your friend’s face, you can’t fail to also notice if she is crying. Whatever information you are conscious of is wholly and completely presented to your mind; it cannot be subdivided. Underlying this unity of consciousness is a multitude of causal interactions among the relevant parts of your brain. If areas of the brain start to disconnect or become fragmented and balkanized, as occurs in deep sleep or in anesthesia, consciousness fades and might cease altogether. Consider split-brain patients, whose corpus callosum—the 200 million wires linking the two cortical hemispheres—has been cut to alleviate severe epileptic seizures. The surgery literally splits the person’s consciousness in two, with one conscious mind associated with the left hemisphere and seeing the right half of the visual field and the other mind arising from the right hemisphere and seeing the left half of the visual field. Quote
reevesr1 Posted November 11, 2009 Author Posted November 11, 2009 Ok, that is pretty serious. I think that if your Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner operates for a few hundred years it will eventually obtain consciousness, like that robot in that robot movie. It will then start to try to find companionship. It will find humans fat and disappointing. Then it will seek out robot companionship, probably a cute one that flies with one eye that seems to portray emotion. Then it will get captured by evil short junk yard workers who have shiny red eyes and wear hoods and operate this big slow junk yard machine. It will then be disassembled and the cute one eyed robot will be sad. The end. Quote
Tungsten Posted November 11, 2009 Posted November 11, 2009 Ok, that is pretty serious. I think that if your Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner operates for a few hundred years it will eventually obtain consciousness, like that robot in that robot movie. It will then start to try to find companionship. It will find humans fat and disappointing. Then it will seek out robot companionship, probably a cute one that flies with one eye that seems to portray emotion. Then it will get captured by evil short junk yard workers who have shiny red eyes and wear hoods and operate this big slow junk yard machine. It will then be disassembled and the cute one eyed robot will be sad. The end. Robots can't fly!I want what your on! Quote
LynnF Posted November 11, 2009 Posted November 11, 2009 Clearly you have to be intelligent to participate in this thread. I am not. Seriously. Quote
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