I checked your link. Most of the pages in fact explain that there *aren't* any "out of place fossils". The closest was a page so blindly-stupid as to think an overthrust creates out of place fossils, and about two lpages that bafflingly think that a newly found slightly earlier ancestor, or a later descendant, is somehow "out of place". Not one single example of a rabbit in the Precambrian, or any other remotely out of place fossil. An out of place fossil has to be an evolutionary descendant (like rabbits) appearing before an ancestor (like dinosaurs). You didn't present a single one, your link didn't present a single example.

-

It's not being treated as a monolith. The government was finally spurred to action on this issue mainly because of Islamist trying push religion in science class. The general rule is that you can't false claims about any flavor of creationism being accepted supported science. You have to teach science in a science class. Kinda like you are supposed to be teaching math in a math class.

No. Old earth creationists are being treated equally. You can't teach old earth creationism in a science class when the only accurate description of the current state of science is that professional scientists consider old-earth creationism unscientific and unsupported scientifically.

It seems you need to flip that around.
Scientific is not the same thing as atheism!
Science does not mention gods because there is zero scientific evidence for or against the existence of any gods. Just because science has nothing to say about gods does not make science atheistic. Just because welding class has nothing to say about gods doesn't make welding atheistic.

Yep. And therefore shouldn't be in a science class.

A theology class, comparing and contrasting the major world religions, would be an entirely appropriate class to teach the Islamic, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and other stories of creation.

-

What a bizarre argument. You confirm every single point of the case proving AGW, and you counter by citing that atmospheric CO2 only goes up half as fast as we dump CO2 into the atmosphere. This is something that has been long known and factored in by scientists. As long as atmospheric CO2 is going up then you're concurring that the AGW case has been established, and you're merely pointing out that in a fictional world without natural CO2 sinks the CO2 increase would have been twice as fast, a fictional world that would have had faster and more severe warming.

Basically you're saying the effect is real and proven, but it's only half as big as I imagine it could have been, therefore it doesn't exist? Huh?

-

It has been known for years, probably decades, that gene frequencies follow this mathematical rule, and that it has been mathematically proven optimal for solving Multi-armed bandit type problems. Each generation genes are tested by natural selection, and increase or decrease in frequency according to multiplicative increase or decrease. This is a mathematically optimal strategy for exploring and optimizing payoff in a complex unknown environment. Mutation creates random stuff to try, and this mathematically selection algorithm optimally crafts it into useful new information.

-

From TFA: "Second, suramin is a poor drug choice for chronic use because of potentially toxic side effects that can occur with prolonged treatment."

And from the Wikipedia page on the drug (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suramin#Adverse_reactions):

So while this is an important piece of work that identifies purine metabolism as a critical set of pathways related to ASD, it should be viewed primarily as a starting point for a more precisely targeted drug that will have the same effect on the pathways that matter without also messing up the ones that cause the side-effects.

This. Expecting people with no knowledge of statistics, programming, or machine learning algorithms to develop appropriate models and interpret them correctly is unrealistic.

I've worked on applications that attempted to bring machine learning to the desktop for specific tasks, and it failed because naive users were simply not able to bring the required knowledge and nuance to the table. It made experts better (I still use the program myself now and then) but there was a threshold below which it was useless.

Without getting your hands on the data and understanding something about the internals of the problem you can't build learning systems that will be plausibly generalizable. Overtraining (and undervalidation) is still a rampant problem in ML applications, and this kind of technology will just make it worse.

Learning algorithms, especially at the level they are implemented in R, are not black boxes. They need to be understood and applied carefully and appropriately.

To go from 136 million in 1871 to zero in 1900 (the year the last passenger pigeon was shot in the wild) would have taken a phenomenal killing effort. At that size of population the reproduction rate must have been getting on for 100 million new birds a year, and every bird killed must simply created a better chance that next year's young would survive, because they would be competing for food with a smaller flock.

Granted, the nesting areas were relatively small and therefore subject to easy destruction, but two (related) factors should also be taken into account: disease and invasive species (which could well have brought diseases with them.)

Although introduced to late to be the culprit with respect to passenger pigeons, the common starling is an example of the massive effect invasive species can have on local ecologies. Furthermore, the massive changes to the prairie eco-system as the result of farming must have had an effect as well.

So while hunting and wanton destruction of nesting habitat obviously didn't help, it's interesting to ask, "Could the passenger pigeon have survived even without deliberate attempts to kill it?" The answer is not obviously "yes" (nor is it obviously "no", which is why the question is interesting.)

In this context it is worth remembering that the exclusion zone around the worst civil nuclear disaster in human history is far, far better for the local wildlife that simply having a thriving human population in the area: http://www.slate.com/articles/... (the article incorrectly states that observations of wildlife diversity around Chernobyl depend on the assumption that radiation isn't as bad for animals as humans, but this has causality backward: it is simply a matter of empirical fact, backed up by systematic observations carefully ignored by critics, that wildlife diversity in the exclusion zone is as high as that in protected nature reserve.)

But you're also concluding that if the machine does it as well as the human it is "really" a human intelligence, but if a man does it as well as a woman he is not "really" a man.

The basic premise of the test is, "If two unlike things behave alike in one case, we say they are the same; in the other case, we say they are different."

The premise of the test violates its conclusion.

The interesting question is, I suppose, whether or not this source of "water" is responsible for the oceans, or if they came about from e.g. cometary impacts post-crust formation (before the crust formed they don't really count as "cometary impacts", it was all just part of the formation process). This has a significant impact on the probability of finding water on extrasolar planets and hence on the CO_2/O_2/H_2O/N_2 life cycle establishing itself. There is of course evidence in the form of e.g. Europa and Titan that there is abundant water out there that COULD form seas on planetoid objects in our own solar system if the temperature/atmosphere composition range were right, but I'm not sure that we have a compelling, evidence supported picture of the details of the Earth's early evolution and how much of it was a comparatively rare accident, how much is commonplace in planetary formation. If we built a really, really big telescope at e.g. one of the Lagrange points -- maybe something with a 100 meter or even a kilometer primary mirror and similar scales for the optical paths -- we might be able to "see" extrasolar planets at a level of detail sufficient to resolve the chemistry and maybe more of smaller planets and planetary objects, not just the ones with orbits and mass parameters sufficient to make the current cut. And see a lot of other really cool stuff as well, of course -- such an eye in the sky could look across time to the big bang and immediate aftermath a lot more effectively than the Hubble.

Let's see, a primary mirror with a diameter of d = 1000 meters, \alpha = 1.22 \lambda/d, visible light is roughly 1 micron, so diffraction-limited resolution would be order of 10^9 radians. Nearish stars are order 10^16 meters, so we could barely resolve details 10^7 meters in size. Darn, that's just over the size of he Earth. We could actually photograph Jupiter-sized planets, but Earth-like planets would still just be a (fat) dot. Of course in the UV spectrum we could get one more order of magnitude out of ordinary optics so we could possibly see continent sized features and oceans in the UV (and resolve an Earth as more than just a dot). And people might find a way to cheat resolution a bit more than that -- build a coherent array of smaller telescopes, whatever. It would need damn good optics, as well.

One can dream, right? The Big Eye. Crowdfunding, anyone? If everybody on the planet contributed a dollar a year, we could build it inside a decade. Or maybe two. I might even live to see the first pictures come back. But probably not.

rgb

Absolutely none of which is relevant to ride-share arrangements, but was relevant before a ubiquitous network allowed people arriving at airports to pre-arrange with a party on the receiving end, who has been vetted by an honest broker (Uber et al).

The ability to personally connect with the person picking you up makes rideshare services more like a buddy picking you up and you paying for gas than a traditional, anonymous taxi service.

tl;dr: Irrelevant rules are irrelevant.

None of those species developed the kind of representational, specifically human intelligence that builds spaceships and discovers universal gravitation. They "could have", of course, but as a poster up this thread has pointed out, we have left the hand-wavey philosophy behind and are now using the only way of knowing: the discipline of testing ideas by systematic observation, controlled experiment and Bayesian inference... this discipline is called "science".

We know of exactly one species that developed specifically human intelligence: us. There are tool-users all over the place. Tool-use is found in bonobos and birds. There are language-users of a kind as well: it would be astonishing if humans were so good at language if it wasn't an elaboration of capabilities that existed in our ancestors.

But what we do--specifically human intelligence, not the intelligence of beings who chipped flints into useful shapes or use sticks to capture ants or whose various articulations communicate a variety of important states--what we alone do is unique to us, and we are even beginning to understand why that is the case.

Obviously specifically human intelligence did not evolve to write sonnets or build spaceships, so it could not have been selected for due to its enormous problem-solving scope. Our brain uses 10% of our body's energy budget, which is a ridiculous burden, and it wasn't evolved against the possibility that one day it would be useful in the development of the political state. It was developed because it got us laid. Proto-human males and females were more likely to mate with partners who could entertain them, and being modestly bright themselves they found brighter partners more entertaining (this also explains why both males and females have the same intelligence, because both minds had to be engaged in the process for it to work.)

Quite accidentally, that resulted in our specifically human intelligence, which is not the intelligence of tool-using birds or communicative pack hunters, but the only kind of intelligence that builds spaceships and discovers mathematical laws describing reality (which is the only kind of intelligence the Drake Equation is concerned with.)

So all the actual evidence we have tells us that specifically human intelligence--not the intelligence of dolphins or whales--evolved:

a) by accident, as an epiphenomenon of sexual selection

and

b) exactly once.

Given the former, the latter is not surprising.

This is quite unlike every other complex characteristic of species. Eyes have evolved independently dozens of times (different types of eye use different biochemistry). Wings, likewise. Ditto fins. And so on.

So it is not at all implausible that the probability of developing specifically human intelligence of the kind required for a species to be detectable at stellar distances--a kind that is not found in any other species on Earth--is extremely improbable, even though life itself is extremely probable. And that is my personal bet, as we go out and explore other worlds: we will find life everywhere, and the specifically human intelligence that took us to the stars in the first place... no where.

[I've had this argument before, and am not under any illusions as to the ability of people who believe intelligence must be common to bring up imaginary "counter arguments", but what we can or cannot imagine has no bearing on what is real, only reality does.]

I don't seem to have "Rogue Bolo" in my sci-fi book collection, but the cover on Amazon looks familiar. I think I might have given it away one Halloween decades ago living in Princeton, NJ when I gave the option of getting books instead of candy to some trick-or-treaters (several teens there seemed to prefer the books).

Your point on a Bolo singularity makes me think about the Asimov universe, and how his robots there eventually interpreted the three laws in a way "The Zeroth Law" that gave them lots of independence, and that saw themselves as in a way more "human" than humans, and also caused them to start intervening in history behind the scenes. There is no set of laws or constitution that ultimately does not need some intelligent judge to interpret the meaning or spirit of the words in a present day context, and once some intelligent entity (including an AI) starts creatively interpreting "rules" including "metarules" about how rules can be changed, who knows where it will end?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Inspired by your post, I've been looking through my Bolo books. I started rereading "Ploughshare" by Todd Johnson in "Bolos: Book 1: Honor of the Regiment" where "Das Afrika Corps" and other Mark XVI C Bolos act a bit odd due to a spilled milkshake by the "Director's son" in the "White Room" psychotronics lab and the use of "DK-41" cleaning fluid to fix that mess up. Another case of the unexpected...

I liked "Bolo Rising" novel which has a Bolo Mark XXXIII series HCT called Hector. That is an interesting novel of a Bolo regaining its operational capacity after being infiltrated and locked down by alien technology. There is another XXXIII in "Bolo Strike". But while those mega-Bolo stories are interesting in their own sort of over-the-top way (maybe your point about "the other guy"), I like the diversity in the short stories in "Honor of the Regiment" by a variety of authors covering the whole history of different Bolos of various capabilities and their unfolding increasing sentience and self-directedness. What does "Honor" or "Service" means over time and shading into a meta-level? For example, are whistleblowers like Manning, Snowden, or Kiriakou honorable and engaged in service and fulfilling their oath to defend the Constitution? Or are they traitors? Complex questions... Perhaps "Rogue Bolo" goes deeper into such issues? As a lesser example, "Bolo Brigade" explores the issue of a conflict between "rules of engagement" and a Bolo's desire to get its job done. Conflicts between priorities are not something that only humans will face...

It is not clear where the singularity of emerging AI and technologically-expanded-or-narrowed humans and so on will all lead in reality -- especially with Bolo vs. Beserker as an option. I forget the plot of "Bolo Strike" as I look at my Bolo books, but the blurb on the back says "as Bolo faces human-Bolo hybrid in a cataclysmic showdown". So there are other ways automated systems can cause change, either their own independence or by empowering some few independent humans. As I essentially say near the end of the 2000 post to the Unrev-II Engelbart Bootstrap mailing list, corporations are like vast machine intelligence at his point. And like the present day, what is the real difference to most people if the Earth is laid waste, the seas polluted, the mountains leveled, the oceans strip-mined, and most of the people kept down in their aspirations for a decent life by "aliens from outer space" or by some 1% of vampire-like human-machine-hybrid-organizational "aliens" who have become specialized in "extracting wealth" by privatizing gains and socializing costs (including the cost to the worker of unpleasant work environments)? Even without human-Bolo hybrids, there can be vast technological/bureaucratic enterprises that make use of humans as parts much the same as the "!*!*!" of "Bolo Rising" tried to do in their quest of "efficiency" -- "efficiency" to what end and to whose benefit? So much of sci-fi is a way that people can reflect of concerns of the day, but at a safer intellectual distance.

Anyway, reminds me I should try playing with my kid this old Metagame I have around somewhere and have not played in decades and was inspired by the Bolo series:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

Not even close, because our conclusion about other humans is based on a huge amount of non-verbal communication and experience, starting from the moment we are born. AI researchers (and researchers into "intelligence" generally) conveniently forget that the vast majority of intelligent behaviour is non-verbal, and we rely on that when we are inferring from verbal behaviour that there is intelligence present.

Simply put: without non-verbal intelligent behaviour we would not even know that other humans are intelligent. Likewise, we know that dogs are intelligent even though they are non-verbal (I'm using an unrestrictive notion of "intelligent" here, quite deliberately in contrast to the restrictive use that is common--although thankfully not universal--in the AI community.)

With regard to the Turing test as a measure of "intelligence", consider it's original form: http://psych.utoronto.ca/users...

Turing started by considering a situation where a woman and a man are trying to convince a judge which one of them is male, using only a teletype console as a means of communication. He then considered replacing the woman with a computer.

Think about that for a second. Concluding, "If a computer can convince a judge it is the human more than 50% of the time we can say that it is 'really' intelligent" implies "If a woman can convince a judge she is male more than 50% of the time we can say she is 'really' a dude."

The absurdity of the latter conclusion should give us pause in putting too much weight on the former.

There's no real point in arguing with a gun nut, but I'll do so anyway.

You point out that the US has more guns per person. But the US also has (plausibly) seen a considerable drop in the number of people who own guns in the past 30 years: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

So triumphal ballyhooing about "proof" (never a good sign in someone who pretends to be arguing the data, which only ever increase or decrease plausibility) is a bit premature. It is at least as plausible that some types of violent crime have decreased because fewer people can lay their hands on a deadly weapon in a moment of anger or confusion.

When making a statistical argument (but I repeat myself) it is always important to dig into the sub-structure of the data. In this case, the distribution of gun ownership. In other cases, the kind of gun owned may be important: there is some evidence that the prevalence of handguns specifically are associated with homicides. Canada, for example, has comparable long-gun ownership to the US--and they are used for the same primary purpose here as they are there, which is to commit suicide--but far fewer handguns and a far lower gun-murder rate.

I'm just guessing here based on nothing but a few decades of involvement in the scientific community, but I'd say it's pretty likely that a) the scientists in question have thought of your objection already and b) they have quantified the relative contributions from increased grain size vs increased dark pollutants.

What would be incredibly stupid is assuming that people who study this stuff professionally can be out-thought by a random Internet commenter who has just encountered the question for the first time.

But just in case, let me ask you: what is the quantitative relationship between grain size and reflectivity of snow? Please respond with a graph or formula. You must have access to this information to judge the relative importance of grain size vs pollutant cover, and it would be a positive contribution to this discussion to share it.