Comment Re:meh (Score 1) 33
Adam Smith called such an intelligence the "Invisible Hand".
Adam Smith called such an intelligence the "Invisible Hand".
From the article:
Misra came up with a formula
Bruce, there's a reason why the gun is called The Great Equalizer.
Indeed, in the grand scheme, you are suggesting that we take guns out of the hands of the individual, and put them solely in the hands of the State; that sounds like a transfer of power from the Weak to the Strong...
Carl Sagan, in Cosmos:
If the general picture, however, of a Big Bang followed by an expanding universe is correct, what happened before that? Was the universe devoid of all matter, and then the matter suddenly, somehow created? How did that happen?
In many cultures, the customary answer is that a "god" or "gods" created the universe out of nothing. But, if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question: Where did God come from?
If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, then why not save a step, and conclude that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe always existed? There's no need for a creation—it was always here.
These are not easy questions; cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries, with the questions that were once treated only in religion and myth.
inanimate matter
What does ‘inanimate’ mean? The problem is that people are always making this bizarre differentiation between ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’, when really there is just matter interacting with matter; some sets of interactions are more complex and organized (or, shall we say, repetitive and sustained) than other sets of interactions. Indeed, sometimes that complexity and organization is so great that we call it ‘life’ and even ‘intelligent life’, but it’s all one and the same:
Matter interacting with matter.
When you eat some metal such as calcium, that calcium may become incorporated in your bones. Is that calcium all of a sudden ‘animated’ and ‘living’? Is the water that you drink somehow ‘animated’ because it flows through your brain cells?
A child is a continuation of that complex interaction between matter that we call the parent.
Random processes
The variation may be random (whatever that really means). The selection is not random.
The whole process, evolution by variation and selection (yes, "abiogenesis" is as specious as the notion of "nonliving" matter), is decidedly not random.
I reject your notion that evolution is unrelated.
Both variation and selection are still at work, even on "inanimate" objects.
This concept was considered in Star Trek: Deep Space 9's "Hard Time", in which Miles O'Brien spends a few hours being subjected to the experiences of a couple decades or so in prison.
Just because you can does not mean it's supported.
Guess what? It's not supported.
* Apple has Boot Camp because they have to allow Dual Booting in order to lure in the majority of computer users—Windows users. They sure as hell aren't helping Linux users out.
* Apple introduced Boot Camp when they were still user-friendly—before they started constructing their walled guarden (located at 1984 Infinite Loop).
* Of course Apple provides the Windows drivers for Apple's own machines; every vendor that supports Windows has always had to do so.
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." —Jonathan Swift
As I already said:
publicly acceptable reason for shutting the door on those pesky newcomers.
The purpose of CLAs is to maintain the hegemony for the ruling clique; the very point of a CLA is to provide the entrenched bureaucrats with a publicly acceptable reason for shutting the door on those pesky newcomers.
Corporations couldn't buy so much power if the government didn't have so much power to sell in the first place.
In other words, either the problem is economic success through voluntary interaction, or the problem is a centralized monopoly on involuntary interaction for hire to the highest bidder. Which one is it?
Bankruptcy is defined by the government.
Corporate liability firewalls are defined by the government.
Taxpayer cleanup is established by the government.
Competition in regulation was destroyed when a monopoly on regulation was declared by the government.
The existing regulation was establisehd by that government.
I see one common element throughout all of the details you dislike. Can you spot it?
The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.