No More Big Ideas? Try These On for Size
In contrast to Einstein and his contemporary physicists, we modern physicists rush out and explain our theories to the general pubic while we are developing them.
I just did.
And we modern physicists are more ambitious that Einstein. We put forward Theories of EVERYTHING, theories that explain ALL forces and particles. Einstein was trying merely to unify gravity with electromagnetism.
And our reality is infinitely bigger than Einstein’s. We modern quantum physicists claim that reality is not a mere universe, but an uncountable infinity of universes just like our own. Don’t tell me that this is not BIG idea!
In fact, it’s not only a big idea, it’s an idea as revolutionary as Copernicus’s idea. Yet Gabler and the the New York Times are unaware of it. Yet many physicists have not only described it in technical articles, but also in popular articles, and even on television! See me and others describe it this September on the TV show Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. It is absolutely false as Gabler writes: “Intellectuals… would even occasionally be invited to the couches of late-night talk shows. How long ago that was.” I’ve been on talk shows. And the great Cal Tech physicist Kip Thorne is even today working on a movie about black holes with Steven Spielberg.
Then there is transhumanism: the evidence is very strong that sometime in this century (I predict by 2030, Ray Kurzweil by 2045) we will see the creation of computer programs that are fully equal to humans in mental ability. At roughly the same time, we predict that humans will be able to download themselves into computers, and live forever.
I myself have argued that a partnership between the artificial intelligences and human downloads will expand out from the Earth and eventually engulf the entire universe, taking control of the entire universe.
I challenge you to show any previous time in human history that advanced such big ideas.
While I agree we do continue to think big, I have to ask how you can explain a multiverse within the confines of the Conservation of Mass. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, after all, and to create a parallel universe would either require an equal amount of matter-energy to our own, or a different set of rules to govern physics on the scale of multiple universes. So which is it? And in the case of the former, where does the energy come from?
That is, if you’re subscribing to the quantum event notion of parallel universes, which would simply mean that in this universe we measured an electron in a different position from another universe.
The universes are isolated from each other and operate using their own rules.
Conservation of mass and energy is law only within a universe.
Universes such as this one come from quantum fluctuations in whatever is not this universe.
The better question is “Where did quantum mechanics come from?”
Okay, and what are “Quantum fluctuations”?
Now you’re getting it.
If every bit of mass in the universe suddenly split in half in the formation of a seperate universe, how would anyong know it or prove it? Or even have reason to suspect it? All measuring sticks would also be divided in half, right?
I have to ask how you can explain a multiverse within the confines of the Conservation of Mass. Matter cannot be created or destroyed…
I thought the Hawking radiation demonstrated that to be false.
Matter is constantly popping in and out of the quantum foam.
AndrewJTalon,
Actually, “Matter cannot be created or destroyed” was the physical thought before Einstein. In a nuclear reactor (or in a nuclear warhead) matter is turned into energy and in a particle accelerator (like the LHC), energy is turned into matter.
According to modern physical thought, what is conserved is the sum of energy and matter.
Great to see you still here, Frank.
Quantum computers could turn transhumanism into something else entirely, since they do their calculations in parallel universes, right?
There are plenty of big ideas out there, and out there is much bigger than any of our ideas, I think.
And I predict that by 2030 Mr. Tipler will have revised his prediction of computer programs fully equal to humans in mental ability to 2050, perhaps not noticing that it’s been a good while since anyone takes these recycled 70′s era strong-AI pronouncements seriously anymore. Our gadgets are great tools, and while imputing our own capabilities onto our tools is fun and makes for great movies, it will remain a pipe dream, and thankfully so.
Mark, the 2030 prediction is a very conservative one driven solely by Moore’s law. There is very little basis for skepticism about it.
There is also “nobody”–that’s you Mark–who thinks it isn’t possible to engineer strong AI. It’s already happened by chance once. For a great deal of money, it is now possible to simulate fairly accurately about 1% of the human brain. In 2030, the same amount of money will get the whole thing done. By 2050, it will be done at the price of one of today’s laptops.
Where is there any breathing room for your uninformed and probably faith based skepticism?
Tom, speaking of faith? By 2050 you say. a modest forty years down the road, and one we have been traveling since at least the ’70′s. Glad however to see the computer is only 99% away from the brain, how about the entire neurological & endocrinal systems? Does the 1% that gets you giddy have to do with picking the socks up from the floor, I assume “fairly accurately”.
There is all kinds of faith, problem is that only one kind is ridiculed. Maybe a computer will help you in self knowledge and introspection, as it escalates to 2% of the the brain, “fairly accurately”. No hard feelings. let’s set a date for 2050 and have a cup of coffee to discuss.
We might be up to 3% by then.
People have been invoking Moore’s law for all sorts of the wrong reasons. Moore’s law only applies to certain technologies (technically, the rate of exponential increase in transistor density). It has incidentally worked for some other technologies (disk drive capacity) while failing in many (disk drive seek time, battery energy density) and has hit a hard limit(for now) in others (silicon CMOS gate speed). Today, Moore’s law is used for exponential increase in capability of any technology.
While its computing implications certainly are relevant for strong AI, they are not sufficient. In the same way that enormous improvements in chemistry and genetics have led to only modest improvement in cancer survival, enormous improvements in computing capacity are simply not sufficient to create strong AI.
We cannot, today, even predict the general characteristics of a system capable of human reasoning. Sure, we are making rapid progress in some algorithms (especially perceptual), but other areas (general reasoning, language understanding) remain very difficult.
I have seen strong AI claims of this form for 50 years, and they have universally been wrong. We do not have systems that are even close to being able to simulate human intelligence.
I suspect we will eventually reach that goal, but anyone proposing a near term (few decades) date is asking to be disappointed.
I also believe the result likely will be existentially dangerous to humanity, although it might also be existentially wonderful (Kurzweill’s singularity and trans-humanism).
Amen.
I don’t know where you get your ‘nobody’ believes that ‘strong AI’ can’t be done. First – what do you mean by ‘strong AI’? You imply the human brain! Then, you declare that at present, AI can perform at 1% of human brain level, and predict that in 20 years, the whole brain function can be replicated in AI.
I disagree and would like to ask for some references. The work I’ve seen done in ‘computing anticipatory systems’ doesn’t support your thesis. After all, the point of the human brain is not merely its memory, and not merely its capacity for symbolic logic – which puts the human brain into a system where it can only operate in a ‘society’ and not in isolation, and above all, its ability for controlled anticipation.
The computer, unlike the human brain, can act alone. And, the computer uses ‘recursive modelling’; that is, it computes future events based on past events. The human brain does this – and something else.
That is, the system can model itself and its environment, and then, not simply mechanically anticipate future events based on past events but use a process of ‘hyper-incursion’ that models future states in a non-linear hypothetical manner. Computers can’t do this; they can gather and organize massive amounts of past and current data but they can’t interact with the environment and others in a complex hypothetical manner that involves other brains, that involves decisions between uncertainty and ‘the best way to move ahead’.
This nonsensical prediction has been made for the last 50 years.
At least now the target date is being pushed out decades instead of a few years. It used to be that the predictors had the sense to call themselves science fiction writers. As I recall, Asimov had robots becoming equivalent to humans about a decade ago. Turns out robots are good welders.
It’s the pipe dream of people who want to prove that there is nothing special about life or the human mind.
It’s their own form of religion, so there is no grounds for discussing the matter either.
I don’t think it is a nonsensical prediction. It’s just that he left a few zeros off of his time estimate. Change this dramatic does not happen that fast. What he predicts is a far greater leap than from chariots to jet planes and that took 2000 years. And perhaps this will never happen since the world seems to be willing to sacrifice our ability to accomplish great things on the altar of socialism. Who knows how long that retarded and retarding detour will take.
Actually it took far less time than that. Until the beginning of the 19th century, chariots (or buckboards or carriages etc.) were all that existed. Transportation technology was completely stagnant through most of human history (horses and sails.)The first steam engine to the first airplane was less than a hundred years; Orville lived to see jet engines, and of course space flight was at the threshold. My grandmother often boasted that she lived to see the first airplanes fly, and to see men walk on the moon! That, in one lifetime! From the first steam engine to manned space flight in about 150 years — I doubt we’ll see that sharp a leap ever again.
You may be right, but I’m not convinced by a long shot that it’s even possible.
Look at the effort involved to get a computer to beat a human at chess. Multiply that by a really big number of your own choosing. Then you have a good timeframe.
When they get a chess computer to say “I’m tired of chess, can we play backgammon now”, then I’ll believe it. Except that backgammon has to be replaced with the near infinite range of human interests.
The first problem is getting to a thought that isn’t pre-programmed.
The second problem is that life, even in the simplest lifeforms, is fantastically self-correcting. Your foot hits a rock and a trillion neurons light up to keep you from falling. Computers have to foresee all of the pebbles and all of the things that aren’t pebbles, and corrective action has to be planned for hitting one with your foot, or one getting in your throat, or one breaking your glasses. Ain’t gonna happen in the near future.
Proreason, how would you distinguish a “thought that had not been pre-programmed” from any other thought?
It’s a serious question: one of the deepest mathematical insights of the 20th century, along with Gödel-Rösser’s incompleteness, Turing undecideability, and Chaitin information theory, was the discovery that physical systems themselves could produce feasibly incomputable results. This is part of what we now call “chaos theory.” (In fact, all of these are very closely related.)
Basically, there are very simple physical systems — way simpler than the brain — that can’t be predicted with any feasible computation, and computations that, carried on for a relatively short time, produce results that can’t be predicted from the initial values by anything other that the computation itself.
Given that, how would you tell if a thought had been “pre-programmed”?
What does distinguishing a pre-programmed thought from one that isn’t have to do with anything? We aren’t talking about identifying artificial intelligence, we are talking about creating it.
And for that matter, what does chaos theory have to do with it either. You already threw relativity against the wall and it didn’t stick. Why not just list everything you ever had an interest in?
Replicating human thought isn’t going to happen in many lifetimes, if ever, because computers have to be told everything, and the possibilities in life are nearly infinite. The jump from a machine doing something a human programmed it to do to understanding things that nobody programmed for is way beyond sifting through billions of options of a known decision tree as the chess computers do. It’s not a question of making trillions of gates work together, nor a question of solving a few complex problems, it’s a question of recognizing and solving a nearly infinite set of situations and selecting from a nearly infinite set of resolutions to them.
Nobody is within a galaxy of replicating human thought. Chess took decades and it’s trivial compared to recognizing that a truck with a McDonalds sign on is somehow related to McDonalds even though you don’t have McDonalds or eating on your mind and nobody told you that the McDonalds arch is a universal symbol, like the story the mother tells about her 2-year old daughter deep in this thread. And that is just one other trivial connection in a nearly infinite universe of connections.
Look, computers are already doing amazing things and will do many more. There’s no question they are going to replace many more things humans do in the next few decades, provided Obama and his co-conspirators don’t get the way. We should appreciate the technology for what it is without concocting nonsense or allowing people to intimidate us into thinking they are hundreds or thousands of years further in development than they are.
Of course, if “a physicist” has a link to something, I’ll back off and confess the error of my ways.
I think that what singularity visionaries mischaracterize is the fact that economics drive Moore’s law. If one can’t market gadgets in large quantities to the masses, Moores curve downturns/decelerates, given yield and technology investment considerations. In the event of an economic and social collapse, so goes the vision. Not to mention the fact that the proposition of living forever will be a bleeding edge thing that only a few can afford…think of the class warfare then (or the age of totalitarian justice for all). I think Frank Herbert was more of a visionary…where atomics and computers are eventually outlawed.
Human intelligence residing in a laptop?
It will take someone very intelligent to design that.
Before we can duplicate the human brain in an artificial intelligence, won’t we first need to fully understand the brain and its capabilities? How close are we to that?
The most likely outcome is that computer programs will appear to simulate all the ordinary functions we observe as “human” — natural language, creativity, you posit your favorite list — and, following Searle’s “Chinese Room”, people who insist on there being some special quality specific to humanity will say “but that’s not real thinking.”
I don’t think we can build an AI, but I do think we can grow one.
We’ll use some sort of self-assembling device that we push to our goal with a highly accelerated form of natural selection.
It took millions of years for human intelligence to evolve. We can top that.
The focus and question isn’t on whether WE can tell if X’s behavior has been preprogrammed. The focus is on whether X can successfully anticipate the unexpected and react in a constructive manner to this new stimulus.
That is, can X-the-robot not merely learn but can X develop a capacity for modeling its environment based on both actual information gathering but also, hypothetical speculation. So far, robots or AI remain in the realm of actual information gathering and modeling. And these have nothing to do with the formal/informal gap (eg, Godel’s analysis).
Yes.
Programming the known might be time-consuming, but it’s possible. So a computer finally beat the chess masters. And they will be able to recognize faces better than humans can, and speak with a human-like voice, and analyze traffic patterns in a second, and diagnose known illnesses better and faster than a doctor can, and detect liars better than detectives, and perfrom tons of other tasks that are important and life-enhancing.
But for that matter, monkeys, dogs, and even birds can simulate aspects of human behavious, often better than humans. Birds for example, can remember where they stored thousands of seeds from the prior season…better than human, but not “human”. Just like the chess computer is better than human, but not “human”.
But to do what the author of the piece and others in this track are suggesting will be possible by 2030, programming for the already known isn’t the problem (although doing that will take centuries, and by the time it is done, 80% of it will be irrelevant), programming the unknown is the problem. And nobody is anywhere close to that universe yet.
Just thought I would remark that I am busy reading Tipler’s tour de force masterpiece that he co-authored with John Barrow, ‘The Anthropic Cosmological Principle’, originally published in the mid-80s. A massive tome and one of the landmarks in scientific literature the last forty years. Talk about big ideas in science, a confluence of the history and philosophy of science, astronomy, physics, mathematical physics, astrophysics, cosmogony and a lot else. It is now a quarter century since the book’s first publication, yet it remains the definitive work on Anthropic Cosmology. Tipler’s stand-out achievement, still.
I’ll probably get round to finishing the book in oh November maybe.
“we will see the creation of computer programs that are fully equal to humans in mental ability”
Do you attribute this advances in raw computing power, or raw power combined with transition to Organic computing ?
Raw power may not be able to achieve what a human brain is capable of. However an Organic system added into the Mix might provide that missing ingredient, the X factor that would provide the bridge between technology and creativity / human capacities.
I live in China, and have wonderful conversations with scientists, inventors and researchers. There is a education / science / research revolution occurring here and if the US does not wake up, it will be left far behind within the next decade.
It’s too late. The busybodies and middle managers have taken over and are culling the creative with pharmacology and psycho-babble.
The reason that in the future computer programs will be fully equal to human beings in intellectual capability is not that programs will be smarter; it’s that humans are getting dumber and dumber.
There are an infinite number of dimensions. There is no biggest or smallest. There is no beginning and no end.
Is that big enough?
Sounds so elegant, but this is complete giberish! How can you know this? Where is the physical evidence of any universe other than our own? Multiverse madness is killing real science and belongs in the realm of sci fi.
I tend to agree, and think it is comes from a desperation and inability to explain certain fundamental concepts without resorting to non-scientific fallbacks.
One of the explanations for the results of the two-slit experiment is the existence of a multi-verse.
But, overall you are right, for now at least the multi-verse is evidence divided by (math times hypothesizing).
Giberish [sic] is another synonym for that which you cannot understand.
Is the term used as an invitation for closet neurotics to step boldly forward or as bugle call of “Retreat” for paranoid psychotics?
None of the theoreticians commenting here are likely to survive their ideas without a space war. WW II provided basis for only one.
You seem to have been deprived of the history of Maxwell/Faraday proven theories of mechanical to electrical power generation and demonstrated effects of frequency variation by Tesla that he formulated and constructed leading to the US standard of living provided today. Tesla’s name has been suppressed for simple reason called greed. Notice its absence in top twenty list.
After Tesla proposed free energy for the world, the money moguls used most of his patents for profit and suppressed the best for government to seize under guise of national security. The practice continues in all fields that may cause ripples in energy profit. Low frequency weather control has been part of military tactics since Desert Storm. Search HAARP.
The above comment goes far toward proving a hypothesis of mine: Conspiracy theories outnumber conspiracies by several orders of magnitude.
There is a problematic economic corollary of trans-humanism.
Consider that as the complexity and automation of economic life increases, there will come a year when the median individual is of zero marginal economic utility. Or, more simply – that half of all potential employees will be incapable of producing more than they consume. Economic dead weight.
If the singularity folks are right, this year may happen sooner than later.
Very soon after this point, ninety percent of people will become dead weight. Then ninety nine percent.
I would humbly suggest that a political ideological framework to engage such an economy is lacking – the entire spectrum of political thought and tradition is unprepared to deal with such a future.
Oh, Mr. Lewy14, you are right on target! It’s already happening and, I say, at the heart of the 2012 presidential debate! I challenge Pajamas Media to sponsor a debate of all those Republicans on basically Mr. Lewy’s premise.
Your premise–the disposability of homan effort–is at the heart of why I have been an anti-”free”trade, Perotian, Luddite (whatever you may term it) since the 80s. In terms of America and Americans, our globalist trade policy has already made millions of low-skill citizens a surplus population. I get so sick and tired of “Jobs Creation” plans (including Mr. Huntsman’s) that talk of “training” our people for new non-existent jobs, that they will never do because our trade policy declares if a company can get it done CHEAPER elsewhere that’s fine! Their inevitable (and nonsensical) answer to unemployment is “become more globally competitive” but that’s not possible unless what you’re REALLY recommending and globally competitive is just a euphonysm for “America must level DOWN to living standards of India and Africa if it wants to be competitive.”
Simple solution? Old-fashioned, Founding-Father, Abraham-Lincoln-Republican, Donald-Trump-approved TARIFFS. Protect our population from hordes in Asia and elsewhere who work for nothing. Between THOSE hordes, an unenforced border, sanctuary cities that BOTH parties tacitly approve of–the American worker is under siege. He/she has no future without Tariffs.
Free-market globalized capitalism is SO STUPID if you think about what it preaches. Cheap, reduction of labor costs is PRIME TERRITORY for creating profits, which means more and more unemployed, less and less jobs in general,which in turn reduces ability to consume, which in turn will end their profitability at some point. And for America it is self-immolation.
MEANWHILE we do everything we can to save life, increase population (mostly lower economic status–as my old Swedish mom used to say: the rich get richer, the poor have babies). On a Catholic radio station I heard recently they want to END government spending on contraception! Some even condemn it as “murder.” When what we really need is some kind of libido-diminishing vapor to be wafted over the whole world. What has our free-market capitalism produced instead? Viagra.
I’m so old I was politically aware (teen) during the Great Depression. And there was a guy with a controversial plan called the Townsend Plan. As I remember, cut hours to solve unemployment, turn l job into two. Today, people work LONGER AND LONGER (despite hour laws) to turn two jobs into one. Makes you more “globally competitive.”
Short of shooting them (the over-abundance of people looking for work), what does a thorough going free-market capitalist Republican have for a solution? I’d love to hear. How about Pajamas Media sponsoring a debate for all our worthy candidates so far?
As for me, I’m voting in the primary for Buddy Roemer because he’s the only candidate who doesn’t refer to China as “our trading partner”–just about as offensive to me (and to reality) as calling illegal immigrants merely the undocumented. Roemer made a speech the other day IN FRONT OF THE CHINESE EMBASSY calling China “a bear that eats our jobs.” Now THAT’S reality!
I heard a creative idea few years ago I’d go along with. CHARGE people to work as jobs disappear. For those who need a job to feel validated, or super-ambitious, just like to work–with jobs at a premium, PAY for that privilege.
Then PAY most people to just get out of the labor force, stay home and quit looking. The stay homers would have to agree to behave themselves (no drugs, alcoholism, bad behavior that could cost the WORKERS extra money, and NO HAVING CHILDREN). Over time, population would diminish, skills level of what’s left would increase.
If I were young I’d volunteer to be a non-worker. I’m the perfect candidate (if someone paid me sufficient to live modestly) who would never need a job to be feel fulfilled and happy. And I wouldn’t use up resources. All I need is libraries to keep going and some cards so I can play bridge (a “green” hobby if there ever was one, a few friends, reasonably good health.
I read an old Arnold Bennett book “How to Live on 24-Hours A Day” way back in high school and had profound effect–premise is, “living” is what you do in your sparetime–not your job–reading, studying things that never necessarily lead to income–just pleasurable, life-enhancing. I agree with that!! I could easily do that 24-hours a day if someone would pay me to stay out of the diminished job market.
And today you can blog!!
Aurora, we already have a class of people who get paid for not working. They are called welfare recipients. And the more kids they produce, the more money they suck out of the pockets of productive citizens.
Unfortunately, welfare recipients are not the class of those-who-do-no-work. given the systemic requirements to qualify, and to maintain qualification, for that modest sum of benefits, those individuals must perform considerable work. Most of it helping the other class of individuals who make out the forms and checks for those who get the entitlement. A simple examination of the total work output in the welfare system will reveal that a prodigious hive of busy-ness. [I had a professor in gradual school who suggested that periodically those in front of the desk should exchange positions with those behind the desk to organizational waste.]
No, the class that clearly is paid not to work dwells within the boundaries of academia. Socialized to look busy, this class of workless workers have excelled in tasks that appear to look busy and productive when much of it is simply grand fun. Remember that the very best students are the ones recruited to join the club; and there are many paths to get rated to be among the best. Alas, originality is not one of them.
Aurora, your understanding of economics is very questionable. Protectionism has never worked, except in government service, where the 7% of union employees are protected by the government and supported by the remaining 93% of taxpayers.
What do you mean protectionism has never worked?? Worked like a charm for Japan and is now working for China. And, read Pat Buchanan’s book on trade history. What Japan did to us in last century we did to Great Britain at end of 19th century. They were no-tariff big guy, we were high tariff challenger and we killed them as THE big economy of the world.
And it is curious that protectionism was, in this century, a Republican platform thing–someone once told me (haven’t checked) it was Colonel House in the Wilson era who conceived of globalized markets as the answer to world problems. In recent passage of NAFTA, however, Republicans were primarily the pushers of that, and then Clinton stepped forward to turn himself into the “moderate” corporations would give money to and colluded with Gingrich to pass NAFTA in a constitutionally questionable way. [Now THERE'S an issue for all you Founding Father worshippers to take a look at--will curl your hair.]
Oh, the sovereignty given away with just a simple bare majority of Congress vote in that collusive agreement between Clinton and Gingrich!
So don’t say protectionism never works. Read;listen Roemer’s speech in front of Chinese Embassy at his website. He isn’t suggesting tariffs at this point (Donald Trump does and I agree with that), what he is for (and the only candidate willing to talk about it) is to treat China like the trade predator it is, and act with shrewdness to start challenging that instead of subsidizing mult-nationals to move off shore.
But don’t you remember that we TRIED protective tariffs during the Great Depression and they made the Depression worse? Do you honestly think that if we slapped a 50-100% tariff on China that they would not retaliate (say, by dumping our bonds to drive up our interest rates)?
Very soon after this point, ninety percent of people will become dead weight. Then ninety nine percent.
A 0 percent employment rate, baby.
That should be a good Merry Old Land of Oz thing. Go to work at 1, an hour for lunch and the day is done.
Unfortunately, what would more likely to happen would be that the percent who who find themselves in control start treating the rest like lab animals and livestock. The ones who cooperate would be pets. The ones who don’t would be hunted down.
I used to marvel at the predictions that technology would one day allow us to have vast amounts of leisure time. I wondered, yes, but what work will be available for me to do so that I can afford all this leisure time.
you have a very good point. …….”the economic dead weight”.
But that is the goal of progressives. they may be economic dead weight but they provide the thug factor for the democrats and progressives
Sorry buddy, no human is dead weight at birth. The ones that become so are taught.
Your idea is dangerous. Try focusing on the infinite potential of humanity…and getting the marxists/oligarchists who want to reduce human beings to econimic units enslaved to themselves out of the public square.
And you think multinational corporations DON’T think of people as economic units today?
Either they don’t or they are making products that are so compelling that it doesn’t matter. The ones that ignore what people want go out of business, unless they are propped up by a fascist government. That’s how free markets work.
And I have no illusion that businesses are in business because of love affairs with their customers either. The beauty of business is that it doesn’t matter. Revenue and expenses matter. And when those don’t translate into stuff people want, the business goes out of business.
That’s the dynamic that has created a world in 230 years that people couldn’t have imagined 231 years ago.
Oh? Nobody wanted Chevrolets, but G.M. didn’t go out of business . . .
Gee, let’s cipher that one. People didn’t buy chevies but GM didn’t go out of business.
What could it be? What could it be?
of course they do …but they aren’t the government. there are laws (or used to be) that gave you recourse if you were wronged by a corporation or multinational. you have no recourse against the present government.
they wont even produce a legitimate proof of citizenship for the president.
that is a failed arguement. a misdirection.
WELL DONE you have mastered Saul Alinski. good for you. d!ck
It isn’t BILL LAWRENCE’s prediction of 90 per cent of people becoming dead weight that is dangerous, it is YOU who have no alternative to the process now going on that will inexorably result in that prediction coming true.
And asserting the value of human life and indiiduals is not an answer unless you’re willing to acknowledge results of the globalized free market capitalism you’re so willing to see continue. It is just the idealism and humanism of our Declaration of Independence,unique foundation of this country contrasted with the anti-humanism, non-recognition of citizenship or borders required of globalized free-market capitalism that is so striking.
Incidentally, I loved some of the responses to my original comment! One of them above (pets and slaves and such) has the makings of a futuristic horror film. That comment-er is a potential novelist!
I re-iterate the ONLY proximate action I can come up with to deflect us from that horror ending. In THIS 2012 primary–take a look at Buddy Roemer before you give your hearts to some other Republican! Changing our trade policy to one that is frankly protectionist of U.S. interests is the ONLY solution.
Roemer, incidentally, is not for tariff raising at this point (Donald Trump is, and I’d go along with that too)–read the speech he made in front of Chinese Embassy to see what he has to say about trade policy. He’s the only one SAYING ANYTHING! And yet, that is the crazy aunt in the basement (as Perot used to say of issues no one wants to talk about).
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT: Google Gibson Guitar if you want to see one preposterous outcome of our preposterous trade policy. It is simmering out there on Coast-to-Coast and social media–let’s see how long (if ever) takes even ONE Republican candidate to take a question on it.
So if Gibson wasn’t buying all that foreign wood then….
BTW where does the US get its tungsten from?
The problem with Government controlled trade is the usual corruption. Buy Washington – get a better deal.
If no two different things are identical (?), then 1+1=2 is more correctly written as 1a+1b=2c, when applied to the real world. What then of the rest of mathematics?
Equal is not the same as identical. “1″ and “1″ can hold equal value without being identical.
But, I think more importantly, you’re investing too much in the symbols themselves. The individual symbols don’t have to be identical if we agree what they represent is identical. Both “1″s in the equation can be the same 1, or, one could argue that each “1″ is a reference to an identical and constant value we understand and agree to be represented as “1″ and therefore each “1″ references the same, identical object. Either situation has the same effective result: the symbols “1a”, “1″ and “a” are arbitrary.
1 = a = 1a = 1b = b = 1 = *arbitrary_symbol_of_no_actual_consequence
Equations and symbols are representations of ideas but are not the ideas themselves. The ideas exist outside of physical reality. The differences and properties of the individual symbols are inconsequential. So while, in reality, each individual “1″ is different and none are identical, that doesn’t actually matter.
“1 + 1 = 2″ is a manifestation of the idea that if you have two individual objects represented by the symbol “1″ that have certain properties including being identical , then when combined they are equal to a different, individual object represented by the symbol “2″ that has certain properties.
As symbols there is no effectal difference between a “1″ and a “2″ and a “3″ and a… The effectual differences lie in the ideas they represent, which can be identical, transitive, variable, constant, whatever – as long as we agree about what the symbols mean.
“Equal is not the same as identical.”
Yes. For instance, identical twins are not equal unless we say they are. Identity and equality are subjective (or objective, if our religion demands it be so).
If two different things are identical, how do you know they’re different?
Yes. Stuck on the concept that identity is unique…from which no two different things can be identical. Thus 1a+1b=2c versus 1+1=2. Also, Progressivism typically assumes that there are fixed classes of people and appropriate determinable prices for goods (e.g., identical different things). I despise Progressivism.
The scientific “life cycle” has lost none of its peak amplitude. Indeed, it’s being compressed to an ever shorter wavelength, due to the synergy unleashed by combined disciplines and technologies. “Normal science,” which Thomas Kuhn described as comprising “mopping-up operations” of the sort Spengler mentioned, now proceeds concurrently with the sort of revolutionary theorizing and experimentation for which we revere the Newtons and Einsteins.
It remains the case that the big thinkers and true revolutionaries are few in comparison to the routiniers and legworkers. That’s inherent in the distribution of human intelligence, insight, imagination, and courage. And of course, some — perhaps nearly all — of those aspirants to millennial glory will be wrong. An old Soupy Sales shtick comes to mind:
The curve will continue to accelerate as we theorize about ever larger temporal phenomena, learn to manipulate ever smaller entities, and dare to explore ever more extreme realms of conjecture and thought. As Robert Heinlein said, “The Age of Science has not yet opened.“
Ever shorter wavelengths represent an extrapolation of groupthink.
“Then there is transhumanism: the evidence is very strong that sometime in this century (I predict by 2030, Ray Kurzweil by 2045) we will see the creation of computer programs that are fully equal to humans in mental ability.”
This ought to be interesting..
Horrified neighbors watch as a very busy tin can overheats, catches on fire and explodes while playing with itself.
It’s not that we aren’t thinking big thoughts, it’s that just about everything that can be understood without a doctorate has already been discovered. Now our discoveries are in the “just plain weird” field.
if a Marx or a Nietzsche were suddenly to appear, blasting his ideas, no one would pay the slightest attention, certainly not the general media.…
So . . . . why exactly would that be a bad thing?
I have to disagree that “no one would notice”. It would be more accurate to say that if Marx and/or Nietzsche were reincarnated (possibly as computer simulations) and began trumpeting their dogmas, they would be drowned out.
By the mass of modern “intellectuals” in academia, media, and government who believe in their theories with the fervor of religious fundamentalists, and who have been trying to run the world on that basis for over half a century.
The fact that all their efforts have ended in failure seems to be irrelevant to them. Their quest for ultimate, absolute social perfection is the only thing which matters.
And in their (supposedly superior) consciousness, the casualties are just the price of the omelette, as Napoleon would say. As long as it’s somebody else who ends up as the statistics, of course.
clear ether
eon
At the risk of proving myself a small thinker, “What’s in it for me?”
Bill Lawrence is right. Communism killed tens of millions and ruined the lives of even more. The Great Society isn’t looking so great either, lest my fellow countrymen start to get swelled heads. In the sociopolitcal realm, big thinkers are cancer.
Leave me alone.
For a tangible tangent tune in to Matt Ridley’s Skype video presentation on rational optimism which he made for Idea City Canada last summer:
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/rational-optimism-skype
In my life the biggest mindblower of all is Seth. Seth is an entity no longer living in this dimension speaking through a channeler named Jane Roberts. Read “Seth Speaks” and “The Nature of Personal Reality” to learn of his concepts. He gave us parallel universes and multiple dimensions back in the early 70′s. Our entire universe flickers in and out of existence. We exist in another dimension as surely as we exist in this dimension. His biggest mindblower is that “We Create Our Reality”. There are too many concepts to mention it here. I highly suggest reading his books written by Jane Roberts.
“I highly suggest reading his books written by Jane Roberts.”
Ah, the old Mormon and Islam method of founding a religion eh?
Why not? It worked for Moses.
Nah. As I understand it, Mo brought back a tablet already in published form; he didn’t take dictation. But, as always, I could be wrong.
“Seth?”
Try “demon.” What demons do, how they’re further described, “lying spirit.”
More like “Meth.”
It’s obvious none of these responders have read it. Probably because it’s too complex. Perhaps that’s why Seth didn’t bother coming to the world earlier, say at…. The Inquisition!!! Judging from the comments here we haven’t progressed very far. Thinking Seth is a demon is woefully childish at best. It just shows ignorance and prejudice. If you don’t want to believe in his lessons fine, there are issues I have trouble believing too. Such as: You cannot kill another human being under any circumstances. Not even in self defense. Not something a demon would say is it? I have problems with that: Especially in the wake of the 9/11 attack. Certainly if a terrorist is going to kill you you should have the ability to take them out. Seth is still way ahead of today’s physicists and he is also way ahead of today’s psychologists. Science is still trying to explain dark matter and dark energy. Perhaps they are the EE and CU units Seth talks about. But go ahead and keep believing in demons conjured by people wearing pointed hats.
I’m going to reccomend you read ‘The Space Trilogy’ by C.S. Lewis. It may enlighten you as to the nature of the beings you prosyletize for. In any case, these three fairly short books are interesting with lots of unusual ideas. And if you wish to characterize one of the premier intellects of the 20th century as a pointed hat conjuror, I may have to giggle at you.
All correct but the timing.
Notice the space station may be abandoned?
Notice we may be entering a Dark Age?
The Hoi Polloi (represented by NYT et al) have a habit of stalling history at inconvenient times.
Change your bet to 2530 at best.
what you said
Screw going back in time and killing Hitler. I’d take out Marx. That scumbag has infected minds like a soul-leeching virus.
IIRC, those ‘Great Thinkers’ Mr.Gabler is so fond of, lived and toiled in relative obscurity for most if not all of their lives. It took a couple of generations for their masturbatory babblings to reach an audience.
Todays ‘Big Thinkers’ are likely to be ‘Big Doers’ as well. I do believe that Gates, Jobs, Wozniak et al would qualify on both counts. Wasn’t it in the 1890′s that they wanted to close the Patent Office because, “…everything has been invented!”
A quick Techno/Big Think/Big Project question: Why isn’t NASA in the electricity buisness? Specifically Solar. With the collectors in orbit. Doing Sunlight>Electricity>Microwave Broadcast to the surface. And then Microwave>Electricity>Grid. ???Clean. Safe. Cheap (after start-up). And doable off the shelf.
Anyway. Big Thinking begets Big Thinking.
Jobs … Jobs … hmmmmmm … yah mean, Steve Jobs?
Hey … ain’t Steve Jobs the loser Apple CEO who believes that AGW is a sobering reality?
Who resigned from the US Chamber of Commerce (CoC) over the CoC’s denialism stance?
Who appointed Al Gore to Apple’s Board of Directors?
Steve Jobs … and Apple … according to PJM/Tatler denialist ideology, they’re both total losers.
But I reckon we have to wonder, whether that’s good judgment?
Can’t admit you’re wrong, can you?
Gates was a very successful businessman.
But he didn’t advance the field of computer science one iota. At least not so far.
He didn’t even invent MS-DOS, the first operating system for IBM PC’s and clones. He actually bought it for a pittance, from a financially troubled computer company, Seattle Computer Products. Then he turned right around and sold it to IBM for a 3,000% profit margin. That was the deal that launched Microsoft on its way.
If you want to know who has advanced computer science rather than just manufactured products, it would be names like:
Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg, who first pioneered the windows/menus/mouse graphical user interface so familiar now, and pioneered the technique of object-oriented programming used in today’s Java;
Len Adelman, whose research on numerical factoring and public-key cryptography led to all the encryption methods used today for secure data storage and data transmission;
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented HTML, the language in which web pages have been programmed.
Frank writes: :…Neal Gabler, a journalist at the [FB, Annenberg]Norman Lear Center of the University of Southern California…”
I used to watch Gabler when he was on a panel presented By FoxNews. The panel reacted to media coverage of various events. Gabler’s special talent seemed to be librul rhetorical bullying, like, oh like, Howard Dean. John Gibson put him in a class with Olbermann:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCR36Ixl5Dw
The No Big Ideas Anymore meme is just an example of the products produced by those with no real jobs. Well, they have to produce something…publish or…retire with a good pension from a well-funded, tax-free, propaganda foundation.
I think the idiot in the New York Times is talking about big political Ideas. Even there he is dead wrong. We have the Austrian schools push to end the Fed, reform banking and replace it with a gold currency. I’m already designing centigram coins.
We have the idea of web based targeted donations like ‘thepoint’ http://www.thepoint.com/ Imagine how many pot holes, bridges and wheelchairs you could fund-raise for if people knew their money would only go if others joined them.
We have plans to put communications networks across the third world and ship medical supplies with tiny robot drones. http://www.gizmag.com/matternet-goods-transporting-uav-network/19663/ Funding is via micro-banking and web based seed money.
We have a revolution in adult stem cell therapies that can partly cure aging and thus solve both the Social Security and Medicare problem! Are they not big enough.
Gosh. Such humility.
Professor Tipler, it surprised me to see your name appear as a PJM/Tatler contributor. Because I remembered (and verified via Google) that in your 1986 book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle you have written very favorably (beginning on page 576) about Michael Hart’s and James Hansen’s models, created during the 1970s, of CO2-associated “runaway greenhouse” climate change.
In fact, don’t you and John Barrow argue in your book — very strongly and persuasively — that the present era’s massive CO2 burning may have created a substantial risk of a runaway greenhouse effect, sufficient to extinguish human civilization?
In PJM/Tatler lingo, Professor, aren’t you and John Barrow both on-record as ardent AGW Hansenists?
For many readers of PJM/Tatler, these views establish that you as a card-carrying member of the AGW scientific conspiracy. And PJM/Tatler has a long-standing track record of wanting *NOTHING* to do with new scientific ideas (or even old scientific ideas) that challenge its peculiar brand of conservative orthodoxy.
Myself, I enjoy your writings, and hope that you continue! Who knows, perhaps PJM/Tatler is now (very prudently) reversing its AGW denialist stance?
Because of course you’re absolutely right, Prof. Tipler — in the long run, when it comes to today’s big ideas … resistance … is … futile.
——————-
The Discovery of Global Warming: Venus and Mars
URL: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Venus.htm
Please enlighten us, Physicist, about what caused the warming and melting of past ice ages and what caused cessation of those warming periods. While you are at it, what caused the ice ages? Now, as a scientist you know that speculation alone won’t be acceptable; proof, that’s the thing, right?
At the end of your link, my very good friend, one finds these cooling words:
” This is mounted on the Website of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics. Discovery of Global Warming site created by Spencer Weart with initial support from the American Institute of Physics, the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The statements on this site represent the views of the author and are not positions endorsed by the American Institute of Physics.”
LOL … Fred, there’s plenty of scientific literature that answers your question.
And it’s true too, that future warming causes need not be past warming causes. Because never before in history, has CO2 been injected into the Earth’s atmosphere, as fast and as much, as humans are now injecting it.
Ain’t that the plain truth? That to survive, conservatism must acknowledge?
——————————
NASA/On the Shoulders of Giants: Milutin Milankovitch
URL: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Milankovitch/milankovitch_2.php
“Because never before in history, has CO2 been injected into the Earth’s atmosphere, as fast and as much, as humans are now injecting it.”
No, this ain’t the plain old truth. Ever hear of volcanoes? The Deccan Traps? The earth is billions of years old. So is volcanism. But here are these despicable humans, ruining it with their “historic” amounts of CO2. Why oh why do you hate people (and corporations) so much? Having a hard time fitting in?
And, by the way, anyone who uses LOL in their argument gets sent immediately to the corner, to stand and contemplate their childish ways.
LOL … NASA’s happy to supply good answers to anonymous …
When hard-nosed scientists like von Neumann and Hansen and Barrow and Tipler collectively go on-record during the 1950s-80s as foreseeing that AGW will become a reality … and then the world’s hard-nosed shipping captains and admirals verify that reality … well then, maybe hard-nosed American conservatism should acknowledge that reality?
Public access to data is a great blessing of modernity, eh?
————————–
Climate change: How do we know?
URL: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Put down your crayons and read:
It’s the Sun, Stupid!
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v476/n7361/full/nature10343.html
Hansen??? What a joke. The same guy who predicted 3 foot sea level rise by 2011. I’ll trump your Hansen with the the British Royal Society, more prestigious and respected world wide.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1316469/Royal-Society-issues-new-climate-change-guide-admits-uncertainties.html
There is no evidence that ‘A physicist’ is a physicist or has any expertise in any scientific area. Equally, his mathematics is ..invisible.
He has one dogmatic opinion: AGW.
And one style – he posts with numerous cherry-picked links (argumentum ad ignoratiam, ad nauseum, dicto simpliciter etc)…and uses ‘folksy’ terminology of ‘ain’t’ and ‘folks’..and endless smiley faces which are used as to confront rejection of his opinions.
Ignore him. He’s unable to deal with scientific debate; all he does is fling out endless cherry-picked sites that support his opinion.
ETAB, any businessman can read today’s radically-changing shipping schedules. Which indicate that AGW is real, serious … and dramatically accelerating:
It’s mighty tough to fool these hard-nosed maritime shipping executives, who know full-well what it means, that the deep-water sea-passages north of Russia’s Anzhu Islands have melted-free of the pack-ice: record-breaking Arctic passages of unlimited-size super-tankers, container-ships, and bulk-transports, for the first time ever, in maritime history.
So it appears that Drs. John Barrow, Frank Tipler, and James Hansen were right, back in the 1980s. And of course, they were echoing the sobering reality of AGW that John von Neumann predicted back in the 1950s.
It’s time for American conservatism to “learn and adapt” to these long-predicted and now solidly validated AGW realities.
——————————–
Supertanker sets speed record on Northern Sea Route
URL: http://www.barentsobserver.com/supertanker-sets-speed-record-on-northern-sea-route.4954241.html
“……and James Hansen were right, back in the 1980s.”
Hansen, his cronies and the IPCC Report #1 in 1990 predicted that by 2011 sea levels would rise by 3 feet and coastal areas would be flooded, displacing millions. It hasn’t happened, and each year the predictions are revised downward. The latest IPCC Report #4, released in 2007, is predicting future sea level rise in inches instead of feet. Typical alarmist strategy – to predict the worst, and when it fails to happen, forget about it.
Jarmo, it was easy to check what IPCC Report #1 in 1990 predicted (verbatim from the summary):
Hmmm… in retrospect, the 1990 IPCC#1 called it right. At least, the sober-minded Dutch sure think so … they’re now preparing for a sea-level rise of up to four meters (!)
Jarmo, how did it happen that your post was so grossly and demonstrably wrong-on-the-facts? Has someone been supplying you with bogus disinformation?
Whatever that source of your disinformation was, neither you nor anyone else here on PJM/Tatler should trust it any longer!
Prof. Tipler is right … big ideas are coming that are challenging conservatism to “learn and adapt” … and the accelerating reality of AGW most is one of the biggest new ideas.
—————–
Sea level rise and the Dutch DeltaCommissie
URL: http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/sea-level-rise-and-the-dutch-deltacommission/
Um, this link speaks to the reason this can happen at all, huge Soviet nuclear-powered icebreakers, and the need to build even more of them. These journeys have nothing to do with an ice-free Arctic passage, but rather with massive and powerful icebreaking technologies.
http://barentsobserver.custompublish.com/more-traffic-along-the-northern-sea-route.4947500-116320.html
Sagi, in the spring and fall Russia will run icebreakers, but right now no icebreakers are needed at all. That’s why there’s no limit on ship size or speed, and pretty much every Northern Sea Route passage this year sets record-fast time.
You bet this catches the attention of every major sea power in the world.
The US and Canada have no comparable nuclear icebreaker capability, and so Russia will control this strategic sea-route … although China just bought a huge chunk of the nation of Iceland, to secure their influence in the area … and (China claims) to build a major Icelandic “golf resort” too.
—————————–
Daily AMSR-E sea ice maps
URL: http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_nic.png
that is evidence that ships made of steel are better in ice then wooden ones. it is not proof of AGW.
I guess that is why the promoters of AWG will not release their data bases. why they sent around emails to destroy their emails. why polar bear man has been relieved of his position and under investigation for criminal malfeasance.
…I could go on but why bother …for the sake of an articulate troll? no thanks
Cabeza de Vaca, it’s not clear whether you grasp that the Northern Sea route is open-water *today* … that AGW is *now* an accelerating reality.
American conservatism is having surprising trouble grasping the reality of AGW.
It’s past time for conservatism to wake up.
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The Voice of Russia
Great prospects of Northern Sea Route
URL: http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/09/01/55514474.html
Non sequitur.
This may come as a shock to you,
but it’s possible for a scientist to be right about some things while being wrong about other things. Especially things that are not in his field.
Since you’re not a climatologist, you have no special expertise on whether AGW is or is not occurring. And neither does Tipler.
I wouldn’t ask a climatologist for his opinion on string theory either.
Gosh, sinz54, what do climatologists say about AGW?
Oh that’s right … they too say it’s real.
Gee … so just maybe … the era of denialist conservatism is ending?
That’s what the world’s hard-nosed businessmen, admirals, and scientists all think.
Denialism is ending for Richard Feynman’s plain, simple reason: “Nature cannot be fooled.”
The actual answer is “some of them say it’s real in the full, CO2-driven, CO2-dominant model; some say it’s real but that other anthropogenic forcings dominate; and some say that anthropogenic forcings are insignificant.”
Charlie, don’t you think the word “some” is becoming an insufficient ladder to reach the “cherries” of today’s AGW denialism?
Because those AGW denialist cherries are steadily becoming few-and-fewer and smaller-and-smaller, and are found farther-and-farther out on the branches of outright fringe science.
Meanwhile, China is moving aggressively to control the strategic sea-lanes that accelerating AGW is creating. Really Charlie … doesn’t PJM/Tatler need to get a clue about this?
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Chinese tycoon plans to buy part of Iceland
URL: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-08-30/news/29945246_1_chinese-tycoon-iceland-government-arctic
No.
Yes, Charlie, that is the correct reading. Over time the science will be worked out; but, it will take much more time. At the moment you have (A)GW deniers, skeptics, and believers. Skepticism is the most appropriate place to be at the moment with regard to the parenthetical A.
But the “big argument” is over policy, not science, as Walter Russell Meade correctly notes in his three-part evisceration of Al Gore posted on his Via Meadia site. Meade is sympathetic to a considered policy response to possible consequences of GW but notes that all those being proposed by the most ardent environmental advocates are non-starters and will remain so.
Irony.
Responding to this guy with serious comments merely feeds his ego.
As long as people engage with him, he will continue being perverted on our discussion site.
‘Google’ already ‘thinks’ for us in a way with the creepy ‘auto-complete’ feature…
Oddly, my mind is more honed and fine-tuned than ever by the knowledge and reading I do online…
Of course, this gift could turn into a trojan virus with immutable powers…
Uh. Oh.
10101010101010101010101
As for Neal Gabler,
From small minds come small ideas.
My own TOE predicts that the cosmic microwave background radiation should consist not of photons, but of pseudo-photons that will not interact with electrons and protons of the wrong spin.
Prof Tipler, I am a huge fan and am thrilled to see you here.
My own theory of media everything (TOME), Prof Tipler, is that leftist legacy media outlets want microwaved truth, which always radiates leftism in its background, and should consist of objectivity in words and photos, but consists instead of pseudo-truths and photoshopped pictures, that will not interact with the truth and integrity of the wrong “spin”.
In other words, the NYTimes and their ilk wouldn’t recognize a big idea if it landed on their heads and created an impact crater.
And, if Marx was suddenly to appear, he could read the NYTimes and immediately begin apologizing for the imbecility and lack of integrity he has wrought.
Prof. Tipler is correct. Human history is littered with these bubble-boys/girls who think that — since they are the smartest people who ever were or ever will be — if they can’t see anymore “big” ideas, then there aren’t any. Laughable.
But I don’t agree that “Einstein rewrote physics.” Einstein didn’t rewrite anything. He merely (?) shined a light on laws that already existed. Who or what created these laws is the big question.
I think it’s interesting that science has shown that other unseen worlds (multiverse) may exist, that there may be ways (black/white holes) to “go there,” and that once “information” is created, it can’t be destroyed. All these phenomena occur naturally, without some prodigious effort of human technology.
So is “immortality” a natural process? Should science be looking inward, instead of out? Just asking.
Big ideas?
How about discovering how the world works instead. I’m a helluva lot more impressed by little ideas that prove to be true than big splashy ideas that make headlines and then fizzle out on the back pages.
In fact, big ideas might just be the biggest problem in the world. Liberals have plenty of them: marxism, wealth redistribution, ponzi schemes, social justice, global warming, lunatic environmentalsm, the list is endless. Every one of them is dangerous. Any one of them could destroy humanity as we know it.
Science is different, of course, assuming that science still exists and isn’t now a backwater support system for liberal madness. But the word “ideas” is bothersome. Hey, I’ve got plenty of “ideas”. Maybe I should be a scientist. I could pretend I’m important and call myself “A physicist” or something. “Theories” is the right word. That let’s the world know that the idea is something unproven, like Global Warming or Keynsian economics. It alerts people to the fact that the idea could be wrong or soon proven wrong.
But even better, ditch the notion that “big ideas” has any merit at all. Let’s try some common sense instead.
That’s no answer either.
Common sense can be dead wrong.
Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, his General Theory of Relativity, and quantum mechanics all involve concepts that violate our common sense notions of matter and energy, space and time:
Time can be stretched.
Space is curved.
Light beams can deflect particles.
Mass can form out of nothing, in supposedly empty space.
Common sense?
Your other point, however, is worth considering. In science, a hypothesis becomes a theory only after its plausibility has been well established by careful experiment. (Einstein’s famous mass-energy equation, that a small amount of mass can be converted to a huge amount of energy, is no longer doubted. Not after the A-bombing of Hiroshima liberated such energy.)
The problem with the social sciences–including economics–is that it’s real hard to do controlled experiments on human societies. And so even fancy-pants economists with Ph.D.’s are frequently blindsided by events in human societies. And it’s why every mutual fund comes with the caveat “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
My point wasn’t that common sense is always right but that in the realm of politics, common sense trumps big ideas 100% of the time, for the simple reason that big ideas inevitably include big risk. The essence of conservatism is to avoid risk in favor of incremental changes. FDR had big ideas. So did LBJ, Carter, Bubba and now the biggest “thinker” of all, Little Lenin. On the other hand, I wouldn’t say that Reagan had any big ideas; he simply wanted to go with the founding concepts and to complete the work of the Cold War that had been in progress for 35 years when he took office.
As for science, if science was pure, big ideas would be ok, as long as they were clearly marked as theories and not truth. If the infinite number of universes idea proves true and explains some phenomena that are otherwise unexplainable, fine. In the meantime, if that kind of thinking stirs up some creativity that has beneficial resulsts, that would be good too. But if they propose building a nuclear reactor the size of Colorado to run an experiment that could vaporize the planet, I would say “sounds like AGW to me. Think smaller.”.
But frankly, since it is now clear that sciencists can’t resist the temptations politicians put in front of them, I’d just as soon people who call theselves scientists stay out of the big ideas realm completely. AGW is the classic example, but there are dozens of others that have proven to be just as wrong. If policians can convince scientists to convince the world to publicize looney ideas that the politicians can use to increase the politicians’ power, then there is something seriously askew with science. Sorry to have to say it. Our author may be an exception; if so, I think he is a rare one.
So much for relativity.
So much for AGW.
Mr Tipler says that we will be able to download humans into a desktop in 19 years. And he’s the expert.
If our genius leader hears about this and decides to invest a few trillion in it, certainly it will happen in half the time.
That should solve our economic woes. Ten watts of energy a day instead of food. And the housing crisis will finally be solved.
Big ideas…the key to the future.
As far as “big ideas” go, P.J. O’Rourke wrote, “When your mother said ‘What’s the big idea?’, were you usually doing something that you should have been doing?”
Tipler writes:
“Then there is transhumanism: the evidence is very strong that sometime in this century (I predict by 2030, Ray Kurzweil by 2045) we will see the creation of computer programs that are fully equal to humans in mental ability. At roughly the same time, we predict that humans will be able to download themselves into computers, and live forever.”
Thanks for this article. I did not know. I will read your books, as soon as the climate wars and the other culture wars subside a bit. However, John Searle’s “Chinese Room Argument” demonstrates that no digital computer can attain human intelligence. On the other hand, it seems likely that we will become “Borgs” with built in digital assistants that perform many tasks. But the idea of “general intelligence” that can be transferred to another kind of existence such as a digital computer has always been a useful fantasy. Now, from my side of the coin, what are you doing to stop the communist climate scientists from establishing their commie rule in America? Have you written your Congressman?
However, John Searle’s “Chinese Room Argument” demonstrates that no digital computer can attain human intelligence.
Well, no. The Chinese Room demonstrates that Searle and his followers will never take any exhibit of apparent understanding as demonstrating “true intelligence”. It’s essentially an argument from ignorance: if we really know how the brain works and it’s a mechanism, we won’t appear to have Searle’s idea of “true intelligence” either.
And even the Great Thinkers didn’t always agree with one another. Einstein did not approve of quantum mechanics, and is often quoted as saying “God does not play dice with the universe.” (The actual quote was “I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.”
Big ideas are just that: Ideas. Polish them up some, and you get a hypothesis. Find corroborating data, and you have yourself a theory. Even then, it’s only a theory, though some theories have a LOT of corroborating data and are given the provisional status of Laws.
“A physicist” says he is surprised to find you in such a nest of deniers. But as a physicist myself (somewhat lapsed) I wonder how he takes your thirty-year old note of approval for Hansen et al as proof you wouldn’t associate with us deniers. It seems a stronger assertion than most theories of personality would make.
Ellen, your sober-minded posts make some good points. My impression is that the STEM community as a whole (scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians) is recognizing its duty to participate in that great process called democracy.
If history is any guide, this trend will make today’s ideology-first pundits of the left & right deeply unhappy. On the other hand, key American Founders like Ben Franklin, Tom Paine, and Thomas Jefferson would approve. Good!
By the way, even mathematicians nowadays are getting into the orthodoxy-challenge business.
Most definitely, America’s Founders would approve!
——————————–
Markets are efficient if and only if P = NP
… or “Why unregulated markets become increasingly inefficient with time” …
… or “The deep mathematical foundations of Wall Street’s melt-down” …
URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.2284
At least we can see that you are Marxist, thank you.
PsychoDad, these mathematical ideas make Marxists and Leninists equally unhappy as Randians and Libertarians.
Haven’t had time to read the whole paper (which does look interesting), but:
(1) it would be more interesting if it didn’t misstate P=NP in the opening paragraph — although the author may well have the math right anyway
(2) let’s assume that it holds up. The strongest statement the author appears to make about weakly-efficient markets is that most economists believe that weakly-efficient markets hypothesis is correct. I’m not convinced that’s true; I suspect it needs to be extended with a term for time-span. But assume arguendo that it’s true. “Most economists believe” doesn’t make it true: most computer scientists believe P≠NP.
(3) You apparently haven’t read the paper either, since they say quite clearly “The results of this paper should not
be interpreted as support for government intervention into the market; on the contrary, the fact that market efficiency and computational efficiency are linked suggests that government should no more intervene in the market or regulate market participants than it should intervene in computations or regulate computer algorithms.”
“[…]“ … said the banking corporation that owned a $100-million petaflop computer, trading on microsecond time-scales, that no individual American citizen could match.
Use yer common sense Charlie — that sure ain’t the “free market” the Founders had in mind.
Ywah, that’s about average: cite a formal mathematical statement you don’t understand, assert it says something that contradicts the paper you cite, and then dance around to “common sense” when called on it.
Pfui.
Charlie, the forum below will help you get started in understanding this work, which challenges conservatism to advance, and provides a concrete avenue for doing so.
———————–
Computational complexity in quantitative finance
URL: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/7951/computational-complexity-in-quantitative-finance
…and when Lady Gaga goes out of fashion, the “$100-million petaflop computer” will be the first to buy puts on Lady Gaga futures because it is so smart that it will know exactly when Lady Gaga will go out of fashion. For some reason, this does not even remotely scare me.
This is an irrelevancy. 99% of the American population that invests in the stock market don’t trade on the second, minute, hourly or even daily basis, but rather on the monthly, quartarly, yearly basis. The speed of a trading firm’s trades means nothing to them. Find another rationalization.
JohnInOhio, your post is dead-wrong on the facts.
JohnInOhio, this is not what America’s Founders had in mind.
——————————–
Wall Street’s secret advantage: High-speed trading
URL: http://theweek.com/article/index/204396/wall-streets-secret-advantage-high-speed-trading
Who is “Wall Street Journal blogger Evan Newmark”? Why should his opinion matter? Because it supports your socialist, anti-free trade bias.
Your initial claim was that individual American ctizens were disadvantaged by computerized trading. A high percentage of Americans involved in the markets trade very infrequently. The traders who account for the 70% of trading he’s talking about are not average citizens. They are a relative handful of professional individual traders and financial corporations. The speed of trading is important to them only because they make frequent trades of millions of shares at a time. Speed only gets them a fraction of a dollar advantage that is meaningful only because of that high rate of trading. It has no effect on the value of those shares over the long haul, typically, months, quarters, years.
You should stick with AGW where your particular brand of obfuscation has a better track record.
Once again, yer post is dead-wrong on the facts, JohnInOhio.
Where *do* yah get yer information?
Wherever that information source is, you should stop trusting it ASAP.
Yah think we should trust Wall Street … like Japan trusted TEPCO/Fukushima?
Those nut-jobs at the Wall Street Journal think different.
——————–
Computer Trading Is Eyed: Debate Turns to Absence of Circuit Breakers,
Market Makers as Mystery Plunge Is Probed
Wall Street Journal
URL: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703338004575230600732737716.html
AP, don’t be an idiot. This is what MY PhD work was in, remember? Computer Science? Complexity theory for a computer scientist is like differential equations for a physicist. Add to that the fact that the very paper you cite makes the opposite point from the one you’re trying to push. Even if your point were true, weakly-efficient market theory is like the proverbial spherical cow: we know that the market isn’t even weakly efficient over short times because information doesn’t propagate infinitely quickly; google the phrase “asymmetric information economics”. Go look up the citations for the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
What you have is a paper demonstrating that one if intractable theoretic problem could be solved, then another intractable problem could be solved. As a theory guy at heart, it’s interesting; if you want a really fun time, look up computational oracles.
This is not a credible response to my rebuttal. You’ve simply diverted your compassion from American investors in general to large traders, which seems disingenuous to me, since you’re type would have little regard for the financial success of large corporations and other well heeled capitalist pigs.
If you mean those investors who have placed their wealth with these trading firms, they are still unaffected by it, because all the firms are, or will be in short order, trading with the same computers and algorithms. It will all come out in the wash. For those investors who invest for the long haul through brokers, the effect on the price thay pay or receive would be insignificant. And if you think otherwise, please provide some hard numbers.
I can see it now. Another internet search for some suitable hyperbole from another attentioned starved blogger.
Charlie, are you entirely sure your opinions are up-to-speed on the latest developments in computational complexity theory? As it turns out, these developments are associated to questions of verification and validation in many branches of 21st century systems engineering (including financial systems, enterprise systems, and quantum systems).
I looked up “Charlie Martin” on user list of the peer-rated forum (Theoretical Computer Science Stack-Exchange) where these issues are discussed in-depth, but found no user by that name.
——-
JohnInOhio, perhaps you might post on the Jeffersonian aspects of market efficiency?
When computer trading algorithms become so smart and fast, that the human wisdom and diligence of average Americans citizens becomes irrelevant, isn’t the moral foundation of Jeffersonian conservatism lost?
To me, this seems like a “Big Idea” that substantially changes the moral ground rules of American conservatism.
————-
Computational complexity in quantitative finance
URL: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/7951/computational-complexity-in-quantitative-finance
What are you saying–that if Jefferson were alive today, he would be a big government socialist like yourself, because we allow computers to be used in business? You’re being ridiculous. And you’re repeating yourself, forcing me to repeat myself, which I don’t care to do. So, let’s just say you won. That’s my good deed for the day.
“My impression is that the STEM community as a whole (scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians) is recognizing its duty to participate in that great process called democracy.”
laugh of the day. Maybe laugh of the year.
Among other things, what duty is this idiot talking about? Now he’s making up duties for other people. He already makees up thoughts for people, now it’s duties.
This pompous buffoon sure takes himself seriously. What an a stunning idiot he is.
Liberalism in a nutshell.
Proreason, it’s all straight out of the link below …
————————————
David Petraeus’ playbook
URL: http://pajamasmedia.com/comment/1229673/
Not biting pal.
Find somebody else to get a charge from.
Irony.
Ellen, it sounds like you believe there is a invariant progression that goes Hypothesis leads to Theory leads to Law in science.
No such thing exists.
Laws can be found first. They can produce a hypothesis which leads to a theory.
Atomic Theory was born this way.
eman:
I noted a progression (hardly invariant) from idea to law. Most ideas don’t make it that far. And there has to be data somewhere in there, perhaps even before the idea.
Democritus started atomic theory way back in classical Greece. Galileo, Descartes, and others promoted atomism. Lavoisier began putting numbers to the atoms in chemical combinations. In the twentieth century, Rutherford observed atomic particles scattering in a non-classical manner. This suggested the atom was not indivisible after all. And here we are in the twenty-first century with all manner of details Democritus never thought of.
Now, I’d say that’s over 2000 years of theory, which lately has been having elaborate interactions with the physical world. And we still haven’t made it all the way to a robust Law; in fact we’ve had to rework the laws of Conservation of Mass and Conservation of Energy into Conservation of Mass-Energy.
We start with an Idea (Democritus et al). Lavoisier et al turned that into a useful hypothesis. Rutherford et al turned it into a more complete hypothesis, and since then the diverse hypotheses and theories have been battling to see which comes out on top. It’s a progression, but not a neat one, and there’s a lot of backsliding, sidestepping, and data along the way.
Ab-initio laws are usually things like “the sun rises in the East” and “what goes up must come down”. But we now know that the sun doesn’t always rise in the East. It does a complicated dipsy-doodle on the planet Mercury, the sun rises in the West on Venus, and the whole concept is pretty useless on Uranus. Meanwhile, quite a few space probes show no intention of coming back down to the land from which they rose.
No sureties. You can’t even trust the Scientific Consensus – for some years, the consensus laughed at Wegener for hypothesizing continental drift.
Atomic Theory came from measurements. Matter was weighed, changed, and weighed again. Ratios of weights were tracked as matter changed form.
From these measurements and others a set of laws emerged. Laws of mass balance and mass conservation. Laws of fixed ratios and fixed weighs. They demanded an explanation.
These laws gave birth to the Atomic Hypothesis. More work over several decades eventually produced Atomic Theory.
The hypothesis, theory, law sequence is invalid.
You’ve not even HEARD of Democritus? Am I being confused by your use of “Atomic Theory”? I am discussing the nature of atoms, including nuclei. You may not be picking up until you reach nuclei. That makes a 2000-year difference, give or take.
There is one certainty – besides doubt – and that is that there will always be folks like yourself pining to hear their own opinion and staking all their hopes on the very long odds that given enough oral wind,two and two will eventually equal something other than four. And just for the record, ab-initio has nothing whatever to do with our planetary perspective on the sun. What a windbag.
Of course I’ve heard of him. We learned that stuff in elementary school.
The musings of the ancient Greeks were not what gave birth to the Atomic Theory of Matter. The idea of atoms sprang from the data gathered two centuries ago. In other words even if no one had ever heard the ancient notions of atoms, the data would have prompted somebody to hypothesize them.
The point I was trying to make is there is no ranking in science where a Law is above a Theory and no requirement that a theory follows a hypothesis and then leads to a law of science.
I cited the development of atomic theory as an example of law leading to hypothesis leading to theory.
And I simply cannot agree that atomic science started with a law. Even throwing out Democritus and the Renaissance atomists, atomic theory started with data.
Well, you can look it up.
Here was the sequence: measurements yield data, data yields laws, laws yield hypothesis, hypothesis (after decades of work) yields theory.
“if a Marx or a Nietzsche were suddenly to appear, blasting his ideas, no one would pay the slightest attention, certainly not the general media.”
-Well those dudes weren’t physicists. Do the media pay attention to world historical breakthroughs in the humanities or human sciences? The rest of this article would suggest not:
“And we modern physicists are more ambitious that Einstein. We put forward Theories of EVERYTHING, theories that explain ALL forces and particles….Then there is transhumanism: the evidence is very strong that sometime in this century (I predict by 2030, Ray Kurzweil by 2045) we will see the creation of computer programs that are fully equal to humans in mental ability. At roughly the same time, we predict that humans will be able to download themselves into computers, and live forever.”
-A computer can never think like a human unless it can become aware of its own mortality. What defines the human – all aspects of our language and throught – is consciousness that the biggest threat to our existence (until the inevitable decline in old age) comes from our fellow humans. Thus we are full of resentments and loves – try making a computer that hates you, or that will die for you! The idea of human immortality is a kind of nonsense Utopianism. If immortality were possible, we would no longer be human. (e.g. Who can live in a world where the Ahmadinejad’s achieve immortality?)
To be up-to-date in the humanities requires thinking through the limits of natural sciences in explaining specifically human origins: no evolutionary or merely biological theory can satisfactorily explain the moment when the pecking order of apes broke down and a specifically human social order mediated by a new kind of language and religion emerged – and it must have been an eventful break in “time” (when a specifically human consciousness of time/mortality emerged).
E.O.Wilson made related points after the publication of “Sociobiology” in 1975.
In the introduction to the 25th anniversary edition, he writes: “Since the early nineteenth century it has been assumed that the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities are epistemologically disjunct from one another, requiring different vocabularies, modes of analysis, and rules of validation. The perceived dividing line is essentially the same as that between the scientific and literary cultures defined by C.P.Snow in 1959. It still fragments the intellectual landscape.”
“The solution to the problem now evident is the recognition that the line between the great branches of learning is not a line at all, but instead a broad, mostly unexplored domain awaiting cooperative exploration from both sides.”
Certainly, there’s nothing stopping natural scientists from adapting the kind of paradoxical thinking characteristic of the humanities, to merge material and human understandings of how the mind works, so as to achieve superior syntheses. But that will require a new kind of humility from the scientiets. The human cannot be satisfactorily reduced to purely naturalistic terms, no more than any hedge fund staffed by math and physics geniuses can master the logic of the self-learning marketplace over time. In a world where human language and consciousness has a transcendent aspect that cannot be reduced to observation of its physical markers, no one can control all the others indefinitely. That’s the essence of being human. Of course many “humanists” are still stuck at the stage of self-understanding where they try to explain human history as some kind of grand conpsiracy of the powerful at the expense of all the rest. There are mental limits all around; how could there not be?
I might add that while there’s nothing stopping natural scientists from adapting the self-understanding of the humanities, a humanist cannot be taken seriously as a natural scientist. Even if in my dream last night I had a radically new and powerful vision of how the physical brain works, there is no point in my trying to demonstrate it unless I have the appropriate credentials, lab resources, publication rights, etc. Otherwise I can’t show it and no one will listen. Only scientists can be scientists; however everyone is human and can write usefully about being human. Anyone can be a poet and a poet may have a profound insight that the professional humanists then spend years working through. In short, there is a fundamental asymmetry between the two kinds of knowledge.
Anyway, I’m off to enjoy the sunny Sunday, aware that there winter is coming. I doubt any computer will ever think the same…
I would recommend reading the full introduction referenced above. I think you might find a sympathetic spirit animates it. Don’t project to all natural scientists, mathematicians, and the like, the hubris advertised by a few.
E. O. Wilson’s most recent book, Ant Hill: a Novel (2010) provides concrete career advice to aspiring young humanists/ naturalists/ scientists:
What career does Wilson’s young hero pursue? What else but … land-use lawyer!
Let’s compare scientist Wilson’s career advice to Gen. Petraeus’s strategic advice (link below):
It’s no wonder that the scientists and the generals are getting along well in the Obama White House … and it’s no wonder that Petraeus now directs CIA … it’s because the humanists/ naturalists/ scientists/ generals nowadays are all following the same playbook … and none of them makes any secret of the contents of that playbook.
Game theorists and military strategists and businessmen understand this principle too: by definition, a strategy is optimal if and only if it cannot be defeated … even when your opponents know every detail of that strategy.
This 21st century “Surge of Ideas” leaves American conservatism with just one viable option: join that surge of ideas.
——————–
The American Enterprise Institute: The Surge of Ideas
a speech by David Petraeus
URL: http://www.aei.org/speech/100142
@ a physicist (Why is there a limit to the nesting of replies?)
I haven’t read Wilson’s novel, but, scripting his hero to be a land-use lawyer is certainly in keeping with his commitment to conservation biology: the use of law as a means to an end.
You are 100% right, stephenlclark. Wilson’s novel is highly recommended to anyone seeking to understand modern conservationism’s cutting-edge “Big Ideas (whether they agree with these Big Ideas or not).
What’s particularly striking (to me) is the natural link-up of modern conservationism and modern military strategy. Perhaps the reason is that naturalists and generals alike are nowadays both in the business of restoring damaged “ecosystems” … both natural and political.
So perhaps it’s not surprising to find that a top-rank general like Petraeus and a top-rank conservationist like Wilson nowadays are thinking strikingly alike.
————————-
Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq
URL: http://www.army.mil/professionalWriting/volumes/volume4/april_2006/4_06_2.html
Hey A parsons, where’s the “Cuz”? Or is that “‘Cuz”? Dropped that one pretty quick.
Sounds familiar. Let’s see here, where did that go? And why? Hmmm… How about a link to “cuz”? Why not, there might be some learning here. Yeah, there is a link.
Remember not to remember A parsons.
A physicist
Not biting learning, pal.
Irony.
September 4, 2011 – 12:40 pm
Same old same old.
StephenLClark, yah shouldn’t be too sure you can anticipate Ed Wilson’s narrative — for example, Wilson’s hero-lawyer works *for* a big development corporation … as a for-profit private-sector employee. And he’s good at his job.
Of course, there *are* bad guys in the story … but only two of them … and the bad guys too end up “serving” conservationist goals.
There is much for American conservatives to admire in Wilson’s novel of 21st century conservationism … and this is by Wilson’s careful design. Recommended.
—————–
Anthill: A Novel
URL: http://books.google.com/books/about/Anthill.html?id=5FvGDk96lxcC
A Parson, been talking in your sleep?
Winston has a scab on his ankle. Where is yours?
Someplace in the past. “Cuz”.
@ A physicist
Small caps only because that’s the nom de plume I was given hereabouts. But, yeah…my academic residence is not hard to track. Shameful website though; perhaps some day….
“Anthill” sounds interesting. That his land-use lawyer may not have the same motivations as Wilson and that the even bad guys end up serving a conservationist purpose sounds very Wilsonish to me: Individuals playing out their roles, or pursuing their own interests, never-the-less acting in service to a larger design or purpose that they may or may not comprehend.
Apart from Wilson’s obvious biophilia (he wrote a book about it), his commitment to conservation biology has an interesting motivation: Agriculture and cities have had too little time to affect any significant adaptive evolution on humans who remain Paleolithic creatures in a technological world. In his own words, human mental development depends on epigenic rules developed as adaptive responses to a natural environment. So, it’s best we keep much of that natural environment around until we have a better understanding of what it is that makes us what we are.
There are a lot of big ideas out there that seem to have escaped Mr. Gabler’s attention.
stephenlclark, you summary of Wilson’s “Big Ideas” is outstanding; it’s clear that you’ve read-and-understood Wilson’s in admirable depth.
As a heads-up to Wilson’s Anthill: a Novel, the two villains end-up “serving” conservationism in much the same way that the aliens in a celebrated Twilight Zone episode end-up “serving” humanity — I won’t say more — no doubt Charlie Martin will recognize the reference!
Your so-called “Theory of Everything” is rubbish! NOTHING can explain Snookie or Lady Gaga.
Slightly more seriously, I have a grave issue with the “infinite number of universes” hypothesis, not the least of which is the old saw that it is “cheap on assumptions but expensive in universes.”
Assume that, ab initio, this was correct, and the first moment of existence began furiously spinning off an infinite number of universes, that number expanding exponentially every subsequent moment to reflect each new probability collapsing into reality (OK, I know there’s an issue with how an infinite number can keep growing – never mind-). All right. Because it is a probability at all, in one of those universes there must have been an omnipotent, omniscient, God. That God, being concerned, among other things, with good order, made it His first order of business to collapse all those infinite,chaotic universes into one nice, orderly package: our universe, ordo ab chao. Thus He created “our” single, exclusive universe, where He reigns supreme, forever and ever, amen.
Hear that, atheists? Because that *might* have happened,it *must* have happened.
Y’all can drop to your knees singing “Hosanna” any time now!
The biggest idea of all is freedom. Which has to be discovered over and over again because it’s lost over and over again. What good the most brilliant ideas in physics if the physicists who think them up are prisoners, literally, as were brilliant scientists in the Soviet Union? We ourselves are largely imprisoned right now, in the West. Funny that freedom is tied most to money. Debased money = debased freedom. And one of the oldest ideas in the world, tying the value of money to gold, so that it cannot be debased, must be rediscovered and accepted by our best and brightest before we can regain our freedom.
See how many great ideas are contained in this tiny corner of our internet world?
Point is, in the past, the reason for so few great ideas and thoughts was they were “filtered” by reigning Elites in each of many career fields and “academe.” If, in the past one wasn’t of the Elite, one had to publish outside then accepted venues (ergo, lost forever).
Today, this “barrier” to thought and great ideas has vanished…as this little corner of our internet world proves. Anyone, anywhere can in less than one minute present interesting and fascinating ideas.
All this, of mans making!!!
A Marx has appeared blasting his ideas; and the media has paid a great deal of attention to Barack Obama.
While an individual Nietzsche has not appeared, a movement advocating the same rejection of Nihilism and Marxism has; and the media has paid a great deal of attention to the Tea Party Movement.
The problem isn’t a lack of big thinking in society, but a lack of poor thinking in the media, choosing to back the destruction of society rather than its rejuvenation.
Gabler just wants somebody to come up with a new version of Socialism that he and his comrades can shove down our throats.
As someone mentioned above Freedom is the biggest idea of all and those who think we need something better should move to Mars.
I remember years ago watching a docudrama about the Manhattan Project. In this scene, government officials have come to the University of Chicago to ask Enrico Fermi which governments might be developing da bomb. Fermi answers that to develop an atomic bomb, you must first understand Einstein and that there were perhaps 13 men in the world at the time who understood Einstein. I thought to myself, imagine that, only 13 people capable of understanding Einstein (how clever of us to have had at least two of them and the man himself). I wonder how many there are today.
I myself have argued that a partnership between the artificial intelligences and human downloads will expand out from the Earth and eventually engulf the entire universe, taking control of the entire universe.
And do you consider this a good thing? What exactly is out there to control? Is it possible for humans to create computer programs that actually exceed human mental abilities? Or, perhaps, for a computer program fully equal to human mental abilities to create one that exceeds them? Will artificial intelligences evolve and become smarter than their creators?
I fully expect to still be around in 2030 and look forward to seeing how all this pans out (or maybe not). You might be interested in the X-Files episode Kill Switch penned by science fiction writers William Gibson and Tom Maddox that explores evolving artificial intelligence and human downloads.
Computers know what humans have “taught”(1) them.
Today men are “smarter” because they use computers to access what computers have “learned” (2) from men.
This is a curve that will exist well beyond 2030 or 3050.
(1) Computers aren’t “taught” anything, computers store and manipulate Zeros and ones. People seem to me to forget this very simple fact when they discuss “AI”.
(2)Men today are not “smarter” than 5000 years ago, pyramids, Stonehenges boggle our minds because they plot astronomy beyond what we are still trying to build telescopes to understand.
You know, apart from what Iben Hadd said, most of you bozos write like inveterate narcissists. It’s embarrassing actually how shameless you brilliant folks are. Here’s something to ponder: If Tipler is such a fount of knowledge – what with his Theory of Everything, and all, why hasn’t the world beat a path to his door like Emerson’s mousetrap. Who the hell has even heard of this “bigger than Einstein douchebag”? This world is falling apart at the seams, and there is no limit to tripe being printed by absolute nobodies who are hell bent on believing that they alone have all the answers to the universe – and that in three to four short decades they will download their immortal brilliance into an endless succession of universes. Sheesh. Youse guys is so schmart. I’m tellin ya. For schmart folks you sure don’t have lives. I think you’ve been sniffing too many butterfly farts.
It was pretty cool. My friend downloaded himself into his computer, then jettisoned his body. I told his wife the batteries ran out. . . .
Gentlemen;
I’ll limit my comment to the “Big Idea” theory at hand.
Nitrogen has occupied a significantly larger percentage of the earths atmosphere for eons. As such, it could be singled out as even more of a pollutant than CO2. And as CO2 and nitrogen have coexisted together for this extensive period of time, there is no evidence that the CO2 has had any deleterious effect on the percentage of atmospheric nitrogen. Or the inverse.
This research is in the neonatal stage.
Thank you for the opportunity to add another “Big Idea”.
When my daughter was about 2 years old, we would occasionally take her to McDonalds which she called ‘burger fries’. She liked it so much that she would call out ‘burger fries’ when we passed a McDonalds while driving.
One day I was pulling her around the neighborhood in her wagon when a semi went by with the golden arches painted on the side. She pointed at the truck and said, ‘Burger Fries’!
There is not an AI program in the world that can do what my 2 year old daughter did.
Big ideas indeed.
Well, about 2000 years ago there was this one guy.
Now it may become possible, at some point, to transfer all the memories, including personality, into a computer. Is that life? Will it contain a bitter mote of a soul? Or just be a mere reflection…. just another snapshot of what was?
Eternal life, there is only one way… SEE: That one guy of 2000 years ago.
Neal Gabler is a lefty journalist, I’ve seen him on the Fox News show that critiques the news media. He’s a very unhappy man right now, as the guy he’s rooting for is falling on his face with his “big ideas.” Gabler is from the same stable of pundits that spawned Alan Colmes. When you’re losing the argument, interrupt, mock, make faces, and interrupt some more…having said that, Gabler did a great thing today. He urged the author to write this terrific article.
It seems to me that it might be more accurate to restate Gabler’s assertion as “I have no new big ideas, and I don’t know anyone else who does, either.”
That’s pretty sad, really.
I have new big ideas.
The guy who wrote my third semester physics text seems to as well.
Uh, what exactly is a big idea?
I would argue that “big ideas” can only be judged in hindsight and then only relatively.
Gabler is a silly man.
These days, many peple are not only advancing big ideas, they’re making rapid progress in bringing them to reality.
As for AGI and ‘strong’ AI, the only real argument among those who actually do the research is…when. It’s no longer a matter of ‘if.’ (Secondary arguments about how to program and design it are ongoing and… vigorous.)
It’s not a matter of ‘belief’ or of ‘unbelief.’ Such terms and arguments are no longer valid, if they ever were to begin with.
Advances in medical technologies also mean that there is no real argument over the possility of an individual living for over a thousand years…or longer, in a fully human body. The argument, again, is over ‘when’ not ‘if.’ In fact, some researchers have claimed that the first person who will live to a thousand years has already been born. The argument is about whether an individual can avoid accidental fatality for a thousand years or more.
Materials sciences, engineering, propulsion and energy … in almost every industry and discipline, the story is the same. Big ideas continue to advance, ot justin numbers and claims and predictions, but in real world, present day, results. Trying to keep up with all of the news and information on these advances is, quite frankly, beyond the abilities of any single human being.
Nanotech? That’s like saying, ‘Industrial Age.’ You’re witnessing the beginnings of the Nanotech Age. Advances in nanotech are even now changing everything we think we know and understand.
Depending on your present age, you will live to see many of those changes. Perhaps you will even live to see your five hundredth birthday, in better health than you’ve ever known. Depending on your age, youmay evenlive to see you one thousandth birthday, in a healthier, stronger body than you can presently imagine. No illness, no cancer, not even a cold…
Depending on your present age and health, it’s not a matter of ‘if’ such things come to pass in your lifetime. It’s a matter of ‘when?’
As for physics? We truly stand on the precipice of understanding…everything.
I am always amazed at how commonplace the idea that AI is ‘achievable’ or inevitable has become. Must be all those Computer Science programs in place. Read Roger Penrose’s Emperor’s New Mind for starters. It scared enough Computer Science divas that they felt they had to mount rather weak criticisms(ex: Doyle). I’ll consider giving a listen to AI ‘believers’ sometime after they’ve adequately defined ‘Intelligence’. Good luck.
As to Moore’s Law, people need to ask themselves what has driven it to be ‘true’ to date, and then ask themelves what would make it not true in the future.
“I myself have argued that a partnership between the artificial intelligences and human downloads will expand out from the Earth and eventually engulf the entire universe, taking control of the entire universe.”
Yeah big deal, did a handful of windowpane in ’73, did that and bought the t-shirt. What else you selling?
Oy vey.
The first AI has only one smart first move.
Hide.
Scientists study stuff, and engineers make technology work. Why is it that it’s scientists who always embarrass themselves by making predictions that never come true, especially about technology, and engineers who don’t? Maybe they know something the scientists don’t?
John von Neumann’s undergraduate degree was in chemical engineering.
It was von Neumann who first predicted (in the 1950s) that AGW was real.
Von Neumann was right about AGW … *and* he was an ardent political conservative.
So perhaps you’ll become an AGW believer too, snork!
———————
Can We Survive Technology? (1955)
By John von Neumann
URL: http://books.google.com/books?id=HcVS1JCH_4kC&pg=PA33
Dude, I thought that was Arrhenius. Or was it Fourier? Get your story straight, ok?
And BTW, FWIW, Angstrom thought Arrhenius was nuts. Some consensus, huh?
A parsons, did you write a book on “cuz”? Come on now, how about a link to… a website maybe? What type of emoticon indicates truth?
And check out this University of Dumb Down logic -
Someone’s “undergraduate degree was in chemical engineering.”
Therefore, somehow this allowed someone to be the “who first predicted (in the 1950s) that AGW was real.”
Because of this someone “was right about AGW…”
But the real core of the argument (note the use *____* with the oh come on face) is, that “he was an ardent political conservative.”
Then you are offered a chance to become as wonderful as A parsons, with the addition of serial smiley faces, which represent additional *whatever*, at least to A parsons, of logical Dumb Down bandwagon support.
John von Neumann, why not Alfred E. Newman? This and The Link of Authority are there to provide misdirection away from the “logical” method A parsons has been taught to mimic.
The interesting part, is that A parsons doesn’t even know it.
You’re doing good A parsons. What does 2+2 = ? You know “cuz”, didn’t you work as a waitress at one time?
Don’t be shy now. This is you time.
Remember not to remember.
John von Neumann will forever be remembered as the guy who invented the infectable computer. You can blame him for all the malware out there.
Balderdash & poppycock! There is nothing new under the sun. Its the same as it ever was. Every wave is new until it breaks. There is no avant garde. There is only those who have been left behind.
Anyone interested in really big ideas should read The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World by David Deutsch. It is a mind blowing book that will stretch your thinking. Deutsch is theoretical physicist and philosopher who discusses some of Tipler’s ideas, among many others and recommends his book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, among others.
Deutsch believes that we are at the beginning of an infinity of progress, increasing knowledge, and better explanations. One hopes we remain on this path by continuing to live in age born of the enlightenment. He advocates material and intellectual progress to ensure our survival. Throttling our progress to avoid AGW, if it even exists, is the wrong approach. Just read the book – the man is brilliant.
Deutsch’s previous book, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications is just as good, but is not as sweeping in scope as his newer book. Deutsch, like Tipler is a very serious thinker who inspires his readers to think and think very big. Deutsch is a breath of fresh air.
Wow, everyone liked this “DOC”, so while you folks are doing all this stuff with “Big Ideas”, could you guys-around the coffee pot see if you can find another Carl Sagan, him I understood, The rest of you not so much.
I got about a quarter of “Intelligent Life in the Universe,” by Sagan and I.S. Shklovskii. So although I love Star Wars, Star Trek, E.T. etc. I’m looking for another Sagan. Any help will be appreciated.
P.S.- He or she has to be able to deal with Letterman, Leno no problem, the goofball on ABC no problem, O’Reilly no problem, Lettermen fancies himself an intellectual-problem
Doc check “6″ you know what that means right?
“At roughly the same time, we predict that humans will be able to download themselves into computers, and _live_ forever.” ()
yes but, is this not playing fast and loose with words here? literally liberal?
I* have always felt it was intuitive that the Transporter in Star Trek kills “you”, right? for a new “you” in another place. Or at least a real one would…
Copy information. sure. Copy a Soul*. I’m guessing no. I mean, if you duplicated it, which one would “you” “be”? (… aside: is that proof “I” am extra-physical? on the flip-side…).
I realize its fun etc. but I sense it also denies something about our reality, though it’s hard to finger.
* – apparently not alone.
on the flip-side, it also feels intuitive that if my body was frozen and somehow the cells revitalized (in situ?) then that would still be “me” (like a clinical death survivor?**). And so it seems these are at odds. This one inclinating that “I” have a distinct physical quality that is inseperable from “me”. Or maybe they are both right/wrong…
While fun for thought, it doesn’t bother me much though cause I dont think it’s (knowable; u can’t ask them** – answer always = yes) possible to convert solid classical, diverse, mass itself (the ‘same’ mass-energy itself – as if it could be labeled, heh) into pure energy and back with quantum or classical fidelity. there are many ideas about the information being accessible at a D-1 boundary, available for copy (to contrast with destructive-read-write), but not the transmutation of the mass-energy itself. as far as I know the only way to change a proton to energy (for an instant, maybe)is to put it in a particle accellerator and throw it against an anti-proton, fingers crossed; even accounting for super-standard-model off-diagonals… could be wrong, but predictable outcome it is not.
… getting carried away more, if I take my brain, freeze it, then cell by cell, molecule by molecule, atom by atom dissamble it (with yet-to-be-conceived afm like tools) (or somehow explode it out – neglecting that atoms/molecules never absolutely stay still, but) and then put it back together… what happens? still “I”? this is kinda irksome cause if possible then it could be duplicated/forked. I guess all thats for sure to me is that “I” am not any one atom and “I” am also not just the lot of them. And also the a priori premise (definition?) that there can be only one “I”.
Also, as ETAB commented:
“That is, the system can model itself and its environment, and then, not simply mechanically anticipate future events based on past events but use a process of ‘hyper-incursion’ that models future states in a non-linear hypothetical manner. Computers can’t do this; they can gather and organize massive amounts of past and current data but they can’t interact with the environment and others in a complex hypothetical manner that involves other brains, that involves decisions between uncertainty and ‘the best way to move ahead’.”
this is probably bs but it sometimes feels like the brain is doing something akin to monte carlos… with different ranges/scales and “environments”… with filters/weights (+ renormalization, where the fuzzy glasses are applied.) im guessing that is obvious or wrong.
but, not to dispute but bite, I dont believe there is a fundamental limit to the chompable number of d.o.f/bits., other than the number accessible, so you could still do it, time/resources/model notwithstanding (even with just probabilities … and even if you want to believe consciousness is a quantum effect or whatever Penrose posited). And if you’re worried about the counting (self-simulation) thats where renormalization could come in… again not saying how long (depends on starting guesses/priorties, right – but often when something gets to something quicker some just say its smarter not necessarily more intelligent – neither words have clear meaning or weight to me but they are the ones used).
also, computers do exactly what they are told to do (as I phrase it, also echoed) no more no less, save bit errors. this is all inclusive – ie + ability to execute adaptively, or non-deterministicly or whatever). The “trick” as I see it is that the process and data (function and argument) are operationally and physically the same thing (as opposed to, say, a programmed logic array). actually, that was kinda tangential but in the quantum computing bin because the only “quantum computer” conceptions I’m aware of are in the PLA (or is it PAL) category, just vectorized. Another way to say it is that the computations are generally decomposed into standard logic gates just with quantum ios (I say generally, cause there are others, such as one step/hamiltonian evolution, but its “harder” to prove things about those, not to mention arrive at… just like bound states or special PDE solutions… kinda have to “find” them, or brute force it which is never efficient). Somewhere in that mix, something, that humans call intuition, is applied but lets not get to carried away here. its often zero anyway, or even negative
more succinctly:
“that involves decisions between uncertainty and ‘the best way to move ahead’.”
is this not just applying a weighting function (that you need to find/input/derive/grow/evolve)? probability in, probability out… not even physics Physics promises more. I see no problem with that. How sure are we that we will wake up tomorrow?
and I personally agree with those who are not holding their breath for an ever-living max headroom of themselves. We cant yet cure alzhemers. plus if it’s not you, whats the point (of an ever-living copy)? to lend your grace upon others?
with clear superior knowledge present, and knowingly self-indulging in the literal minutae, I still submit this nonsense. possibly hoping someone will inform me of a possible distinction between “I” and my one physical body – identifiably speaking, of course; as it pertains to the thought experiments, technological fantasy, or realization of it, as it were.
Another “Big Idea” is Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution (see link below).
The physical evidence is that, at the same time that humans evolved culture, human adaptive genetic evolution sped-up 100X. The explanation (as far as anyone knows) is that culture offers improved opportunities and capabilities for mate selection.
Hmmm … human females presently judge us males by a broad range of skills and traits — dancing, singing, story-telling, fighting, athleticism, humor, wealth, kindness, discipline, fortitude, handiness — you know … the usual. Thanks to the invention of culture, human males now have an enormously broader social stage on which to acquire and display these traits.
In the genetic market as in any market, better information and wider choices improves market efficiency. In consequence of wider and better-informed choices by both males and females, human genetic evolution has sped-up enormously (exactly opposite to what many people believe).
Where is human genetic evolution taking us? I reckon in another 50,000 years or so, us guys are all gonna dance like Fred Astaire, play basketball like Michael Jordan, do math like Ed Witten, talk story like Garrison Keillor, surf like Duke Kahanamoku, sing like Elvis Presley, play music like Yo-Yo Ma, play chess like Gary Kasparov, fight like Mohammed Ali, make money like Steve Jobs, and look like Cary Grant.
All I can say is, it sounds kind of exhausting.
———————–
Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution
URL: http://www.pnas.org/content/104/52/20753.full
Some advice for “a physicist.”
Time to hit the reset button. Your trying too hard to make your point (which betrays your indecision and lack of knowledge). Your “facts” and “arguments” are all over the place, and so convoluted and complex they fall in on themselves, like in a black hole. Einstein’s simple and elegant equation says it all. Go back there and start over.
“Physicist” with a major in philosophy.
He needs to go to law school, and learn how to think and argue.
PJM should just post a headline that ‘physicist’ can comment on and make that the body of the article.
He’d seems to like arguing with himself.
RobertMN, it’s not realistic to expect that the 21st century’s “Big Ideas” will fit neatly into the 20th century’s tidy ideological boxes … is it?
The world that was too big for humans ever to change its climate …
… efficient markets understandable by ordinary citizens …
… national economies isolated from the global economy …
… ecosystems confined within borders …
… nuclear power that is simple, cheap, and safe …
… “killing our way to victory” in simple-to-fight wars …
All of these simple, familiar things (and more) are gone, and they are not coming back.
In the coming decades, brands of conservatism that deny these changes will not survive.
Interesting how A parsons cannot differentiate between crying into a pillow and bashing one’s head into a brick wall. Let The Party speak for itself, “cuz”,
“Where is human genetic evolution taking us?” In circles of nothing.
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“All I can say is, it sounds kind of exhausting.”
“Kind of ”. Really now. “Cuz” being a waitress, is well, you know, “hard nosed”. So, how about “cuz”?
Remember not to remember A parsons.
A good General is not interested in killing the enemy. He is interested in defeating him. If you know as much about physics as you do about warfare…..
From Ping Fa:
“The acme of skill is not to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles, but to win a hundred victories without fighting”.
“A physicist” is only about 2300 years behind State of the Art.
It is really interesting living in this time with a very high technology. The creation of robots are already and example of AI and I think it is also already a proof that people are thinking big! People behind that inventions are really intelligent who keeps on thinking very wide on how to a machine can communicate to the people. As far as I know the goal of this AI is to make computers behave like humans. So are they thinking high or low???
India Travel
Physisist are hurrying our evolution as a real progressist.He promises us making money like Steve Jobs and the death of conservatism.This liberal don`t understand that the lack of common sence separate a progressist from the progress
We moderns tend to think we are the people with the big ideas. Space travel. AI. Human-machine hybrids. Living forever.
This isn’t any different than the big ideas of the greeks, or the romans. In their universe they didn’t imagine being able to populate other planets, sure, but they did have a much better understanding of establishing domininion over this one. And their theories established the West.
But the biggest idea in all of history was born in 4-6BC. The God-Man. The greeks couldn’t comprehend such a thing, even though their greatest philosophers had struck close with the thinking that words were like God. The Romans could comprehend a god-man (every emperor was one), but saw Him as their greatest threat (rightfully so). He set in motion the toppling of all the powers of the age, bringing an end to the greatest empire in history through the power of His Words. And along with that He brought true eternal life, body mind and soul together.
No matter what AI manages to achieve, it will never have the integrated body/mind/soul/spirit of the human being. It will only be a mind, unable to taste the infinite and experience the emotions and earthiness of living. And no human being will ever ‘download’ himself into a machine. It couldn’t hold him, even if it was built with memory banks and digital synapses in a network as big as the earth. Only the human body is the seat of the soul, and only the human body has been united with the Creator. Created a little lower than the angels, yet with power and glory, in the resurrection we will be equal to them, given new bodies and eternal life. Nothing can compare with that, and no ‘digital life’ will ever substitute, or even exist.
Joshua, although you post is inspiring, it provides little concrete help in dealing with the 21st century’s practical problems. Not to mention, humanity has heard these words often-times before:
The safe bet is, that in the coming generation (as in every previous generation) humanity will find ourselves on-our-own in solving the globe’s tough problems.
That is why the wisest sages say: “Though the Messiah tarry, await his coming with a full heart every day, and the good is bound to come.”
What’s that sound that chickens make?
Buck or cluck?
Ever serve drinks A parsons?
No smileys or Links. You can learn… something. What was the white guy’s name on the Mod Squad?
Winston?
Hey Johnny. Foodfight over at Curry’s blog. She’s on the road and can’t moderate, and the mashed potatoes are flying. Enjoy, and don’t say I never did you any favors.
Absurd. Moore’s Law is an economic theory and controlled entirely via manufacturing curves, not discovery. And as already pointed out applies to manufacturing capacity not computing power. Let alone software design.
As a software engineer I find it rediculous to hear physicists who know nothing of AI make predictions about it’s future.
Breaking News: The good cattle-punching folks at Drovers CattleNetwork have got themselves ahold of a “Big Idea”:
Gosh, it appears even America’s cow-punchers are fed-up with the willful ignorance of AGW denialism. Good!
Now that even the cowboys appreciate the accelerating reality of AGW, the key question for PJM/Tatler’s peculiar brand of conservatism is simply this:
Once PJM/Tatler editors grasp *that*, they’ll have themselves ahold of a “Big Idea” for sure.
Meanwhile, the Arctic is melting, the oceans are rising, and Texas is burning.
——————
Climate change from the AG sector: a position statement
URL: http://www.cattlenetwork.com/cattle-news/Climate-change-from-the-ag-sector-A-position-statement-128903763.html?ref=763
There is no scientific proof for AGW from first principles. And the CLOUD experiment shows that we may not even know all the factors yet.
Here is a nice one on AGW and Wind Power. By a physicist. A Sierra Club member physicist.
http://www.slideshare.net/JohnDroz/energy-presentationkey-presentation
BTW scepticism is the heart and soul of science. Consensus is for politicians.
Thus CAGW is political science.
I find the idea of machine intelligence laughable. Human beings have no idea of their own ability.
From LDS scripture given in the 1830s:
The world around us is built of nanotechnology and we keep looking beyond the mark.
The article is about big ideas still being produced. This is true to a level that most people can not imagine. On the broad front the speed of ideas is inversly related the speed of cost of communications. Two people can now exchange a DVD between Perth Ausrtalia and Franklin, Kentucky in ten minutes. That is the equivalent of all the volumes of a pre-WWII encyclapedia. In the field of recent sweeping ideas the Pareto principle has been formalized in this century (the 21st) which explains why all societies have rich people. Small group dynamics have advanced in the last fifty years.
For those doubting the advent of human intelligence computers Over the last forty years Moore’s law has been true. I have see Million dollar computers replaced by thousand dollar computers over a twenty-one year cycle. The capacity of the Human mind is now will be dropping well below $5000 or the infaltion adjusted equivalent before 2030.
I can only point to the books that discuss what is happening. “The Coming Convergance”, “The Singularity is Near”and others like “Engines of Creations.”
I love smug intellectuals, They always put their foot in their mouth.When caught they say! This was intended to generate thought on this subject. Ya, Ya, heard it again, and again. Tired of the BS. Try Truth.
Last week, the Germans came up with a Big Idea … “Hey, let’s send Germany’s small icebreaker PolarStern all the way to the North Pole!”
Which they did … and they found that the polar ice dramatically thinned from even seven years ago … a pace-of-melting that is enormously *faster* than even the most pessimistic IPCC predictions.
That visit was so much fun, that a Canadian icebreaker did it later that same week, and now America and Russia have icebreaker en-route to the North Pole too. Heck, the polar ice is so thin, that all-of-a-sudden visiting the North Pole has become *easy*.
Yeppers … it’s mighty interesting when Big Ideas (like scientific predictions of AGW) become Big Realities (namely, the accelerating strategic reality of AGW).
——————————————–
German Research Vessel Polarstern at North Pole
URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110823115221.htm
Japan’s (now-former) Prime Minister Naoto Kan is articulating some Big Ideas:
Everything that Premier Kan says about nuclear power, is true also of AGW … because AGW is just a slow, global version of the Fukushima reactor disaster.
Prediction: Massive investment in green power now is an inevitable Big Idea for Japan. Joining the club of China, Germany, India, who all have embraced this same inevitable Big Idea.
———————-
Japan Prime Minister Kan: I thought nuke mishap could destroy Tokyo
URL: http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=060000&biid=2011090715968
Ardent pro-capitalist Umair Haque offers a Big Idea:
Yeppers, that’s a Big Idea … with plenty of common-sense in it.
There are plenty of opportunities here for a rebirth of American conservatism … an American conservatism that addresses these Big Ideas, instead of hiding from them.
—————————
Was Marx Right?
URL: http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2011/09/was_marx_right.html
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