Minecraft Forums

On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

Though it's written in terminology and tone suitable for the layperson, Hawkins - former CEO of a tech company and current full-time neuroscientist - and his contemporaries purport to have made great strides in the nomothetic understanding of the brain. What came as a surprise to me was just how very little we understand about the overall structure of the mind; perhaps it's no wonder then that the current level of AI is so inept compared to that of humans. That is a statement backed by Hawkins himself. In any case, even if its academic significance was somewhat discounted on a nonspecialist like me, it painted a very novel picture of the world and meta-thinking with a programming-conceptual flair.

The Poincaré Conjecture: In Search of the Shape of the Universe by Donal O'Shea

Another take at a fascinating but recondite subject, put in a tone and vocabulary accessible by the public. It tackles some of the basic tenets, theorems, and concepts in topology, which is particularly helpful in comprehending the abstract subject of extra dimensions, finite-but-boundless manifolds, homeomorphisms, and the like. An unexpected but pleasant quality this book exhibited was its emphasis on the history of mathematics and the mathematicians behind these revolutions; eminent politicians, scientists, and philosophers are typically household names, but while Newton and Ramanujan and the like might as well be among their ranks, I feel the history of mathematics is generally underplayed. Prime Obsession by John Derbyshire is another book that limns mathematics before its proper historical backdrops.

I'd bring the time-machine, of course. How else did I get in Ancient Rome?

Just train for 8 hours each and every day by sleeping, so you can recognize it and stop from falling asleep in the other 16 hours of the day. That's what most people do.

Quote from Derpcakes

Aren't chat bots for people who don't have any friends?

Yes, just like automobiles are for people who don't have any legs.

I would like to see a source for that statistic.

And here I was thinking this was a political thread.

Anyhow, I hear it's something while developing in the fetus and/or genetics, although I could be mistaken. I'm a rightie myself.

You didn't do anything wrong. Although she might be going through a hard time, not accepting multiple apologies after you took it down is pretty unacceptable. I was expecting there to be a fight emerging in the chat, but it was just you pleading her to, kindly, suck it up and she wouldn't calm down.

Hopefully she might come to her senses.

Quote from Travis

Santorum is crazy, but at least he doesn't sentence millions of people to gulags.

He also hasn't been part of an orchestra that systematically starved millions of people.

"Warning: Reading this sticker has been associated with carpal bones being involuntarily launched into the nasal bridge and cranium area, causing bone fractures."

"Guess which three people in this room have herpes!"

I learned that people aren't nearly as awful as every angsty 14-year-old says they are.

If you don't like rock in your ear, change your radio station to classical.

In Portal 2, when you escape with Wheatley, the first thing he says is "Hey buddy! I'm speaking in an accent that is beyond her range of hearing!" The developer commentary describes this as him attempting (and doing a terrible job) of an American accent. I don't know the extent to how accurate it is being American myself, but here's a video of it:

edit: What I meant by accurate is how we would sound to other people.

I cannot ethically justify stealing, so I don't do it. If something is worth having, it's worth buying. Otherwise I don't need it.

Quote from ub3rn00b6

All the space agencies know about it. The government is hiding evidence by refusing to tell people about it in schools as well as hiding it by a series of satelites progexting a holographics image in the sky.

Holograms don't work that way. The implications of your point are preposterous and it is readily apparent to anyone with knowledge of the subject that you are very full of ****.

1) Holograms cannot be "projected". The reference beam of the holographic laser must be cast on a pre-developed holographic plate, which only permits viewing of the hologram from a constrained set of viewpoints.
2) Holograms are not photorealistic. Even if holograms could be projected then you still have the problem that holograms are made of coherent light (light of a single frequency). It would be trivial to filter out that light frequency and you would then see through the hologram. In order to produce a hologram visually indistinguishable from an actual object It would take an infinite amount of these hypothetical holographic projectors to project an infinite amount of frequencies which would require an infinite amount of energy.
3) Holograms have a fixed size. An observer would merely need to change their viewpoint and look behind the hologram, destroying its ability to obscure things, just as one can walk behind a television and notice that what's on the screen does not represent objects behind the television.
4) Mass distorts space-time. There is a reason astronomers can predict the locations of massive bodies based on the perturbations of the surrounding space-time; objects with mass have an influence on other objects. The gravitational influences of this ridiculous planet would pass through any hologram and been observed to affect many other objects; gravity, unlike other types of waves, cannot be stopped by intervening matter.

You are in grave need of critical thinking skills and scientific knowledge. I suspect you are doing this for shits and giggles just to get a rise out of us.

The OP won't respond to this evidence-based appraisal of their stupidity, of course; they will ignore it and continue to spew stupidity.

Quote from ub3rn00b6

What makes you think I don't want to listen to reason?

Do you HONESTLY believe in "Nibiru" ********?
Yup, a "large planet" close to Earth, which has been completely missed by every space agency, every private firm, and every amateur sky gazer on the planet. Sounds legit. And don't give me any "government cover-up" ********. If it's really so big and close, anyone with eyes could notice "Nibiru". Unless the government implants "Nibiru cover-up chips" in everyone's brain so they can't detect it with their eyes.