Viewing profile — happythomist

The judiciary and executive are not on an equal footing. The judiciary is the weakest branch of government, and the legislature the strongest. These kinds of abuses must be address…

This is exactly right. So does "all our concepts are complicated grab bags of 'ontic' and 'epistemic'".

I am using mine as a DHCP, DNS, and VPN server. Something I've noticed is that the SD card corrupts easily, though that may be simply because I'm using a phone charger as the power…

I don't agree, but I've reached my personal limit for philosophical discussion for the day, so I'll let you have the last word. Thanks for the discussion! :)

> If I create a robot with an optical camera that detects if there is a large object near itself and uses an arm to open a door if so, the system works (or doesn't work) regardless…

> The subjects experience sensations that are inseparable from their neurons firing. What does "inseparable" mean? That the sensation occurs at the same time that the neurons fire?…

> If we could understand human thought at a similar level, we MIGHT find out that "the feeling of red" is not fundamentally different than "the understanding that 1 + 1 = 2", and w…

> Perhaps if we were able to understand the brain's inner workings, we could see that 'the experience of red' is precisely 'these 3 neurons firing ever 0.0112 seconds at an intensi…

> If we perfectly understood the human brain, the sensation of red would be defined as a sequence of neurons that need to be turned on and off at the right time. A sequence of neur…

Why should the complexity matter, so long as the computation is recognizable as such?

The issue is not whether we can pragmatically communicate the concept of "red" by piggybacking on some (presumed) common experience, but whether that experience of redness itself i…

How do you go about quantifying the sensory experience of red, then? You can observe that red light has a wavelength of 620 to 750 nm, or that we've assigned it the RGB colour code…

I think you're missing the central point, which is that computation is observer relative. Anything can be interpreted as a computational process. Searle: "Thus for example the wall…

I don't think you can say that life is built on computational processes unless you use a definition of "computation" that is so vague and all-encompassing that it becomes effective…

> It's not even clear exactly how our brains work so its hard to imagine that they couldn't be implemented with a sufficiently powerful computer... Not commenting on what OP said, …

That's basically my thinking as well, for what it's worth.

> Not only is this scenario 1000x worse for freedom than the very very worst that Amazon could do, it's also far more likely at the moment. Politically motivated refusal of service…

> Should newspapers be liable (that is, able to be sued) for a letter to the editor they publish? Why shouldn't they? If the letter is libelous, then they're responsible for distri…

One solution might be for the Supreme Court to acknowledge that APIs are copyrightable, but that re-implementations are always fair use.

I believe it's similar to "constexpr" in C++ -- it means those functions can now be evaluated at compile time.

What's so surprising about that? It's not so much a "rule" as a statement of political fact. Now that Supreme Court has become a de facto legislative body, no nominee has a chance …

> That helps make my point, though, that the legal framework for handling encryption already exists and just needs to be clarified a little bit, instead of making new, far-reaching…

Did some more research on this; see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23647018

> The latter is protected by the Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination, in the same way as sharing knowledge verbally. ... If the latter, however, then there is no legal…

I think there might be a circuit split on this issue, but IMO merely divulging a combination or encryption key is not "testimonial" (and therefore not a 5th Amendment violation) ex…