/sci/ - Science & Math

Meanwhile, everyone else in the world who've been second in line and have busted their asses trying to catch up have little reason not to stir the pot. China, N.K, and the Islamic states are pushing agendas that, while not openly confronting-so as to provoke a military response-hasten the demise of the American "empire."

Given enough time, say a few generations, American will be torn asunder from within, with strongly polarized political groups looking out solely for themselves, helping to further divide Americans. Given the decline of educational funding, the average American will be (if possible) even stupider than currently, and the scene will be set for Paul Atreides to step on the scene.

And the rest is history.

People who say the United States is not bound to fall in much the same manner as the Roman Empire are ignorant of history. Will it fall in your lifetime? The next few decades? The next few centuries? No one ones, but if there is one absolute in history is that nothing lasts forever.

There are many correlations between the two civilizations if you're willing to think broadly about the subject. The U.S. was founded based on military might, unified religious views, and strong economic potential. Being on the other side of the world certainly helped matters quite a bit as well. I'm not some right-winged moron who will preach a return to these conditions, it's simply not possible, nor is it ethical.

Over time, the globalization of general economic practices have stripped "developed" countries of their base. For the United States, that base has always been production, yet there are millions of people in other countries who are willing to do the same menial work for a hell of a lot less. This internal difficulty has lead to the rise of two diametrically opposite political regimes, neither of which can work effectively w/o feeling obligated to outdo their opponent. This division, coupled with economic strain has polarized the average American into an emotionally-charged frenzy of irrational voting based on propaganda perpetuated by capitalist news corporations. Coupled with racial, religious, and gender disputes, we see the "great beast" begin to wobble.

Still speaking inwardly, Leto said: "But the genie is not dead. Technology
breeds anarchy. It distributes these tools at random. And with them goes the
provocation for violence. The ability to make and use savage destroyers falls
inevitably into the hands of smaller and smaller groups until at last the group
is a single individual."
Moneo returned to a point below Leto, holding the disabled lasgun casually in
his right hand. "There is talk on Parella and the planets of Dan about another
jihad against such things as this."
Moneo lifted the lasgun and smiled, signaling that he knew the paradox in such
empty dreams.

As Leto continued silent, Moneo crossed to the lasgun and retrieved it from the
crypt's cold floor. He began disabling it.
Leto watched him, thinking how this tiny scene encapsulated ..fostered
the essence of the Army myth. The Army fostered technology because the power of
machines appeared so obvious to the shortsighted.
That lasgun is no more than a machine. But all machines fail or are superceded.
Still, the Army worships at the shrine of such things-both fascinated and
fearful. Look at how people fear the Ixians! In its guts, the Army knows it is
the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It unleashes technology and never again can the magic
be stuffed back into the bottle.

>>1699209
Can't tell if you're trying to refute my point or back it up. Seems to me the picture provides pretty good support for my opinion.

I wouls day Cromwell had the right idea in the beginning but lost miserably in the end by resorting to a flame war.

In my opinion, the golden rule will work in the majority of cases, and anyone that takes a trite moral code literally is a moron. If you wanted to create a foolproof ethical code, it will take more than one sentence. The whole idea behind truncated banalities is to acknowledge the innate intricacies and infinite potential interpretations, yet still manage to transmit the core-essence of the idea in a short, memorable, logical way so people can remember it and actually use it.

Grab a TEM good sir, I'll even help you prepare the sample! Oh, wait shit, never mind

>>1694413
Dune bro, why you gotta be so racist?

>>1694336
Have you read the whole series? My absolute favorite ever. I was just recommended the Foundation series (Isaac Asimov) which I'm on page 2 of right now.

>Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.

a. not doing that easy bullshit
b. or that
c. or that
Challenge: n^3s^3=(ns)^3

I hope you get caught cheating when you can't explain your answer XD

>>1693644
It's not music, but check out idoser. They have a theta "dose" (only lasts 30 min), and they want you to pay, but there are like a million torrents.

>>1693298
>>1693294
Congratulations, you've just created an awesome metaphor for the early development of human societies and civilization.

That's quite the pretty drawing of earth in your picture OP, I'm a little disappointed in the depth of design you chose for your spaceships though. Where do the passengers go to the restroom and sleep? I mean, I used to draw super awesome detailed drawings of spaceships back in the day, and I liked to add things like movie theaters, swimming pools, restaurants, etc. Could you try harder next time please?

>>1693190
Flipping through one of my music history textbooks here, and you're right. In fact, the latter half of the modes all are hypo- modifcations of the first half, however the irony here is that:

present | Greek
Ionian | Lydian
Dorian | Phrygian
Phrygian | Dorian

So in effect, it's still Phrygian and Dorian, they're just reversed. I guess I danced around the point being that Greek philosophers and music theorists were aware of the effects music had on peoples' emotions, and their discoveries would later effect Medieval and Renaissance composers, thus effecting us. So it's, to some degree conditioning that music as we know it today can be traced back to Greek culture, but credence must also be given to their original discovery of musical emotional effect was present before theorists attempted to quantity it.

>>1692977
As far as musical aesthetics are concerned, Pythagoras did an experiment through which he concluded that an octave is a ration of 2:1, and 5th 2:3, and a 4th 3:4 (off the top of my head, numbers might be off). As the Greeks were obsessed with numbers, they used these ratios to explain why these intervals sounded the most consonant. During the middle ages, these same intervals (Perfect 4th,5th,8th) were the basis of all musical theory, which was the beginning of the long road leading to our understanding of music now.

Also, certain modes (ionian, dorian, phrygian, mixolydian, etc), were described to inflict certain emotions on the ethos of human beings. Thus, Plato (iirc) postulated that all music should be performed in the dorian and phrygian modes.

>I don't know the musical modes, I said, but leave us that mode that would fittingly imitate the utterances and the accents of a brace man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed, either meeting wounds or death or having fall into some mishap, in all these conditions confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes. And another for such a man engaged in works of peace, not enforced by voluntary, either trying to persuade somebody of something and imploring him-whether it be a god, through prayer, or a man, by teaching and admonition-or contrariwise yielding himself to another who is petitioning him or teaching him or trying to change his opinions, and in consequence faring according to his wish, and not beaing himself arrogant, but in all this acting modestly and moderately and acquiescing in this outcome. Leave us these two modes-the enforced and the voluntary-that will best imitate the utterances of men failing or succeeding, the temperate, the brace-leave us these.

-Plato, Republic 398d-399c.

I don't care what kind of theology you do or don't prescribe to, this is just outright cool.

WHY DID SOMEONE HAVE TO BUMP THIS THREAD, NOW I'M GOING TO CONSCIOUSLY WILL MYSELF NOT TO PARTICIPATE

>>1690850
It's not so much that the program would be flawed in presenting a successful scenario/experience because some dumb (or cognitively enhanced, pick your poison) programmer mistyped something. I'm talking things like-what effects have Plato's teachings made on the world? Can you truly understand mathematics, astronomy, government, logic, ethics, music, or philosophy without first knowing about their origins? If you say you understand, for example, government, then I could ask you generally about socialism/capitalism/communism/whatever-ism and you could give a fairly accurate recounting of what you have learned. The question then arises: why did it take until now for people to create and adapt these governments? The answer of course is that they were adapted based on flaws in their predecessors. These, too, were adaptations to account for externalities in previous systems, and this can be said of anything in the present: that it is in some way a reaction to what came before it.

How then can you accurately model a virtual society w/o incorporating all of the knowledge of everything leading up to the creation of the program w/o leaving something out. And I don't mean you forgot a comma, or you left out a vital manuscript. I'm referring to the idea that your life is at least, if not more, the summation of everything you have experienced since you were born, and I would be completely unable to understand and recreate you w/o having lived your entire life through your eyes. Can society be any easier to reproduce? Can light, sound, planets, black holes, super novas, on and on.

As they increase the number of children, they diminish the share each child receives towards his/her future, and it is therefore less desirable to continue having children. Families w/o access to material goods and social status are more inclined to produce more children, as they have no "leg-up" on the competition (think rich kids w/ awesome education, good nutrition compared to those w/ much less money) and thus, the chances of any one child exceeding through sheer luck and fortune becomes higher the more children you have.

>Where we've gotten in the past 2,000 years IS NOT a result of >evolution. It's a result of us building on what past generations have >learned. This is not the same as evolution.

This is evolution of thought. See the first part of this post.

basically, evolution is not the end-all be-all solution and ultimatum for everything. It's just a thing that happens.

Evolutionary patterns are all around us, physically deciding who lives or dies, and who wins the Gold medal or Nobel prize.

>>1690813
I would argue that a sort of philosophical "evolution" takes place, according to rules similar to those we equate with natural world.

For example, why are there no Feudal countries in the world today? Is it because it was an old hat and we wanted to try something "different" as you say? No, it is because, in competition with other forms of government, it was deemed less effective and was abandoned.

>This is especially true for humans right now, as we have long since >ceased mating with superior members of our race. People living in the >slums have more babies than people living in mansions. Idiots are >more likely to get pregnant than geniuses (who are actually less likely >to have offspring compared to the average person).

Here, you actually make a good argument for evolution. One could argue that current "superiority" of a companion is determined not solely through physical means, but by material possessions and status in a community. People with access to these things are thus more capable of successfully raising small numbers of children well, and giving them everything they need to be successful in their own right eventually.

>>1690778
>>1690786

The problem doesn't lie in the computational ability of the computer, nor in the accuracy/detail
of its results and computations. It lies in the fact that:
-Humans, as inventor and creator of the computer, are imperfect, and thus incapable of relating all knowledge accurately to the computer. Imagine using 3.14 instead of the irrational pi for all your geometry questions. It works to a point right? But if we're assuming humans wake up IRL, get plugged into virtual-reality immediately, and die inside of the computer-generated world, which assumes that computers, as you claim, are vastly superior to reality, and only a complete fool would refuse to live in the computer world 24/7/365/lifespan.
-This is inescapable because computers have not been around since the beginning of time to record infinity, so a flaw MUST exist if they are made by humans.

This is all a moot point, however, if you posit that any single human could ever come to a perfect understanding of the universe and convey that to a computer in his lifetime.

>>1690775
Not sure what's so insane about that, perhaps you haven't been reading the entire thread?

>>1690753
>>1690764

>>1690740
But evolution isn't simply a matter of pulling numbers randomly out of a hat. Many, many, many, many, many, many (infinte) factors, tracing back to the beginning of the universe determine the course of evolution. And to ruin my point I was making in >>1690739, human memory is imperfect, that is you cannot remember anything in perfect detail, nor relive any moment of your existence EXACTLY as it was. To further compound the issue, history: the understanding of the path leading up to our current understanding of science, math, government (everything) has been corrupted and must be taken with a huge tablespoon of salt. (history told by the winner, variable pre-written oral history, etc)