Why do we pay Philosopher's (and the like) for basic Stoner Thoughts? Have they ever solved anything?

[Shrooms00087]

Quantum computers are laughable. Stupid stoners. That's how it will work out. I give it a year.

 

[4DQSAR]

Quantum computers are laughable. Stupid stoners. That's how it will work out. I give it a year.

Well, of course I don't have you vast wealth of experience in designing and programming a range of quantum computers to blithly conclude they won't work.

NEWSFLASH - THEY WORK!

But they are very niche. I don't think in themselves they are even technically Turing Complete (support conditional state-change) so to me at least they seem much more akin to those FPUs you could buy if your IBM PC was running software that required high-precision mathmatics.

So just as AI involves no intelligence, I don't think the term computer is appropriate. Because if you hear the words 'quantum computer' almost invariably the word algorithm closely follows... but what they do clearly isn't algorithmic.

BTW when you look at Quil it's important to realize that the control-flow and that conditional state-change is actually carried out by a classical computer that accesses the Qbits.

 

[alasdairm]

"No, Central Processing Units (CPUs) do not require philosophy to function"

who said anything about cpus requiring philosophy to function?

not me. you're addressing a point i never made.

What even makes you think we can't program CPU's without algebra. Mind boggling.

what is a cpu?

a cpu is, essentially, a massive, highly-structured grid of connected logic gates (AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR). a cpu is literally algebra/logic manifest physically.

the physical behavior of the semiconductor does not merely represent or simulate the algebra. it obeys the exact laws of boolean algebra because they are isomorphic.

alasdair

 

[alasdairm]

p.s. it's easy to deride quantum computing because it's still in its early infancy. it's about where the classic computing equivalent was in about the 1960s i.e. transistors and early ics.

alasdair

 

[alasdairm]

When directly asked Google says: "No, Central Processing Units (CPUs) do not require philosophy to function" Google AI

try asking google ai a relevant question: "is it accurate to say that philosophy was fundamental to the evolution of modern cpus?"

i saved you the time and went ahead and asked it. here is what it said:

Yes, it is accurate to say that philosophy was fundamental to the evolution of modern CPUs. Specifically, mathematical logic—a core branch of philosophy—provided the theoretical blueprint for all modern computing.

The Philosophical Foundations:

- Aristotle (384–322 BCE) created Syllogistic Logic. This established the first formal system of binary truth (True or False).

- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) envisioned the Calculus Ratiocinator. He invented the modern binary system (1s and 0s) to mechanize human thought.

- George Boole (1815–1864) developed Boolean Algebra. He reduced philosophical logic into mathematical equations using AND, OR, and NOT operations.

The Engineering Bridge:

- Claude Shannon (1937) bridged philosophy and engineering. He realized Boolean logic could align perfectly with electrical switches (relays).

- Shannon's breakthrough turned philosophical logic into physical hardware via Logic Gates. Switches mapping to "True" (On) or "False" (Off) form the basis of every modern CPU chip.

Summary:

The philosophical pursuit of formalizing human thought created modern microprocessors. Without these logic frameworks, the engineering of hardware could not exist.

If you want to continue, I can:

- Detail Claude Shannon's specific experiment with electrical relays.

- Explain how Boolean logic gates function inside a chip today.

- Discuss the Philosophy of Mind and its impact on modern Artificial Intelligence.

(my emphasis)

alasdair

alasdair

 

[Shrooms00087]

So without Philosophy CPU's would've never been possible. Interesting. Thank God Aristotle worked out binary truth.

 

[4DQSAR]

Ternarty computers are a thing.

Built, tested, used.

So well done, showing off that unrivalled knowledge of computer technology once again. Hey, get an AI to tell you about them!

 

[alasdairm]

So without Philosophy CPU's would've never been possible. Interesting.

exactly.

alasdair

 

[notsmokeymcpot42088]

• A.I is more likely to be correct than some druggy. Etc

Than why has it produced consistently worse results in this thread alone?

You do realize that A.I is trained by human knowledge that it just recycles back to you faster and less accurately than a book, informed human, or even search engine?
I wonder if people even know how to research anymore -- can they tell a good study from a BS study by looking at methodology etc.

Did you say morality is simple and think that was going to slide?

Explain the Milgram experiment to me real quick than tell me how simple morality is again. That is a pretty black and white case. Most moral dilemnas live in the grey.

ex. Do I vote for Bernie Sanders as morally I feel he is the best candidate or hillary clinton because realistically she had a chance of winning.

I run up in your house with a gun and say its either you or your s/o --- your s/o or your kid.... Still simple?

You get dimed out by another criminal, is it morally acceptable to snitch on that person?

Im more of a logic guy so lets go this premise -- If morality is not objective than philosophy must be useful?

 

[Cheshire_Kat]

George Boole was a professor of mathematics. In 1849, he accepted a position as the chair of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork (now University College Cork) in Ireland where he taught for the rest of his life.

So he was primarily a mathematician. He had a interest in philosophy and tried to map human logic into algebra...

Even so he did not see any practical use for Boolean Logic

In 1948 Claude Shannon, the person who did, was an electrical engineer.

 

[Cheshire_Kat]

Ternarty computers are a thing.

Built, tested, used.

So well done, showing off that unrivalled knowledge of computer technology once again. Hey, get an AI to tell you about them!

So do analog computers, which predated digital computers of any number system base, by a couple of millennia . Some analog computers are used to this very day.
Analog computers operate completely without Boolean Logic

 

[Opana313]

I smoke philosophy and I snort science- king krooked

 

[ageingpartyfiend]

The transferable skills gained from studying philosophy at/above undergraduate level are often highly valued by employers in many and varied fields.

 

[Rectify]

Along those lines, have there been any new philosophies of thought and reason lately?

Praise Bob Dole!

 

[Rectify]

I Pay Taxes. Sales Tax!

 

[4DQSAR]

So do analog computers, which predated digital computers of any number system base, by a couple of millennia . Some analog computers are used to this very day.
Analog computers operate completely without Boolean Logic

Indeed. Most appear designed for one specific application which is why I think Babbage used design philosophy to accept lower accuracy as it then allowed him create a computer more general in it's application. In that case he chose a decimal computer. Binary is just the most efficient way to design a digital computer.

Lest we forget general purpose digital digital computers started to appear within a handful of years of the first digitial electronic computer and the concept of backward-compatibility only a decade later. Code written on an IBM System/360 in 1964 will still run on the latest IBM Z mainframes. But the term 'software' was only coined in 1958 which I suggest was to explain that computers had begun to appear whose operation was entirely data defined. Until 1952 compatibility wasn't an issue since each digital computer was unique.

The US (and indeed all democratic nations) should thank IBM for dooming Soviet computer development. Being a command economy with departments being responsible for certain parts of that economy, Soviet researchers were stuck because it wasn't clear which Soviet department should be responsible for a general purpose computer. Researchers didn't share ideas and when the System/360 appeared they couldn't reverse-engineer it so ended up smuggling them in to the point where right up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, each institution still developed it's own set of applications which were mostly written in assembly-language! They tried to make up for using decades old computers with hand-optimized code that most assuredly wasn't portable.

I'm under no illusion - the philosophy of backward compatibility hinged on it's value being that existing applications would continue to work efficiently engendering customer loyalty as it saves the customer so much money. Higher-level languages in theory make code compatible regardless of the underlying hardware but it doesn't automatically mean that the compiled code will be efficient. The greater the abstraction, the more the problem of efficiency becoming an issue.

Isn't there stilll an infamous line of code in the Unix V6 which is commented 'you are not expected to understand this'?

As I understand it, the problem was that in spite of using C, there was a quirk/limitation in the PDP-11 instruction set. designers had assumed that a rigid scheduler would 'share out' CPU time among users rather than a single user potentially executing and stopping arbritary applications are arbritary times and that one application may need the output of another application to proceed so that yielding the CPU offered a universal way of avoiding the case of an application essentially doing nothing but still hogging CPU time. That yield potentially being part of a multi-user multi-processor design. Arguablly without that hack, the development of Unix may not have included multi-processor systems.

I think the main reason binary digital electronic computers were settled on so fast was because in theory the speeds possible were so much higher than any of the alternatives.

This is why the development of quantum computing is so interesting. Einstein had predicted quantum entanglement in 1935 but it took until 1972 for the first experiment and a futher decade to rule out theoretical loopholes. I suspect that 2022 Nobel prize for Physics being awarded to researchers in quantum entanglement pushed the concept into the mainstream media.

But honestly, it is BIZARRE. I absolutelly agree with @alasdairm that since nobody knows which elements of a design will turn out to be possible, practical, powerful and ultimately affordable, it does seem each team is testing out different solutions to known issues that ironally may not be issues in the future or equally may turn out to be insoluble.

Quantum computing has the advantage of various mathematicians/logicians/philosophers have identified specific classes of problem in which quantum entanglment offers much faster ways to calcuate the result(s) but as I previously noted, it seems that quantum computing is more like a co-processor i.e. it can PROCESS data much faster than classical computers but offer no advantages in the ordination of data and we know, in most cases general purpose computers spend around 90% of their time ordinating data and only around 10% of their time actually computing. Hence the French using the term 'ordinateur'.

It's still incredibly exciting but it's impossible to know quite which form of quantum computing (if any) replaces classical computing. It could be that like the 80x87 FPUs it will become cheaper to incorporate a quantum unit within the CPU of a classical computer or if like GPUs, they will become tools used by CPUs but it's optimal to seperate the two.

 

[puke]

People like Joel Osteen need to seriously be investigated.

 

[4DQSAR]

People like Joel Osteen need to seriously be investigated.

For what?

Confidence-tricksters come in almost infinite variety but United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78 (1944) simply underlines the fact that freedom of religious belief means that it matters not if a person's beliefs are right or wrong, only that they are sincerely held.

In essence, unless you can PROVE to a legal standard that a person is acting in bad faith (sic), if their religious belief is that other should hand over money, it's all quite legal.

For contrast, in the UK The Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951 and the later Fraud Act 2006 explicitly states that if a 'rational' person would view ANY false claims used to obtain goods of money are viewed in the same light i.e. 'because god told me' is not a defence in law.

Do we have dubious religious organizations? Certainly. But they have to go to great lengths to show that something of value was provided in exchange for goods or money.

But Ron L. Hubbard started up his religion in the UK and it was during the 1950s that he was forced to up sticks as Scientoloy was classed as a business. Maybe this is a possible route for investgtion into the chap you mentioned?

 

[Cheshire_Kat]

Indeed. Most appear designed for one specific application which is why I think Babbage used design philosophy to accept lower accuracy as it then allowed him create a computer more general in it's application. In that case he chose a decimal computer. Binary is just the most efficient way to design a digital computer.

Lest we forget general purpose digital digital computers started to appear within a handful of years of the first digitial electronic computer and the concept of backward-compatibility only a decade later. Code written on an IBM System/360 in 1964 will still run on the latest IBM Z mainframes. But the term 'software' was only coined in 1958 which I suggest was to explain that computers had begun to appear whose operation was entirely data defined. Until 1952 compatibility wasn't an issue since each digital computer was unique.

The US (and indeed all democratic nations) should thank IBM for dooming Soviet computer development. Being a command economy with departments being responsible for certain parts of that economy, Soviet researchers were stuck because it wasn't clear which Soviet department should be responsible for a general purpose computer. Researchers didn't share ideas and when the System/360 appeared they couldn't reverse-engineer it so ended up smuggling them in to the point where right up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, each institution still developed it's own set of applications which were mostly written in assembly-language! They tried to make up for using decades old computers with hand-optimized code that most assuredly wasn't portable.

I'm under no illusion - the philosophy of backward compatibility hinged on it's value being that existing applications would continue to work efficiently engendering customer loyalty as it saves the customer so much money. Higher-level languages in theory make code compatible regardless of the underlying hardware but it doesn't automatically mean that the compiled code will be efficient. The greater the abstraction, the more the problem of efficiency becoming an issue.

Isn't there stilll an infamous line of code in the Unix V6 which is commented 'you are not expected to understand this'?

As I understand it, the problem was that in spite of using C, there was a quirk/limitation in the PDP-11 instruction set. designers had assumed that a rigid scheduler would 'share out' CPU time among users rather than a single user potentially executing and stopping arbritary applications are arbritary times and that one application may need the output of another application to proceed so that yielding the CPU offered a universal way of avoiding the case of an application essentially doing nothing but still hogging CPU time. That yield potentially being part of a multi-user multi-processor design. Arguablly without that hack, the development of Unix may not have included multi-processor systems.

I think the main reason binary digital electronic computers were settled on so fast was because in theory the speeds possible were so much higher than any of the alternatives.

This is why the development of quantum computing is so interesting. Einstein had predicted quantum entanglement in 1935 but it took until 1972 for the first experiment and a futher decade to rule out theoretical loopholes. I suspect that 2022 Nobel prize for Physics being awarded to researchers in quantum entanglement pushed the concept into the mainstream media.

But honestly, it is BIZARRE. I absolutelly agree with @alasdairm that since nobody knows which elements of a design will turn out to be possible, practical, powerful and ultimately affordable, it does seem each team is testing out different solutions to known issues that ironally may not be issues in the future or equally may turn out to be insoluble.

Quantum computing has the advantage of various mathematicians/logicians/philosophers have identified specific classes of problem in which quantum entanglment offers much faster ways to calcuate the result(s) but as I previously noted, it seems that quantum computing is more like a co-processor i.e. it can PROCESS data much faster than classical computers but offer no advantages in the ordination of data and we know, in most cases general purpose computers spend around 90% of their time ordinating data and only around 10% of their time actually computing. Hence the French using the term 'ordinateur'.

It's still incredibly exciting but it's impossible to know quite which form of quantum computing (if any) replaces classical computing. It could be that like the 80x87 FPUs it will become cheaper to incorporate a quantum unit within the CPU of a classical computer or if like GPUs, they will become tools used by CPUs but it's optimal to seperate the two.

I think we are looking at different aspects of the same question. The OP asked the question of philosophers getting paid for their work. As much as Bool changed the way computing developed he never got paid for it because it provided no practical use for his work while he was alive and therefore received no payment other than his work as a Math Professor.

I have spent a lot of time studying philosophy and enjoy it, so it's not that I am against it.

 

[puke]

For what?

Confidence-tricksters come in almost infinite variety but United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78 (1944) simply underlines the fact that freedom of religious belief means that it matters not if a person's beliefs are right or wrong, only that they are sincerely held.

In essence, unless you can PROVE to a legal standard that a person is acting in bad faith (sic), if their religious belief is that other should hand over money, it's all quite legal.

For contrast, in the UK The Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951 and the later Fraud Act 2006 explicitly states that if a 'rational' person would view ANY false claims used to obtain goods of money are viewed in the same light i.e. 'because god told me' is not a defence in law.

Do we have dubious religious organizations? Certainly. But they have to go to great lengths to show that something of value was provided in exchange for goods or money.

But Ron L. Hubbard started up his religion in the UK and it was during the 1950s that he was forced to up sticks as Scientoloy was classed as a business. Maybe this is a possible route for investgtion into the chap you mentioned?

I believe if they did some real digging they could get him on misappropriation of donations he takes. I believe he knows his flock thinks he's a man of god a preacher or a pastor when he is really a spokesperson an actor as the same way u see someone reading off side effects or giving medical instructions on tv for a medication but they're not really a doctor but that actor doesn't go around in his real life playing a doctor and getting benefits from doing that. That's why we have laws to protect us from snake oilers, he's peddling something that isn't real his blessings his prayers and services and is greatly benefiting by knowingly telling a lie. If a preacher says they're going to pray for u I would consider that prayer benefitting me more and holding a higher rank than just someone saying they'll pray for me. When you go to confession u do it with a priest because it's like a phone call to God and the amount of prayers ur told to pray afterwards will absolve u but if it's just some dude bah humbug. Kinda like what Kevin Trudeau got busted for.