I have twenty years of professional experience in web app and website development. I'm currently in Germany, but my schedule is flexible - I can accommodate your timezone. I'm also available to work on-site.

Core Skills:

* full stack web development

* server-side programming, especially APIs

* project rescue: if your project is behind schedule and your code is a mess, I'll come in and get you back on track!

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Contact me: hn@openfu.com

I am a full stack generalist programmer with a heavy web background and more than 20 years of experience.

My favorite tools and tech:

  - HTML5/JS/CSS (browsers are awesome!)
  - JavaScript: jQuery, React, Three.js/WebGL, Handlebars, Isotope/Masonry
  - Server side: NginX, PHP, node.js, C, Lua, Java
  - Database: mongodb, MySQL/MariaDB
  - Tools of the trade: text editor, git, command line
  - Machine learning: Caffe framework +Python

Contact me: hn@openfu.com

A lot has been accomplished with public awareness and public outcry has repeatedly averted disaster - so far. But the proponents of this come back with another attempt at least once a year, in both Europe and the US, and they have money on their side. It's amazing net neutrality has gone on as long as it did, against vast corporate and political interests.

Whereas net neutrality advocates have to beat this back every time everywhere, their opposition has to be successful only once, and only in one of these regions, for the whole thing to fall.

It is, I'm afraid, just a matter of time.

It's especially hard when so many people are spouting stuff about how the free market will solve this (if I got a dollar every time "free market" was the drooled out answer to a complicated problem...). It's like we have to convince a critical mass of our peers of the benefits of free speech every time the issue comes up.

However, it's still important we fight each battle, each time one rears its ugly head, wherever it happens, with whatever resources we have available. The internet is too powerful a tool to be left in the hands of greedy slimeballs. It's the great equalizer. Anyone can have a voice, and anyone can listen to that voice, whether you're a giant corporation or a 12 year-old kid with a good idea.

It's worth the struggle.

I'm not ideologically opposed to net neutrality regulations - I think they can be a useful tool after you fuck things up, like the US did.

What I dispute is the idea that suddenly everyone has that problem just because the US does. How about letting each country implement its own net neutrality laws if and when they're needed?

a) We don't "win". We just "don't lose". Yet. b) You are doing a great favor to them, thinking they are "idiots". The truth couldn't be further from the truth. They just have different goals than we have.

Boy, this is complicated, isn't it? It's almost like "free market" isn't a magic incantation that fixes everything.

The capital expenditure required for downtown areas may not be that high, though. Government may extend the natural monopolies to rich, urban areas by requiring ISPs to wire up poor areas, thus increasing capital expenditure.

Government may make the natural monopoly worse (or better), but the problem is a natural part of the business.

I want a DRM-less HD video file that I can play on any computer, when I want. I want to be able to download it from anywhere I might be in the world, and my nationality should not have an effect on the availability of the content.

Heck, if HBO had a web-based tip jar, I would just pay something for every Game of Thrones episode and otherwise go straight ahead and torrent it. You know, HBO, don't "offer" me anything, just give me an option to pay you which makes my download quasi-legal, and I'll take care of the rest myself.

($0.10 is just a for discussion purposes number estimating the ballpark per view revenue from ad supported stuff; of course they will resist doing this, ads also make the experience worse and don't undermine purchasing the way a price near cost on demand service would)

Some parent might chime in that this would be terrible for kids videos, I'm not trying to say it should be the only way to pay.

(Say the cost of delivery is $0.05. If they have 4x the customers at $0.50 as they do at $1.00, $0.50 should make lots more money. If the cost of delivery is $0.55, then obviously $1.00 makes more money than any number of users at $0.50.)

They would make more than they make now, that's for sure. Because right now, there is no way for me to pay them.

> Because, an extra cost, for example, would be the subtitling.

I don't want subtitling, just because I'm from a foreign country. What little legal content consumption options I have, they always and mandatorily come with either dubbing or subtitles.

> HBO would have to hire people to do this job per episode, per show, etc.

Like I said, that's what they (or in this case you, if you work for them) think, but that's not what I asked for. I want the show, within a few days after it aired, in an open format, with none of that internationalization crap or any added "value". People who want those extra things can use any of the existing sales channels.

I want what I can have right now illegally and conveniently, made legal by paying for it.

This might not cover or replace the existing subscriber base, but it would be an opportunity to bring additional customers on board at next-to zero cost. Just by shutting up and taking my money.

But there are lots of other people that are paying them. If getting you to pay more means that all those people start paying less, then they might very well lose. Also it's worth remembering that the guy in the sofa in front of his TV is not the only HBO customer. They make money selling their shows to other TV channels as well.

It's funny how those pass for prohibitive reasons why something can't happen until suddenly these reasons go away. This is exactly what happened to music downloading. There were international sales, fears of organizations competing with their own sales partners, and oh dear all those unsolvable problems that come with offering content free of DRM. Oh the horror. And then, all of that went away.

Arguing in favor of the status quo is always a safe position, because obviously you have current management on your side. That doesn't mean consumers don't have a nasty habit of breaking out of their straight jackets. There are good reasons why torrenting TV shows is so popular, and it only partially has to do with the price tag. I would argue that for most downloaders, the primary reason is actually quality and freedom from hassle.

Things are reasonably impossible until they aren't.

As to the music industry it responded to a serious decline in sales and for all their attempts at going digital their growth is at best pretty flat and they are still far off their pre-crash peak. So streaming and DRM-free downloads at best helped the music industry slow their decline, it certainly didn't lead to them making more money.

I'd just like to say in closing that I want to pay money for a product I'm not getting right now. The main argument against this seems to be that by allowing me to pay for it, this product would suffer. I will bow to the majority opinion and get out of here.

No. The main argument against is that by setting up the infrastructure needed to let you pay for the product you want in the way that you want will probably lead to the company making less money. No one is saying that it wouldn't be nice if it worked the way you want it to work (I want it to work the way you want it to work), just that it's financially unrealistic.

Except now they can no longer sell exclusive content rights to companies in each territory which means they lose a ton in license fees. So then HBO has to take over all the local marketing that each licensor was doing for them. Now, instead of collecting $1m from RomaniaTelekom with close to 100% margin, they have to set up a local office in Bucharest, contract with an ad agency, etc etc etc.

Exclusive content is a HUGE driver of consumer spend and so providers are willing to pay a TON of money for the content. Take away the exclusivity and all those big contracts go away.

This is obviously wrong in principle. The way music downloads work right now is exactly what I've been describing - music from iTunes or Amazon comes without DRM, and they allow me to purchase songs wherever I am, from wherever I am.

If your argument is those DRM-less music files don't make it onto Torrent sites, you're mistaken. Nevertheless, they sell them without DRM, because customers pressured them into it.

I buy it on iTunes, I put it into my music folder, copy it around to all my machines, it's just fine.

So I'm a German national being in France right now. If I decide to buy some music from iTunes, I click on the "buy" button and stuff starts downloading. However, if I try to purchase a TV show, it starts out by showing me only German shows. Deep down, I can find outdated US originals with subtitles - which is the best option they give me! What happens when I try to actually purchase one? "There is a problem with your iTunes account". Oops, I'm currently in the wrong country, no show for me! There is no getting around the fact that this sucks, it sucks needlessly, and to the detriment of everyone involved.

You might not want/need subtitling but the vast majority of the foreign fans of Games of Thrones (for example) depend on it to be able to watch. So, if HBO was ever to give "files" around just like that, they would have to make sure that they are offering something far superior to torrented content, at a cost that makes it more convenient to choose it over the torrents.

I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, so this is the last time I'm going to respond to that (no offense): I want exactly the torrent file. I don't want them to pile on any of the additional crap they assume I need or should need.

Anyone who wants subtitles, or dubs, or a free rootkit, or whatever can use the existing sales channels. I want you to give me your product, as is, without any additional considerations or features, just straight up. I want the torrent file, and nothing else, no guarantees, no contracts, no nothing.

Just me giving you money for the right to legally consume what you made. Not some version of it, just the thing, with nothing added or subtracted.

You seem to assume torrenting shows is popular because it's free. Well, it's not free, it carries a substantial legal risk. There may well be a big portion of downloaders who don't have the money to buy the show legally. But the rest of them do it because of the benefits of the medium, not its price tag.

Offer us exactly the benefits and the convenience of the bootlegged medium, just give us an option to pay you for it. It really is that simple. Nobody is advocating you should cease any of your current offerings. Just create an additional sales channel and allow the money to flow in.

DNA is not merely "data"; to make everything even more complicated, some of it is probably both data and structure... maybe even both at the same time.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_RNA#Structure

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-coding_RNA

That being said I think the basic gist of your comment is correct. It's very old spaghetti code... just hyper dimensional massively parallel spaghetti code.

I'd love to start a project to study this.

At least we're getting to the point where we can flip switches and monitor for changes. Debug print!

  Computers are very, very, very far from being like humans, especially 
  when it comes to consciousness. The problem is different, that the system, 
  the military and economic and political system doesn't really need 
  consciousness.

I know it's just a thesis, but when you think about what our mindless AIs lack, it makes sense. They're characterized by a complete incapability for global reasoning and an inability for personal consideration. You might argue, as the article does, this is exactly how we want our tools to behave, but then we might have to accept there could be hard limits on the complexity of mental tasks these systems are able to perform without access to higher reasoning.

I think you're exactly right; Michael Graziano's theory of consciousness it that it starts as a necessary function for modeling the attention of an agent and turns into awareness when the brain itself is modeled as an agent. First, a specialized brain function for agent modeling of predator/prey/rival/mate evolves as a good trait for survival. Part of that function entails modeling what an agent is attentive to. However, once this agent model discovers the brain it is running on, a new agent is recognized, and attention now becomes redundant and is instead reported as awareness of attention, which has to feel subjectively like a secondary aspect of primary sensory information. It's a nice logical progression. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223025/

I think this is exactly right. In fact my suspicion is that "consciousness" is an emergent property of feedback from high resolution sensors. Stated another way, it's a constant internal inventory of everything that can be controlled through the same volitional system.

Many people seem to know what it is, no one can actually define it, and it has never been measured, located or proven to exist.

Maybe we should stop using it altogether.

[0] - http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationalist_taboo

[1] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/nu/taboo_your_words/

Furthermore, it seems only to exist or pinpoint when you're communicating with another person. In total solitude, boundaries between your self-image and the other(s) just don't hold up, and the whole thing becomes almost meaningless.

Edit: the concept of time seems to be connected to it as well, but i really need to read this paper first now, i think :)

Our brains process information in a certain way due to evolution, therefore, we are.

See Jaynes' bicameral mind hypothesis. Even if it's most likely a mistaken theory it's still interesting as a distinction between intelligence and consciousness.

Strictly speaking, everything in living nature is an "accident". Natural selection acts on "accidental" random mutations. It's not a directed process.

The point is though that while the mutations themselves are "accidents" and the result is always characterized by a certain randomness, evolution as a problem-solving algorithm isn't itself accidental. While some (or even many) if the characteristics of an organism might be incidental, some major features tend to have a good reason for being selected. Self-awareness, I assert, is such a feature, because it carries implications too large not to have an effect on selection.

You might assert that, but there's virtually no evidence to support that assertion, and interesting philosophical arguments to the contrary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

Now, if what you mean by "self-awareness" is just the ability of an organism to monitor its own condition and respond accordingly, then we're in agreement, but I find that a very uninteresting assertion and it means that we're not really talking about "consciousness" except inasmuch as a thermostat is conscious: http://consc.net/notes/lloyd-comments.html

>There's no reason to believe that consciousness is a necessary feature for an organism to respond to its environment in a survival-enhancing way.

The reason to believe this is that systems with "consiousness" are a strict superset of systems with "responding to the environment." They are not unrelated ideas, and in fact, the ability of an organism to survive is closely tied to this kind of behavior.

I have never heard anyone try to defend P-zomies unless they were simply unaware of what the word 'meaning' means, or how our words acquire meaning. If you know how this works, you should be able to easily see why P-zombies are a meaningless idea -- an incongruous hypothetical. (Like "what would we be talking about if I didn't exist?")

Same goes for Searle's Chinese Room argument. If you assume something that is impossible, it is easy to conclude any ridiculous thing you like. P-zombies are impossible. They are not anymore useful than any other self-contained contradiction.

I don't understand how you can be so confident of this. How are you defining consciousness? How are you measuring it? What makes you believe with such emphatic certainty that I am a conscious being and not a p-zombie? (or, if you prefer, a bot that easily passes the Turing test)

> They are not unrelated ideas, and in fact, the ability of an organism to survive is closely tied to this kind of behavior.

That's what I'm saying, consciousness is not a "kind of behavior". There is nothing behavioral about your inner experience as a conscious entity.

The people who argue p-zombies often do this because they want to keep consciousness as something fundamentally different than the material world, something inaccessible to science. But it's wrong. Even magic is accessible to science. By the very definition and idea of science, anything that has any causal influence on the observable universe can be studied and is in the domain of science.

So, only one of the versions is correct, but it's only by coincidence! All the reasons that the conscious brain has to think it's a conscious human being, and answer "yes" to the question, are also in play in the zombie universe, which also answers "yes". The only difference is that in the "real" world the non-zombie brain happens to be right, for literally no reason at all.

And I think it's around this point you're supposed to realize the absurdity of the thought experiment.

Here, I distinguished them all. Doesn't that contradict your argument about indistinguishability not being transitive in general?

If you want, you can redefine identity in terms of some notion of indistinguishability, but then you'll end up with the odd consequence that identity is not transitive. In other words, you'd have to say that if A is identical to B, B is identical to C, and C is identical to D, it doesn't necessarily follow that A is identical to D.

There are even semi-realistic examples of this, I think. Suppose that two physical quantities X and Y are indistinguishable by any physically possible test if the difference between X and Y < 3. Then i(1, 2), i(2,3), i(3,4), but clearly not i(1,4).

So at this point I'm not sure if your example is, or is not an issue for a working definition of identity. To circle back to p-zombies, as far as I understand, they are not supposed to be distinguishable from non-p-zombies by any possible means, which includes testing everything against everything.

What if I define the identity test I(a,b) in this way: I(a,b) ↔ ∀i : i(a,b), where i(a,b) is an "indistinguishable" test? This should establish a useful definition of identity that works according to my scenario, and also your last example unless you limit the domain of X and Y to integers from 1 to 4. But in this last case there's absolutely no way to tell there's a difference between 2 and 3, so they may as well be just considered as one thing.

As I said, I need to think this through a bit more, but what my intuition is telling me right now is that the very point of having a thing called "identity" is to use it to distinguish between things - if two things are identical under any possible test, there's no point in not thinking about them as one thing.

Yes, that's the point. But then you lose the transitivity property, since although 2 and 3 are indistinguishable, 3 and 4 are indistinguishable, and 4 and 5 are indistinguishable, 2 and 5 are not. So the kind of operational definition of identity you have in mind yields a relation that's so radically unlike the standard characterization of the identity relation that I don't see any reason to call it "identity" at all.

Here's one way of drawing this out. Suppose that X linearly increases from 2 to 5 over a period of 3 seconds. Do we really want to say that there was no change in the value of X between t=0 and t=1, no change between t=1 and t=2, no change between t=2 and t=3, and yet a change between t=0 and t=3? (?!)

As far as I understand you, you have some kind of positivist skepticism about non-operationalizable notions, and so you want to come up with some kind of stand-in for identity which can play largely the same role in philosophical/scientific discourse as the ordinary, non-operationalizable notion of identity. That's a coherent project, but it rests on assumptions that anyone who's interested in P-zombies is likely to reject.

Yeah, I get that, but what I meant in my previous comment is that you either limit the domain of t to 0-3 (and X to 2-5) and there is indeed no way to tell the change between t=2 and t=3, or you don't limit yourself to that test and can distinguish the intermedate values by means of the trick I described before. In other words, either you have transitive identity or you have all the reasons to treat non-transitive cases as one (if the identity test is like the one I described in my previous comment).

> positivist skepticism about non-operationalizable notions

I think it's too late in the night for me to understand this, I'll need to come back to it in the morning. Could you ELI5 to me the meaning of "non-operationalizable" in this context?

Again, thanks for making me think and showing me the limits of my understanding.

Yes this was a fun discussion, thanks.

Your objection stands if you have (and know you have) at least one instance of every value for the quantity. So suppose that we are given a countably infinite set of variables and told that each integer is denoted by at least one of these variables, and then further given a function over pairs of variables f(x,y), such that f(x,y) = 1 if x and y differ by less than 3 and = 0 otherwise. Then, yes, we can figure out which variables are exactly identical to which others.

However, I would regard this as irrelevant scenario in the sense that we could never know, via observation, that we had obtained such a set of variables (even if we allow the possibility of making a countably infinite number of observations). Suppose that we make an infinite series of observations and end up with at least one variable denoting each member of the following set (with the ellipses counting up/down to +/-infinity):

    ...,0,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,...

Of course it does, by Voevodsky's Univalence Axiom ;-).

>One obvious way to show this is to note that only the latter is a transitive relation. In other words, if A = B and B = C, then A = C; but if A is indistinguishable from B and B is indistinguishable from C, it doesn't follow that A is indistinguishable from C.

In this case, you seem to be envisioning A, B, and C as points along a spectrum, and talking about ways to classify them as separate from each-other, in which we can classify {A, B}->+1 or {B, C}->+1, but {A, C}->-1 always holds.

That's fine, but when we say indistinguishable in the p-zombie argument, we're talking about a physical isomorphism, which doesn't really allow for the kinds of games you can get away with when classifying sections of spectrum.

I think this was a joke, right? Just asking because it's hard to tell sometimes on the internet. I didn't see how VUA was particularly relevant but I may be missing something.

It is question-begging in this context to assert that the existence of a physical isomorphism between A and B entails that A and B are identical, since precisely the question at issue in the case of P-zombies is whether or not that's the case.

I took OP to be making an attempt to avoid begging the question by arguing that in general, indistinguishability in a certain very broad sense entails identity, so that without question-beggingly assuming that the existence of a physical isomorphism entails identity, we could non-question-beggingly argue from indistinguishability to identity. In other words, rather than arguing that P-zombies couldn't differ in any way from us because they're physically identical to us (which just begs the question), the argument would be that they couldn't differ in any way from us because they're indistinguishable from us.

Indistinguishability does entail identity. If I have a sphere of iron X, and a sphere of iron Y which is atom-for-atom, electron-for-electron, subatomic-particle-for-subatomic-particle identical to sphere X, and I place sphere X in position A, and sphere Y in position B, then they are still distinguishable, because one is in position A and one is in position B.

Basically, I'm not sure what the two of you mean by "the same", but I suspect you're not in agreement on it.

Like I said, it doesn't seem germane to the thought experiment anyway, which doesn't allow for epsilons, at least none that could have a causative effect on anything. Like, if you have universe A with no consciousness, and universe B with orange-flavored consciousness, and universe C with grape-flavored consciousness, and finally universe D with cherry-flavored consciousness, and none of them are distinguishable from the others except for universe A and universe D, then you're violating the terms of the thought experiment because you have two supposedly physically identical universes which are nonetheless distinguishable by dint of their underlying consciousness substrates (or lack thereof).

Anyway you're right, it is a weak argument, but only because it doesn't go far enough in outlining why p-zombies are ridiculous (which, IMO, the argument I presented instead, does).

Thus they only need to be indistinguishable up to some feature of similarity that allows them to be classified in the same group. That's why, for example, we don't have to worry about "A is the same as B except that it is 2 meters to the left."

Because p-zombies are self-contradictory. The definition of a p-zombie is a contradiction. It's like saying "suppose 1 = 2 and 1 != 2. Call this a p-zombie quality."

When you suppose that the behavior of a thing is separate from the reality of a thing, you are failing to account for how the words 'behavior' and 'reality' acquire meaning -- through observation. They cannot be different because the processes that establish their meaning are identical.

To suppose that a p-zombie could be different from a person, yet measurably identical in all aspects is a contradiction.

>How are you defining consciousness?

There is a big difference between meaning and definition. I don't have to define consciousness, I only need to know what it means. I only need to identify the use-cases where it is appropriate.

>There is nothing behavioral about your inner experience as a conscious entity.

Yes there is: behavior is the activity that you measure, and you can measure brain activity.

> behavior is the activity that you measure, and you can measure brain activity.

You've shifted your definition of "behavior" now. I thought we were talking about behaviors that impact survival and are acted on by natural selection, not minute differences in MRI scans. For purposes of the thought experiment, I certainly don't care if the p-zombie has a slightly different brain-wave. Let's say they're permanently sleepwalking, then.

I really feel like you're hand-waving at supposed contradictions here, rather than engaging with why this is a difficult problem. If you firmly reject the idea of a p-zombie, let's leave that aside for now.

Do you believe that it would be possible, in principle, to build a robot that looked and acted extremely similar to a human being? It could carry on conversations, make decisions, defend itself against antagonists, etc. in a similar manner to a human being? In your view, would such a robot be necessarily a conscious entity?

I don't even know that other humans are conscious entities. At least not with the level of rigor you seem to be demanding I apply to this hypothetical robot. However, if you and I were to agree upon a series of test that, if passed by a human, we would assume for the sake of argument that that human was a conscious entity, and if we then subjected your robot to those same tests and it also passed, then I would also assume the robot was also conscious.

You might have noticed I made a hidden assumption in the tests though, which is that in establishing the consciousness or not-consciousness of a human they do not rely on the observable fact that the subject is a human. Is that reasonable?

> I don't even know that other humans are conscious entities

Exactly. Note that the claim Retra is making (to which I was responding) was very much stronger than this. He is arguing not just that we should generally treat beings that seem conscious (including other people) as if they are, but that they must by definition be conscious, and in fact that it is a self-contradictory logical impossibility to speak of a hypothetical intelligent-but-not-conscious creature.

Yes, you do. Because if the p-zombie has a slightly different brain-wave, it remains logically possible that p-zombies and a naturalistic consciousness can both exist. The goal of the thought-experiment is to prove that consciousness must be non-natural -- that there is a Hard Problem of Consciousness rather than a Pretty Hard Problem. Make the p-zombie physically different from the conscious human being and the whole thing fails to go through.

Of course, Chalmers' argument starts by assuming that consciousness is epiphenomenal, which is nonsense from a naturalistic, scientific point of view -- we can clearly observe it, which means it interacts causally, which renders epiphenomenalism a non-predictive, unfalsifiable hypothesis.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708807/

Then this is our fundamental disagreement. You believe consciousness is purely a question of information processing, and you're throwing your lot in with Skinner and the behaviorists.

I believe that you're neglecting the "the experience of what it's like to be a human being"[0] (or maybe you yourself are a p-zombie ;) and you don't feel that it's like anything to be you). There are many scientists who agree with you, and think that consciousness is an illusion or a red herring because we haven't been able to define it or figure out how to measure it, but that's different than sidestepping the question entirely by defining down consciousness until it's something we can measure (e.g. information processing). I posted this elsewhere, but I highly recommend reading Chalmers' essay "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness"[1] if you want to understand why many people consider this one of the most difficult and fundamental questions for humanity to attempt to answer.

[0] http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/ahyvarin/teaching/niseminar4/Nag...

[1] http://consc.net/papers/facing.html

No, that is not at all what is happening. That's not even on the same level of discourse.

>I believe that you're neglecting the "the experience of what it's like to be a human being"

That experience is the information processing. They are the same thing, just different words. Like "the thing you turn to open a door" and "doorknob" are the same thing. I'm not neglecting the experience of being human by talking about information processing. What is human is encoded by information that you experience by processing it.

>There are many scientists who agree with you, and think that consciousness is an illusion or a red herring because we haven't been able to define it or figure out how to measure it [...]

No, this is not agreement with me. This is not at all what I'm saying.

> What is human is encoded by information that you experience by processing it.

So you're saying that it's impossible to process information without experiencing it? That the act of processing and the act of experiencing are one and the same? Do you think that computers are conscious? What about a single neuron that integrates and respond to neural signals? What about a person taking Ambien who walks, talks and responds to questions in their sleep (literally while "unconscious")?

Yes, exactly.

>Do you think that computers are conscious? What about a single neuron that integrates and respond to neural signals?

This is a different question. No, computers aren't conscious. You need to have the 'right kind' of information processing for consciousness, and it's not clear what kind of processing that is.

This is essentially the Sorites Paradox: how many grains of sand are required for a collection to be called a heap? How much information has to be processed? How many neurons are needed? What are the essential features of information processing that must be present before you have consciousness?

These are the interesting questions. So far, we know that there must be continual self-feedback (self-awareness), enough abstract flexibility to recover from arbitrary information errors (identity persistence), a process of modeling counterfactuals and evaluating them (morality), a mechanism for adjusting to new information (learning), a mechanism for combining old information in new ways (creativity), and other kinds of heuristics like emotion, goal-creating, social awareness, and flexible models of communication.

You don't need all of this, of course. You can have it in part or in full, to varying levels of impact. "Consicousness" is not well-defined in this way; it is a spectrum of related information processing capabilities. So maybe you could consider computers to be conscious. They are "conscious in a very loose approximation."

I answer, yes.

It's beyond science, but I don't believe in randomness or chaos, which doesn't mean I believe in religion either( which are just a collection of myth, which says absolutely nothing about the fundamental nature of 'god').

In the linked article, I got curious about this paragraph:

"Everything was seemingly resolved, and there was no public reaction on Twitter. It was only once the man "posted about losing his job on Hacker News" that the pushback started, and then escalated exponentially, with even ostensible allies abetting the abuse by tone and choice policing."

If I recall, and I might well be wrong, the discussion was already underway when that guy posted. I'm also having trouble with identifying anything in the content of his post that would put him at fault for what happened afterwards (which was deplorable).

Can anyone with a better recollection than me weigh in on this? The article doesn't sound particularly unbiased, and neither does it have to be, but are the facts right here or not?

It's not irrational. I'm a man and I avoid groups of people at night, too. It's an absolutely reasonable precaution. I avoid other men because I don't want to put my life in danger unnecessarily, and I avoid women mostly because I don't want them to be alarmed by my presence.

These are what I would call rational fears, because they're about minimizing risk. It's also very clear that, say, if I required sudden medical assistance, I would probably trust any stranger I come across in the city at night to do the right thing 99.9% of the time. These are the mechanics of false negatives vs. false positives.

> I don't expect other people to cater towards my fear

Exactly. This is an important point because being afraid of something another person might do doesn't necessarily mean it's an accurate reflection of that person's intent.

And this is the fundamental breaking point where I think reasonable people start to feel a disconnect in the flow of the dongle story, because Richards is asserting both now and then that her life was in danger, and while it's easy to at least consider this feeling was real, the main question becomes did those guys do anything to cause that fear?

Because if they did not, it's unreasonable to blame them for causing this fear. I don't think a lot of people would say this fear itself is unjustified, but using it to attack someone who apparently did nothing to cause it is, and this whole disaster is a missed opportunity to talk about the factors that cause it.

This is not to detract from the stupidity of genital jokes in general, which amazingly both parties appear to be fond of.

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Ionization smoke detectors have a high false-positive rate in areas like kitchens where you have a lot of particulate matter. Use a photoelectric there.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/co-and-smoke-alarms/buyin...