"Consent of the Governed": Now a Commodity

[Bounty]

ETA: dang, beaten to the punch!

[Stark]

Actually, if I were doing an AI project, a bot of some sort that posted AI jargon and responded badly to being insulted, etc, would be a hilariously self-referential project to do.

Well maybe that's it - someone signed up a spambot with a library of cogsci and AI references for it to randomly post. Nobody would suspect someone talking about AI to be a spambot! The ultimate camoflage.

The alternative - that this is actually a human being who just talks in verbatim quotes, can't discuss anything and constantly refers to himself - is just lame.

[Starglider]

most often knowing provides the results that technology demands.

You never did anything that came close to pushing the state of the art then.

I have for some time been interested in trying to understand what ‘understand’ means.

You failed. Badly and probably irreperably, because you seem to be stuck in a self-reinforcing cycle of bullshit. At least with religion that's slightly forgivable because it stems from inherent human cognitive flaws.

Puzzles require ingenuity but seldom understanding. However, understanding is essential when dealing with matters of relationships between humans.

Working out what 'understanding' and 'meaning' actually are has stumped the field of AI for decades. Ultimately we found that these intuitive reflective notions are no more useful than the rest of the rough generalisations humans use to simplify their own minds down to something they can work with on a day to day basis. They don't break down to specific component parts (and you will confabulate random crap if you try) and you can't implement them directly (lots of people tried, assorted hilarity ensued). There are only two valid ways to approach 'understanding'; tangible measures of capability (when someone can take a system apart, put it back together again, make strong predictions of how it will react to changes and adapt it for use in larger systems, I'd say that's a pretty strong classifier for 'understanding') and designing reasoning systems from first principles that do useful things, then saying 'ah, the results of this set of functional mechanisms could be informally characterised as 'understanding the problem'.

I say this not for your benefit of course, as you are irretrievably drunk on philosobabble and words which you have imbued with inherent meaning, independent of any sort of utility. A habit which you probably picked up from religion and carried with you into pop psychology.

I suspect many people go their complete life and never have an intellectual experience that culminates in the “ecstasy of understanding”.

Ah, ectasy of revelation, another stupid idea you've imported from religion. Yes discovering new things is a rush. Sometimes that can help with brainstorming. But the hard part is filtering out the crap, fixing mistakes and proving what you have actually works, and that requires a coldly rational approach. I know a few people who got addicted to the 'ecstasy of revelation' - fortunately most of them snapped out of it - and it results in a kind of cognitive short-circuit that causes them to discard verification and spend more and more time brainstorming pointless buzzword strings that give the feeling of insight without any of the tangible results. I've been there myself on occasion and the results are not pretty.

[Darth Wong]

Clear evidence has been posted that coberst is not only copying and pasting his posts from elsewhere, but he is pretending that he is not. I can't see his Senate poll going in his favour.

[phongn]

Stark (who is actually an admin, not a moderator) is right, though. Refusing to address arguments because they've been harshly worded is a good way to end up banned, resembling more a meal made of carrot and bollock than the hearty meat feast we all strive to be.

Those with actual power on this board are labeled as such underneath their avatar (i.e. Senator or Governor).

[Rye]

Stark (who is actually an admin, not a moderator) is right, though. Refusing to address arguments because they've been harshly worded is a good way to end up banned, resembling more a meal made of carrot and bollock than the hearty meat feast we all strive to be.

Those with actual power on this board are labeled as such underneath their avatar (i.e. Senator or Governor).

Yes, it was a joke.

[Hillary]

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is quite a neat concept, albeit that it merely states the obvious in a useful, diagramatical way.

What it has to do with this guy's ridiculous scrawl I'm not sure. All Maslow does is describe people's goal instincts, i.e. if you are struggling to feed and clothe your family, learning to play the piano is not uppermost in your thoughts. If you're financially secure, it becomes more of a 'need'.

Hence his suggestion that the populace HAVE to read more to gain self-actualisation only holds true if that is what they actually WANT. Some people may reach their self-actualisation by watching Oprah for 6 hours a day.

Why are so many "intellektuals" so fucking stupid?

[Spoonist]

Clear evidence has been posted that coberst is not only copying and pasting his posts from elsewhere, but he is pretending that he is not. I can't see his Senate poll going in his favour.

3 funny things:
1) The one he is copy&pasting from is always himself so its not plagiarism.
2) Coberst is all over the net: google
3) He hears funny sounding clicks on his phone line...

[apocolypse]

Your threads are really fucking boring, and reak of some sort of pseudo-intellectualizing bullshit that works my nerves.

[Darth Wong]

Clear evidence has been posted that coberst is not only copying and pasting his posts from elsewhere, but he is pretending that he is not. I can't see his Senate poll going in his favour.

3 funny things:
1) The one he is copy&pasting from is always himself so its not plagiarism.
2) Coberst is all over the net: google
3) He hears funny sounding clicks on his phone line...

So he signs up to spam the same opinion everywhere, and without intelligent discussion to follow up. It's still copy-paste spam. It would be like me signing up on dozens of webboards to copy and paste portions of my various websites all over them. Pure spam. And there's still no reason to believe that he actually composed this material in the first place. The fact that he's copy-pasted it before does not mean he necessarily wrote it. The lack of interactivity in his posting behaviour does not suggest that he is actually capable of thinking on his feet.

[Spoonist]

So he signs up to spam the same opinion everywhere, and without intelligent discussion to follow up. It's still copy-paste spam. It would be like me signing up on dozens of webboards to copy and paste portions of my various websites all over them. Pure spam. And there's still no reason to believe that he actually composed this material in the first place. The fact that he's copy-pasted it before does not mean he necessarily wrote it. The lack of interactivity in his posting behaviour does not suggest that he is actually capable of thinking on his feet.

Oh, I agree fully, especially since some of it is direct quotes from books by the authors he mentions. I just find it WTF-funny.

[Setesh]

In all fairness I have met people who talk like this. One of my psych professors was a 'new age' pop psychology twit. He really did talk like this, all the time, about just about everything.

The morons who spew this pretentious bullshit are under the impression it makes them sound intelligent, and that anyone who doesn't must be uneducated. Its a nice way to inflate word count on essays, and to confuse people with walls of incomprehensible spiel. Most of these idiots grow out of it when people start ignoring them.

Unfortunately its an instinct in those who have little to no self-worth. Its the same idea behind those dipshits you find on usenet or in chat rooms who reply in foreign languages they know you don't speak (chances are they don't either, last time I saw one of these he was replying in latin with WH40K pseudo-latin tossed in) or change their font to wingdings (or other symbols). It makes them feel slightly superior even if it is for no reason.

Hell even if he flames back at some point I'll bet he uses the generator at Insultmonger.com, rather then come up with his own.

I'd translate what this wannabe-bot said into plain english but he really didn't say much of anything once you boil out the buzzwords.

[Cao Cao]

Copied or not his posts are too damn long to begin with and a headache to read; the fact that it isn't even his own words just adds to the annoyance.

[Coyote]

Coberst--

Bear in mind this Senate thread and contemplate that if you really want to be here, you may want to consider changing your course quickly.

[Mad]

For a long time I have been trying to grasp the distinction between knowing and understanding. I think I have recently stumbled upon a new theory that might help me a great deal in my attempt to discover this distinction.

The distinction is that understanding something means being able to reason about that thing. It means being able to answer "why." Knowing something is being able to answer "who," "what," "where," "when," and "how."

Given your post style thus far, it appears that you lack understanding. You are copy-and-pasting pre-written arguments. This shows that you know about the subjects, but your inability thus far to actually expand on the reasoning by directly replying to questions suggests that you don't truly understand your own arguments. You appear unable to distill and rephrase the arguments in a meaningful way suited for online debate. Someone with true understanding of the material would be more than capable of such.

[phongn]

3 funny things:
1) The one he is copy&pasting from is always himself so its not plagiarism.

Well, in academia there is the idea of "self-plagiarism" and that can be a be an actionable offense.

[metavac]

Well, in academia there is the idea of "self-plagiarism" and that can be a be an actionable offense.

With far more contention and caveat than plain old plagiarism, as well. Once again, the chief concerns are principally over copyright; an author reusing a substantial piece of work without permission of an editor or co-author with an actionable copyright. Other ethical concerns are largely specific to publishing practices peculiar to specific fields. There's even a small (and extremely anal, IMHO) perspective that holds that 'post-prints' (copies of journal articles made freely available online by their authors) cross the line.

[His Divine Shadow]

Stark (who is actually an admin, not a moderator) is right, though.

Where do people get the idea I'm important? I'm just a regular poster! I don't have Board Influence, I swear it!

Stark isn't the admin at all but the owner of this board. Get it right people.

[coberst]

For a long time I have been trying to grasp the distinction between knowing and understanding. I think I have recently stumbled upon a new theory that might help me a great deal in my attempt to discover this distinction.

The distinction is that understanding something means being able to reason about that thing. It means being able to answer "why." Knowing something is being able to answer "who," "what," "where," "when," and "how."

Given your post style thus far, it appears that you lack understanding. You are copy-and-pasting pre-written arguments. This shows that you know about the subjects, but your inability thus far to actually expand on the reasoning by directly replying to questions suggests that you don't truly understand your own arguments. You appear unable to distill and rephrase the arguments in a meaningful way suited for online debate. Someone with true understanding of the material would be more than capable of such.

I have been for some time trying to understand the meaning of the word ‘understand’. I can remember reading the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and after reading some reviews I recognized that the book is about ‘quality’. I must admit that I do not remember much else.

Metaphors seem to be necessary for communicating understanding regarding such concepts as mind, consciousness, morality, understanding, self, etc.

I think that the metaphors ‘knowing is quantity’ and ‘understanding is quality’ are useful for distinguishing the difference between knowing and understanding. Of course the concept ‘quality’ is a rather elusive concept it self.

I have been studying the concepts ‘reification’ (to regard something abstract as a material thing) and ‘commodification’ (to turn an intrinsic value into an object of commerce), which are concepts studied by the soft sciences in an attempt to understand the nature of capitalism. In that process I came across this Marx quote:

“Through the subordination of man to the machine the situation arises in which men are effaced [to cause to vanish] by their labor. In which the pendulum of the clock has become as accurate a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed of two locomotives. Therefore, we should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at most an incarnation of time. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything: hour for hour, day for day…”

I think that the general idea contained in this Marx quote might be said for education it self. Understanding no longer matters. Knowing alone decides everything. Education is commodified and the product of education is a commodity (credentials and a data base).

One Amazon reviewer said that this was his favorite "We want to make good time, but for us now this measured with emphasis on 'good' rather than 'time' and when you make a shift in emphasis the whole approach changes."

I think that our years of schooling serve a useful purpose because those years prepare us to be good workers. However, in our adult years “when you make a shift in emphasis the whole approach changes."

[Aaron]

And his latest reply is ripped word for word from a post he made on another board, here.

It would appear that he has nothing original to contribute.

[aerius]

Metaphors seem to be necessary for communicating understanding regarding such concepts as mind, consciousness, morality, understanding, self, etc.

I think that the metaphors ‘knowing is quantity’ and ‘understanding is quality’ are useful for distinguishing the difference between knowing and understanding. Of course the concept ‘quality’ is a rather elusive concept it self.

The turd I crapped into the toilet bowl this morning had a startling and profound resemblance to your nonsensical ramblings.

[Setesh]

Well, in academia there is the idea of "self-plagiarism" and that can be a be an actionable offense.

With far more contention and caveat than plain old plagiarism, as well. Once again, the chief concerns are principally over copyright; an author reusing a substantial piece of work without permission of an editor or co-author with an actionable copyright. Other ethical concerns are largely specific to publishing practices peculiar to specific fields. There's even a small (and extremely anal, IMHO) perspective that holds that 'post-prints' (copies of journal articles made freely available online by their authors) cross the line.

It tends to come up more often under contract law actually. A lot of research companies have a clause in the employment contract that anything you come up with on company time with company equipment belongs to the company not to you.

In this case though he's not really plagiarizing himself so much as he is an actual author somewhere. He's cut&paste-ing himself from other forums but he originally quoted someone else. His 'knowing and understanding' text block gives me serious deja-vu to some of my philosophy books (more specifically the christian philosophy books I've read to shut-up apologists 'who say read this book'). He may change a word here and there to make it seem like his. But its the familiar garbage that was churned out throughout the 90's on the subject.

[Ar-Adunakhor]

I have been for some time trying to understand the meaning of the word ‘understand’. I can remember reading the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and after reading some reviews I recognized that the book is about ‘quality’. I must admit that I do not remember much else.

Metaphors seem to be necessary for communicating understanding regarding such concepts as mind, consciousness, morality, understanding, self, etc.

I think that the metaphors ‘knowing is quantity’ and ‘understanding is quality’ are useful for distinguishing the difference between knowing and understanding. Of course the concept ‘quality’ is a rather elusive concept it self.

I have been studying the concepts ‘reification’ (to regard something abstract as a material thing) and ‘commodification’ (to turn an intrinsic value into an object of commerce), which are concepts studied by the soft sciences in an attempt to understand the nature of capitalism. In that process I came across this Marx quote:

“Through the subordination of man to the machine the situation arises in which men are effaced [to cause to vanish] by their labor. In which the pendulum of the clock has become as accurate a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed of two locomotives. Therefore, we should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at most an incarnation of time. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything: hour for hour, day for day…”

I think that the general idea contained in this Marx quote might be said for education it self. Understanding no longer matters. Knowing alone decides everything. Education is commodified and the product of education is a commodity (credentials and a data base).

One Amazon reviewer said that this was his favorite "We want to make good time, but for us now this measured with emphasis on 'good' rather than 'time' and when you make a shift in emphasis the whole approach changes."

I think that our years of schooling serve a useful purpose because those years prepare us to be good workers. However, in our adult years “when you make a shift in emphasis the whole approach changes."

Are you seriously trying to say that understanding and applying concepts is no longer relevant? What about engineers and scientists? That they just, memorize shit, get a degree, and start going through the motions while not understanding the concepts behind them?

Christ you are retarded. Go back and fellate your professor some more so you can be upgraded from AA to BS in Psych.

[metavac]

Are you seriously trying to say that understanding and applying concepts is no longer relevant?

Not 'application.' He's saying 'understanding' is either inconsequential or less so; not terribly profound considering his post is poor on comparisons and measures. Given the philosophical bent of the post, he might think a firm foundation in philosophy is necessary to effectively conduct business in science and engineering.

[metavac]

It tends to come up more often under contract law actually. A lot of research companies have a clause in the employment contract that anything you come up with on company time with company equipment belongs to the company not to you.

I can't speak from beyond personal experience, but my gut's with you. However, I was narrowly addressing the issue where it concerns academic publication.