Mar 25 2013: Check out the "Avartar" projects though, this Russian Scientist is asking the Ford 500 richest for funding in exchanging of giving them access to the technology first XD.
Mar 25 2013: DIvorce should be cheap and accessible.
This argument is simply made from the perspective of resource conservation. I mean seriously, it virtually created an entire profession as divorce law! Many divorces don't usually involve that much unsettled dispute over financial allocation, it's all paper work.
I know this difficulty right now may encourage people to stay together, but it's equivalent to saying that people will reduce abortion rate simply because it's inconvenient. Divorce is usually the result of a long and unhappy marriage, no matter how irresponsible somebody is it's at least still a life decision, if they make it, they will get down to the bones just to pull it through.
Instead, marriage should be made to be difficult and inconvenient, this will screen off those that get married irresponsibly (arguably the No.1 cause of unhappy marriages?) And also it provides the same psychological impact (justification effect) and helps people stay together since the marriage is something they both worked towards.
Mar 20 2013: I think everybody's view on this topic is pretty much valid after reading some comments (sorry if I over generalize, I didn't read all of them). Language and gender identity are definitely correlated, but the emphasis here is: correlated.
This means that all the things we find can only be used to prove that these two things go together, but we can't generalize causal relations between the two.
Gender specific language do have the possibility to create an environment that highlights the differences between the genders and lead to a relatively gender specific culture.
On the other hand it is equally possible that some other factors caused the culture to be gender specific in the first place and that somehow lead to the development of a gender specific language in this area.
Mar 18 2013: continued:
So in this sense, taking the lightbulb out not only stops the flow of electricity (as a matter of fact), it also makes it impossible for us to detect the electricity (theoretically of course, there are many other ways but that's not of the argument), thus the electricitiy seize to exist.
That's the same for our soul, what exists is what we can see, and my proof is simple, I put a bullet in your brain, you will seize all acitivty at once (please don't try this at home XD). This is direct evidence that our brain governs behavior. Now, your turn to prove the existence of a soul in us. Can you take it away? Is there any visible evidence that such as thing exists? Pull out some facts and evidence, let's see what there is.
And about you directly attack the notion of science now....I really have no comment on it since you didn't even make an argument and even if you did I don't think it's that relevant to the topic. To be honest I think science is a load of bull most of the time, but that doesn't mean we shuoldn't disrespect it.
Mar 18 2013: Haha you do like to pull latin words a lot don't you, but the truth is latin doesn't prove anything, simply because a word has a certain roots in latin doesn't have any meaning on the actual significance of the word. Latin's meaning comes from cultures long ago, and that, is what I call backwards. Are you saying that the Romans are more advanced than us in scientific knowledge?
And you know what you right, my apologies for simply skimming through your argument and assumed that you used the same boring analogy of a table....that was my mistake, let me adopt your way of quote every single line i seem to write (that's really not nessesary by the way).
"If you turn on a table lamp and then remove the bulb from the lamp, it doesn't affect the electricity, it simply affects the element through which electricity is manifested. "
Ok first of all if you have any knowledge of electrical enginnering or just simple common sense, you will realize that electricity actuallys Stops flowing once the circuit is broken by removing the lamp, if it's still running something is going to fry :). But of course that's not your argument, what you are saying is that electricity can exist without a lightbulb showing that "hey! i'm here!". But my question is the same, does it?
The world exists in our mind only as our perception of the world. Let me take a more famous example, how do you know that the world doesn't fall apart whenever you are not looking and come back together whenever you do? You don't know, that's the problem, because our knowledge of existence goes only to what we can perceive, it doesn't go beyond that.
Mar 18 2013: Ok I really do not wish to turn this into a debate of whether or not a "soul" exists. To be honest I am not sure myself but the thing is, how can you prove such a thing? Take your table example, you say I turn the lights off and claim that the table doesn't exist anymore, but the thing is, Does it?? If there is no way to access something, does it mean it still exists? If it does, how do you know?
You can say that the table still exists because you can always turn the lights back on or use some other ways of detection, but what if you can't? What if, like you said, you remove the light bulb and that's it? You're never going to find that table again, then it this case it technically doesn't exist? At least that's true in the field of physics and computer science...
Mar 18 2013: The anatomy of a human brain and the computer isn't the same by itself, on the most basic level, our neurons operate on a "degree" level, while the computer chips operate on a "binary" level. This is to say, imagine the computer chip being a set of predefined set light bulbs that can either light up for be absolutely dim, the neurons are like light bulbs that can this switch thing that can adjust brightness. The action potential of a neuron might give you the illusion of a "fire or no fire mechanism", but the difference is that instead of being triggered by a single action potential coming from the "right" place, action potentials in the neurons are generated by the build up of electric potential instead, and there is a randomness factor in here, that's why our thoughts are so random, and a computer is always so predefined.
So, is it possible to construct a brain? Yes it still is, but is it possible to construct a brain with computer chips, that's just not possible, the basic operational process is different, you need to actually build a brain with the same mechanism of it....which still isn't possible right now.
Mar 18 2013: Well it is a convenient thought to separate all that we are, all that we know of from this small piece of fatty tissue inside our skull that can barely even wiggle (and no, your brain doesn't actually wiggle when you think XD). But the fact is, we are who we are! Our mind is what our brain supports. This is a scientific fact almost every single psychologist will agree with me, without the brain, our minds don't exist at all, there's nothing beyond that.
For example, you say the brain is not capable of memory, although we can't prove what memory is or how it's stored, but at least we can say that after removing a part of the physical brain (the hippocampus), people can lose either ability to remember! That's not saying that the little piece of brain we remove is exactly like a hard drive that you can stick into somebody else, but it should at least say that even things like memory is manifested through the brain.
Besides what do we know about our mind anyway? There is no way we can understand how our ind works by simply thinking, cuz that's obviously part of the paradigm of our mind itself. But at least the very least the conclusion is: science claims that thoughts originate from the brain, science is right. (where else can it come from??)
Mar 17 2013: Bullying, like murder, like theft, like all the bad stuff you get along with life, is not that much of an "evil manifestation' that is resulted from all these hurt little souls or legal restrictions. It's a phenomena, in a world of natural selection our mindset has never really evolved out of the jungle. Bullying is everywhere, only that when it comes to kids we always go awww aren't they so cute...... the question isn't how do we stop bullying, since that is the to ask us to stop being human, the question is how do we face it properly. In fact when we do, bullying is actually a good thing since it gives children some exposure to the hazards of the real world.
And for that I stand undecided honestly of the "right" way to deal with it, the "an eye for an eye" method sounds very appealing, but then again, what happened to the virtues of "turn your other face?"
Mar 15 2013: Well the leap is huge, I can see two ways this whole system can work, one is basically the system right now, where majority of the people are kept in the muddy darkness wadding their way through to presumed bliss. The other way is that every single person needs to understand that they are part of a big picture, a cog in the entire machine of modern society, and it is true, everybody plays a somewhat important and irreplacable role. That is the only way I can imagine the whole world to function, it's kinda like utopia, but there it is....it's utopia XD.
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A comment on Conversation: Are we on the brink of creating a human-like digital mind?
A comment on Conversation: Divorce should be cheap and accessible.
This argument is simply made from the perspective of resource conservation. I mean seriously, it virtually created an entire profession as divorce law! Many divorces don't usually involve that much unsettled dispute over financial allocation, it's all paper work.
I know this difficulty right now may encourage people to stay together, but it's equivalent to saying that people will reduce abortion rate simply because it's inconvenient. Divorce is usually the result of a long and unhappy marriage, no matter how irresponsible somebody is it's at least still a life decision, if they make it, they will get down to the bones just to pull it through.
Instead, marriage should be made to be difficult and inconvenient, this will screen off those that get married irresponsibly (arguably the No.1 cause of unhappy marriages?) And also it provides the same psychological impact (justification effect) and helps people stay together since the marriage is something they both worked towards.
A comment on Conversation: He, she or s/he? Should languages be made gender neutral or be left on their own to preserve literary integrity?
This means that all the things we find can only be used to prove that these two things go together, but we can't generalize causal relations between the two.
Gender specific language do have the possibility to create an environment that highlights the differences between the genders and lead to a relatively gender specific culture.
On the other hand it is equally possible that some other factors caused the culture to be gender specific in the first place and that somehow lead to the development of a gender specific language in this area.
Just pointing this out.
A reply on Conversation: Are we on the brink of creating a human-like digital mind?
So in this sense, taking the lightbulb out not only stops the flow of electricity (as a matter of fact), it also makes it impossible for us to detect the electricity (theoretically of course, there are many other ways but that's not of the argument), thus the electricitiy seize to exist.
That's the same for our soul, what exists is what we can see, and my proof is simple, I put a bullet in your brain, you will seize all acitivty at once (please don't try this at home XD). This is direct evidence that our brain governs behavior. Now, your turn to prove the existence of a soul in us. Can you take it away? Is there any visible evidence that such as thing exists? Pull out some facts and evidence, let's see what there is.
And about you directly attack the notion of science now....I really have no comment on it since you didn't even make an argument and even if you did I don't think it's that relevant to the topic. To be honest I think science is a load of bull most of the time, but that doesn't mean we shuoldn't disrespect it.
A reply on Conversation: Are we on the brink of creating a human-like digital mind?
And you know what you right, my apologies for simply skimming through your argument and assumed that you used the same boring analogy of a table....that was my mistake, let me adopt your way of quote every single line i seem to write (that's really not nessesary by the way).
"If you turn on a table lamp and then remove the bulb from the lamp, it doesn't affect the electricity, it simply affects the element through which electricity is manifested. "
Ok first of all if you have any knowledge of electrical enginnering or just simple common sense, you will realize that electricity actuallys Stops flowing once the circuit is broken by removing the lamp, if it's still running something is going to fry :). But of course that's not your argument, what you are saying is that electricity can exist without a lightbulb showing that "hey! i'm here!". But my question is the same, does it?
The world exists in our mind only as our perception of the world. Let me take a more famous example, how do you know that the world doesn't fall apart whenever you are not looking and come back together whenever you do? You don't know, that's the problem, because our knowledge of existence goes only to what we can perceive, it doesn't go beyond that.
A reply on Conversation: Are we on the brink of creating a human-like digital mind?
You can say that the table still exists because you can always turn the lights back on or use some other ways of detection, but what if you can't? What if, like you said, you remove the light bulb and that's it? You're never going to find that table again, then it this case it technically doesn't exist? At least that's true in the field of physics and computer science...
A comment on Conversation: Are we on the brink of creating a human-like digital mind?
So, is it possible to construct a brain? Yes it still is, but is it possible to construct a brain with computer chips, that's just not possible, the basic operational process is different, you need to actually build a brain with the same mechanism of it....which still isn't possible right now.
A reply on Conversation: Are we on the brink of creating a human-like digital mind?
For example, you say the brain is not capable of memory, although we can't prove what memory is or how it's stored, but at least we can say that after removing a part of the physical brain (the hippocampus), people can lose either ability to remember! That's not saying that the little piece of brain we remove is exactly like a hard drive that you can stick into somebody else, but it should at least say that even things like memory is manifested through the brain.
Besides what do we know about our mind anyway? There is no way we can understand how our ind works by simply thinking, cuz that's obviously part of the paradigm of our mind itself. But at least the very least the conclusion is: science claims that thoughts originate from the brain, science is right. (where else can it come from??)
A comment on Conversation: How can we help to prevent bullying?
And for that I stand undecided honestly of the "right" way to deal with it, the "an eye for an eye" method sounds very appealing, but then again, what happened to the virtues of "turn your other face?"
A reply on Conversation: We do not need to change the education system