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That's awesome! Cheers. I love stuff that makes connections between statistics/optimisation/neural nets/etc and the human brain - specifically the individual behaviour of 'cells'/neurons and patterns which emerge on a global/holistic level.

I mean, with all the above chat on the universe being non-deterministic, with radioactive decay randomly occurring, I think it's entirely valid to believe the universe capable of creating itself. We're not talking about the creation of stars and life here (fairly well understood, scientifically...

I love how TacoTerrorist begs the question, then the asserts this means god exists. Excuse me, but what created God? God could create himself no more (or less) than the universe could. You've simply replaced one notion inconceivable to you as a human with another equally inconceivable notion...

God damn it, I've got statistics on the brain. Yeah, conjugate. And don't take that tone with me.

Yep; the universe does - quantum mechanics. Go look up Schroedinger's Cat or the Everett interpretation of QM. Easy. Radioactive decay. Snap. Burn. Zing. This is the entire basis for the Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment. That's what Creationists say - it just shows an ignorance of...

One of the most beautiful examples of complexity theory, and mathematics in general, which I have found in real life is this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Textile_cone.JPG The cone literally applies a cellular automata in the creation of its shell pattern. For reference...

Stop trying to defend a scientifically incorrect theory. You're starting to sound like a Creationist or something. Quantum Mechanics governs the microscopic world but it ALSO governs the macroscopic world. You need to realise that determinism is the human mind's approximation here, not the...

You are absolutely correct: this scenario is not reproducible in reality. However, this matters little, as Newtonian mechanics isn't reproducible in reality, either. The point here is that even as an idealistic, 'complete' approximation of macroscopic world phenomena, Newtonian mechanics...

Hahaha. It's funny because it's true.

Hmm, I was sceptical, so I tried cross-referencing it with some known, reliable 'encyclopaedia' on philosophy/determinism, such as Stanford's, and it had this to say: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/#ClaMec And then...

lol

bigboyjames: Basically, every country has criteria for citizenship, as well as a quota. They are not about to give a radical Muslim citizenship in a country that already has significant trouble with Muslim extremists, when they could instead give it to somebody far more likely to assimilate...

Can you give me a summary? I'll watch it later, but I'm on Ubuntu right now and my apt-get isn't working, so I can't install Flash.

My position on determinism is kind of like my position on God: not enough information to decide either way, but a strong case for both determinism and God being simply the incorrect products of the human mind's need to order and understand things.

Sorry, I said above that Chaos Theory is underpinned by 'stochastic processes' - this is not correct, as such processes are non-deterministic. In this sense, Chaos Theory is as much an approximation of reality as Newtonian Mechanics is. Still, that's why we have the counterpart of Quantum...

I think you'd be interested in complexity theory, Doris. It includes things like Chaos Theory, and covers such questions. Basically, there's the assertion that a deterministic system can produce unexpected results via slight aberrations/changes in initial conditions through sufficiently complex...

No it certainly does not. Do some research on hidden variables and quantum indeterminacy. There's no foregone conclusion, but certainly the case for determinism essentially died at the start of the 20th century. And you clearly have absolutely no knowledge of what 'chaos' means in the...

Nah, that's failure logic. Go read about quantum mechanics. Intelligence.

Underlined = conjugate. 1) z1 = a+ib, so |z1| = sqrt(a^2+b^2) RHS =|z1|^2 = a^2+b^2 LHS = z1*z1 = (a+ib)(a-ib) = a^2+b^2 # 2) it's fucking obvious. I mean the conjugate of a complex number is itself still a complex number (and therefore has a conjugate), making it a trivial rewording of the...

Koombyaaa