Okay except how come he got an edit button? he shouldn't have for my postings.Betruger wrote:He must have clicked 'edit' instead of 'quote', by mistake.
Ray Kurzweil, Cyberprophet or Crack-Pot?
Yep.Betruger wrote:He must have clicked 'edit' instead of 'quote', by mistake.
I plead not enough coffee. It will teach me to be more careful.
Fortunately it was a short reply to a bunch of quoted comments. I'd really feel bad if it was something long.
Any recommended penance?
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Actually, Diamond claims it was primarily geographic (he claims the stagnant political situation arose from geographic isolation, which is a fairly weak argument given that China was invaded and conquered).I'm not going to try and argue empiricism wasn't tremendously important, but if you look at Jared Diamond's work, you'll see you've got it backwards. He more or less claims that the specific shape of statehood in that region constrained exploration.
The later in history you get, the more culture dominates: Diamond's theories don't explain why Japan, while equally isolated, was able to modernize and become a world power while China stagnated over the 19th and 20th centuries, or why Taiwan and South Korea become highly developed countries as North Korea regressed, or why African countries are nearly all poor with the notable exception of Westernized South Africa.
People generally don't appreciate how recent and Western a phenomenon free speech and free inquiry (without which empiricism withers on the vine) actually are. Even the ancient Greeks were pretty illiberal by our standards -- they famously put Socrates to death for his speech.
n*kBolt*Te = B**2/(2*mu0) and B^.25 loss scaling? Or not so much? Hopefully we'll know soon...