Ring a loud bell?

[empip]

...It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models...

Hmmm street laden cameras in place of beat cops... Sort of similar??

Doctor sits before a screen and keyboard - does more keying than actual physical patient measurement.

There will be more... Any examples?? Or is this outlook just a little too close for comfort?

 

[Lincsbodger]

No its the way we are going. When we hit the Technological Singularity, and become cymeks, we will all be mentally interconnected anyway. Its the shape of things to come. Ultimately, I think all individual human consciousnesses will be uploaded to a vast universe wide vector field and we wont need physical bodies at all.



ON earthier note, the reason the Met Office got up its own arse so badly was it convinced itself it need a new shiny computer costing £300M, then it filled it with garbage fiddled data from the University of East Anglia. Theres a saying in computing, GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out. Consequently all its weather reports, long and short term, and its theories on global warming, turned into a heap of doggy poo. The mistake the Met Office made was to get rid of all the old boys like Bob Rust, who had been doing it since the year dot and knew what they were talking about, and replace them with blond fluffy things that looked good on camera but didnt know **** all about weather prediction

 

[dextrous]

Take it you've read Christopher Booker's articles and books on climate change then links?

 

[Lincsbodger]

Take it you've read Christopher Booker's articles and books on climate change then links?

Nope.

Look, the Met Office cant even predict 3 months ahead, remember the 'Barbeque Summer' then the 'Mild Winter'? In fact, one month ahead and they tend to bugger it up. Why woudl you give such a faulty computer model any credence when its predicts 50 years ahead ?

PWS and Accuweather both out performed the Met Office in the last two years, both predicted accurately the washout summer and cold winter, and they dont own a £300M computer. The Met Office wants to wake up, throw the computer away and get back to looking out the window doing it the old fashioned way.

 

[dextrous]

Never mind 3 months ahead. I'm currently looking out of my window at a clear, crisp sunny sky. Except that, according to the met office, it's absolutely p***ing it down.

 

[joinerjohn]

"Doctor sits before a screen and keyboard - does more keying than actual physical patient measurement."

Yep, totally agree. If I make an appointment with my doctor, I usually end up seeing another doctor who looks up my records on the computer, gives me the once over, then advises me to pack up doing the things I like.
Typical conversation::: " Do you like going abroad?"... "Yes I do."

"Well, I'd advise no more flying for at least 2 years."

"Do you drink?"

"Yes doctor, I enjoy the occasional pint."

"Well, I reckon you should cut down a bit. "

"But I only drink occasionally, say around 3 or 4 pints a week."

" Ohh, Far too much in my opinion. Cut it down to 3 or 4 pints per month. "

Finally, when leaving, rather dissillusioned, he's on the intercom to the practice nurse asking if she knows anything about Repetitive Strain Injury, as his wrist is hurting from using the computer keyboard too often!!!!!!

 

[conny]

Mate in work has heart problems so he went to GP's.
Old GP had retired so he had to see the new one. he was from another continent where the sun is always shining, (except when its the monsoon season). Everytime mate answered a question GP typed into computer.
When GP went to cupboard to get something mate leaned forward and looked at PC.
It was on Google! FFS!

He changed doctors after that.

 

[skitzee2k]

Never mind 3 months ahead. I'm currently looking out of my window at a clear, crisp sunny sky. Except that, according to the met office, it's absolutely p***ing it down.

When they have cracked chaos theory maybe we'll have a better prediction models. You're a maths wiz Dex...you go fix it

 

[dextrous]

The weather isn't chaotic - it's entirely deterministic

 

[skitzee2k]

The weather isn't chaotic - it's entirely deterministic

Surely it is deterministic chaos?

 

[dextrous]

Surely it is deterministic chaos?

Nope.

 

[skitzee2k]

Surely it is deterministic chaos?

Nope.

Glad we are clear.
What about the butterfly flapping it's wings, causing a storm. That is a central tenet to chaos surely.

 

[dextrous]

Surely it is deterministic chaos?

Nope.

Glad we are clear.
What about the butterfly flapping it's wings, causing a storm. That is a central tenet to chaos surely.

It indicates that everything is connected. If you knew absolutely everything about a single point in space, then you know everything about everything. This is the argument which an advocate of determinism would adopt, whereas a proponent of chaos would say that everything behaves in a chaotic manner within reasonable constraints, but randomly nevertheless.

In a philosophical application, if you had two identical parallel universes, determinism would suggest that they would always be identical whereas chaos would suggest they diverge

I'm more inclined to go down the deterministic line (for the sake of argument now - I have no real opnion but we'll see how far I can defend this one for ), since I don't accept that anything is random

 

[skitzee2k]

Surely it is deterministic chaos?

Nope.

Glad we are clear.
What about the butterfly flapping it's wings, causing a storm. That is a central tenet to chaos surely.

It indicates that everything is connected. If you knew absolutely everything about a single point in space, then you know everything about everything. This is the argument which an advocate of determinism would adopt, whereas a proponent of chaos would say that everything behaves in a chaotic manner within reasonable constraints, but randomly nevertheless.

In a philosophical application, if you had two identical parallel universes, determinism would suggest that they would always be identical whereas chaos would suggest they diverge

I'm more inclined to go down the deterministic line (for the sake of argument now - I have no real opnion but we'll see how far I can defend this one for ), since I don't accept that anything is random

Ah this is where we differ, I am not a believer in fate or destiny. Sometimes however even deterministic applications are unpredictable.
It also calls into question Free will.
If everything causes and was only ever going to cause one thing, then free will is non existent.
This gets too close to the 'God's plan' reasoning for me.
I think there are just too many variables with too large of scales to .......
Ok, one of the rare occassions where I have flipped my belief.
I agree that there is probably at the heart of everything a fate. We however are lucky enough to not know, and most likely never will know, the information needed to make any assumptions or predictions about it.

If you had all the information that you needed you could exactly recreate the explosion of a bomb using a model...so if you had enough processessing power I guess you could predict anything. Humans, animals and plants are equally predictable if you had all the information you needed.

 

[dextrous]

Some interesting points there. Can't remember the name of that paradox about time travel (if you could change the past then you might not have subsequently come to exist in order to change it), but applied here it could lead to the curious situation where you could have travelled back and changed something, only to return to "current" time to realise that it hasn't actually changed jack-all. In short, you would have converged to your destiny.