Posted on 07/26/2018 9:24:33 AM PDT by edwinland
Imagine youre the president of a European country. Youre slated to take in 50,000 refugees from the Middle East this year. Most of them are very religious, while most of your population is very secular. You want to integrate the newcomers seamlessly, minimizing the risk of economic malaise or violence, but you have limited resources ... What do you do?
Well, you make your best guess and hope the policy you chose works out. But it might not. ...
You can, however, experiment like that with virtual people. And thats exactly what the Modeling Religion Project does. An international team of computer scientists, philosophers, religion scholars, and others are collaborating to build computer models that they populate with thousands of virtual people, or agents. As the agents interact with each other and with shifting conditions in their artificial environment, their attributes and beliefslevels of economic security, of education, of religiosity, and so oncan change.
...
The other models raise similar concerns, he said. The modrn model gives you a recipe for accelerating secularizationand it gives you a recipe for blocking it. You can use it to make everything revert to supernaturalism by messing with some of those key conditionssay, by triggering some ecological disaster. Then everything goes plunging back into pre-secularism. That keeps me up at night.
...
Were modelers, sociologists, philosopherswere academic geeks, basically. Were never going to convince them to trust a model. But he believes that policy analysts, acting as bridges between the academic world and the policy world, will be able to convince the politicians. Were going to get them in the end.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Because it is false.
I don’t know my wife’s 20 something millennial nephew is a atheist convert from his college indoctrination and he is an insufferable little bast&rd with his mockery and rants against believers. But he considers himself “the friendly atheist!” I suggested he look up the definition of friendly, because he ain’t it.
It takes about 10 years for a freshly-molted atheist to mellow until they are fit for human companionship, and only then if they are conservative. If they are liberal, it never happens.
He is most definitely a liberal. Actually he’s a flaming socialist working as an accountant in the health care system. He knows better but alas he went to college and bought into the program hook, line, sinker, reel, tackle box and cooler.
“I always like to think of it like a beautiful museum with an infinite number of rooms.”
I used to view G-d’s “rooms” like a spiritual “bookshelf” with which, on our journey with G-d, we look into them until we find the one marked “myself”. I put that in a poem I wrote in my teens. Of course, in our teens we are alot about realizing our identity in so many ways.
“I was more focused on the goal of their social engineering (secularism) rather than the means (modelling) but your comment really puts the two together. Their faith in modelling (which is essentially a reduction of the complexity of the universe into a simplistic cartoon) is directly connected to their embrace of secularism.”
You are so right. The two are so connected.
Atheism is bound up with a securlar belief in “reason” as the ultimate truth, and yet how can reason and logic explain ultimate truth of the universe unless that universe is based (created/designed) on a higher reason and logic (which the secular atheist thinks he/she can reach), and yet how can THAT be if NOTHING is behind it all.
I feel deeply uncomfortable that one of my models accidentally produced a criterion for killing religious leaders.
If a religious leader chooses to put him self on the path of terrorism he has put himself outside of the moral protections of a life of faith.
Anyone willing to kill to advance their religion should be put down like the rabid dog that they are.
Putting such people in prison is counterproductive to which our American prisons systems give direct evidence.
One of the most productive places for Islamic conversions is the American penal system. Islamic evangelism should be banned there. Adherents to Islam should be segregated from the general population. Islam should be considered a communicable disease requiring quarantine.
I think you're confusing RPA (Robotic Process Automation) with AI. RPA is more akin to intricate if-then-else programming. Artificial Intelligence is based on algorithms that are capable of learning and those algorithms are typically limited in scope and purpose to keep the amount of data required to drive the AI process down to a reasonable amount. More on that below .....
Even the neural networks they incorporate are not AI. Neural networks merely memorize patterns.
A neural network is a series of algorithms that endeavors to recognize underlying relationships in a set of data through a process that mimics the way the human brain operates.
Given the millions, billions, trillions of calculations a human brain does in any decision making process and the variables in those decisions, my own opinion here is that a true neural network that can 100% mimic the human brain is impossible to create. Why? Two reasons. First, we're human and we're imperfect. Second, one can never underestimate the level of stupidity a human can display at any point in time. The amount of data required to get close to creating a near-human neural network would be so massive that we lack the computing power today (and likely the foreseeable future) to ever create one. Just my opinion here.
True intelligence requires conscious self-awareness. Consciousness is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. You will never achieve it through software alone.
I don't think I could possibly agree with this statement more! And this right here is why self-driving cars will never ever replace humans behind the wheel in a meaningful way. I'm going to borrow your statement during my next debate with my oldest son on that topic. I'm sure it'll shut him down lock, stock and barrel!
I guess we know where his sympathies lie.
People returning to their faith is a plunge backward in to superstition.
Having read the entire article I am rather disappointed that it really did not posit a theory as to why atheism is unpopular.
The only expression in the article that comes close is the theory that secularism is not advancing in the US as fast as in Europe because the national government does not have complete control of education.
Lucky for the Atlantic that there is no truth in labeling law for atricles.
And?
You regurgitated something about neural networks that you read somewhere.
Have you ever done anything with neural networks besides script-kiddy stuff?
Can you explain the mathematics of a neuron or the feed-forward/backpropagation learning algorithm?
My article does.
And?
You acted like you know everything about neural networks.
Prove it.
I will save you the trouble: “And?”
I did no such thing. You’re assuming. Lighten up Francis.
You said that like you know what you're talking about, and it's gibberish, Frances.
What exactly is your beef here? I liked your post, commented on it based on what I understand as I do read up on these things and you attack me. Even when my post was in agreement with yours.
Try getting out more or something. Sheesh.
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