Ethical and legal question about CSS and JS codes.

[nixnerd]

To quote Canadians:

Soooooorry.

[Anonymous]

Greetings Traq,

Yes, Psychoanalysis is just chocked full of theories (opinions)

There is a huge and critical difference between a “theory” and an “opinion.”

Indeed there is! I was being sarcastic towards Psychoanalysis. It is little more than opinion and what facts there are, for example the structures of the brain which explains more about a person’s actions than some nonsense about a latent desire for dear old Mum, came from the real medical field.

Your allegory to a device driver, source code, hardware and I/O are a perfect way to put it. The drawback to humans is that we lie, so the IO isn’t reliable, and if the device driver is flawed, what output there is may be the result of Psychosis. Then we have to consider what reality is, which Physics is grappling with. The question has been asked if all we perceive, (or you perceive, depending on which one of us is actually real, if either) is a simulation, holographic projection, or something other than what we view as reality. If what we experience is not real at all, then what if the psychotic mind has the ability to see bits of the “coding” that creates what we experience, or they can see glimpses of “the man behind the curtain” if you will? What if I could not only see the images and characters on my monitor, but had a defect that also allowed me to see the magnetic domains on the hard drive that creates what was on the monitor? I likely would not be able to understand what I was seeing, but they would be no less real. In fact, it could be argued that they are more real than what is seen on the monitor. This ability to see the magnetic domains would certainly cause me a great deal of difficulty and as my condition would be unbelievable and abnormal, I would be branded as such.

Real science agrees that E=M/C²

Not really. In fact, “Real science” agrees the opposite: E=M/C² is an oversimplifciation of the theory which only holds true……

You contradict yourself. E=MC2 is correct in that matter can be converted into energy and vice versa. The only possible variable would be the speed of light, and other than the bogus claim some years back that neutrinos travel faster. Everything has mass even massless particles because their mass is relativistic i.e., their relativistic energy /c2. Relativistic mass dilation also sets limits as to the speed of light. Indeed, the formula E=MC2 has been misapplied, but that does not detract from it.

Real science could not say in one case that drunk driving is the result of a deficient mind and in another, where wealth is involved, state that it is the result of being affluent.

This is like claiming it is impossible for a house to be painted white if owned by a poor man, but painted blue if owned by a rich man.

No, it’s like saying 2+2=4 unless you are wealthy enough then 2+2 can equal anything you want it to be. Of course this can’t be done because math is a constant, but psychoanalysis is not and therefore is a pseudoscience based not on proofs, but mere opinions.

You’re assuming that competence and salary go hand-in-hand.

Not at all, but more often than not salary and corruption do.

I agree that there are good lawyers and good Psychoanalysts. I’ve friends in both professions, but that doesn’t make their fields any nobler in my opinion, and certainly not in our time. If justice were truly fair, then every town and village would have its own courts and police made up of its citizens and it would be based on common law/common sense. No need for career lawyers or prosecutors and the judge would be a community vote for or against the accused or a one person judge who serves in much the same fashion as a person serves on a jury. The legal system in place today is a ruse and if psychoanalysis ever had a whit of believability, it lost it when it hitched its wagon to the legal and political field.

Best Regards.

[Anonymous]

@Joe_Temp

Brilliant Post.

[Anonymous]

Hey @michael1961, Did you think this thread was going to be this popular?

I neither expected it to take the turn that it did, or get the attention it has. It’s a great deviation from coding stresses for me as a newbie.

I appreciate the Mod’s letting it run.

[__]

Real science could not say in one case that drunk driving is the result of a deficient mind and in another, where wealth is involved, state that it is the result of being affluent.

This is like claiming it is impossible for a house to be painted white if owned by a poor man, but painted blue if owned by a rich man.

No, it’s like saying 2+2=4 unless you are wealthy enough then 2+2 can equal anything you want it to be.

Well, let me try to explain what I meant more clearly:

First, yes, I agree (for simplicity’s sake) that there is only one “correct” diagnosis in this case. To further illustrate, let us assume that corruption does not figure into our example. What I’m getting at is the flaw in the legal system (or, more to the point, in our culture), which allows a more wealthy person access to better representation and medical care. If the same defendant were poor, their psychological state might not be any different, but they would not have the resources to prove it (or, in many cases, to even suspect it).

E=MC2 is correct in that matter can be converted into energy and vice versa.

yes; agreed. See below.

…the formula E=MC2 has been misapplied, but that does not detract from it.

Again, “not an astrophysicist” (or mathematician), but e = mc² works only when the total (net) momentum for the system, relative to its frame of reference, is zero. Other factors appear in the equation when relative momentum must be considered. I don’t have my physics text anymore, but I found this on wikipedia:

(Maybe we’re both getting at the same point, here, but phrasing it differently…?)

There is also debate on whether or not mass-energy equivalence always holds true regardless: Stephen Hawking, for example, once postulated that conversion of energy fails under certain situations inside black holes. I believe he’s since reversed his opinion, though I don’t know if he’s found his proof yet.

If justice were truly fair, then every town and village would have its own courts and police made up of its citizens and it would be based on common law/common sense.

I understand the temptation of this view, but an individual’s “common sense” is not the same as a community’s (or a mob’s). “Common Law” is nothing more than unwritten customs and taboos. I don’t argue that our current system of justice is good (or even sufficient), but this model degrades into either a dictatorship (because only one/a few individuals care to take responsibility) or a vigilante system (because of mob mentality).

Your allegory to a device driver, source code, hardware and I/O are a perfect way to put it. The drawback to humans is that we lie, so the IO isn’t reliable, and if the device driver is flawed, what output there is may be the result of Psychosis…

Lying is not the only interference (and I don’t believe that it is the most significant, either): there is the simple fact that people have a hard time with metacognition, understanding what their “output” means or is caused by, and with explaining what parts of it they do. Psychology is a science that relies on art, in a way: the ability of a psychologist to ask productive questions and draw the connections between responses to reach a useful conclusion.

The science of psychiatry is even more obvious. Have you (or someone you know) ever been under the care of a psychiatrist for a serious condition? Treatment decisions are based on past experience in similar situations, and refined based on the observed results. Speaking from personal experience, it is almost frightening how much psychological diagnosis and treatment resemble trial-and-error… but it does follow the scientific method. Unlike mathematics, it’s a field that we do not have a mastery of.

[Anonymous]

Greetings traq,

I agree with your points above.

Best Regards.

[nixnerd]

Brilliant Post.

@michael1961 I don’t know anything… except that I cannot know :)

[__]

I don’t know anything… except that I cannot know :)

Really.

Prove it.

[nixnerd]

Prove it.

@Traq is actually right. I can’t.

I love this conversation. It just keeps going on and on. In the end, I’m wrong if I say I know anything… even that I know I cannot know. We are stuck in recursion here and we’re doomed to be wrong, regardless of what we say. The reason? There will NEVER come a time when we have enough evidence on anything to say that we definitively know.

You know what this is exactly like? The halting problem.

Basically, one program can NEVER tell you whether another will halt. The reason? There will never come a time when the inquiring program can definitively say “Yep… this program is never going to perform its intended calculation and will never halt. It’s just going to run forever.” How can that program KNOW that the other program wouldn’t have halted… if only given 5 more seconds?

P.S. The typing at the beginning of that video is undoubtedly a mechanical keyboard.

[Anonymous]

I know what I know (or believe that I do), I know what I don’t know, and I don’t know what I don’t know.

In essence, I’m a talentless hack who has made a comfortable life at it.
;)

[Author]

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