Yawn - yet another election. Wake me up when it's all over. :rolleyes:
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Yawn - yet another election. Wake me up when it's all over. :rolleyes:
Boring Sidney, Boring....
This thread is intersting and funny.
It's over now - so I've woken up :wave:Quote:
Originally Posted by 2kaud
and a Happy New Year to all :wave:
Half a score and seven years ago Tom brought forth upon this forum a new thread dedicated to the proposition that this thread is boring.
It is still boring.
The yawnfullness is terrific!
This thread illustrates the so called symbol grounding problem very well. It does not have to define boring because it is self-explanatory boring.
It is self-defining.
I'll keep my reply as boring as possible. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by 2kaud
The symbol grounding problem is new to me. I came across it while checking out the issue of consciousness in Artificial Intelligence. It is argued that for an AI to be conscious it cannot rely on a self-contained dictionary of symbols that are explained together in relation to each other. Instead at least some symbols must be self-explanatory, that is grounded in some sort of tangible reality. For the boring thread to ground boring it must evoke the sensation of boredom in the AI who/which then can associate the symbol boring with the actual feeling of being bored.
Apparently with grounded information human level consciousness in AI can be achieved. Quite scary to have machines with a sense of self comparable to ours. I doubt it's even desirable. It raises ethical questions. Do they have human rights or are they our slaves? And exactly how do we benefit from their intelligence? Say they have a much higher IQ than the average human. Practically it means they are much better at solving Raven Matrix puzzles than humans but how do we benefit from that? Ordinary computers executing algorithms will still outdo AI-machines with high IQ. Running algorithms fast is not the strength of human intelligence no matter how high the IQ. But couldn't such AI-machines use their high IQ to invent better algorithms? Unfortunately most real problems are NP-hard and take almost infinite time to solve. No genius, man or machine, can change that because it's a law of nature that sets an upper limit to computing just as it does with speed (you cannot travel faster than light). Admittedly the limit for computing is not yet proved but very likely.
So to me, machines with human style intelligence seems like a dead end. In fact even human style intelligence itself may be a dead end. It is an ongoing evolutionary experiment with an unknown outcome. We consider ourselves the crown of creation but our intelligence may very well enable us to destroy our habitat Earth. If we manage to self-destruct and go extinct, evolution will just unceremoniously remove intelligence from its list of promising traits and continue without us as if we never existed.
That post was too interesting for this thread...zzzzzzzzzzz.
Sorry for that, I'll try another topic. Hopefully the one I have in mind will be a better fit. It should because one of its most influential figures goes by the name of Mr. Bohr.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Frohman
I'm talking about Quantum Mechanics. QM is a subject I've never managed to understand but now I at least understand why I don't understand it. It's because I've never realized that there are several competing interpretations of QM and I've always only come across the dominant one, the so called Copenhagen interpretation. It states that there exist no particles in the classical sense, only wave-functions; A physical particle is a wave-function meaning that nature is fundamentally probabilistic. I find it hard to believe.
I'm aware of the quote attributed to Einstein that "God does not play dice" but I've always thought he said so because he had gotten old and couldn't grasp QM. But now I understand that Einstein's critique has lived on and resulted in several alternatives to the Copenhagen interpretation. I'm particularly interested in the one by David Bohm. Here a particle is a classical particle. The particle is affected by a classical field but also by a quantum field and these together satisfy the Schrödinger equation with the same results as with the Copenhagen interpretation.
Fine but what is a quantum field? I don't know. Introducing it doesn't solve the mystery of QM but in the Bohm interpretation at least a particle is a particle and not some statistical ghost - and that's good enough for me.
https://aeon.co/ideas/what-einstein-...-not-play-dice
ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Boring would be preferable to the year 2020.
Please....
What...............
There was once a horse, which headed towards a Hill. It started to climb the hill and find out whats on the other side. It started climbing up and up and up. One day he finally reached the crest of the hill but he found out it was only the military crest, so he kep on climbing. Once he reached the actual crest, he took a peak on the other side and found himself where he started, so he started climbing down and down and down.....
stop boring, just play games))
I hope you mean playing boring games?)
I have to say... this place is the life of the party :) .
Well either it's a really boring party or this thread isn't meeting it's objectives........
Are there any US developers here living in Atlanta?
Here in the UK, our BBC still offers a teletext service with world news & weather etc. And I've often noticed that the weather for Atlanta seems to be almost permanent thunderstorms!!
That's gotta be a boring place to live :lol:
This is boring. Boring,Sydney, Boring.
Tom, you started a legendary thread, it's been around for two decades!
Still Boring
snoozefest
Hi guys! It's been a long while since I've posted around here but thought I'd fly by and let you know I have two books that just published. Check out the new edition of C++ for Dummies (8th edition). I stepped in and updated that previous edition to C++ 2026 - yeah, big update - so big they had to shift a few things out to bonus chapters. Its focus is modern C++, so it uses print more so than cout. If any of you check out a copy, let me know what you think (you can find me). If you really like it, post a review. If you have issues with it, just let me know and forego the review! I did this book through Wiley - it is a Dummies book after all!
I also just self-published a book I'd really like to get feedback on. It's called "The Leadership Spark: The Hidden Laws That Shape Leaders and Their Teams". This is one you should read even if you aren't a leader. If you work for a company, get them to buy you a copy. Tell them it will make you a better employee for the company - I believe it will. Again - I'd be interested in hearing what some of you think about the book.
I'll stop now. I'm liable to turn the boring thread into something exciting. :D
(Hopefully whoever is running this forum now won't ban me for this post. I did, after all write a good chuck of the articles and the blog posts on the Codeguru site afterall. :) I do wish, however, they'd update those feature links in the ad column on this forum. I posted those a decade ago. It's time someone update them!
AI Overview
The Leadership Spark: The Hidden Laws That Shape Leaders and Their Teams by Bradley L. Jones (released March 10, 2026) outlines actionable "laws" governing team dynamics, culture, and decision-making, designed as practical diagnostic tools rather than theoretical advice. It covers influence, communication, and performance, providing insights for leaders to accelerate team effectiveness and avoid burnout.
Get it here-> https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Sp.../dp/B0GQNKDVVW
Brad - we still treat spammers rather poorly around here:wave: