Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT: 2495-2499 (22-26 July, 2013) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread
zmeiat_joro:
--- Quote from: Nepiophage on 25 Jul 2013, 04:35 ---Homeopathic medicines are very useful. They provoke a placebo response without any danger of adverse side effects. I know a doctor who recommends them for that reason. Of course he doesn't tell that to the patients because then it wouldn't work.
--- End quote ---
There are products companies label homeopathic that do contain active ingredients, as was with the case of a nasal spray which contained Zinc and caused permanent loss of smell in some cases. I seem to recall, but I'm not actually sure, that due to them being labeled homeopathic and not actual medication, they were subject to less strict regulation than medication. So don't count on anything labeled homeopathic to be harmless. Not to mention the danger of people self-medicating with placebos for dangerous conditions, which they are encouraging by fostering in them the idea that homeopathy is not placebos.
Same for Chiropractice or whatever it's spelled -- beside their crackpot claims (on the same level as homeopathy), don't go to one instead of an actual physical therapist -- there have been numerous cases of severe spinal injury by "chiropracticers" (EDIT: I think they call themselves "chiropractors"), as they are not legally subject to licensing. Same with "nutritionist" rather than dietician -- the latter is subject to legal regulation in most places.
ZoeB:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 24 Jul 2013, 10:53 ---If lobsters sign up for the forum we will treat them with decency and respect.
--- End quote ---
Well said. And then I'd have to revise my definition of "person" to be more inclusive.
When the facts change, I change my opinions.
ZoeB:
--- Quote from: Carl-E on 24 Jul 2013, 22:53 ---Who says they're written? I think the AI is some kind of self-generating / replicating code. A complete personality is... way too complex to be authored.
--- End quote ---
Not authored - grown. Evolved. That's the one way we know how we can get emergent behaviour at the moment. Use a meta-genetic algorithm to optimise evolution of AI's. You end up with something that has the properties you want, but you have no idea how to get there from here. It has other properties too that you haven't considered.
That reminds me, I better get back to my thesis (on this very subject - experimental work).
See
Using Meta-Genetic Algorithms to tune parameters of Genetic Algorithms to find lowest energy Molecular Conformers
ZE Brain, MA Addicoat
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems
Optimization of a genetic algorithm for searching molecular conformer space
ZE Brain, MA Addicoat
The Journal of chemical physics 135 (17), 174106-174106-10
Optimization of a Genetic Algorithm for the Functionalization of Fullerenes
MA Addicoat, AJ Page, ZE Brain, L Flack, K Morokuma, S Irle
Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation 8 (5), 1841-1851
Using a Meta-GA for parametric optimization of simple GAs in the computational chemistry domain
MA Addicoat, ZE Brain
Proceedings of the 12th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation
jwhouk:
--- Quote from: J on 25 Jul 2013, 02:56 ---Did they ever actually get rid of Momo's old shell?
--- End quote ---
...You were thinking that too, hey?
GarandMarine:
Momo's old shell would be a fitting purgatory for May I think.
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