Retitled: Modern philosophers are full of it!

[Asher]

Your problem is you don't understand how pervasive computers are in today's world, and you lack the intellectual capacity to have any kind of real insight or foresight.

Computers are more than PCs or calculators, and nothing would make me happier than for you to realize how much you and most Western people depend on "computers" in today's modern era.

This is a prime example why the whole field of modern Philosophy is a waste -- the people who study it are out of touch with reality. They spend all of their time navel gazing and discussing **** that really doesn't matter that they don't understand the real world around them. They're aimless, brainless drains on educational funding. Sack their asses and make them Get Real.

If they're too stupid to comprehend the importance of computers and the internet in modern society, why should we trust them for anything else?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Odin
GePap under-rating the impact of computers:

You and Asher grossly over=estimating the impact.

For at least half of humanity computers mean nothing, since I have yet to see any study claimig computers have in any substantial way have improved the efficiency of distributing basic goods and services.

For most of the other half computers are one way, thought not mainly the most important way, of communicating more efficiently-even there this is simply a signficant imporve over what used to be, but not a quantum leap. Certainly for many institutions the imporved data storage and retreival is vitally important, this being very true for financial institutions, but hell, most medical data for example is still on paper.

Simple fact- my being able to get any piece of data I want from anywhere in the world immidiately will still affect my life less than how I get the basics for life in my hands on a daily basis. And computers have only just began to challenge the importance of other communications mediums, like phones, or mediums like TV and radio.

So computer geeks need to get out of their rooms, look around, realize most of humanity doesn't have a modem, and get a clue.

[Asher]

Simple fact- my being able to get any piece of data I want from anywhere in the world immidiately will still affect my life less than how I get the basics for life in my hands on a daily basis. And computers have only just began to challenge the importance of other communications mediums, like phones, or mediums like TV and radio.

You don't get it, do you?

Computers are phones, TV, and radio now. Computers are communication.

What do you think made the global telecommunications network a reality? Why do you think AT&T invented the C programming language and Unix?

You're simply too naive and too stupid to understand more than the superficial image of the computers as the PC with a Hotmail account. You don't understand the kind of breakthroughs that computers enable in terms of research in virtually every field of study, to the improvement of quality of life across the board, to the importance of real-time, global communication and information exchange. You don't understand the importance of Information, and how computers have revolutionized the exchange and storage of information. They are a catalyst for so much more than porn and ways for you to play games instead of doing your job.

And I suppose it's not surprising, IIRC you work in the government in some effect, and we know all about the qualified people that beurocratic mess hires.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Asher
Your problem is you don't understand how pervasive computers are in today's world, and you lack the intellectual capacity to have any kind of real insight or foresight.

Computers are more than PCs or calculators, and nothing would make me happier than for you to realize how much you and most Western people depend on "computers" in today's modern era.

This is a prime example why the whole field of modern Philosophy is a waste -- the people who study it are out of touch with reality. They spend all of their time navel gazing and discussing **** that really doesn't matter that they don't understand the real world around them. They're aimless, brainless drains on educational funding. Sack their asses and make them Get Real.

If they're too stupid to comprehend the importance of computers and the internet in modern society, why should we trust them for anything else?

I guess basic classes in tact are left out of your curriculum.

As for how much I depend on computers- we all heard the silly 2000 scare. Of couse I don;t know about massive banks of computers holding large amounts of data for corporations, financial institutions, academic institutions, government dadabases, transportation hubs, and all that-of course I forget that these remain the most important computers out there...yep. Silly me.

Idiot.

The point, which fails to get to you since it forces you to realize there is a world out there beyond you sad pathetic self (something you might notice if you did some navel-gazing because then you would realize the shallowness of your soul and your general insignificance in the universe) is that all that information could be stored in yet another medium anyways. It would be more expensive, more cumbersome, and less useful, but it could still be there.

The question becomes, when do quantitative changes become qualitative changes. When does the ability to store, sort, and move information faster and easier becomes such a radical change that it changes the form of information itself, the very way human beings interact with information. THAT is the question.

My assertion, which you have challenged only with meaningless platitudes towards the future (which are meaningless because society could collapse in the next 50 years for all we know), is that as of yet, the quantitative change has not yet become so vast as to qualify as a qualitative change. This being very much unlike inventions like the railroads, or cars, in which the quantitative change of increased and improved transporation of everything (because you can load information unto trains as well) were so vast and rapid that it was obviously a qualitative change very soon, and this is seen clearly by the vast changes in the distribution of mankind.

NOw do you get it, or will you continue to diminish yourself with nthing more than insults lacking in even the most basic parts of actual debate?

Maybe if you paid better attention in humanities classes you would know how to do it.

[Kuciwalker]

Simple fact: the only reason you can make a call to California from New York is because of the computer.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Simple fact: the only reason you can make a call to California from New York is because of the computer.

Are you high? I think the fact people laid telephone wire between the two places and then set up operators to handle telephone calls is actually what made that possible, and IIRC, that happened before the invention of the vacuum tube.

[Asher]

The point, which fails to get to you since it forces you to realize there is a world out there beyond you sad pathetic self (something you might notice if you did some navel-gazing because then you would realize the shallowness of your soul and your general insignificance in the universe) is that all that information could be stored in yet another medium anyways. It would be more expensive, more cumbersome, and less useful, but it could still be there.

The word you're looking for is "completely impractical".

The world isn't a Philosophy or Humanities classroom, GePap.

In the real world, we depend on computers. Computers are everywhere.

I'll say this again because it's the core truth of this discussion: You are not intellectually capable of understanding the importance of computers and what they have enabled. That much is patently clear to me, and I'm sure most other people who have any reasonable knowledge about their pervasiveness.

The fact that you called databases "dadabases" screams more than we need to know about your gross incompetence with the issue.

Go back to counting beans like a good civil servant, and leave the thinking to the big boys.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by GePap
Are you high? I think the fact people laid telephone wire between the two places and then set up operators to handle telephone calls is actually what made that possible, and IIRC, that happened before the invention of the vacuum tube.

Actually that's incorrect. You need a lot of signal amplification to carry it across the continent - vacuum tubes couldn't handle it, they produced too much heat. Hence the transistor, developed by Bell Labs.

In fact, the transistor is why AT&T kept their monopoly - they were the only ones who could provide telephone communication across the entire United States.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

In fact, the transistor is why AT&T kept their monopoly - they were the only ones who could provide telephone communication across the entire United States.

You are still wrong. That is why transistors were crucial to making a call, not computers. Transistors themselves are not computers.

[Kuciwalker]

Arrangements of transistors are effectively computers.

(For that matter so are arrangements of vacuum tubes...)

Anyway, it certainly isn't something a philosopher could design

[Asher]

Originally posted by GePap
You are still wrong. That is why transistors were crucial to making a call, not computers. Transistors themselves are not computers.

Transistors were the beginning of the computer revolution -- they are the building blocks of computers.

Please, GePap, spare yourself further indignity. A man who calls databases dadabases is in no position to argue about computers, let alone their importance. To do so requires some basic understanding of computers, perhaps even on a high-school level.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Asher

The word you're looking for is "completely impractical".

The world isn't a Philosophy or Humanities classroom, GePap.

In the real world, we depend on computers. Computers are everywhere.

NOt really. I doubt I will find many in the middle of the Congolose jungle, or the Australian outback or the Sahel. I will find automobiles there though.

I'll say this again because it's the core truth of this discussion: You are not intellectually capable of understanding the importance of computers and what they have enabled. That much is patently clear to me, and I'm sure most other people who have any reasonable knowledge about their pervasiveness.

The fact that you called databases "dadabases" screams more than we need to know about your gross incompetence with the issue.

Go back to counting beans like a good civil servant, and leave the thinking to the big boys.

You have proven yourself the true intellectual pygmy you are. Congrats.

All you had to do is try, just try, to argue using evidence and logic, why the quantitative changes made by computers in the efficiency of data movement equal a qualitative change in the manner human beings interact with their world, or even with data itself. You did not even try.

Pathetic, trully pathetic.

[Kuciwalker]

The Cold War was due to computers

[GePap]

Originally posted by Asher

Transistors were the beginning of the computer revolution -- they are the building blocks of computers.

And yet, not computers, anymore than a piston, being a critical part of any engine is an internal combustion engine in itself.

Is basic logic that difficult for you, really?

See, its this simple:

Transistor =/ computer

Wow. Deep.

[Asher]

Originally posted by GePap
NOt really. I doubt I will find many in the middle of the Congolose jungle, or the Australian outback or the Sahel. I will find automobiles there though.

The average automobile has dozens of computers.

All you had to do is try, just try, to argue using evidence and logic, why the quantitative changes made by computers in the efficiency of data movement equal a qualitative change in the manner human beings interact with their world, or even with data itself. You did not even try.

Pathetic, trully pathetic.

How can I argue about the importance of computers when the person on the other side has clearly demonstrated their agenda of bias and general stupidity?

You don't even understand the word "databases", let alone the importance of data, let alone the importance of information.

There are some people that just aren't worth the time to explain something to if you know in your heart they're too stupid or too stubborn to understand.

You're very much correct that this is pathetic, that someone arguing about "dadabases" and the future of artificial life has such a primitive understanding of computer and modern information and its value to society.