You seem to enjoy provided adjectives and/or extension to things
that I have posted.. I said it is OK to speculate. Then you say
that it is my opinion that it is OK to speculate "about irrational
things as though they were the truth". No. I just said that it
is OK to speculate. I don't feel that the individual who was
speculating was being overly irrational, and I certainly don't
think that he was under the impression that his speculation was
actually the 'truth'. Now - you knew some facts pertaining to
the subject, which you were kind enough to provide (in your own
'holier-than-thou' way), which may cause that person to change
his mind. In that way, he learns: his speculation was a good
thing for him.
I speculated further, and you offered no useful comments to my
speculation. My speculation has not yet served me one way or
the other.
By the way, was Einstein an idiot for doing all those
Gedankenexperimente? That's just speculation, right?
> I guess that is why no one in this email list is going to accuse
> you of being scientific or intelligent.
(Not that this appeal to authority matters (I wonder why you bring
it up) , but I was invited to join the list by one of the list
members. He accused me of exactly what you claimed noone from
the list would. Odd, huh?)
> > [clip of summary, the gist of which is: the non-REM-sleeping
> > echidna can function with an extremely large prefrontal cortex,
> > but other mammals get by having smaller brains and REM sleep.]
>
> YOu missed the point again. You are pretty stupid. How can you
> make conclusions before you have the facts?
I said the gist of the summary was such-and-such. Are claiming
that I did not read your summary? If I'm too stupid to under-
stand the gist of the summary, perhaps you could summarize it
yet further?
> > No - I cannot see how you come to that conclusion. The summary
> > you posted says nothing about the /mechanics/ of 'dreaming'
>
> Yes it did.
You will note that my comment was directed at your summary,
which did not talk about the mechanics of dreaming, even though
you claim it did. Perhaps the article did, but your summary
did not.
> Try reading that person's article instead of my summary.
> Can you do that all by yourself or would you like someone
> to hold your hand and read it for you?
That would be very nice, actually. A tall, sexy brunette would
do quite nicely. And the nearest library which has back issues
of Scientific American is a good forty miles away.
> > So, would you be opposed to the notion that the 'minds' contained
> > in these simple experimental neural networks developed 'dreaming'
> > in order to survive, and did so because, 'living' in such a tiny
> > neural structure, it had to 'evolve' a new 'brain mechanism'?
>
> It didn't evolve a new brain mechanism.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe a direct quote from your
summary included that humans, with the smaller cranial capacity,
had to "develop a new brain mechanism". You can argue about my
replacing 'develop' with 'evolve', but that's a small matter of
semantics that does not touch on the real issue.
Do you have any opinion at all as to why the experimental neural
networks behave in such a way, or is any speculation about it at
all to be scoffed at?
> > Or, is that mindless speculation akin to new-age theology?
>
> If it was, it would be at your level or "reasoning".
Even so, you didn't answer the question.
- JPSchneider
- jschneid@hanoverdirect.com