What are the odds 7 dice roll a higher number than 8 dice?

7 dice wins 129007254816 vs. 8 dice... 316648728585

129007254816 rolls of the 470184984576 rolls. Or 27.437553101%

    
    static final int SIDES = 6;
    static final int MINROLL = 1;
    
    public long combinatoricaldice(int d0, int d1) {    
        int[] dist0 = convolvedistribution(d0);
        int[] dist1 = convolvedistribution(d1);
        long wins = combdice(dist0,dist1);
        System.out.println(d0 + " dice wins " + wins + " vs. " + d1 + " dice.");
        return wins;
    }
    
    public int[] convolvedistribution(int dice) {
        int[] roll = new int[((SIDES -1 + MINROLL) * dice) + 1];
        for (int i = 0; i < SIDES; i++) {
            roll[i + MINROLL] = 1;
        }
        return convolvedistribution(roll,dice-1, new int[roll.length]);
    }
    public int[] convolvedistribution(int[] roll, int dice, int[] temp) {
        if (dice == 0) return roll;
        Arrays.fill(temp, 0);
        for (int i = 0, s = roll.length; i < s; i++) {
            for (int q = i + MINROLL, m = i + SIDES + MINROLL; q < m && q < s; q++) {
                temp[q] += roll[i];
            }
        }
        System.arraycopy(temp, 0, roll, 0, temp.length);
        return convolvedistribution(roll, dice-1, temp);
    }
    
    public long combdice(int[] sumdistribution0, int[] sumdistribution1) {
        long winning = 0;
        for (int m = 0; m < sumdistribution0.length; m++) {
            long s0 = (long) sumdistribution0[m];
            long winsagainst = Arrays.stream(sumdistribution1).limit(m).sum();
            winning += (s0 * winsagainst);
        }
        return winning;
    }
    
    
    

    public boolean incrementDice(int[] dice) {
        for (int m = 0; m < dice.length; m++) {
            if ((dice[m] - MINROLL) + 1 < SIDES) {
                dice[m]++;
                for (m = m - 1; m >= 0; m--) {
                    dice[m] = MINROLL;
                }
                return true;
            }
        }
        return false;
    }
    public int[] sumdistribution(int d0) {
        int[] dice = new int[d0];
        Arrays.fill(dice, MINROLL);
        
        int[] dist = new int[((SIDES - 1 + MINROLL)*d0) + 1];
        do {
            int sum0 = Arrays.stream(dice).sum();
            dist[sum0]++;
        } while (incrementDice(dice));
        return dist;
    }

Conway's BufferedImageOp of Life

    protected class ConwayImageOp implements BufferedImageOp {

        @Override
        public BufferedImage filter(BufferedImage bi, BufferedImage bout) {
            int width = bi.getWidth();
            int height = bi.getHeight();
            int[] rgbArray = new int[bi.getWidth() * bi.getHeight()];
            int[] modArray = new int[bi.getWidth() * bi.getHeight()];
            rgbArray = bi.getRGB(0, 0, bi.getWidth(), bi.getHeight(), rgbArray, 0, bi.getWidth());
            int peer;
            int x, y, xr, yr;
            int[][] karray = {
                {-1, -1}, {-1, 0}, {-1, 1},
                {0,  -1},           {0, 1},
                {1, -1},  {1, 0},   {1,  1}
            };

            for (int index = 0, mi = rgbArray.length; index < mi; index++) {                
                int[] counts = new int[24];
                x = index % bi.getWidth();
                y = index / bi.getWidth();
                for (int m = 0, q = karray.length; m < q; m++) {
                    if (karray[m] != null) {
                        xr = x + karray[m][0];
                        yr = y + karray[m][1];

                        if ((karray[m] != null) && (((xr >= 0) && (yr >= 0) && (xr < width) && (yr < height)))) {
                            peer = rgbArray[(yr * width) + xr];
                            for (int i = 0; i < 24; i++) {
                                if (((peer >> i) & 1) == 1) counts[i]++;
                            }
                        }

                    }
                }
                int current = rgbArray[index];
                int conway = 0;
                for (int pix = 0; pix < 24; pix++) {
                    conway |=  (Conway(((current >> pix) & 1), counts[pix]) << pix);
                }
                modArray[index] = conway | 0xFF000000;
            }
            bout.setRGB(0, 0, bout.getWidth(), bout.getHeight(), modArray, 0, bout.getWidth());
            return bout;
        }
        
        int Conway(int current, int sum) {
            if (sum == 3) return 1;
            if ((current == 1) && (sum == 2)) return 1;
            return 0;
        }

        @Override
        public Rectangle2D getBounds2D(BufferedImage bi) {
            return null;
        }

        @Override
        public BufferedImage createCompatibleDestImage(BufferedImage bi, ColorModel cm) {
            return new BufferedImage(bi.getWidth(), bi.getHeight(), BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
        }

        @Override
        public Point2D getPoint2D(Point2D pd, Point2D pd1) {
            return null;
        }

        @Override
        public RenderingHints getRenderingHints() {
            return null;
        }
    }

Conway's Game of Life In 24 Dimensions.

http://www.gfycat.com/GraciousBlankFrenchbulldog

Smart Sharpen

Smart Sharpen, threshold color sharpen operation. In case you want to avoid mussing up the edges in an image, but you want to make it *really* hard to compress for basically no reason.

Preserves the important bits, causes the unimportant bits to be oversharpened.







Original:

On Islam and Culture

Too many people think religion is the core of their identity and they grossly underestimate the impact of culture. As an American atheist, I have more in common with American Christians and American Muslims than even British atheists or British Christians or British Muslims. Put a few representative peoples in a room and see how long it takes to identify them. The American would spot the American long before any religions matter. -- Yeah, there's a region in the world where Jihad is a cultural thing and yes it's fed by the religion but the idea that I should fear American Muslims is absurd.

Muslim is a much smaller cultural difference than American is. We should not fear them because they are American. There's a region of the world where FGM is practiced and it's largely from the local culture. While the religion tends to defend it with various parts of the Hadith. And it ends up in like Indonesia and Malaysia as a purely Islamic rite, it's still all culture (of which religion is a component) but it's a much smaller component than American Christians would like to believe. Christianity isn't all liberal and reformed, it's just culturally we are all children of the enlightenment.

It's pretty easy to envision a world where the roles are reversed. Where America was completely Muslim and took basically none of the Koran seriously but embraced enlightenment values and the Middle East was entirely Christian executing people for apostasy and stoning women to death in honor killings, with large members of ignorant fundamentalist embracing Crusade.

Olsen Noise Source Code in Java.

http://pastebin.com/gh6P5zf3


Use http://pastebin.com/fy7fV16C instead.

See: http://godsnotwheregodsnot.blogspot.com/2015/02/olsen-noise-2d-java-code-updated.html

I have it autonormalizing. Because Olsen Noise doesn't artifact it's plenty doable to have the noise routine, fall into a specific range across all pixels by design. In this case it will always be between 0 and 255. Due to the random additions being at the exact bit level of the maxiterations and the max iterations at 7. Due to the blur and random speckling again it will likely fall into a gaussian distribution at around 128.

The math at the beginning is kind of confusing what it's doing. I changed it from recursive to iterative. So to figure out the base case it needs to iterate down to the base case. There may however be a way to solve the recursive problem directly and figure out what the window size is any given iteration. But, for now it does (v/2)-1 for all the lows (applying floor due to integer division) and 1 -(-v/2)) for all the highs (that double negative is there to make it a ceiling op).

It creates too many int[][] objects. One for upsample, One for Blur, and One for trim, each of the 7 iterations. So 21 such objects. I think it can be done with 3.

Update: Blur object can be removed by subdividing the blur into length then width (and division). The two pass solution allows for the same int[][] object that stores the value for blurring to be the same object the blur is passed into.

2/15 Update: The trim isn't really even needed as if you properly use a 1d array to store it and skip around with a stride, you can avoid trimming as most images will accept that you can give them more pixels and tell them where they properly are in the image (thus doing the trim) 

One of the more important things about this is at some particular iteration it can't know from its current position where it is actually located in the iteration above it. It actually needs to calculate the x0,y0 and x1,y1 positions and compare that to the current location Scaled and Translated into where it would normally be and use that to calculate the offset it's what  this: xoff = -2*((nx/2)) + nx + 1; actually does. It figures out from the next x, whether when the data is moved into the trimmed matrix should it be shifted somewhere. Without these calculations, you'll still get noise, it just won't be stable.

I should update or make a new javascript demo in both 2 and 3d. It would be hard to have it melt through time to show the 3D version off. 

Wrapping should be possible. It could be done at Q*(2^I) in any With iterations of 7 that's 128 and any multiples of 128.  Upsample would be unaffected by the random additions would need to know to wrap and the the blur would need to know that it wraps around the edge rather than truncates the edges.

Update: -- Originally had source code pasted here. It exists in the slashed out paste bin if you need it. But, It's old see --
http://godsnotwheregodsnot.blogspot.com/2015/02/olsen-noise-2d-java-code-updated.html

Absolute Certainty.

Ignorance of Ignorance is the only thing in absolute certainty.

Joss Wheton's Firefly, "Objects in Space" as a modern chiasmus.

The Firefly episode "Objects in Space" is a chaismus. It follows an overt chaistic structure.  Also called an inclusio or a sometimes a Markian sandwich in the Gospel of Mark.

Today most of our examples follow short literary phrases. But, having a total chaistic structure in a large work was not uncommon. The Gospel or Mark apparently has one. But, they are rare today, and we don't teach it much as a literary form.

They are where each part of the beginning parallels the end, with the second part paralleling the penultimate part. And the third part paralleling the ante-penultimate part. It has modernly been ignored, outside of short literary phrases and not as an entire works of media as a sort of meaning palindrome. But, "Objects in Space" certainly fits pattern. Which is a rarity.

While some of the links might be a byproduct of simply trying to mirror the characters of River and Early as being both alike in their in their form but different in their intents and desires. Looking at the characters at their literal object self, you still get a sort of crazy psychic assassin created by the Alliance with preternatural shooting abilities faster than the crew.

Structure of the Episode

• Objects floating in space.
• Crew interactions (disjointed)
• Early Descent
• Discussion about River.
• Kaylee is scared.
• Early boards Serenity.
• Wanders the ship / deals with crew.
• River becomes Serenity.
• Kaylee is brave.
• Discussion about Early.
• River Descent
• Crew interactions (united).
• Objects floating in space.

Some site I used to reference a Richard Carrier answer from seems gone (Tapee3i)

So I loaded up the way back machine and snagged the interview.

I had cited it in my life changes through various media thing before.

I totally wouldn't post it here, but I'm worried it might vanish forever.




tabee3i a home for Metaphysical Naturalists
By: Enki, November 5th, 2009

Richard Carrier Richard Carrier is a world-recognized atheist philosopher, teacher, and historian. He holds a Ph.D in Greco-Roman intellectual history from Columbia University. He is best-known as the author of Sense and Goodness without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism, and for his writings in the Secular Web (also known as the Internet Infidel) where he stayed the editor-in-chief for several years (now emeritus). He is a major contributor to The Empty Tomb and was also featured in the documentary film: The God Who Wasn't There. Dr. Carrier has published many articles in books, magazines and journals and made many appearances across the US and on national television defending sound historical methods and the ethical worldview of secular naturalism.

I have contacted Dr. Carrier and asked him about Metaphysical Naturalism, Christianity, atheism in the Middle East, his political opinions, and personal life.

1- First, let me start by thanking you again for your time. Looking at the various definitions of 'nature' or 'natural' that Keith Augustine has discussed in his thesis "A Defense of Naturalism", I would love to hear your version of the definition.

I discuss this very thoroughly, with entertaining examples, here: Defining the Supernatural I also have a forthcoming paper in Free Inquiry on the very issue of defining naturalism (perhaps next year, it's been languishing in their queue for years already, title "On Defining Naturalism as a Worldview," by last report will appear in the April/May issue of 2010, but it's been bumped before and may again).

2- One of atheism's strengths is being the default position in which it's not a claim but rather a response to a claim. Do you think this strength might get weakened as metaphysical naturalism is not only an assertion about what exists but it goes beyond that to a worldview?

I see it as entirely the other way around: mere atheism is the weaker position.

First, you can't go through life without a complete worldview, so in actual fact you have one whether you know it or not (unless you are insane, although often even then), so if you try to go around like a mere atheist, you are de facto going around with a completely unexamined, ill-tested, un-thought-out worldview, which you might not even be aware of even though you rely on it daily. On the one hand, Christians can take advantage of this fact. If they have thought their worldview through better than you have, they can easily expose the failures of yours, which leads to a serious weakness in mere atheism (as I'll explain in a moment). On the other hand, it's just dumb. You shouldn't be going around with a completely unexamined, ill- tested, un-thought-out worldview. Even if there were no religions. Thus, I say, stop doing that and start examining, testing, and thinking out your worldview, instead of pretending you don't have one.

I think the fear is that having a worldview commitment is equated with dogmatism and certainty, which is a fallacy. You can have a tentative worldview, with various components in various stages of uncertainty, and often revise your worldview without embarrassment (scientists do it all the time), even rest from time to time on unresolved sets of options at some points, but you still must have (and do have, whether you know it or not) some idea of the hierarchy of probabilities and possibilities. Even if one element of your worldview is highly uncertain, you are epistemically obligated to make sure it's still the most probable element of all known alternatives. Likewise, if you are unsure between, say, three different ways to answer a question, and so go around assuming any one of them may be correct, you are still epistemically obligated to make sure these options are not only the most probable of all known options but that they are equally probable to each other, otherwise you should be leaning in the direction of the most probable one, to some degree at least. If you do not do this, you will succumb to the folly of assuming all possible answers to a question are equally probable, which is not only nuts, it's a fallacy Christians routinely exploit.

Second, the modern Christian apologetic amounts to this: we have better explanations of all the so-far scientifically unexplained phenomena of the world than you do, therefore it is irrational not to see our worldview as presently the most probably correct. Taking a position of mere atheism is not only of no use against that apologetic, it's actually immediately defeated by it. There is only one way to validly respond to it. You have to prove the central premise false: they do not have better explanations of all the so- far scientifically unexplained phenomena of the world than we do. You can do this by agnostically articulating several equally good explanations, but at some point that just becomes pedantic and naive, because if you really did it competently, you'd realize even those "equally good" explanations, all of them, are defeated by an explanation that is in fact better. Thus, agnosticism is defeated by naturalism. Therefore it is agnosticism (and equivalently weak atheism) that is the weaker argument, not the other way around. And just as naturalism defeats agnosticism, it also a fortiori defeats Christianity by using their own apologetic against them: no, sir, in point of fact we have better explanations of all the so-far scientifically unexplained phenomena of the world than you do, therefore it is irrational not to see our worldview as presently the most probably correct.

I think the common mistake is to assume that claiming this is equivalent to declaring dogmatic certainty in naturalism. But that's the same fallacy I pointed out above. Saying naturalism is the most probably correct worldview on present evidence (and IMO, it is so by a large margin, no other competitor even comes close, a fact that isn't always obvious to those not well informed of the actual facts) merely means it is more probable than alternatives, not that it is itself decisively or undeniably certain. "More probable" does not mean "100%," or even "80%." It just means more. If the next most probable worldview is 20% probable, naturalism need only be 55% likely to be vastly more credible. I'm just making up numbers. But you see my point. Showing that we have better explanations for each peculiar fact is enough to refute Christianity. We need not assert that those explanations are therefore true, only that of all explanations so far conceived, those are far more likely to be correct than any others. That may change tomorrow as new information comes, showing some other explanation even more credible still. But right now, we ought to believe what the evidence makes most likely. And once you realize that naturalism has a better explanation of everything than Christianity, you'll realize it has a better explanation of everything than any other worldview. Which leads to only one rational conclusion: we all should be naturalists. At least for now. Maybe future evidence will change our minds, but we have to go on what we know now. Leave the future for later.

New Theme.

The black was a drag. So I posted very happy rainy day theme instead.

3D Olsen Noise

Java Source Code: http://godsnotwheregodsnot.blogspot.com/2015/02/olsen-noise-2d-java-code-updated.html


So I made a newer noise algorithm beyond fractal diamond squared noise. I previously removed the limitations on size and the memory issues, allowing proper paging.

Now I got rid of the diamond squared bit, and the artifacts it produces. As well as allowed the algorithm to be quickly expanded into multiple dimensions.

http://www.gfycat.com/SecondhandDimpledGull

Basically rather than double the size, apply the diamond elements, apply the square elements.

You upsample increasing the size of each pixel to 2x in each dimension. Add noise to every pixel reducing it depending on the iteration iteration (my current reduction is Noise / (iteration + 1)). Apply a box blur (though any blur would work).  And it's all done in my infinite field scoping scheme, wherein the base case is pure randomness, and each later case is recursively scoped.

Update 9/22: The Java Source Code and Demo have Noise reduction of +bit@iteration. So Iteration 7 flags the 7th bit, so +128 or +0. 6th bit, +64, +0. -- Doing this allows it to skip normalization as the end result will *always* fall between 255 & 0.

No more artifacts, and the algorithm would quickly implement on GPU hardware, doesn't change at N-dimensions.

Update: While the algorithm was actually made with GPU hardware in mind, and would very quickly implement exactly as diamond squared would not. -- It does change at N-dimensions. In that more of the roughness flows into the additional dimensions. Rather than average over 9 somewhat random pixels at a given level it will be the average of 27. Each level meaning it will be much closer to the mean. You might still get desired effects by reducing the number of iterations. 

I've also confirmed that a 2d slice of 3d noise is the same as a 2d bit of noise. Since it's fractal this should be expected. I don't think you can, do things like turbulence bump-mapping like with simplex noise, because the absolute value of Olsen Noise, is pretty much again just fractal noise. Fractals are fun like that.

Update: It's this fact about Olsen Noise that initially lead to my false confirmation of the noise. If you normalize it, regardless whether it's excessively smooth or not. It will look like identical noise. If you want to go that route, then the noise won't change at 2d to 3d. Because the narrower ranged 3d noise will be zoomed in on, and give the same appearance of roughness.

And since the noise is scoping, you can map it out in N-dimensions. So not only could you make it go around corners without hard edges, like this paper is so happy with itself for doing. You simply go from wanting a 1x500x500 slice at 0,0 to wanting a 500x1x500 slice at 0,500. It would by definition be seamless.



And unlike other noise algorithms its' fast and *simple*. In fact, it's a number of simplifications of diamond-squared noise all rolled up in an infinite package (which is itself a simplified bit).


One can reduce the iterations with distance, far enough away from you, you have 4 block sections, which are the same as the close bits but dropping an iteration.

Update: Reducing the iteration in the demo can be seen as sampling at 2x2 the value. It's basically the same cost. You don't need to do the full size and reduce, you can just request the area scaled down by 2x2 at 1 fewer iterations.

Sampled at 1:5
http://www.gfycat.com/ImpressionableShinyFlounder

Sampled at 1:20
http://www.gfycat.com/KnobbyBlissfulFairyfly


Wrapping:

If it were mission critical to have the noise wrap like old diamond squared noise, this could be done if the deterministic hash of the x,y,z...,iteration was taken as the x MOD wrap, y MOD wrap, z MOD wrap with regard to iteration  you would likely need to scope the wrapping. So if you wanted it to wrap with iterations equal to 7 (all my given examples here are iterations of 7), and wrap at 100. Your deterministic random hash function to give you random offsets modded at 100. Then at the call for iteration 6 have your deterministic random hash function give you random offsets looped at 51. And this would be independent of your requested set of pixels. It would do the recursive scope to make sure the the random variables given sync up. But, you could do awesome things like wrap at a specific (and different, x, y, and z). So you could make noise that wraps horizontally at 1000 but vertically at 50. In theory. I haven't managed to get it to work and there could be some kind of desyncing that happens when one iteration is looping at 16 and the next at 31. It might require a multiple of 2 for the wrapping. Or even a 2^(max iteration) wrapping or nothing at all.

Wrapping is left to later. I'll settle for better than everything else.

Smoothness:
Smoothness is mostly a product of the number of iterations along with the drop off rate of the randomness.

http://www.gfycat.com/LateRevolvingBlackmamba

Update: Algorithm Outline.
It occurs to me that I should have provided some pseudocode.


getTerrain(x0,y0,x1,y1,iterations) {
    if (iterations == 0) return maxtrixOf(random numbers);
    map = getTerrain(floor(x0/2) - 1, floor(y0/2) - 1, ceiling(x1/2), ceiling(y1/2), iterations-1);
    make a newmap twice as large.
    upsample map into newmap
    apply blur to newmap.
    add deterministic random offset to all values in newmap (decreasing each iterator)
    return requested area from within newmap. (This is typically newmap from [1,(n-1)] [1,(n-1])
}

Update: Actual Java Source Code.
http://godsnotwheregodsnot.blogspot.com/2014/09/olsen-noise-source-code-in-java.html


Update: Demo.
http://tatarize.nfshost.com/OlsenNoise.htm

Update: 3D Noise Source Code, With Commenting.
http://pastebin.com/WJVyDxDR

I don't really have a title here, but I was on a roll somewhere.

I am somewhere on the net defending the notion that Nazi Christianity isn't really that strange in the grand scheme of things.



The Gnostics are a very early heretical branch (in this context meaning only that they didn't win) even pre-Trinitarian. They make up about 0% of Modern Christian thought. And while a lot of the early groups did actually vote as to whether to keep the OT or not (with some outright rejecting it), it was generally accepted by the winning branch which became the Catholic Church and then the Catholic and Orthodox church and later gave rise to the Protestant groups.

The better example would be the many groups of real Christians who argue that Jesus fulfilled the law and that with Jesus the law was super-seceded and no longer needed. Though these individuals cite Paul who apparently was, according to Nazi theology, a horrible snake who corrupted Jesus' true stance against the Jewery. And, as it turns out they simply didn't. They accepted the OT.

I have heard that they invented a pseudohistory by which modern Jews are not ancient Jews. Though, I don't have a reliable source for that. And they certainly did that for Jesus, by accepted the whole 'bin Panthera' story that was made up and written into the Talmud and repeated in some pagan sources (Jesus was the kid of a Roman Legionnaire, not born of a virgin!) The Nazis took that as true and said, see he was a member of the Master Race.

They didn't reject the OT.

Hitler for example in the Table Talks compared himself quite favorably with Moses.

(February 1942)

"I have never found pleasure in maltreating others, even if I know it isn't possible to maintain oneself in the world without force. Life is granted only to those who fight the hardest. It is the law of life: Defend yourself! "
    "The time in which we live has the appearance of the collapse of this idea. It can still take 100 or 200 years. I am sorry that, like Moses, I can only see the Promised Land from a distance."

A side note, of importance, for a variety of reasons (mostly due to a French conman) this is translated in the only full English version of the Table Talks(Roper) as:

 "Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity."

Which any check to the actual German would dispossess that notion.


But, they also used the OT as an example of good laws, namely laws based on race:

"I have written such articles again and again; and in my articles I have repeatedly emphasized the fact that the Jews should serve as an example to every race, for they created the racial law for themselves-- the law of Moses, which says, "If you come into a foreign land you shall not take unto yourself foreign women." And that, Gentlemen, is of tremendous importance in judging the Nuremberg Laws.. These laws of the Jews were taken as a model for these laws. When after centuries, the Jewish lawgiver Ezra demonstrated that notwithstanding many Jews had married non-Jewish women, these marriages were dissolved. That was the beginning of Jewry which, because it introduced these racial laws, has survived throughout the centuries, while all other races and civilizations have perished." --Julius Streicher (Trial of The Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945, Vol. 12)

The point is, while it seems really odd, it's not actually outside the even pretty narrow band of Christian thought of straight forward Protestantism. Without needed to go back to Arianism or Marcion or any of the heretics, which I would actually have to agree deviate pretty markedly from the Christianity that survived the Dark Ages.

The theological baggage of Christianity.

The story is a near east creation story. It's intended to explain where we come from, why snakes don't have legs, why human childbirth is so painful, why we know right from wrong. God tells them they will die if they eat the fruit, the serpent says that they won't die, they eat the fruit, they don't die, God finds them and punishes Adam with working the land and eating bread, Woman with painful childbirth and being controlled by men, and the serpent with having no legs, eating dust, and not getting along with people. Then to protect the other magical tree and letting Adam and Eve become fully like the gods (apparently Godhood is simply knowing right from wrong and immortality) he kicks them out and makes a magical fire sword to protect the place.

There's no other theological significance or anything. All the extra eisegesis comes later. The original tale is a creation story in line with Native American stories, "How the Bear Lost its Tail". All cultures have these.

And while it does give rise to the whole fall of man thing, and later the whole Son of God/God sacrifices Himself to Himself to create a loophole in his own system. Because religions keep their baggage. In Genesis being a god is knowing right from wrong and living forever. For fear of them becoming gods they were kicked out etc. Then there's the weird immoral idea that the sins of the father are the sins of the children, hence why Adam and Eve's sin of doing something (which they by definition didn't know was wrong) is passed to all humanity. And because sacrificing animals to forgive sins, what better sacrifice could there be but the sacrifice of a Demigod? Hebrews 9 says almost exactly this. The religion ends up with God sacrificing Himself to Himself (as later Trinitarianism took over and Jesus was said to be one with the father). So each step tends to leave baggage and make it all weirder.

So because of this story with magical trees and talking snakes, mankind is doomed, so to solve this God gives himself a body and kills it. Because only God's own blood had enough magic to allow all-powerful God to create a loophole in his own system. So now, if you accept the story, preferably without questioning it, you can avoid God's first horrible everybody falls short system, and just through God's sacrifice of His blood to Himself, skip that system. So Mahatma Gandhi is burning in hell, because he was Hindu, but Jeffery Dahmer should like his odds because he accepted Jesus and was baptized shortly before his cellmate beat him to death. -- This system is pockmarked with bizarre theological history and crafted towards propagation rather than anything approaching a coherent way of running the universe.

What is the relationship between people believing a claim and its veracity?

When asked to properly evaluate the likelihood of the Loch Ness monster one really can agree that it doesn't exist, but if you put the likelihood at actual zero rather than a number infinitesimally close thereto, you are being a bad skeptic.

If people state things as true and they are true 60% of the time, then we are correct to say there's a positive correlation there. Even according them a very wide wrong margin of 40% (especially considering things they assert are stuff like their names, whether they have pets, how they are doing, where such and such a person is). I am giving a very very wide margin of error, and even given a true/false set of facts guessing could only ever be 50%.

It holds accurate that people tend to be right more often than you would be right, if you were pulling answers at random. Especially in science where refinement and self-checking really gets the answers well into at least the 90%s of being correct.

I'm not looking at the world in rose colored glasses. I'm a skeptic, I do my best to see the world as it actually is. I think that "trust but verify" is a fantastic methodology for having the most true beliefs and the fewest false beliefs. That one can create a robust and functional epistemology. I am not saying, everything people say is true. I'm saying since things people say are more likely to be true than false, it holds that there is a positive correlation between what people believe and what are true facts about the world.

"How does the number of believers have any bearing on the veracity of the claim?"

And the answer is by being positively correlated. There's a number of good and proper responses to the supposing God exists because theists exists. Most people tend to believe in mutually exclusive gods. If everybody believed in unicorns but everybody disagreed as to what color all of them were, it would not what we'd expect of a true belief. Generally people believe in the sun exists, but there's very little disagreement as to what color it appears to be. Equally there are not demonstrated gods. Most people seem to believe chairs exists, and claim that chairs exists. When asked how they know, they will quite often point to a chair. With regard to gods they seem to insist it's impossible to demonstrate, which is an unusually characteristic for things that actually exist.

When I say I have a pet gecko, you would be correct to accept my claim tentatively. When I say I have a pet dragon, you would error to accept my claim, even tentatively. If I said that by "dragon" I mean komodo dragon, my claim becomes astronomically more reasonable, but you would still error to tentatively accept my claim as they are rare, endangered, illegal to own, and highly dangerous.

When you say you have a friend named Bob, and he's a dietitian, that would be a perfectly reasonable claim. When you say you have a friend named Bob, and he's a deity whose created the universe and is magically undetectable, everybody's bullshit detector should go off. The fact that the majority of people think this is true, does very little to dilute the absurdity of notion.

While it the better than average chance that what people say is true suffices to establish that what people tend to think tends (better than random) to be true, that meager amount of evidence is resoundingly rendered moot when you say things as absurd as religion.

If somebody tells you they are a Christian, they are generally going to be telling the truth, and you would do well to believe them. If somebody tells you that Christianity is true, you would do well to not.

Because the saying of things is good enough for trivial claims, but if you want to convince somebody that the creator of the entire universe donned a baby suit so that he could sacrifice Himself to Himself to give Himself permission to forgive His creation for their ancestors sins of eating magical fruit on the advice of a talking reptile, by utilizing His blood in some fashion to create a loophole in His own system, and through His perfect justice damn Mahatma Gandhi to eternal hell-fire for the evil of not believing this claptrap. You need more than words.

Saying something is true is evidence. And for minor claims it's often sufficient evidence for a claim. The problem here is that a billion people believing a lie cannot render it true. There are vastly more cases of a billion people being wrong about something than there are of some religion's creation myth being true, and their deities being real, or for magic.

What is the relationship between a great many people believing a claim and the veracity of that claim. The answer is they share a positive correlation (which means it's evidence). If asked whether that suffices to justify even one miracle, the answer is definitively no.

On The Historicity of Jesus, Richard Carrier Podcast

Worth a listen.

http://unbelieversradio.com/2014/07/historicity-jesus-might-reason-doubt-dr-richard-carrier/

Feminist Frequency

My New Position Based Color Quantization Algorithm.

pool
491×369
4



Original: 37,671 bytes




ScolorQ: 7,755 bytes




Photoshop: 7,640 bytes



The pictures are hotlinked from scolorq.
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~dcoetzee/downloads/scolorq/


And finally my algorithm at 4 colors.

The truth is oddly, that my algorithm is crap for color picking. I'm not very good at it yet. And need a few more things to really make it pop. Here's the SColorQ colors with my positional color dither.

My thing can't even pick colors and it's better. Or at least has some noted advantages.


Slightly different settings for the dilthering.

And yet a different setting... Which is pretty insane in and of itself.

Which turns out to be rather cool as an effect. Cooler when you realize that it salvages a lot of the depth of the gradient and such that was otherwise lost at an expense of becoming insane.





To really mess with your head. Here it is, not even color quantized. I fed it raw CYMK (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, Black).

Not messed with enough. Here's KCYM. The exact same color except I changed the order. (Yes. The order!)

Keep in mind. This isn't even quantized. This is just rendering the picture in Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.


Getting rid of the order requirement and making it a total free for all, this is *still* 4 colors. And not even quantized. Just CYMK.

Here is RGBWCYMK so all the 8 combinations of solid colors.

And bringing it back full circle, here's ScolorQ's 4 colors with my dither, sans ordering and pareto-optimal.

Unimpressive/Unimpressive Code

    public static boolean permutation(List values, int index) {

        return permutation(values, values.size() - 1, index);

    }

    private static boolean permutation(List values, int n, int index) {

        if ((index == 0) || (n == 0)) {

            return (index == 0);

        }

        Collections.swap(values, n, n - (index % n));

        return permutation(values, n - 1, index / n);

    }

Give it a list, and an index and it will do the permutatation associated with that index. It runs out of integers at 12 items as 12! > Integer.MAX_VALUE

Why the Singularity is bullshit.

I've done a lot of thinking on the issue. After I solved a few of the theoretical problems, and I've got to say, it's really kind of silly. The claim that AI could improve its design and then cause a runaway explosion of intelligence is quite simply wrong. In fact, the entire idea of the singularity is based on a wrong notion of what intelligence is and how it functions. Which really should be something people should have figured out at square one before moving on and pontificating. But, it wasn't like any of the AI programs were doing anything, and you might as well use that time to daydream about it.

Intelligence takes real work. You don't just have it. You build your brain with what patterns you see and recognize, which means you need to be exposed to them and experience things, and test things within actual reality rather than trying to do physics in one's own head. Intelligence is a bit like the scientific method being automatically implemented on 3 pounds of neurons.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. 

You can't make the scientific method work twenty times as fast if you use a bunch of science to improve the scientific method. You cannot use to do the real intellectual work of understanding things, predicting them, knowing the underlying patterns, to improve the actual work it takes to do that. Just as doubling a functioning AI's computer processor wouldn't make it twice as smart. Just as making a human exist for two seconds for every second wouldn't make her smarter, it would simply allow her to get to the same wrong answer in half the time and not be one iota more intelligent (it would make her an unstoppable devil with a pointed stick though).

Don't respect my beliefs for no reason.

You should not respect my belief that given any mysterious occurrence I will believe that it isn't magical or supernatural but rather natural phenomenon acting in a previously unknown way. It earns that respect by thus far in the history of mysteries being correct 100% of the time thus far. Your belief that a cosmic superman poofed everything into existence and then had to fix it later on by donning a human suit and sacrificing himself to himself, equally should not unquestioning get respect but be evaluated according to it's actual likelihood of being true.

The claim that 'I respect your beliefs, you are are being cruel by not respecting mine' is a red herring. It's patronizing and disrespectful to me. It's saying you think I would prefer to walk around believing false notions being coddled and unquestioned, more than I would want a small amount of discomfort learning that one of my beliefs is actually false and then being able to correct the notion. -- It's insulting to me to suppose I would prefer the former to the later.

Turned off Anon posting.

I got too annoyed with the spam. It was getting all auto filtered but it emailed me about the spam it was filtering off.

Hitler Table Talks

So the whole Hitler as a Christian thing came up again, and so I dug around for the original German hoping for the google to save me. And Der Spiegel did publish some of them piecemeal in 1980, and digitized the collection. Of which the major one talking about Christianity is:

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-14317956.html

Only under the effects of the Germanic spirit has gradually lost his Christianity openly Bolshevik character; it has become fairly portable. While it dies, the Jew will again start with the early Christianity, Bolshevism.
One has the high level of Roman art and culture in temples such as flats compare with what brought the Bolshevik underworld back in the catacombs as a new Christian culture. At that time, destroying all the libraries, and today we see in Russia the same: a depression on a very low, all the same level.
At that time and until the Middle Ages, the most terrible tortures, tortures and burns in the name of Christianity, and today the same in the name of Bolshevism. From the Saul a Paul from the Mordechai was a Karl Marx.
If we eradicate this pest, we accomplish a deed for humanity, our men out there still can do no idea of their meaning.

Is traditionally held to say, via the Trever Roper translations via the French conman guy.

 In the old days, as now, destruction of art and civilisation.
The Bolsheviks of their day, what didn't they destroy in Rome,
in Greece and elsewhere? They've behaved in the same way
amongst us and in Russia.
One must compare the art and civilisation of the Romans —
their temples, their houses — with the art and civilisation repre-
sented at the same period by the abject rabble of the catacombs.
In the old days, the destruction of the libraries. Isn't that what
happened in Russia? The result: a frightful levelling-down.
Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages,
the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was
in the name of Christianity. To-day, it's in the name of
Bolshevism.
Yesterday, the instigator was Saul: the instigator to-day,
Mardochai.
Saul has changed into St. Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx.
By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of
which our soldiers can have no idea.

The latter seems to suppose that Christianity should be exterminated. The more proper version says the Bulshevik corruption of Christianity should be.

Why insects are stupid, but seem pretty smart. Evolution And Intelligence

The error with thinking that some life forms are intelligent when they are basically rather simple automatons is the underlying intelligence of our brains is an evolutionary algorithm in and of itself. So the products of evolution always look intelligent. But, that's not because they are, but because intelligence is similarly an evolutionary process carried out within our brains.

It's why the design of highly evolved structures look intelligent. Because intelligence is a type of evolution carried out within neurons rewiring the best predictive pathways in the brain. In short that's the reason behind the flaw in the design argument.

It isn't that the supposed intelligence behind nature is real and evolution is therefore fake. But, the intelligence in our heads is a form of evolution and the evolution in nature looks very similar. Not because it's an illusion, as many wrongly argue, but because they are similar. They are doing the same thing. But, not "being intelligent" but "being evolved."

I've wanted to write a book on that little insight for a while now. But, it explains why people think intelligent design feels so intuitive. -- Because it is, and for deep reasons.

Evolution is well understood and highly established. Intelligence is nebulous and generally vague at best and hugely unknown. Saying intelligence explains evolution, takes absolutely robust science and throws it down a rabbit hole. Saying evolution explains intelligence, takes a rabbit hole and gives it some substance and explanation.

The truth behind the design argument is that it really does look designed. It looks like something very intelligent made it work just like that, knowing all this stuff about how things work and engineering. And it's not an illusion, it's a category mistake. It evolved, but that's how intelligence works to, so saying the causes seem similar is obviously accurate but not because intelligence is behind nature. But, because nature is behind intelligence.

The universal acid flows down hill, not up.

I updated my Field Diamond Squared Algorithm Demo.

http://tatarize.nfshost.com/FieldDiamondSquare.htm

Much more drag the background, see the infinite. Also, fixed a few errors I made when I made it to just produce a static one off rather than the full implementation.

Pulled out of thin error.

I'm going to start using this all the time rather than the "air" version.

6 links found on google.