It need not be an evil person driving a car. In this closed system it could just be another old person driving a Buick. The old person is not evil, just too old to be driving.
It really depends on the rate of recidivism, and what sort of crimes they are likely to commit when they re-offend. If, for argument's sake, the ten guilty men in question have a 30% chance of murdering again... the cost of letting free that one innocent man means that you have condemned at least 3 innocent men to a death sentence.
In my view a justice system should weigh the probable consequences of false negatives equal to the harm of false positives, attempting to lower the total harm to society (by deterrence and prevention of future crimes).
How is Googling everything any worse than what happened in prior years - i.e. mistakenly thinking you are making your own decision by watching the news and reading the papers while being ignorant of the fact that you are really only seeing a highly edited stream of ideas designed to sway your vote? For at least a half a century there has been a democracy of sorts, but it is not how the average person conceives of democracy. It is instead a battle between several factions of highly intelligent plutocrats to see who can best manipulate a vast sea of idiots into voting their way.
A parasite on the cable companies is not going to be able to match the magnitude of the campaign contributions of said cable companies. Whoever makes a decision by looking at such things is going to say "Hmmm. Campaign contributions from cable companies >= Gross amount of your theft... kthxbye."
Why not take control over your children's video diet instead of letting television executives (and hence advertising and marketing execs) decide what your children are going to turn out like? HDDs are cheap. Media players are cheap. Even if you decide to buy DVDs rather than pirate, it's still not that expensive to buy things like TV series for kids rather than look at whatever crap the TV stations pump out. You are looking at the investment of a thousand or two that will last for a lot of their childhood. The other advantage to buying is that there is some really good (and usually old) content that the media companies have decided to make available. You won't often find these on torrent sites, but they are well worth having. So for a few thousand your kids can have "the best" during their formative years.
Do you know what it's like to fall in the mud and get kicked... in the head... with an iron boot? Of course you don't, no one does. It never happens. Sorry, Tablizer, that's a dumb question... skip that.
It wasn't just any random 20 year old. It was the best of the best. Select the best of the best today, and they are going to be using computers, hard science and critical thinking. The only difference is the computer part instead of the slide rule. And realistically, the best and brightest are not going to ASS-U-ME anything any more than they did back in the 1950s. Any good engineer estimates the result of every calculation in his head to see what it should be roughly. The same general idea - "Does this make sense?" applies to trusting any computed message.
Age and experience has never been a barrier to the hyper competent. A lot of the reason for that I've noticed is that exceptionally competent people just happen to get their experience a lot earlier than others. Someone who has been building or hacking on stuff since they were 8 years old is always going to have a leg up on a guy with the same IQ who starts at age 18.
That's nothing compared with the hate that the irrational can have for imaginary people. But most people in the real world simply don't like dealing with such complex issues.
If you look at the wikipedia list of all the different conceptions of the golden rule, I'm sure you will find one that is consistent with my interpretation.
If you want to obey a primitive version of the golden rule that says you should behave the same way to all people, then go ahead. Go ahead and get screwed by all the sociopaths in life if that is your wont.
Personally, I follow something like this: 1. Don't get screwed, by anyone. 2. Be nice to others, starting in small amounts and then gradually increasing as they reciprocate. 3. But note their behavior - are they attempting to con you? If so, avoid. See rule 1. 4. If someone attempts to screw you for a small amount, write it off. Part of the point of rule 2. is to make the amount that you would be screwed by so minuscule that it's not worth someone's time and effort to do so. 5. If someone screws you for a non-trivial amount, get justice.
If I meet others following the same policy, I will build up good friendships and relationships with people I can trust. I am more than happy to "be done by" anyone following these rules as it will lead to the sort of reliable relationships with others I seek, along with filtering out everyone I don't want to deal with.
A note to the pedantic - rule 1. does not include acts of charity, and general duties to one's own family. Looking after your wife and family as a provider is not "getting screwed". It's doing your job.
But that's NOT the golden rule. The golden rule doesn't say treat people how they treat you, or be nice as long as everyone else is. The rule is that you treat people like you would like to be treated because you're suppose to love your neighbor as much as you love yourself, even if your neighbor is the world's biggest asshole.
The golden rule is a concept that is in pretty much every religion or culture. At its heart is the concept of reciprocity, which is just another way of saying "tit for tat". Naturally this should be the case, since in the iterated social interactions between citizens that are common to every society it is only natural that the different game playing strategies emerge. It is also only natural that different thinkers in different societies give them a name, and especially the one that is necessary and to be encouraged for a functioning society.
As far as Christianity is referred, I was using the "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" version of the golden rule. And unless one is of the opinion that one's own evil deeds should escape punishment, then getting vengeance is compatible with the golden rule.
If you treat an asshole like he treats you, then you're an asshole, too. You're not going to turn many assholes into non-assholes, period, but you certainly wo't get them to stop assholish behavior by being one. Fighting fire with fire only results in a huge fire; you need water, not gasoline.
The goal is not to turn assholes into non-assholes. It's to punish them and to set an example to other would-be assholes - do they want the carrot or the stick?
And besides, everybody is an asshole some time or another.
Mostly true. Then often when that happens karma will catch up with you in the form of others teaching you a lesson.
The whole philosophy is, unhappily, the antithesis of America. Blessed are the meek? Yeah. Blessed are the poor??? (banker laughs his ass off). If someone sues you for your cloak, give him your coat as well? Sure, uh huh. In America? LOL!
This was the interpretation of Christianity I had in my youth, the doormat version of Christianity. This was one of the reasons I decided it was not for me. However, to get a correct assessment I would probably have to study everything as an adult and come to my own conclusions. Realistically Christians and Christian nations have embarked on campaigns of retaliation. Personally I don't think a society of doormats is a noble or good thing. But I view the bible as an imperfect product of many different men, so I am not surprised that practically speaking it has to be "hacked" to be followed properly, if at all.
The golden rule CAN actually work, if you approach life with a tit for tat strategy (benevolent or otherwise). If you are nice until someone shits on you and are then a bastard in return, this is completely compatible with the golden rule a.k.a. "do as you would be done by". If you are nice to others and they are nice to you in return, it all works out. And if you are reasonable, then you would also understand that someone is going to attempt to shaft you if you shaft them first. However, as long as you are nice to someone using a tit for tat strategy then you will never see their vengeful side. So "employ a (benevolent) tit for tat strategy as you would hope others do towards you" is not only nice, it is a very practical way to approach life, consistent with a functioning society that will even self regulate in the absence of a justice system.
You do need to be guarded against those who would feign tit for tat for an extended period of time until they judge the time is ripe for a mortal blow.
...but he is just a stupid little hacker who thinks his dick grows every time he uses vi. Don't be like that.
Experienced hackers know that eventually a limit is reached. And while vi is reputed to promote growth, if you want to go the other way the key of course is EMACSulation.
There have been very few attempts. Beyond the two biosphere experiments (which took the approach of using so many different species that there were too many variables to control IMO), what experiments in this area do you know of?
But you do correctly point out that more research in this area is needed - this is one of the first things to get right, and is a great candidate for an X prize or something of the sort.
Increasingly, students are in class to memorize material so that they can quickly recall it on one of many tests.
That is one of the by-products of the need to test students for competency. And that is something that needs to happen regardless of how the details of injecting the knowledge into students is going to happen.
For me, a lot of what I got from college was the knowledge that different subjects existed, that I was competent in using the techniques in that class and what those techniques are. This way whenever I hit those topics again or a subject that looks like it will benefit from the application of one of those techniques, I know that the technique exists and what the technique is called. I can then go and look it up for myself. Because I am relearning rather than learning, the learning is much quicker the next time.
The point of university education IMO is not to remember the material long term in order to be able to apply it without a refresher. Wasting brain space hard wiring your undergrad major into your brain is silly IMO and could possibly even have negative consequences. Only remembering a few key points I think potentially allows you to learn and apply a lot more than you otherwise would.
Nice troll. While there is considerable debate by scientists as to the answers to the Fermi paradox, you come along and solve the whole thing with a single unbacked statement.
Never underestimate the power of human ingenuity. Technological change is marked by vast revolutionary leaps coupled with long periods of evolutionary lulls. Look at the sailing ships that existed back in Roman times. Your argument is effectively that clipper ships of 2000 years later did not go much faster and used the same basic principles, ergo manned flight is impossible and the idea of an airliner is simply delusional.
There is potential for a further 25% reduction in fuel usage using a Blended Wing Body design. And they certainly don't look like commercial airliners of our day. Of course, barring some unexpected discovery subsonic flight will continue to be what gets us from A to B. It works, and it's cheap.
Slashdot could really use a +1 Insightful but Unnecessarily Dickish mod.
What is wrong with this picture?
Moderation categories already encompass both categories mentioned, and are an improvement on a simple "like" or "dislike". Adding multiple combinations of moderation (e.g. Insightful + Flamebait or Informative + Troll or any of the other 90 combinations you would needlessly add to the slashdot moderation system) is only slightly less stupid than allowing the herd of cats that is the slashdot moderator community to just create arbitrary moderation categories out of thin air any time they feel like it. There ARE TWO WHOLE FUCKING CATEGORIES OF MODERATION already dedicated to "Insightful but Unnecessarily Dickish", namely Insightful and Flamebait. The general idea is that on average the +1 from the Insightful and the -1 from the Flamebait cancel each other out, and people checking the moderations on their comments over time will come to realize they should be less of a dick but retain their level of insight.
But noooo, ignorant people such as yourself, would rather recommend slashdot implement the most arbitrary and poorly architected moderation system in the world just so you can get the +5 insiiiiiiiiightful. (And even if you would argue that Dickish!=Flamebait you are proposing a new 11th moderation category for "insightful but Unecessarily Dickish" worth a +1, which would result in the sizable misanthropic subset of slashdot users who would actually TRY to get their posts moderated as your wondrous new moderation category, thinking it is an improvement over plain old insightful.)
For behavioral profiling being a "junk science" they've had a lot of successes, and more success than this idea will ever yield (especially since it's so easily reverse engineerable, not to mention vague in its predictions). And the criticism coming from a criminal lawyer - well, I think the lady doth protest too much.
The basic idea of profiling is to narrow a large search down into a smaller one. The basis of the idea that by studying known offenders and finding commonalities between them, you'll have a clue as to the sort of person a perpetrator will be given an arbitrary new crime. Now that enough information about profiling is out there, offenders can and do reverse engineer the profiling process to make it tougher for them to get caught (assuming they are smart enough to do so - many are not that smart). However, at the very least there will be certain things that they are compelled to do otherwise the crime is simply not interesting for them to do. And certain things they have to do to carry out their crimes which will give a clue as to who they are.
The way I look at it, the people who study these particular criminals and offer advice for catching them are analogous to specialist doctors. For example, if you are trying to diagnose and treat some specialist skin condition that is very rare, you will have better results with a referral to a dermatologist than having the GP struggle and try to treat it as best he can.
Slashdot Mirror
It need not be an evil person driving a car. In this closed system it could just be another old person driving a Buick. The old person is not evil, just too old to be driving.
It really depends on the rate of recidivism, and what sort of crimes they are likely to commit when they re-offend. If, for argument's sake, the ten guilty men in question have a 30% chance of murdering again... the cost of letting free that one innocent man means that you have condemned at least 3 innocent men to a death sentence.
In my view a justice system should weigh the probable consequences of false negatives equal to the harm of false positives, attempting to lower the total harm to society (by deterrence and prevention of future crimes).
How is Googling everything any worse than what happened in prior years - i.e. mistakenly thinking you are making your own decision by watching the news and reading the papers while being ignorant of the fact that you are really only seeing a highly edited stream of ideas designed to sway your vote? For at least a half a century there has been a democracy of sorts, but it is not how the average person conceives of democracy. It is instead a battle between several factions of highly intelligent plutocrats to see who can best manipulate a vast sea of idiots into voting their way.
I wouldn't be so quick to judge. It is clear that in either case the article is indefinite.
A parasite on the cable companies is not going to be able to match the magnitude of the campaign contributions of said cable companies. Whoever makes a decision by looking at such things is going to say "Hmmm. Campaign contributions from cable companies >= Gross amount of your theft... kthxbye."
Why not take control over your children's video diet instead of letting television executives (and hence advertising and marketing execs) decide what your children are going to turn out like? HDDs are cheap. Media players are cheap. Even if you decide to buy DVDs rather than pirate, it's still not that expensive to buy things like TV series for kids rather than look at whatever crap the TV stations pump out. You are looking at the investment of a thousand or two that will last for a lot of their childhood. The other advantage to buying is that there is some really good (and usually old) content that the media companies have decided to make available. You won't often find these on torrent sites, but they are well worth having. So for a few thousand your kids can have "the best" during their formative years.
Do you know what it's like to fall in the mud and get kicked... in the head... with an iron boot? Of course you don't, no one does. It never happens. Sorry, Tablizer, that's a dumb question... skip that.
Flatworms are highly prone in general.
The car in this car analogy is in the parking lot. This is the Caterham 7 of car analogies, it's about the most bare bones as you can get.
It wasn't just any random 20 year old. It was the best of the best. Select the best of the best today, and they are going to be using computers, hard science and critical thinking. The only difference is the computer part instead of the slide rule. And realistically, the best and brightest are not going to ASS-U-ME anything any more than they did back in the 1950s. Any good engineer estimates the result of every calculation in his head to see what it should be roughly. The same general idea - "Does this make sense?" applies to trusting any computed message.
Age and experience has never been a barrier to the hyper competent. A lot of the reason for that I've noticed is that exceptionally competent people just happen to get their experience a lot earlier than others. Someone who has been building or hacking on stuff since they were 8 years old is always going to have a leg up on a guy with the same IQ who starts at age 18.
Interestingly enough there are seven moons that are larger than Pluto. Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, the Moon, Io, Europa and Triton.
That's nothing compared with the hate that the irrational can have for imaginary people. But most people in the real world simply don't like dealing with such complex issues.
If you look at the wikipedia list of all the different conceptions of the golden rule, I'm sure you will find one that is consistent with my interpretation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule
If you want to obey a primitive version of the golden rule that says you should behave the same way to all people, then go ahead. Go ahead and get screwed by all the sociopaths in life if that is your wont.
Personally, I follow something like this:
1. Don't get screwed, by anyone.
2. Be nice to others, starting in small amounts and then gradually increasing as they reciprocate.
3. But note their behavior - are they attempting to con you? If so, avoid. See rule 1.
4. If someone attempts to screw you for a small amount, write it off. Part of the point of rule 2. is to make the amount that you would be screwed by so minuscule that it's not worth someone's time and effort to do so.
5. If someone screws you for a non-trivial amount, get justice.
If I meet others following the same policy, I will build up good friendships and relationships with people I can trust. I am more than happy to "be done by" anyone following these rules as it will lead to the sort of reliable relationships with others I seek, along with filtering out everyone I don't want to deal with.
A note to the pedantic - rule 1. does not include acts of charity, and general duties to one's own family. Looking after your wife and family as a provider is not "getting screwed". It's doing your job.
The golden rule is a concept that is in pretty much every religion or culture. At its heart is the concept of reciprocity, which is just another way of saying "tit for tat". Naturally this should be the case, since in the iterated social interactions between citizens that are common to every society it is only natural that the different game playing strategies emerge. It is also only natural that different thinkers in different societies give them a name, and especially the one that is necessary and to be encouraged for a functioning society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule
As far as Christianity is referred, I was using the "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" version of the golden rule. And unless one is of the opinion that one's own evil deeds should escape punishment, then getting vengeance is compatible with the golden rule.
The goal is not to turn assholes into non-assholes. It's to punish them and to set an example to other would-be assholes - do they want the carrot or the stick?
Mostly true. Then often when that happens karma will catch up with you in the form of others teaching you a lesson.
This was the interpretation of Christianity I had in my youth, the doormat version of Christianity. This was one of the reasons I decided it was not for me. However, to get a correct assessment I would probably have to study everything as an adult and come to my own conclusions. Realistically Christians and Christian nations have embarked on campaigns of retaliation. Personally I don't think a society of doormats is a noble or good thing. But I view the bible as an imperfect product of many different men, so I am not surprised that practically speaking it has to be "hacked" to be followed properly, if at all.
The golden rule CAN actually work, if you approach life with a tit for tat strategy (benevolent or otherwise). If you are nice until someone shits on you and are then a bastard in return, this is completely compatible with the golden rule a.k.a. "do as you would be done by". If you are nice to others and they are nice to you in return, it all works out. And if you are reasonable, then you would also understand that someone is going to attempt to shaft you if you shaft them first. However, as long as you are nice to someone using a tit for tat strategy then you will never see their vengeful side. So "employ a (benevolent) tit for tat strategy as you would hope others do towards you" is not only nice, it is a very practical way to approach life, consistent with a functioning society that will even self regulate in the absence of a justice system.
You do need to be guarded against those who would feign tit for tat for an extended period of time until they judge the time is ripe for a mortal blow.
That would be a fowl deed.
Experienced hackers know that eventually a limit is reached. And while vi is reputed to promote growth, if you want to go the other way the key of course is EMACSulation.
If Keanu had never been born, you wouldn't be making that joke.
There have been very few attempts. Beyond the two biosphere experiments (which took the approach of using so many different species that there were too many variables to control IMO), what experiments in this area do you know of?
But you do correctly point out that more research in this area is needed - this is one of the first things to get right, and is a great candidate for an X prize or something of the sort.
That is one of the by-products of the need to test students for competency. And that is something that needs to happen regardless of how the details of injecting the knowledge into students is going to happen.
For me, a lot of what I got from college was the knowledge that different subjects existed, that I was competent in using the techniques in that class and what those techniques are. This way whenever I hit those topics again or a subject that looks like it will benefit from the application of one of those techniques, I know that the technique exists and what the technique is called. I can then go and look it up for myself. Because I am relearning rather than learning, the learning is much quicker the next time.
The point of university education IMO is not to remember the material long term in order to be able to apply it without a refresher. Wasting brain space hard wiring your undergrad major into your brain is silly IMO and could possibly even have negative consequences. Only remembering a few key points I think potentially allows you to learn and apply a lot more than you otherwise would.
Nice troll. While there is considerable debate by scientists as to the answers to the Fermi paradox, you come along and solve the whole thing with a single unbacked statement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
Never underestimate the power of human ingenuity. Technological change is marked by vast revolutionary leaps coupled with long periods of evolutionary lulls. Look at the sailing ships that existed back in Roman times. Your argument is effectively that clipper ships of 2000 years later did not go much faster and used the same basic principles, ergo manned flight is impossible and the idea of an airliner is simply delusional.
http://airbornegeeks.blogspot.com/2011/02/blended-wing-body-aircraft-carriers-of.html
There is potential for a further 25% reduction in fuel usage using a Blended Wing Body design. And they certainly don't look like commercial airliners of our day. Of course, barring some unexpected discovery subsonic flight will continue to be what gets us from A to B. It works, and it's cheap.
What it lacks in latency, it makes up in bandwidth.
What is wrong with this picture?
Moderation categories already encompass both categories mentioned, and are an improvement on a simple "like" or "dislike". Adding multiple combinations of moderation (e.g. Insightful + Flamebait or Informative + Troll or any of the other 90 combinations you would needlessly add to the slashdot moderation system) is only slightly less stupid than allowing the herd of cats that is the slashdot moderator community to just create arbitrary moderation categories out of thin air any time they feel like it. There ARE TWO WHOLE FUCKING CATEGORIES OF MODERATION already dedicated to "Insightful but Unnecessarily Dickish", namely Insightful and Flamebait. The general idea is that on average the +1 from the Insightful and the -1 from the Flamebait cancel each other out, and people checking the moderations on their comments over time will come to realize they should be less of a dick but retain their level of insight.
But noooo, ignorant people such as yourself, would rather recommend slashdot implement the most arbitrary and poorly architected moderation system in the world just so you can get the +5 insiiiiiiiiightful. (And even if you would argue that Dickish!=Flamebait you are proposing a new 11th moderation category for "insightful but Unecessarily Dickish" worth a +1, which would result in the sizable misanthropic subset of slashdot users who would actually TRY to get their posts moderated as your wondrous new moderation category, thinking it is an improvement over plain old insightful.)
For behavioral profiling being a "junk science" they've had a lot of successes, and more success than this idea will ever yield (especially since it's so easily reverse engineerable, not to mention vague in its predictions). And the criticism coming from a criminal lawyer - well, I think the lady doth protest too much.
The basic idea of profiling is to narrow a large search down into a smaller one. The basis of the idea that by studying known offenders and finding commonalities between them, you'll have a clue as to the sort of person a perpetrator will be given an arbitrary new crime. Now that enough information about profiling is out there, offenders can and do reverse engineer the profiling process to make it tougher for them to get caught (assuming they are smart enough to do so - many are not that smart). However, at the very least there will be certain things that they are compelled to do otherwise the crime is simply not interesting for them to do. And certain things they have to do to carry out their crimes which will give a clue as to who they are.
The way I look at it, the people who study these particular criminals and offer advice for catching them are analogous to specialist doctors. For example, if you are trying to diagnose and treat some specialist skin condition that is very rare, you will have better results with a referral to a dermatologist than having the GP struggle and try to treat it as best he can.