I forget where, but it's been said "If you don't give weight to your principals, then the first wind will carry them off
I agree with this completely. As a Finn I've often been pondering recently what I'd do if the time comes to visit the US for business reasons or otherwise and this idea of just getting brand new device to bring along has been in my thoughts. However, in the context of your quote it has one massive setback: it's yielding to the system by saying 'fine, I agree that you can search everything I have so I bought a device with nothing on it'. It's not going to help the situation in the long term.
In fact I can see this kind of behavior being used to tighten the screws of surveillance even more: "Sir, we have noticed that you are on Facebook/Gmail/twitter but you're not logged into any of those on your device, please provide the passwords so we can verify you're not trying to hide any illegal activities'. That is, having a 'fresh' wiped device could itself be in the future seen as cause for 'reasonable suspicion', only making the problem worse.
In so far as I can see, the only way is not to try to go around the surveillance by means of technical solutions, but to oppose it in courts en masse. It's a hard route to take, but failing to stand up for your constitutional rights will, in the light of history, only lead to them being slowly chiselled away.
Another reason not to rely on a corporate website for your news and information.
So you don't read any non-tax funded news-sites then, you know the ones ran by news corporations?
But honestly, it's facebook's decision to decide whether or not they want their platfrom to be used in distribution of non-factual/made up 'news'. I personally do not get my news from FB but I've seen the amount of entirely made up 'news' from blogs that have been shared in the recent years. A simple thing that I've seen repeated time and time again here is this: someone files a report about an immigrant committing some crime, usually theft or assault. The yellow-press then runs this with a headline along the lines of 'Immigrant man under investigation for crime X'. Then some nationalist blog made up to look like a news site runs an article with the headline "yet another immigrant crime, man from *insert country* harassed a teenager.", then, to appear more credible they link to the previous article about an ongoing investigation.
These spread like wildfire on social media because the headlines are usually shocking and they pander the the preconceived notions and fears that people have, and nobody bothers to check what the source actually says. If you point out in the comment section that the guy has not in fact been convicted of anything and it's an ongoing investigation (you know, innocent until proven guilty and all that) you get attacked for being 'on their side' or 'defending criminals', nevermind that no crime has of yet been proven to take place. If the guy is convicted it's trumpeted again as evidence of how all brown people are dangerous criminals and/or terrorists. If charges are not raised at all or he's found to be innocent, no correcting stories are run.
There are several sites operating mainly using this principle, many of them receiving funding or support from Russia, which is taking advantage of the immigrant crisis here in Europe to stir up xenophobia and nationalism because a divided and weakened EU is to their benefit. RT is a common 'source' used by these sites, Many of them also cross-link to each other, so that a blog being run in sweden is used as source by blog here in Finland. The traditional media obviously does not report on unsubstantiated rumors which is then further used as 'evidence' that the media is involved in some sort of massive 'cover-up' by not immediately reporting everything someone decided to blog about,
This is what 'alternative facts' mean, and personally having seen how fast these things can spread even after officials come out and issue corrections, I don't mind social media trying to do something about these sites' visibility, because without the massive speed/inertia that they gain by quick shares and likes they'd be in near obscurity. They are only damaging public discourse, because it's now impossible to even try and have a rational discussion with many of these people as they will not accept any news or reporting from the 'corrupted mainstream media' as evidence that they've in fact been duped by propagandists and ideologues. As a test, reporter from a newspaper submitted a story about being attacked by a foreigner(s) last summer and it was immediately published even though no source or evidence was presented. They'll pretty much run everything that serves their agenda, because that's what propaganda is.
I see no reason why facebook should allow this to keep happening. They already censor stuff like nudity and gore out, and I don't see nudity and gore anywhere near as dangerous to the society as made up 'news'.
This is a bizarre little trick, apparently some weird leftover piece of Cold War propaganda, that any time a topic has anything to do with the free market you can point that out and a significant minority of people will believe you've just "won" the discussion and will mod you up, even if you're rambling irrelevant drivel.
I believe you're on point here, and it's not just an american thing either. As a Finn I was recently discussing politics online here with a Finnish libertarian type who was of the opinion that we should move away from our current model of healthcare towards a more market oriented solution because 'the free market is more efficient'. I've previously written at length here and elsewhere why I do not believe this is the case for health production, but that's a side point. What's interesting is that when I inquired from him how he explains the current situation in the US, which, despite being more market oriented is both massively more expensive and non-universally covering, his answer was that the US model was not 'free' at all and should be avoided. Upon further discussion he said he agrees with the clause in our constitutions which guarantees health care to people regardless of their economic status. So despite wishing for more private contractors with (IMO) bad reasoning in the name of 'more freedom', his operational definition of a free market differs from his american libertarian counterparts who tend to believe that no-one should get treated unless they can pay for it or or get some other individual to pay for it.
I'm taking this up because this highlights the core problem of the term: it doesn't have a clear meaning. There are those who genuinely believe that the only truly free markets are those in which no regulations exist, essentially an anarchocapitalist view in which anything that comes between the seller and the buyer is deemed as bad. Then there are those (such as myself) who believe that a certain amount of regulations is needed for a market to be truly free because the point of laws and regulations regarding trade is to ensure that no-one's taken advantage of. This is why consumer protection laws exist.
The problem is in the term itself. It says 'free'. Who doesn't like freedom? But what it means for say, an investment bank or an oil giant to be 'free' is entirely different than what it means for me an individual to be 'free'. My freedom as an individual depends on things such as the infrastructure (funded by taxes), the environment not being destroyed, being protected from illness and violence and so on, whereas for the companies their 'freedom' equates solely to their ability to make as much money as possible without being hindered. An oil company has no qualms about pursuing methods destructive to the global ecosystem because they as an entity do not care about the environment. And I don't believe they should, companies are by their nature amoral, they're entities driven by profit and profit only, and that's alright. However if we recognize this we should also recognize that there's no way for everyone to have total freedom. The purpose of a civilized society should be to make sure that the trade and business being conducted within it is not causing excessive damage to people. We should not expect giant corporations to grow a conscience but we should instead impose the collective conscience of the society on them in the form of laws. Therefore, in my idea of a truly free market the companies would be restricted from pursing tactics that are detrimental to ecosystem that we all depend upon.
Point being: whether or not a given action is performed in a free market or not has no bearing to its morality. Slaves were once traded (and still are, in some parts of the world) in the free market. Tobacco manufacturers once used the free market to dole out massive amounts of blatant misinformation about their products to consumers. The companies knew long before the general public did that smoking causes cancer. Now that the marketing
Your post reads exactly like so many others around the first several self-driving car competitions.
If you read it that way you did not understand it. The difference is the problems faced by self-driving car development are computational. The people who said:'oh cars can could never drive themselves' were essentially arguing 'oh compuers can never handle all the variables' and so on. Because of Moore's law etc. those who were up to dat on the progress of computing knew that this wouldn't be the case going ahead, as we're now starting to see.
The problems faced by hyperloop are not computational, they're cost-benefit oriented. Given enough money, the hyperloop could surely be implemented already, even though the cost would be at or beyond space-program levels. Building vacuum tubes and maintaining them against leaks and other safety dangers is not something we can project will become masively cheaper to do in the near future. The cost estimates hyperloop itself thus far has presented assume for example zero maintenance costs and so on. The cost calculations are not even 'optimistic', they're simply wrong.
With self-driving cars the argument to be made for them could be constructed even way back 10-15 years ago by noting the obvious fact that computers are getting smaller, cheapr and more efficient at a relatively steady pace. The same is not true for the kind of tech required by hyperloop to work at the cost-ranges that they've been using in their plans and presentations,
Will it work? Who knows...but I certainly wouldn't discount it because in the first try EVER didn't have any resounding success.
I am not rejecting them based on the failed first test. I'm not rejecting the concept at all. I'm rejecting the economic feasibility of the concept based on the fact that the instances behind Hyperloop have not presented any kind of data which would lead me to believe they're even at the beginning stages of starting to solve the engineering obstacles required to get to the price-point they've been advertising. The test is just an example of these issues. Like I said: if there are major breakthroughs in vacuum technology or so on, things may be different. But right now they're holding pod-design contests for student teams when they do not even have solutions for building the tube itself at costs levels they're claiming they can get to, nor any plans on how to get there.
If these change, I will gladly change my mind, hyperloop would be a cool thing. But all fact considered, it so far remains economically speaking a pipe-dream.
With Musk the right question is never 'will it work?" but 'will it make any sense factoring in the costs?'
In theory something like the Hyperloop is a great idea. Until you realize that the costs and dangers involved in building a several hundred mile vacuum tube, and keeping it depressurized would cost astronomical amounts of money. The test track the built for the recent pod-competition for hyperloop was less than a mile long and its still the second largest vacuum tube ever built. Took about 30 minutes to depressurize and top speeds were around 60 mph, and that's with them being pushed by an external motor unit, the pods themselves didn't even have functioning engines. The moment the external motor 'released' the pods they pretty much froze, with most of them not even making it across the finish line.
The practical difficulties in doing this on the scale and speeds that the hyperloop project has been painting (600 MPH over a distance of hundreds of miles) are so enormous especially taking into consideration the kind of safety features that'd have to be included that economically speaking the hyperloop is not going to happen in any foreseeable future barring major technological breakthroughs in vacuum technology and structural engineering. The cost-benefit ratio is simply way too poor.
Now theoretically, you can eliminate some of the technical issues such as thermal expansion by by burying the hyperloop underground, but that increases the cost even more.
Is he crazy? Since he has so much money, and since he's not destructive, no, he is not crazy, he's eccentric.
Agreed. He's an eccentric man with a lot of ideas, some of which turn out to be economically feasible/profitable, while other are not so.
Just fuck off. Slashdot isn't a partisan political forum.
Judging by the amount of political news and commentary on a daily basis here you're massively mistaken.
Nerds aren't into parties and playing politics
As a nerd that's very much into politics, political discussions and debates and has been having them on this very site for several years, I'm going to throw you own words back at you and kindly ask you to just fuck off. You are not the arbiter of what nerds are and are not into.
You seem to assume people without education are not responsible for being without education.
No I'm not. However, even if all people had a university level education, someone would still have to do all the low-skill jobs. There need for lower skill jobs is still there, and it makes no sense that those jobs are now partially performed at a wage-level which is not livable. In a sensible society anybody working full time should make enough money to not have to rely on external aid.
Why should I pay more at Walmart just those those assholes who called me nerd and wanted to have babies with drug dealers now have to scramble for their jobs?
Because you're already paying for it but currently do not seem to realize it. What you 'save'* in slightly cheaper prices Walmart gets by paying sub-livable wages you lose in increased tax-costs caused by their workforce having to rely on government aid to get by. You're not saving any money, you're only helping Walmart take advantage of the public safety net to increase their profits. The people need a certain minimum amount of money to get by their everyday costs of living, and if they cannot get it from their job, the rest will be covered by society.
Everyone gets a free high school education here. Everyone without an education CHOSE to not have one.
If you think you can get a well paid job on a HS diploma only, you're totally clueless as to the job requirements of this day an age. University degrees are required for nearly every better paid position. The best you can get with a HS background is jobs like fast food and retail.
Your entire argument makes zero sense, because walmart & co paying sub-living wages is not benefiting you, or the economy as a whole, at all. In fact it's doing the exact opposite, and yet here you are defending it because you do not seem to understand the bigger picture involved at all.
And yet, with all the other options available to them, people choose to work for Walmart. Why do you suppose that is?
Because getting some money is better than getting no money. It's not like the poeple who end up working in a wal-mart have a wide choice of places to work in. You seem to assume people without education can simply pick where they work. If there were masses of jobs with a higher pay than wall-mart's available, obviously people would rather work somewhere else.
Secondly, this is not the case for all wall-marts everywhere obviously, so there are (to my knowledge) states in which the pay is higher and hence it's a better place to work.
The alternative to working is being poor. The fact that people still opt to work for sub-optimal/sub-livable wages is not proof that those wages are livable, it's proof that a sub-livable wage is superior to no wage at all. Doesn't make it an ethical business practice.
What? A living wage is an easily definable concept: a wage at which people workign full time with said wage can maintain a normal standard of living, that is, afford housing, food, electricity, and so on.:
People can bitch about Wal-Mart all they want but they have shown to be willing to work with people like my kid. I don't agree with all the crap they pull but I won't fault them for taking care of their employees.
The plural of anecdote is not evidence. I'm glad your son has gotten employed, but keep in mind that wallmart's abuses towards their workforce are such that they even have their own wiki article'
In 2008, Walmart agreed to pay at least $352 million to settle lawsuits claiming that it forced employees to work off the clock. "Several lawyers described it as the largest settlement ever for lawsuits over wage violations."[ - - Because Walmart employs part-time and relatively low paid workers, some workers may partially qualify for state welfare programs.[52] This has led critics to claim that Walmart increases the burden on taxpayer-funded services.[53][54] A 2002 survey by the state of Georgia's subsidized healthcare system, PeachCare, found that Walmart was the largest private employer of parents of children enrolled in its program; one quarter of the employees of Georgia Walmarts qualified to enroll their children in the federal subsidized healthcare system Medicaid.[55] A 2004 study at the University of California, Berkeley charges that Walmart's low wages and benefits are insufficient, and although decreasing the burden on the social safety net to some extent, California taxpayers still pay $86 million a year to Walmart employees.
Wal-Mart Stores raised its minimum wage to $9 in 2015 and to $10 in 2016, after years of protests by workers. While important steps in the right direction, these increases are not enough. An employee working 34 hours per week (which Wal-Mart considers full time) at $10 per hour still earns less than $18,000 per year and cannot meet her family's basic needs on Wal-Mart's wages alone, even in states with low costs of living, according to a recent study.
Why does it matter? Wal-Mart is the country's largest private employer, with 1.5 million employees in the United States alone. And it's a hugely profitable one: it generated $482 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2016. The company simply cannot justify its meager pay practices."
Etc. So they're paying a below livable wage and then making their employees use benefits to try and survive. They're essentially subsidizing a large part of their labor costs with tax-money because what they're paying people is not enough to live on in many areas.
I totally disagree that this is 'taking care' of their employees. It's blatant abuse, of both the employees themselves as well as tax-payer money that has to be spent on their employees on account of them not paying a livable wage or offering proper health care.
The problem is that Valve, while being a multimillion dollar international powerhouse, doesn't actually want to do any work on things like customer service or maintaining their store.
They don't want to do it because they don't need to do it because they're so huge. It's the same problem as with facebook: the inertia both FB and Steam got from being the first to deliver a service has launched them so far ahead in the market that they're pretty much indestructible at this point. I mean sure, there are competitors out there but steam is so far ahead above the others that they don't have to worry about losing their spot.
Think about the fact that steam is the only thing that pushes ads onto my desktop from time to time. Then think about the fact that sometimes I've bought games from these ads if the discount is good enough. Valve knows the types of games I've purchased, what I've played, for how long, what kind of hardware I'm running, etc. They have pretty in depth stats about my gaming habits from the past 10 years. This information by itself is something that none of their competitors can ever have access to, and it's worth a lot to them. Targeted advertising is not just done on websites.
They have taken advantage of this by building the sales/discount system so that even though pretty much everyone agrees that Steam's customer service and quality control are bullshit, most of us still end up using the service because of the value it offers. It's a sort of abusive relationship: we all know that the only way to teach Valve a lesson would be to stop using steam altogether and head to their competition. But people have to start steam to play their library of games, at which time it usually reminds you that this or that game happens to be 70 % off now, and sooner or later relapsing occurs.
People don't really switch from Facebook to other similar competing social platforms because FB has their images, posts, and connections. Competition is difficult with both Steam and facebook because to efficiently compete with either of these you need access to at least some of the information currently only possessed by these companies, and they sure as hell are not going to hand it to you.
You can hire someone to do a job that you cannot today because the benefit added is lower than the cost
The whole problem faced by advanced economies is that the marginal utility of an untrained individual is approaching zero, though it's not there yet obviously. The more automated we become, the less value an untrained individual will be able to generate.
When talking about this subject many often bring up farming as an example of a field that was once heavily reliant on labor, became automated and the people didn't become unemployed. This is true because the skillset that the people who worked on farms could be transferred to other jobs at for example factories with relatively little cost (ie. no large amount of training required).
However now as more and more menial jobs are being performed better, faster and with less mistakes by a machine, the likelihood of an untrained or lowly educated individual finding a job is getting smaller and smaller. Invoicing and other data entry jobs are a good example of something that we know for sure will be gone in less than a couple of decades by and large, and there are people whose main function has been to operate a PC and enter data either from documents into the computer or from within one system to another etc. Once it becomes cheap to automate these tasks entirely, there simply is no point for companies to hire individuals to do it. The machine can handle varying workloads at tight schedules and does not require heavy monitoring, does not sleep, take days off, etc.
The data entry skill set will become worthless sooner or later, and in order to find a new job, these people need to retrain themselves, which obviously is not possible for everyone. But the core point to keep in mind that we're heading into a future in which machines can perform increasingly complicated tasks at a level equal to or better than low-skilled individuals. Transportation/logistics is another such example: once automated driving gets better and more widespread, there's simply no reason to have human drivers for most situations anymore; computers get into less accidents and can work 24/7, so even if a human truck driver offers his services at a reduced cost, he's not going to be able to compete in a market where the automated vehicles are driving non-stop without breaks using real time data from other vehicles and the internet to optimize its route around traffic jams etc. The initial investment required by a self-driving car/truck is obviously higher, meaning that at first human drivers can still compete against the machines with lowered salaries. But the closer the price of an automated unit comes to the costs of a manually operated unit, the less sense it makes to keep the human in the loop. Once the costs are on par the humans will lose their competitive advantage altogether and the job will become obsolete. That is, a point will come wherein even if the human driver works for free, the machine is a better choice because it does more work in less time, just like a tractor is a better choice than hiring people to manually work the fields with horses, even if they'd offer to work for no pay because the former is vastly more efficient and therefore way better for productivity,
So to clarify: I agree with you in part, but we cannot and should not assume there will always be a marker for low/no-skill jobs in advanced economies.
If you have an UBI of 800 bucks and you now earn 1000, having a wage of 200 bucks would mean that you get equal pay.
No, no it wouldn't the whole point of my reoply to you is that none of the BI models anywhere are tax-free, and a wide scale implementation of it requires changing the way taxes work to fund the model. Under the suggested model I used as an example someone would have to earn 637 euros to make a 1000 euros after the increased income tax of 41 % is rediced from their pay and the BI is added on top. So your math is off. Obviously my example was just one model, but your math does not work in any of the BI models being discussed, because they all swtich taxes around to make sure the model is funded, which means that you cannot calculate it in the way you did without getting a skewed result.
Paying 200 instead of 1000 is cutting the price tag of that employee to a fifth, essentially meaning that he could hire 5 people for the same price as one today
Not to a fifth. As I've been trying to say the de facto effect on employee costs is much smaller if similar income levels are to be maintained, as they should be.
What every country does have a problem with, though, is keeping its lowly skilled (and hence lowly paid) population occupied. UBI could easily take care of that problem.
Well, UBI will help to that end yes, but it's not as if the need for low-skilled labor is going up even with UBI in use. Manufacturing and storage and office jobs are fast being automated already. In 10-15 years, even if I can hire 1,5-2 employees at the price of one with an UBI backing them up, it's still more likely that an entirely electronic solutions will be more cost effective, and you need maybe 1-3 guys to oversee it.
UBI is needed because unemployment will keep creeping upwards, and skyrocket when general level AI hits in X number of decades. but to assume that UBI alone, just by making employees slightly cheaper to the employer, is going to generate demand for low-skill/no-skill jobs is not exactly something I'd agree with, because the point will come weherein the cost-benefit ratio of machines will simply make those human jobs obsolete. But at least with a UBI at a proper level, the unemployed masses will have money to live their lives and participate in society.
Instead, what will most likely happen, is that companies will get away with offering WAY less money as compensation for work.
Well no, not at least in the models currently being tested/speculated about. It depends on how the BI is arranged. I wrote about the BI experiment going on here in Finland in an earlier story here, quoting the relevant part:
Have a look at this chart, it's one of the proposed models for basic income by the Finnish Green Party. Now, I might not entirely agree with the numbers therein but this gives you an idea of how these systems are imagined. The leftmost column is the basic income, same for all income groups. The column after that is income from work, and the column after that is taxes paid for on the income for work (41 % for those making less than 4200, and 49 % for those making above it). The column after that is net income after taxes, and the column after that is total income (net income + basic income), the rightmost column is the effective tax-rate. Now you can see that for the two lowest classes, even though the nominal taxrate is high (41) the effective tax-rate is indeed negative due to the basic income, and only 4 % on those who make 1500.
Because in most models of BI the income is essentially created as a negative tax-bracket it means that not everyone will get a blank increase of X dollars which would lower wages. For me example under such a model my tax-rate would go down 5 %. meaning my pay could be cut by that amount without it affecting my level of income at all. Cutting any more than that would start to reduce the net income I get.
So if an employer offered 200 for a month of work, this would be enough.
No, it wouldn't. If I was offered 200 instead of my current pay, my net income would drop 63 % under this model. People are not going to go "oh cool, you want me to keep doing what I've always been doing and get less than half the money I used to because they tweaked the taxation system slightly, I'm fine with this."
Besides, doing this would destroy the consumer base entirely. If the net incomes of the vast majority of people drop by over half, domestic consumption would come crashing down, in turn causing major issues for companies,
BIs are at their core tax-reforms which are meant to ensure people can accept part time and short-term jobs more flexibly without having to worry about the problems that causes for their benefits and the hassle of re-applying for them and in the process losing any source of income for the time that their application is reprocessed. The current bI models being discussed in western economies are not such that they could be used for massive pay-cuts. The models assume that pays stay the same, as the BI itself requires heavy taxation of income to be funded. Cut pays across the board and the tax-revenue will collapse, making the system immediately unsustainable.
In the long term, if and when automation proceeds to a stage in which nearly everyone is on BI, then the situation is different and the amount of BI will have to be increased to maintain domestic demand, but in that scenario, since nearly no-one will be generating income tax-revenue, the money for the higher BI will need to come from somewhere, which means corporate taxes and capital gains taxes will have to be tweaked to fund the higher BI.
Ah, it's getting late here and I messed up my wording, correction;
" Banning countries like SA, Turkey, Pakistan, UEA would actually reduce the odds of terror attacks" is missing "in the short term.".
I believe full country bans would increase the hostility towards you and increase the risks of attacks in the long term, but my point was at least if he included those countries he/you would have an argument to make about the policy being somehow useful. Right now you do not,
If you're trying to win a conflict, you need to be aware of the objective of your enemy in order to better defeat them. If you do not understand their objectives or their methods, you cannot defeat them. You should have learned this by now from both Vietnam and the failed Iraq campaign(s).
Basically you're characterizing the travel ban as something it's not (an anti-muslim move)
No, I've been explaining to you why the ban(s) are a defective solution: they do not alter the current situation, which already allows for refusing immigrants whose backgrounds cannot be vetted, in any positive way. Your own State Department is against it. What they do accomplish on the other hand is provide your enemy with ample propaganda ammunition to further their goal in painting the US as the enemy of all muslims It's a pure PR stunt from Trump that has no actual upsides while worsening the strategic position and reputation in the middle-east.
You do not understand this and maintain the ban is somehow useful, despite there being no factual evidence for that. The justifications given for it all all attacks which were not performed by people coming in from those countries,
No one cares about your histrionics.
Your entire argument thus far has been: 'you disagree with Trump, therefore you're wrong'. You have not demonstrated why this ban makes any sense or improves the current siutation in any way. That's because it does not. It's a 'solution' for a non-issue which does not block access from the high risk terrorist countries such as SA, Pakistan etc. At least if it included those you would have a point. I've been saying Trumps solution is essentially useless in achieving what he claims it to achieve (reducing the risk of terrorism) because the risk of terrorism from people coming in from those countries is minimal compared to the countries you keep letting in.
This discussion has 2 main points:
1. Are country-wide travel bans effective way of reducing terrorism? 2. If one were to ban immigrants from certain countries in an attempt to reduce terrorism, would this list be a sensible one?
My answer to both is no. We probably disagree on the 1st one but that's irrelevant, because regardless of that the 2nd is objectively wrong, making this policy idiotic even if one's answer to 1. is yes. Banning countries like SA, Turkey, Pakistan, UEA would actually reduce the odds of terror attacks, this however does not. It does however conveniently aid your enemy which is trying to turn the domestic US muslim population more into aggression.
I'm yelling about the idiocy of trump because trump is objectively wrong here even if you agree with his stated end goals. I'm yelling at him because setting these types of policies shows lack of forethought, and does not raise my confidence in the slightest that he has a clue of what he's doing.
My problem is that the bans are counter-productive. They do not make the US any more safe than it is now as the stats prove. Having rigorous vetting is good and if someone cannot be vetted, then understandably they should not be let in, but it's not like there is or has been a massive problem of terrorists coming in to the US through these countries, whereas there is a history of people coming in from other countries (such as SA) and doing a lot of damage, yet these countries are not on the list.
It makes no sense. You're fighting people who want nothing more than all muslims to be demonized and targeted, because that's the single most effective way of turning them against you. ISIS would like nothing more than US banning islam and telling muslims to 'convert or die' as that'd be the perfect gift for them; they'd tell everyone to officially give up their faith (something the Koran sanctions) and go deeper into underground to strike against the US. Attacks would likely increase, not stop. This is what they openly wish for.
The ban as it's currently implemented does nothing except further ruin your repetutation and make alliances with those and other muslim countries even harder. The jihadists are already taking advantage of it;
Several postings suggested that Trump was fulfilling the predictions of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American born al-Qaeda leader and preacher who famously said that the “West would eventually turn against its Muslim citizens.” Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011.
“When U.S. President Donald Trump says ‘We don’t want them here’ and bans the Muslim immigrants from Muslim countries, there is one thing that comes to our mind,” said another posting, beneath a banner of al-Awlaki and his quote.
Another posting on the Telegram channel “Abu Magrebi” said Trump’s actions “clearly revealed the truth and harsh reality behind the American government’s hatred toward Muslims.”
Leaders of the Islamic State speak frequently of their intention to drive a wedge between Western governments and their Muslim populations, and have welcomed outside help — intentional or not — in fulfilling that goal. In a 2015 essay in the Islamic State’s English-language magazine Dabiq, the group said that its motivation for launching terrorist attacks in Europe was to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash that would force ambivalent Muslims to enlist with them.
“Jihadists would have to argue to lengths that Obama, Bush, and others held anti-Islam agendas and hated the religion — not just radical terrorists,” said Rita Katz, founder of the SITE Intelligence Group, a private organization that monitors jihadist websites. “Trump, however, makes that argument a lot easier for them to sell to their followers.”
You're playing exactly into their hand and strategy with this ban, while gaining no notable benefit to your current situation. It's a completely shortsighted and stupid policy to be putting into action when you can already - if need be - refuse immigrants if they cannot be properly vetted. The ban is not needed for that. The justifications given for it are also complete bullshit:
"There are 1,000 open ISIS investigations, approximately, inside the United States. There's a very strong nexus between our immigration and visa programs and terrorist plots and extremist networks inside the United States," the official continued. "Look at the recent, high-profile attacks that have occurred inside the country -- an immigration nexus is not at all uncommon. I won't go through the list of them all now. One obvious example would be Tashfeen Malik and the San Bernadino incident with the K1 visa." A K1 visa i
Those seven countries do not have infrastructure such that they can provide documentation to Customs/BP/DHS/State so background checks or vetting can occur. It's hard to get someone's police record from the "government" of Somalia so you can see whether or not they're a criminal.
Many people from these countries have been vetted before and so far it's worked, that is, there's no history of peole coming in from these regions committing acts of terror in the US. Obviousuly the vetting is hard and takes time, but that's not a good reason for an across the board ban, as opbviously cases exist in which vetting can (and has) be successfully done.
Saudi Arabia has a functioning government
They're a totalitarian theocracy. They have a 'functioning government' in the same sense North-Korea has a 'functioning government'.
Or would you like Saudi Arabia added to the list because they're muslim?
No, I don't think banning entire countries is a good strategy to begin with. I support giving refuge to anyone fleeing the totalitarian government of SA just as I support giving refuge to those fleeing isis. My point was an is that Saudis are the primary source of monetary and ideological suport for ISIS. They share a good deal of values, as SA is also a strict islamic theocracy.
If the goal is to combat radical islam, then doing so without putting pressure on the Saudi government to stop aiding extremists groups and funneling them money is a useless effort.
Also, trusting the Saudi officials is also not likely a safe strategy. The declassified 28 pages of the 911 report make it seem pretty likely that Saudi intelligence is lackluster at best, and in league with the hijackers at worst.
Perhaps most intriguingly, the 28 pages reveal that Osama Basnan, whom the documents describe as a supporter of two of the 9/11 hijackers in California, received a cheque from Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the US.
“On at least one occasion, Bassnan received a check directly from Prince Bandar’s account,” it says. “According to the FBI, on May 14, 1998, Bassnan cashed a check from Bandar in the amount of $15,000. Bassnan’s wife also received at least one check directly from Bandar.”
Basnan lived across the street from two of the hijackers – Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi – in San Diego and told an FBI asset that he had helped them, according to the document. Basnan was allegedly a supporter of al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden and spoke of him “as if he were a god”.
Obviously the official conclusion of the FBI is still that SA was not complicit in the attacks, because admitting that while continuing to hold them as a military ally would be impossible.
Whatever the case is, either the Saudi officials are so incompetent in their monitoring and record collecting that they missed their own former ambassador wiring money to an extremist. Or they did not miss that and simply let it slip. Anyway, in this light, were I american I would be heavily skeptical of any 'vetting' or other such intel provided by Saudi officials and their 'working' government, which shares more of its core values with ISIS than it does with western democracies.
It's impossible to simultaneously say that ISIS is evil but there's nothing wrong with Saudi-Arabia, and this is the key cognitive dissonance that american politicians, officials and the public will have to face if you want to address the issue of militant Islam without seeming totally clueless.
What about the OSU attacker(2016) who was from Somalia ?
You're right he was from Somalia, the stats extend only to 2015. But even counting that attack, being a knife attack, only injured 13 people and none were killed, so it doesn't change the overall point in the slightest: countering terrorism by banning these countries is not a sensible policy in light of the existing data about terrorism and the regions that it's coming from.
Banning entire countries is a bad strategy to begin with, but if some countries are to be banned, banning Saudis and the UAE for example would make a great deal more sense than banning these 7 countries,
Reality is countries who letting these refugees in are finding out the hard way how incompatible the cultures are, and some people are paying for it with their lives.
The residents of the countries on that list have performed 0 terror attacks on US soil since 1975. And the source for this is not some 'libtard' site bit the conservative as Cato institute:
Foreigners from those seven nations have killed zero Americans in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and the end of 2015. Six Iranians, six Sudanese, two Somalis, two Iraqis, and one Yemini have been convicted of attempting or carrying out terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Zero Libyans or Syrians have been convicted of planning a terrorist attack on U.S. soil during that time period. - -
In addition to the visa restrictions above, Trump’s executive order further cuts the refugee program to 50,000 annually, indefinitely blocks all refugees from Syria, and suspends all refugee admissions for 120 days. This is a response to a phantom menace. From 1975 to the end of 2015, 20 refugees have been convicted of attempting or committing terrorism on U.S. soil, and only three Americans have been killed in attacks committed by refugees—all in the 1970s. Zero Americans have been killed by Syrian refugees in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The annual chance of an American dying in a terrorist attack committed by a refugee is one in 3.6 billion. The other 17 convictions have mainly been for aiding or attempting to join foreign terrorists.
President Trump tweeted earlier this week that executive orders were intended to improve national security by reducing the terrorist threat. However, a rational evaluation of national security threats is not the basis for Trump’s orders, as the risk is fairly small but the cost is great. The measures taken here will have virtually no effect on improving U.S. national security.
Meanwhile, Saudi-arabia is the largest propagator of Wahabbism which is both the state religion of the kingdom and also at the core of ISIS ideology. Saudis are also largely behind the funding of ISIS. 15 of the 911 attackers were Saudi nationals, 2 were from United Arab Emirates, 1 was Lebanese, and one was from Egypt, But is Saudi-Arabia on the list? Nope. And neither are Egypt or Lebanon. They're still considered your 'allies'. In fact Saudis themselves seem 'very optimistic about Trump.'
So he's planning to combat radical Islam by maintaining military and financial support to its largest state sponsor in the world, while banning a list of countries that have done the US zero harm comparatively? So what, exactly is this 'fixing' outside playing right into the hands of your enemies by allowing them to trump up the rhetoric of 'holy war' and senseless persecution of muslims in an attempt to radicalize the american muslim population?
Nothing. You're being played like a cheap fiddle. The ISIS commanders are laughing their beards off and Sun Tzu is rolling in his grave because of such utter strategic incompetence.
That trump is not just blatantly lying but doing his damnest to make it so truth itself can be crushed and that all reasonable voices to the otherwise are silenced is scary as hell.
Yup, This is how it started in Russia. Many people seem confused as to why would they deny something as obvious as the size of the inauguration crowds for example that's easily proven false? Well, it has 3 important effects on american public discourse and media:
1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference.
2. Increasing the separation between Trump's base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong - that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong - they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here - likely to pay off - is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as "fake news" (because otherwise they'd be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.)
3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say "clearly the White House is lying," a third will say "if Trump says it, it must be true," and the remaining third will say "gosh, I guess this is unknowable." The idea isn't to convince these people of untrue things, it's to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.
This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump's White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as the crowds at the inauguration, just imagine what else they'll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. This allows them to eventually say anything to the public, and this should be worrisome to Americans regardless of who you voted because this is how totalitarian states get started. He's setting up his Pravda and being quite upfront about it.
He's still making the claim that 3 million 'fake voters' voted for Hillary to lose him the popular vote. There's no evidence for this, none whatsoever, anywhere. Yet the defense given reads like this::
Forced to defend the President's remarks to congressional leaders on Monday night, his spokesman Sean Spicer was unable to quell the controversy on Tuesday, citing "studies and evidence" -- then refused to discuss or produce any such material. "The President does believe that, I think he's stated that before, and stated his concern of voter fraud and people voting illegally during the campaign and continues to maintain that belief based on studies and evidence people have brought to him," Spicer said.
So to him. He only knows. Truth is what he believes it to be. Where have I read this before?
I tell you Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the party holds to be truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.
-1984
I'm not american, but all I can say to Americans is: don't fall for this. Don't let the man divide you even further against yourself and monopolize the truth. You've seen how well that has gone in Russia, a
Overseas pharmacies ignore IP protected drugs by using a loop hole in the international trade pacts that allow country claiming a national medical emergency and then go on to create their own generic copies.
You mean overseas countries like the Netherlands, Canada and UK not to mention all the other European countries are 'ignoring trade pacts' with the US? Huh?
Yes, unlicensed manufacturing is going on in places like India, but the fact of the matter is that the drug companies are charging insane amounts of extra in the US because they can. After all, they seek to make profit, so to them, the price is set carefully to the point that allows them to extract the most profit out of any given economy. The pharmaceutical industry is in a position in which people often have to buy their products or they will die. This is what allows them to ask prices that are way beyond what their actual R & D costs are. Look at the chart from this article outlining the costs and profits of the largest drug manufacturers. All of them spend more money on marketing than R & D and all if them have large margins, with Pfizer making as much as 43 % proft. These numbers are unheard of in any other industry, and they're solely the result of the american medical system's private nature which robs hospitals and states of effective ways to buy drugs cheaper. Instead of the Federal government or a state buying drugs in bulk, each private hospital chain has to buy them separately. This, combined with the fact that insured individuals don't really care how much the price is as long as it's covered by their insurance is what's put the US so far behind other developed nations in drig-polices and allowed the pharmaceutical industry to become the most profitable industry in the US.
There's no way for example European economies to 'force' these companies to sell to us at a loss. The prices they get selling their drugs to us are still profitable to them, butt because most non-US economies use differing forms of collective bargaining among other sensible policies, we're able to negotiate the prices down. A lot. The common counter-argument to this is that if the US started limiting drug companies' abilities to make as much profit as they currently do, they'd stop R & D and we'd run out of new drugs, but this is false. All of the companies can afford to sell the drugs much cheaper than they currently are being sold in the US and still make solid profit.
It does exactly what it is programmed/trained to do, nothing more, nothing less.
If we're talking about an AI system with general intelligence, that is, a system that's equally or more intelligent than humans are then the whole point is that it's capable of changing its programming.
As Sam Harris this video , we cannot assume that we can keep on improving the intelligence of our machines and simultaneously thinking that we will retain total control of said machines. He also points out the dangers posed by AI are not in the 'killbot' scenario by comparing the difference in intelligence between humans and a superintelligent system to the difference between humans and ants. We don't seek to exterminate or destroy all ants, but when they get in the way of our higher goals, be it building a building, or whatever, we destroy them without hesitation.
The danger is that if in the future AI system/systems are in charge of overseeing for example global production systems. Let's assume the AI is ethical, that is, it has a goal that is to maintain the existence of human life and biodiversity on the planet. What will it do to make sure this goal is met? It might well end up killing some humans in order to save the species, not via Terminator robots, but by for example shutting down polluting production and power-generation in overpopulated areas etc.
Also, since true AI systems would be superior in waging war, the emergence of AI itself poses a risk to humanity because whoever gets there first will have a massive advantage, both in strategy as well as weapons R & D. If the Russians found out the americans had a near complete AI they are about to deploy churning out decades worth of material and weapons research in a matter of weeks, what would they do? What would the US do if they found out the same about China? Etc.
In short: killbots are not the problem, but that does not mean that the emergence of an intelligence on this planet that exceeds our own and cannot be guaranteed to share our values does not pose risks, There are great many risks involved, some of which are even probably unknown to us at this point.
Apple unashamedly politicizes a price hike disguised as equality (gotta keep things "fair" right?)
I'm no fan of Apple's business practices in general, but this has nothing to do with politicizing anythting. It's a fact that the Pound has weakened after Brexit and keeps weakening. It's also a fact companies don't like their profits being eaten up by exchange-rate fluctuations. They need to make their desired cut on the apps, and it's not their fault that the Pound is falling.
Sure, if Apple cared about ethics more it could keep the price the same and suffer the loss.. but when have megacorporations ever cared about ethics before profits?
Smaller countries in the world deal with this on a constant basis. Back when we here in Finland had the mark before the euro, the prices of import goods could vary as much as 10-30 % almost overnight if the exchange rate to dollars/pounds/german marks/rubbles dropped sharply.
The problem is that a human is able to step out of their algorithm and ask themselves, "Is this really correct?"
So is a computer. Error-checking and adapting is something that computers are still not very good at, but the whole point of machine learning and adaptive algorithms is to achieve this same ability.
Humans are able to error-check their own decisions and calculations only so far as we've learned to do it. If I've performed some task 10 000 times I know what kind of errors can occur in the process and can account for those. If I'm presented with a problem that I've never seen or solved before, my capabilities to do error-checking are nonexistent unless I first study the problem to find out which sort of errors can come up.
The same is true for machines: they can do error-checking in so far as they have data and experience to check against. The more data they have in their use, the better the error checking capabilities. A learning machine does not perform the same calculations time and time again, it looks at the result and attempts to change the calculations until the desired outcome is achieved.
The human brain is not a computer because computing is a very small part of thinking and intelligence.
Firstly, even if one agrees that this is true, the human brain is still a computer, even if it's not entirely a computer. We're able to perform calculations and predictions based on learned experience, which amounts to computing. You can argue that on top of this the human brain has some 'extra' abilities that make it 'more than just a computer' but I'm not so sure of that.
The brain is in charge of not only conscious thinking but maintaining the life of the organism. It does this by receiving information from the nervous system and controlling the operation of the organs. It obviously does not (as others have pointed out) receive or process this information in the same way as a human built electronic computer does, but it does so nonetheless, so my way is to view the brain as just an incredibly advanced form of a computer that's way beyond anything we can currently even conceive of manufacturing ourselves.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with this completely. As a Finn I've often been pondering recently what I'd do if the time comes to visit the US for business reasons or otherwise and this idea of just getting brand new device to bring along has been in my thoughts. However, in the context of your quote it has one massive setback: it's yielding to the system by saying 'fine, I agree that you can search everything I have so I bought a device with nothing on it'. It's not going to help the situation in the long term.
In fact I can see this kind of behavior being used to tighten the screws of surveillance even more: "Sir, we have noticed that you are on Facebook/Gmail/twitter but you're not logged into any of those on your device, please provide the passwords so we can verify you're not trying to hide any illegal activities'. That is, having a 'fresh' wiped device could itself be in the future seen as cause for 'reasonable suspicion', only making the problem worse.
In so far as I can see, the only way is not to try to go around the surveillance by means of technical solutions, but to oppose it in courts en masse. It's a hard route to take, but failing to stand up for your constitutional rights will, in the light of history, only lead to them being slowly chiselled away.
So you don't read any non-tax funded news-sites then, you know the ones ran by news corporations?
But honestly, it's facebook's decision to decide whether or not they want their platfrom to be used in distribution of non-factual/made up 'news'. I personally do not get my news from FB but I've seen the amount of entirely made up 'news' from blogs that have been shared in the recent years. A simple thing that I've seen repeated time and time again here is this: someone files a report about an immigrant committing some crime, usually theft or assault. The yellow-press then runs this with a headline along the lines of 'Immigrant man under investigation for crime X'. Then some nationalist blog made up to look like a news site runs an article with the headline "yet another immigrant crime, man from *insert country* harassed a teenager.", then, to appear more credible they link to the previous article about an ongoing investigation.
These spread like wildfire on social media because the headlines are usually shocking and they pander the the preconceived notions and fears that people have, and nobody bothers to check what the source actually says. If you point out in the comment section that the guy has not in fact been convicted of anything and it's an ongoing investigation (you know, innocent until proven guilty and all that) you get attacked for being 'on their side' or 'defending criminals', nevermind that no crime has of yet been proven to take place. If the guy is convicted it's trumpeted again as evidence of how all brown people are dangerous criminals and/or terrorists. If charges are not raised at all or he's found to be innocent, no correcting stories are run.
There are several sites operating mainly using this principle, many of them receiving funding or support from Russia, which is taking advantage of the immigrant crisis here in Europe to stir up xenophobia and nationalism because a divided and weakened EU is to their benefit. RT is a common 'source' used by these sites, Many of them also cross-link to each other, so that a blog being run in sweden is used as source by blog here in Finland. The traditional media obviously does not report on unsubstantiated rumors which is then further used as 'evidence' that the media is involved in some sort of massive 'cover-up' by not immediately reporting everything someone decided to blog about,
This is what 'alternative facts' mean, and personally having seen how fast these things can spread even after officials come out and issue corrections, I don't mind social media trying to do something about these sites' visibility, because without the massive speed/inertia that they gain by quick shares and likes they'd be in near obscurity. They are only damaging public discourse, because it's now impossible to even try and have a rational discussion with many of these people as they will not accept any news or reporting from the 'corrupted mainstream media' as evidence that they've in fact been duped by propagandists and ideologues. As a test, reporter from a newspaper submitted a story about being attacked by a foreigner(s) last summer and it was immediately published even though no source or evidence was presented. They'll pretty much run everything that serves their agenda, because that's what propaganda is.
I see no reason why facebook should allow this to keep happening. They already censor stuff like nudity and gore out, and I don't see nudity and gore anywhere near as dangerous to the society as made up 'news'.
I believe you're on point here, and it's not just an american thing either. As a Finn I was recently discussing politics online here with a Finnish libertarian type who was of the opinion that we should move away from our current model of healthcare towards a more market oriented solution because 'the free market is more efficient'. I've previously written at length here and elsewhere why I do not believe this is the case for health production, but that's a side point. What's interesting is that when I inquired from him how he explains the current situation in the US, which, despite being more market oriented is both massively more expensive and non-universally covering, his answer was that the US model was not 'free' at all and should be avoided. Upon further discussion he said he agrees with the clause in our constitutions which guarantees health care to people regardless of their economic status. So despite wishing for more private contractors with (IMO) bad reasoning in the name of 'more freedom', his operational definition of a free market differs from his american libertarian counterparts who tend to believe that no-one should get treated unless they can pay for it or or get some other individual to pay for it.
I'm taking this up because this highlights the core problem of the term: it doesn't have a clear meaning. There are those who genuinely believe that the only truly free markets are those in which no regulations exist, essentially an anarchocapitalist view in which anything that comes between the seller and the buyer is deemed as bad. Then there are those (such as myself) who believe that a certain amount of regulations is needed for a market to be truly free because the point of laws and regulations regarding trade is to ensure that no-one's taken advantage of. This is why consumer protection laws exist.
The problem is in the term itself. It says 'free'. Who doesn't like freedom? But what it means for say, an investment bank or an oil giant to be 'free' is entirely different than what it means for me an individual to be 'free'. My freedom as an individual depends on things such as the infrastructure (funded by taxes), the environment not being destroyed, being protected from illness and violence and so on, whereas for the companies their 'freedom' equates solely to their ability to make as much money as possible without being hindered. An oil company has no qualms about pursuing methods destructive to the global ecosystem because they as an entity do not care about the environment. And I don't believe they should, companies are by their nature amoral, they're entities driven by profit and profit only, and that's alright. However if we recognize this we should also recognize that there's no way for everyone to have total freedom. The purpose of a civilized society should be to make sure that the trade and business being conducted within it is not causing excessive damage to people. We should not expect giant corporations to grow a conscience but we should instead impose the collective conscience of the society on them in the form of laws. Therefore, in my idea of a truly free market the companies would be restricted from pursing tactics that are detrimental to ecosystem that we all depend upon.
Point being: whether or not a given action is performed in a free market or not has no bearing to its morality. Slaves were once traded (and still are, in some parts of the world) in the free market. Tobacco manufacturers once used the free market to dole out massive amounts of blatant misinformation about their products to consumers. The companies knew long before the general public did that smoking causes cancer. Now that the marketing
If you read it that way you did not understand it. The difference is the problems faced by self-driving car development are computational. The people who said:'oh cars can could never drive themselves' were essentially arguing 'oh compuers can never handle all the variables' and so on. Because of Moore's law etc. those who were up to dat on the progress of computing knew that this wouldn't be the case going ahead, as we're now starting to see.
The problems faced by hyperloop are not computational, they're cost-benefit oriented. Given enough money, the hyperloop could surely be implemented already, even though the cost would be at or beyond space-program levels. Building vacuum tubes and maintaining them against leaks and other safety dangers is not something we can project will become masively cheaper to do in the near future. The cost estimates hyperloop itself thus far has presented assume for example zero maintenance costs and so on. The cost calculations are not even 'optimistic', they're simply wrong.
With self-driving cars the argument to be made for them could be constructed even way back 10-15 years ago by noting the obvious fact that computers are getting smaller, cheapr and more efficient at a relatively steady pace. The same is not true for the kind of tech required by hyperloop to work at the cost-ranges that they've been using in their plans and presentations,
I am not rejecting them based on the failed first test. I'm not rejecting the concept at all. I'm rejecting the economic feasibility of the concept based on the fact that the instances behind Hyperloop have not presented any kind of data which would lead me to believe they're even at the beginning stages of starting to solve the engineering obstacles required to get to the price-point they've been advertising. The test is just an example of these issues. Like I said: if there are major breakthroughs in vacuum technology or so on, things may be different. But right now they're holding pod-design contests for student teams when they do not even have solutions for building the tube itself at costs levels they're claiming they can get to, nor any plans on how to get there.
If these change, I will gladly change my mind, hyperloop would be a cool thing. But all fact considered, it so far remains economically speaking a pipe-dream.
With Musk the right question is never 'will it work?" but 'will it make any sense factoring in the costs?'
In theory something like the Hyperloop is a great idea. Until you realize that the costs and dangers involved in building a several hundred mile vacuum tube, and keeping it depressurized would cost astronomical amounts of money. The test track the built for the recent pod-competition for hyperloop was less than a mile long and its still the second largest vacuum tube ever built. Took about 30 minutes to depressurize and top speeds were around 60 mph, and that's with them being pushed by an external motor unit, the pods themselves didn't even have functioning engines. The moment the external motor 'released' the pods they pretty much froze, with most of them not even making it across the finish line.
The practical difficulties in doing this on the scale and speeds that the hyperloop project has been painting (600 MPH over a distance of hundreds of miles) are so enormous especially taking into consideration the kind of safety features that'd have to be included that economically speaking the hyperloop is not going to happen in any foreseeable future barring major technological breakthroughs in vacuum technology and structural engineering. The cost-benefit ratio is simply way too poor.
Now theoretically, you can eliminate some of the technical issues such as thermal expansion by by burying the hyperloop underground, but that increases the cost even more.
Agreed. He's an eccentric man with a lot of ideas, some of which turn out to be economically feasible/profitable, while other are not so.
Judging by the amount of political news and commentary on a daily basis here you're massively mistaken.
As a nerd that's very much into politics, political discussions and debates and has been having them on this very site for several years, I'm going to throw you own words back at you and kindly ask you to just fuck off. You are not the arbiter of what nerds are and are not into.
No I'm not. However, even if all people had a university level education, someone would still have to do all the low-skill jobs. There need for lower skill jobs is still there, and it makes no sense that those jobs are now partially performed at a wage-level which is not livable. In a sensible society anybody working full time should make enough money to not have to rely on external aid.
Because you're already paying for it but currently do not seem to realize it. What you 'save'* in slightly cheaper prices Walmart gets by paying sub-livable wages you lose in increased tax-costs caused by their workforce having to rely on government aid to get by. You're not saving any money, you're only helping Walmart take advantage of the public safety net to increase their profits. The people need a certain minimum amount of money to get by their everyday costs of living, and if they cannot get it from their job, the rest will be covered by society.
If you think you can get a well paid job on a HS diploma only, you're totally clueless as to the job requirements of this day an age. University degrees are required for nearly every better paid position. The best you can get with a HS background is jobs like fast food and retail.
Your entire argument makes zero sense, because walmart & co paying sub-living wages is not benefiting you, or the economy as a whole, at all. In fact it's doing the exact opposite, and yet here you are defending it because you do not seem to understand the bigger picture involved at all.
Because getting some money is better than getting no money. It's not like the poeple who end up working in a wal-mart have a wide choice of places to work in. You seem to assume people without education can simply pick where they work. If there were masses of jobs with a higher pay than wall-mart's available, obviously people would rather work somewhere else.
Secondly, this is not the case for all wall-marts everywhere obviously, so there are (to my knowledge) states in which the pay is higher and hence it's a better place to work.
The alternative to working is being poor. The fact that people still opt to work for sub-optimal/sub-livable wages is not proof that those wages are livable, it's proof that a sub-livable wage is superior to no wage at all. Doesn't make it an ethical business practice.
What? A living wage is an easily definable concept: a wage at which people workign full time with said wage can maintain a normal standard of living, that is, afford housing, food, electricity, and so on. :
The plural of anecdote is not evidence. I'm glad your son has gotten employed, but keep in mind that wallmart's abuses towards their workforce are such that they even have their own wiki article'
As this article well puts it:
Etc. So they're paying a below livable wage and then making their employees use benefits to try and survive. They're essentially subsidizing a large part of their labor costs with tax-money because what they're paying people is not enough to live on in many areas.
I totally disagree that this is 'taking care' of their employees. It's blatant abuse, of both the employees themselves as well as tax-payer money that has to be spent on their employees on account of them not paying a livable wage or offering proper health care.
They don't want to do it because they don't need to do it because they're so huge. It's the same problem as with facebook: the inertia both FB and Steam got from being the first to deliver a service has launched them so far ahead in the market that they're pretty much indestructible at this point. I mean sure, there are competitors out there but steam is so far ahead above the others that they don't have to worry about losing their spot.
Think about the fact that steam is the only thing that pushes ads onto my desktop from time to time. Then think about the fact that sometimes I've bought games from these ads if the discount is good enough. Valve knows the types of games I've purchased, what I've played, for how long, what kind of hardware I'm running, etc. They have pretty in depth stats about my gaming habits from the past 10 years. This information by itself is something that none of their competitors can ever have access to, and it's worth a lot to them. Targeted advertising is not just done on websites.
They have taken advantage of this by building the sales/discount system so that even though pretty much everyone agrees that Steam's customer service and quality control are bullshit, most of us still end up using the service because of the value it offers. It's a sort of abusive relationship: we all know that the only way to teach Valve a lesson would be to stop using steam altogether and head to their competition. But people have to start steam to play their library of games, at which time it usually reminds you that this or that game happens to be 70 % off now, and sooner or later relapsing occurs.
People don't really switch from Facebook to other similar competing social platforms because FB has their images, posts, and connections. Competition is difficult with both Steam and facebook because to efficiently compete with either of these you need access to at least some of the information currently only possessed by these companies, and they sure as hell are not going to hand it to you.
The whole problem faced by advanced economies is that the marginal utility of an untrained individual is approaching zero, though it's not there yet obviously. The more automated we become, the less value an untrained individual will be able to generate.
When talking about this subject many often bring up farming as an example of a field that was once heavily reliant on labor, became automated and the people didn't become unemployed. This is true because the skillset that the people who worked on farms could be transferred to other jobs at for example factories with relatively little cost (ie. no large amount of training required).
However now as more and more menial jobs are being performed better, faster and with less mistakes by a machine, the likelihood of an untrained or lowly educated individual finding a job is getting smaller and smaller. Invoicing and other data entry jobs are a good example of something that we know for sure will be gone in less than a couple of decades by and large, and there are people whose main function has been to operate a PC and enter data either from documents into the computer or from within one system to another etc. Once it becomes cheap to automate these tasks entirely, there simply is no point for companies to hire individuals to do it. The machine can handle varying workloads at tight schedules and does not require heavy monitoring, does not sleep, take days off, etc.
The data entry skill set will become worthless sooner or later, and in order to find a new job, these people need to retrain themselves, which obviously is not possible for everyone. But the core point to keep in mind that we're heading into a future in which machines can perform increasingly complicated tasks at a level equal to or better than low-skilled individuals. Transportation/logistics is another such example: once automated driving gets better and more widespread, there's simply no reason to have human drivers for most situations anymore; computers get into less accidents and can work 24/7, so even if a human truck driver offers his services at a reduced cost, he's not going to be able to compete in a market where the automated vehicles are driving non-stop without breaks using real time data from other vehicles and the internet to optimize its route around traffic jams etc. The initial investment required by a self-driving car/truck is obviously higher, meaning that at first human drivers can still compete against the machines with lowered salaries. But the closer the price of an automated unit comes to the costs of a manually operated unit, the less sense it makes to keep the human in the loop. Once the costs are on par the humans will lose their competitive advantage altogether and the job will become obsolete. That is, a point will come wherein even if the human driver works for free, the machine is a better choice because it does more work in less time, just like a tractor is a better choice than hiring people to manually work the fields with horses, even if they'd offer to work for no pay because the former is vastly more efficient and therefore way better for productivity,
So to clarify: I agree with you in part, but we cannot and should not assume there will always be a marker for low/no-skill jobs in advanced economies.
No, no it wouldn't the whole point of my reoply to you is that none of the BI models anywhere are tax-free, and a wide scale implementation of it requires changing the way taxes work to fund the model. Under the suggested model I used as an example someone would have to earn 637 euros to make a 1000 euros after the increased income tax of 41 % is rediced from their pay and the BI is added on top. So your math is off. Obviously my example was just one model, but your math does not work in any of the BI models being discussed, because they all swtich taxes around to make sure the model is funded, which means that you cannot calculate it in the way you did without getting a skewed result.
Not to a fifth. As I've been trying to say the de facto effect on employee costs is much smaller if similar income levels are to be maintained, as they should be.
Well, UBI will help to that end yes, but it's not as if the need for low-skilled labor is going up even with UBI in use. Manufacturing and storage and office jobs are fast being automated already. In 10-15 years, even if I can hire 1,5-2 employees at the price of one with an UBI backing them up, it's still more likely that an entirely electronic solutions will be more cost effective, and you need maybe 1-3 guys to oversee it.
UBI is needed because unemployment will keep creeping upwards, and skyrocket when general level AI hits in X number of decades. but to assume that UBI alone, just by making employees slightly cheaper to the employer, is going to generate demand for low-skill/no-skill jobs is not exactly something I'd agree with, because the point will come weherein the cost-benefit ratio of machines will simply make those human jobs obsolete. But at least with a UBI at a proper level, the unemployed masses will have money to live their lives and participate in society.
Well no, not at least in the models currently being tested/speculated about. It depends on how the BI is arranged. I wrote about the BI experiment going on here in Finland in an earlier story here, quoting the relevant part:
Because in most models of BI the income is essentially created as a negative tax-bracket it means that not everyone will get a blank increase of X dollars which would lower wages. For me example under such a model my tax-rate would go down 5 %. meaning my pay could be cut by that amount without it affecting my level of income at all. Cutting any more than that would start to reduce the net income I get.
No, it wouldn't. If I was offered 200 instead of my current pay, my net income would drop 63 % under this model. People are not going to go "oh cool, you want me to keep doing what I've always been doing and get less than half the money I used to because they tweaked the taxation system slightly, I'm fine with this."
Besides, doing this would destroy the consumer base entirely. If the net incomes of the vast majority of people drop by over half, domestic consumption would come crashing down, in turn causing major issues for companies,
BIs are at their core tax-reforms which are meant to ensure people can accept part time and short-term jobs more flexibly without having to worry about the problems that causes for their benefits and the hassle of re-applying for them and in the process losing any source of income for the time that their application is reprocessed. The current bI models being discussed in western economies are not such that they could be used for massive pay-cuts. The models assume that pays stay the same, as the BI itself requires heavy taxation of income to be funded. Cut pays across the board and the tax-revenue will collapse, making the system immediately unsustainable.
In the long term, if and when automation proceeds to a stage in which nearly everyone is on BI, then the situation is different and the amount of BI will have to be increased to maintain domestic demand, but in that scenario, since nearly no-one will be generating income tax-revenue, the money for the higher BI will need to come from somewhere, which means corporate taxes and capital gains taxes will have to be tweaked to fund the higher BI.
Ah, it's getting late here and I messed up my wording, correction;
" Banning countries like SA, Turkey, Pakistan, UEA would actually reduce the odds of terror attacks" is missing "in the short term.".
I believe full country bans would increase the hostility towards you and increase the risks of attacks in the long term, but my point was at least if he included those countries he/you would have an argument to make about the policy being somehow useful. Right now you do not,
If you're trying to win a conflict, you need to be aware of the objective of your enemy in order to better defeat them. If you do not understand their objectives or their methods, you cannot defeat them. You should have learned this by now from both Vietnam and the failed Iraq campaign(s).
No, I've been explaining to you why the ban(s) are a defective solution: they do not alter the current situation, which already allows for refusing immigrants whose backgrounds cannot be vetted, in any positive way. Your own State Department is against it. What they do accomplish on the other hand is provide your enemy with ample propaganda ammunition to further their goal in painting the US as the enemy of all muslims It's a pure PR stunt from Trump that has no actual upsides while worsening the strategic position and reputation in the middle-east.
You do not understand this and maintain the ban is somehow useful, despite there being no factual evidence for that. The justifications given for it all all attacks which were not performed by people coming in from those countries,
Your entire argument thus far has been: 'you disagree with Trump, therefore you're wrong'. You have not demonstrated why this ban makes any sense or improves the current siutation in any way. That's because it does not. It's a 'solution' for a non-issue which does not block access from the high risk terrorist countries such as SA, Pakistan etc. At least if it included those you would have a point. I've been saying Trumps solution is essentially useless in achieving what he claims it to achieve (reducing the risk of terrorism) because the risk of terrorism from people coming in from those countries is minimal compared to the countries you keep letting in.
This discussion has 2 main points:
1. Are country-wide travel bans effective way of reducing terrorism?
2. If one were to ban immigrants from certain countries in an attempt to reduce terrorism, would this list be a sensible one?
My answer to both is no. We probably disagree on the 1st one but that's irrelevant, because regardless of that the 2nd is objectively wrong, making this policy idiotic even if one's answer to 1. is yes. Banning countries like SA, Turkey, Pakistan, UEA would actually reduce the odds of terror attacks, this however does not. It does however conveniently aid your enemy which is trying to turn the domestic US muslim population more into aggression.
I'm yelling about the idiocy of trump because trump is objectively wrong here even if you agree with his stated end goals. I'm yelling at him because setting these types of policies shows lack of forethought, and does not raise my confidence in the slightest that he has a clue of what he's doing.
My problem is that the bans are counter-productive. They do not make the US any more safe than it is now as the stats prove. Having rigorous vetting is good and if someone cannot be vetted, then understandably they should not be let in, but it's not like there is or has been a massive problem of terrorists coming in to the US through these countries, whereas there is a history of people coming in from other countries (such as SA) and doing a lot of damage, yet these countries are not on the list.
It makes no sense. You're fighting people who want nothing more than all muslims to be demonized and targeted, because that's the single most effective way of turning them against you. ISIS would like nothing more than US banning islam and telling muslims to 'convert or die' as that'd be the perfect gift for them; they'd tell everyone to officially give up their faith (something the Koran sanctions) and go deeper into underground to strike against the US. Attacks would likely increase, not stop. This is what they openly wish for.
The ban as it's currently implemented does nothing except further ruin your repetutation and make alliances with those and other muslim countries even harder. The jihadists are already taking advantage of it;
You're playing exactly into their hand and strategy with this ban, while gaining no notable benefit to your current situation. It's a completely shortsighted and stupid policy to be putting into action when you can already - if need be - refuse immigrants if they cannot be properly vetted. The ban is not needed for that. The justifications given for it are also complete bullshit:
Many people from these countries have been vetted before and so far it's worked, that is, there's no history of peole coming in from these regions committing acts of terror in the US. Obviousuly the vetting is hard and takes time, but that's not a good reason for an across the board ban, as opbviously cases exist in which vetting can (and has) be successfully done.
They're a totalitarian theocracy. They have a 'functioning government' in the same sense North-Korea has a 'functioning government'.
No, I don't think banning entire countries is a good strategy to begin with. I support giving refuge to anyone fleeing the totalitarian government of SA just as I support giving refuge to those fleeing isis. My point was an is that Saudis are the primary source of monetary and ideological suport for ISIS. They share a good deal of values, as SA is also a strict islamic theocracy.
If the goal is to combat radical islam, then doing so without putting pressure on the Saudi government to stop aiding extremists groups and funneling them money is a useless effort.
Also, trusting the Saudi officials is also not likely a safe strategy. The declassified 28 pages of the 911 report make it seem pretty likely that Saudi intelligence is lackluster at best, and in league with the hijackers at worst.
Obviously the official conclusion of the FBI is still that SA was not complicit in the attacks, because admitting that while continuing to hold them as a military ally would be impossible.
Whatever the case is, either the Saudi officials are so incompetent in their monitoring and record collecting that they missed their own former ambassador wiring money to an extremist. Or they did not miss that and simply let it slip. Anyway, in this light, were I american I would be heavily skeptical of any 'vetting' or other such intel provided by Saudi officials and their 'working' government, which shares more of its core values with ISIS than it does with western democracies.
It's impossible to simultaneously say that ISIS is evil but there's nothing wrong with Saudi-Arabia, and this is the key cognitive dissonance that american politicians, officials and the public will have to face if you want to address the issue of militant Islam without seeming totally clueless.
You're right he was from Somalia, the stats extend only to 2015. But even counting that attack, being a knife attack, only injured 13 people and none were killed, so it doesn't change the overall point in the slightest: countering terrorism by banning these countries is not a sensible policy in light of the existing data about terrorism and the regions that it's coming from.
Banning entire countries is a bad strategy to begin with, but if some countries are to be banned, banning Saudis and the UAE for example would make a great deal more sense than banning these 7 countries,
The residents of the countries on that list have performed 0 terror attacks on US soil since 1975. And the source for this is not some 'libtard' site bit the conservative as Cato institute:
Meanwhile, Saudi-arabia is the largest propagator of Wahabbism which is both the state religion of the kingdom and also at the core of ISIS ideology. Saudis are also largely behind the funding of ISIS. 15 of the 911 attackers were Saudi nationals, 2 were from United Arab Emirates, 1 was Lebanese, and one was from Egypt, But is Saudi-Arabia on the list? Nope. And neither are Egypt or Lebanon. They're still considered your 'allies'. In fact Saudis themselves seem 'very optimistic about Trump.'
So he's planning to combat radical Islam by maintaining military and financial support to its largest state sponsor in the world, while banning a list of countries that have done the US zero harm comparatively? So what, exactly is this 'fixing' outside playing right into the hands of your enemies by allowing them to trump up the rhetoric of 'holy war' and senseless persecution of muslims in an attempt to radicalize the american muslim population?
Nothing. You're being played like a cheap fiddle. The ISIS commanders are laughing their beards off and Sun Tzu is rolling in his grave because of such utter strategic incompetence.
Yup, This is how it started in Russia. Many people seem confused as to why would they deny something as obvious as the size of the inauguration crowds for example that's easily proven false? Well, it has 3 important effects on american public discourse and media:
1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference.
2. Increasing the separation between Trump's base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong - that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong - they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here - likely to pay off - is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as "fake news" (because otherwise they'd be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.)
3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say "clearly the White House is lying," a third will say "if Trump says it, it must be true," and the remaining third will say "gosh, I guess this is unknowable." The idea isn't to convince these people of untrue things, it's to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.
This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump's White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as the crowds at the inauguration, just imagine what else they'll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. This allows them to eventually say anything to the public, and this should be worrisome to Americans regardless of who you voted because this is how totalitarian states get started.
He's setting up his Pravda and being quite upfront about it.
He's still making the claim that 3 million 'fake voters' voted for Hillary to lose him the popular vote. There's no evidence for this, none whatsoever, anywhere. Yet the defense given reads like this::
So to him. He only knows. Truth is what he believes it to be. Where have I read this before?
-1984
I'm not american, but all I can say to Americans is: don't fall for this. Don't let the man divide you even further against yourself and monopolize the truth. You've seen how well that has gone in Russia, a
You mean overseas countries like the Netherlands, Canada and UK not to mention all the other European countries are 'ignoring trade pacts' with the US? Huh?
Yes, unlicensed manufacturing is going on in places like India, but the fact of the matter is that the drug companies are charging insane amounts of extra in the US because they can. After all, they seek to make profit, so to them, the price is set carefully to the point that allows them to extract the most profit out of any given economy. The pharmaceutical industry is in a position in which people often have to buy their products or they will die. This is what allows them to ask prices that are way beyond what their actual R & D costs are. Look at the chart from this article outlining the costs and profits of the largest drug manufacturers. All of them spend more money on marketing than R & D and all if them have large margins, with Pfizer making as much as 43 % proft. These numbers are unheard of in any other industry, and they're solely the result of the american medical system's private nature which robs hospitals and states of effective ways to buy drugs cheaper. Instead of the Federal government or a state buying drugs in bulk, each private hospital chain has to buy them separately. This, combined with the fact that insured individuals don't really care how much the price is as long as it's covered by their insurance is what's put the US so far behind other developed nations in drig-polices and allowed the pharmaceutical industry to become the most profitable industry in the US.
There's no way for example European economies to 'force' these companies to sell to us at a loss. The prices they get selling their drugs to us are still profitable to them, butt because most non-US economies use differing forms of collective bargaining among other sensible policies, we're able to negotiate the prices down. A lot. The common counter-argument to this is that if the US started limiting drug companies' abilities to make as much profit as they currently do, they'd stop R & D and we'd run out of new drugs, but this is false. All of the companies can afford to sell the drugs much cheaper than they currently are being sold in the US and still make solid profit.
If we're talking about an AI system with general intelligence, that is, a system that's equally or more intelligent than humans are then the whole point is that it's capable of changing its programming.
As Sam Harris this video , we cannot assume that we can keep on improving the intelligence of our machines and simultaneously thinking that we will retain total control of said machines. He also points out the dangers posed by AI are not in the 'killbot' scenario by comparing the difference in intelligence between humans and a superintelligent system to the difference between humans and ants. We don't seek to exterminate or destroy all ants, but when they get in the way of our higher goals, be it building a building, or whatever, we destroy them without hesitation.
The danger is that if in the future AI system/systems are in charge of overseeing for example global production systems. Let's assume the AI is ethical, that is, it has a goal that is to maintain the existence of human life and biodiversity on the planet. What will it do to make sure this goal is met? It might well end up killing some humans in order to save the species, not via Terminator robots, but by for example shutting down polluting production and power-generation in overpopulated areas etc.
Also, since true AI systems would be superior in waging war, the emergence of AI itself poses a risk to humanity because whoever gets there first will have a massive advantage, both in strategy as well as weapons R & D. If the Russians found out the americans had a near complete AI they are about to deploy churning out decades worth of material and weapons research in a matter of weeks, what would they do? What would the US do if they found out the same about China? Etc.
In short: killbots are not the problem, but that does not mean that the emergence of an intelligence on this planet that exceeds our own and cannot be guaranteed to share our values does not pose risks, There are great many risks involved, some of which are even probably unknown to us at this point.
I'm no fan of Apple's business practices in general, but this has nothing to do with politicizing anythting. It's a fact that the Pound has weakened after Brexit and keeps weakening. It's also a fact companies don't like their profits being eaten up by exchange-rate fluctuations. They need to make their desired cut on the apps, and it's not their fault that the Pound is falling.
Sure, if Apple cared about ethics more it could keep the price the same and suffer the loss.. but when have megacorporations ever cared about ethics before profits?
Smaller countries in the world deal with this on a constant basis. Back when we here in Finland had the mark before the euro, the prices of import goods could vary as much as 10-30 % almost overnight if the exchange rate to dollars/pounds/german marks/rubbles dropped sharply.
So is a computer. Error-checking and adapting is something that computers are still not very good at, but the whole point of machine learning and adaptive algorithms is to achieve this same ability.
Humans are able to error-check their own decisions and calculations only so far as we've learned to do it. If I've performed some task 10 000 times I know what kind of errors can occur in the process and can account for those. If I'm presented with a problem that I've never seen or solved before, my capabilities to do error-checking are nonexistent unless I first study the problem to find out which sort of errors can come up.
The same is true for machines: they can do error-checking in so far as they have data and experience to check against. The more data they have in their use, the better the error checking capabilities. A learning machine does not perform the same calculations time and time again, it looks at the result and attempts to change the calculations until the desired outcome is achieved.
Firstly, even if one agrees that this is true, the human brain is still a computer, even if it's not entirely a computer. We're able to perform calculations and predictions based on learned experience, which amounts to computing. You can argue that on top of this the human brain has some 'extra' abilities that make it 'more than just a computer' but I'm not so sure of that.
The brain is in charge of not only conscious thinking but maintaining the life of the organism. It does this by receiving information from the nervous system and controlling the operation of the organs. It obviously does not (as others have pointed out) receive or process this information in the same way as a human built electronic computer does, but it does so nonetheless, so my way is to view the brain as just an incredibly advanced form of a computer that's way beyond anything we can currently even conceive of manufacturing ourselves.