I'm a self-employed fiction writer, and an Australian, my answer to this is:
No. Fuck off.
My longer answer is:
Why copyright infringement, and why Hollywood? Why do they deserve protection?
I'm David Adams. I've written and published 30+ books across various pen names and platforms, including compendiums, omnibuses, etc. I self-publish and it's been my livelihood for 17 months. I'm no Hugh Howey but I do okay.
Every single time that copyright infringement comes up, it's always in the context of Hollywood. Indie writers, singers, artists, producers... we never get a single mention. It's always all about Hollywood. Every time a tariff is discussed, a new law is proposed, it's always protecting a US industry explicitly. I would never see any money from any of the protection schemes suggested by my elected representatives, and if there's not direct funding involved, the suggested courses of action would only ever hurt me.
My questions for Mr. Brandis, not that he gives a flying fuck about me, are:
- Why Hollywood? Why are you not helping out our local artists? Is it because we don't donate flaming dump-trucks full of money to your re-election campaigns, and if so, don't you feel that you're actively selling out your local entertainment industries? Shouldn't you be representing *my* interests? - Why are you focusing on copyright infringement, something I give zero fucks about and even actively encourage? if you don't buy my book, I'd rather you got it from The Pirate Bay than passed on it, and I make lots of books free to encourage their proliferation anyway. Why fix something that's not broken? - As TFS and TFA indicate, this power is sweeping and applies to a lot more than just copyright. The last time the Federal Government tried this, under the banner of child pornography, it was shown (when the list was inevitably leaked) that many more websites were being blocked than simply child fiddling. Innocuous, offensive (but legal), personal grudges... the works. I struggle to believe that this time would be any different, and such blocks are trivial to bypass anyway. Why would you support a system that's fundamentally broken?
I'm David Adams. I write fiction for a living (http://www.amazon.com/David-Adams/e/B006S1GSXI/?tag=wwwlacunavers-20 is me). So where's my money?
Sure, I'm Australian and not Canadian, but where's my tax dollars handout? I could really use that. After all, I'm a publisher too and not just a writer, so I should surely qualify for some money. My books get pirated after all, they appear on heaps of pirating sites, so where's my share of the tax on blank media?
Again, let's just pretend that I'm Canadian for a second. It shouldn't be too hard; the RIAA already doesn't recognise international borders when it comes to copyright infringement, so surely they'll be eager to give me my share of that money any day now.
Any day now.
Maybe I'll send them another email just to be sure. They seem to have lost the last few.
I'm sure it's just a mistake. They care about the artists. They said so. It couldn't possibly just be a selfish money grab at the expense of regular Canadians, supporting an outdated business model that just needs to shrink or go away entirely. Surely not.
I've long maintained that the progression will go something vaguely like this:
- Fully manual cars. - Electronic fuel injection, spark plug control, etc. - Power windows that stop when something's caught in them, digital dashboard that beeps at you when you're low on fuel, bluetooth integration that mutes the audio when you have an incoming call, etc. - OnStar and equivalent systems. - Safety and navigation systems like airbags, electronic stability control, GPS, blind spot indicators that can be manually overridden and just sound alarms, anti rear-end sensors, reverse sensors, etc.
This is where we are right now.
- Automatic park systems (some cars have them but they're still very rare). - Blind spot indicators that physically stop you from merging when a collision is detected. - "Smart" emergency systems that detect when a car's upside down, had its airbags activated, or is in distress. - Optional automatic "highway mode" driving. - Optional "long distance" haul. - Optional automatic "door to door" driving.
At this point, the requirements for getting a licence become much harder, much like getting a gun licence in Australia. Must show genuine need, must do yearly tests, must have a much higher skill level than our current drivers and demonstrate a need to be able to operate a vehicle manually.
- Mandatory "highway mode" driving, with emergency override. - Mandatory "long distance" haul, with emergency override. - Mandatory "door to door" driving, with emergency override.
Our attitude towards manual drivers slowly changes. Back in the day wearing seatbelts was uncool and unpopular, now everyone does it (and is horrified by those who don't). By now I imagine the same attitude is held towards manual operators, especially by young people.
- Total redesign of the personal car, making them more like the back seat of a limo, open and even with things like fold out beds for long trips, etc. - Total redesign of our transport infrastructure. Cars are now electric, and can now auto-drive to and dock with large trains that shuttle them long distances such as between suburbs or different "sides" of larger cities, charging on the way. Huge trains compliment or replace highways in this way, simply due to efficiencies of scale.
And probably a million things I haven't even thought of yet.
Well, that was the problem that was presented. Let's tackle this one instead.
You're driving at 65mph (104.607km/h, which I'll round to 105km/h just to be easier, and since the previous example was done using metric), in the middle lane of a freeway. Tanker to your right, redneck to your left.
Your car is autodriving, cruising along in conditions that are basically ideal for it; this isn't some trecherous mountain road, it's a highway. Ideal conditions. The LIDAR on top is working away, and you're checking MyFace+ and looking at pictures of cats.
Plastic bag gets kicked up in front of you. The LIDAR probably can't even see it because it's not dense enough, but let's assume it can. This is actually a very well chosen problem: the fact that the bag's off the ground might confuse the system, and let's assume that the system has no way of determining the density of an object and hasn't been programmed for bird strikes (a fairly common occurrence really, but let's just assume).
So the LIDAR and onboard computers examine the object, determines that it's not moving very fast, but there's going to be a collision. There's no way the car can go left, there's no way the car can go right. There's a potential collision object in front of it and cars behind.
Its course of action is to do the following:
- Performs a complex risk analysis. If I'm completely boxed in, how safe is it to collide with the object behind me (or emergency break and risk a collision) vs just striking the thing? In this case, we assume it can't tell the difference between "brick flying off the back of a truck" and "plastic bag", so it assumes the former and reacts accordingly. - Break as much as possible, keeping in mind that it has full 360 degree vision and won't allow the car behind it to rear-end and will ease up the breaking if a collision is going to occur. - Attempts, if possible, to go into "harm minimization mode", where it realises that a collision is imminent. Airbags are primed and charged, seatbelts are tightened, the horn is sounded and the system sends an SMS to the local emergency responders, informing them that a collision may be taking place (it later transmits either a 'false alarm', a 'non-critical impact, we'll be okay' or a 'critical impact, send help', with nothing being assumed to be the later). - The trajectory of the potential collision object is analysed, far quicker than a human can. The computerised system is aware of where its occupants are (even my car has alarms that whine if you aren't wearing your seatbelt). It knows that this object, which we've assumed it can't tell the density of, is going to strike the vehicle, and therefore positions the vehicle within its lane so that the object strikes an unattended area, if possible, such as the passenger seat (assuming only a "driver"). - Other systems can potentially activate, things that just won't work on driver-controlled cars, such as external airbags. Since the car knows it's going into the shit, it can prepare accordingly, and do multiple concurrent things at once (simultaneously prepare for, and try to avoid, an accident) in a way no human can. - The system begins to record what's happening on a black box. This does nothing to help the people in the car, but helps people across the country and the world, when the data is analysed by the car's engineers. Now, the autodrive system can be tweaked so that this kind of error doesn't happen any more. We've learnt that the density of a potential collision object matters. The accident, even if it somehow kills the people onboard, becomes a learning experience for every "driver" in the entire world, rather than just a statistic on a chalkboard in a police station.
So yes. Assuming that the car mistakenly identifies a non-harmful object as a harmful object, which as I pointed out may not be a realistic scenario (LIDIR may not be able to see a plastic bag due to it being largely opaque and not very dense, and the car's systems may be programmed for things like bird-strikes, where
Which would YOU pick? Bearing in mind the car is travelling at 150km/h, and you probably have less time to decide than you do reading this sentence.
So you see something on the road at 50m, which takes your brain 200ms to identify it. You identify it as a baby, which takes, let's say, 500ms (humans are surprisingly good at that). You really quickly check your mirrors and scan the upcoming road to make sure you're not driving into something dangerous (500ms), and see that you are. You identify it as an immobile pillar, highly dangerous.
Now let's throw in some time to moralise this decision. It doesn't matter how long, but let's say 500ms.
You turn the wheel to avoid the crash, which takes 200ms, and the car begins to turn, and in say 200ms, neatly avoids the baby. Right?
Uhh, not quite. You haven't even finished checking your surroundings yet, and that baby is currently underneath your front left wheel (150km/hr * 1200 miliseconds = 50.00000004 metres). Note: 150km/h is 0.0416666667 metres a milisecond.
Your autodriving car, however, sees the baby at 50m. It doesn't care that it's a baby, because it's a solid lump in the middle of the road, and it should be avoided. If it were a wombat, it would wreck your shit at 150km/hr, and honestly a concrete pillar is probably not that much worse.
Let's see how the auto driving car fares.
So your car sees something on the road at 50m, which it takes 200ms to identify. It doesn't spend any further time on this because objects on the road must be avoided. It begins slowing the car while it decides, and a coprocessor tightens the seat belts, primes the air bags, and potentially sounds the horn (or notifies other self-driving cars by wireless that, hey, shit's about to go down yo).
It doesn't need to check its surroundings because, as an automated system, it has full 360 vision at all times and doesn't slack off, get distracted, get tired, have a fight with the ex over the kids or get an SMS or any number of factors that could distract a driver. And before you say "But I constantly pay attention at all times on the road and never, ever slack off ever", firstly bullshit, and secondly you can't do it as well as it does anyway.
There's no moralising in this equation. It just wants to avoid hitting things.
It begins turning the wheel to avoid the crash, which takes 200ms, and the car begins to turn, and in say 200ms, neatly avoids the baby.
What other things can it do?
Let's see: how about talk to other cars wirelessly, informing them that there's a hazard and steering around it. So only this car needs to dodge, all the others are aware of it and react accordingly -- and even get out of the way of the dodger, so that it doesn't have to slam into the concrete. How about the car can (at the speed of a computer, faster a human brain) calculate its current speed, distance to target, potential impact threat of a solid object that size, and just decide to break instead. How about the car (for whatever reason) gets into an accident and automatically informs the first responders, possibly even transmitting things like: "Three passengers. Caucasian female, African male, Asian female. African male is allergic to penicillin." If you want to go truly sci-fi, then it gives real-time status feeds. "Asian female is hemmoraging, heart rate is high, possibly tachycardia. Caucasian female was thrown from the vehicle and cannot be monitored."
The advent of self-driving cars is like the invention of the internet. We don't even KNOW what it'll do to our society, but I'm really excited about it and I want one now now now now now now now now now, and not JUST so I don't get stuck being the designated drivers simply because I also own a car.
On the other hand... if so, that could be a huge catalyst for space funding, if you could convince the Aramahic churches of the world that science says the Garden of Eden is on Mars, and we need to go back there, they could pour funds into sending humans there.
That'd be an interesting idea for a short story, actually. A bunch of Mormons flying out to Mars to find the Garden of Eden.
But statistically, it'll probably be better than having humans behind the wheel. Not that this will stop anyone the first time the car backs over a kid, despite their excellent safety record.
A key component of nearly all, or in fact all, conspiracy theories is a vast group of dedicated individuals with almost infinite resources who, in ways grand and mundane, affect reality to hide some truth or collection of truths. The problem with that theory is that any evidence to the contrary, no matter how convincing, is in fact seen as evidence *for* the theory.
An example. There are two ninjas outside your window right now.
Go on, take a look.
See any ninjas?
No, of course you didn't, because they're invisible. Ninjas are badarse pros who would never be seen by an amateur. They're there, though. I was reading on Black Helicopter-o-pedia about the ninja training program in 1967 that produced hundreds of thousands of these trained, stealthy killers and they watch "persons of interest" constantly. Go read a book, sheeple!
More seriously, though, the root cause of conspiracy theories is usually ego. The kind of people who believe in them are typically those who have a very high opinion of themselves, often to the point of believing that they're amongst a small group of people (as small as 1 person) who are somehow smart enough, or cunning enough, or brave enough, or in some way "special" enough to avoid some great trick or ailment that affects the "mundanes". The idea, though, that they are infact deficient in some manner, such as being batshit insane, can't cross their minds because they've convinced themselves that they're better than everyone.
That's not to say that mainstream ideas are always correct, or that the most popular opinion is the best one; but any theory that relies, in some part, on you being intrinsically better than everyone, including academics and those with decades of experience and know-how in certain areas who have no incentive to cover up vast scandals, or that relies on a global, infinitely resourced, powerful, invisible cabal to work is probably bullshit.
Plus, you know, these things do have a tendency to come out. The NSA got busted doing a huge amount of domestic spying lately. They ARE an organisation that is essentially global, essentially infinitely resourced, powerful, invisible... and they managed to conceal this fact for what? Ten years, only?
>When the day comes that this information is obtained and used against the same politicians who voted for it, it will be some delicious comeuppance.
I really don't think you quite get how that day would work.
"Senator, PRISM has discovered an email of you admitting to having a gay lover in college, something that would make you completely unelectable in this country for some reason."
"Ahh. Johnny Ten Inches. Yes, well, I admit to that. How much is it going to cost for this to go away?"
"We have all the money we need, but it would sure be nice if that new NSA data seizure legislation in the pipeline got a yes vote. #211,944 if I recall."
"#211,944? I'm not familiar with it."
"Of course you aren't, senator. We haven't written it yet."
I'm a sci-fi writer, and I've thought about this a fair bit. Book two in the Lacuna series deals with a self-aware construct who is different from his peers because of a tiny error. His inputs and outputs are therefore non-deterministic, in so far as you could present him with a set of inputs and record his outputs, then erase his memory and give him the same inputs again. His outputs would be different (subtly). Or they might not. The error was subtle enough to evade detection during manufacturing after all.
Humans are flesh computers, but it is our imperfection that makes us able to grow and change. To be non-deterministic.
Reporting from the ACT, which is a tiny territory wholly within New South Wales.
Today's tempretures were "real fucking hot", about 38 C/39 C, and the wind is really strong. Whipping up dust all over the place, buffeting the car around as I drove, etc etc. The grass around is quite rich and quite dry, like little golden fields. I actually used the lush grass in a Kindle serial set in Canberra, because it's really pretty and there's a lot of it (and it's very dry). Very, very similar to the big fires that swept through here a decade ago (I was here for that).
It's overcast and cooler now, but earlier today it wouldn't have taken much to light everything up. Some people who lived out in the rural areas are staying home today because they're expecting fires.
I expect tomorrow and the day after will be not as bad, because there's a lot of cloud that's moved in, but later in the week will be bad.
I wonder if you could take the "We The People" site and change it slightly, so that anyone who signs the petition is legally bound to vote against the incumbent at the next election (on pain of perjury or, at least, having your vote disqualified) if the petition's demands are not met.
You'd get much, much fewer signatories, but it would also make the petitions matter and only be used for serious matters. And death stars, which for some are a serious matter.
So called macro-evolution can't be "proven" any more than anything can be proven absolutely. Like I went to effort to explain, science does not offer absolute proof because as you pointed out, it's impossible.
Evolution is, however, backed by evidence (go to talkorigins.org to find it out). We cannot "prove" it to absolute certainty, but it is most certainly the "least wrong". It can be shown to be this. If you do not believe there is evidence for evolution, you haven't looked, because there is a mountain of it. And yes -- species do change. For example, google 'fruit fly evolution experiment'. This fact have been shown to hold in laboratory experiments.
As for the questions regarding the big bang theory, the answer to most of this is "we don't really know". That means the theory is less than perfect, as all are, but it is absolutely the "least wrong" theory of them all.
Mild quibble regarding faith. I don't have "faith" in anything. I believe things. I believe that if I hold up a ball and let go, it will drop. I believe this because I have evidence of balls I've dropped before, the mathematics behind it bears out that prediction, and there's all manner of demonstrations we can do to prove that it will, indeed, drop.
Faith is belief that the ball will fall up despite evidence, and if it doesn't, you smile, shrug and say, "God moves in mysterious ways, doesn't he?"
This is why it's easier to believe that Evolution is correct, while a God creating the universe is less likely.
Let me get right to the point: evolution may not be correct. But it's "less wrong" than a magical unicorn farting everything into existence in seven minutes.
Remember: "Less wrong". Less wrong. Less wrong. Less wrong. Not absolute proof. Less wrong.
Actually, I wouldn't say at all that "parts of the process don't make sense". I'll elaborate further down, but let's get one really important thing out of the way first.
Science is not about finding absolute truth. It's not really about finding what's "right", only what's "less wrong". This distinction is important.
A good example is Pluto. Pluto takes about 248 years to orbit the sun. But we've known of Pluto's existence for less than this period of time. This means that, no, we cannot say without a shadow of a doubt that Pluto completes an orbit of the sun within that period, but we can look at what's done so far, look at where it's going and at what speed, and then work out the rest.
It's entirely possible that Pluto's orbit shakes slightly near the end and does a loop before continuing on. This would be highly improbable but let's say it happened. That would mean that our new theory would be "less wrong". It's not perfection, it has margins of error and mistakes and unpredictable things, but it's less wrong than, say, saying that Pluto's orbit is a square.
Second point is that "theory" is the graduating point of science. We really need a new word because the linguistic definition is roughly equivalent to "educated guess", but the scientific definition (which is what scientists use when they talk in such terms) is "a proposition supported by demonstrable evidence". That is to say, a set of facts we know about the world, which are the least wrong facts we have. When people say "evolution is just a theory", they're really saying "evolution is just a proposition supported by demonstrable evidence". It's a fact. The least wrong thing we know about our universe.
So, moving back to evolution.
Evolutionists -- that is to say, scientists with years and years if not decades of study in the field of evolution and biological science -- generally do not make differentiation between "micro" and "macro" evolution. The only difference between the two is time. Once you have small changes, small changes plus time equals large changes.
My understanding of the theory of the Big Bang, though, is that is it was a super hot, super dense ball of matter. Not really "nothing". And then it blew up. The cause of the explosion is unknown, but it is, again, the least wrong theory we have.
Where in the world did you get such a staggering discount? Or are you counting on a massive boost to NASA's funding?
NASA budget in 2012: $3.5-$8.7 billion DOD (not including the FBI, international affairs, veterans affairs, homeland security, many other things): $707.5 billion
Ten times would be a huge change. I mean, the interest on debt for past wars was $109.1–$431.5 billion itself.
Lemme put that into perspective for you: You're spending about 30x as much repaying the debt for the last wars than you are putting stuff into space.
I'll type it again so it's really really clear.
The budget for repaying the debt, not necessarily the whole debt itself, just the interest on the debt, for Iraq/Afghanistan, is around about thirty times the budget of NASA. The defense budget itself is two to three times *that* amount.
The war would be short, yep. Over in a few days, a week or so tops.
Okay, so now you have an impoverished third world country where the single biggest employer, the military, has been utterly destroyed, full of fanatically loyal people who hate you and will do everything to kill you even at the expense of their own lives.
"Troops home by Christmas" was the talk during WW I, "a shadow of the Great War" was the talk during WW II, "a bunch of fishermen in mud huts" was Korea (familiar?) and Vietnam. "Kill Osama, get out" was Afghanistan and "Get Sadam, freedom will rise" was Iraq.
If you think a conflict with North Korea would be "short" you're not looking beyond the big picture.
Okay, look. North Korea are not the world's nicest people from what we know, either to their southern neighbour or (far more commonly) their own people. Let's just get that out of the way right now.
But seriously. Seriously. "Takes them out"? A Korea War II would be extremely costly for the western world and over what? A satellite that, worst case, smashes into one of the US Military's satellites (say a GPS one, not one so secret they'd just go "WHAT SATELLITE, IT WAS A TRAINING EXERCISE"). Then the debris takes out a few other satellites, and the GPS network takes a hit, being down for a week or so.
That's in my mind the absolute worst case scenario, and it would be pretty bad. We use GPS for everything; the airlines would take a hit, the road toll would go up, some smart missiles and bombs would stop working.
And you want to fucking bomb them for this? It's clearly just an accident. Sure, criminal ineptitude possibly, but that's what sanctions are for.
There's no reason anyone should die over this even in the absolute worst case. Stop crying for war as your country plummets over the fiscal cliff of economic crisis. And, of course, you sound so confident you can win (protip: You didn't win last time).
Are you fucking insane? Or one of those hardcore American evangelical Christians whose line of thought goes:
God blesses America to do whatever the fuck we want. Skirmishes? Bah, bomb those Athe-commies back to nothing. It escalates to total war? It's Christians vs Atheistic Commies! God will bless us with victory. It escalates to nuclear war? Praise God, the end times are upon us! The rapture is here!
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I'm a self-employed fiction writer, and an Australian, my answer to this is:
No. Fuck off.
My longer answer is:
Why copyright infringement, and why Hollywood? Why do they deserve protection?
I'm David Adams. I've written and published 30+ books across various pen names and platforms, including compendiums, omnibuses, etc. I self-publish and it's been my livelihood for 17 months. I'm no Hugh Howey but I do okay.
Every single time that copyright infringement comes up, it's always in the context of Hollywood. Indie writers, singers, artists, producers... we never get a single mention. It's always all about Hollywood. Every time a tariff is discussed, a new law is proposed, it's always protecting a US industry explicitly. I would never see any money from any of the protection schemes suggested by my elected representatives, and if there's not direct funding involved, the suggested courses of action would only ever hurt me.
My questions for Mr. Brandis, not that he gives a flying fuck about me, are:
- Why Hollywood? Why are you not helping out our local artists? Is it because we don't donate flaming dump-trucks full of money to your re-election campaigns, and if so, don't you feel that you're actively selling out your local entertainment industries? Shouldn't you be representing *my* interests?
- Why are you focusing on copyright infringement, something I give zero fucks about and even actively encourage? if you don't buy my book, I'd rather you got it from The Pirate Bay than passed on it, and I make lots of books free to encourage their proliferation anyway. Why fix something that's not broken?
- As TFS and TFA indicate, this power is sweeping and applies to a lot more than just copyright. The last time the Federal Government tried this, under the banner of child pornography, it was shown (when the list was inevitably leaked) that many more websites were being blocked than simply child fiddling. Innocuous, offensive (but legal), personal grudges... the works. I struggle to believe that this time would be any different, and such blocks are trivial to bypass anyway. Why would you support a system that's fundamentally broken?
I'm David Adams. I write fiction for a living (http://www.amazon.com/David-Adams/e/B006S1GSXI/?tag=wwwlacunavers-20 is me). So where's my money?
Sure, I'm Australian and not Canadian, but where's my tax dollars handout? I could really use that. After all, I'm a publisher too and not just a writer, so I should surely qualify for some money. My books get pirated after all, they appear on heaps of pirating sites, so where's my share of the tax on blank media?
Again, let's just pretend that I'm Canadian for a second. It shouldn't be too hard; the RIAA already doesn't recognise international borders when it comes to copyright infringement, so surely they'll be eager to give me my share of that money any day now.
Any day now.
Maybe I'll send them another email just to be sure. They seem to have lost the last few.
I'm sure it's just a mistake. They care about the artists. They said so. It couldn't possibly just be a selfish money grab at the expense of regular Canadians, supporting an outdated business model that just needs to shrink or go away entirely. Surely not.
Went to register www.ubuntusucks.com to see if Mark Shuttleworth would sue me.
Turns out it redirects to their bugtracker.
Well played, sir.
Well played.
I've long maintained that the progression will go something vaguely like this:
- Fully manual cars.
- Electronic fuel injection, spark plug control, etc.
- Power windows that stop when something's caught in them, digital dashboard that beeps at you when you're low on fuel, bluetooth integration that mutes the audio when you have an incoming call, etc.
- OnStar and equivalent systems.
- Safety and navigation systems like airbags, electronic stability control, GPS, blind spot indicators that can be manually overridden and just sound alarms, anti rear-end sensors, reverse sensors, etc.
This is where we are right now.
- Automatic park systems (some cars have them but they're still very rare).
- Blind spot indicators that physically stop you from merging when a collision is detected.
- "Smart" emergency systems that detect when a car's upside down, had its airbags activated, or is in distress.
- Optional automatic "highway mode" driving.
- Optional "long distance" haul.
- Optional automatic "door to door" driving.
At this point, the requirements for getting a licence become much harder, much like getting a gun licence in Australia. Must show genuine need, must do yearly tests, must have a much higher skill level than our current drivers and demonstrate a need to be able to operate a vehicle manually.
- Mandatory "highway mode" driving, with emergency override.
- Mandatory "long distance" haul, with emergency override.
- Mandatory "door to door" driving, with emergency override.
Our attitude towards manual drivers slowly changes. Back in the day wearing seatbelts was uncool and unpopular, now everyone does it (and is horrified by those who don't). By now I imagine the same attitude is held towards manual operators, especially by young people.
- Total redesign of the personal car, making them more like the back seat of a limo, open and even with things like fold out beds for long trips, etc.
- Total redesign of our transport infrastructure. Cars are now electric, and can now auto-drive to and dock with large trains that shuttle them long distances such as between suburbs or different "sides" of larger cities, charging on the way. Huge trains compliment or replace highways in this way, simply due to efficiencies of scale.
And probably a million things I haven't even thought of yet.
Well, that was the problem that was presented. Let's tackle this one instead.
You're driving at 65mph (104.607km/h, which I'll round to 105km/h just to be easier, and since the previous example was done using metric), in the middle lane of a freeway. Tanker to your right, redneck to your left.
Your car is autodriving, cruising along in conditions that are basically ideal for it; this isn't some trecherous mountain road, it's a highway. Ideal conditions. The LIDAR on top is working away, and you're checking MyFace+ and looking at pictures of cats.
Plastic bag gets kicked up in front of you. The LIDAR probably can't even see it because it's not dense enough, but let's assume it can. This is actually a very well chosen problem: the fact that the bag's off the ground might confuse the system, and let's assume that the system has no way of determining the density of an object and hasn't been programmed for bird strikes (a fairly common occurrence really, but let's just assume).
So the LIDAR and onboard computers examine the object, determines that it's not moving very fast, but there's going to be a collision. There's no way the car can go left, there's no way the car can go right. There's a potential collision object in front of it and cars behind.
Its course of action is to do the following:
- Performs a complex risk analysis. If I'm completely boxed in, how safe is it to collide with the object behind me (or emergency break and risk a collision) vs just striking the thing? In this case, we assume it can't tell the difference between "brick flying off the back of a truck" and "plastic bag", so it assumes the former and reacts accordingly.
- Break as much as possible, keeping in mind that it has full 360 degree vision and won't allow the car behind it to rear-end and will ease up the breaking if a collision is going to occur.
- Attempts, if possible, to go into "harm minimization mode", where it realises that a collision is imminent. Airbags are primed and charged, seatbelts are tightened, the horn is sounded and the system sends an SMS to the local emergency responders, informing them that a collision may be taking place (it later transmits either a 'false alarm', a 'non-critical impact, we'll be okay' or a 'critical impact, send help', with nothing being assumed to be the later).
- The trajectory of the potential collision object is analysed, far quicker than a human can. The computerised system is aware of where its occupants are (even my car has alarms that whine if you aren't wearing your seatbelt). It knows that this object, which we've assumed it can't tell the density of, is going to strike the vehicle, and therefore positions the vehicle within its lane so that the object strikes an unattended area, if possible, such as the passenger seat (assuming only a "driver").
- Other systems can potentially activate, things that just won't work on driver-controlled cars, such as external airbags. Since the car knows it's going into the shit, it can prepare accordingly, and do multiple concurrent things at once (simultaneously prepare for, and try to avoid, an accident) in a way no human can.
- The system begins to record what's happening on a black box. This does nothing to help the people in the car, but helps people across the country and the world, when the data is analysed by the car's engineers. Now, the autodrive system can be tweaked so that this kind of error doesn't happen any more. We've learnt that the density of a potential collision object matters. The accident, even if it somehow kills the people onboard, becomes a learning experience for every "driver" in the entire world, rather than just a statistic on a chalkboard in a police station.
So yes. Assuming that the car mistakenly identifies a non-harmful object as a harmful object, which as I pointed out may not be a realistic scenario (LIDIR may not be able to see a plastic bag due to it being largely opaque and not very dense, and the car's systems may be programmed for things like bird-strikes, where
Which would YOU pick? Bearing in mind the car is travelling at 150km/h, and you probably have less time to decide than you do reading this sentence.
So you see something on the road at 50m, which takes your brain 200ms to identify it. You identify it as a baby, which takes, let's say, 500ms (humans are surprisingly good at that). You really quickly check your mirrors and scan the upcoming road to make sure you're not driving into something dangerous (500ms), and see that you are. You identify it as an immobile pillar, highly dangerous.
Now let's throw in some time to moralise this decision. It doesn't matter how long, but let's say 500ms.
You turn the wheel to avoid the crash, which takes 200ms, and the car begins to turn, and in say 200ms, neatly avoids the baby. Right?
Uhh, not quite. You haven't even finished checking your surroundings yet, and that baby is currently underneath your front left wheel (150km/hr * 1200 miliseconds = 50.00000004 metres). Note: 150km/h is 0.0416666667 metres a milisecond.
Your autodriving car, however, sees the baby at 50m. It doesn't care that it's a baby, because it's a solid lump in the middle of the road, and it should be avoided. If it were a wombat, it would wreck your shit at 150km/hr, and honestly a concrete pillar is probably not that much worse.
Let's see how the auto driving car fares.
So your car sees something on the road at 50m, which it takes 200ms to identify. It doesn't spend any further time on this because objects on the road must be avoided. It begins slowing the car while it decides, and a coprocessor tightens the seat belts, primes the air bags, and potentially sounds the horn (or notifies other self-driving cars by wireless that, hey, shit's about to go down yo).
It doesn't need to check its surroundings because, as an automated system, it has full 360 vision at all times and doesn't slack off, get distracted, get tired, have a fight with the ex over the kids or get an SMS or any number of factors that could distract a driver. And before you say "But I constantly pay attention at all times on the road and never, ever slack off ever", firstly bullshit, and secondly you can't do it as well as it does anyway.
There's no moralising in this equation. It just wants to avoid hitting things.
It begins turning the wheel to avoid the crash, which takes 200ms, and the car begins to turn, and in say 200ms, neatly avoids the baby.
What other things can it do?
Let's see: how about talk to other cars wirelessly, informing them that there's a hazard and steering around it. So only this car needs to dodge, all the others are aware of it and react accordingly -- and even get out of the way of the dodger, so that it doesn't have to slam into the concrete. How about the car can (at the speed of a computer, faster a human brain) calculate its current speed, distance to target, potential impact threat of a solid object that size, and just decide to break instead. How about the car (for whatever reason) gets into an accident and automatically informs the first responders, possibly even transmitting things like: "Three passengers. Caucasian female, African male, Asian female. African male is allergic to penicillin." If you want to go truly sci-fi, then it gives real-time status feeds. "Asian female is hemmoraging, heart rate is high, possibly tachycardia. Caucasian female was thrown from the vehicle and cannot be monitored."
The advent of self-driving cars is like the invention of the internet. We don't even KNOW what it'll do to our society, but I'm really excited about it and I want one now now now now now now now now now, and not JUST so I don't get stuck being the designated drivers simply because I also own a car.
>ask where forum members don't give a shit about PC.
So you're telling him to go ask 4chan?
>dat signature
>mfw
On one hand, oh god, that is a terrible thought.
On the other hand... if so, that could be a huge catalyst for space funding, if you could convince the Aramahic churches of the world that science says the Garden of Eden is on Mars, and we need to go back there, they could pour funds into sending humans there.
That'd be an interesting idea for a short story, actually. A bunch of Mormons flying out to Mars to find the Garden of Eden.
Lots of things. And they will.
But statistically, it'll probably be better than having humans behind the wheel. Not that this will stop anyone the first time the car backs over a kid, despite their excellent safety record.
A key component of nearly all, or in fact all, conspiracy theories is a vast group of dedicated individuals with almost infinite resources who, in ways grand and mundane, affect reality to hide some truth or collection of truths. The problem with that theory is that any evidence to the contrary, no matter how convincing, is in fact seen as evidence *for* the theory.
An example. There are two ninjas outside your window right now.
Go on, take a look.
See any ninjas?
No, of course you didn't, because they're invisible. Ninjas are badarse pros who would never be seen by an amateur. They're there, though. I was reading on Black Helicopter-o-pedia about the ninja training program in 1967 that produced hundreds of thousands of these trained, stealthy killers and they watch "persons of interest" constantly. Go read a book, sheeple!
More seriously, though, the root cause of conspiracy theories is usually ego. The kind of people who believe in them are typically those who have a very high opinion of themselves, often to the point of believing that they're amongst a small group of people (as small as 1 person) who are somehow smart enough, or cunning enough, or brave enough, or in some way "special" enough to avoid some great trick or ailment that affects the "mundanes". The idea, though, that they are infact deficient in some manner, such as being batshit insane, can't cross their minds because they've convinced themselves that they're better than everyone.
That's not to say that mainstream ideas are always correct, or that the most popular opinion is the best one; but any theory that relies, in some part, on you being intrinsically better than everyone, including academics and those with decades of experience and know-how in certain areas who have no incentive to cover up vast scandals, or that relies on a global, infinitely resourced, powerful, invisible cabal to work is probably bullshit.
Plus, you know, these things do have a tendency to come out. The NSA got busted doing a huge amount of domestic spying lately. They ARE an organisation that is essentially global, essentially infinitely resourced, powerful, invisible... and they managed to conceal this fact for what? Ten years, only?
Alas, this kind of origin story is less suited to a superhero, more suited to a supervillain.
Good to see people bucking the trope.
>When the day comes that this information is obtained and used against the same politicians who voted for it, it will be some delicious comeuppance.
I really don't think you quite get how that day would work.
"Senator, PRISM has discovered an email of you admitting to having a gay lover in college, something that would make you completely unelectable in this country for some reason."
"Ahh. Johnny Ten Inches. Yes, well, I admit to that. How much is it going to cost for this to go away?"
"We have all the money we need, but it would sure be nice if that new NSA data seizure legislation in the pipeline got a yes vote. #211,944 if I recall."
"#211,944? I'm not familiar with it."
"Of course you aren't, senator. We haven't written it yet."
I'm a sci-fi writer, and I've thought about this a fair bit. Book two in the Lacuna series deals with a self-aware construct who is different from his peers because of a tiny error. His inputs and outputs are therefore non-deterministic, in so far as you could present him with a set of inputs and record his outputs, then erase his memory and give him the same inputs again. His outputs would be different (subtly). Or they might not. The error was subtle enough to evade detection during manufacturing after all.
Humans are flesh computers, but it is our imperfection that makes us able to grow and change. To be non-deterministic.
Makes me want to write a story about that.
Yeah, one guy with a rifle and a sub-machine gun killing like five hundred dudes, that would be totally unrealistic.
Reporting from the ACT, which is a tiny territory wholly within New South Wales.
Today's tempretures were "real fucking hot", about 38 C/39 C, and the wind is really strong. Whipping up dust all over the place, buffeting the car around as I drove, etc etc. The grass around is quite rich and quite dry, like little golden fields. I actually used the lush grass in a Kindle serial set in Canberra, because it's really pretty and there's a lot of it (and it's very dry). Very, very similar to the big fires that swept through here a decade ago (I was here for that).
It's overcast and cooler now, but earlier today it wouldn't have taken much to light everything up. Some people who lived out in the rural areas are staying home today because they're expecting fires.
I expect tomorrow and the day after will be not as bad, because there's a lot of cloud that's moved in, but later in the week will be bad.
A billion dollars is a rounding error when it comes to the DoD budget, which for 2012 was $707.5 billion (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Budget_breakdown_for_2012).
I wonder if you could take the "We The People" site and change it slightly, so that anyone who signs the petition is legally bound to vote against the incumbent at the next election (on pain of perjury or, at least, having your vote disqualified) if the petition's demands are not met.
You'd get much, much fewer signatories, but it would also make the petitions matter and only be used for serious matters. And death stars, which for some are a serious matter.
So called macro-evolution can't be "proven" any more than anything can be proven absolutely. Like I went to effort to explain, science does not offer absolute proof because as you pointed out, it's impossible.
Evolution is, however, backed by evidence (go to talkorigins.org to find it out). We cannot "prove" it to absolute certainty, but it is most certainly the "least wrong". It can be shown to be this. If you do not believe there is evidence for evolution, you haven't looked, because there is a mountain of it. And yes -- species do change. For example, google 'fruit fly evolution experiment'. This fact have been shown to hold in laboratory experiments.
As for the questions regarding the big bang theory, the answer to most of this is "we don't really know". That means the theory is less than perfect, as all are, but it is absolutely the "least wrong" theory of them all.
Mild quibble regarding faith. I don't have "faith" in anything. I believe things. I believe that if I hold up a ball and let go, it will drop. I believe this because I have evidence of balls I've dropped before, the mathematics behind it bears out that prediction, and there's all manner of demonstrations we can do to prove that it will, indeed, drop.
Faith is belief that the ball will fall up despite evidence, and if it doesn't, you smile, shrug and say, "God moves in mysterious ways, doesn't he?"
This is why it's easier to believe that Evolution is correct, while a God creating the universe is less likely.
Let me get right to the point: evolution may not be correct. But it's "less wrong" than a magical unicorn farting everything into existence in seven minutes.
Remember: "Less wrong". Less wrong. Less wrong. Less wrong. Not absolute proof. Less wrong.
Less wrong.
Actually, I wouldn't say at all that "parts of the process don't make sense". I'll elaborate further down, but let's get one really important thing out of the way first.
Science is not about finding absolute truth. It's not really about finding what's "right", only what's "less wrong". This distinction is important.
A good example is Pluto. Pluto takes about 248 years to orbit the sun. But we've known of Pluto's existence for less than this period of time. This means that, no, we cannot say without a shadow of a doubt that Pluto completes an orbit of the sun within that period, but we can look at what's done so far, look at where it's going and at what speed, and then work out the rest.
It's entirely possible that Pluto's orbit shakes slightly near the end and does a loop before continuing on. This would be highly improbable but let's say it happened. That would mean that our new theory would be "less wrong". It's not perfection, it has margins of error and mistakes and unpredictable things, but it's less wrong than, say, saying that Pluto's orbit is a square.
Second point is that "theory" is the graduating point of science. We really need a new word because the linguistic definition is roughly equivalent to "educated guess", but the scientific definition (which is what scientists use when they talk in such terms) is "a proposition supported by demonstrable evidence". That is to say, a set of facts we know about the world, which are the least wrong facts we have. When people say "evolution is just a theory", they're really saying "evolution is just a proposition supported by demonstrable evidence". It's a fact. The least wrong thing we know about our universe.
So, moving back to evolution.
Evolutionists -- that is to say, scientists with years and years if not decades of study in the field of evolution and biological science -- generally do not make differentiation between "micro" and "macro" evolution. The only difference between the two is time. Once you have small changes, small changes plus time equals large changes.
My understanding of the theory of the Big Bang, though, is that is it was a super hot, super dense ball of matter. Not really "nothing". And then it blew up. The cause of the explosion is unknown, but it is, again, the least wrong theory we have.
There's a lot of information available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
Only ten?
Where in the world did you get such a staggering discount? Or are you counting on a massive boost to NASA's funding?
NASA budget in 2012: $3.5-$8.7 billion
DOD (not including the FBI, international affairs, veterans affairs, homeland security, many other things): $707.5 billion
Ten times would be a huge change. I mean, the interest on debt for past wars was $109.1–$431.5 billion itself.
Lemme put that into perspective for you: You're spending about 30x as much repaying the debt for the last wars than you are putting stuff into space.
I'll type it again so it's really really clear.
The budget for repaying the debt, not necessarily the whole debt itself, just the interest on the debt, for Iraq/Afghanistan, is around about thirty times the budget of NASA. The defense budget itself is two to three times *that* amount.
Ten. If only, mate. If only.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Budget_breakdown_for_2012
Moot? Is that you?
The war would be short, yep. Over in a few days, a week or so tops.
Okay, so now you have an impoverished third world country where the single biggest employer, the military, has been utterly destroyed, full of fanatically loyal people who hate you and will do everything to kill you even at the expense of their own lives.
"Troops home by Christmas" was the talk during WW I, "a shadow of the Great War" was the talk during WW II, "a bunch of fishermen in mud huts" was Korea (familiar?) and Vietnam. "Kill Osama, get out" was Afghanistan and "Get Sadam, freedom will rise" was Iraq.
If you think a conflict with North Korea would be "short" you're not looking beyond the big picture.
Just hold on a moment.
Okay, look. North Korea are not the world's nicest people from what we know, either to their southern neighbour or (far more commonly) their own people. Let's just get that out of the way right now.
But seriously. Seriously. "Takes them out"? A Korea War II would be extremely costly for the western world and over what? A satellite that, worst case, smashes into one of the US Military's satellites (say a GPS one, not one so secret they'd just go "WHAT SATELLITE, IT WAS A TRAINING EXERCISE"). Then the debris takes out a few other satellites, and the GPS network takes a hit, being down for a week or so.
That's in my mind the absolute worst case scenario, and it would be pretty bad. We use GPS for everything; the airlines would take a hit, the road toll would go up, some smart missiles and bombs would stop working.
And you want to fucking bomb them for this? It's clearly just an accident. Sure, criminal ineptitude possibly, but that's what sanctions are for.
There's no reason anyone should die over this even in the absolute worst case. Stop crying for war as your country plummets over the fiscal cliff of economic crisis. And, of course, you sound so confident you can win (protip: You didn't win last time).
Are you fucking insane? Or one of those hardcore American evangelical Christians whose line of thought goes:
God blesses America to do whatever the fuck we want. Skirmishes? Bah, bomb those Athe-commies back to nothing. It escalates to total war? It's Christians vs Atheistic Commies! God will bless us with victory. It escalates to nuclear war? Praise God, the end times are upon us! The rapture is here!
So I repeat my question. Are you fucking insane?
Autocorrect, you betrayed me again.