The ban in question dates back to the 1990s and was over concern about China's human rights record. Obviously, China did have, and still does have a terrible record. But we have cooperation with Russia who also has a terrible record. The primary result of this ban has been for China to go and develop its own space capability which means we have less input into what they are doing, so from a pragmatic perspective it doesn't even accomplish anything. In any event, where the future of humanity is concerned we should be willing to work with countries we disagree with. If we could do the joint Soviet-US Soyuz-Apollo mission we can work with China.
Well, it is likely connected to the fact that Japan has an insanely high conviction rate, over 99% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate. Part of this is due to the fact that prosecutors in Japan only bring cases if they are very confident of a conviction (probably part of why the prosecutors did not want to prosecute in this case) but also cultural issues where once a person is prosecuted, the default assumption in terms of how people treat it is that the person is guilty.
Basic research is one of the things that really does make sense for taxpayer money to go it. It needs to happen, but the advantages of it often pay out very far down the line after a few steps, so companies don't have that much incentive to do it unless they are near monopolies (think the old Bell Labs). That's exactly where tax money should go: things that in the aggregate provide a benefit for almost everyone and where there's no economic incentive for private organizations to fund it.
I agree. Everything sounded reasonable up until I got to that point, and then I had to ask how much of what was above wasn't at all correct I was surprised about his statement that one might expect a lower cancer level in space from the lack of carcinogenic chemicals, and was thinking about that when I got to this point, and then updated with "oh, he just doesn't know what he's talking about."
Your source is for worldwide. The study in question was US specific, and for the US it is going down. See this graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Actually, replacing coal is happening already. The percentage of plants that are coal has been going down. Moreover, the plants which are coal have been getting progressively cleaner. And as electric-plugins become more common, that means there will be more on-grid storage which will help make solar and wind more common (since one of their big problems is the intermittent nature of the power they supply). Moreover, the study uses the current crop of electric cars, where they are getting more and more efficient, and as electric cars get more efficient they'll compare more favorably in more locations.
Hmm? No, not at all. Note that the proposal here is a *proposal that is different from the status quo.* So claiming that this is some sort of attempt to keep the status quo doesn't work. So instead of trying to make what amount to unhelpful accusations about motivation, actually evaluate whether the policy would be a net improvement.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. In the ideal universe all of this would be public already. But we don't live in that universe, and if we insist that all FOIA requests become available to everyone then overall fewer requests will be made. So the compromise proposed by the AC is the correct response, since it means that we'll have a small delay in the info getting public but it will actually get public.
Even better, give it to them as an option: have a variable amount one can use. So they could request say any amount of time up to some reasonable limit (say 6 months), and use that time.
I can't tell if you are joking or serious, but I'll try to explain. The ozone layer is a completely distinct problem from global warming. The presence of ozone is necessary because ozone blocks UV radiation. Ozone does act as a weak greenhouse gas, as you can see on the list of greenhouse gases here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas but it is one of the weakest. Note that if anything, this would mean you'd naively expect a lower temperature when there's more ozone (in fact the actual relation is more complicated). So the idea that the ozone hole would have caused warming is just deeply wrong.
You don't get a chance necessarily to get it right. You will be able to in very limited environments, but at the end, you are going to have to run it in the general world, and in that context, you may only get one chance to get it right.
Sure. Very narrow AI may not have a motivation structure. It isn't clear what a general AI with no motivation would look like. But more to the point, how much do you want to risk that there won't necessarily be a motivation structure?
You are made for carbon. The AI can use that carbon and other atoms for something else. Your atoms are nearby to it and it doesn't need to move up a gravity well. And why restrict what resources it uses when it doesn't need to? And if finds the nearby atmosphere "toxic" then why not respond by modifying that atmosphere? You are drastically underestimating how much freedom the AI has potential to do. We cannot risk it deciding what it does and gamble that it makes decisions that don't hurt us simply because you can conceive of possible ways it might be able to achieve its goals without doing so. That's wishful thinking in a nutshell.
On the contrary, the primary concern is that people who think it will go well are over anthropomorphizing. If general AI is made, there's no reason to think it will have a motivation structure that agrees with humans or that we can even easily model. That's the primary concern. I agree with most of the rest of your second paragraph is accurate in the sense that it general AI seems far away at this point. But the basic idea that AI is a threat isn't from anthropomorphizing. I recommend reading Bostrom's excellent book "Superintelligence" on the topic.
A big part of the US shuttle program was that it was a compromise that had to do everything for everyone. For example, the initial plan was going to be fully reusable, but since they didn't have the money for that, it had to have the singe-use fuel tank. It also had to do orbital profiles for the military, such as being able to launch, release a single satellite and come down after making a single polar orbit. The plan was to Vandenberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_AFB_Space_Launch_Complex_6 for the launch. The entire idea was a bit silly since the entire idea was to use it to launch spy satellites faster than the Soviets could shoot term down if the cold war got luke-warm (but somehow not becoming an outright hot war). It is possible that this was actually a cover for another orbital profile that hasn't yet been declassified. But the basic upshot is clear: the shuttle had to many different things for many different people, many who never even ended up using it for the desired purposes. If you make something that has to a hundred different things don't be surprised if is very expensive.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, some of these regulations are clear attempts to just protect the taxi industry from new models. On the other hand, some of the regulations (like having some basic insurance to cover if things go wrong) are pretty reasonable. On the gripping hand, both Uber and Lyft are both just blatantly ignoring regulations in many jurisdictions, and whether or not one thinks the laws should be there, it is hard to think that having cheaper car services is such a compellingly necessary service that it can morally or ethically justify ignoring laws.
There is a massive problem in the literature about bias in academia with ideologies of all sides pushing their agenda. This is connected to the amazing situation where nearly identical studies are getting nearly exactly the opposite results. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/15/trouble-walking-down-the-hallway/. The idea that everyone who is male is one side of this (complicated) ideological dispute and everyone on the other side is female is incredibly stupid.
The first year or two in any given country is generally pretty difficult to figure out how US taxes work with them. Once that's done it doesn't become an issue after that.
As for US consular services, one gets all the advantages one gets from having another country as backup when something is going wrong. Unrest in a country you are staying in and people need to be evacuated? The US has done that many times for its citizens in the past. It has helped other countries evacuate their citizens as well, but they generally have given priority to US citizens. Have legal trouble in another country? Having access to people from the embassy of the country with the big military helps. US citizens are in many places treated better as a result.
Yes. They don't lose anything by becoming citizens (there are tax issues but they are pretty minor), and being a US citizen has a lot of advantages, like the support of US consulate services. They can then decide which passport to travel on depending on what is most convenient. And they can then donate to American political causes if they want. On the whole the benefits outweigh the costs, and if it really does become an issue they can renounce citizenship later. However, you and they should talk to a lawyer about this first to make sure there aren't any special issues that might come up in your particular case. When in doubt, always go with real legal help not random people on the internet.
With the disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer, this seems like fair use. In the US there are four major prongs to evaluate fair use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use. The first is purpose, which as Wikipedia summarizes is "The first factor is regarding whether the use in question helps fulfill the intention of copyright law to stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public, or whether it aims to only "supersede the objects" of the original for reasons of personal profit. " Since there's no profit here, this does well on the first prong. The second prong isn't very relevant here- it just means that because this is a fictional work, the standard is slightly stricter. The third prong looks at the amount of the original material that has been used. Since only a few names, some colors and certain aspects of costumes were used, the amount used is very small. The fourth factor is whether the material dilutes or competes commercially with the original source material. No one is going to go and not by Power Rangers material or not watch the original because of this. There's clearly no competition or loss of profit to the actual franchise.
Overall, seems like a clearcut case of fair use even before we talk about the parody defense.
Slashdot Mirror
The ban in question dates back to the 1990s and was over concern about China's human rights record. Obviously, China did have, and still does have a terrible record. But we have cooperation with Russia who also has a terrible record. The primary result of this ban has been for China to go and develop its own space capability which means we have less input into what they are doing, so from a pragmatic perspective it doesn't even accomplish anything. In any event, where the future of humanity is concerned we should be willing to work with countries we disagree with. If we could do the joint Soviet-US Soyuz-Apollo mission we can work with China.
Well, it is likely connected to the fact that Japan has an insanely high conviction rate, over 99% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate. Part of this is due to the fact that prosecutors in Japan only bring cases if they are very confident of a conviction (probably part of why the prosecutors did not want to prosecute in this case) but also cultural issues where once a person is prosecuted, the default assumption in terms of how people treat it is that the person is guilty.
Basic research is one of the things that really does make sense for taxpayer money to go it. It needs to happen, but the advantages of it often pay out very far down the line after a few steps, so companies don't have that much incentive to do it unless they are near monopolies (think the old Bell Labs). That's exactly where tax money should go: things that in the aggregate provide a benefit for almost everyone and where there's no economic incentive for private organizations to fund it.
How likely do you think Trump is to end up as the Republican nominee?
I agree. Everything sounded reasonable up until I got to that point, and then I had to ask how much of what was above wasn't at all correct I was surprised about his statement that one might expect a lower cancer level in space from the lack of carcinogenic chemicals, and was thinking about that when I got to this point, and then updated with "oh, he just doesn't know what he's talking about."
Instead of making obnoxious remarks, why don't you actually read the article?
But does your spiritual protection go up to 11?
Your source is for worldwide. The study in question was US specific, and for the US it is going down. See this graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Actually, replacing coal is happening already. The percentage of plants that are coal has been going down. Moreover, the plants which are coal have been getting progressively cleaner. And as electric-plugins become more common, that means there will be more on-grid storage which will help make solar and wind more common (since one of their big problems is the intermittent nature of the power they supply). Moreover, the study uses the current crop of electric cars, where they are getting more and more efficient, and as electric cars get more efficient they'll compare more favorably in more locations.
Right. So since we have as our aims what is best for the public, this sort of policy makes sense.
The actual genetic situation is substantially more complicated than your summary. Mitochondrial DNA indicates that Ashkenazic Jews (Jews from Eastern Europe) have a large influx of European women ancestors. See summary http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/37821/title/Genetic-Roots-of-the-Ashkenazi-Jews/. However, chromosomal DNA shows a major Middle Eastern component to the point where almost any Ashkenazic Jew is easily genetically distinguishable from a generic European http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/12/09/ashkenazi-jews-are-middle-east/. Moreover, around half of all Israeli Jews are not Askenaz but are rather descended from Sephardim and Mizrachim and the like (e.g. from Morocco, Spain, Iraq, Egypt, etc.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel and have thus essentially zero European genetic ancestry.
Hmm? No, not at all. Note that the proposal here is a *proposal that is different from the status quo.* So claiming that this is some sort of attempt to keep the status quo doesn't work. So instead of trying to make what amount to unhelpful accusations about motivation, actually evaluate whether the policy would be a net improvement.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. In the ideal universe all of this would be public already. But we don't live in that universe, and if we insist that all FOIA requests become available to everyone then overall fewer requests will be made. So the compromise proposed by the AC is the correct response, since it means that we'll have a small delay in the info getting public but it will actually get public.
Even better, give it to them as an option: have a variable amount one can use. So they could request say any amount of time up to some reasonable limit (say 6 months), and use that time.
I can't tell if you are joking or serious, but I'll try to explain. The ozone layer is a completely distinct problem from global warming. The presence of ozone is necessary because ozone blocks UV radiation. Ozone does act as a weak greenhouse gas, as you can see on the list of greenhouse gases here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas but it is one of the weakest. Note that if anything, this would mean you'd naively expect a lower temperature when there's more ozone (in fact the actual relation is more complicated). So the idea that the ozone hole would have caused warming is just deeply wrong.
You don't get a chance necessarily to get it right. You will be able to in very limited environments, but at the end, you are going to have to run it in the general world, and in that context, you may only get one chance to get it right.
Sure. Very narrow AI may not have a motivation structure. It isn't clear what a general AI with no motivation would look like. But more to the point, how much do you want to risk that there won't necessarily be a motivation structure?
You are made for carbon. The AI can use that carbon and other atoms for something else. Your atoms are nearby to it and it doesn't need to move up a gravity well. And why restrict what resources it uses when it doesn't need to? And if finds the nearby atmosphere "toxic" then why not respond by modifying that atmosphere? You are drastically underestimating how much freedom the AI has potential to do. We cannot risk it deciding what it does and gamble that it makes decisions that don't hurt us simply because you can conceive of possible ways it might be able to achieve its goals without doing so. That's wishful thinking in a nutshell.
On the contrary, the primary concern is that people who think it will go well are over anthropomorphizing. If general AI is made, there's no reason to think it will have a motivation structure that agrees with humans or that we can even easily model. That's the primary concern. I agree with most of the rest of your second paragraph is accurate in the sense that it general AI seems far away at this point. But the basic idea that AI is a threat isn't from anthropomorphizing. I recommend reading Bostrom's excellent book "Superintelligence" on the topic.
A big part of the US shuttle program was that it was a compromise that had to do everything for everyone. For example, the initial plan was going to be fully reusable, but since they didn't have the money for that, it had to have the singe-use fuel tank. It also had to do orbital profiles for the military, such as being able to launch, release a single satellite and come down after making a single polar orbit. The plan was to Vandenberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_AFB_Space_Launch_Complex_6 for the launch. The entire idea was a bit silly since the entire idea was to use it to launch spy satellites faster than the Soviets could shoot term down if the cold war got luke-warm (but somehow not becoming an outright hot war). It is possible that this was actually a cover for another orbital profile that hasn't yet been declassified. But the basic upshot is clear: the shuttle had to many different things for many different people, many who never even ended up using it for the desired purposes. If you make something that has to a hundred different things don't be surprised if is very expensive.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, some of these regulations are clear attempts to just protect the taxi industry from new models. On the other hand, some of the regulations (like having some basic insurance to cover if things go wrong) are pretty reasonable. On the gripping hand, both Uber and Lyft are both just blatantly ignoring regulations in many jurisdictions, and whether or not one thinks the laws should be there, it is hard to think that having cheaper car services is such a compellingly necessary service that it can morally or ethically justify ignoring laws.
There is a massive problem in the literature about bias in academia with ideologies of all sides pushing their agenda. This is connected to the amazing situation where nearly identical studies are getting nearly exactly the opposite results. See http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/15/trouble-walking-down-the-hallway/. The idea that everyone who is male is one side of this (complicated) ideological dispute and everyone on the other side is female is incredibly stupid.
The first year or two in any given country is generally pretty difficult to figure out how US taxes work with them. Once that's done it doesn't become an issue after that. As for US consular services, one gets all the advantages one gets from having another country as backup when something is going wrong. Unrest in a country you are staying in and people need to be evacuated? The US has done that many times for its citizens in the past. It has helped other countries evacuate their citizens as well, but they generally have given priority to US citizens. Have legal trouble in another country? Having access to people from the embassy of the country with the big military helps. US citizens are in many places treated better as a result.
Yes. They don't lose anything by becoming citizens (there are tax issues but they are pretty minor), and being a US citizen has a lot of advantages, like the support of US consulate services. They can then decide which passport to travel on depending on what is most convenient. And they can then donate to American political causes if they want. On the whole the benefits outweigh the costs, and if it really does become an issue they can renounce citizenship later. However, you and they should talk to a lawyer about this first to make sure there aren't any special issues that might come up in your particular case. When in doubt, always go with real legal help not random people on the internet.
With the disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer, this seems like fair use. In the US there are four major prongs to evaluate fair use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use. The first is purpose, which as Wikipedia summarizes is "The first factor is regarding whether the use in question helps fulfill the intention of copyright law to stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public, or whether it aims to only "supersede the objects" of the original for reasons of personal profit. " Since there's no profit here, this does well on the first prong. The second prong isn't very relevant here- it just means that because this is a fictional work, the standard is slightly stricter. The third prong looks at the amount of the original material that has been used. Since only a few names, some colors and certain aspects of costumes were used, the amount used is very small. The fourth factor is whether the material dilutes or competes commercially with the original source material. No one is going to go and not by Power Rangers material or not watch the original because of this. There's clearly no competition or loss of profit to the actual franchise. Overall, seems like a clearcut case of fair use even before we talk about the parody defense.