If the philosophy base is wrong then its limitations will manifest through the software and hardware created under such a philosophy and eventually show the limitations....
Perhaps there is a place for open source software here!!!
Don't bow down to the stone image (Stone = computer hardware - Image = software) of the beast of man, for the beast is error prone and his image can be no better. Instead take a closer look at the code.... with many eyes.....
And the invisible, virginal Spirit rejoiced over the light which came forth, that which was brought forth first by the first power of his forethought, which is Richard Stallman. For Open Source is the richness of the light; the remembrance of the pleroma.
I know. Just like those silly Interstate highways,
Highway construction is mostly managed by states: Federal subsidy reduces the incentive to keep costs down and effectively eliminates the consideration of other alternatives like rail.
the US Marine Corps,
Needed to maintain the oil supplies that support the fuel-inefficient transportation system. They're not defending the borders.
the US Postal Service that'll deliver a package of paper to any door in the US within a day or two for an affordable flat fee,
They were the best alternative because federal law prohibited competition. FedEx and UPS are doing a pretty good job in niches where they are allowed.
and those terribly inefficient and socialized Firefighters and that neo-communist socialized Police Department. Government. Pah! Who needs it?
Those are local government, not U.S. government.
Just because the Federal government did something which we are now dependent on because the subsidies helped destroy the alternatives, doesn't mean it was a blessing.
Of course government is necessary, and all entrenched power is wasteful, whether its government, corporations, or otherwise. And government does do useful stuff that wouldn't get done otherwise. But it also wastes an enormous amount of resources.
So now luxury cars are being subsidized, paid for by the confiscated earnings of people who can not themselves afford such cars. At least its a loan and not a grant.
You can't make a comment like this and not tell us what they thought you did.
Stealing building supplies. Someone saw me carrying some boards and initial assummed that I took them from a nearby construction site. The initial suspicion was arguably reasonable under the circumstances. The problem in my view was the way the thing went down afterwards, with the physical coercion, the indifference to right and wrong, particularly by the prosecutor, and it costing me several times the maximum fine in legal fees, even though I could easily demonstrate my innocence to anyone interested. I'd be less vague but it would take pages to spell out all the relevant details. I don't think my personal sob story is important compared to the bigger picture of the direction we're headed as a society. The essential point I want to get across, all details aside, is do not assume that if you're law abiding and successful it is entirely because its what you deserve, and that you and your children will therefore remain safe. And don't suppose that the institutions that wield power care much about your well-being, like the good guys do on TV. Many people are consciously jaded, and many more are uninterested in facing the painful effects of their own actions. Its not that big of a fall from where we are now to something really ugly. I realize I haven't demonstrated this with the meager facts I have provided, but hopefully a few people who are on the fence about surveillance issues can think about it from a wider angle (to use an unfortunate metaphor). There were no surveillance cameras involved in my case, but I can see clearly how surveillance systems lend themselves to these sort of things, since I know some things about video surveillance from my job.
after all a public company does not work for it's customers, it works for it's shareholders. This is established, especially in the US.
And it will wreck much of what's left of the culture and economy if its not re-examined and un-established.
Certainly a company has very significant obligations to its investors, because they have committed their money, and hold the ultimate power for executive decisions. But it also owes a lot to its employees, who have invested their lives, and are powerful in the sense that most of the company's intellectual capital is in their heads. And it owes something to its suppliers, people who buy its products, all all other parties it has relationships with.
True, company employees are free to leave if they don't like how they are treated, if they can find another suitable company willing to hire their specialized skills. And customers are free not to continue buying products. But this ignores the significance of their investment, and the high cost of starting again elsewhere. And its also true that stockholders can sell their stock if they don't like how they are treated. This assertion that only stockholders matter exists to justify immoral behavior that maximizes short term stock value, but there's no other logic behind it.
I'm in agreement about Steve Jobs though. Just had to rant about the 'maximize shareholder value' thing. (You are certainly correct in your characterization of the prevailing consensus, and I mean nothing personally.)
In my case the police showed up at my house at night, cuffed me, and took me to jail, but at least they didn't threaten to shoot me.
As life tribulations go, this is pretty mild stuff. But I think its instructive. I've always been Mr. Law Abiding, with no underage drinking, no drugs, no speeding, no jaywalking....is the legal system about justice? Not so much as I would have imagined, apparently.
Right. The system where any random person or machine with limited information can accuse you of a crime, you get arrested by default, and you have to pay thousands of dollars before even having a chance to argue your innocence, is nuts. Formally, there has to have been an "investigation" before the judge issued the warrant for the arrest. That investigation should include trying to find out whether the accused has done anything wrong, and that should usually involve talking with the accused. The further disconnected the police get from the community the less likely this is to happen though, and the use of camera systems tends to have that effect.
A problem with camera surveillance, is much more innocent than criminal behavior is in view, so a fairly high proportion of suspicious behavior is actually innocent behavior that looks improbably suspicious. Statistically, its the same problem as with false positives in drug tests. Compounding this problem is that when law enforcement is impersonal and from a distance, the accused often is not given a fair, face-to-face chance to defend themselves before having their lives temporarily wrecked. By the time it goes to trial, it has already cost large legal fees and possibly employment.
In my own arrest a few years ago, for innocent behavior that looked suspicious from afar, I was never once interviewed by a law enforcement officer or prosecutor and given a chance to tell my story, right up to the morning of the trial.
There was to me surprisingly little public comment when the domestic satellite surveillance program was announced a couple of years ago. Its nice that the Obama administration seems to be doing the right thing with this anyway.
Saying that Amazon and Google stifle innovation because they sit as an intermediary between creators and audiences is a bit like saying the Roman Catholic church stifles religion because a priest sits between the Creator and his followers.
And? The Roman Catholic church saddled Europe with a ridiculous Aristotlean physics for centuries, while better alternatives were already available. That is definately a case of coming between the mind of the 'creator' and his followers. Not to mention suppressed theological heresies, many of which were better but less profitable than what the church was up to with the sale of indulgences, etc.
This is not a new problem - there's even a parable for it in the New Testament, about dogs at the trough that don't eat and don't let the other animals eat.
Well, at least we don't have surveillance cameras at every corner...
Yes, yes we do. Coming to your area soon if you haven't seen it yet. So far its primarily for raising revenue by automatically ticketing motorists, not for spying on pedestrians. But most American cities have few pedestrians anyway, since everything is set up for cars.
On the question of what ordinary people will do if more of them realize the system is corrupt: They may become more overtly jaded, but most people are too busy trying to kiss the ass above them and stand on the face below them to actually take a stand and try to change things. Slavery and the genocide of natives was in some ways a lot more messed up than what's going on now, and people let that go on for a long time.
Every time/. has a thread about regulation of video games or porn, I see that several different arguments get blended together as if they are interchangeable:
1. What is the proper role of government, vs. families, individuals and other institutions. 2. Can indulging cruel appetites in virtual reality be harmful, when the victims aren't real? 3. Given that we already have cruel appetites, can indulging them in a relatively harmless way be less bad than suppression or acting out in worse ways?
Obviously most Chinese people have different ideas about the role of government than most Americans or most Europeans. There are valid points to be on both sides, and existing culture has to be taken into account when deciding what policy is best at the present. As an off-topic example to illustrate, almost everyone acts like the Chinese government's persecution of the Falun Gong is unambiguously bad. But Chinese history shows that religious cults can get very, very, disasterously out of control, for example with the Taiping Rebellion. So I think its not so clear cut.
The idea that what you do in video games or what images you look at doesn't affect your appetites or how you think about other people is just ridiculous. For example, can a formerly decent and empathetic person play a rape video game without it at all affecting their perceptions of women that they interact with in real life? Really? Yeah, skeletons aren't that big of a deal to most of us, but its still true that the images you experience do affect you, skeletons included.
The last question has no simple answer, which is why I am mostly libertarian about these things. My main point is to distinguish it from the second question, since there has been a lot of BS about this on/. in relation to porn, pedophilia, and violent video games.
I believe your premonition. I think for you it wasn't about the boy, it was about something else, and the boy's experience was just the same kind of image but not in a dream.
I don't think premonitions can be trusted to tell you what to do - they don't point in the direction of right and wrong. And desiring them is generally unhealthy and dangerous, so its just as well for them to be rare and for people to be skeptical. But it might be a useful warning if you do the right thing with it.
Yeah I know I'm likely to get modded crazy by people who don't know WTF I'm talking about, and for being unwilling to publicly post more supporting data. I've already heard all the arguments.
Re:like cross-bows in the middle ages
on
Wired for War
·
· Score: 1
World War I just sent a telegram
Right, and the American civil war, and the Crimean war, etc. Now we're at another choice point, and I think we should look at all this stuff again. Did our parents and grandparents make the best choices the last time? And how much worse can it get in the future with an arrogant, morally smug elite disciplining subhuman barbarians using armed UAVs and robotic armies?
The barbarians will at least have the benefit that a lot of these technologies have effective asymmetric countermeasures.
Right now we (technically saavy people) are for the most part on the side of the elite, but that could change for our descendants.
Re:like cross-bows in the middle ages
on
Wired for War
·
· Score: 1
Robotics offer up the opportunity take the preservation of the life of the soldier out of the equation.
Very good point. But in the long run we may wind up with the worst of both worlds. The days of countries completely leveling other countries are probably not behind us either, just gone for a few decades or maybe even a few hundred years. But the 'smart' weapon gives a perverse kind of slippery slope, where you can start brutalizing people gradually, with few headline grabbing problems at first, and work your way deeper into it over a period of time. I think the remote, surgical kill has a corrupting effect on the culture. Yes there are other positive dynamics also. But I think as a society we would do best to start making a lot of thoughtful choices about where we're willing to go with this stuff, and how to stop it from going where we don't want to go. Because by the time its become an obvious hell, we'll already be too far into it to get back again easily.
The question boiled down to the issue in the first paragraph: will the person pulling the trigger be in control, or will it be an indiscriminate killing machine?
Unfortunately, in cases where there is ambiguity or uncertainty about what is being shot at, most people will assume what they are comfortable to believe. So, as a hypothetical example, I would be pretty uncomfortable about a system that had a radar and a weapon on board for use through fog. Because of the way information is compartmentalized for security reasons, and people protect themselves own team by covering up embarrassing mistakes, I don't think it very likely that the use of such a weapon would be governed responsibly.
A lot of people pretend that if you make and sell a gun, you aren't responsible for how people use it. I think there is some truth to that. But if you already know something about the psychology of the institutions that use it, then that adds quite a lot of responsibility.
Personally I draw the line at weapons on unmanned aircraft, and I won't develop or support it. But that's a judgment call, and I'm not saying the other judgment is wrong. All we can do is draw the lines where we will, then accept the consequences.
I would also be a lot happier if the main purpose of the weapons was to defend our countries against invasion. But I'm not entirely sure that's what's happening. For the most part, terrorists that attack westerners get their money from governments that get their money from westerners. It looks to me like the whole dynamic has has more to do with certain people gaining and hanging onto power and wealth than anything else. And if we really cared about maintaining the strength and integrity of our nations, we would worry more about border control and what we're doing to our economies. But again, its complicated, and that's all judgment calls.
like cross-bows in the middle ages
on
Wired for War
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I see the introduction of robotic weapons to be a dangerous and ominous development. When you kill someone face to face, you experience it more directly, and you put yourself more directly at risk. When you use tools to kill from a distance, the risks are less obvious and wrongs are easier to deny. Was aerial bombing of cities in WW II a good development? The consensus seems to be that it was, but I'm not sure. And at least then there were men in the aircraft. Now a president can order an unmanned attack on a group of terrorists, or a wedding party as the case may be, at very little political risk, since there is no pilot to be captured or killed. And the scale of this sort of thing will become much, much larger. Of course a lot of such developments are inevitable, particularly once the genie is out of the bottle, but we do have some ability to change our trajectory a little bit.
The Skynet disaster won't happen, because computers aren't even remotely close to dangerous intelligence. But something similar could happen with men at the helm, using the technology to maintain their lifestyle at everyone else's expense. How long before some really strong countries start using nuclear weapons and unmanned surveillance and delivery systems to extort wealth from less powerful nations? I mean more overtly than happens currently? I think it will happen, not far in the future probably.
I don't see much difference between being on welfare and being formally employed by or for the government but sitting around and talking all day or surfing/. without working, or not even bothering to come into work. It rots the soul in either case. The main difference is whether its "us" or "them". In either case, individual people who really want to work have a hard time finding a way to make it happen when everyone around them just wants to pull in a paycheck and protect their turf without rocking the boat. I've found a lot of the defense industry is like this also. If you're older, maybe things hadn't slipped so far in your day.
I'd support a telescope on the other side of the moon. And that's a valid point you make about the need to actively do something.
One thing that a lot of people forget is energy accounting - it takes a certain amount to lift something out of the earth's gravity well no matter how you do it. A lot of mining and related visions fail on that grounds. And recent space-plane gimmicks won't ever lift anything into a useful orbit, notwithstanding other merits they may or may not have. Yes I know that the gravity well thing is one argument for putting stuff on the moon. I'm just saying that space exploration right now is like trying to run with a kite when there is no wind. I love science, but I'd trade it all for an honest job making a product that someone wants to buy, instead of BS projects that look like science or engineering from the outside but are technically fraudulent from the inside.
OK, I'm with you on the military and great society stuff. But some of those people sitting at home and popping out babies work at NASA. One colleague had a huge family to deal with and only came in to the office a couple hours a week. And he wasn't working at home.
I'm also not sure the moon base really makes sense. What is it for? The bottom of the ocean under the north pole is a lot closer, and more hospitable in a lot of ways, but not a very good place for people to live. And I don't think its really a step towards 'colonizing the stars', as claimed in a recent NASA mission statement. If we want to do that, we have a lot of work to do first with evolution and understanding fundamental physics. But I'm open to moon bases as long as people will be honest about what they will be good for and how much they will cost.
As another idea that might make a lot more sense than going to mars....If you like the technology developed by manned exploration, there's a lot more building and exploring that could be done in relation to the ocean. Not as much like Star Trek, but with the virtue of being more real.
The key is to find real, meaningful, achievable dreams and work towards those. One reason NASA has floundered is their long-term manned space exploration visions haven't made much sense in recent decades, with a lot of technical and logical show stoppers swept under the carpet. People think its unpatriotic to say this, but from my experience parts of the NASA bureaucracy are almost unbelievably corrupt. People lose faith after years of false promise and waste. Better to start fresh maybe, focusing more where there has been recent success, such as with unmanned probes and powerful telescopes.
If lots of people are extracting money from the system and not contributing real wealth, then there will be problems. Money has complicated dynamics, but its not magic. People who make a living shuffling numbers around in spreadsheets are providing a useful service that makes the system more efficient. But only up to a point. Few people believe greed is a vice anymore, hence certain results follow.
Most people who study the aerodynamics of pterosaurs don't think they would have had a problem flying in today's atmosphere. the thicker atmosphere stuff is definitely fringe science.
Fringe my foot! The reduced UV rays is the only way to explain how some people in the Old Testament lived past 200.
I think its too simplistic to put men and women on a continuum and talk about which is 'better' than the other. In my experience teaching math to men and women, they are approximately equal in skill overall. However, on the average they excelled in different ways. Women often organized their thoughts more clearly, while men seemed to get farther kludging their way through things. And at the very high end of the distribution, its not obvious what the differences would be.
In any case, there are obviously very intelligent mathematicians of both genders at the high end, so there needn't be any debate about that.
If fewer women become mathematicians than men, maybe women are just smarter about their career choices. Its not like there are a ton of non-academic jobs out there for people with math degrees.
Slashdot Mirror
If the philosophy base is wrong then its limitations will manifest through the software and hardware created under such a philosophy and eventually show the limitations....
Perhaps there is a place for open source software here!!!
Don't bow down to the stone image (Stone = computer hardware - Image = software) of the beast of man, for the beast is error prone and his image can be no better. Instead take a closer look at the code.... with many eyes.....
And the invisible, virginal Spirit rejoiced over the light which came forth, that which was brought forth first by the first power of his forethought, which is Richard Stallman. For Open Source is the richness of the light; the remembrance of the pleroma.
How close genetically are Indians (from India) to Chinese?
More bullshit courtesy of the U.S. Gubmint!
I know. Just like those silly Interstate highways,
Highway construction is mostly managed by states: Federal subsidy reduces the incentive to keep costs down and effectively eliminates the consideration of other alternatives like rail.
the US Marine Corps,
Needed to maintain the oil supplies that support the fuel-inefficient transportation system. They're not defending the borders.
the US Postal Service that'll deliver a package of paper to any door in the US within a day or two for an affordable flat fee,
They were the best alternative because federal law prohibited competition. FedEx and UPS are doing a pretty good job in niches where they are allowed.
and those terribly inefficient and socialized Firefighters and that neo-communist socialized Police Department. Government. Pah! Who needs it?
Those are local government, not U.S. government.
Just because the Federal government did something which we are now dependent on because the subsidies helped destroy the alternatives, doesn't mean it was a blessing.
Of course government is necessary, and all entrenched power is wasteful, whether its government, corporations, or otherwise. And government does do useful stuff that wouldn't get done otherwise. But it also wastes an enormous amount of resources.
So now luxury cars are being subsidized, paid for by the confiscated earnings of people who can not themselves afford such cars. At least its a loan and not a grant.
You can't make a comment like this and not tell us what they thought you did.
Stealing building supplies. Someone saw me carrying some boards and initial assummed that I took them from a nearby construction site. The initial suspicion was arguably reasonable under the circumstances. The problem in my view was the way the thing went down afterwards, with the physical coercion, the indifference to right and wrong, particularly by the prosecutor, and it costing me several times the maximum fine in legal fees, even though I could easily demonstrate my innocence to anyone interested. I'd be less vague but it would take pages to spell out all the relevant details. I don't think my personal sob story is important compared to the bigger picture of the direction we're headed as a society. The essential point I want to get across, all details aside, is do not assume that if you're law abiding and successful it is entirely because its what you deserve, and that you and your children will therefore remain safe. And don't suppose that the institutions that wield power care much about your well-being, like the good guys do on TV. Many people are consciously jaded, and many more are uninterested in facing the painful effects of their own actions. Its not that big of a fall from where we are now to something really ugly. I realize I haven't demonstrated this with the meager facts I have provided, but hopefully a few people who are on the fence about surveillance issues can think about it from a wider angle (to use an unfortunate metaphor). There were no surveillance cameras involved in my case, but I can see clearly how surveillance systems lend themselves to these sort of things, since I know some things about video surveillance from my job.
after all a public company does not work for it's customers, it works for it's shareholders. This is established, especially in the US.
And it will wreck much of what's left of the culture and economy if its not re-examined and un-established.
Certainly a company has very significant obligations to its investors, because they have committed their money, and hold the ultimate power for executive decisions. But it also owes a lot to its employees, who have invested their lives, and are powerful in the sense that most of the company's intellectual capital is in their heads. And it owes something to its suppliers, people who buy its products, all all other parties it has relationships with.
True, company employees are free to leave if they don't like how they are treated, if they can find another suitable company willing to hire their specialized skills. And customers are free not to continue buying products. But this ignores the significance of their investment, and the high cost of starting again elsewhere. And its also true that stockholders can sell their stock if they don't like how they are treated. This assertion that only stockholders matter exists to justify immoral behavior that maximizes short term stock value, but there's no other logic behind it.
I'm in agreement about Steve Jobs though. Just had to rant about the 'maximize shareholder value' thing. (You are certainly correct in your characterization of the prevailing consensus, and I mean nothing personally.)
In my case the police showed up at my house at night, cuffed me, and took me to jail, but at least they didn't threaten to shoot me.
As life tribulations go, this is pretty mild stuff. But I think its instructive. I've always been Mr. Law Abiding, with no underage drinking, no drugs, no speeding, no jaywalking....is the legal system about justice? Not so much as I would have imagined, apparently.
I was seen with property that the accuser incorrectly imagined was theirs, and accused of theft.
Right. The system where any random person or machine with limited information can accuse you of a crime, you get arrested by default, and you have to pay thousands of dollars before even having a chance to argue your innocence, is nuts. Formally, there has to have been an "investigation" before the judge issued the warrant for the arrest. That investigation should include trying to find out whether the accused has done anything wrong, and that should usually involve talking with the accused. The further disconnected the police get from the community the less likely this is to happen though, and the use of camera systems tends to have that effect.
A problem with camera surveillance, is much more innocent than criminal behavior is in view, so a fairly high proportion of suspicious behavior is actually innocent behavior that looks improbably suspicious. Statistically, its the same problem as with false positives in drug tests. Compounding this problem is that when law enforcement is impersonal and from a distance, the accused often is not given a fair, face-to-face chance to defend themselves before having their lives temporarily wrecked. By the time it goes to trial, it has already cost large legal fees and possibly employment.
In my own arrest a few years ago, for innocent behavior that looked suspicious from afar, I was never once interviewed by a law enforcement officer or prosecutor and given a chance to tell my story, right up to the morning of the trial.
There was to me surprisingly little public comment when the domestic satellite surveillance program was announced a couple of years ago. Its nice that the Obama administration seems to be doing the right thing with this anyway.
Saying that Amazon and Google stifle innovation because they sit as an intermediary between creators and audiences is a bit like saying the Roman Catholic church stifles religion because a priest sits between the Creator and his followers.
And? The Roman Catholic church saddled Europe with a ridiculous Aristotlean physics for centuries, while better alternatives were already available. That is definately a case of coming between the mind of the 'creator' and his followers. Not to mention suppressed theological heresies, many of which were better but less profitable than what the church was up to with the sale of indulgences, etc.
This is not a new problem - there's even a parable for it in the New Testament, about dogs at the trough that don't eat and don't let the other animals eat.
Well, at least we don't have surveillance cameras at every corner...
Yes, yes we do. Coming to your area soon if you haven't seen it yet. So far its primarily for raising revenue by automatically ticketing motorists, not for spying on pedestrians. But most American cities have few pedestrians anyway, since everything is set up for cars.
On the question of what ordinary people will do if more of them realize the system is corrupt: They may become more overtly jaded, but most people are too busy trying to kiss the ass above them and stand on the face below them to actually take a stand and try to change things. Slavery and the genocide of natives was in some ways a lot more messed up than what's going on now, and people let that go on for a long time.
Every time /. has a thread about regulation of video games or porn, I see that several different arguments get blended together as if they are interchangeable:
1. What is the proper role of government, vs. families, individuals and other institutions.
2. Can indulging cruel appetites in virtual reality be harmful, when the victims aren't real?
3. Given that we already have cruel appetites, can indulging them in a relatively harmless way be less bad than suppression or acting out in worse ways?
Obviously most Chinese people have different ideas about the role of government than most Americans or most Europeans. There are valid points to be on both sides, and existing culture has to be taken into account when deciding what policy is best at the present. As an off-topic example to illustrate, almost everyone acts like the Chinese government's persecution of the Falun Gong is unambiguously bad. But Chinese history shows that religious cults can get very, very, disasterously out of control, for example with the Taiping Rebellion. So I think its not so clear cut.
The idea that what you do in video games or what images you look at doesn't affect your appetites or how you think about other people is just ridiculous. For example, can a formerly decent and empathetic person play a rape video game without it at all affecting their perceptions of women that they interact with in real life? Really? Yeah, skeletons aren't that big of a deal to most of us, but its still true that the images you experience do affect you, skeletons included.
The last question has no simple answer, which is why I am mostly libertarian about these things. My main point is to distinguish it from the second question, since there has been a lot of BS about this on /. in relation to porn, pedophilia, and violent video games.
I believe your premonition. I think for you it wasn't about the boy, it was about something else, and the boy's experience was just the same kind of image but not in a dream.
I don't think premonitions can be trusted to tell you what to do - they don't point in the direction of right and wrong. And desiring them is generally unhealthy and dangerous, so its just as well for them to be rare and for people to be skeptical. But it might be a useful warning if you do the right thing with it.
Yeah I know I'm likely to get modded crazy by people who don't know WTF I'm talking about, and for being unwilling to publicly post more supporting data. I've already heard all the arguments.
World War I just sent a telegram
Right, and the American civil war, and the Crimean war, etc. Now we're at another choice point, and I think we should look at all this stuff again. Did our parents and grandparents make the best choices the last time? And how much worse can it get in the future with an arrogant, morally smug elite disciplining subhuman barbarians using armed UAVs and robotic armies?
The barbarians will at least have the benefit that a lot of these technologies have effective asymmetric countermeasures.
Right now we (technically saavy people) are for the most part on the side of the elite, but that could change for our descendants.
Robotics offer up the opportunity take the preservation of the life of the soldier out of the equation.
Very good point. But in the long run we may wind up with the worst of both worlds. The days of countries completely leveling other countries are probably not behind us either, just gone for a few decades or maybe even a few hundred years. But the 'smart' weapon gives a perverse kind of slippery slope, where you can start brutalizing people gradually, with few headline grabbing problems at first, and work your way deeper into it over a period of time. I think the remote, surgical kill has a corrupting effect on the culture. Yes there are other positive dynamics also. But I think as a society we would do best to start making a lot of thoughtful choices about where we're willing to go with this stuff, and how to stop it from going where we don't want to go. Because by the time its become an obvious hell, we'll already be too far into it to get back again easily.
people protect themselves own team by covering up embarrassing mistakes
ha ha.... ^themselves^their
The question boiled down to the issue in the first paragraph: will the person pulling the trigger be in control, or will it be an indiscriminate killing machine?
Unfortunately, in cases where there is ambiguity or uncertainty about what is being shot at, most people will assume what they are comfortable to believe. So, as a hypothetical example, I would be pretty uncomfortable about a system that had a radar and a weapon on board for use through fog. Because of the way information is compartmentalized for security reasons, and people protect themselves own team by covering up embarrassing mistakes, I don't think it very likely that the use of such a weapon would be governed responsibly.
A lot of people pretend that if you make and sell a gun, you aren't responsible for how people use it. I think there is some truth to that. But if you already know something about the psychology of the institutions that use it, then that adds quite a lot of responsibility.
Personally I draw the line at weapons on unmanned aircraft, and I won't develop or support it. But that's a judgment call, and I'm not saying the other judgment is wrong. All we can do is draw the lines where we will, then accept the consequences.
I would also be a lot happier if the main purpose of the weapons was to defend our countries against invasion. But I'm not entirely sure that's what's happening. For the most part, terrorists that attack westerners get their money from governments that get their money from westerners. It looks to me like the whole dynamic has has more to do with certain people gaining and hanging onto power and wealth than anything else. And if we really cared about maintaining the strength and integrity of our nations, we would worry more about border control and what we're doing to our economies. But again, its complicated, and that's all judgment calls.
I see the introduction of robotic weapons to be a dangerous and ominous development. When you kill someone face to face, you experience it more directly, and you put yourself more directly at risk. When you use tools to kill from a distance, the risks are less obvious and wrongs are easier to deny. Was aerial bombing of cities in WW II a good development? The consensus seems to be that it was, but I'm not sure. And at least then there were men in the aircraft. Now a president can order an unmanned attack on a group of terrorists, or a wedding party as the case may be, at very little political risk, since there is no pilot to be captured or killed. And the scale of this sort of thing will become much, much larger. Of course a lot of such developments are inevitable, particularly once the genie is out of the bottle, but we do have some ability to change our trajectory a little bit.
The Skynet disaster won't happen, because computers aren't even remotely close to dangerous intelligence. But something similar could happen with men at the helm, using the technology to maintain their lifestyle at everyone else's expense. How long before some really strong countries start using nuclear weapons and unmanned surveillance and delivery systems to extort wealth from less powerful nations? I mean more overtly than happens currently? I think it will happen, not far in the future probably.
I don't see much difference between being on welfare and being formally employed by or for the government but sitting around and talking all day or surfing /. without working, or not even bothering to come into work. It rots the soul in either case. The main difference is whether its "us" or "them". In either case, individual people who really want to work have a hard time finding a way to make it happen when everyone around them just wants to pull in a paycheck and protect their turf without rocking the boat. I've found a lot of the defense industry is like this also. If you're older, maybe things hadn't slipped so far in your day.
I'd support a telescope on the other side of the moon. And that's a valid point you make about the need to actively do something.
One thing that a lot of people forget is energy accounting - it takes a certain amount to lift something out of the earth's gravity well no matter how you do it. A lot of mining and related visions fail on that grounds. And recent space-plane gimmicks won't ever lift anything into a useful orbit, notwithstanding other merits they may or may not have. Yes I know that the gravity well thing is one argument for putting stuff on the moon. I'm just saying that space exploration right now is like trying to run with a kite when there is no wind. I love science, but I'd trade it all for an honest job making a product that someone wants to buy, instead of BS projects that look like science or engineering from the outside but are technically fraudulent from the inside.
OK, I'm with you on the military and great society stuff. But some of those people sitting at home and popping out babies work at NASA. One colleague had a huge family to deal with and only came in to the office a couple hours a week. And he wasn't working at home.
I'm also not sure the moon base really makes sense. What is it for? The bottom of the ocean under the north pole is a lot closer, and more hospitable in a lot of ways, but not a very good place for people to live. And I don't think its really a step towards 'colonizing the stars', as claimed in a recent NASA mission statement. If we want to do that, we have a lot of work to do first with evolution and understanding fundamental physics. But I'm open to moon bases as long as people will be honest about what they will be good for and how much they will cost.
As another idea that might make a lot more sense than going to mars....If you like the technology developed by manned exploration, there's a lot more building and exploring that could be done in relation to the ocean. Not as much like Star Trek, but with the virtue of being more real.
The key is to find real, meaningful, achievable dreams and work towards those. One reason NASA has floundered is their long-term manned space exploration visions haven't made much sense in recent decades, with a lot of technical and logical show stoppers swept under the carpet. People think its unpatriotic to say this, but from my experience parts of the NASA bureaucracy are almost unbelievably corrupt. People lose faith after years of false promise and waste. Better to start fresh maybe, focusing more where there has been recent success, such as with unmanned probes and powerful telescopes.
If lots of people are extracting money from the system and not contributing real wealth, then there will be problems. Money has complicated dynamics, but its not magic. People who make a living shuffling numbers around in spreadsheets are providing a useful service that makes the system more efficient. But only up to a point. Few people believe greed is a vice anymore, hence certain results follow.
Most people who study the aerodynamics of pterosaurs don't think they would have had a problem flying in today's atmosphere. the thicker atmosphere stuff is definitely fringe science.
Fringe my foot! The reduced UV rays is the only way to explain how some people in the Old Testament lived past 200.
I think its too simplistic to put men and women on a continuum and talk about which is 'better' than the other. In my experience teaching math to men and women, they are approximately equal in skill overall. However, on the average they excelled in different ways. Women often organized their thoughts more clearly, while men seemed to get farther kludging their way through things. And at the very high end of the distribution, its not obvious what the differences would be.
In any case, there are obviously very intelligent mathematicians of both genders at the high end, so there needn't be any debate about that.
If fewer women become mathematicians than men, maybe women are just smarter about their career choices. Its not like there are a ton of non-academic jobs out there for people with math degrees.