As someone who does this stuff for a living, I'd argue the contrary—that the weight ratio is misleading, because it's an exception. In terms of RNA and protein-coding genes, isoforms, homologues, and selection rates, in addition to more obvious things like number of cells, they vastly outstrip the core of the body. Think also of how much more time they've cumulatively had to evolve and swap genes!
The best analogy for this, I think, is a *nix distro—the human genome is a monolithic kernel, and the bacteria are all the shell scripts and daemons that help manage it.
I'm not talking about invisible hands, just contentment amongst the devious men of whom you speak. Suitable motivations include threats of violence, communism, etc.
I'm pretty sure networks are oversubscribed because ISPs have no motivation to improve them. The margins for large service providers are ridiculous. A lot more infrastructure can be built before providing internet access becomes unprofitable.
Do the firmware updates actually do anything, though? In three years of owning a third-generation wifi Kindle, I have never seen anything change—despite a handful of significant-seeming firmware updates. If they're security-related... then airplane mode still solves that.
Shortly after the fire, seven Tesla employees visited the owner of the vehicle. The company also offered to take care of the damages and inconvenience caused by the fire, but the owner declined.
This sounds comically similar to a villain trying to conceal the remains of a failed plan to frame someone.
This kind of abusive segregation-of-vendor-and-producer legislation goes back even further, to 1936: General Motors bought laws that prohibited power companies from owning transit services, gradually and systematically destroying the streetcar systems in almost every city in the United States. If that hadn't happened, I suspect combustion engine vehicles would not have attained the dominance they enjoyed during the latter half of the 20th century. The impacts this would have on the energy and ecological situations are hard to predict, but I'm willing to bet the world would've been better off by a significant margin.
The moral of this tale: any time anyone involved in the automotive industry wants something legislated, it's probably really, really fucking evil.
As Spy Handler suggested, the bar would only be raised as high as the chief of police's scruples. Fortunately, centralizing corruption means there's only one head that needs to roll in order to fix a rotten department.
It is a time-honoured tradition amongst writers to put together thinly-veiled pseudo-anecdotal essays. Just try to think of it as slightly less boring than just reading the bare essay itself.
Well... that's one of the perks of the (very slightly pyramid-scheme-like) nature of transhumanism—it's diminishingly difficult to accurately predict what innovations will be practical or broadly appealing, so sometimes it's better to just say "if we throw all of our energy into it, it's sure to be fantastic!" rather than to make specific promises. (Of course, the story does make quite a few specific suggestions, so that's not really what you're talking about, but it seemed pertinent.)
Wait, wait, I know this one! Ah, nothing like innovations in management to remind you that a dystopia is always possible. Anyone who hasn't read Manna, go do it! It is worth it.
It's too bad so much iconic dystopic science fiction was written or cinematized in the 80s (Nineteen Eighty-Four and Bladerunner, to name but two film examples), since it means that all you need to trick people into thinking it's impossible is a bright and cheery computer interface.
These are all entirely fair points. I think most of the people who stand against the tar sands tend to be focused on eliminating fossil fuel dependence as much as possible, though, so they would say it's moot. I think.
On behalf of Canada, the answer's simple: our government has been hijacked by Bush-era conservatives. (And I do mean "hijacked": see this and this.) A lot of people here are vehemently upset about new petroleum fuel extraction developments.
This has all been a miscommunication, I think. I was not saying robots are incapable of feeling a sense of accomplishment, only that if it is easy for them, they will feel less of one because there has been less overcome. Admittedly that was not what was written; I assume people would focus on the analogy (helicopter pilot vs. mountain climber, not helicopter vs. mountain climber) and understand what was intended. The end result is that a person who does something, even in a society when it is no longer necessary, can still feel satisfaction at their achievement.
This has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
a) in the context of the quotation, artificial beings who were accepted as having genuine emotions existed.
b) my statement was that "humans can still feel accomplishment even if robots make their work unnecessary." The only implementation of any relevance was the human one.
c) an accomplishment is defined by the obstacles you overcome to achieve it, so it does not need to be special. You, as a human, faced the challenge with more obstacles than a purpose-built machine.
That all being said, I'm detecting some really profound anti-AI chauvinism here. Subjectivity is about how evidence from your environment influences your thoughts and decisions; if a mind can process well-formed hypotheses and beliefs, then it can judge itself to have accomplished something. There are two problems with your last paragraph:
a) How do you, personally, know that everyone around you isn't lying to your face about what they believe? Claiming AI would be non-genuine because you can't "detect" anything more is no different. There would be debugging procedures both equivalent to, and much more powerful than, the fMRI we currently use to detect (what we think are) genuine emotions in humans.
b) It would be impossible to build an AI that behaved fully human without either copying a human template or understanding how it worked. If the human template is copied, then the new model has no appreciable difference; if the AI built from scratch, we'd know for certain how experiences would affect its decision-making.
"Feeling a sense of accomplishment" is the subjective experience of having performed something understood to be difficult for the individual who performed the task. It is not an implementation-specific phenomenon.
That does not diminish the personal sense of accomplishment of the endeavour. There are plenty of inadvisable and dangerous recreational activities—parkour, skydiving, and deep-sea diving to name but a handful. Humans have undertaken hazardous physical challenges for sport since the dawn of time, and no amount of fretting over it will curtail that.
Challenges are defined by the limitations and risks you face them with. Whether or not you approve of people confronting particular ones because they are extremely dangerous really doesn't contribute anything at all to this conversation or affect the validity of the analogy.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who does this stuff for a living, I'd argue the contrary—that the weight ratio is misleading, because it's an exception. In terms of RNA and protein-coding genes, isoforms, homologues, and selection rates, in addition to more obvious things like number of cells, they vastly outstrip the core of the body. Think also of how much more time they've cumulatively had to evolve and swap genes!
The best analogy for this, I think, is a *nix distro—the human genome is a monolithic kernel, and the bacteria are all the shell scripts and daemons that help manage it.
I'm not talking about invisible hands, just contentment amongst the devious men of whom you speak. Suitable motivations include threats of violence, communism, etc.
What, again?
I'm pretty sure networks are oversubscribed because ISPs have no motivation to improve them. The margins for large service providers are ridiculous. A lot more infrastructure can be built before providing internet access becomes unprofitable.
Do the firmware updates actually do anything, though? In three years of owning a third-generation wifi Kindle, I have never seen anything change—despite a handful of significant-seeming firmware updates. If they're security-related... then airplane mode still solves that.
I think you may need more people in your model—you have Elizabeth Taylor marrying herself at least eight times.
From TFA:
Shortly after the fire, seven Tesla employees visited the owner of the vehicle. The company also offered to take care of the damages and inconvenience caused by the fire, but the owner declined.
This sounds comically similar to a villain trying to conceal the remains of a failed plan to frame someone.
This kind of abusive segregation-of-vendor-and-producer legislation goes back even further, to 1936: General Motors bought laws that prohibited power companies from owning transit services, gradually and systematically destroying the streetcar systems in almost every city in the United States. If that hadn't happened, I suspect combustion engine vehicles would not have attained the dominance they enjoyed during the latter half of the 20th century. The impacts this would have on the energy and ecological situations are hard to predict, but I'm willing to bet the world would've been better off by a significant margin.
The moral of this tale: any time anyone involved in the automotive industry wants something legislated, it's probably really, really fucking evil.
As Spy Handler suggested, the bar would only be raised as high as the chief of police's scruples. Fortunately, centralizing corruption means there's only one head that needs to roll in order to fix a rotten department.
The GOP was instrumental in killing SOPA. So... there's that.
Nope and nope. "I chicken at least have."
It is a time-honoured tradition amongst writers to put together thinly-veiled pseudo-anecdotal essays. Just try to think of it as slightly less boring than just reading the bare essay itself.
Well... that's one of the perks of the (very slightly pyramid-scheme-like) nature of transhumanism—it's diminishingly difficult to accurately predict what innovations will be practical or broadly appealing, so sometimes it's better to just say "if we throw all of our energy into it, it's sure to be fantastic!" rather than to make specific promises. (Of course, the story does make quite a few specific suggestions, so that's not really what you're talking about, but it seemed pertinent.)
Wait, wait, I know this one! Ah, nothing like innovations in management to remind you that a dystopia is always possible. Anyone who hasn't read Manna, go do it! It is worth it.
It's too bad so much iconic dystopic science fiction was written or cinematized in the 80s (Nineteen Eighty-Four and Bladerunner, to name but two film examples), since it means that all you need to trick people into thinking it's impossible is a bright and cheery computer interface.
Somehow this has stopped being surprising.
I like yours better. Yours has better punctuation.
Ah, but: a lot of people liked Windows 95 (or at least OSR2). So the pattern's fixed! Just count them separately.
That doesn't make it any less of an accomplishment, though. For extra fun, try doing it blindfolded!
These are all entirely fair points. I think most of the people who stand against the tar sands tend to be focused on eliminating fossil fuel dependence as much as possible, though, so they would say it's moot. I think.
As the other AC rightly noted, it's a divisive issue. "A lot" doesn't mean everyone!
On behalf of Canada, the answer's simple: our government has been hijacked by Bush-era conservatives. (And I do mean "hijacked": see this and this.) A lot of people here are vehemently upset about new petroleum fuel extraction developments.
This has all been a miscommunication, I think. I was not saying robots are incapable of feeling a sense of accomplishment, only that if it is easy for them, they will feel less of one because there has been less overcome. Admittedly that was not what was written; I assume people would focus on the analogy (helicopter pilot vs. mountain climber, not helicopter vs. mountain climber) and understand what was intended. The end result is that a person who does something, even in a society when it is no longer necessary, can still feel satisfaction at their achievement.
This has nothing to do with what I was talking about.
a) in the context of the quotation, artificial beings who were accepted as having genuine emotions existed.
b) my statement was that "humans can still feel accomplishment even if robots make their work unnecessary." The only implementation of any relevance was the human one.
c) an accomplishment is defined by the obstacles you overcome to achieve it, so it does not need to be special. You, as a human, faced the challenge with more obstacles than a purpose-built machine.
That all being said, I'm detecting some really profound anti-AI chauvinism here. Subjectivity is about how evidence from your environment influences your thoughts and decisions; if a mind can process well-formed hypotheses and beliefs, then it can judge itself to have accomplished something. There are two problems with your last paragraph:
a) How do you, personally, know that everyone around you isn't lying to your face about what they believe? Claiming AI would be non-genuine because you can't "detect" anything more is no different. There would be debugging procedures both equivalent to, and much more powerful than, the fMRI we currently use to detect (what we think are) genuine emotions in humans.
b) It would be impossible to build an AI that behaved fully human without either copying a human template or understanding how it worked. If the human template is copied, then the new model has no appreciable difference; if the AI built from scratch, we'd know for certain how experiences would affect its decision-making.
"Feeling a sense of accomplishment" is the subjective experience of having performed something understood to be difficult for the individual who performed the task. It is not an implementation-specific phenomenon.
That does not diminish the personal sense of accomplishment of the endeavour. There are plenty of inadvisable and dangerous recreational activities—parkour, skydiving, and deep-sea diving to name but a handful. Humans have undertaken hazardous physical challenges for sport since the dawn of time, and no amount of fretting over it will curtail that.
Challenges are defined by the limitations and risks you face them with. Whether or not you approve of people confronting particular ones because they are extremely dangerous really doesn't contribute anything at all to this conversation or affect the validity of the analogy.