I find a shotgun quietens the neighbours dogs better than anything.
Re:this is what happens from watching cnn
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Globalism Post 9/11
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· Score: 2
> Not to mention the muslim states can't even agree that the killing of civilians is in fact terrorism
For heaven's sake. What a totally vacuous statement. Everybody knows terrorism is a totally loaded term which means "violence by the other side". When Turkey (our ally) massacres Kurds, it's counter-terrorism. When Saddam does it, it's state sponsored terrorism, etc.
I agree that non US media is not immune from bias. I don't agree that quality of sources is simply personal preference, but I'll agree that getting your information from a single source is disastrous. If you watch one source 95% of the time and then watch the other 5%, you'll probably think the 5% is full of shit. Try watching Al Jeezera 50% of the time for a month.
Re:I don't know what subject to give this...
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Globalism Post 9/11
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· Score: 4, Interesting
In Europe they hate US because a) americans think the sun shines out their ass b) americans are amazingly ignorant about non-us c) [and this really grates] americans are more powerful and more successful (although standard of living is often higher in europe).
In 3rd world, it is much more love hate relationship, jealousy plays a part, but a feeling that they've been robbed of freedom and wealth by US is much more significant. West encourages and finances coups. Then it lends money to resulting dictatorships. The money is spent by dictators on arms bought from west and used to subdue population. Country then has big debt that it owes west which is paid for by growing export crops (coffee, choclate, coke, whatever). However, the export crops have collapsed in value, so they can barely afford to buy grain from US after having converted their agriculture to cash crops at behest of IMF. Also, the regimes we prop up are necessarily friendly to western business interests at expense of local industry. Effectively, entire populations are enslaved and set to work for west, their natural resources exported for a pitance, and all this without us having to bother with the hassle of explicit invasion. Neat, huh.
Anyway, accurate or not, this understanding of what's going on is what makes people less than fond of US. It's not that they "hate our freedom", they hate their own slavery and don't think it's entirely an accident.
this is what happens from watching cnn
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Globalism Post 9/11
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If I got my opinions from CNN, or from other mainstream US media I would probably share your views of palestinians.
Your own bullshit detector needs some attention.
I could list sites for you to visit, or suggest you actually try going to the middle east and taking a look for yourself, but I don't think it would do any good. The trouble is, people judge the credibility of information against what they think they know already. You obviously believe you have a more accurate understanding of what's going on there than 98% of the people who live there. You "know" too much to learn anything.
They disagree with what you learnt from CNN - they must be stupid and ignorant.
The Russians conquerored the country quite quickly too. As did the British. The tricky thing is keeping it conquerored. Luckily, we don't really care what happens there so we can just let it revert to the pre-taliban state of endless civil war.
>With the Taliban gone, this opens up free world trade to Afghanastan. When peace and stability is in their best interest, you can bet it is going to happen.
Well, the heroin trade has certainly picked up, so I guess you're half right. However, peace and stability are seldom in the interests of "warlords" as you should be able figure out just from analysing the word.
> we're not invading Afghanistan, and we're not a hostile occupying power; we are welcomed their by the current government.
I'm sure the average Russian believed the same thing about the USSR during the Russian occupation. Of course, that was because they received all their news through state sponsored propoganda. What's your excuse ?
Nice one, good experiment. Just how much plausible sounding but preposterouis bullshit can you fit in 3 sentences and still have people take you seriously ?
I'm in two minds about this. I think he's right, but I also think we are going to get a hell of a lot closer to sentience than we are now, even with strictly deterministic, non-quantum devices.
I think humans are capable of something fundamentally impossible for deterministic computers, but at the same time I think that most of us barely use these facilities. Most of what we do is mundane, and perfectly possible to mimic on a computer. We may not be able to mimic consciousness life, but we may be able to prove that most of us spend most of our lives in a zombified state.
Two things to emphasis: all turing machines are equivalent; speed and intelligence are independent. If it is ever possible to produce consciousness on a deterministic computer, then it is possible on today's hardware. If you had a radio onversation with an intelligent alien who lived 100 light years away, it would take 200 years to get each response - that doesn't mean he is stupid. Similarly, if it is possible to mimic humanity on tommorow's hardware, we should be able to do it, slowly, on today's.
I sure hope this was a troll. If it is, it was a good one. You managed to convert a metric mass into a metric mass and introduced an inaccuracy of 2.4x10^11 into the calculation. And it seems like several people bought it too ! Good effort.
Maybe you're just a fuckwit, but that's the essense of a good troll, it's hard to tell.
The score on original asteroids goes round the clock after a measly 99990 points, a fairly trivial target. So unless there is a hidden counter there, someone must have had to watch the whole thing and count how many times he did this. Also, how long did it take - does anyone have any details on this ?
Almost right and yet so wrong. Trixillions explanation is excellent, but I guess it might be too complicated for some to grasp.
The reason the banks books balance is because the loan balances the credit they create. When the bank splits the account into Bank a:5000,-5000 b:0 c:5000 d:5000,-5000 bank:0 in my explanation above - it still balances. But the fact that someone can spend $5000 which they didn't have before increases the money in circulation.
The banks are supposed to keep a fraction of the money they lend in reserve. In the US the fraction is 8.5% (last I heard). This reserve is an additional requirement to the need to "balance their books". Even this requirement gets broken from time to time.
It's not the $500 that's invented by the bank, it's the $5000.
The effect of the loan is to temporarily increase the money in circulation by $5000. This extra $5000 disappears when the money is paid back. The $500 interest that is paid back has to be extracted from the system elsewhere. Where from ? - well, effectively from some other sucker taking out a loan that must eventually be paid back. The $500 may be spent by the bank, or it may add it to it's reserves. The point is - the only way the system can work is if people are continually taking out more loans. Or else the borrower defaults on the loan and the banks end up with more. This means that a stable economy is impossible. The economy *has* to grow or else some people are going to have to default.
The main point of being a bank, is that banks are allowed to invent money.
Everyone knows about bank notes and coins, they are minted by the government. However, this is only a small fraction of the money in circulation - around 4% in most big economies. Most money is in bank accounts of one sort or another and circulates through cheques, debit cards etc. Cash is a minor part of the money supply and becoming less important by the day. So, where does most money really come from ? The answer is very simple: money is invented by banks when people take out loans.
This is not a secret, it's just not widely known. Most people think that banks lend you other people's money and charge more interest to borrowers than the lenders receive, but this picture is fundamentally wrong. If you borrow £5000 from the bank, nobody is sent a letter saying that their money is temporarily unavailable because they have lent it to someone else. A more accurate picture is that this £5000 didn't exist until the bank lent it to you.
This is hard to believe, so let me show you how it works. It simplifies matters to imagine that there is only 1 bank, or if that strains your imagination, just imagine that A,B and C all bank with Wells Fargo.
Let us start with people A,B,C and a bank and keep track of how much money they have. The bank keeps separate accounts for A,B,C and itself
1. We'll start everybody off with no money, and nothing in their bank account except for C who has $5000 External funds A: 0, B: 0, C 5000 Bank a:0 b:0 c:0 bank:0
2. C pays his money into his bank account External A: 0 B: 0 C: 0 Bank a:0 b:0 c:5000 bank:0
3. A asks to borrow from bank so it breaks A's account of 0 into $5000 of money for his current account and a debt of -$5000 External A: 0, B: 0, C: 0 Bank a:(5000,-5000) b:0 c:5000 bank:0
4. The bank transfers the money to A External: A: 5000, B: 0, C: 0 Bank a:-5000 b:0 c:5000 bank:0
5. A pays this money to B Exernal A: 0, B: 5000, C: 0 Bank a:-5000 b:0 c:5000 bank:0
6. B pays the money into his account External A: 0, B: 0, C: 0 Bank a:-5000 b:5000 c:5000 bank:0
7. A obtains money from elsewhere (easier said than done) External A: 5500, B: 0, C: 0 Bank a:-5000 b:5000 c:5000 bank:0
8. A repays 5000 to bank, plus interest of 500 External A 0, B 0, C 0 Bank a:0 b:5000 c:5000 bank:500
9. The bank pays some interest to C External A: 0, B: 0, C: 0 Bank a:0 b:5000 c:5300 bank:200
So far, the bank has done nothing strange, and this actually corresponds to the understanding that most people have about the way banks work. One thing to notice is that when A received $5000, nothing happened to C's account. Theoretically C could withdraw his money at any time.
The clever bit is that step 4 never needs to actually happen. A doesn't remove $5000 in cash from his bank - he just writes a check out to B, who never takes out the money either - he just pays it into his account. So in order to "lend money" to A, all that the bank needs to do is change it's accounts from saying:
Bank a:0 b:0 c:5000 bank:0
to saying:
Bank a:5000,-5000 b:0 c:5000 bank:0
Which means: A has $5000 in his current account and also has a debt of $5000 in a separate account.
and as far as A is concerned he has borrowed $5000 from the bank.
But there is nothing to stop the bank from "lending" lots of people money in this way. Why not lend D $5000 too, just change the accounts to say:
Bank a:5000,-5000 b:0 c:5000 d:5000,-5000 bank:0
The money that it lends out does not have to exist before it lends it out - the bank invents the money. In fact, almost all the money in circulation has been invented in this way.
Are banks allowed to do this - isn't there a law against this ? No, not at all, banks are expected to do this - in fact without the banks providing credit, the money supply drys up and the economy goes into recession. There used to be laws specifying a limit - banks could only lend out X times as much money as they received, but these laws have been scrapped in most modern economies. The only constraint is market confidence. If people start to lose confidence in the bank, too many people demand to physically get their hands on their money at the same time, then the whole facade comes tumbling down.
The central misunderstanding is that banks charge interest because they themselves are borrowing money from somewhere, as in fact they are if the money actually leaves their control. Banks compete with one another to lend you money because it is their principle source of revenue. They compete by charging less interest. If they charge too little, lend too much to people who have trouble paying it back then people lose confidence, and move their funds to another bank, the bank goes bust. They lend as much as they dare though, because it's immensly profitable: they are inventing the money they lend you.
So, money is created by banks in the form of debt. Now, lets think about this a moment. What would happen if everybody tried to pay off their debts to the banks, and nobody took out new loans. Well, the money supply would dry up, there would be far less money in circulation. Money's primary function is a to facilitate trade, if nobody has any money then nobody would be able to trade, the economy would grind to a halt.
More fundamentally, it is absolutely impossible that all debt could be paid off. THERE IS MORE DEBT THAN MONEY. It's easy to understand this when you think about where money comes from. Every time a bank lends people money it increases the gap between the amount of money in the world and the amount of debt. The bank lends you $5000, and demands you repay $5500. $5000 is temporarily added to the amount of money in circulation, but it must eventually return to the bank - plus an additional $500 that must go back to the bank too. When the debt is finally paid off, $500 more must have been extracted from the system than went into it. The only way to keep the system going is with increasing debt. Of course, banks spends money too - they have employees and shareholders who buy cars and houses, yachts etc, this pumps money back into the system, which slows down the debt spiral. (A very fat, and almost entirely parasitical segment of the economy that creates nothing real, but that's not my point). Even if the bank spends all the money it receives in interest, there is still a discrepency, because the money must be returned to the bank before it can spend it - at any one time there has to be more debt than money.
The value of our assets (in money terms) is proportional to the amount of money existing. Our debts to the banks are in terms of money. As credit collapses, the amount of money goes down, the "value" that people put on real items goes down (nobody can pay much if they don't have much money). If banks suddenely refused any further loans the banks would end up owning everything. (In fact - I strongly suspect that one or two of the biggest banks would end up owning everything, including all smaller banks). Nobody would have money to pay off their debts and the money they could obtain from selling their assets wouldn't cover it - not enough money would exist. The banks would own all the money AND all the property. This is not just a theoretical problem, it's an exaggeration of what happens during recession. Extending it to the logical conclusion highlights how much power lies with banks in the current system.
When banks lend people money, they increase the amount of money in circulation. This changes the balance between the amount of money in the world and the amount of stuff in the world. This slightly decreases the value of all money - it is the root cause of inflation. Effectively banks steal money off everybody else by lending out more money than they have. It's just a form of legalized forgery. A private individual would have exactly the same effect on the economy if he produced perfectly forged money that he was allowed to add to the system on the condition that he removed and destroyed the same amount at a later date.
An expanding economy needs an ever increasing amount of money. The more stuff in the world, the more money is needed. This money is invented by private banks in the form of debt. Even governments borrow their money from private banks. So we have this paradoxical situation where the most successful countries have the largest amounts of debt. Amazingly the USA has recently been able to start decreasing it's national debt, but this has been achieved by a massively expanded amount of private sector debt. People are more confident, they believe their shares are worth more, they borrow more money and invest more. More is collected in taxes due to increased wages, and for a short time the government debt can decrease, but overall debt always increases.
During boom times - the credit supply increases. The system keeps afloat by ever increasing amounts of debt. In order to service this debt, the economy *must* expand - it is completely impossible for the monetary system to stay afloat with a stable economy, because the only way the debts can be serviced is by creating new debts.
Obviously this debt cycle cannot quite go on forever. At some stage people lose confidence, and it becomes harder to get credit. Then businesses go bankrupt, banks foreclose on the assets, and we go into recession or depression. Then gradually things improve and we start over again - the only difference being that now more of the actual assets in the world (rather than just the money), are then owned by the banks.
So the boom/bust cycle is inevitable when all money is created in the form of debt. The system is inherently unstable. We end up with rather large debts. For instance, the national debt of USA is $5,673,018,308,921 (last time I checked). The estimated population of the United States is 276,004,098 so each citizen's share of this debt is $20,554.11. The money to service this debt is extracted (taxed) with menaces by the government and paid to the banks. If you wanted to be alarmist about it, you could say we are selling our children into slavery (or at the very least indentured servitude) to the owners of the private institutions that invent our money.
Whose idea was this wonderful mechanism for inventing money ? Amazingly enough, it was the bankers. In 1694, Britain's King William was having trouble with money and probably did not understand it too well. At the time governments were scratching their heads over how to pitch the speed of money supply to the economy so as to avoid periods of inflation and at the same time finance their wars, build their palaces and even, from time to time, make life bearable for their people. The bankers convinced King William that the bankers were the "experts" who understood money and that the job of issuing currency should be handed to them.
As the amount of stuff in the world increases, the amount of money needs to increase. An artist paints a picture and wants to sell it - the amount of stuff in the world has just increased. Either: more money has to be created everything; the price of everything needs to reduce slightly; or we have a world where their is plenty of stuff, but nobody can buy it. In fact, this is pretty much the situation we live in: there is plenty of stuff, but everyone is short of money.
Letting the banks invent all money in the form of debt is not the only possible system. For instance, the government could invent money and give everybody a certain amount each year. This scheme was advocated by Douglas in the 30s and was making progress before war broke out. The introduction of more debt free money into the economy would reduce the need for loans and gradually eliminate the boom and bust cycle. Of course if the government invents too much we end up with inflation. But we have inflation already because the banks are inventing money all the time. If people were given money, they would borrow less from the banks so we wouldn't need inflation. A lot of inflationary pressure comes from the need to make interest payments. This scheme is far less inflationary than you might think.
The reason that the current system (where money is invented by banks) has become dominant is that the current monetary system is pretty good at creating a vibrant thriving economy where enterprise is encouraged and financed - it undeniably encourages growth, in fact, it can't live without it. A stable economy is absolutely impossible in the current system, people must be perpetually taking out loans and investing. Without constant investment and new loans the money dissappears and we sink into recession. That's why the idea has spread so wide - it's the most competitive model so far seen.
It's not exactly perfect though. The tendancy to enslave populations into the service of bank owners is one flaw. An insatiable need to expand economies until the whole planet is covered in concrete is another. The necessity for people to work like mules their whole lives, scraping a living amongst plenty when automation should provide us with leisure is another. The maintenance of a huge parasitical segment of the economy that creates virtually nothing of value is another... I could go on, but I think you see my point - the current system is not ideal.
One good thing about the current system is that the wastefulness of private institutions is bounded by the fact that if they become too bloated, corrupt and stupid then they go bankrupt. Governments don't have the same market-place correction. Elections change the spokesmen, but the permanent institution that grows up behind our "elected representitives" is much harder to displace. It can reach far greater levels of stupidity and incompetence than is possible for private organisations. But the market place competition between banks doesn't help us much. When banks fold they get taken over by other banks. Banks have an even greater motivation to merge than other businesses - the larger they are, the less likely that money ever leaves their control, so the larger their possible debt/credit ratio. What this means is that larger banks can invent more money than smaller banks, thus stealing more from the rest of the world. The fact that stupid banks get taken over by clever banks doesn't help. It just makes the resulting mega banks more powerful than ever.
You can't really blame banks - they are just making the most of a preposterous situation. It should be the responsibility of government to create the money we need and distribute it amongst us. Counter-intuitively this would make governments less powerful. The present system gives them the power to do whatever they like, or more accurately the power to not do whatever they like. They control the
rate of the economy by controlling interest rates. They can obtain as much money as they want by increasing the national debt, and they can avoid doing things that people want by just saying they can't afford it.
An intelligent and informative book that explains this stuff and related ideas quite thoroughly is "Grip of Death" by Mike Rowbotham, Jon Carpenter Publishing; ISBN: 1897766408
The only reason Andreesen got asked to write a GUI for www was because his maths was not up to scratch and he couldn't do the job he was hired for. He was a reasonable X programmer though so his boss (Ping Phou) asked him to write a GUI for www. It wasn't his idea. Ping was happy at NCSA so, Clarke took on Marc instead.
Just using that phrase "designer babies" determines the conclusion. Put out a poll...
"are you in favor of designer babies" - no
"should potential parents with inheritable diseases have the right to pre-screen their embryos for those diseases" - yes
Then we get the "look at all the wonderful cripples like Hawkins etc...." argument. Well, the foetuses you discard have at least as much chance of turning out well as the ones you keep. There are plenty of great humans who have nasty genetic diseases, but we have no way of telling what geniuses we've missed because the lack of screening meant some doomed half-wit runt got born instead.
And while I'm ranting... Gattaca wasn't that scary. I'm in favor of a world where more people look like Uma Thurman.
Anyway, I better quit before I start proposing full scale eugenics and saying "just because Hitler gave it a bad name doesn't mean it's wrong, after all, if his policies had been implemented Hitler would never have been born in the first place..." that would ruin any credibility I have. Oh shit, too late, just kidding, but I do have a gut reaction against the "this is what nazi's wanted = bad". Decent roads and punctual transport would get discarded too with those arguments.
Personally, I have more faith in nature combining things in the right way than a bunch of fuckwit genetic engineers. But, I don't think it's fair to tell people "it's illegal for you to try and avoid having a child who dies early - I'm not comfortable with that". You know what - nobody asked you to be comfortable with it, it's none of your business.
> If you are an oil baron, environmentalist panic is very, very good for business.
No, it's not. What a pile of crap. The large energy companies spend millions funding dubious research to rebutt the findings of all the scientists who are not funded by energy companies. Read "Green Backlash".
Re:Luddites coming out of the woodwork
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I STILL Want My HDTV
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
Heh, if I were you I would try the "if you* had a life, you wouldn't be reading/." track if I were you. Now *that* might sting a bit...
[work, friends, tv] - choose 2.
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I STILL Want My HDTV
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Rather than whining about not being given the option to vegetate in front of inane rubbish at improved resolution, why not rejoice in the fact that you have an incentive to go outside and interact with the world, it's considerably less pixelated than even HDTV.
Why would anyone want to go outside, meet people or do things ? Instead, you can watch others have fake adventures or get your opinions and desires programmed in rather than going to all the trouble of figuring them out for yourself. You can achieve a state of lower consciousness - it helps pass the time while you wait for death.
If you must watch TV, at least buy a mirror to put up above the screen. That way you can look up from time to time and compare the excitement on the screen with the futile existence of the vegtable on the couch.
Fuck Disney. They have made enough more money on some stupid cartoon mouse than they ever deserved. Any new stuff they produce deserves same copyright protection as anything else.
Auction idea would only work if proceeds of auction go to government (otherwise the owner can bid unlimited amount, he is paying himself), but I still think it's a bad idea. If a million people would receive $1 worth of benefit from something going to public domain, they would be outbid by a company willing to pay $10000.
what's wrong with cheerleaders ?
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Disinformation.com
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· Score: 5, Funny
One of the things I admire most about America is that you've got your sports groupies in uniform and parading on the sidelines. It's just so organised ! The unarguably subservient status of cheerleaders versus actual players is also a cause for wonder. It's so refreshingly old fashioned. It shows that at some level the country hasn't completely lost it's head up it's own ass in the fad of expecting identical roles for men and women.
You make a good argument. The fact that XXX was invented by someone raised in culture YYY provides evidence that culture YYY has got something right. Something gets lost in the shorthand version though. If people remember
it is the values of freedom and independence they are proud of, that's fine. The shorthand version allows people to lose the distinction between American interests and the values these supposedly represent.
I still think there's something a bit weird in the way people are "Proud to be XXX" whether XXX is white, black, American, French, British or martian.
It's a bit like saying some celebrity was awfully brave for dying of cancer. As far as I can tell he didn't have any choice.
Pride is dangerous (it's number 1 of 7 on the deadly sins chart). Being proud of stuff which is purely an accident of birth is also pointless.
You have a strange perspective. You don't seem interested in looking at the evidence as to whether they are correct in saying someone else invented XXX first.
Also, I think most of the crap about the moon landings never happened is mostly generated by loony Americans - AFAIK it's not a foreign conspiracy.
The really strange thing is - who gives a flying fuck ? Does it make you feel proud that various things were invented by Americans ?
"I'm proud to be an American, one of things I'm proud about is that it was an American who invented the plane."
"I've got green eyes, I'm proud to have green eyes, the inventor of the microwave oven also had green eyes."
Slashdot Mirror
I find a shotgun quietens the neighbours dogs better than anything.
> Not to mention the muslim states can't even agree that the killing of civilians is in fact terrorism
For heaven's sake. What a totally vacuous statement. Everybody knows terrorism is a totally loaded term which means "violence by the other side". When Turkey (our ally) massacres Kurds, it's counter-terrorism. When Saddam does it, it's state sponsored terrorism, etc.
I agree that non US media is not immune from bias. I don't agree that quality of sources is simply personal preference, but I'll agree that getting your information from a single source is disastrous. If you watch one source 95% of the time and then watch the other 5%, you'll probably think the 5% is full of shit. Try watching Al Jeezera 50% of the time for a month.
In Europe they hate US because
a) americans think the sun shines out their ass
b) americans are amazingly ignorant about non-us
c) [and this really grates] americans are more powerful and more successful (although standard of living is often higher in europe).
In 3rd world, it is much more love hate relationship, jealousy plays a part, but a feeling that they've been robbed of freedom and wealth by US is much more significant. West encourages and finances coups. Then it lends money to resulting dictatorships. The money is spent by dictators on arms bought from west and used to subdue population. Country then has big debt that it owes west which is paid for by growing export crops (coffee, choclate, coke, whatever). However, the export crops have collapsed in value, so they can barely afford to buy grain from US after having converted their agriculture to cash crops at behest of IMF. Also, the regimes we prop up are necessarily friendly to western business interests at expense of local industry. Effectively, entire populations are enslaved and set to work for west, their natural resources exported for a pitance, and all this without us having to bother with the hassle of explicit invasion. Neat, huh.
Anyway, accurate or not, this understanding of what's going on is what makes people less than fond of US. It's not that they "hate our freedom", they hate their own slavery and don't think it's entirely an accident.
If I got my opinions from CNN, or from other mainstream US media I would probably share your views of palestinians.
Your own bullshit detector needs some attention.
I could list sites for you to visit, or suggest you actually try going to the middle east and taking a look for yourself, but I don't think it would do any good. The trouble is, people judge the credibility of information against what they think they know already. You obviously believe you have a more accurate understanding of what's going on there than 98% of the people who live there. You "know" too much to learn anything.
They disagree with what you learnt from CNN - they must be stupid and ignorant.
You rock. There hasn't had a troll of your calibre on /. since the delightful MEEPT. Keep up the good work.
> Hate to break it to ya, but we already did.
The Russians conquerored the country quite quickly too. As did the British. The tricky thing is keeping it conquerored. Luckily, we don't really care what happens there so we can just let it revert to the pre-taliban state of endless civil war.
>With the Taliban gone, this opens up free world trade to Afghanastan. When peace and stability is in their best interest, you can bet it is going to happen.
Well, the heroin trade has certainly picked up, so I guess you're half right. However, peace and stability are seldom in the interests of "warlords" as you should be able figure out just from analysing the word.
> we're not invading Afghanistan, and we're not a hostile occupying power; we are welcomed their by the current government.
I'm sure the average Russian believed the same thing about the USSR during the Russian occupation. Of course, that was because they received all their news through state sponsored propoganda. What's your excuse ?
Nice one, good experiment. Just how much plausible sounding but preposterouis bullshit can you fit in 3 sentences and still have people take you seriously ?
I'm in two minds about this. I think he's right, but I also think we are going to get a hell of a lot closer to sentience than we are now, even with strictly deterministic, non-quantum devices.
I think humans are capable of something fundamentally impossible for deterministic computers, but at the same time I think that most of us barely use these facilities. Most of what we do is mundane, and perfectly possible to mimic on a computer. We may not be able to mimic consciousness life, but we may be able to prove that most of us spend most of our lives in a zombified state.
Two things to emphasis: all turing machines are equivalent; speed and intelligence are independent. If it is ever possible to produce consciousness on a deterministic computer, then it is possible on today's hardware. If you had a radio onversation with an intelligent alien who lived 100 light years away, it would take 200 years to get each response - that doesn't mean he is stupid. Similarly, if it is possible to mimic humanity on tommorow's hardware, we should be able to do it, slowly, on today's.
I sure hope this was a troll. If it is, it was a good one. You managed to convert a metric mass into a metric mass and introduced an inaccuracy of 2.4x10^11 into the calculation. And it seems like several people bought it too ! Good effort.
Maybe you're just a fuckwit, but that's the essense of a good troll, it's hard to tell.
The score on original asteroids goes round the clock after a measly 99990 points, a fairly trivial target. So unless there is a hidden counter there, someone must have had to watch the whole thing and count how many times he did this. Also, how long did it take - does anyone have any details on this ?
Almost right and yet so wrong. Trixillions explanation is excellent, but I guess it might be too complicated for some to grasp.
The reason the banks books balance is because the loan balances the credit they create. When the bank splits the account into
Bank a:5000,-5000 b:0 c:5000 d:5000,-5000 bank:0
in my explanation above - it still balances. But the fact that someone can spend $5000 which they didn't have before increases the money in circulation.
The banks are supposed to keep a fraction of the money they lend in reserve. In the US the fraction is 8.5% (last I heard).
This reserve is an additional requirement to the need to "balance their books". Even this requirement gets broken from time to time.
It's not the $500 that's invented by the bank, it's the $5000.
The effect of the loan is to temporarily increase the money in circulation by $5000. This extra $5000 disappears when the money is paid back. The $500 interest that is paid back has to be extracted from the system elsewhere. Where from ? - well, effectively from some other sucker taking out a loan that must eventually be paid back. The $500 may be spent by the bank, or it may add it to it's reserves. The point is - the only way the system can work is if people are continually taking out more loans. Or else the borrower defaults on the loan and the banks end up with more. This means that a stable economy is impossible. The economy *has* to grow or else some people are going to have to default.
The main point of being a bank, is that banks are allowed to invent money.
Everyone knows about bank notes and coins, they are minted by the government. However, this is only a small fraction of the money in circulation - around 4% in most big economies. Most money is in bank accounts of one sort or another and circulates through cheques, debit cards etc. Cash is a minor part of the money supply and becoming less important by the day. So, where does most money really come from ? The answer is very simple: money is invented by banks when people take out loans.
This is not a secret, it's just not widely known. Most people think that banks lend you other people's money and charge more interest to borrowers than the lenders receive, but this picture is fundamentally wrong. If you borrow £5000 from the bank, nobody is sent a letter saying that their money is temporarily unavailable because they have lent it to someone else. A more accurate picture is that this £5000 didn't exist until the bank lent it to you.
This is hard to believe, so let me show you how it works. It simplifies matters to imagine that there is only 1 bank, or if that strains your imagination, just imagine that A,B and C all bank with Wells Fargo.
Let us start with people A,B,C and a bank and keep track of how much money they have. The bank keeps separate accounts for A,B,C and itself
1. We'll start everybody off with no money, and nothing in their bank account
except for C who has $5000
External funds A: 0, B: 0, C 5000
Bank a:0 b:0 c:0 bank:0
2. C pays his money into his bank account
External A: 0 B: 0 C: 0
Bank a:0 b:0 c:5000 bank:0
3. A asks to borrow from bank so it breaks A's account of 0
into $5000 of money for his current account and a debt of -$5000
External A: 0, B: 0, C: 0
Bank a:(5000,-5000) b:0 c:5000 bank:0
4. The bank transfers the money to A
External: A: 5000, B: 0, C: 0
Bank a:-5000 b:0 c:5000 bank:0
5. A pays this money to B
Exernal A: 0, B: 5000, C: 0
Bank a:-5000 b:0 c:5000 bank:0
6. B pays the money into his account
External A: 0, B: 0, C: 0
Bank a:-5000 b:5000 c:5000 bank:0
7. A obtains money from elsewhere (easier said than done)
External A: 5500, B: 0, C: 0
Bank a:-5000 b:5000 c:5000 bank:0
8. A repays 5000 to bank, plus interest of 500
External A 0, B 0, C 0
Bank a:0 b:5000 c:5000 bank:500
9. The bank pays some interest to C
External A: 0, B: 0, C: 0
Bank a:0 b:5000 c:5300 bank:200
So far, the bank has done nothing strange, and this actually corresponds to the understanding that most people have about the way banks work. One thing to notice is that when A received $5000, nothing happened to C's account. Theoretically C could withdraw his money at any time.
The clever bit is that step 4 never needs to actually happen. A doesn't remove $5000 in cash from his bank - he just writes a check out to B, who never takes out the money either - he just pays it into his account. So in order to "lend money" to A, all that the bank needs to do is change it's accounts from saying:
Bank a:0 b:0 c:5000 bank:0
to saying:
Bank a:5000,-5000 b:0 c:5000 bank:0
Which means: A has $5000 in his current account and also has a debt of $5000 in a separate account.
and as far as A is concerned he has borrowed $5000 from the bank.
But there is nothing to stop the bank from "lending" lots of people money in this way. Why not lend D $5000 too, just change the accounts to say:
Bank a:5000,-5000 b:0 c:5000 d:5000,-5000 bank:0
The money that it lends out does not have to exist before it lends it out - the bank invents the money. In fact, almost all the money in circulation has been invented in this way.
Are banks allowed to do this - isn't there a law against this ? No, not at all, banks are expected to do this - in fact without the banks providing credit, the money supply drys up and the economy goes into recession. There used to be laws specifying a limit - banks could only lend out X times as much money as they received, but these laws have been scrapped in most modern economies. The only constraint is market confidence. If people start to lose confidence in the bank, too many people demand to physically get their hands on their money at the same time, then the whole facade comes tumbling down.
The central misunderstanding is that banks charge interest because they themselves are borrowing money from somewhere, as in fact they are if the money actually leaves their control. Banks compete with one another to lend you money because it is their principle source of revenue. They compete by charging less interest. If they charge too little, lend too much to people who have trouble paying it back then people lose confidence, and move their funds to another bank, the bank goes bust. They lend as much as they dare though, because it's immensly profitable: they are inventing the money they lend you.
So, money is created by banks in the form of debt. Now, lets think about this a moment. What would happen if everybody tried to pay off their debts to the banks, and nobody took out new loans. Well, the money supply would dry up, there would be far less money in circulation. Money's primary function is a to facilitate trade, if nobody has any money then nobody would be able to trade, the economy would grind to a halt.
More fundamentally, it is absolutely impossible that all debt could be paid off. THERE IS MORE DEBT THAN MONEY. It's easy to understand this when you think about where money comes from. Every time a bank lends people money it increases the gap between the amount of money in the world and the amount of debt. The bank lends you $5000, and demands you repay $5500. $5000 is temporarily added to the amount of money in circulation, but it must eventually return to the bank - plus an additional $500 that must go back to the bank too. When the debt is finally paid off, $500 more must have been extracted from the system than went into it. The only way to keep the system going is with increasing debt. Of course, banks spends money too - they have employees and shareholders who buy cars and houses, yachts etc, this pumps money back into the system, which slows down the debt spiral. (A very fat, and almost entirely parasitical segment of the economy that creates nothing real, but that's not my point). Even if the bank spends all the money it receives in interest, there is still a discrepency, because the money must be returned to the bank before it can spend it - at any one time there has to be more debt than money.
The value of our assets (in money terms) is proportional to the amount of money existing. Our debts to the banks are in terms of money. As credit collapses, the amount of money goes down, the "value" that people put on real items goes down (nobody can pay much if they don't have much money). If banks suddenely refused any further loans the banks would end up owning everything. (In fact - I strongly suspect that one or two of the biggest banks would end up owning everything, including all smaller banks). Nobody would have money to pay off their debts and the money they could obtain from selling their assets wouldn't cover it - not enough money would exist. The banks would own all the money AND all the property. This is not just a theoretical problem, it's an exaggeration of what happens during recession. Extending it to the logical conclusion highlights how much power lies with banks in the current system.
When banks lend people money, they increase the amount of money in circulation. This changes the balance between the amount of money in the world and the amount of stuff in the world. This slightly decreases the value of all money - it is the root cause of inflation. Effectively banks steal money off everybody else by lending out more money than they have. It's just a form of legalized forgery. A private individual would have exactly the same effect on the economy if he produced perfectly forged money that he was allowed to add to the system on the condition that he removed and destroyed the same amount at a later date.
An expanding economy needs an ever increasing amount of money. The more stuff in the world, the more money is needed. This money is invented by private banks in the form of debt. Even governments borrow their money from private banks. So we have this paradoxical situation where the most successful countries have the largest amounts of debt. Amazingly the USA has recently been able to start decreasing it's national debt, but this has been achieved by a massively expanded amount of private sector debt. People are more confident, they believe their shares are worth more, they borrow more money and invest more. More is collected in taxes due to increased wages, and for a short time the government debt can decrease, but overall debt always increases.
During boom times - the credit supply increases. The system keeps afloat by ever increasing amounts of debt. In order to service this debt, the economy *must* expand - it is completely impossible for the monetary system to stay afloat with a stable economy, because the only way the debts can be serviced is by creating new debts.
Obviously this debt cycle cannot quite go on forever. At some stage people lose confidence, and it becomes harder to get credit. Then businesses go bankrupt, banks foreclose on the assets, and we go into recession or depression. Then gradually things improve and we start over again - the only difference being that now more of the actual assets in the world (rather than just the money), are then owned by the banks.
So the boom/bust cycle is inevitable when all money is created in the form of debt. The system is inherently unstable. We end up with rather large debts. For instance, the national debt of USA is $5,673,018,308,921 (last time I checked). The estimated population of the United States is 276,004,098 so each citizen's share of this debt is $20,554.11. The money to service this debt is extracted (taxed) with menaces by the government and paid to the banks. If you wanted to be alarmist about it, you could say we are selling our children into slavery (or at the very least indentured servitude) to the owners of the private institutions that invent our money.
Whose idea was this wonderful mechanism for inventing money ? Amazingly enough, it was the bankers. In 1694, Britain's King William was having trouble with money and probably did not understand it too well. At the time governments were scratching their heads over how to pitch the speed of money supply to the economy so as to avoid periods of inflation and at the same time finance their wars, build their palaces and even, from time to time, make life bearable for their people. The bankers convinced King William that the bankers were the "experts" who understood money and that the job of issuing currency should be handed to them.
As the amount of stuff in the world increases, the amount of money needs to increase. An artist paints a picture and wants to sell it - the amount of stuff in the world has just increased. Either: more money has to be created everything; the price of everything needs to reduce slightly; or we have a world where their is plenty of stuff, but nobody can buy it. In fact, this is pretty much the situation we live in: there is plenty of stuff, but everyone is short of money.
Letting the banks invent all money in the form of debt is not the only possible system. For instance, the government could invent money and give everybody a certain amount each year. This scheme was advocated by Douglas in the 30s and was making progress before war broke out. The introduction of more debt free money into the economy would reduce the need for loans and gradually eliminate the boom and bust cycle. Of course if the government invents too much we end up with inflation. But we have inflation already because the banks are inventing money all the time. If people were given money, they would borrow less from the banks so we wouldn't need inflation. A lot of inflationary pressure comes from the need to make interest payments. This scheme is far less inflationary than you might think.
The reason that the current system (where money is invented by banks) has become dominant is that the current monetary system is pretty good at creating a vibrant thriving economy where enterprise is encouraged and financed - it undeniably encourages growth, in fact, it can't live without it. A stable economy is absolutely impossible in the current system, people must be perpetually taking out loans and investing. Without constant investment and new loans the money dissappears and we sink into recession. That's why the idea has spread so wide - it's the most competitive model so far seen.
It's not exactly perfect though. The tendancy to enslave populations into the service of bank owners is one flaw. An insatiable need to expand economies until the whole planet is covered in concrete is another. The necessity for people to work like mules their whole lives, scraping a living amongst plenty when automation should provide us with leisure is another. The maintenance of a huge parasitical segment of the economy that creates virtually nothing of value is another... I could go on, but I think you see my point - the current system is not ideal.
One good thing about the current system is that the wastefulness of private institutions is bounded by the fact that if they become too bloated, corrupt and stupid then they go bankrupt. Governments don't have the same market-place correction. Elections change the spokesmen, but the permanent institution that grows up behind our "elected representitives" is much harder to displace. It can reach far greater levels of stupidity and incompetence than is possible for private organisations. But the market place competition between banks doesn't help us much. When banks fold they get taken over by other banks. Banks have an even greater motivation to merge than other businesses - the larger they are, the less likely that money ever leaves their control, so the larger their possible debt/credit ratio. What this means is that larger banks can invent more money than smaller banks, thus stealing more from the rest of the world. The fact that stupid banks get taken over by clever banks doesn't help. It just makes the resulting mega banks more powerful than ever.
You can't really blame banks - they are just making the most of a preposterous situation. It should be the responsibility of government to create the money we need and distribute it amongst us. Counter-intuitively this would make governments less powerful. The present system gives them the power to do whatever they like, or more accurately the power to not do whatever they like. They control the
rate of the economy by controlling interest rates. They can obtain as much money as they want by increasing the national debt, and they can avoid doing things that people want by just saying they can't afford it.
An intelligent and informative book that explains this stuff and related ideas quite thoroughly is "Grip of Death" by Mike Rowbotham, Jon Carpenter Publishing; ISBN: 1897766408
The only reason Andreesen got asked to write a GUI for www was because his maths was not up to scratch and he couldn't do the job he was hired for. He was a reasonable X programmer though so his boss (Ping Phou) asked him to write a GUI for www. It wasn't his idea. Ping was happy at NCSA so, Clarke took on Marc instead.
That is the geekiest joke I've ever seen.
It should probably have been a signed int originally.
Just using that phrase "designer babies" determines the conclusion. Put out a poll...
"are you in favor of designer babies" - no
"should potential parents with inheritable diseases have the right to pre-screen their embryos for those diseases" - yes
Then we get the "look at all the wonderful cripples like Hawkins etc...." argument. Well, the foetuses you discard have at least as much chance of turning out well as the ones you keep. There are plenty of great humans who have nasty genetic diseases, but we have no way of telling what geniuses we've missed because the lack of screening meant some doomed half-wit runt got born instead.
And while I'm ranting... Gattaca wasn't that scary. I'm in favor of a world where more people look like Uma Thurman.
Anyway, I better quit before I start proposing full scale eugenics and saying "just because Hitler gave it a bad name doesn't mean it's wrong, after all, if his policies had been implemented Hitler would never have been born in the first place..." that would ruin any credibility I have. Oh shit, too late, just kidding, but I do have a gut reaction against the "this is what nazi's wanted = bad". Decent roads and punctual transport would get discarded too with those arguments.
Personally, I have more faith in nature combining things in the right way than a bunch of fuckwit genetic engineers. But, I don't think it's fair to tell people "it's illegal for you to try and avoid having a child who dies early - I'm not comfortable with that". You know what - nobody asked you to be comfortable with it, it's none of your business.
> If you are an oil baron, environmentalist panic is very, very good for business.
No, it's not. What a pile of crap. The large energy companies spend millions funding dubious research to rebutt the findings of all the scientists who are not funded by energy companies.
Read "Green Backlash".
Heh, if I were you I would try the "if you* had a life, you wouldn't be reading /." track if I were you. Now *that* might sting a bit...
Rather than whining about not being given the option to vegetate in front of inane rubbish at improved resolution, why not rejoice in the fact that you have an incentive to go outside and interact with the world, it's considerably less pixelated than even HDTV.
Why would anyone want to go outside, meet people or do things ? Instead, you can watch others have fake adventures or get your opinions and desires programmed in rather than going to all the trouble of figuring them out for yourself. You can achieve a state of lower consciousness - it helps pass the time while you wait for death.
If you must watch TV, at least buy a mirror to put up above the screen. That way you can look up from time to time and compare the excitement on the screen with the futile existence of the vegtable on the couch.
Western media is overwhelmingly in the hands of a handful of individuals already. Check out this article in pravda
Fuck Disney. They have made enough more money on some stupid cartoon mouse than they ever deserved. Any new stuff they produce deserves same copyright protection as anything else.
Auction idea would only work if proceeds of auction go to government (otherwise the owner can bid unlimited amount, he is paying himself), but I still think it's a bad idea. If a million people would receive $1 worth of benefit from something going to public domain, they would be outbid by a company willing to pay $10000.
One of the things I admire most about America is that you've got your sports groupies in uniform and parading on the sidelines. It's just so organised ! The unarguably subservient status of cheerleaders versus actual players is also a cause for wonder. It's so refreshingly old fashioned. It shows that at some level the country hasn't completely lost it's head up it's own ass in the fad of expecting identical roles for men and women.
You make a good argument. The fact that XXX was invented by someone raised in culture YYY provides evidence that culture YYY has got something right. Something gets lost in the shorthand version though. If people remember
it is the values of freedom and independence they are proud of, that's fine. The shorthand version allows people to lose the distinction between American interests and the values these supposedly represent.
I still think there's something a bit weird in the way people are "Proud to be XXX" whether XXX is white, black, American, French, British or martian.
It's a bit like saying some celebrity was awfully brave for dying of cancer. As far as I can tell he didn't have any choice.
Pride is dangerous (it's number 1 of 7 on the deadly sins chart). Being proud of stuff which is purely an accident of birth is also pointless.
You have a strange perspective. You don't seem interested in looking at the evidence as to whether they are correct in saying someone else invented XXX first.
Also, I think most of the crap about the moon landings never happened is mostly generated by loony Americans - AFAIK it's not a foreign conspiracy.
The really strange thing is - who gives a flying fuck ? Does it make you feel proud that various things were invented by Americans ?
"I'm proud to be an American, one of things I'm proud about is that it was an American who invented the plane."
"I've got green eyes, I'm proud to have green eyes, the inventor of the microwave oven also had green eyes."
I just don't see the point.