I think you underestimate how easy it will be to mechanize "intelligence" work.
Just where the fuck do I do that? Did you even read my post? Did you catch any of the four examples where I showcase what can and cannot be automated?
we both have some serious melancholy in our families, the intervention that I would find most tempting is the one that will prevent these dispositions from manifesting themselves in our kids.
You want your kids to be stupid. Wow dude. I know that's not exactly what you said, or meant to imply. But face it: Intelligence carries a burden and ignorance is bliss. And you're saying you wish your kids had more of the latter.
From a professor..... Wow.
Sorry if this comes off as judgmental, or harsh, or whateverthefuck, but seriously. We're fighting the good fight against anti-intellectualism, barely keeping a grip on democracy, striving to reach a sustainable society before the oil runs dry or some idiot pushes the red button. In a time when the current trends are dependent upon further technological advances, here you are as one of the pinnacles of society and you just don't give a fuck. You'd rather your kids took it easy, didn't have to work so hard, didn't have to think so hard, and were just simply happy. Let someone else cure cancer, make fusion viable, or colonize mars.
And I get it. I do. You want a better life for your kids. That's commendable. You've got problems, who doesn't, and you want your kids to avoid them. It's just... fuck man... I guess I have big hopes for the future and thought more of professors.
Just the one. And I desperately hope that he's a smart little cookie. Because it will make life so much better for him. And if he doesn't have the natural talent like I did, I hope that I can instill a work ethic that'll get him through life.
My brother had some rough patches, and thankfully he's through the worst of it. But now he's 35 with no real career to speak of. His resume has a giant gapping hole that is hard to explain. His body isn't going to last in his current job for another decade and it's the sort that he needs to fight for every year so they hire him again. It's not all doom and gloom for him, but well, the family worries.
A happy kid is good thing. But I don't think one genetically selected to be easy-going and carefree is a good thing.
Judgmental much? What exactly is a "better person" according to your criteria?
Sure, I guess. A "better person" would be one that tries to be a better person rather than simply being content and happy with whatever they're handed. Sure, if they could be happy while struggling with something that's outside their safety zone, that'd be great. And if they find the "happily tenacious" gene, I'd be down with switching that on. But currently I see a sliding scale between being content and being driven. If geneticists selected for kids to be happy, I imagine they'd have a batch of kids that didn't really see the point in studying and working hard.
Lots of people work hard, even in a "menial" blue-collar job.
Whoa whoa whoa. There are a shit-ton of blue-collar jobs that aren't menial. Mechanics have a full spectrum of skills from noob to master. And a certified areospace mechanic can make some serious bank. In short, that's a blue collar job that isn't a dead end. No, I was talking about actual dead-end jobs: retail, fry-cook, maid, fruit-picker. These are jobs which simply have no career advancement and don't develop any skills. As anyone can do them, you face a lot of competition from people that didn't have the same opportunities that your typical GENE-SELECTED BABY FROM WEALTHY PARENTS have. It's a common trope that the rich or gifted kid is expected to "succeed" (which carries it's own problems). That will be expanded if you also have tweaked genes.
work is what you do to get money to do the REST OF THINGS, which is your ACTUAL LIFE
Yeah, and as an engineer, I have to do so very much less then a fruit picker to get enough money to do the things in my "actual life". Trust me, life is simply easier and better with a higher income.
I'd rather have a kid who could be satisfied and happy in his life, even if he worked what you call a "dead-end job" and had good relationships with friends. As long as he's happy and able to support himself, why do you care what he does? What makes him a "bad person"?
Well, in a modern first-world society that isn't some libertarian hell-scape, the answer is because I'm taxed and he's not. And I'm subsidizing his lifestyle. But hey, if he's got a job, he's probably still a net-gain for society. Statistically though, the poorer he is the less likely it is that he will be happy, or be able to support himself. It's a real roll of the dice, but I hope to load the dice a little by making sure my kid has good grades.
Also, what does he do when he's a 40 year old laid-off bus-boy with no marketable skills? Have kids and hope one of them will support him? Uh........
Point taken about the ambitious jerks. It's a balancing act really.
The world in which we live depends on a certain percentage of the population doing those jobs: garbage truck worker, toll booth operator, road maintenance crewmember, janitor, etc.
I'd like to see those menial jobs replaced with automation if possible. I mean, it removes a mind-numbingly boring job of monotony. garbage truck worker They've already automated the process of picking up the trash-can and dumping it. Now it's just a driver. And with self-driving cars, hopefully that will be automated as well. toll booth operator Really? Come on dude, are you even trying? road maintenance crewmember There's actually a lot that goes into road building. And they're all legacy systems with the nightmares that come with that. But hey, filling potholes might be able to be automated. janitor There will always be janitors and general handymen, but for something as boring as, say, sweeping or mopping? Sure, roomba to the rescue. It's not that I want these people to be out of work. It's that I don't think we need to dedicate man-power to these tasks. I want those kids that would grow up into a ditch-digger position instead go on to do something a little more rewarding and productive.
Providing opportunities to your kids is about the best you can do. But how the hell do you distinguish "choosing" and "settling"?
At one point, poor eyesight or ADD meant the sabre-tooth edited you out of the gene pool.
You have that backwards. ADD mean you noticed the sabre-tooth tiger and lived longer than your geeky friend who managed to focus on trying to build a fire. ADD is a positive trait if you have to constantly watch your back.
And mother nature just didn't give a shit what happened to your eyesight past 30, but point taken.
There's a reasonable argument that natural selection isn't working anymore,
There is always selection, some people have (more) kids than others. Some people don't have kids. The "natural" aspect is meaningless and doesn't matter worth a damn. The question is merely what is being selected for and what is not. Perfect example is ADD, while it might have helped kids survive being hunted, it doesn't help hunters. Nor fire-builders, nor programmers, etc. But "helping" doesn't equate with selection anymore. Sadly, the movie Idiocracy kinda hits this one on the head. The poor and the stupid out breed the smart of the wealthy. It doesn't have a good impact on society. And I think is this what you're getting at, but phrases like:
So, we'll have to add the chlorine ourselves
That's a euphamism with horrible consequences. Really, trying to kill off the poor, or steralize all the blacks, or steer the genetic boat in general are all really bad ideas that have been tried before with larger negative consequences than they could ever hope to outweigh with positive impact.
almost HAS to be done at some point.
No, actually, it doesn't. While selection is still happening, and Idiocracy might be in effect, we really don't have to change. With sufficient outbreeding (as opposed to inbreeding for freaks) we can maintain a stable baseline genetic structure and simple carry on. The crocodile and nautilus haven't changed much for millions of years. They found a niche and didn't have reason to change. We could do the same.
Correct. And when people talk about this, they mean "relative to today's standards". And that's a perfectly reasonable way of talking about it.
But this is not a zero-sum game where it only matters how smarter you are than the next guy. It really does have an impact if EVERYONE is smarter on the whole.
Fun fact: If we never re-adjusted the IQ scale and somehow compared the IQ scores of people today to everyone in history, we would score higher then those of the past. People have gotten smarter. And this is a good thing. While it might mean that someone that could easily pick up orbital mechanics might be the dumbest person in the room and be forced to sweep floors for a living, it means good things for society, janitors included. Because they can play Kerbal when they get home.
I think you're working quite hard at being depressed about this. IQ isn't everything. Genes aren't everything. This is one of those lessons that sci-fi helps us learn before stumbling over it. Rest assured that some people will still stumble. It'll be a long long time before we can select against fools.
As for "reducing humanity", yeah man, we're just a few genetic markers away from apes. That's how works.
Really? You want a kid with no ambition? One that will happily work at a dead-end job and bum around with his friends rather than put in the effort to be a better person.
the thing I'd want most is that they grow up happy.
awwwww, that's adorable. Especially coming from a Spock parody. But that whole "happiness" thing is mostly on the shoulders of the parents, and doesn't matter if the kid is smart, dumb, rich, or poor. Once they hit the real world, then OH YEAH, those things matter for a lot. Hence why most parents try to steer their kid towards homework rather than making sure they're happy. I think a balanced approach is best.
Maxing out their intelligence would not be at all high on my list of priorities. Is this a weird attitude? I thought it was a kind of typical parent attitude
No actually, it's sadly not that high on a lot of parents list. Many appear to be concerned with hair color, eye color, skin tone, height, weight, and athletic ability. And while they would be willing to screen for health concerns, intelligence appears to be around that same level of side-concern. As long as the baby is white and blonde.
but apparently, geneticists have different ideas.
Yeah, right now the geneticists are all theorizing academics that want to make the world a better place. Wait till it becomes a typical business model, and they'll align their ideas with the market. Sigh...
Gattaca was a cautionary tale, not a blueprint for future eugenics.
It was a cautionary tale to not focus too deeply on the genes one has rather than the potential one has. An invalid can best those with superior genes if they've got no fire, and a perfectly peaceful man can commit a horrible murder if everyone believes him to be perfectly peaceful.
Luckily, Einsteins brain has been sequenced. The results aren't publicly available, but that's not the sort of information that's going to disappear. If we can identify "creativity and genius", then all the better. Just like we can identify intelligence. And having the right set of genes isn't the end-all-be-all of who you are. Even if you were a clone of Einstein, or say, one of his kids, that doesn't guarantee you're going to go on to do great things.
You're right that IQ isn't everything. But GATTACA was most certainly a blueprint for future eugenics, and once it's available I really don't see an alternative.
Real porn or fake porn? Because if they look for it, I'm prety sure they're going to find something. Welcome to the future.
Ah, contracts. Now there you might have something. But would you say that it was "immoral" that a celebrities private data was compromised? What if a paperazi somehow managed to be a peeping tom? And this is a successful hollywood actress, so it actually DOES matter what she and her lawyers can argue in court if the studio tries to have her fired. But then again, JUST LIKE I SAID LAST TIME, that would have half the country calling foul. And that would lose them money.
The context is the Patriot Act and the CEO of Google tells them that they're being watched.
There we go, fixed it for you. You didn't seem to quite get the message of my first post. I understand the sentiment, and your post is more or less correct. Yes, security-minded geeks have this whole "don't trust other people's servers" mentality which is coming out the play. I'm just telling you that you're taking Schmidt's quote out of context and pretending that he said something he didn't.
So ease up there with the knee-jerk bitching you random asshole coward on Slashdot, I'm agreeing with your overall point.
Ok, so he wants people to use a password manager. That's not that crazy. A viable alternative for the general populace.
But for me? I need to log into stuff from all over the place, so the manager has to live out on the net. It can't reside safely in my own semi-trusted computer. I need to log into stuff from my computer, my phone, work, occasionally a friend's computer. Not all scenarios are completely trust-worthy and I REALLY don't want to enter the same password I use for throw-away sites as the one I use to aid and abet ISIS durka durka muhamed jihad. I mean my porn. I mean my bad twilight fanfic. I mean my completely innocuous twilight-ISIS crossover fanfic with pornographic tendencies.
Anyway, do you REALLY think that everyone is going to choose the high road like Lavabits? Even Lastpass's corporate overlord, Marvasol, is based in Virginia. And I've no doubt that they've received a visit and a gag order from a three letter agency.
How about the freedom to sue the police after being wrongfully arrested for filming police and win in the courts or have a settlement worth millions?
And dude, heroin is a terrible drug. One with sociological ramifications. We don't really want something like England's East India Company to have another war. It's not the individualist's paradise that you seem to think it is. It DOES matter what my neighbor does. But yeah, sure, we're learning that it's better not to criminalize some things.
Most of "the west", ie, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, etc. Remember that BEFORE democracy, their government were run by kings. The people were literally owned, and simply part of the land. Their options were limited to "till the fields or die". France had that big clusterfuck with all the heads rolling and the time of terrors afterwards, but eventually things were better for the masses because they had additional freedoms. This sentiment spread to the rest of Europe and was a defining force in the formation of the USA, who had a fantastic amount of freedom compared to their contemporaries at the time (which time? Most of them).
Despite the steps back (and the era of the robber barons), the USA still has a high degree of freedom for it's citizens. If you question that, I think you need to travel more. Like, say, to Hong Kong or China.
Every time someone rolls out this comment, I like to remind them of the context:
Interviewer: "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?" He replied: "I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities."
You should take that as a not too subtle hint that "the government is spying on everything you do through Google. We have been compromised. You cannot trust us to keep you safe from the government".
But no, a rich man makes a statement leading up to his main message, and the media and populace takes it and runs with it. Even Glenn Greenwald pulled this shit in a TED talk. And I think we've hit that point to where it no longer matters what actually happened, as the meme has embedded itself into the social psyche.
Also, this is a pretty good reason why we really don't want the government to impose these sort of retention requirements. Because we can't trust the retainers to keep a secret.
Are you sure about that? I mean, other than the victims, who really cares all that much? Not to downplay the crime, they certainly have grounds for being pissed and these sort of wild accusations of sex crimes is understandable.
But what's the actual damage? Is she not going to get signed up for the next Hunger Games? That would be even more outrageous and would have half the country leaping down the producer's throats.
My portfolio started taking a beating when these democracy agitators started causing trouble in Hong Kong.
Ah, so this is an obvious troll. Or at least the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm pointing out some of the more nefarious mentality that's probably going on in the upper echelons of US business. It's getting hard these days to tell the difference, and idiots like DNS-BIND can't read sarcasm. Poe's law is in effect.
so as to avoid labor costs getting out of control.
Just so everyone else is aware, the Chinese workers have steadily been earning more for years, and as they get more powerful, they'll want more rights/control/political power. The higher salary comes first, then the living standards, and now voting. And everything is in tiny little steps. Which is probably for the best. Nobody in their right mind wants giant sweeping changes that disrupts everything.
No, that's how discovery works. People are mucking about doing something and notice something else happening. "Hmm, that's interesting". The science part is often narrowing down a) What's happening, b) what's causing it, c) how to get it to happen by itself.
A lot of people seem to think that there's a science shovel, and if you pay a scientist enough money to dig long enough, that eventually they'll hit pay dirt and have a geyser of science flowing out. (That's why they wear labcoats and goggles, obviously)
And honestly, who cares what lead to it's discovery?
HA! not falling for that again. Please, could you spell out who/what 1) "The very group" 2) "he" 3) "this excuse" refer to? Because at this stage I'm quite lost as to just what the fuck you're talking about.
What essentially consisted of a cult moved to this rural town in Oregon and tried to get the cult leader voted in. The math didn't pan out, so they tried to give the voters food poisoning right before the election.
1) Casual contact doesn't work. They did the whole thing with doorknobs and toilets. Didn't work. Your skin in a fantastic shield against this stuff and it dies before infecting you. Or you simply wash your hands.
2) Infecting the food does work. Putting infected liquid in the salad bar caused 751 to become infected. 45 needed hospital treatment. None died.
Also, the event caused the people to come out in droves to vote against the cult who lost by a landslide.
The cult leader ousted the perpetrators in the end for committing the heinous crimes. And who the hell knows if he was ever in on it.
I feel the need to ease your fears. Relax. Even in the worst-case scenario, where some evil mastermind gets a group of people to get get themselves infected, and then proceeds to get them to the USA, and then they try to spred it about as best they can, even in this scenario there would only be a few thousand deaths. Society would shit some bricks, survive, and move on. Hopefully better then when 3000 some people died in NY a decade ago.
And remember that the economic impact of people not going to a fast-food joint or a base-ball game is the general populace being healthier and having a little more money in their pocket. It does kinda suck for some people who play a game for a living.
But no, what I really want to say to you is that YES, offense is ludicrously easier than defense. And so we need to live in a society where people generally don't want to commit suicide just to spit in our eye. We can't afford to be the bad guys. We have to be the good guys because the alternative, in the long view, is our own destruction.
And we probably haven't yet felt the blowback of those hundreds of thousands of dead civilians in Iraq over the last decade. That's gonna be a bitch.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you underestimate how easy it will be to mechanize "intelligence" work.
Just where the fuck do I do that?
Did you even read my post?
Did you catch any of the four examples where I showcase what can and cannot be automated?
we both have some serious melancholy in our families, the intervention that I would find most tempting is the one that will prevent these dispositions from manifesting themselves in our kids.
You want your kids to be stupid. Wow dude. I know that's not exactly what you said, or meant to imply. But face it: Intelligence carries a burden and ignorance is bliss. And you're saying you wish your kids had more of the latter.
From a professor..... Wow.
Sorry if this comes off as judgmental, or harsh, or whateverthefuck, but seriously. We're fighting the good fight against anti-intellectualism, barely keeping a grip on democracy, striving to reach a sustainable society before the oil runs dry or some idiot pushes the red button. In a time when the current trends are dependent upon further technological advances, here you are as one of the pinnacles of society and you just don't give a fuck. You'd rather your kids took it easy, didn't have to work so hard, didn't have to think so hard, and were just simply happy. Let someone else cure cancer, make fusion viable, or colonize mars.
And I get it. I do. You want a better life for your kids. That's commendable. You've got problems, who doesn't, and you want your kids to avoid them. It's just... fuck man... I guess I have big hopes for the future and thought more of professors.
Just the one. And I desperately hope that he's a smart little cookie. Because it will make life so much better for him. And if he doesn't have the natural talent like I did, I hope that I can instill a work ethic that'll get him through life.
My brother had some rough patches, and thankfully he's through the worst of it. But now he's 35 with no real career to speak of. His resume has a giant gapping hole that is hard to explain. His body isn't going to last in his current job for another decade and it's the sort that he needs to fight for every year so they hire him again. It's not all doom and gloom for him, but well, the family worries.
A happy kid is good thing. But I don't think one genetically selected to be easy-going and carefree is a good thing.
Judgmental much? What exactly is a "better person" according to your criteria?
Sure, I guess. A "better person" would be one that tries to be a better person rather than simply being content and happy with whatever they're handed. Sure, if they could be happy while struggling with something that's outside their safety zone, that'd be great. And if they find the "happily tenacious" gene, I'd be down with switching that on. But currently I see a sliding scale between being content and being driven. If geneticists selected for kids to be happy, I imagine they'd have a batch of kids that didn't really see the point in studying and working hard.
Lots of people work hard, even in a "menial" blue-collar job.
Whoa whoa whoa. There are a shit-ton of blue-collar jobs that aren't menial. Mechanics have a full spectrum of skills from noob to master. And a certified areospace mechanic can make some serious bank. In short, that's a blue collar job that isn't a dead end. No, I was talking about actual dead-end jobs: retail, fry-cook, maid, fruit-picker. These are jobs which simply have no career advancement and don't develop any skills. As anyone can do them, you face a lot of competition from people that didn't have the same opportunities that your typical GENE-SELECTED BABY FROM WEALTHY PARENTS have. It's a common trope that the rich or gifted kid is expected to "succeed" (which carries it's own problems). That will be expanded if you also have tweaked genes.
work is what you do to get money to do the REST OF THINGS, which is your ACTUAL LIFE
Yeah, and as an engineer, I have to do so very much less then a fruit picker to get enough money to do the things in my "actual life". Trust me, life is simply easier and better with a higher income.
I'd rather have a kid who could be satisfied and happy in his life, even if he worked what you call a "dead-end job" and had good relationships with friends. As long as he's happy and able to support himself, why do you care what he does? What makes him a "bad person"?
Well, in a modern first-world society that isn't some libertarian hell-scape, the answer is because I'm taxed and he's not. And I'm subsidizing his lifestyle. But hey, if he's got a job, he's probably still a net-gain for society. Statistically though, the poorer he is the less likely it is that he will be happy, or be able to support himself. It's a real roll of the dice, but I hope to load the dice a little by making sure my kid has good grades.
Also, what does he do when he's a 40 year old laid-off bus-boy with no marketable skills? Have kids and hope one of them will support him? Uh........
Point taken about the ambitious jerks. It's a balancing act really.
The world in which we live depends on a certain percentage of the population doing those jobs: garbage truck worker, toll booth operator, road maintenance crewmember, janitor, etc.
I'd like to see those menial jobs replaced with automation if possible. I mean, it removes a mind-numbingly boring job of monotony.
garbage truck worker They've already automated the process of picking up the trash-can and dumping it. Now it's just a driver. And with self-driving cars, hopefully that will be automated as well.
toll booth operator Really? Come on dude, are you even trying?
road maintenance crewmember There's actually a lot that goes into road building. And they're all legacy systems with the nightmares that come with that. But hey, filling potholes might be able to be automated.
janitor There will always be janitors and general handymen, but for something as boring as, say, sweeping or mopping? Sure, roomba to the rescue.
It's not that I want these people to be out of work. It's that I don't think we need to dedicate man-power to these tasks. I want those kids that would grow up into a ditch-digger position instead go on to do something a little more rewarding and productive.
Providing opportunities to your kids is about the best you can do. But how the hell do you distinguish "choosing" and "settling"?
Well, he was perfectly peaceful... you know, before the murder thing.
At one point, poor eyesight or ADD meant the sabre-tooth edited you out of the gene pool.
You have that backwards. ADD mean you noticed the sabre-tooth tiger and lived longer than your geeky friend who managed to focus on trying to build a fire. ADD is a positive trait if you have to constantly watch your back.
And mother nature just didn't give a shit what happened to your eyesight past 30, but point taken.
There's a reasonable argument that natural selection isn't working anymore,
There is always selection, some people have (more) kids than others. Some people don't have kids. The "natural" aspect is meaningless and doesn't matter worth a damn. The question is merely what is being selected for and what is not. Perfect example is ADD, while it might have helped kids survive being hunted, it doesn't help hunters. Nor fire-builders, nor programmers, etc. But "helping" doesn't equate with selection anymore. Sadly, the movie Idiocracy kinda hits this one on the head. The poor and the stupid out breed the smart of the wealthy. It doesn't have a good impact on society. And I think is this what you're getting at, but phrases like:
So, we'll have to add the chlorine ourselves
That's a euphamism with horrible consequences. Really, trying to kill off the poor, or steralize all the blacks, or steer the genetic boat in general are all really bad ideas that have been tried before with larger negative consequences than they could ever hope to outweigh with positive impact.
almost HAS to be done at some point.
No, actually, it doesn't. While selection is still happening, and Idiocracy might be in effect, we really don't have to change. With sufficient outbreeding (as opposed to inbreeding for freaks) we can maintain a stable baseline genetic structure and simple carry on. The crocodile and nautilus haven't changed much for millions of years. They found a niche and didn't have reason to change. We could do the same.
Correct. And when people talk about this, they mean "relative to today's standards". And that's a perfectly reasonable way of talking about it.
But this is not a zero-sum game where it only matters how smarter you are than the next guy. It really does have an impact if EVERYONE is smarter on the whole.
Fun fact: If we never re-adjusted the IQ scale and somehow compared the IQ scores of people today to everyone in history, we would score higher then those of the past. People have gotten smarter. And this is a good thing. While it might mean that someone that could easily pick up orbital mechanics might be the dumbest person in the room and be forced to sweep floors for a living, it means good things for society, janitors included. Because they can play Kerbal when they get home.
I think you're working quite hard at being depressed about this. IQ isn't everything. Genes aren't everything. This is one of those lessons that sci-fi helps us learn before stumbling over it. Rest assured that some people will still stumble. It'll be a long long time before we can select against fools.
As for "reducing humanity", yeah man, we're just a few genetic markers away from apes. That's how works.
A society full of geeks. How bad could it be?
OH SHIT! It'll be like the local hackerspace's mailing list ALL THE TIME. Dear god no.
Also, Gregarious Man would be a thing.
Really? You want a kid with no ambition? One that will happily work at a dead-end job and bum around with his friends rather than put in the effort to be a better person.
the thing I'd want most is that they grow up happy.
awwwww, that's adorable. Especially coming from a Spock parody. But that whole "happiness" thing is mostly on the shoulders of the parents, and doesn't matter if the kid is smart, dumb, rich, or poor. Once they hit the real world, then OH YEAH, those things matter for a lot. Hence why most parents try to steer their kid towards homework rather than making sure they're happy. I think a balanced approach is best.
Maxing out their intelligence would not be at all high on my list of priorities. Is this a weird attitude? I thought it was a kind of typical parent attitude
No actually, it's sadly not that high on a lot of parents list. Many appear to be concerned with hair color, eye color, skin tone, height, weight, and athletic ability. And while they would be willing to screen for health concerns, intelligence appears to be around that same level of side-concern. As long as the baby is white and blonde.
but apparently, geneticists have different ideas.
Yeah, right now the geneticists are all theorizing academics that want to make the world a better place. Wait till it becomes a typical business model, and they'll align their ideas with the market. Sigh...
Gattaca was a cautionary tale, not a blueprint for future eugenics.
It was a cautionary tale to not focus too deeply on the genes one has rather than the potential one has. An invalid can best those with superior genes if they've got no fire, and a perfectly peaceful man can commit a horrible murder if everyone believes him to be perfectly peaceful.
Luckily, Einsteins brain has been sequenced. The results aren't publicly available, but that's not the sort of information that's going to disappear. If we can identify "creativity and genius", then all the better. Just like we can identify intelligence. And having the right set of genes isn't the end-all-be-all of who you are. Even if you were a clone of Einstein, or say, one of his kids, that doesn't guarantee you're going to go on to do great things.
You're right that IQ isn't everything. But GATTACA was most certainly a blueprint for future eugenics, and once it's available I really don't see an alternative.
Unless you get caught. Worse, if you get caught downloading any movies with "subversive overtones".
And pft, you can download movies all day long in the USA too.
Real porn or fake porn? Because if they look for it, I'm prety sure they're going to find something. Welcome to the future.
Ah, contracts. Now there you might have something. But would you say that it was "immoral" that a celebrities private data was compromised? What if a paperazi somehow managed to be a peeping tom? And this is a successful hollywood actress, so it actually DOES matter what she and her lawyers can argue in court if the studio tries to have her fired. But then again, JUST LIKE I SAID LAST TIME, that would have half the country calling foul. And that would lose them money.
The context is the Patriot Act and the CEO of Google tells them that they're being watched.
There we go, fixed it for you. You didn't seem to quite get the message of my first post. I understand the sentiment, and your post is more or less correct. Yes, security-minded geeks have this whole "don't trust other people's servers" mentality which is coming out the play. I'm just telling you that you're taking Schmidt's quote out of context and pretending that he said something he didn't.
So ease up there with the knee-jerk bitching you random asshole coward on Slashdot, I'm agreeing with your overall point.
Ok, so he wants people to use a password manager. That's not that crazy. A viable alternative for the general populace.
But for me? I need to log into stuff from all over the place, so the manager has to live out on the net. It can't reside safely in my own semi-trusted computer. I need to log into stuff from my computer, my phone, work, occasionally a friend's computer. Not all scenarios are completely trust-worthy and I REALLY don't want to enter the same password I use for throw-away sites as the one I use to aid and abet ISIS durka durka muhamed jihad. I mean my porn. I mean my bad twilight fanfic. I mean my completely innocuous twilight-ISIS crossover fanfic with pornographic tendencies.
Anyway, do you REALLY think that everyone is going to choose the high road like Lavabits? Even Lastpass's corporate overlord, Marvasol, is based in Virginia. And I've no doubt that they've received a visit and a gag order from a three letter agency.
How about the freedom to sue the police after being wrongfully arrested for filming police and win in the courts or have a settlement worth millions?
And dude, heroin is a terrible drug. One with sociological ramifications. We don't really want something like England's East India Company to have another war. It's not the individualist's paradise that you seem to think it is. It DOES matter what my neighbor does. But yeah, sure, we're learning that it's better not to criminalize some things.
Most of "the west", ie, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, etc. Remember that BEFORE democracy, their government were run by kings. The people were literally owned, and simply part of the land. Their options were limited to "till the fields or die". France had that big clusterfuck with all the heads rolling and the time of terrors afterwards, but eventually things were better for the masses because they had additional freedoms. This sentiment spread to the rest of Europe and was a defining force in the formation of the USA, who had a fantastic amount of freedom compared to their contemporaries at the time (which time? Most of them).
Despite the steps back (and the era of the robber barons), the USA still has a high degree of freedom for it's citizens. If you question that, I think you need to travel more. Like, say, to Hong Kong or China.
Every time someone rolls out this comment, I like to remind them of the context:
Interviewer: "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?"
He replied: "I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities."
You should take that as a not too subtle hint that "the government is spying on everything you do through Google. We have been compromised. You cannot trust us to keep you safe from the government".
But no, a rich man makes a statement leading up to his main message, and the media and populace takes it and runs with it. Even Glenn Greenwald pulled this shit in a TED talk. And I think we've hit that point to where it no longer matters what actually happened, as the meme has embedded itself into the social psyche.
Also, this is a pretty good reason why we really don't want the government to impose these sort of retention requirements. Because we can't trust the retainers to keep a secret.
a HIGH damage should they leak.
Are you sure about that?
I mean, other than the victims, who really cares all that much? Not to downplay the crime, they certainly have grounds for being pissed and these sort of wild accusations of sex crimes is understandable.
But what's the actual damage? Is she not going to get signed up for the next Hunger Games? That would be even more outrageous and would have half the country leaping down the producer's throats.
My portfolio started taking a beating when these democracy agitators started causing trouble in Hong Kong.
Ah, so this is an obvious troll. Or at least the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm pointing out some of the more nefarious mentality that's probably going on in the upper echelons of US business. It's getting hard these days to tell the difference, and idiots like DNS-BIND can't read sarcasm. Poe's law is in effect.
so as to avoid labor costs getting out of control.
Just so everyone else is aware, the Chinese workers have steadily been earning more for years, and as they get more powerful, they'll want more rights/control/political power. The higher salary comes first, then the living standards, and now voting. And everything is in tiny little steps. Which is probably for the best. Nobody in their right mind wants giant sweeping changes that disrupts everything.
Sometimes you have to invite the trolls to tea.
No, that's how discovery works. People are mucking about doing something and notice something else happening. "Hmm, that's interesting". The science part is often narrowing down a) What's happening, b) what's causing it, c) how to get it to happen by itself.
A lot of people seem to think that there's a science shovel, and if you pay a scientist enough money to dig long enough, that eventually they'll hit pay dirt and have a geyser of science flowing out. (That's why they wear labcoats and goggles, obviously)
And honestly, who cares what lead to it's discovery?
. . . It's a trailer. The rest of the time you unhitch it and leave it somewhere. That's kind of the point.
HA! not falling for that again.
Please, could you spell out who/what
1) "The very group"
2) "he"
3) "this excuse"
refer to? Because at this stage I'm quite lost as to just what the fuck you're talking about.
Terrorists actually tried this in 1984 with salmonella.
What essentially consisted of a cult moved to this rural town in Oregon and tried to get the cult leader voted in. The math didn't pan out, so they tried to give the voters food poisoning right before the election.
1) Casual contact doesn't work. They did the whole thing with doorknobs and toilets. Didn't work. Your skin in a fantastic shield against this stuff and it dies before infecting you. Or you simply wash your hands.
2) Infecting the food does work. Putting infected liquid in the salad bar caused 751 to become infected. 45 needed hospital treatment. None died.
Also, the event caused the people to come out in droves to vote against the cult who lost by a landslide.
The cult leader ousted the perpetrators in the end for committing the heinous crimes. And who the hell knows if he was ever in on it.
I feel the need to ease your fears. Relax. Even in the worst-case scenario, where some evil mastermind gets a group of people to get get themselves infected, and then proceeds to get them to the USA, and then they try to spred it about as best they can, even in this scenario there would only be a few thousand deaths. Society would shit some bricks, survive, and move on. Hopefully better then when 3000 some people died in NY a decade ago.
And remember that the economic impact of people not going to a fast-food joint or a base-ball game is the general populace being healthier and having a little more money in their pocket. It does kinda suck for some people who play a game for a living.
But no, what I really want to say to you is that YES, offense is ludicrously easier than defense. And so we need to live in a society where people generally don't want to commit suicide just to spit in our eye. We can't afford to be the bad guys. We have to be the good guys because the alternative, in the long view, is our own destruction.
And we probably haven't yet felt the blowback of those hundreds of thousands of dead civilians in Iraq over the last decade. That's gonna be a bitch.