why do we assume machine AI will be highly rational? It is not like we could rengineer a more rational brain, if we don't really understand conciousnous our first attempts will produce a quirky but functional AI?
One violent person in a neighbourhood does not make the whole neighbourhood complicit merely because they have done nothing. It's rather difficult to tell the guy with a gun what to do when you have no real police or army to turn to.
Actually I don't really think the people of Iraq ever had much of a say in military budgets.
I would guess that the weapons of todays insurgents are financed from good-old mafia-style intimidation tactics and a peppering of out-of-country support. As such the majority of people just trying to get by have never had too much REAL choice.
I disagree with the mechanic analogy. GASP, the car anology may not be appropriate:)
Doctors have no parts listing; their tools are primitive compared to the object they care for; their procedual manual is rudementary as well as full of half-truths and false-hoods. Consequently they must constantly be on the lookout incase what they are doing is wrong.
From a medical point of view many paitents really are unique. This is a big problem with modern medicine, we bin diseases by symptoms yet often treat them at a molecular level through drugs. In the future proper diagnosis needs to be improved, we will use personalised medicine that actually determines the molecular profile of a disease and whether a given drug is useful for a patient. Half the drugs we use now are wasted and in some fields, particularly cancer therapy, probably cause more harm than good on many patients.
I doubt that many doctors want to kill their patients, although as Harold Shipman demonstrates a very small minority occasionally will. The really scary thing about Dr. Shipman was the sheer number of patients he deliberately killed without anyone noticing. This is akin to the Madoff scandle in that it highlighted just how aware the "experts" really are. If an average doctor kills one patient every ten years through bad practice can we really be sure the system would pick this up and modify behaviors accordingly?
So the real questions are: how many doctors are too busy or overworked to be competent?; and how many doctors are insufficiently self-critical to actually notice when they are harming or killing people?
That doctors are overworked is largely a self-imposed problem. If overworked doctors clocked half the time for half the money their customers would probably be better off. To compensate med-school intakes can easily be increased.
Secondly, if we have learned anything from the history of medicine its that our theoretically-correct "best practice" can in actuallity be faulty and lead to peoples death. The historical behavior of the medical community towards puerperal fever is a good example of this - during the 19th century in certain hospitals it was simply safer to give birth without a doctor. In such aberrant cases parts of the medical profession may be twisted purely into money making enterprises. Given the gains in quality-of-life scientific-medicine has given us such scenarios must always be searched for, incomplete knowledge, difficult statistical analyses, human greed and beaurocratic opacity almost gurantee they will constantly arise.
Depending on the "health-problams" of person A, real benefits can certainly flow through to person C.
Low incidences of transmissable disease in individuals is a boon to the whole of society. It leads to lower crime, higher property prices and reduces the chance that you will be infected by disease yourself. In this sense certain health costs really are beneficial to all of us.
Other health costs are of course more individual - heart disease and cancer perhaps? I disagree that society should leave such diseases untreated in those who cannot afford it.
When I go out or on holidays I take cardboard cutouts of people or backdrops with me. It's to ensure that facebook's algorithms are confused by as many fake people, places, activities and false social connections I can get into their datastream.
At first I just did it out of spite to add noise to the advertising signal. But then it got out of hand when I grew attached to Martha, sure she's two dimensional and all but that smile...
Imperial Japan killed a LOT of people in their invasion of Manchuria and were not even remotely nice about it. Far more civilians died in Asia than in the European half of the war.
The invasion was forced to end externally by Russia and the US. As a consequence many countries aren't really convinced Japan as a country ever really showed proper remorse, hence the anger. Contrast Japan's behavior as a socitey with the clear remorse Germany has shown over the last 60 years. In terms of not dealing with the nastier parts of their history they are far closer to the Austrian/Italian WWII response or the response of Britian/France/Belgium/Germany/Holland to their African colonial histories.
We are born into the same world it just looks different to each of us. If you were born in an igloo in the middle of Siberia how likely is it you would be here right now on/.
I'm not talking about genes, just the social situations we find ourselves in the US. If your white access to education and job oppourtunities is a little easier (it used to be MUCH easier). Historically more white families have accumulated wealth; these are the families from which the people who innovate often, but by no means always, arise. How many of the big political families are generational (Bush's, Clinton's, Kennedy's etc.)?
Even 50 years ago just being white gave you far more privilage than today - better access to law and order, assumed correctness in contract disuptes, easier credit. Most of that has been levelled to some extent today which is why Obama is now president - in the long run though he is just a man like any other.
If you were forced to move right now into a town in the middle of rural China how long before your decendents would have: overcome racism; developed language-skills; obtained country-specific education; the political connections and the oppourtunity to run for major?
You see no social equality because people of eropean-decendent have done a mediocre job of trying to bring it about. While on the other side of the equation people of African decent are trying to jump up 1000-years of technological development with all the historical power-imbalences that entails.
Think about how HUGE social differences were - 200 years ago every black man in America was a slave, think on the sheer brutality that implies. In the 1960's (within living memory) seggregation was an established part of much of American society. When slavery was abolished it's not like education or skilled-jobs suddenly jumped into black communities, these things take generations to nuture from parent to child.
Any "physical differences" between races are at most 3rd or 4th order effects. My guess is it wil take a 100 years or more before social equality has advanced to the point where being black and in power in AMERICA is not noteworthy let alone the rest of the world. You've just elected your first black president - celebrate man this is how progress is made, and how we make up for the misdeeds and ill-gotten gains of pyshcopathic forefathers (on every side).
Agree witht the above, toll roads should solely be "additional but avoidable throughfares", that is a free but longer alternative needs to exist.
If a company wants to pay to build a shorter route this is okay, if people can afford the toll they spend money and save time, but if not they take the longer route and pay with their time. It can never be the only-connection and all toll-roads should revert to free-roads in 10-20yrs time.
"But in the meantime, they'll continue to increase our reliance on them "
Ummm, don't you think that perhaps you have a bit of a say in this part? Your the bigger country here fella's. Maybe, just maybe, China is offering a service that you are buying. No gun at your head or anything, this is free-trade capatalism pure and simple. If it is not really in US long-term interest is a second point we could debate, but even if this trade is detrimental to the US why is that China's problem to worry about and not yours?
I think what concerns me is the inability to deal with uncertainty. As you say the scientific-percentages are normally forced into not-proven/proven in criminal proceedings or balance of evidence in civil proceedings.
Science by contrast normally comes with error bars but court judgments not so much. Not sure how you give out a sentence of guilty +/- 30% so perhaps there is no better system. Maybe the law is fine we just need to focus on better diagnostics in the science area.
Thimerosal does not need to be in modern vaccines - single dose sterile packaging SHOULD be able to render it unnecessary. This is a good thing, while injecting trace amounts may not be statistically linkable to autism if you can avoid any unnecessary heavy metal exposure then you should. Same with radiation, X-rays or pesticides, each will eat away at your ability to live to 90.
We currently have the technology and economics to avoid thimerosals use, perhaps some poorer countries do not. In the West problems only arise when health staff get sloppy and reuse packs or are unable to notice a seal broken during shipment. Blaming such incidents on the FDA not allowing mercury use is incorrect - its plane old management failure, its harder to fix and most of know it too well.
They've always made decisions but courts sometimes crave a level of certainty that science isn't always able to provide and that is where mistakes can be made IMHO. Not that I think this is the case with the MMR vaccine, this issiue IS actually black-and-white. Others are not.
I think problems can arise when the science is new - e.g. shaken baby syndrome. Forensics thought they could tell when babies where being deliberately shaken to death. Unfourtunately they hadn't calibrated their forensic screens against a large enough sample of accidental trauma injuries to be able to distinguish the two - several innocent parents went to jail as a result.
Much research has been done by HEREOC (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission) into writing one for Australia. Not sure where it has led or if Rudd wants to introduce it.
Not that the research I saw had provisions for unfiltered interent access - maybe it would be interesting to have a "bill-of-rights" written in the modern age. Can't help thinking in this day of spin that it would largely be a fluff-document.
Although I suppose even after the American bill of rights was written the abolition of slavery remained a century away and the clearances of the Indians wouldn't stop for 200 years. Perhaps all such works start off as shallow and only become meaningful as they are proven useful with time.
Kennedy went through with the bay of pigs invasion but he didn't really orchestrate it did he? It had been planned for some time before he took office.
The fact it wasn't his idea or something he really agreed with was probably a major reason for its failure. If Eisenhower had the time to implement it agressively perhaps it would have worked, or if Kennedy had the guts to back out maybe the missile crisis could have been prevented by other means. Instead...
Surely this will depend on how the future economics will look, if all the worlds wealth stays in the US and Europe then perhaps your point is valid.
But, if some of the poorer parts of the world start getting richer (china, russia, brazil and india) perhaps the hub-model will be valid again, serving to provide the flow of people a multi-polar world power structure will require. I.e. maybe we will need both the A380 and the dreamliner.
Slashdot Mirror
why do we assume machine AI will be highly rational? It is not like we could rengineer a more rational brain, if we don't really understand conciousnous our first attempts will produce a quirky but functional AI?
You wouldn't but I would, then I'd lick the casing. My dog might even widdle on the side of the probe or hump one of its legs.
I'm pretty sure one constant throughout the universe will be that life invariably leads to unbelievable stupidity.
And what were they taught about the disappearances of the American Indians?
One violent person in a neighbourhood does not make the whole neighbourhood complicit merely because they have done nothing. It's rather difficult to tell the guy with a gun what to do when you have no real police or army to turn to.
Actually I don't really think the people of Iraq ever had much of a say in military budgets.
I would guess that the weapons of todays insurgents are financed from good-old mafia-style intimidation tactics and a peppering of out-of-country support. As such the majority of people just trying to get by have never had too much REAL choice.
Half of spain and latin america, and look what wonders that does for their economies!
I disagree with the mechanic analogy. GASP, the car anology may not be appropriate :)
Doctors have no parts listing; their tools are primitive compared to the object they care for; their procedual manual is rudementary as well as full of half-truths and false-hoods. Consequently they must constantly be on the lookout incase what they are doing is wrong.
From a medical point of view many paitents really are unique. This is a big problem with modern medicine, we bin diseases by symptoms yet often treat them at a molecular level through drugs. In the future proper diagnosis needs to be improved, we will use personalised medicine that actually determines the molecular profile of a disease and whether a given drug is useful for a patient. Half the drugs we use now are wasted and in some fields, particularly cancer therapy, probably cause more harm than good on many patients.
I doubt that many doctors want to kill their patients, although as Harold Shipman demonstrates a very small minority occasionally will. The really scary thing about Dr. Shipman was the sheer number of patients he deliberately killed without anyone noticing. This is akin to the Madoff scandle in that it highlighted just how aware the "experts" really are. If an average doctor kills one patient every ten years through bad practice can we really be sure the system would pick this up and modify behaviors accordingly?
So the real questions are: how many doctors are too busy or overworked to be competent?; and how many doctors are insufficiently self-critical to actually notice when they are harming or killing people?
That doctors are overworked is largely a self-imposed problem. If overworked doctors clocked half the time for half the money their customers would probably be better off. To compensate med-school intakes can easily be increased.
Secondly, if we have learned anything from the history of medicine its that our theoretically-correct "best practice" can in actuallity be faulty and lead to peoples death. The historical behavior of the medical community towards puerperal fever is a good example of this - during the 19th century in certain hospitals it was simply safer to give birth without a doctor. In such aberrant cases parts of the medical profession may be twisted purely into money making enterprises. Given the gains in quality-of-life scientific-medicine has given us such scenarios must always be searched for, incomplete knowledge, difficult statistical analyses, human greed and beaurocratic opacity almost gurantee they will constantly arise.
Depending on the "health-problams" of person A, real benefits can certainly flow through to person C.
Low incidences of transmissable disease in individuals is a boon to the whole of society. It leads to lower crime, higher property prices and reduces the chance that you will be infected by disease yourself. In this sense certain health costs really are beneficial to all of us.
Other health costs are of course more individual - heart disease and cancer perhaps? I disagree that society should leave such diseases untreated in those who cannot afford it.
When I go out or on holidays I take cardboard cutouts of people or backdrops with me. It's to ensure that facebook's algorithms are confused by as many fake people, places, activities and false social connections I can get into their datastream.
At first I just did it out of spite to add noise to the advertising signal. But then it got out of hand when I grew attached to Martha, sure she's two dimensional and all but that smile...
rag head? Have you read Revelations - modern technology allows us to make that a reality!
I've been telling the guys in the subs to blow thing up for like ages. Seems its all about who you know though, typical.
Sarkozy is currently thinking of rejoing NATO no?
Imperial Japan killed a LOT of people in their invasion of Manchuria and were not even remotely nice about it. Far more civilians died in Asia than in the European half of the war.
The invasion was forced to end externally by Russia and the US. As a consequence many countries aren't really convinced Japan as a country ever really showed proper remorse, hence the anger. Contrast Japan's behavior as a socitey with the clear remorse Germany has shown over the last 60 years. In terms of not dealing with the nastier parts of their history they are far closer to the Austrian/Italian WWII response or the response of Britian/France/Belgium/Germany/Holland to their African colonial histories.
We are born into the same world it just looks different to each of us. If you were born in an igloo in the middle of Siberia how likely is it you would be here right now on /.
I'm not talking about genes, just the social situations we find ourselves in the US. If your white access to education and job oppourtunities is a little easier (it used to be MUCH easier). Historically more white families have accumulated wealth; these are the families from which the people who innovate often, but by no means always, arise. How many of the big political families are generational (Bush's, Clinton's, Kennedy's etc.)?
Even 50 years ago just being white gave you far more privilage than today - better access to law and order, assumed correctness in contract disuptes, easier credit. Most of that has been levelled to some extent today which is why Obama is now president - in the long run though he is just a man like any other.
If you were forced to move right now into a town in the middle of rural China how long before your decendents would have: overcome racism; developed language-skills; obtained country-specific education; the political connections and the oppourtunity to run for major?
You see no social equality because people of eropean-decendent have done a mediocre job of trying to bring it about. While on the other side of the equation people of African decent are trying to jump up 1000-years of technological development with all the historical power-imbalences that entails.
Think about how HUGE social differences were - 200 years ago every black man in America was a slave, think on the sheer brutality that implies. In the 1960's (within living memory) seggregation was an established part of much of American society. When slavery was abolished it's not like education or skilled-jobs suddenly jumped into black communities, these things take generations to nuture from parent to child.
Any "physical differences" between races are at most 3rd or 4th order effects. My guess is it wil take a 100 years or more before social equality has advanced to the point where being black and in power in AMERICA is not noteworthy let alone the rest of the world. You've just elected your first black president - celebrate man this is how progress is made, and how we make up for the misdeeds and ill-gotten gains of pyshcopathic forefathers (on every side).
Agree witht the above, toll roads should solely be "additional but avoidable throughfares", that is a free but longer alternative needs to exist.
If a company wants to pay to build a shorter route this is okay, if people can afford the toll they spend money and save time, but if not they take the longer route and pay with their time. It can never be the only-connection and all toll-roads should revert to free-roads in 10-20yrs time.
"But in the meantime, they'll continue to increase our reliance on them "
Ummm, don't you think that perhaps you have a bit of a say in this part? Your the bigger country here fella's. Maybe, just maybe, China is offering a service that you are buying. No gun at your head or anything, this is free-trade capatalism pure and simple. If it is not really in US long-term interest is a second point we could debate, but even if this trade is detrimental to the US why is that China's problem to worry about and not yours?
I think what concerns me is the inability to deal with uncertainty. As you say the scientific-percentages are normally forced into not-proven/proven in criminal proceedings or balance of evidence in civil proceedings.
Science by contrast normally comes with error bars but court judgments not so much. Not sure how you give out a sentence of guilty +/- 30% so perhaps there is no better system. Maybe the law is fine we just need to focus on better diagnostics in the science area.
Thimerosal does not need to be in modern vaccines - single dose sterile packaging SHOULD be able to render it unnecessary. This is a good thing, while injecting trace amounts may not be statistically linkable to autism if you can avoid any unnecessary heavy metal exposure then you should. Same with radiation, X-rays or pesticides, each will eat away at your ability to live to 90.
We currently have the technology and economics to avoid thimerosals use, perhaps some poorer countries do not. In the West problems only arise when health staff get sloppy and reuse packs or are unable to notice a seal broken during shipment. Blaming such incidents on the FDA not allowing mercury use is incorrect - its plane old management failure, its harder to fix and most of know it too well.
They've always made decisions but courts sometimes crave a level of certainty that science isn't always able to provide and that is where mistakes can be made IMHO. Not that I think this is the case with the MMR vaccine, this issiue IS actually black-and-white. Others are not.
I think problems can arise when the science is new - e.g. shaken baby syndrome. Forensics thought they could tell when babies where being deliberately shaken to death. Unfourtunately they hadn't calibrated their forensic screens against a large enough sample of accidental trauma injuries to be able to distinguish the two - several innocent parents went to jail as a result.
Your a doctor and THAT is your sig? Please tell me your not using slashdot to record experimental subject data.
So what your saying is Facebook should have a downgrade button so you can rank people.
Then come monday morning 190 of your "Friends" would get a little: -1 you've just lost a Friend message. That is so mean, what fun you could have...
Much research has been done by HEREOC (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission) into writing one for Australia. Not sure where it has led or if Rudd wants to introduce it.
Not that the research I saw had provisions for unfiltered interent access - maybe it would be interesting to have a "bill-of-rights" written in the modern age. Can't help thinking in this day of spin that it would largely be a fluff-document.
Although I suppose even after the American bill of rights was written the abolition of slavery remained a century away and the clearances of the Indians wouldn't stop for 200 years. Perhaps all such works start off as shallow and only become meaningful as they are proven useful with time.
Kennedy went through with the bay of pigs invasion but he didn't really orchestrate it did he? It had been planned for some time before he took office.
The fact it wasn't his idea or something he really agreed with was probably a major reason for its failure. If Eisenhower had the time to implement it agressively perhaps it would have worked, or if Kennedy had the guts to back out maybe the missile crisis could have been prevented by other means. Instead...
Surely this will depend on how the future economics will look, if all the worlds wealth stays in the US and Europe then perhaps your point is valid.
But, if some of the poorer parts of the world start getting richer (china, russia, brazil and india) perhaps the hub-model will be valid again, serving to provide the flow of people a multi-polar world power structure will require. I.e. maybe we will need both the A380 and the dreamliner.