No explicit claim that it breaks in known "laws" is given, but it *appears* to violate conservation of momentum. This makes one suspect that all is not what it appears. With that kind of apparent effect, I won't believe it until after it changes the orbit of a satellite. I may *hope* that it works as advertised, but I'm not going to *believe* it. Even then I may look for alternate mechanisms.
The only thing is, some medicines are falsely labeled homeopathic. I have no idea why, but I've a quite effective low carbohydrate cough syrup that's labeled homeopathic. I almost avoided buying it, but the clerk convinced me that it actually was real medicine that was just labeled homeopathic. (I think it works by being a thick orange+something flavored syrup. Don't know how they make the syrup, but it's not sugar based. It thins out the mucus quite well, however, and doesn't taste terrible. Whiskey works as well, but sometimes that's not appropriate.)
So not everything labeled homeopathic is placebo. Sometimes it's just marketer-speak for "buy this".
I think you misunderstand the "Linux Foundation". Judging from their past actions that's not a group that supports Linux as much as a group that supports businesses that are somehow involved with Linux. It's not exactly a false name, but it's certainly a misleading one...and probably on purpose.
Actually, you ARE talking about the Singularity. Your comment was about the increased rate of technological change happening faster than people could easily adapt to it, and that is the very essence of the Singularity at any particular point in time. (The other part is that if you look over a long period of time that rate is increasing.)
FWIW, I still guess that human level AI will be achieved around 2030. There was awhile when I was thinking I should push it back to 2035, and there are some indications that it will happen before 2030, but nothing convincing, and short term fluctuations are to be expected. N.B.: "human level AI" doesn't mean that it will equal humans in all areas. It should be expected to surpass humans in some areas, and to be inferior in others. I wouldn't care to predict in what areas it would be inferior, however.
I agree about the division between science and technology being hard to nail down, but Watt was a technologist, Franklin was mainly a scientist, etc. There is a wavery, jagged, border between the two, but except near that border they are quite distinct.
Sorry about the "Lord Kelvin" mistake. I know that kind of thing happens. But many of the early scientists were supported by rich and/or powerful patrons. Others substituted the church. Technologists could often be market successes, but scientists had no such option. If I go back before they merged at the edges scientists came from philosophers and technologists from artisans. And I don't think I'm getting this from mythologies, though Aristotle may have had some reason to believe that women had fewer teeth than men. (Small sample size is one possibility.)
It's also true that technologists do well with a different mental toolkit than do scientists...though again there's a lot of overlap, but the overlap doesn't deny the difference.
I understand that it is *supposed* to mean that. I'm not aware of any period in history when it actually did. And if the king is the one saying "I've got the weapons, so do what I say" then that is exactly the "rule of law". Or if it's the local baron, and the king doesn't object.
Yes. Those who fatuously praise the oncoming Singularity don't understand the process. It's so dangerous that I would be violently against it if I didn't have even less faith in people being able to survive human control of their governments. We've already been within 30 seconds of nuclear war, and hypersonic missiles are going to increase the instability.
Science has NEVER been a commercial success. It intrinsically cannot be. Technology can and has. And technology depends on science, so if you don't support science you don't get technology.
There are time lags in the system, however, and both negative and positive feedbacks with varying delays. Originally science was supported by wealthy elites. This caused lots of fraud and secrecy (just read the history of the alchemists), and culminated in people like Lord Kelvin. Later there was a transition to academics who experimented on their own time and taught classes to earn their bread. This was indirect support of the elites yielding things like Oxford. Eventually technologies started developing out of this science. (Well, this had been happening all along, though most early technologies had no, or no sensible, theoretical backing.)
The problem is there are some science projects that are too expensive for any wealthy benefactor to support. This doesn't inherently mean they won't lead to technologies that are tremendously useful, but it sure doesn't guarantee that they will. And there are time lags. Technology tends to pay for itself fairly quickly, and it's still true that the initial innovators often lose their shirts. Look at Xerox. Science is much worse. US prosperity was founded on science developed in Britain. Etc.
Science is vital to humanity, but often doesn't really reward the country/company/individual who funded it.
As for GMOs...that's basically technology rather than science, and my distrust of them is due to the testing process, and the perverse incentives it offers to not find any problems. Also to the tendency to promote monopoly control. AFAIKT there aren't any inherent problems with any GMO products available, and after any particular one has been on sale a few decades I'll probably trust it. I'd trust sooner if the testing process was less biased and a bit more careful.
The last Congress has removed any pretense of civility or good faith, so why should anyone give ANY politician, much less the most abusive in recent time, any respect? Particularly one who, if he carries his stated policies though, will be the most damaging to the country president in history. (But he's a known liar, contract breaker, etc. so he may not even be interesting in most of his promises.)
I believe some warehouses have been using self-driving trucks internally for years. Of course, that's a bit different from the roadable truck that's being worked on. I'd guess that one's two years away, but this is without looking at any data, and well out of my area of expertise. Still, I think I read about one that was allowed to drive on the autobahn, though I don't know what the conditions were. IIRC (uncertain) the maker was Mercedes/Benz.
Sorry, but those considerations were always true. The requirement for native-born was probably to avoid British agents being elected. It isn't that valuable, but it's a decent 1st screen. People who obsess over it are generally revealing that they are bigots who are ashamed of being bigots and are looking for some more acceptable reason to reject the candidate. You could use similar arguments to say the minimum age shouldn't be 35, but should instead be 50... or 25.
This was clearly stated as a rumor. You don't need to believe in its truth to believe that it's an actual rumor. And I find nothing suspicious about that being claimed to be a rumor.
It's true that an anonymous source isn't all that trustworthy, but neither is a rumor. And neither is questioning the truth of something because you don't know who is sharing it rather than because you don't have any evidence for it. (The word of an honest man is a kind of evidence, but I generally find other evidence preferable. The honest man can only tell you what he believes.)
When do you think rule of law was EVER practiced? The only times I can think of were the feudal period when the law was "I've got the weapons, so do what I say.". Even then you can find exceptions. If you couldn't there never would have been a Magna Carta.
It may not be startling, but it could be wrong. Whether it is depends on what the president does. This one has promised to scrap environmental controls. That could turn out to be more significant that anything else, as the models don't work well when the temperature goes outside the known range of variation. It *probably* won't turn the Earth into a second Venus, but we can't prove it. (Of course, the models aren't that good even in the tested areas, but they generally hit within known error bars. Outside those limits the error bars grow increasingly.) He could also start a major war, which could also be more significant than any likely technological change within the next 4 years. It might not kill off humanity, but it would likely kill off civilization. (Minor wars are NOT good models of major wars, considering the weapons now available.)
You are much more certain of that than I am. I don't expect that result, but it wouldn't surprise me. Trump is a proven liar who changes his story as convenient.
That said, I'm hoping he will be merely an isolationist-fascist (as in Mussolini, corporate-state). And he may not even really be racist. His recent statements are grounds for cautious optimist that this will be the result, but as he's a known liar I don't know that we can trust them. I am currently slightly less nervous than I was in the early days of Bush the first...though that's not saying much, and it's partially because I now have fewer years left to lose. I do expect him to carry through on his plans for trashing the environment, and think people with young grandchildren should start thinking about what happens when Antarctica melts, as it now appears to me that a 6 degree Centigrade warming by the end of the century is plausible.
I think you need to think a bit more clearly. You can't legally be impeached for crimes committed before being elected, but only for crimes in office. Of course, the House can legally impeach the President whenever they feel like it, and just list the "crimes before taking office" as additional considerations to he actually abused paper clips.
But do note that BOTH the House and the Senate are Republican controlled, and it requires super-majority votes to either impeach or convict. (I forget which need to be 2/3s votes, but it's easy to look up if you care to.) So he's not going to be impeached. Certainly not at first, and not for anything he's already admitted to or been charged with.
It is my hope that Trump will turn out to be a cross between an isolationist and a Mussolini-style fascist (i.e. "the corporate state"). This will be a disaster for the world, but people have lived through changes before. Don't invest in an land near sea level for your grand-children, though. It's possible he won't even be a racist, though that's a bit much to hope for.
You think much more favorably about Hillary than I do. I think Trump is worse, but that's hardly saying Hillary wouldn't be terrible. The only reliable good thing I can say about her is that she tends to sympathize with children. There are other probably good things that are probably true of her, but not that I can be certain of. And there are some rather negative things that I can also say are probably true. But I would rather have taken a chance on a person picked at random from the country than on any of the four major candidates.
Minor party candidates are always flakey, because who else would put out the kind of effort required to run a campaign that they are guaranteed to loose. This doesn't explain the major party candidates.
The last, possibly only, major US 3rd party was when T. Roosevelt ran the Bull Moose party. They lost, but it was a major party. I think that was the only election in US history with a major 3rd party, and it's because of the system design. Sometimes a party will get so weak that it switches from major to minor, and in that case the remaining major party splits in half. I think that happened when the Whigs died out.
It is a genuinely lousy system. The only electoral system worse is the single party system. IRV and Condorcet are good attempts at alternatives, but come with the negative of increased information load. But the results during my lifetime have been so poor that I actually support replacing it by a Selective Service style draft lottery. This would necessitate a decentralization of power, but that's needed anyway.
I don't think that would suffice. A system were the congressional representative got a vote share based on the number of people who are signed up with them might work. But only if people were allowed to instantly remove their support, and ideally transfer it to someone else. (But try keeping THAT from getting hacked.)
Yes, and of the four major candidates (i.e., the four available on my ballot) Trump was only the second worse, and Hillary was actually the least worst. The election was decided by people who didn't vote, and many of them didn't vote because they couldn't stomach ANY of the candidates. I'd been planning on voting Green despite the unworkable platform until that candidate came out with the incredible nonsense that we should vote for Trump. (Well, I *do* live in a very blue state, and knew that my vote didn't really matter. But even so after that I couldn't vote Green.)
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No explicit claim that it breaks in known "laws" is given, but it *appears* to violate conservation of momentum. This makes one suspect that all is not what it appears. With that kind of apparent effect, I won't believe it until after it changes the orbit of a satellite. I may *hope* that it works as advertised, but I'm not going to *believe* it. Even then I may look for alternate mechanisms.
The only thing is, some medicines are falsely labeled homeopathic. I have no idea why, but I've a quite effective low carbohydrate cough syrup that's labeled homeopathic. I almost avoided buying it, but the clerk convinced me that it actually was real medicine that was just labeled homeopathic. (I think it works by being a thick orange+something flavored syrup. Don't know how they make the syrup, but it's not sugar based. It thins out the mucus quite well, however, and doesn't taste terrible. Whiskey works as well, but sometimes that's not appropriate.)
So not everything labeled homeopathic is placebo. Sometimes it's just marketer-speak for "buy this".
Interesting timing, though.
I think you misunderstand the "Linux Foundation". Judging from their past actions that's not a group that supports Linux as much as a group that supports businesses that are somehow involved with Linux. It's not exactly a false name, but it's certainly a misleading one...and probably on purpose.
Sorry, but this really is a problem, if not a difficult one. Perhaps it should sound like an ice cream vendor?
More seriously, just amplifying the tire on the road noise should suffice. And you don't need many decibels.
Actually, you ARE talking about the Singularity. Your comment was about the increased rate of technological change happening faster than people could easily adapt to it, and that is the very essence of the Singularity at any particular point in time. (The other part is that if you look over a long period of time that rate is increasing.)
FWIW, I still guess that human level AI will be achieved around 2030. There was awhile when I was thinking I should push it back to 2035, and there are some indications that it will happen before 2030, but nothing convincing, and short term fluctuations are to be expected.
N.B.: "human level AI" doesn't mean that it will equal humans in all areas. It should be expected to surpass humans in some areas, and to be inferior in others. I wouldn't care to predict in what areas it would be inferior, however.
I agree about the division between science and technology being hard to nail down, but Watt was a technologist, Franklin was mainly a scientist, etc. There is a wavery, jagged, border between the two, but except near that border they are quite distinct.
Sorry about the "Lord Kelvin" mistake. I know that kind of thing happens. But many of the early scientists were supported by rich and/or powerful patrons. Others substituted the church. Technologists could often be market successes, but scientists had no such option. If I go back before they merged at the edges scientists came from philosophers and technologists from artisans. And I don't think I'm getting this from mythologies, though Aristotle may have had some reason to believe that women had fewer teeth than men. (Small sample size is one possibility.)
It's also true that technologists do well with a different mental toolkit than do scientists...though again there's a lot of overlap, but the overlap doesn't deny the difference.
I understand that it is *supposed* to mean that. I'm not aware of any period in history when it actually did. And if the king is the one saying "I've got the weapons, so do what I say" then that is exactly the "rule of law". Or if it's the local baron, and the king doesn't object.
Yes. Those who fatuously praise the oncoming Singularity don't understand the process. It's so dangerous that I would be violently against it if I didn't have even less faith in people being able to survive human control of their governments. We've already been within 30 seconds of nuclear war, and hypersonic missiles are going to increase the instability.
Science has NEVER been a commercial success. It intrinsically cannot be. Technology can and has. And technology depends on science, so if you don't support science you don't get technology.
There are time lags in the system, however, and both negative and positive feedbacks with varying delays. Originally science was supported by wealthy elites. This caused lots of fraud and secrecy (just read the history of the alchemists), and culminated in people like Lord Kelvin. Later there was a transition to academics who experimented on their own time and taught classes to earn their bread. This was indirect support of the elites yielding things like Oxford. Eventually technologies started developing out of this science. (Well, this had been happening all along, though most early technologies had no, or no sensible, theoretical backing.)
The problem is there are some science projects that are too expensive for any wealthy benefactor to support. This doesn't inherently mean they won't lead to technologies that are tremendously useful, but it sure doesn't guarantee that they will. And there are time lags. Technology tends to pay for itself fairly quickly, and it's still true that the initial innovators often lose their shirts. Look at Xerox. Science is much worse. US prosperity was founded on science developed in Britain. Etc.
Science is vital to humanity, but often doesn't really reward the country/company/individual who funded it.
As for GMOs...that's basically technology rather than science, and my distrust of them is due to the testing process, and the perverse incentives it offers to not find any problems. Also to the tendency to promote monopoly control. AFAIKT there aren't any inherent problems with any GMO products available, and after any particular one has been on sale a few decades I'll probably trust it. I'd trust sooner if the testing process was less biased and a bit more careful.
Why?
The last Congress has removed any pretense of civility or good faith, so why should anyone give ANY politician, much less the most abusive in recent time, any respect? Particularly one who, if he carries his stated policies though, will be the most damaging to the country president in history. (But he's a known liar, contract breaker, etc. so he may not even be interesting in most of his promises.)
I believe some warehouses have been using self-driving trucks internally for years. Of course, that's a bit different from the roadable truck that's being worked on. I'd guess that one's two years away, but this is without looking at any data, and well out of my area of expertise. Still, I think I read about one that was allowed to drive on the autobahn, though I don't know what the conditions were. IIRC (uncertain) the maker was Mercedes/Benz.
Tell that to the Romans.
Sorry, but those considerations were always true. The requirement for native-born was probably to avoid British agents being elected. It isn't that valuable, but it's a decent 1st screen. People who obsess over it are generally revealing that they are bigots who are ashamed of being bigots and are looking for some more acceptable reason to reject the candidate. You could use similar arguments to say the minimum age shouldn't be 35, but should instead be 50 ... or 25.
This was clearly stated as a rumor. You don't need to believe in its truth to believe that it's an actual rumor. And I find nothing suspicious about that being claimed to be a rumor.
It's true that an anonymous source isn't all that trustworthy, but neither is a rumor. And neither is questioning the truth of something because you don't know who is sharing it rather than because you don't have any evidence for it. (The word of an honest man is a kind of evidence, but I generally find other evidence preferable. The honest man can only tell you what he believes.)
When do you think rule of law was EVER practiced? The only times I can think of were the feudal period when the law was "I've got the weapons, so do what I say.". Even then you can find exceptions. If you couldn't there never would have been a Magna Carta.
It may not be startling, but it could be wrong. Whether it is depends on what the president does. This one has promised to scrap environmental controls. That could turn out to be more significant that anything else, as the models don't work well when the temperature goes outside the known range of variation. It *probably* won't turn the Earth into a second Venus, but we can't prove it. (Of course, the models aren't that good even in the tested areas, but they generally hit within known error bars. Outside those limits the error bars grow increasingly.) He could also start a major war, which could also be more significant than any likely technological change within the next 4 years. It might not kill off humanity, but it would likely kill off civilization. (Minor wars are NOT good models of major wars, considering the weapons now available.)
You are much more certain of that than I am. I don't expect that result, but it wouldn't surprise me. Trump is a proven liar who changes his story as convenient.
That said, I'm hoping he will be merely an isolationist-fascist (as in Mussolini, corporate-state). And he may not even really be racist. His recent statements are grounds for cautious optimist that this will be the result, but as he's a known liar I don't know that we can trust them. I am currently slightly less nervous than I was in the early days of Bush the first...though that's not saying much, and it's partially because I now have fewer years left to lose. I do expect him to carry through on his plans for trashing the environment, and think people with young grandchildren should start thinking about what happens when Antarctica melts, as it now appears to me that a 6 degree Centigrade warming by the end of the century is plausible.
I think you need to think a bit more clearly. You can't legally be impeached for crimes committed before being elected, but only for crimes in office. Of course, the House can legally impeach the President whenever they feel like it, and just list the "crimes before taking office" as additional considerations to he actually abused paper clips.
But do note that BOTH the House and the Senate are Republican controlled, and it requires super-majority votes to either impeach or convict. (I forget which need to be 2/3s votes, but it's easy to look up if you care to.) So he's not going to be impeached. Certainly not at first, and not for anything he's already admitted to or been charged with.
It is my hope that Trump will turn out to be a cross between an isolationist and a Mussolini-style fascist (i.e. "the corporate state"). This will be a disaster for the world, but people have lived through changes before. Don't invest in an land near sea level for your grand-children, though. It's possible he won't even be a racist, though that's a bit much to hope for.
It's nice to see that there is one good thing to come out of this last election. And I guess I'd better cherish it, because there aren't many.
You think much more favorably about Hillary than I do. I think Trump is worse, but that's hardly saying Hillary wouldn't be terrible. The only reliable good thing I can say about her is that she tends to sympathize with children. There are other probably good things that are probably true of her, but not that I can be certain of. And there are some rather negative things that I can also say are probably true. But I would rather have taken a chance on a person picked at random from the country than on any of the four major candidates.
Minor party candidates are always flakey, because who else would put out the kind of effort required to run a campaign that they are guaranteed to loose. This doesn't explain the major party candidates.
The last, possibly only, major US 3rd party was when T. Roosevelt ran the Bull Moose party. They lost, but it was a major party. I think that was the only election in US history with a major 3rd party, and it's because of the system design. Sometimes a party will get so weak that it switches from major to minor, and in that case the remaining major party splits in half. I think that happened when the Whigs died out.
It is a genuinely lousy system. The only electoral system worse is the single party system. IRV and Condorcet are good attempts at alternatives, but come with the negative of increased information load. But the results during my lifetime have been so poor that I actually support replacing it by a Selective Service style draft lottery. This would necessitate a decentralization of power, but that's needed anyway.
I don't think that would suffice. A system were the congressional representative got a vote share based on the number of people who are signed up with them might work. But only if people were allowed to instantly remove their support, and ideally transfer it to someone else. (But try keeping THAT from getting hacked.)
I think you failed your systems analysis course.
Yes, and of the four major candidates (i.e., the four available on my ballot) Trump was only the second worse, and Hillary was actually the least worst. The election was decided by people who didn't vote, and many of them didn't vote because they couldn't stomach ANY of the candidates. I'd been planning on voting Green despite the unworkable platform until that candidate came out with the incredible nonsense that we should vote for Trump. (Well, I *do* live in a very blue state, and knew that my vote didn't really matter. But even so after that I couldn't vote Green.)