For example, my Prius averages me about 60 mpg over the last 45,000 miles. The curb weight is 3,042 lbs., or 1.521 tons, so it averages 39.45 ton miles per gallon. A Chevy Suburban, for example, averages 5.61 ton miles per gallon. Weight for weight, a Prius is 7 times more efficient than a Suburban.
Yes, I'm sure it is...
How many Prius would you need to carry 7 people, plus 7 suitcases of stuff, plus tow an 8,000 lb trailer?
I own a Yukon XL, which is the GMC version of the Suburban. I have 3 kids and often have 1 or 2 more kids with me, with my wife, that is 7 people. We also have plenty of room in the back behind all those people for stuff, and we can tow a camper behind that as well.
We took a vacation last year, loaded up the truck for a road trip, it was comfortable and everyone had their stuff and room. We're doing it again this summer.
I can't do that, even with a pair of little Prius cars.
The Prius has its place, it is a fine commuter car for people who just drive to work every day. But it is no replacement for a Suburban.
Even a minivan isn't because if you stick 7 people in a Honda Odyssey, you don't really have room for their stuff, the cargo space in the back is too small. It also doesn't tow that much, you can't safely or legally tow a 4 ton trailer behind one.
Most people don't need a Suburban, they aren't for everyone, but don't go trying to take mine away when I use it just because YOU don't need one.
That was my whole point. We can't agree on a logical definition of morality. Thus, it is really hard to design an AI that everybody would agree is moral.
Perhaps, but I think we could get close for 90% of the world's population.
"Thall shall not kill" is a pretty common one.
"Thall shall not steal" is another, and so on.
Most humans seem to agree on the basics, "be nice to people, don't take things that aren't yours, help your fellow humans when you can, etc.
Both situations present quandaries, actually. Is it ethical to allow a person to cause permanent harm to themselves voluntarily if it will achieve a greater good? If so, is there a limit to this?
You either believe in free will or you don't.
Is it ethical to prevent someone from causing harm to themselves for any reason? Do people have the right to kill themselves if they want to? Do we have the right to tell them "no, sorry, you have to live because we say so"?
This is why, if I were President, I'd pardon every non-violent drug offender in the county. If someone wants to sit at home, hurting no one, smoking pot or doing cocaine, I don't consider that my business. Where I draw the line is when they want to hurt other people.
How about when it is involuntary? If I can save 1000 people by killing one person, is that ethical, even if they explicitly tell me they do not wish to take part? You could actually make an argument for either position. You'll find many people who would agree with either position.
No, it is not ethical...
It might be logical, but it would be evil and morally wrong.
Yes, I'm well aware that you can find people who would take either position, there are plenty of people in this world with no moral compass, this isn't news.
Let me put this another way... I have three kids... if one of them had a disease that was going to kill them in a month, but you came to me and said, "if we kill this other person's kid, we can save yours, is that ok?, I would say "no, it isn't, that is wrong".
I would not be ok with the killing of your kid to save mine, that would be morally wrong. I would cherish the time I had left with my child and would take joy from the fact that the other child would live on. My child does not have more "right" to life than any other.
As I said elsewhere, I have no doubt that you can give an answer to these questions. The problem is that you can't get everybody else to give the same answer to these questions. That creates a dilemma for anybody creating an AI where moral behavior is desirable. Even with a defined moral code it would be difficult to implement, and the fact that we can't even agree on a defined moral code makes it all the more difficult.
All fair points... the movie "I, Robot" is a good example of how easily this can go off the rails. It isn't the first or only example, but it is one that is accessible to the average person.
The computer saved Will Smith's character because he had a "better chance to live", but a human would have saved the little girl (or tried) because that is the "right thing to do".
How do you get a computer to understand why trying to save the girl is more important than the man, even if his odds of survival are higher? How do you get a computer to understand why a dozen men will charge into a burning building to save one person, when they might die as a result?
We are not machines, it would be sad if we lost the humanity that makes us special.
And that would be the reason I said "some" Nazi activities and not "all" Nazi activities. I certainly find them abhorent, but if you take a strictly utilitarian view then things like involuntary experimentation on people could be justified.
Sure, but using some utilitarian models for morality some Nazi activities actually come out fine (well, their implementations were poor, but you can justify some things that most of us would consider horrific).
There is no moral justification for throwing babies alive into fires.
Ok, stupid extreme example: The Borg show up and say that if we don't throw 1,000 babies alive into fires, they will blow up Earth. Sure, maybe we'd do it, but that doesn't make it right or moral.
Sometimes people will take an immoral stance for the "good of the many".
Suppose human experimentation were reasonably likely to yield a medical advance? Would it be ethical? If you treated 1000 people like lab rats (vivsections and all), and it helped advance medicine to the benefit of millions of others, would that be wrong?
Do those humans get a say in it? Depending on the situation, you might get people to volunteer. The problem is when you do it against their will.
There are some valid questions regarding our vaccine policy and it's impacts on health, which you can't find because shills on both side drown out any discussion.
The same problem exists with gun control, abortion, and a hundred other subjects...
Too often, the extreme sides prevent any rational conversation from happening.
Is it ok to torture somebody if you could be certain it would save lives (setting aside the effectiveness of torture, assuming it is effective, is it moral)? If we can't answer questions like these objectively, how are you going to get an AI to be "beneficial?"
Is it moral? No.
That doesn't address the issue of "should you do it?"
Using the example: "Would you kill one innocent 10 year old girl if it saved 100 random stranger's lives?"
Does your answer change if you know the girl? If it is your daughter? If it is 100 million random strangers rather than just 100?
I would argue that killing the girl is always immoral, but I would understand why some people would do it.
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Humans are able to do some really, really crappy things. Read up on the murder of babies by the Nazis in the concentration camps, it is evil. (the Nazis don't have the exclusive rights to that brand of evil, go back to the Romans, they did plenty of it)
Actually it's not as insane as you might think. There's always a bunch of free-to-play games on Steam, along with games that go free temporarily over a weekend/week/etc. Bottom line, you CAN game on Steam without paying a penny. Plus I don't know if this would count towards your $5 requirement or not, but you can be gifted games from friends. That's how I started on Steam myself, when a friend had bought the X series as a bundle for a couple bucks and gifted it to me.
Sure, I understand that... but my point is... how many of those F2P players or gifted players are actually using the Steam community features before they buy a single game on Steam?
I would say some people may get annoyed due to following limitations: >Submit content on the Steam Workshop >Post in an item's Steam Workshop Discussions Retail games dont give you full account, so if you buy some steam only game with a mod community (eg Civilization 5) you potentially lose quite a bit
That is possible, but how many people are actually active in the Steam community who have never spent $5 on Steam?
Is there someone, somewhere in the world that is like that? Probably. Many people? Probably not.
It is what is called an edge case, and a business can't account for all of them. They are trying to get rid of the bot spammers and this is one way to do it.
I don't think this would apply. dead guy before capture. private family journals belonging to an estate "crime does not pay royalty's" did not come into effect I think until the late 50's.
It wouldn't matter when they came into effect, it wouldn't matter if it happened yesterday.
A law that says "you can't make money from this" doesn't mean "anyone can copy your stuff for free".
Really. You're comparing a protest against a monarchy that was suppressing free speech (among many other very bad things), to a guy who decided to fly a dodgy piece of dangerous equipment with high speed rotors past crowds of tourists in order to register his complaint that we have a constitutional guarantee of free speech?
If that is how you describe the aircraft he was flying, then you have no idea what you're talking about and you should really shut up before you embarrass yourself.
The autogyro is one of the safest aircraft that exists, unlike a helicopter that only *CAN* autorotate (often like a brick), the autogyro is *ALWAYS* autorotating and lands that way without power every single time.
It is not a "dodgy piece of dangerous equipment", it is actually very safe.
I don't know about a sniper, but he was in a no-fly zone. Don't they scramble jets when someone enters a no-fly zone? Especially near the Capitol. I assume they do, but I don't really know.
Yes, usually...
In this case, he wasn't on RADAR and the Secret Service knew he was coming. He was known to them and he had made prior contact to let them know of his publicity stunt.
What about an auto-gyro with 30 lbs or so of C4? Do you still want the "human at the controls"? You don't know what the intentions are, you just know it's very illegal to be there yet there he is.
This man was known to the Secret Service, they even interviewed him a year or so before this, on a tip that he would do JUST THIS.
In addition, he called the Secret Service an hour before he got there to let them know he was coming and why. The press also called them because he was in contact with the press to let them know this was a publicity stunt.
Why aren't the 99% of 'statistical former farmers' starving today? It would have been terrible to setup a government program to support them all.
Many of them are... despite how much food we produce, hunger is a real problem in America...
Of the adults in this country, about 2/3 of them are working. Of those 2/3, how many have a decent paying job?
That number keeps shrinking... I don't have any easy answers, but I can see the problem...
A simple example is Apple, they plan to bring some manufacturing back to the US from China, but they'll do it in a robot factory. In China, iPads and iPhones are hand built by human labor because it is so cheap, in the US, this is too expensive so they'll use robots.
What will the 800,000 or so people in China do who currently build iDevices if Apple moves all production back using robots?
Lowering the American corporate rate to 20% would not solve anything when Ireland has a 12.5% corporate rate.
Maybe... at some point the difference becomes small enough that it isn't worth messing with.
At 35%, there are no hoops too big to be jumped through, at 20%? Maybe there are...
Apple has over $50 billion in cash overseas that it can't bring into the US to invest here because of this. The question becomes, how low does the rate have to get before they change their minds and decide to bring it back?
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To put this another way, we live in a global marketplace, we now have to compete with other nations, including on tax rates and services.
You might do that. Because you have to be criminally incompetent if you can't get hired in the Bay Area now. You can make high five to six figures merely by being mediocre.
High five figures in the bay area might as well be min wage, that doesn't pay for anything there.
Translation: We want to hire coders but do not offer benefits that are as good as the competition. We need to import foreign workers who will work for less $$$!!! It's not our fault that employees can't afford a mortgage with our current benefits package -- that's just the cost of living in the area!
I suspect you're correct.
If the pay doesn't allow for a nice 4 bedroom house in a nice neighborhood with good schools and 2 nice cars, plus enough room for 10% retirement savings, then it isn't paying enough.
Because there ARE jobs elsewhere in the county in this business that DO pay enough for that.
And I suppose it depends on if you count FICA taxes or not. Since those go to three specific programs, I personally don't count them (SS is your own savings, Medicare is your health care, and unemployment is for you if you need it), but you might choose to do so.
The top 1% pays on average 19% of their income in taxes and pays 37% of all federal income taxes.
Interestingly enough, it is the top 10-25% who pays the lowest percentage of taxes, 11%, followed by the bottom 50%, at 12% of their income. But that 12% pays only 2% of the federal taxes.
So the bottom 50% of the entire working population is paying only 2%. Frankly, they should shut up about taxes, they have only one way to go for them, which is up. But the bottom 50% tends to be uneducated, ignorant about such things, and low information voters who listen to soundbites.
If asking those people to pay taxes would endanger their standing, then it would probably be cheaper for them to not be taxed. We can't use three-year-old-child logic when discussing this subject, as it simply doesn't work. A more nuanced approach is required. A flat tax simply hurts poor people a lot for a tiny benefit, and can cause more problems than it solves.
It isn't really a lot of overhead to have employers take out 20% of a paycheck and forward it to the government.
It does establish that everyone is part of the system, everyone pays for it. This is not three-year-old logic, this is reasonable adult logic.
When half of the people of a county see the government as "free", you end up with Greece, people who want "benefits" without paying anything.
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For example, my Prius averages me about 60 mpg over the last 45,000 miles. The curb weight is 3,042 lbs., or 1.521 tons, so it averages 39.45 ton miles per gallon. A Chevy Suburban, for example, averages 5.61 ton miles per gallon. Weight for weight, a Prius is 7 times more efficient than a Suburban.
Yes, I'm sure it is...
How many Prius would you need to carry 7 people, plus 7 suitcases of stuff, plus tow an 8,000 lb trailer?
I own a Yukon XL, which is the GMC version of the Suburban. I have 3 kids and often have 1 or 2 more kids with me, with my wife, that is 7 people. We also have plenty of room in the back behind all those people for stuff, and we can tow a camper behind that as well.
We took a vacation last year, loaded up the truck for a road trip, it was comfortable and everyone had their stuff and room. We're doing it again this summer.
I can't do that, even with a pair of little Prius cars.
The Prius has its place, it is a fine commuter car for people who just drive to work every day. But it is no replacement for a Suburban.
Even a minivan isn't because if you stick 7 people in a Honda Odyssey, you don't really have room for their stuff, the cargo space in the back is too small. It also doesn't tow that much, you can't safely or legally tow a 4 ton trailer behind one.
Most people don't need a Suburban, they aren't for everyone, but don't go trying to take mine away when I use it just because YOU don't need one.
That was my whole point. We can't agree on a logical definition of morality. Thus, it is really hard to design an AI that everybody would agree is moral.
Perhaps, but I think we could get close for 90% of the world's population.
"Thall shall not kill" is a pretty common one.
"Thall shall not steal" is another, and so on.
Most humans seem to agree on the basics, "be nice to people, don't take things that aren't yours, help your fellow humans when you can, etc.
http://www.goodreads.com/work/...
Both situations present quandaries, actually. Is it ethical to allow a person to cause permanent harm to themselves voluntarily if it will achieve a greater good? If so, is there a limit to this?
You either believe in free will or you don't.
Is it ethical to prevent someone from causing harm to themselves for any reason? Do people have the right to kill themselves if they want to? Do we have the right to tell them "no, sorry, you have to live because we say so"?
This is why, if I were President, I'd pardon every non-violent drug offender in the county. If someone wants to sit at home, hurting no one, smoking pot or doing cocaine, I don't consider that my business. Where I draw the line is when they want to hurt other people.
How about when it is involuntary? If I can save 1000 people by killing one person, is that ethical, even if they explicitly tell me they do not wish to take part? You could actually make an argument for either position. You'll find many people who would agree with either position.
No, it is not ethical...
It might be logical, but it would be evil and morally wrong.
Yes, I'm well aware that you can find people who would take either position, there are plenty of people in this world with no moral compass, this isn't news.
Let me put this another way... I have three kids... if one of them had a disease that was going to kill them in a month, but you came to me and said, "if we kill this other person's kid, we can save yours, is that ok?, I would say "no, it isn't, that is wrong".
I would not be ok with the killing of your kid to save mine, that would be morally wrong. I would cherish the time I had left with my child and would take joy from the fact that the other child would live on. My child does not have more "right" to life than any other.
As I said elsewhere, I have no doubt that you can give an answer to these questions. The problem is that you can't get everybody else to give the same answer to these questions. That creates a dilemma for anybody creating an AI where moral behavior is desirable. Even with a defined moral code it would be difficult to implement, and the fact that we can't even agree on a defined moral code makes it all the more difficult.
All fair points... the movie "I, Robot" is a good example of how easily this can go off the rails. It isn't the first or only example, but it is one that is accessible to the average person.
The computer saved Will Smith's character because he had a "better chance to live", but a human would have saved the little girl (or tried) because that is the "right thing to do".
How do you get a computer to understand why trying to save the girl is more important than the man, even if his odds of survival are higher? How do you get a computer to understand why a dozen men will charge into a burning building to save one person, when they might die as a result?
We are not machines, it would be sad if we lost the humanity that makes us special.
And that would be the reason I said "some" Nazi activities and not "all" Nazi activities. I certainly find them abhorent, but if you take a strictly utilitarian view then things like involuntary experimentation on people could be justified.
Logically, yes...
Morally, no...
We are not Vulcans...
Sure, but using some utilitarian models for morality some Nazi activities actually come out fine (well, their implementations were poor, but you can justify some things that most of us would consider horrific).
There is no moral justification for throwing babies alive into fires.
Ok, stupid extreme example: The Borg show up and say that if we don't throw 1,000 babies alive into fires, they will blow up Earth. Sure, maybe we'd do it, but that doesn't make it right or moral.
Sometimes people will take an immoral stance for the "good of the many".
Suppose human experimentation were reasonably likely to yield a medical advance? Would it be ethical? If you treated 1000 people like lab rats (vivsections and all), and it helped advance medicine to the benefit of millions of others, would that be wrong?
Do those humans get a say in it? Depending on the situation, you might get people to volunteer. The problem is when you do it against their will.
There are some valid questions regarding our vaccine policy and it's impacts on health, which you can't find because shills on both side drown out any discussion.
The same problem exists with gun control, abortion, and a hundred other subjects...
Too often, the extreme sides prevent any rational conversation from happening.
Is it ok to torture somebody if you could be certain it would save lives (setting aside the effectiveness of torture, assuming it is effective, is it moral)? If we can't answer questions like these objectively, how are you going to get an AI to be "beneficial?"
Is it moral? No.
That doesn't address the issue of "should you do it?"
Using the example: "Would you kill one innocent 10 year old girl if it saved 100 random stranger's lives?"
Does your answer change if you know the girl? If it is your daughter? If it is 100 million random strangers rather than just 100?
I would argue that killing the girl is always immoral, but I would understand why some people would do it.
---
Humans are able to do some really, really crappy things. Read up on the murder of babies by the Nazis in the concentration camps, it is evil. (the Nazis don't have the exclusive rights to that brand of evil, go back to the Romans, they did plenty of it)
Actually it's not as insane as you might think. There's always a bunch of free-to-play games on Steam, along with games that go free temporarily over a weekend/week/etc. Bottom line, you CAN game on Steam without paying a penny. Plus I don't know if this would count towards your $5 requirement or not, but you can be gifted games from friends. That's how I started on Steam myself, when a friend had bought the X series as a bundle for a couple bucks and gifted it to me.
Sure, I understand that... but my point is... how many of those F2P players or gifted players are actually using the Steam community features before they buy a single game on Steam?
I would say some people may get annoyed due to following limitations:
>Submit content on the Steam Workshop
>Post in an item's Steam Workshop Discussions
Retail games dont give you full account, so if you buy some steam only game with a mod community (eg Civilization 5) you potentially lose quite a bit
That is possible, but how many people are actually active in the Steam community who have never spent $5 on Steam?
Is there someone, somewhere in the world that is like that? Probably. Many people? Probably not.
It is what is called an edge case, and a business can't account for all of them. They are trying to get rid of the bot spammers and this is one way to do it.
Also to spend money you have to hand over your personal information such as your full home address.
Oh, so a private company that has servers and services that you want to access wants your information before giving you access?
Oh the horror!
You're confusing HD radio with SiriusXM Sat radio, not quite the same thing...
Doesn't Germany have the equivilent of a Son of Sam law where criminals and their heirs can't earn a profit from their heinous acts?
Did those laws exist in 1945?
Or does Germany allow new laws to be passed to make formally legal behavior illegal, after the fact?
I don't think this would apply.
dead guy before capture.
private family journals belonging to an estate
"crime does not pay royalty's" did not come into effect I think until the late 50's.
It wouldn't matter when they came into effect, it wouldn't matter if it happened yesterday.
A law that says "you can't make money from this" doesn't mean "anyone can copy your stuff for free".
I'm fairly sure that such gyrocopters qualify as ultralight aircraft, and thus require no license.
And you'd be wrong...
Really. You're comparing a protest against a monarchy that was suppressing free speech (among many other very bad things), to a guy who decided to fly a dodgy piece of dangerous equipment with high speed rotors past crowds of tourists in order to register his complaint that we have a constitutional guarantee of free speech?
If that is how you describe the aircraft he was flying, then you have no idea what you're talking about and you should really shut up before you embarrass yourself.
The autogyro is one of the safest aircraft that exists, unlike a helicopter that only *CAN* autorotate (often like a brick), the autogyro is *ALWAYS* autorotating and lands that way without power every single time.
It is not a "dodgy piece of dangerous equipment", it is actually very safe.
I don't know about a sniper, but he was in a no-fly zone. Don't they scramble jets when someone enters a no-fly zone? Especially near the Capitol. I assume they do, but I don't really know.
Yes, usually...
In this case, he wasn't on RADAR and the Secret Service knew he was coming. He was known to them and he had made prior contact to let them know of his publicity stunt.
What about an auto-gyro with 30 lbs or so of C4? Do you still want the "human at the controls"? You don't know what the intentions are, you just know it's very illegal to be there yet there he is.
This man was known to the Secret Service, they even interviewed him a year or so before this, on a tip that he would do JUST THIS.
In addition, he called the Secret Service an hour before he got there to let them know he was coming and why. The press also called them because he was in contact with the press to let them know this was a publicity stunt.
Why aren't the 99% of 'statistical former farmers' starving today? It would have been terrible to setup a government program to support them all.
Many of them are... despite how much food we produce, hunger is a real problem in America...
Of the adults in this country, about 2/3 of them are working. Of those 2/3, how many have a decent paying job?
That number keeps shrinking... I don't have any easy answers, but I can see the problem...
A simple example is Apple, they plan to bring some manufacturing back to the US from China, but they'll do it in a robot factory. In China, iPads and iPhones are hand built by human labor because it is so cheap, in the US, this is too expensive so they'll use robots.
What will the 800,000 or so people in China do who currently build iDevices if Apple moves all production back using robots?
Lowering the American corporate rate to 20% would not solve anything when Ireland has a 12.5% corporate rate.
Maybe... at some point the difference becomes small enough that it isn't worth messing with.
At 35%, there are no hoops too big to be jumped through, at 20%? Maybe there are...
Apple has over $50 billion in cash overseas that it can't bring into the US to invest here because of this. The question becomes, how low does the rate have to get before they change their minds and decide to bring it back?
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To put this another way, we live in a global marketplace, we now have to compete with other nations, including on tax rates and services.
Fair enough...
Of course, on the flip side... what happens when robots are doing both jobs?
I can see a time, not that far in the future, when most of the unskilled jobs get replaced by machines...
The idea of "everyone getting a job" might end up out of date at some point.
Yes, we'll need someone to fix the robots, until we have robots for that, but not nearly as many people as they replaced.
I don't have simple answers, but the time is coming when we need to have that conversation.
You might do that. Because you have to be criminally incompetent if you can't get hired in the Bay Area now. You can make high five to six figures merely by being mediocre.
High five figures in the bay area might as well be min wage, that doesn't pay for anything there.
Translation: We want to hire coders but do not offer benefits that are as good as the competition. We need to import foreign workers who will work for less $$$!!! It's not our fault that employees can't afford a mortgage with our current benefits package -- that's just the cost of living in the area!
I suspect you're correct.
If the pay doesn't allow for a nice 4 bedroom house in a nice neighborhood with good schools and 2 nice cars, plus enough room for 10% retirement savings, then it isn't paying enough.
Because there ARE jobs elsewhere in the county in this business that DO pay enough for that.
That may be true... so what do you do with them? Toss them off a pier? Tell them to stay home and collect unemployment?
Do they have any incentive to improve themselves?
First, let me be clear. This is not 47% of the entire population, it is 47% of the working population, a key point.
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In 2013, it was 43.3% according to this web site:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org...
And I suppose it depends on if you count FICA taxes or not. Since those go to three specific programs, I personally don't count them (SS is your own savings, Medicare is your health care, and unemployment is for you if you need it), but you might choose to do so.
http://www.politifact.com/trut...
In 2009, it was indeed 47%, but of course that was a bad year.
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It is worth noting who DOES pay the taxes around here:
http://dailysignal.com/2014/04...
The top 1% pays on average 19% of their income in taxes and pays 37% of all federal income taxes.
Interestingly enough, it is the top 10-25% who pays the lowest percentage of taxes, 11%, followed by the bottom 50%, at 12% of their income. But that 12% pays only 2% of the federal taxes.
So the bottom 50% of the entire working population is paying only 2%. Frankly, they should shut up about taxes, they have only one way to go for them, which is up. But the bottom 50% tends to be uneducated, ignorant about such things, and low information voters who listen to soundbites.
If asking those people to pay taxes would endanger their standing, then it would probably be cheaper for them to not be taxed. We can't use three-year-old-child logic when discussing this subject, as it simply doesn't work. A more nuanced approach is required. A flat tax simply hurts poor people a lot for a tiny benefit, and can cause more problems than it solves.
It isn't really a lot of overhead to have employers take out 20% of a paycheck and forward it to the government.
It does establish that everyone is part of the system, everyone pays for it. This is not three-year-old logic, this is reasonable adult logic.
When half of the people of a county see the government as "free", you end up with Greece, people who want "benefits" without paying anything.