People always get the Turing test wrong. Although by extension it is about testing whether a computer is indistinguishable, it doesn't work directly. You have three entities: An interviewer and two interviewees. The interviewer has to determine which of the two interviewees is female. A computer that passes the Turing test would fool the interviewer at least as often as a man would. The interviewer has no idea that a computer is involved at all. That would bias the test.
I quite agree with his comments insofar as saying that biological evolution via DNA/RNA as a reproductive mechanism is no longer seeking an optimum. However, people are getting far too used to thinking about evolution purely in these terms.
Someone's already mentioned memes, so I'll leave them alone. But a few thoughts along the lines of silicon evolution would not go astray. Selection pressure in our environment no longer has anything to do with purely physical abilities or characteristics. Instead, survival of an entity and it's beliefs / structures is what we look at.
And in that respect, machines are evolving far faster than we are.
> Doctors study illness not to cause it, but to cure it.
Yes, but they don't make illnesses. You can talk about vaccination but that would be equivalent to people running security businesses that _attempt_ to break in. It's all about whether you're actually attempting to cause damage. I have no problem with people studying guns in confined laboratories. I have no problems with finding ways to protect people from guns. Your example is irrelevant.
>...Wide purpose...
Back to the counter argument. Guns are not wide purpose. Nuclear weapons are definitively not wide purpose.
In Australia, they did use this argument for our gun licensing laws.
I am only too aware of how extremely dodgy our censorship laws are here. In reply to the theme that publishing the list would make people demand what's banned, think again.
1) The government publishes a list containing URLS for child pornography, bomb making, and anti-copyright law propaganda.
2a) Someone asks for the child pornography sites to be unblocked. Police jump on them. Quite rightly.
2b) Someone uses the anti-copyright law website in a campaign for freedom of speech. Quite rightly.
The problem is a complete lack of checks and balances on the governments ability to censor what we watch. In addition, the censorship process in Australia is very dodgy indeed.
So many of our censorship laws were enacted so that the Government could buy off Senator Brian Harradine who held the balance of power in the Senate. Brian Harradine, a Tasmanian senator, has extremely conservative views - vastly different to the mainstream views in australia.
Studies have shown, time and again, that the australian population does not agree with the TV and movie censorship ratings given out. The official classification almost always condones more violence and less sex.
mick
Re:What constitutes intelligence (artificial or no
on
True Names
·
· Score: 1
I can't believe how many people still make this mistake. The human brain has much more raw processing power than a computer. However, it is fantastically optimised for vision. When the human mind performs mathematical / logical calculations, it typically does so by transforming into word / though pictures, processing, then transforming back.
If the brain used the complexity of neurons required to actually calculate directly, we could easily thrash computers at maths / logic / chess / anything that doesn't require vision.
Computers as we have them have about the same raw processing power as an insect. Or possibly a small fish. Go and read some Hans Moravec. As complexity increases in th biological nervous system, so do higher order computational abilities.
This includes such factors as emotions, instincts, communication, vision, and of course consciousness.
Of course computers are still incapable of proper emotion / self awareness. In terms of raw power, they're a beetle.
On the other hand, we do know that evolution of nervous systems (either biological or silicon) does follow an exponential curve, jumping over ice ages, climate changes, predators, environmental disturbances, transistors, lithography, etc.
And the current calculations show that the evolution of the silicon nervous system is happening at about 100 million times faster than the one based on cells and adenosine tri-phosphate as a power source.
Moore's law is just an quantisation of what anyone who's studied the evolution of the biological nervous system already knows.
Honestly, do you really believe that the medium has anything to do with it? Consciousness et al come from the immense complexity of interactions, combined with an environment that encourages such abilities.
It prevents people from reading the message then passing it on, but not from reading then generating an identical one. Admittedly this is a problem with all mediums, but quantum mechanics aren't the final solution yet.
The longest I have ever gone non-stop was 48 hours straight. By the end of that, I could see the walls beginning to move. Peripheral vision was minimal, visual recognition was starting to fail, and occasional bouts of dizziness were setting in.
The intriguing thing about it is that in order to get through the time without falling asleep it was only necessary to believe that there was no struggle. As soon as I started thinking "dammit, must stay awake", it became a lot harder to do so. If I didn't even consider the possibility that I was sleepy, then it wasn't an issue. I don't know if that would have continued though.
I fully understand the drive when you're just about to crest on a nasty and interesting problem and can just go without food / sleep at work.
I also have the same days when there's nothing interesting to do and it's just tedious stuff.
However, firstly, I always try to get hired by the hour. Quite apart from flexibility, it gives you other people a mindset that allows you to say, well, nothing to do, going home. It takes away the guilt for not being there. After all, they're not paying.
I don't know if you get a salary, or aren't in a position where you can just leave work if you're not in a working mood.
Also, making sure your boss takes you almost totally on results is a big thing for me. Working in a consulting company where most people are at least 5 years older, and the clients normally 10, this is necessary anyway.
Finally, I tend to store up little easy and boring tasks on the side. So when I hit a dead patch (as I call it), I go back to re-writing debugging mechanisms, or tool configuration scripts etc.
I know this has been a bit of a ramble (too much damn coding today. and I'm not even getting paid), but my main point is, managers need to look at things on a longer time frame than day to day. If you do your months work in a months time and get paid for a months wages, that's all that matters, yes?
You need to study genetic algorithms. It has been empirically shown that a good simulation with a proper fitness function applicable to the task at hand will evolve a solution far faster than any deterministic algorithm can, regardless of how good the heuristic.
No one has as yet detailed the mathematics properly, but think of it this way. When you have a search space made up of hills and valleys, and you're trying to find the highest point, improving the heuristic merely changes the direction a single point travels. Stupid ones will just walk uphill, and easily get stuck on a mound. More intelligent ones will go through valleys first. But an evolutionary solution will form a cluster of points (well -distributed if it's a good one), and the search the space via the movement of the cluster as a whole.
And while, yes, a single intelligent solution will perform better than a random point, what you've got to remember is that it is the asymptotic behaviour of the group as a whole.
Evolution is not just a method for explaining how humanity reached the current point. Any situation with entities that have a lifespan and reproducability will exhibit evolutionary behaviour. Literature, fashion, computers, ideas, societies, communities etc.
It has parallels to the zeroth law of thermodynamics, which states (I think), in a closed environment, entropy will increase. In a reproductive environment (and I mean this very generally, not just physically), the best formed solution will arise.
Why do you think there are technological breakthroughs in times of war? It's not because the politicians in the society sit down and say "right old chaps, time to design some good stuff". It's because the increased environmental imperative speeds things up.
That's what's fascinating about working in the evolutionary side of AI as I do, that all you have to do is create the problem, ensure that the entities have the capability to find the solution, and determine a way of mapping a better solution to the fitness function. You look at problems in reverse.
The amusing thing to me is the arrogant position generally postulated by humanity in terms of it's righteousness at the top of the evolutionary stack. Yes, we're on top. Doesn't mean we should be, or that we always will be, or that we have any particular right to be. We just happen to be the ones that found the niche. If we didn't, something else would have, and they would be having this discussion.
The evolution of more and more advanced lifeforms is an imperative. AI is going to get there simply because it's more suited to the environment.
What do you mean artificial? You mean that we, as another society utilising these entities (non-conscious as they are) in some way, therefore destroy their existence as a separate entity?
It is not based on a genetic algorithm's fitness function, nor any environmental conditions.
The world we live in has a fitness function for all things. Why do some people succeed? Why do some pieces of software do better than others? As software has gotten more and more advanced, it has done better than the less advanced software. The fact that it is humanity imposing this fitness function is irrelevant.
When we were a little mammal scurrying around the jungle, our fitness function was imposed on us by our predators. Those of us who adapted better weren't eaten. The relationship here is not exactly a predator / prey one, but that's not the point.
The power you have over the current versions of software is also irrelevant. I'm sure I could also jump on a mouse, squish an amoeba, or kill a dog.
An AI running on my home PVIII 5GHz machine is still limited to the environment I've imposed on it, and will "sleep" if I pull the plug for eternity
And you're still limited to the environment the atmosphere, society, and the community impose on you, and will "sleep" if you get your plug pulled. What's your point? The fact that you've got control of a non-sentient being's existence? So what. Doesn't stop them evolving as a race.
Just as we've been advancing in robots lately, we see they're not the monsters of the 1950's, but clever mechanical encapsulations of software
And this points out your fundamental miscomprehension of the nature of consciousness and self-awareness. It's not a quantitave difference, it's a quantum jump. It's the point at which an extraordinarily complex deterministic system starts producing non-deterministic results. (And lets not get into free will). The difference between a sophisticated robot and an unsophisticated robot is nothing like the difference between a conscious and a non-conscious entity.
As for your assertion that true AI it won't be life-changing, well we'll habe to wait and see. But if you think having a race of sentient beings competing for jobs, votes, resources, partners, etc etc isn't going to change the entire fabric of social structure as we know it, well there's nothing I could do to change your opinion.
Of course, the argument about when (or whether) we'll reach true AI is another matter altogether.
mick
...I had to beat them to death, with their own shoes
Actually, what I'm waiting for is to move past fbrics and onto other types of synthetics. You know the typical sci-fi concept that we'll go to this type of silicon molded armor / clothing?
Well, the obvious issue is that your skin won't be getting any fresh oxygen, unless you can fashion a material that is in some way changeably porous.
And yes I know that last paragraph was slightly o/t, but what the hell.
For those who believe in evolution (and please don't start a flame war, if you don't agree just ignore this thread), it's an interesting exercise to compare the evolution of ai with humanity.
Imagine doing this as a historical study 30 years in the future when artificial consciousness and self-awareness are a reality. Would humanity be viewed as a symbiote with the developing silicon-based life-form?
Taking the viewpoint that evolution is a natural imperative, the evolution of a life-form better suited to a technological age is almost unavoidable. Given any environment and fitness function, if the capability to develop is there, a solution to that space will evolve.
The other interesting thing from an evolutionary perspective, is how the development of any species is advanced by a competitor. Is it possible that humanity, feeling a stricter evolutionary fitness parameter, will move on more quickly too?
And I would hope that the movie doesn't, as has been suggested, just turn into a Pinocchio story for the modern times. Granted, that's an intriguing idea, but surely the necessary meshing of idealogies between species offers far more?
Would racism survive? Homophobia? Intra-country political struggles? eg. Ireland / Israel
Recent statistics have shown that the vast majority of rapists and child molesters have been addicted to Internet pornography.
Hmm, another example of someone who doesn't get statistics. The vast majority of people are addicted to Internet pornography. If you want to show any kind of correlation, let alone causation, you have to show that there is a difference in the pornography addiction percentage between the control and the subject group.
And this sounds far too much like the idea that people are not responsible for their own actions. It's tending towards the idea that a woman dressed provocatively is asking to be raped. Regardless of what this site puts up, there is no way you can give it any moral responsibility for the actions of a bunch of psychos.
the rapes and murders of dozens if not hundreds of women and children
And where's this coming from? Give us some evidence, anything other than a blank assetion. And when did children enter the picture? Granted, I haven't looked over the site yet (Non-business related filter), but are you seriously suggesting that in addition to encouraging rape it encourages paedophilia?
Now you can think whatever you like about the shallowness of this site, and I'll agree, getting off on the approval of strangers is silly. No less silly than a lot of other activities, but silly nonetheless. But accusing this site of generating rapist / paedophilic sentiment is just ridiculous.
Not that I'm backing M$, but it's an old adage in marketing (and Pratchett) that it's better to reduce the slice but enlarge the cake.
Supply and demand. Units and unit prices. They'll get less from you if they get it from twice as many people. And if they can reduce costs, and then reduce price in order to increase demand, they will. Overall profit, not individual.
Most people have no idea how influenced by commercials they really are.
It's very true that the advertising paradigm has become a lot more cynical than it was (it's no longer quite enough to just show a sportsman or supermodel), but it's still pretty damn basic. And all they need if for a certain percentage of people to be slightly more influenced towards them than to something else.
They don't need you to believe the commercial. All they need you to do is to have it make some slight impact on you. And of course there are major rules about expert demographics. Advertising to a group of people who actually care about the product has to be informative. Would script-kiddies be swayed by a Natalie Portman advert? On second thought, don't answer that.
However, if it is a product you don't really pay much attention to worrying about, like fast food, or some types of clothes (I really don't care about shoes), or something like that, then you a a number one target to an ad.
Of course, here in Australia, what amuses me are the ads selling morals. You know how you used to associate a product with a person eg. Britney Spears / Michael Jordan. Well, we have all these ads associating a product with some "insightful" comment about life.
eg. Life is too short. Enjoy it while you can. Go your own way. Ansett Australia.
Of course, the link between the product and message is just as ridiculous as the link between a product and famous person.
As someone who has had quite a bit to do with the solar power industry, I can tell you that the big corporations are only too well aware of what's going on with the depletion of fossil fuels.
They've got their fingers in the top-level pies at all the research institutions. Now it's not profitable for solar power or any other kind of renewable energy source to become commercially viable just yet, so every time someone makes a breakthrough it gets bought out.
In approx. 20 years (a professor of Geology's estimate) when the oil reserves really start getting squeezed, they'll start investing real money into other forms of energy.
The issue of retro-fitting manufacturing plants, developing supply lines, these will all dissapate as the big guys change their focus.
But at this point in time, it would be very very difficult indeed to develop a commercially viable alternative to oil. The efforts won't be squashed, that would be too obvious, but they do get restricted.
Note that this is in Australia, which has slightly different regs.
Over here they did an experiment where they took a random cross-section of the population and asked them to rate a selection of movies to be shown in cinemas. This was then compared against the official Bureau classification.
In almost all cases, the audience asked for a rating at least one degree lower than the one given by the Bureau. However, the audience was much more lenient about sex and drugs, and much less lenient on violence.
My personal view is that censorship of any form is wrong. It's far better to educate and let children (or anyone) choose for themselves than to attempt to regulate.
Slashdot Mirror
People always get the Turing test wrong. Although by extension it is about testing whether a computer is indistinguishable, it doesn't work directly. You have three entities: An interviewer and two interviewees. The interviewer has to determine which of the two interviewees is female. A computer that passes the Turing test would fool the interviewer at least as often as a man would. The interviewer has no idea that a computer is involved at all. That would bias the test.
mick
I quite agree with his comments insofar as saying that biological evolution via DNA/RNA as a reproductive mechanism is no longer seeking an optimum. However, people are getting far too used to thinking about evolution purely in these terms.
Someone's already mentioned memes, so I'll leave them alone. But a few thoughts along the lines of silicon evolution would not go astray. Selection pressure in our environment no longer has anything to do with purely physical abilities or characteristics. Instead, survival of an entity and it's beliefs / structures is what we look at.
And in that respect, machines are evolving far faster than we are.
mick
A decent use for the TSP - finding the fastest way to get drunk.
Of course, the heuristic would be changing over time.
mick
> Doctors study illness not to cause it, but to cure it.
...Wide purpose...
Yes, but they don't make illnesses. You can talk about vaccination but that would be equivalent to people running security businesses that _attempt_ to break in. It's all about whether you're actually attempting to cause damage. I have no problem with people studying guns in confined laboratories. I have no problems with finding ways to protect people from guns. Your example is irrelevant.
>
Back to the counter argument. Guns are not wide purpose. Nuclear weapons are definitively not wide purpose.
In Australia, they did use this argument for our gun licensing laws.
mick
I am only too aware of how extremely dodgy our censorship laws are here. In reply to the theme that publishing the list would make people demand what's banned, think again.
1) The government publishes a list containing URLS for child pornography, bomb making, and anti-copyright law propaganda.
2a) Someone asks for the child pornography sites to be unblocked. Police jump on them. Quite rightly.
2b) Someone uses the anti-copyright law website in a campaign for freedom of speech. Quite rightly.
The problem is a complete lack of checks and balances on the governments ability to censor what we watch. In addition, the censorship process in Australia is very dodgy indeed.
So many of our censorship laws were enacted so that the Government could buy off Senator Brian Harradine who held the balance of power in the Senate. Brian Harradine, a Tasmanian senator, has extremely conservative views - vastly different to the mainstream views in australia.
Studies have shown, time and again, that the australian population does not agree with the TV and movie censorship ratings given out. The official classification almost always condones more violence and less sex.
mick
I can't believe how many people still make this mistake. The human brain has much more raw processing power than a computer. However, it is fantastically optimised for vision. When the human mind performs mathematical / logical calculations, it typically does so by transforming into word / though pictures, processing, then transforming back.
If the brain used the complexity of neurons required to actually calculate directly, we could easily thrash computers at maths / logic / chess / anything that doesn't require vision.
Computers as we have them have about the same raw processing power as an insect. Or possibly a small fish. Go and read some Hans Moravec. As complexity increases in th biological nervous system, so do higher order computational abilities.
This includes such factors as emotions, instincts, communication, vision, and of course consciousness.
Of course computers are still incapable of proper emotion / self awareness. In terms of raw power, they're a beetle.
On the other hand, we do know that evolution of nervous systems (either biological or silicon) does follow an exponential curve, jumping over ice ages, climate changes, predators, environmental disturbances, transistors, lithography, etc.
And the current calculations show that the evolution of the silicon nervous system is happening at about 100 million times faster than the one based on cells and adenosine tri-phosphate as a power source.
Moore's law is just an quantisation of what anyone who's studied the evolution of the biological nervous system already knows.
Honestly, do you really believe that the medium has anything to do with it? Consciousness et al come from the immense complexity of interactions, combined with an environment that encourages such abilities.
mick
Surely this doesn't make it properly uncrackable.
It prevents people from reading the message then passing it on, but not from reading then generating an identical one. Admittedly this is a problem with all mediums, but quantum mechanics aren't the final solution yet.
mick
Writing out some decryption algorithms?
Let's see if the DMCA will ban GPS
mick
You could always make the asteroid itself a story on slashdot and let the millions of hits pulverize it.
mick
A better idea.
Put all the above mentioned parties (although there may be a few people on tv I'd leave out) on a rocket and tell them there's an asteroid coming.
Then start the countdown and ensure that the firing mechanism requires they all learn to act.
Then watch the fireworks.
mick
...particularly Chuck Norris.
The only reason for including is the amusing difference in the way Time makes it seem *exciting* in a way the others didn't.
mick
...woooo, killer asteroid
The longest I have ever gone non-stop was 48 hours straight. By the end of that, I could see the walls beginning to move. Peripheral vision was minimal, visual recognition was starting to fail, and occasional bouts of dizziness were setting in.
The intriguing thing about it is that in order to get through the time without falling asleep it was only necessary to believe that there was no struggle. As soon as I started thinking "dammit, must stay awake", it became a lot harder to do so. If I didn't even consider the possibility that I was sleepy, then it wasn't an issue. I don't know if that would have continued though.
mick
I fully understand the drive when you're just about to crest on a nasty and interesting problem and can just go without food / sleep at work.
I also have the same days when there's nothing interesting to do and it's just tedious stuff.
However, firstly, I always try to get hired by the hour. Quite apart from flexibility, it gives you other people a mindset that allows you to say, well, nothing to do, going home. It takes away the guilt for not being there. After all, they're not paying.
I don't know if you get a salary, or aren't in a position where you can just leave work if you're not in a working mood.
Also, making sure your boss takes you almost totally on results is a big thing for me. Working in a consulting company where most people are at least 5 years older, and the clients normally 10, this is necessary anyway.
Finally, I tend to store up little easy and boring tasks on the side. So when I hit a dead patch (as I call it), I go back to re-writing debugging mechanisms, or tool configuration scripts etc.
I know this has been a bit of a ramble (too much damn coding today. and I'm not even getting paid), but my main point is, managers need to look at things on a longer time frame than day to day. If you do your months work in a months time and get paid for a months wages, that's all that matters, yes?
mick
You need to study genetic algorithms. It has been empirically shown that a good simulation with a proper fitness function applicable to the task at hand will evolve a solution far faster than any deterministic algorithm can, regardless of how good the heuristic.
No one has as yet detailed the mathematics properly, but think of it this way. When you have a search space made up of hills and valleys, and you're trying to find the highest point, improving the heuristic merely changes the direction a single point travels. Stupid ones will just walk uphill, and easily get stuck on a mound. More intelligent ones will go through valleys first. But an evolutionary solution will form a cluster of points (well -distributed if it's a good one), and the search the space via the movement of the cluster as a whole.
And while, yes, a single intelligent solution will perform better than a random point, what you've got to remember is that it is the asymptotic behaviour of the group as a whole.
Evolution is not just a method for explaining how humanity reached the current point. Any situation with entities that have a lifespan and reproducability will exhibit evolutionary behaviour. Literature, fashion, computers, ideas, societies, communities etc.
It has parallels to the zeroth law of thermodynamics, which states (I think), in a closed environment, entropy will increase. In a reproductive environment (and I mean this very generally, not just physically), the best formed solution will arise.
Why do you think there are technological breakthroughs in times of war? It's not because the politicians in the society sit down and say "right old chaps, time to design some good stuff". It's because the increased environmental imperative speeds things up.
That's what's fascinating about working in the evolutionary side of AI as I do, that all you have to do is create the problem, ensure that the entities have the capability to find the solution, and determine a way of mapping a better solution to the fitness function. You look at problems in reverse.
The amusing thing to me is the arrogant position generally postulated by humanity in terms of it's righteousness at the top of the evolutionary stack. Yes, we're on top. Doesn't mean we should be, or that we always will be, or that we have any particular right to be. We just happen to be the ones that found the niche. If we didn't, something else would have, and they would be having this discussion.
The evolution of more and more advanced lifeforms is an imperative. AI is going to get there simply because it's more suited to the environment.
mick
What do you mean artificial? You mean that we, as another society utilising these entities (non-conscious as they are) in some way, therefore destroy their existence as a separate entity?
It is not based on a genetic algorithm's fitness function, nor any environmental conditions.
The world we live in has a fitness function for all things. Why do some people succeed? Why do some pieces of software do better than others? As software has gotten more and more advanced, it has done better than the less advanced software. The fact that it is humanity imposing this fitness function is irrelevant.
When we were a little mammal scurrying around the jungle, our fitness function was imposed on us by our predators. Those of us who adapted better weren't eaten. The relationship here is not exactly a predator / prey one, but that's not the point.
The power you have over the current versions of software is also irrelevant. I'm sure I could also jump on a mouse, squish an amoeba, or kill a dog.
An AI running on my home PVIII 5GHz machine is still limited to the environment I've imposed on it, and will "sleep" if I pull the plug for eternity
And you're still limited to the environment the atmosphere, society, and the community impose on you, and will "sleep" if you get your plug pulled. What's your point? The fact that you've got control of a non-sentient being's existence? So what. Doesn't stop them evolving as a race.
Just as we've been advancing in robots lately, we see they're not the monsters of the 1950's, but clever mechanical encapsulations of software
And this points out your fundamental miscomprehension of the nature of consciousness and self-awareness. It's not a quantitave difference, it's a quantum jump. It's the point at which an extraordinarily complex deterministic system starts producing non-deterministic results. (And lets not get into free will). The difference between a sophisticated robot and an unsophisticated robot is nothing like the difference between a conscious and a non-conscious entity.
As for your assertion that true AI it won't be life-changing, well we'll habe to wait and see. But if you think having a race of sentient beings competing for jobs, votes, resources, partners, etc etc isn't going to change the entire fabric of social structure as we know it, well there's nothing I could do to change your opinion.
Of course, the argument about when (or whether) we'll reach true AI is another matter altogether.
mick
...I had to beat them to death, with their own shoes
- Clothes that vibrate to give you a massage
- a heating element (get burnt and electrocuted)
Actually, what I'm waiting for is to move past fbrics and onto other types of synthetics. You know the typical sci-fi concept that we'll go to this type of silicon molded armor / clothing?
Well, the obvious issue is that your skin won't be getting any fresh oxygen, unless you can fashion a material that is in some way changeably porous.
And yes I know that last paragraph was slightly o/t, but what the hell.
mick
For those who believe in evolution (and please don't start a flame war, if you don't agree just ignore this thread), it's an interesting exercise to compare the evolution of ai with humanity.
Imagine doing this as a historical study 30 years in the future when artificial consciousness and self-awareness are a reality. Would humanity be viewed as a symbiote with the developing silicon-based life-form?
Taking the viewpoint that evolution is a natural imperative, the evolution of a life-form better suited to a technological age is almost unavoidable. Given any environment and fitness function, if the capability to develop is there, a solution to that space will evolve.
The other interesting thing from an evolutionary perspective, is how the development of any species is advanced by a competitor. Is it possible that humanity, feeling a stricter evolutionary fitness parameter, will move on more quickly too?
And I would hope that the movie doesn't, as has been suggested, just turn into a Pinocchio story for the modern times. Granted, that's an intriguing idea, but surely the necessary meshing of idealogies between species offers far more?
Would racism survive? Homophobia? Intra-country political struggles? eg. Ireland / Israel
mick
Recent statistics have shown that the vast majority of rapists and child molesters have been addicted to Internet pornography.
Hmm, another example of someone who doesn't get statistics. The vast majority of people are addicted to Internet pornography. If you want to show any kind of correlation, let alone causation, you have to show that there is a difference in the pornography addiction percentage between the control and the subject group.
And this sounds far too much like the idea that people are not responsible for their own actions. It's tending towards the idea that a woman dressed provocatively is asking to be raped. Regardless of what this site puts up, there is no way you can give it any moral responsibility for the actions of a bunch of psychos.
the rapes and murders of dozens if not hundreds of women and children
And where's this coming from? Give us some evidence, anything other than a blank assetion. And when did children enter the picture? Granted, I haven't looked over the site yet (Non-business related filter), but are you seriously suggesting that in addition to encouraging rape it encourages paedophilia?
Now you can think whatever you like about the shallowness of this site, and I'll agree, getting off on the approval of strangers is silly. No less silly than a lot of other activities, but silly nonetheless. But accusing this site of generating rapist / paedophilic sentiment is just ridiculous.
mick
Not just that....
Could you imagine the online poll? CowboyNeal CowboyNeal!!!
mick
Not that I'm backing M$, but it's an old adage in marketing (and Pratchett) that it's better to reduce the slice but enlarge the cake.
Supply and demand. Units and unit prices. They'll get less from you if they get it from twice as many people. And if they can reduce costs, and then reduce price in order to increase demand, they will. Overall profit, not individual.
Most people have no idea how influenced by commercials they really are.
It's very true that the advertising paradigm has become a lot more cynical than it was (it's no longer quite enough to just show a sportsman or supermodel), but it's still pretty damn basic. And all they need if for a certain percentage of people to be slightly more influenced towards them than to something else.
They don't need you to believe the commercial. All they need you to do is to have it make some slight impact on you. And of course there are major rules about expert demographics. Advertising to a group of people who actually care about the product has to be informative. Would script-kiddies be swayed by a Natalie Portman advert? On second thought, don't answer that.
However, if it is a product you don't really pay much attention to worrying about, like fast food, or some types of clothes (I really don't care about shoes), or something like that, then you a a number one target to an ad.
Of course, here in Australia, what amuses me are the ads selling morals. You know how you used to associate a product with a person eg. Britney Spears / Michael Jordan. Well, we have all these ads associating a product with some "insightful" comment about life.
eg. Life is too short. Enjoy it while you can. Go your own way. Ansett Australia.
Of course, the link between the product and message is just as ridiculous as the link between a product and famous person.
mick
As someone who has had quite a bit to do with the solar power industry, I can tell you that the big corporations are only too well aware of what's going on with the depletion of fossil fuels.
They've got their fingers in the top-level pies at all the research institutions. Now it's not profitable for solar power or any other kind of renewable energy source to become commercially viable just yet, so every time someone makes a breakthrough it gets bought out.
In approx. 20 years (a professor of Geology's estimate) when the oil reserves really start getting squeezed, they'll start investing real money into other forms of energy.
The issue of retro-fitting manufacturing plants, developing supply lines, these will all dissapate as the big guys change their focus.
But at this point in time, it would be very very difficult indeed to develop a commercially viable alternative to oil. The efforts won't be squashed, that would be too obvious, but they do get restricted.
mick
Often found near abundant quantities of the gas octagen or the metal octin.
The light fantastic....
(and perhaps we should stop the quotes here before we get sued for copyright infringement).
mick
Surely you live in Annandale.
Note that this is in Australia, which has slightly different regs.
Over here they did an experiment where they took a random cross-section of the population and asked them to rate a selection of movies to be shown in cinemas. This was then compared against the official Bureau classification.
In almost all cases, the audience asked for a rating at least one degree lower than the one given by the Bureau. However, the audience was much more lenient about sex and drugs, and much less lenient on violence.
My personal view is that censorship of any form is wrong. It's far better to educate and let children (or anyone) choose for themselves than to attempt to regulate.