Whenever I want to know about the ethics of a megacorporation's activities, I pore over a document on their website. It's all right there in the manual, people! If they pinkie-swear that they'll be the mostest ethicalest conglomerate ever, then goddammit, I believe them!
Obviously, removing a vow to not be evil means they've accepted an ethical continuum where any action taken in a situation containing an ethical problem necessarily involves a certain amount of evil; vowing to do NO evil would necessarily mean taking no action, which is itself an evil action, thereby they are avoiding a double bind.
This is a great argument for why one should use Free Software. Even if the binary were widely available, it'll eventually cease to work properly on modern OSes, or support modern features (codecs, colorspaces, etc.).
but did take a moment to call out flying taxi solutions (like Uber Elevate) right off the bat due to danger and noise.
This seems a bit hypocritical considering about a year ago, Musk was advocating using SpaceX rockets for point-to-point travel on Earth. Pretty sure a rocket is noisier and more dangerous than a quadcopter. If the rocket only takes off and lands in rural areas, it might be less of a danger to those on the ground than a quadcopter flying in an urban area, but is still likely to be more dangerous for the passengers.
All I can hear is "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn". Might be a resonance effect due to my speakers being pentacle-shaped. Or I just haven't cleaned out enough of the blood that oozes out of them periodically...
So what human population size is the objectively perfectly ideal size? If we reach that size, are you sure noone will then argue that it should be a different size? This seems as pointless as saying 'things should be different' with no explanation.
Incidentally, there was an early 20th-century German eugenics program that paid cash bonuses to college graduates who had children. The theory was that their offspring would be genetically superior to that of the lower classes. I'm skeptical that holds up, but it might have made sense for other reasons.
Today in the USA there are many subsidies for having children (tax breaks, increased welfare/food stamp benefits, child healthcare programs). IMO the most effective subsidy would be on hospital childbirth costs; the costs were ~$25k in the 80s, according to my mom, and I shudder to think of how much they are now. Also, considering it was proven generations ago that children who are neglected in orphanages develop lower intelligence than those who are adopted, adoption fees should be minimized as well (particularly for older children).
An easy way to improve employment opportunities is to take a large number of people out of the workforce. Given all the time it takes to raise children, perhaps some people who are working could rear children instead. Then, the remaining workers would have employers competing for workers by raising their wages. The increased wages could cover the cost of one's reproductive partner raising a child rather than working.
I imagine the day when Intel goes fabless, perhaps spinning it off like AMD did with Global Foundries. Doing all the die-shrink R&D just for x86 isn't going to be profitable, probably before ARM shrinks become unprofitable (smartphone and PC shipments are both effectively flat, now). We might go back to the days of the 8086, where a certain clock speed is effectively standard, and all that differs is how much RAM your system has. I imagine there will be some DRAM-only shrinks, since it's easier to get running on a new node than processors. Even then, new faster bus versions will emerge (for USB, PCIe, HDMI etc.), display tech will improve, 3D NAND will get more stacks, new types of memory will get more R&D (HMC, HBM, phase-change). So the end of die-shrinks won't be the end of the line for computer tech improvements. Expect larger chips running at lower clocks, and more R&D on exotic architectures like One Instruction Set Computing.
That's almost 5 days' worth of felonies. Too bad 'zero tolerance' replaced 'let the punishment fit the crime.' If he's lucky, the FBI will hire him and get him a shorter/commuted sentence.
I suspect the 'good for 10 launches without refurbishment' is a guesstimate, and they'll disassemble rockets after an increasing number of launches to determine exactly how many they should refurbish after.
The 'error' is due to real hurricanes failing to comply with the NHC's demands. Young, budding hurricanes will be imaged and scrutinized in extreme graphic detail to force the fully-grown hurricanes to step into line. Don't even ASK about the NHC's usage of things like 'spinning', 'blowing' and 'torrential showers' to bend poor hurricanes to their will. What, you thought they did those things of their own free will?! The freedom fighters end up on Youtube, but the revolution will not be televised on The Weather Channel.
You bring up a good point; this is called 'immanentizing the eschaton' in religious circles, and it could lead to interesting changes in religions. If the end-goal of following a religion is eternal life in a great place (heaven), what's the benefit if you know you can live forever on a great Earth?
Dogs are more heavily inbred (the purebreds at least) and thus have more genetic disorders. Some of the breeds are quite expensive, as well. A cat is usually just a Tabby cat, there are few breeds people go out of their way to get, and few owners bother.
The US health care system seems to be doing a pretty good job of preventing that so far, as congress hasn't done much to make life-saving treatments cheaper.
Why a billion? Why not a million? Why stop there, why not a thousand? Actually, a thousand is more than I care for, I can really only have about 200 relationships at one time. We really ought to just be a tribe of 200 humans, any more is pointless. Also, you're assuming you get to be one of those surviving humans rather than one of the billions lying in a mass grave from the purge. Mass forced-sterilizations will be violently opposed; far more likely is people have to decide whether to have children OR to live forever. Many would rather work at a school or day-care center once a week than have children of their own.
That's assuming the rate of accidental death stays the same once disease has been eliminated. Once it's the #2 cause of death (suicide will be #1) then LOTS of effort will be put into reducing accidents. Assume we have self-driving cars by then that cause no accidents. According to a list I found online, drug overdoses, fires, and choking/asphyxiation would then be the major causes of accidental death. Most people die in fires due to smoke inhalation, so that can be rolled in with asphyxiation, which could probably be mitigated by further bioengineering so people can hold their breaths longer. Overdosing can be mitigated by bioengineering, education, modelling of individual metabolism to customize dosage, or some broad replacement for drugs. "I've lived on this land for 500 years and I'm not going to let a volcano/earthquake/wildfire/tornado scare me away" will still be a problem, but umm if someone wants to die 'courageously standing up to mother nature' then they can go straight ahead, I'll chalk it up as 'suicide'.
I'm sure that will work out exactly as well as keeping nuclear weapons secrets. Moreover, most of the research will have been published before it's a viable treatment anyone takes seriously, probably using procedures and theory that have been extensively documented (and made publicly available for years). If they suddenly STOP publishing about a specific avenue of research, and then surprise, immortality drug emerges, it'll be exactly as suspicious as when German and American scientists stopped publishing papers about nuclear fission research, and then surprise, nuclear weapons emerge.
Other countries (socialized medicine anyone?) will develop it independently, and the cat will quickly be out of the bag. You're also ignoring biohackers and home CRISPR kits. People will fly/walk to other countries and risk their lives to get it done, even if secretly in a garage. It's going to be nearly impossible to keep it under control, attempting to do so via legal regulations would backfire hard.
"And we don't believe that 'FIFA Ultimate Team' -- all loot boxes are gambling."
Let me rephrase that as "And we don't believe that 'FIFA Ultimate Team'... all loot boxes, are gambling." As in, we don't believe that FUT nor all loot boxes are gambling. And the submitter parsed this wrong and editorialized his false conclusion. Editors, where art thou?
These games are ostensibly 'skill games'. I.e. there's an element of skill involved, even if it's merely timing. Then again, there's an element of skill in poker, blackjack etc.... These sketchy games can theoretically be won with skill alone, although it's understood that the skill is essentially impossible to rely upon, and thus it is effectively chance.
Oh god now I'm fearing what Borderlands 3 might look like with loot boxes. One enemy camp has 20 loot containers, 10 of which are locked with keys you have to buy with real money; but wait, there are different colored keys which guarantee different minimum rarity levels for the items the key-unlocked containers have.
Slashdot Mirror
Want to kill question headlines forever?
Click here!!
Mutate its way away from danger? How does that work?
Lamarckian Evolution.
Whenever I want to know about the ethics of a megacorporation's activities, I pore over a document on their website. It's all right there in the manual, people! If they pinkie-swear that they'll be the mostest ethicalest conglomerate ever, then goddammit, I believe them!
Obviously, removing a vow to not be evil means they've accepted an ethical continuum where any action taken in a situation containing an ethical problem necessarily involves a certain amount of evil; vowing to do NO evil would necessarily mean taking no action, which is itself an evil action, thereby they are avoiding a double bind.
This is a great argument for why one should use Free Software. Even if the binary were widely available, it'll eventually cease to work properly on modern OSes, or support modern features (codecs, colorspaces, etc.).
144 years?! That's Gross!
but did take a moment to call out flying taxi solutions (like Uber Elevate) right off the bat due to danger and noise.
This seems a bit hypocritical considering about a year ago, Musk was advocating using SpaceX rockets for point-to-point travel on Earth. Pretty sure a rocket is noisier and more dangerous than a quadcopter. If the rocket only takes off and lands in rural areas, it might be less of a danger to those on the ground than a quadcopter flying in an urban area, but is still likely to be more dangerous for the passengers.
All I can hear is "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn". Might be a resonance effect due to my speakers being pentacle-shaped. Or I just haven't cleaned out enough of the blood that oozes out of them periodically...
So what human population size is the objectively perfectly ideal size? If we reach that size, are you sure noone will then argue that it should be a different size?
This seems as pointless as saying 'things should be different' with no explanation.
Incidentally, there was an early 20th-century German eugenics program that paid cash bonuses to college graduates who had children. The theory was that their offspring would be genetically superior to that of the lower classes. I'm skeptical that holds up, but it might have made sense for other reasons.
Today in the USA there are many subsidies for having children (tax breaks, increased welfare/food stamp benefits, child healthcare programs). IMO the most effective subsidy would be on hospital childbirth costs; the costs were ~$25k in the 80s, according to my mom, and I shudder to think of how much they are now.
Also, considering it was proven generations ago that children who are neglected in orphanages develop lower intelligence than those who are adopted, adoption fees should be minimized as well (particularly for older children).
An easy way to improve employment opportunities is to take a large number of people out of the workforce. Given all the time it takes to raise children, perhaps some people who are working could rear children instead. Then, the remaining workers would have employers competing for workers by raising their wages. The increased wages could cover the cost of one's reproductive partner raising a child rather than working.
Gentlemen, I present to you: Domestics!
I imagine the day when Intel goes fabless, perhaps spinning it off like AMD did with Global Foundries. Doing all the die-shrink R&D just for x86 isn't going to be profitable, probably before ARM shrinks become unprofitable (smartphone and PC shipments are both effectively flat, now). We might go back to the days of the 8086, where a certain clock speed is effectively standard, and all that differs is how much RAM your system has. I imagine there will be some DRAM-only shrinks, since it's easier to get running on a new node than processors. Even then, new faster bus versions will emerge (for USB, PCIe, HDMI etc.), display tech will improve, 3D NAND will get more stacks, new types of memory will get more R&D (HMC, HBM, phase-change). So the end of die-shrinks won't be the end of the line for computer tech improvements. Expect larger chips running at lower clocks, and more R&D on exotic architectures like One Instruction Set Computing.
Punishment means, by definition, that it makes an organism less likely to do something in the future.
However, there's no cure for stupid.
That's almost 5 days' worth of felonies. Too bad 'zero tolerance' replaced 'let the punishment fit the crime.'
If he's lucky, the FBI will hire him and get him a shorter/commuted sentence.
I suspect the 'good for 10 launches without refurbishment' is a guesstimate, and they'll disassemble rockets after an increasing number of launches to determine exactly how many they should refurbish after.
The 'error' is due to real hurricanes failing to comply with the NHC's demands. Young, budding hurricanes will be imaged and scrutinized in extreme graphic detail to force the fully-grown hurricanes to step into line. Don't even ASK about the NHC's usage of things like 'spinning', 'blowing' and 'torrential showers' to bend poor hurricanes to their will. What, you thought they did those things of their own free will?! The freedom fighters end up on Youtube, but the revolution will not be televised on The Weather Channel.
You bring up a good point; this is called 'immanentizing the eschaton' in religious circles, and it could lead to interesting changes in religions. If the end-goal of following a religion is eternal life in a great place (heaven), what's the benefit if you know you can live forever on a great Earth?
Dogs are more heavily inbred (the purebreds at least) and thus have more genetic disorders. Some of the breeds are quite expensive, as well. A cat is usually just a Tabby cat, there are few breeds people go out of their way to get, and few owners bother.
The US health care system seems to be doing a pretty good job of preventing that so far, as congress hasn't done much to make life-saving treatments cheaper.
Why a billion? Why not a million? Why stop there, why not a thousand? Actually, a thousand is more than I care for, I can really only have about 200 relationships at one time. We really ought to just be a tribe of 200 humans, any more is pointless.
Also, you're assuming you get to be one of those surviving humans rather than one of the billions lying in a mass grave from the purge. Mass forced-sterilizations will be violently opposed; far more likely is people have to decide whether to have children OR to live forever. Many would rather work at a school or day-care center once a week than have children of their own.
That's assuming the rate of accidental death stays the same once disease has been eliminated. Once it's the #2 cause of death (suicide will be #1) then LOTS of effort will be put into reducing accidents. Assume we have self-driving cars by then that cause no accidents. According to a list I found online, drug overdoses, fires, and choking/asphyxiation would then be the major causes of accidental death. Most people die in fires due to smoke inhalation, so that can be rolled in with asphyxiation, which could probably be mitigated by further bioengineering so people can hold their breaths longer. Overdosing can be mitigated by bioengineering, education, modelling of individual metabolism to customize dosage, or some broad replacement for drugs.
"I've lived on this land for 500 years and I'm not going to let a volcano/earthquake/wildfire/tornado scare me away" will still be a problem, but umm if someone wants to die 'courageously standing up to mother nature' then they can go straight ahead, I'll chalk it up as 'suicide'.
I'm sure that will work out exactly as well as keeping nuclear weapons secrets. Moreover, most of the research will have been published before it's a viable treatment anyone takes seriously, probably using procedures and theory that have been extensively documented (and made publicly available for years). If they suddenly STOP publishing about a specific avenue of research, and then surprise, immortality drug emerges, it'll be exactly as suspicious as when German and American scientists stopped publishing papers about nuclear fission research, and then surprise, nuclear weapons emerge.
Other countries (socialized medicine anyone?) will develop it independently, and the cat will quickly be out of the bag. You're also ignoring biohackers and home CRISPR kits. People will fly/walk to other countries and risk their lives to get it done, even if secretly in a garage. It's going to be nearly impossible to keep it under control, attempting to do so via legal regulations would backfire hard.
The confusion is due to this ambiguous line:
"And we don't believe that 'FIFA Ultimate Team' -- all loot boxes are gambling."
Let me rephrase that as "And we don't believe that 'FIFA Ultimate Team' ... all loot boxes, are gambling."
As in, we don't believe that FUT nor all loot boxes are gambling.
And the submitter parsed this wrong and editorialized his false conclusion. Editors, where art thou?
These games are ostensibly 'skill games'. I.e. there's an element of skill involved, even if it's merely timing. Then again, there's an element of skill in poker, blackjack etc. ...
These sketchy games can theoretically be won with skill alone, although it's understood that the skill is essentially impossible to rely upon, and thus it is effectively chance.
I have a feeling 'stop buying those games' has been about as effective as 'stop voting in incompetent/corrupt politicians'.
Oh god now I'm fearing what Borderlands 3 might look like with loot boxes. One enemy camp has 20 loot containers, 10 of which are locked with keys you have to buy with real money; but wait, there are different colored keys which guarantee different minimum rarity levels for the items the key-unlocked containers have.