Gas is gas. People need a certain amount, and there is no substitute. In the long term they might react to higher prices by buying a more efficient car, but there is nothing they can do immediately. Drinks, though, come in many forms. If the sugar solution costs more, it's easy for people to react to this disincentive by just buying a less energy-laden alternative.
Criminals need to track their business too. How do you think they did it? Just like a legal business they have costs and expenses, clients and accounts.
Those actually made sense at the time. You just need to think religiously to follow it. If heretics are damned to eternal torment, then their attempts to convince others to join there heresy are a crime far worse than mere murder. They must be silenced, for the good of society, to prevent them from dragging and more gullable souls to Hell.
Most of Europe doesn't have prostitution entirely legal, parts of Holland being the exception. The exact situation varies. In the UK, for example, it is not illegal to accept money for sex - but it is illegal to *give* money for sex. The theory behind this is that the prostitutes themselves are victims of circumstance, and to make them criminals would render them unable to seek the help they need, while the johns are the real criminals and deserve to be jailed for their immorality. It's also illegal to 'live off the proceeds of prostitution' - a legal term for being a pimp - or to run a brothel. In practice this means that while the prostitutes themselves are not criminals, they are still forced to operate underground and unable to organise for mutual protection. Occasionally there is a little public discussion about reform, either tightening or loosening, but this is an issue that the government doesn't want to touch with a barge pole.
Everyone pays for medical costs. In a private system, people pay via higher insurance premiums. In a public system, people pay via higher taxes. Either way, the cost has to be spread around - otherwise everyone is just one incident of accident or illness away from financial ruin.
Because fighting instincts is hard. Telling people they just need to control their diet is about as effective as abstinance-only sex education. An effective response needs to examine the underlying instinct and either find a way to make it easier to control, or allow people to indulge while removing the negative consequences of doing so.
People crave sugar because it kept their ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors alive. Those who sought and consumed high energy foods when they were available stored up energy to last them through the harsh times. This continues into modern times. Humans are genetically programmed to desire foods laden with fat and sugar above all else. All that has changed is the availability - where those ancestors would have had to search for unpicked fruit or brave the bees to steal honey, modern man just guzzles down coke whenever he wants to. He always wants to.
"we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable consequences."
If I read that right, they mean that their analysis can only conclude either that the universe is a simulation, or that it is either not a simulation or a simulation too accurate to tell via their method. It can't actually prove that the universe is *not* a simulation.
Looks like no need for elaborate and expensive equipment though - just a way to measure the energy of cosmic rays - so why not give it a try?
It's a useful proxy for 'does anyone with money care' - an indirect plutocracy. Then you end up with people on Slashdot complaining that any company with enough money is able to openly buy whatever legislation they want, regardless of the public's view on the matter.
Obama: I want to close Gitmo, and get the prisoners tried in a civilian court.
CIA Director: Yeah... look, that's not going to happen. We've a few skeletons in the closet there. If you did that, it'd be embarassing when they got out. I'm afraid that even if you ordered it, we'd have to stall for months. It's just reflect badly on you.
Democratic congressmen: A nice idea, but the republicans would tear us up on national security if we supported that. We've got elections in two years. Sorry, but we'd have to vote against any bill to do so.
Obama: Oh.
The gun argument might work better in countries with both stricted gun control and more popular support for that gun control. Like the UK, for example.
If you want to see a real political consultation, try looking at the one over the proposed introduction of opt-out pornography filtering on all UK internet connections. I tried to respond, but it was written like a parody of surveying. Most of the questions were multible choice, and every option available was in support of the filtering - it was quite literally impossible to object on those questions! I was half-expecting the final question to be 'Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes/no.' There were a few fields to enter textual answers in, but given how the multible-choice questions were obviously so intentionally biased in favor of filtering I would imagine that whatever process is used to analyse the text is designed in a similar way to exclude any objections.
A lot would depend on who wrote the civics test. Remember that a lot of aspects of the US legal and political system are still the subject of much debate both in legal and popular forums, usually with both sides insisting with utter conviction that their own interpretation is clearly the correct one and anyone with half a brain should be able to see this. How highly one scores on a civics test would depend largely on how well one agrees with whoever wrote said test.
But in the case of 2), whoever sets the details of the voteing policy is going to wield a lot of power. Like digital gerrymandering. Even a purely administrative body could easily tilt the rules to strongly favor one side over another.
Middle of what? Is it a region in the middle of the known world, with Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Earth on the sides? Middle era? Some aspect of the native's religion, viewing it as the middle ground between their versions of heaven and hell? Because I havn't the faintest idea, and I care not enough to google.
Analog vs digital doesn't matter in this context. A digital system with sufficient precision can replicate an analog system closely enough to be indistinguishable. It'll take a lot more than one bit to represent the state of a neuron, but the number of bits needed is finite. Building a computer that can do so is just an engineering challenge, and programming it a task for biologists and mathematicians - but none of it requires revolutionary new visions of how biology or physics works. Just a vast improvement in our understanding of things we can partway-understand already.
"in order to prove that human nature is mechanistic and reducible to mere information."
But what if Kurzweil is *right* in that claim? Lanier is doing what so many philsophers do: Defending the 'magic' in mankind, without considering that the magic he defends may not exist at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Different cultural basis. People got better at lying to themselves.
Gas is gas. People need a certain amount, and there is no substitute. In the long term they might react to higher prices by buying a more efficient car, but there is nothing they can do immediately. Drinks, though, come in many forms. If the sugar solution costs more, it's easy for people to react to this disincentive by just buying a less energy-laden alternative.
Hah. In several states, it's a criminal offense to sell a dildo. Really. Texas and Alabama certainly, and I think a few more besides that I forget.
Criminals need to track their business too. How do you think they did it? Just like a legal business they have costs and expenses, clients and accounts.
Those actually made sense at the time. You just need to think religiously to follow it. If heretics are damned to eternal torment, then their attempts to convince others to join there heresy are a crime far worse than mere murder. They must be silenced, for the good of society, to prevent them from dragging and more gullable souls to Hell.
Same in the UK. Buying is illegal, selling isn't.
Most of Europe doesn't have prostitution entirely legal, parts of Holland being the exception. The exact situation varies. In the UK, for example, it is not illegal to accept money for sex - but it is illegal to *give* money for sex. The theory behind this is that the prostitutes themselves are victims of circumstance, and to make them criminals would render them unable to seek the help they need, while the johns are the real criminals and deserve to be jailed for their immorality. It's also illegal to 'live off the proceeds of prostitution' - a legal term for being a pimp - or to run a brothel. In practice this means that while the prostitutes themselves are not criminals, they are still forced to operate underground and unable to organise for mutual protection. Occasionally there is a little public discussion about reform, either tightening or loosening, but this is an issue that the government doesn't want to touch with a barge pole.
Everyone pays for medical costs. In a private system, people pay via higher insurance premiums. In a public system, people pay via higher taxes. Either way, the cost has to be spread around - otherwise everyone is just one incident of accident or illness away from financial ruin.
Or possibly Saved by the Bell.
Because fighting instincts is hard. Telling people they just need to control their diet is about as effective as abstinance-only sex education. An effective response needs to examine the underlying instinct and either find a way to make it easier to control, or allow people to indulge while removing the negative consequences of doing so.
People crave sugar because it kept their ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors alive. Those who sought and consumed high energy foods when they were available stored up energy to last them through the harsh times. This continues into modern times. Humans are genetically programmed to desire foods laden with fat and sugar above all else. All that has changed is the availability - where those ancestors would have had to search for unpicked fruit or brave the bees to steal honey, modern man just guzzles down coke whenever he wants to. He always wants to.
"we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable consequences."
If I read that right, they mean that their analysis can only conclude either that the universe is a simulation, or that it is either not a simulation or a simulation too accurate to tell via their method. It can't actually prove that the universe is *not* a simulation.
Looks like no need for elaborate and expensive equipment though - just a way to measure the energy of cosmic rays - so why not give it a try?
It's a useful proxy for 'does anyone with money care' - an indirect plutocracy. Then you end up with people on Slashdot complaining that any company with enough money is able to openly buy whatever legislation they want, regardless of the public's view on the matter.
I suspect actually lots of mini-conspiracies.
Obama: I want to close Gitmo, and get the prisoners tried in a civilian court.
CIA Director: Yeah... look, that's not going to happen. We've a few skeletons in the closet there. If you did that, it'd be embarassing when they got out. I'm afraid that even if you ordered it, we'd have to stall for months. It's just reflect badly on you.
Democratic congressmen: A nice idea, but the republicans would tear us up on national security if we supported that. We've got elections in two years. Sorry, but we'd have to vote against any bill to do so.
Obama: Oh.
The gun argument might work better in countries with both stricted gun control and more popular support for that gun control. Like the UK, for example.
Printing guns isn't practical, true. The closest realistic use I can see would be printing components required to reactivate deactivated guns.
A Colgate toothbrush is probably protected by copyright, patent and trademark law. All at once. Now all they need to do is work trade secret in too.
If you want to see a real political consultation, try looking at the one over the proposed introduction of opt-out pornography filtering on all UK internet connections. I tried to respond, but it was written like a parody of surveying. Most of the questions were multible choice, and every option available was in support of the filtering - it was quite literally impossible to object on those questions! I was half-expecting the final question to be 'Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes/no.' There were a few fields to enter textual answers in, but given how the multible-choice questions were obviously so intentionally biased in favor of filtering I would imagine that whatever process is used to analyse the text is designed in a similar way to exclude any objections.
A lot would depend on who wrote the civics test. Remember that a lot of aspects of the US legal and political system are still the subject of much debate both in legal and popular forums, usually with both sides insisting with utter conviction that their own interpretation is clearly the correct one and anyone with half a brain should be able to see this. How highly one scores on a civics test would depend largely on how well one agrees with whoever wrote said test.
Espicially Microsoft, for whome RAND means 'license incompatible with open source.'
But in the case of 2), whoever sets the details of the voteing policy is going to wield a lot of power. Like digital gerrymandering. Even a purely administrative body could easily tilt the rules to strongly favor one side over another.
Why is it called Middle Earth?
Middle of what? Is it a region in the middle of the known world, with Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Earth on the sides? Middle era? Some aspect of the native's religion, viewing it as the middle ground between their versions of heaven and hell? Because I havn't the faintest idea, and I care not enough to google.
Analog vs digital doesn't matter in this context. A digital system with sufficient precision can replicate an analog system closely enough to be indistinguishable. It'll take a lot more than one bit to represent the state of a neuron, but the number of bits needed is finite. Building a computer that can do so is just an engineering challenge, and programming it a task for biologists and mathematicians - but none of it requires revolutionary new visions of how biology or physics works. Just a vast improvement in our understanding of things we can partway-understand already.
None has been built yet. That does not mean that one cannot be built, in princible. Only that doing so is beyond current understanding.
"in order to prove that human nature is mechanistic and reducible to mere information."
But what if Kurzweil is *right* in that claim? Lanier is doing what so many philsophers do: Defending the 'magic' in mankind, without considering that the magic he defends may not exist at all.