Finally, my "unavoidable consequence" has been borne out again and again in nations that have "guaranteed" certain freedoms for their people.
But almost all western democracies practise gun control, and certainly on assault weapons, but none of your consequences have come about there. It seems obvious from the empirical evidence that gun control does not lead to oppression.
See, all you do with this 'plan' is open up the black markets for such items. Just because these weapons are tightly regulated doesn't mean no one will be able to get them. All it means, like any other gun control plan, is that the outlaws will be armed and the general population will not.
This would be more likely if it wasn't obviously contradicted by reality. Gun control not only works but is a no-brainer in most western countries. Criminals here are not armed to the teeth, they have much smaller and fewer weapons than in the US, and the damage they do is proportionally smaller. Moreover, when people go insane here they can't just take their assault rifle to work and start mowing people down, because they don't have one. They can take a steel pipe or a knife, but the harm they are able to make is considerably smaller that way. In short, getting rid of gun control so that ordinary citizens can defend themselves against criminals sounds like lunacy if you live in a country that actually has gun control.
If such a plan were workable, then there would be no terrorism, since those terrorists wouldn't be able to get their explosives and assault weapons.
Obviously what they need in Iraq is more gun control, not less, and I do believe that is exactly what the US and Iraqi forces are trying to accomplish.
You're missing the point. The libertarian stand isn't so much 'anti-gun-control' as it is 'pro-freedom' and 'pro-personal-responsibility'.
I'm not missing the point, I'm disagreeing with it.
The biggest problem with your post is the attitude that protecting people from 'Timmy' is more important than protecting liberty.
No, the problem with the fanatical libertarian stance is that it's more important to protect an abstract concept that is philosophically problematic at best and incomprehensible at worst than to protect the lives of actual, living people.
Also, while I disagree with their cause, the terrorists we're currently fighting in Iraq are proof positive that an armed population does have a chance against the military. Shit.. The sheer existence of America at all is proof positive... Your pessimism in regard to the escape from government oppression is exactly the reason it has been able to happen.
So the Iraqi insurgents are not just another armed contingent that is a threat to the Iraqi population, they're actually the Iraqi population defending themselves against an oppressive US presence? As I said, armed militias tend to just become another threat to the citizens, not their defenders. I think Iraq is evidence in my favor. Moreover, they are actually old military, not just private citizens with guns, and if they were acting inside the US (that is, against their own government rather than an outside force) do you really think they would stand a chance?
Shit.. The sheer existence of America at all is proof positive...
The French military defeated England (who was fighting on multiple fronts at the time), the homegrown terrorists couldn't have won without their money, guns, and soldiers.
Ignoring the 800-pound gorilla that is the question of access to an effective means of self-defense being a basic human right...
The problem with "basic human rights" is that if I don't agree that it is one there isn't much you can do to convince me. An ability to defend yourself is often desirable, but that doesn't make it a "basic human right." It's desirable for pragmatic reasons, and whatever you can do to lessen the threat is a solution. Not handing out assault weapons to people on drugs is one way to go.
We're talking about the United States, where this total-control-of-the-weapons scenario is impossible to achieve if for no other reason than the sheer size of the place.
Always the "the US is different" argument. Sorry, I believe you are wrong. If European countries can implement gun control effectively, then so can US states.
Cute. But if superior firepower was all you needed to effectively subdue a population, we'd have had Iraq all wrapped up two years ago.
I guess this means that you think the US has no right to take the weapons from the insurgents in Iraq? After all, they are just defending themselves. You can't very well justify US actions with that the insurgents have committed crimes, that excuse would work for any government at any time and would make gun rights moot, since you couldn't rightfully use them against the government anyway.
Timmy the meth head, because he breaks societal norms by taking drugs and ruining his own life (nothing in the parent posts indicate that he has done any direct harm to any other "citizen") automatically relinquishes all other "rights"...
No, not because he "breaks societal norms," because you want to not put a grenade launcher in the hands of someone who is hallucinating. Is this hard to understand? Also, no one has said anything about "all other rights," as far as I'm aware. Of course, in my world owning an assault weapon is not a right that anyone has, so Tim would have the same right as everyone else in this respect.
but let's look at the other extreme.
Why do you think we have to choose between extremes?
Ban all guns. Only the gov't gets guns. Ban all drugs. Regulate the movement of all "suspicious" persons (to prevent "sneaking") regardless of their having committed any previous harmful act. That means set up armed "checkpoints" and ensure people have "papers" to cross boundaries. Go "preemptive" on their asses and make an example out of every person who is "statistically" more likely to become violent. [...]
So all this is in your head an unavoidable consequence of not letting people on drugs have access to assault weapons? Wow. (A more rude person might ask what you have been smoking.) It just confirms my theory that libertarianism is at the end of a day simply a very poor theory about how the world works.
I can't believe someone is still going on about the anonymity of the Internet, when people are being charged with copyright infringement for sharing media files from their computers and the police arrest child porn distributors every week. I think most people have understood that unless you are using some anonymous account on a remote computer, you are not anonymous on the net.
This Article tells of an Orwellian chip that, once installed in your computer (and not by your choice), will allow any website you visit to "read" your identity.
TPM authentication is not likely to become part of the HTTP protocol, so supposedly some kind of software must run on my machine for others to identify me. That's what TFA means when it says it's ultimately up to the user if they want to be identified or not, so enough with the hysterics, please.
At least, under a libertarian scenario, some of his victims might be able to shoot him before he shoots them, instead of waiting 15-60 minutes for the cops.
Except if he sneaks up on them from behind, or they are children or very old people, or his gun has greater range than theirs... It amazes me that this even passes for a "plan" in libertarian circles, it's so pathetic. But yeah, that's exactly the kind of world where I want my children to grow up, ha ha!
Where I live Timmy would have some serious problems getting an assault weapon from his shady friends, because we control access to these weapons tightly. No civilian ever has a right to own one under any circumstances. Ever. It means the police don't need them because their antagonists don't have them, so the only source for assault weapons is the military, which usually manages to keep them locked up. It's not 100%, but it still means that it's hard to get one. This of course means that the citizens can't defeat the military if necessary, but neither can they in any possible world, unless the citizens have tanks, gunships, and attack jets with airports, fuel, ammo, personel, etc. Which of course just becomes another military organization that can be turned against the people.
Just face it, if your military wants to conquer its own population, it's going to. Unless of course France steps in and saves your asses again, he he!
That's about the only situation Timmy could USE such a weapon though.
I guess you missed the part where he is a meth head?
That it's illegal won't stop Timmy from wreaking havoc with his arsenal (since he is a meth head), and his sentence won't bring back to life the ones he killed. So what you are saying is that in this libertarian world there exists no system for preventing mentally unstable people like Timmy the Meth Head from slaughtering innocent people. That's a problem.
Yes, because we know for sure that everyone who will ever have access to this information will be good, honest, and not interested in oppressing people for (for example) their political views or ethnic background...:-/
This is a myth (with some real-world basis) about the Perl language that comes from that most people who have written Perl programs aren't Perl programmers. They're C programmers or Java programmers who need a quick fix for something. Perl programmers actually write as maintainable code as anyone else. It's not mostly up to the language, and there is nothing stopping you from writing maintainable code in Perl. The point where the myth is somewhat factual is in that it is actually possible for a Java programmer to pick up Perl, write a quick hack in "baby Perl," and it will probably do the job. This is a feature of Perl. It leads to more crap code, but according to the Perl philosophy, it's worth it for pragmatic reasons.
Re:Java takes up the COBOL banner 'Java-Correctnes
on
Java Is So 90s
·
· Score: 1
By contrast, I believe that Giudo keeps python as open as humanly possible.
A good point, but the true example of an open-ended philosophy surely is Perl? "There Is More Than A Dozen Ways To Do It"? "Everything to Everybody"? The idea that in Perl, people don't refrain from doing stuff because it's impossible, but because it's bad form. (LW compared to not entering someone's house through the window even if it doesn't have bars.) Also, LW's interest in natural languages and how they develop, and how it should be possible to speak "baby Perl" and still accomplish something. Perl is the diametrical opposite of Java strictness, for good and bad. (Mostly good, in my world.)
Btw, is Perl still the only language with anaphoric and cataphoric pronouns?:-)
Well, in that case "security by obscurity" would not be a bad thing, but a rather meaningless term describing all imaginable security systems. =) If that's what you believe you just need to learn what the expression actually refers to:
"In cryptography and computer security, security through obscurity (sometimes security by obscurity) is to some a controversial principle in security engineering, which attempts to use secrecy (of design, implementation, etc.) to ensure security. A system relying on security through obscurity may have theoretical or actual security vulnerabilities, but its owners or designers believe that the flaws are not known, and that attackers are unlikely to find them. For example, if somebody stores a spare key under the doormat in case they are locked out of the house, then they are relying on security through obscurity." Wikipedia
If you are to guess a 50/50 state without any clues whatever, why listen in at all? You know it has to be a 1 or a 0, you don't need to actually be connected to the system for that. So just guess away. If it works, you have just cracked every conceivable system of encryption, and no tools or physical access to the message necessary!
As for "several thousand combinations"... After the first 32 bits of information you have 4,294,967,296 possibilities, so I hope you are a good guesser.:-)
What can be done to protect consumers without stifling the technological innovation that we all know is so important?
Has this Microsoft line become common wisdom now? Assuming that technological innovation is that important, it still does not need huge conglomerates to happen.
Just curious, do you have any data to support this?
It's just derived from common sense:
How many products do you buy every week? How many of them do you research in review magazines? How many even appear in such magazines?
I agree that when you buy a car, you take a good look around, and also when you buy a house or a boat, but those are extreme cases. How many read the magazine reviews before buying a stereo or a TV? Certainly not everyone, I would guess less than 50% (but it's just a guess). What about when you buy shoes? Or toothpaste, or baked beans?
Compare this to the amount of advertising we are exposed to and that we can't avoid. Don't you think that for the vast majority of products that we consume, "brand awareness" is a lot more important that consumer test reports?
Buy the product
Discover it sucks
Return the product
If the system is to work it's not that we need to know that the product sucks absolutely but that it's not the best value for money. With no other information, you can't know this without trying the alternatives. But even if there are true alternatives, that may be expensive and inconvenient. Meanwhile the advertising keeps feeding us easily digestible "arguments" to buy one product or another.
That's a valid point, but it's also why I said "most of the time." A fraction of consumers read reviews about a fraction of the products they buy. Other purchases are made more spontaneously, probably based much on availability and brand awareness.
Competition is supposedly what makes the free market work in favor of customers, so let's take a closer look at it.
The goal of competition is to end all competition Every company wants to be in a position where you have to buy their product. No matter how often a product manager or marketing executive tells you that competition is good for them, their real dream situation is of course a monopoly. Just look at the companies that are or have been there, and how they cling to it. It makes perfect sense, competition is not their goal, sales are. One common way of achieving this is through consolidation, where you end up with a dozen brands but only a few actual producers. It may look like competition, but it's just different brands from the same producer.
It doesn't happen as often as you think There are very few products on the market that compete head on. It's the explicit job of the product manager (I've been one) to find the "niche" for his products, to make sure that they do not compete head on with someone else, to find a slightly different demographic, a different price range, a different geographic location. Differentiation is the key, and the purpose is to avoid head-on competition.
Consumers don't make informed choices most of the time For consumers to be able to "vote with the wallet" (this feature is supposedly what makes a deregulated market good) they need to be able to make informed choices. But no company is compelled to inform their customers, only to persuade them. Hence all the marketing BS that we are constantly exposed to, and that is also why the one with the biggest marketing budget wins, not the one with the best product. This doesn't benefit consumers.
A totally unregulated market is perhaps the best choice for your local bakery stores, but for large corporations regulation is needed to protect the consumers by ensuring that competition actually is taking place. Competition is a consumer interest, not a corporation one.
One common theme is obvious in many of the previous posts. It's the idea that intelligence is something that "appears" when a certain level of complexity or other necessary criterion (such as having a soul) is accomplished. As if there is a threshold, that once it is crossed switches on sentience, emotion, an autonomous mind with free will and all that comes with it. But as far as conventional science understands minds, there is no "Frankenstein moment." Intelligence is a matter of degrees, from the lowest life forms to whatever we decide to measure. Finding true intelligence in machines is a matter of broadening our definitions, not of coming up with new algorithms.
This is a press release, uncommented, unresearched. Anyone can claim anything, and will, if it gets them some free publicity. This is not news by any measure, it's pure hype. I have noticed that the Slashdot editors tend to have problems telling the difference.
As has been pointed out in a previous post, "calling moondust toxic because it can cause silicosis is like calling water toxic because you can drown in it." Moondust, it seems clear, also does not "bounce like a cannonball." Nothing bounces like a cannonball, just like nothing "oscillates like a cloud," or "crows like a football." In the light of these observations, I'm not quite convinced that it really is dust, or that it comes from the moon. Anyway, I'd like to nominate this for the Worst Headline 2005 Award.
On a different note now, silica dust seems to me like it'd be basically glass or ceramic powder, and it makes intuitive sense that powdered glass would be very bad for the lungs.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally, my "unavoidable consequence" has been borne out again and again in nations that have "guaranteed" certain freedoms for their people.
But almost all western democracies practise gun control, and certainly on assault weapons, but none of your consequences have come about there. It seems obvious from the empirical evidence that gun control does not lead to oppression.
See, all you do with this 'plan' is open up the black markets for such items. Just because these weapons are tightly regulated doesn't mean no one will be able to get them. All it means, like any other gun control plan, is that the outlaws will be armed and the general population will not.
This would be more likely if it wasn't obviously contradicted by reality. Gun control not only works but is a no-brainer in most western countries. Criminals here are not armed to the teeth, they have much smaller and fewer weapons than in the US, and the damage they do is proportionally smaller. Moreover, when people go insane here they can't just take their assault rifle to work and start mowing people down, because they don't have one. They can take a steel pipe or a knife, but the harm they are able to make is considerably smaller that way. In short, getting rid of gun control so that ordinary citizens can defend themselves against criminals sounds like lunacy if you live in a country that actually has gun control.
If such a plan were workable, then there would be no terrorism, since those terrorists wouldn't be able to get their explosives and assault weapons.
Obviously what they need in Iraq is more gun control, not less, and I do believe that is exactly what the US and Iraqi forces are trying to accomplish.
You're missing the point. The libertarian stand isn't so much 'anti-gun-control' as it is 'pro-freedom' and 'pro-personal-responsibility'.
I'm not missing the point, I'm disagreeing with it.
The biggest problem with your post is the attitude that protecting people from 'Timmy' is more important than protecting liberty.
No, the problem with the fanatical libertarian stance is that it's more important to protect an abstract concept that is philosophically problematic at best and incomprehensible at worst than to protect the lives of actual, living people.
Also, while I disagree with their cause, the terrorists we're currently fighting in Iraq are proof positive that an armed population does have a chance against the military. Shit.. The sheer existence of America at all is proof positive... Your pessimism in regard to the escape from government oppression is exactly the reason it has been able to happen.
So the Iraqi insurgents are not just another armed contingent that is a threat to the Iraqi population, they're actually the Iraqi population defending themselves against an oppressive US presence? As I said, armed militias tend to just become another threat to the citizens, not their defenders. I think Iraq is evidence in my favor. Moreover, they are actually old military, not just private citizens with guns, and if they were acting inside the US (that is, against their own government rather than an outside force) do you really think they would stand a chance?
Shit.. The sheer existence of America at all is proof positive...
The French military defeated England (who was fighting on multiple fronts at the time), the homegrown terrorists couldn't have won without their money, guns, and soldiers.
Ignoring the 800-pound gorilla that is the question of access to an effective means of self-defense being a basic human right...
The problem with "basic human rights" is that if I don't agree that it is one there isn't much you can do to convince me. An ability to defend yourself is often desirable, but that doesn't make it a "basic human right." It's desirable for pragmatic reasons, and whatever you can do to lessen the threat is a solution. Not handing out assault weapons to people on drugs is one way to go.
We're talking about the United States, where this total-control-of-the-weapons scenario is impossible to achieve if for no other reason than the sheer size of the place.
Always the "the US is different" argument. Sorry, I believe you are wrong. If European countries can implement gun control effectively, then so can US states.
Cute. But if superior firepower was all you needed to effectively subdue a population, we'd have had Iraq all wrapped up two years ago.
I guess this means that you think the US has no right to take the weapons from the insurgents in Iraq? After all, they are just defending themselves. You can't very well justify US actions with that the insurgents have committed crimes, that excuse would work for any government at any time and would make gun rights moot, since you couldn't rightfully use them against the government anyway.
Timmy the meth head, because he breaks societal norms by taking drugs and ruining his own life (nothing in the parent posts indicate that he has done any direct harm to any other "citizen") automatically relinquishes all other "rights"...
No, not because he "breaks societal norms," because you want to not put a grenade launcher in the hands of someone who is hallucinating. Is this hard to understand? Also, no one has said anything about "all other rights," as far as I'm aware. Of course, in my world owning an assault weapon is not a right that anyone has, so Tim would have the same right as everyone else in this respect.
but let's look at the other extreme.
Why do you think we have to choose between extremes?
Ban all guns. Only the gov't gets guns. Ban all drugs. Regulate the movement of all "suspicious" persons (to prevent "sneaking") regardless of their having committed any previous harmful act. That means set up armed "checkpoints" and ensure people have "papers" to cross boundaries. Go "preemptive" on their asses and make an example out of every person who is "statistically" more likely to become violent. [...]
So all this is in your head an unavoidable consequence of not letting people on drugs have access to assault weapons? Wow. (A more rude person might ask what you have been smoking.) It just confirms my theory that libertarianism is at the end of a day simply a very poor theory about how the world works.
I can't believe someone is still going on about the anonymity of the Internet, when people are being charged with copyright infringement for sharing media files from their computers and the police arrest child porn distributors every week. I think most people have understood that unless you are using some anonymous account on a remote computer, you are not anonymous on the net.
This Article tells of an Orwellian chip that, once installed in your computer (and not by your choice), will allow any website you visit to "read" your identity.
TPM authentication is not likely to become part of the HTTP protocol, so supposedly some kind of software must run on my machine for others to identify me. That's what TFA means when it says it's ultimately up to the user if they want to be identified or not, so enough with the hysterics, please.
At least, under a libertarian scenario, some of his victims might be able to shoot him before he shoots them, instead of waiting 15-60 minutes for the cops.
Except if he sneaks up on them from behind, or they are children or very old people, or his gun has greater range than theirs... It amazes me that this even passes for a "plan" in libertarian circles, it's so pathetic. But yeah, that's exactly the kind of world where I want my children to grow up, ha ha!
Where I live Timmy would have some serious problems getting an assault weapon from his shady friends, because we control access to these weapons tightly. No civilian ever has a right to own one under any circumstances. Ever. It means the police don't need them because their antagonists don't have them, so the only source for assault weapons is the military, which usually manages to keep them locked up. It's not 100%, but it still means that it's hard to get one. This of course means that the citizens can't defeat the military if necessary, but neither can they in any possible world, unless the citizens have tanks, gunships, and attack jets with airports, fuel, ammo, personel, etc. Which of course just becomes another military organization that can be turned against the people.
Just face it, if your military wants to conquer its own population, it's going to. Unless of course France steps in and saves your asses again, he he!
That's about the only situation Timmy could USE such a weapon though.
I guess you missed the part where he is a meth head?
That it's illegal won't stop Timmy from wreaking havoc with his arsenal (since he is a meth head), and his sentence won't bring back to life the ones he killed. So what you are saying is that in this libertarian world there exists no system for preventing mentally unstable people like Timmy the Meth Head from slaughtering innocent people. That's a problem.
Yes, because we know for sure that everyone who will ever have access to this information will be good, honest, and not interested in oppressing people for (for example) their political views or ethnic background... :-/
This is a myth (with some real-world basis) about the Perl language that comes from that most people who have written Perl programs aren't Perl programmers. They're C programmers or Java programmers who need a quick fix for something. Perl programmers actually write as maintainable code as anyone else. It's not mostly up to the language, and there is nothing stopping you from writing maintainable code in Perl. The point where the myth is somewhat factual is in that it is actually possible for a Java programmer to pick up Perl, write a quick hack in "baby Perl," and it will probably do the job. This is a feature of Perl. It leads to more crap code, but according to the Perl philosophy, it's worth it for pragmatic reasons.
It's been around at least since 2000.
LAMP: The Open Source Web Platform
By contrast, I believe that Giudo keeps python as open as humanly possible.
:-)
A good point, but the true example of an open-ended philosophy surely is Perl? "There Is More Than A Dozen Ways To Do It"? "Everything to Everybody"? The idea that in Perl, people don't refrain from doing stuff because it's impossible, but because it's bad form. (LW compared to not entering someone's house through the window even if it doesn't have bars.) Also, LW's interest in natural languages and how they develop, and how it should be possible to speak "baby Perl" and still accomplish something. Perl is the diametrical opposite of Java strictness, for good and bad. (Mostly good, in my world.)
Btw, is Perl still the only language with anaphoric and cataphoric pronouns?
"I understand what is traditionally means.."
Then what are you going on about? Your changing the meaning of the expression simply serves to make it useless for communication, nothing more.
Well, in that case "security by obscurity" would not be a bad thing, but a rather meaningless term describing all imaginable security systems. =) If that's what you believe you just need to learn what the expression actually refers to:
"In cryptography and computer security, security through obscurity (sometimes security by obscurity) is to some a controversial principle in security engineering, which attempts to use secrecy (of design, implementation, etc.) to ensure security. A system relying on security through obscurity may have theoretical or actual security vulnerabilities, but its owners or designers believe that the flaws are not known, and that attackers are unlikely to find them.
For example, if somebody stores a spare key under the doormat in case they are locked out of the house, then they are relying on security through obscurity."
Wikipedia
Using a secret key is not really "security by obscurity"...
If you are to guess a 50/50 state without any clues whatever, why listen in at all? You know it has to be a 1 or a 0, you don't need to actually be connected to the system for that. So just guess away. If it works, you have just cracked every conceivable system of encryption, and no tools or physical access to the message necessary!
:-)
As for "several thousand combinations"... After the first 32 bits of information you have 4,294,967,296 possibilities, so I hope you are a good guesser.
What can be done to protect consumers without stifling the technological innovation that we all know is so important?
Has this Microsoft line become common wisdom now? Assuming that technological innovation is that important, it still does not need huge conglomerates to happen.
It's just derived from common sense:
How many products do you buy every week? How many of them do you research in review magazines? How many even appear in such magazines?
I agree that when you buy a car, you take a good look around, and also when you buy a house or a boat, but those are extreme cases. How many read the magazine reviews before buying a stereo or a TV? Certainly not everyone, I would guess less than 50% (but it's just a guess). What about when you buy shoes? Or toothpaste, or baked beans?
Compare this to the amount of advertising we are exposed to and that we can't avoid. Don't you think that for the vast majority of products that we consume, "brand awareness" is a lot more important that consumer test reports?
If the system is to work it's not that we need to know that the product sucks absolutely but that it's not the best value for money. With no other information, you can't know this without trying the alternatives. But even if there are true alternatives, that may be expensive and inconvenient. Meanwhile the advertising keeps feeding us easily digestible "arguments" to buy one product or another.
That's a valid point, but it's also why I said "most of the time." A fraction of consumers read reviews about a fraction of the products they buy. Other purchases are made more spontaneously, probably based much on availability and brand awareness.
Competition is supposedly what makes the free market work in favor of customers, so let's take a closer look at it.
The goal of competition is to end all competition
Every company wants to be in a position where you have to buy their product. No matter how often a product manager or marketing executive tells you that competition is good for them, their real dream situation is of course a monopoly. Just look at the companies that are or have been there, and how they cling to it. It makes perfect sense, competition is not their goal, sales are. One common way of achieving this is through consolidation, where you end up with a dozen brands but only a few actual producers. It may look like competition, but it's just different brands from the same producer.
It doesn't happen as often as you think
There are very few products on the market that compete head on. It's the explicit job of the product manager (I've been one) to find the "niche" for his products, to make sure that they do not compete head on with someone else, to find a slightly different demographic, a different price range, a different geographic location. Differentiation is the key, and the purpose is to avoid head-on competition.
Consumers don't make informed choices most of the time
For consumers to be able to "vote with the wallet" (this feature is supposedly what makes a deregulated market good) they need to be able to make informed choices. But no company is compelled to inform their customers, only to persuade them. Hence all the marketing BS that we are constantly exposed to, and that is also why the one with the biggest marketing budget wins, not the one with the best product. This doesn't benefit consumers.
A totally unregulated market is perhaps the best choice for your local bakery stores, but for large corporations regulation is needed to protect the consumers by ensuring that competition actually is taking place. Competition is a consumer interest, not a corporation one.
Cool, by that brilliant standard Jenna Jameson is a genius and Stephen Hawking is barely sentient. Rock on, dude!
One common theme is obvious in many of the previous posts. It's the idea that intelligence is something that "appears" when a certain level of complexity or other necessary criterion (such as having a soul) is accomplished. As if there is a threshold, that once it is crossed switches on sentience, emotion, an autonomous mind with free will and all that comes with it. But as far as conventional science understands minds, there is no "Frankenstein moment." Intelligence is a matter of degrees, from the lowest life forms to whatever we decide to measure. Finding true intelligence in machines is a matter of broadening our definitions, not of coming up with new algorithms.
This is a press release, uncommented, unresearched. Anyone can claim anything, and will, if it gets them some free publicity. This is not news by any measure, it's pure hype. I have noticed that the Slashdot editors tend to have problems telling the difference.
As has been pointed out in a previous post, "calling moondust toxic because it can cause silicosis is like calling water toxic because you can drown in it." Moondust, it seems clear, also does not "bounce like a cannonball." Nothing bounces like a cannonball, just like nothing "oscillates like a cloud," or "crows like a football." In the light of these observations, I'm not quite convinced that it really is dust, or that it comes from the moon. Anyway, I'd like to nominate this for the Worst Headline 2005 Award.
On a different note now, silica dust seems to me like it'd be basically glass or ceramic powder, and it makes intuitive sense that powdered glass would be very bad for the lungs.
Spinoza thought so!