They even questioned me on my address being different, as if I should have updated my drivers license after buying a house. That is the kind of misinformation that is incredibly commonly spread to game the system and only the tip of the iceberg.
Caveat 'Emptor'!
In the UK it is an offence, albeit a minor one that will most probably result in only a caution, to fail to inform the DVLA (Driver & Vehicle Licensing Authority) of a change of address.
However, based on the rest of your post, I'm going to hazard a guess that you live in the US. It's not clear which state, but, despite what I thought I'd originally found, it turns out it doesn't matter: "every state requires you to update your address after any move, typically within thirty days... failing to update a license or registration is actually a crime in most states. Generally, the crime is a misdemeanor (punishable by less than a year in jail) and/or fines. Of course, the harshest of these penalties are rarely imposed absent blatant and knowing disregard of the law, but best not to chance fate."
Of course taking legal advice from a random pseudanonymous poster (fwiw ianal) is no different to taking legal advice from a.n. other random anonymous poster is no different from taking legal advice from a random unverified website.
The crucial point about AI is the training they need. Unless the americans have been collecting data for decades (given how few armed conflicts there are and that each one is different from the one before) there won't be any realistic scenarios for the AIs to learn from.
And how do you think they train real flesh and blood soldiers in teamwork, tactics and so on, without risking their lives for real? Ah, that's right, they use a game. Yeah, ok, that's probably a fairly small part of their training, with a great chunk of the rest being physical training, group bonding, inculcation of muscle memory (think time spent on the firing range) and technical training. Robots don't require any of that stuff because it comes under the guise of engineering, manufacture, and basic algorithms and programmatic rules. The experience that makes good soldiers, whether they be made of flesh, blood and brains or plastic, metal and neural nets, can be learned through virtual environments.
It would also be quite easy to defeat AIs that had been trained - just do the unexpected, as all gifted military leaders do.
Although once they get past the initial phase of monumentally screwing up everything they touch - another facet of "superpower" military might - they could easily develop new strategies.
I'd say it's a given that the first generation of fully autonomous 'battle bots' will comes with some 'interesting' quirks, and woeful gaps and oversights that will only become apparent when properly tested in the field of battle. I say this not to contradict what I've said above but because it's practically impossible to make things foolproof as fools are so ingenious - and there are no fools like military fools.
The best strategy would be for the AIs to decide that the battle isn't worth fighting.
No, the best outcome, should we (bah, who am I trying to fool... when we) develop these things, would be for them to decide the battle is not worth fighting. There is no best strategy because strategy is always dependent on what the other side does. For example it might be argued that the best strategy would be to develop these 'tools' ahead of everyone else then forbid their development by anyone else, using such force as necessary to ensure compliance. However, given that this is a potential best strategy the best strategy for everyone thus becomes rush to develop these systems as fast as possible to prevent becoming a permanent underdog in global affairs.
Which is kind of where we find ourselves today.
Personally I've never been particularly convinced by the notion of mutually assured destruction, but it is an oddly rational irrationality and seems to have held the world to a certain level of both stability and balance for the last 70 odd years. Patriotism aside, let's just hope that either the 'hard problem' doesn't get solved in our lifetimes or that, in solving it, the balance is preserved...
Wasn't there a 'study' a while ago linking hot drinks to cancer?
I'm not sure why you've put 'quotes' around the word study, but the answer is, partially, yes. Drinking very hot tea has been shown to marginally increase incidence of oesophageal cancers, albeit only in smokers or people who regularly drink alcohol.
So if you swallow the water, a hot tub 'may cause cancer'... doubly so if you fill it with coffee...
Only if you're smoking and/or drinking whilst in the tub, or if your tub is located in California...
I'm not sure it's the role of a 'responsible adult' to conform, or to force others to conform, to a system that only suits a proportion of the population.
If anything the role of a responsible adult would be to change the system, or at the very least allow changes to the system without having to be browbeaten into it, to ensure it suits everybody.
It has long been known that there's a biological basis between groups' waking and sleeping times. Back in the dawn of time this would have been a good thing, as it would have provided round the clock security for your tribe. In the modern world it's similarly a boon as it enables shift workers to work at times that suit them - though I'm not sure we truly benefit from this as much as we could be.
But, for some reason, when it comes to education we find people turning all authoritarian, saying "suck it up buttercup", and accusing those who genuinely find early morning lectures a struggle of being snowflakes. While I have found educational psychology to be fascinating I must confess I find ex-students' (i.e. most of us adults') attitudes towards education equally interesting. What stories do they tell about our experiences when we were students.
For all that you mean well, respectfully, your advice is actually part of the problem, because you're not seeing the real problem. The problem for those 'people out of time' is the system, not themselves and those who, for whatever (likely mostly subconscious) reasons strive so hard against anyone changing that system. You're trying to fix the wrong thing!
The Constitution is an abstract concept. Guns and taxes are only "stupid stuff" in the sense that anything that isn't an actual Platonic ideal is stupid stuff. High taxes enable perversion of the intent of the Constitution. Nigh-indiscriminate gun-grabbing is both a perversion of the intent of the Constitution and enables more perversion. Military escapades abroad are a perversion, but guess how much worse it would be if all we did was debate that all while acquiescing to higher taxes and more government micromanagement.
I agree with everything you said, and did appreciate the irony in the last sentence, but I would like to add, to expand upon the section I highlighted: Nigh-indiscriminate gun-ownership is both a perversion of the intent of the Constitution and enables more perversion. In addition, from an outside perspective, background checks, licensing and registration, and so on, the seemingly sensible reforms to the current almost-free-for-all, don't add up to 'gun-grabbing' whichever way you slice it. I understand that they are seen as a step in that direction but opposing reform based on this 'slippery slope' fallacy strikes me as ideological / illogical, rather than a logical and sensible compromise.
Having said that, I'm not American, and haven't visited for many years, nor lived there for many more. Feel free to ignore my observations or treat them as irrelevant based on it not being my problem.
I've just realised that the Wikipedia page I linked to in my previous reply was distinctly light on detail. Sorry.
There's an excellent chapter on Moonlight Maze in Thomas Rid's book Rise of the Machines (The Lost History of Cybernetics). Well worth borrowing from the library, in my opinion.
Like everything the situation is perhaps slightly more complicated than we would like it to be, and there are groups on both sides who are heavily invested (financially or ideologically), hence vocal and unwilling to give any ground at all.
For links, I found this document, which was presented to Human Rights Council of the UN, by their appointed 'Special Rapporteur', last year to be rather an eye opener.
I have previously seen documentaries about the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides and their effect on bees, by university biologists, which, while clearly stating that (some) pesticides are harmful to beneficial wildlife, did suggest that without pesticides we would see a roughly 30% reduction in crop yields. However the report I just linked to states (paragraph 96):
"Despite their widespread use, chemical pesticides have not achieved reduction in crop losses in the last 40 years. This has been attributed to their indiscriminate and nonselective use, killing not only pests but also their natural enemies and insect pollinators. Efficacy of chemical pesticides is also greatly reduced owing to pesticide resistance over time."
This nugget is apparently sourced from “Crop losses due to pests”, by E.C. Oerke, in the Journal of Agricultural Science, vol. 144, No. 1 (February 2006), so I took a quick browse, only to find the initial summary goes on to say (among other things):
"However, pesticide use has enabled farmers to modify production systems and to increase crop productivity without sustaining the higher losses likely to occur from an increased susceptibility to the damaging effect of pests"
The study itself strikes me as somewhat more balanced than the UN report, which clearly has an slant, but I don't know who funded the study and I'm not confident of my ability to concretely identify any possible bias within it.
It's almost as if the wealthy and powerful within China realized, "Oh, shit! I don't have anywhere I can run to, if this all goes to Hell in a handbasket! We better make sure that doesn't happen!"
This is a realization which the rich and powerful of the US and Europe have yet to arrive at.
I'm pretty sure someone linked to this story yesterday.
Problem is that History is not taught in schools. People do not know China's recent history.
During Mao's strong man Great Leap Forward some 30 *Million* people starved to death. A billion went hungry -- the birth rate plummeted. All due to Mao.
Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. The problem is, when you're basically a dictator the consequences of your mistakes tend to be magnified. It is for this very reason that I call businesses moral amplifiers.
Of course in retrospect it's easy to tell that 'close planting', based on bullshit by Lysenko, and 'deep ploughing', based on bullshit by Lysenko's colleague Maltsev, were horrendous ideas but even the wisest among us sometimes falls for bullshit.
In my view Mao's egregious & unforgivable error was in refusing to admit he'd made mistakes, and refusing to accept that perhaps he wasn't the best man for the job, which essentially led to the Cultural Revolution.
Since Deng Xioping there has been an economic miracle.
I'd say there has been an ongoing convergence between the economies of China and the west, but this is more an inevitability than a miracle. In a global market you'd actually have to struggle, or fuck up really really badly, to achieve anything else. Their general economic indicators such as GDP growth will mostly settle at the same level as those of the west once convergence has been achieved, with one caveat: It remains to be seen what their net foreign ownership will be at that point - because of their laws limiting inward foreign investment they are likely to be better off than us (i.e. net positive rather than net negative for e.g. the US / UK) once the dust settles.
But now we have a new emperor, Emperor Xi Jinping. Ruler for life.
Yeah, you've got a point here! Given the current 'state of the system' in China his removal of term limits has, to all intents and purposes, done just that. It does remain to be seen if he will be good for China, but bear in mind my first point: Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone.
What might save them from another disaster, in whatever form that takes (and it's extremely unlikely to take the same form as the 'Great Leap Forward') is if he has aides and advisors who are strong enough to face up to him, and he's 'secure' enough to admit he could be wrong.
It's a wonder that any women at Microsoft manged to keep their jobs at all during the 90's, what with the number of them that used to (allegedly) wear T-shirts emblazoned with 'slogans' like "Marry Me, Bill".
That poor guy put up with years of harassment... (*cough*)
Having said that, just to check - as you say you've been on harassment seminars: It would be considered wrong for guys in the office to wear hats / t-shirts/etc. asking their female coworkers or managers to marry them, right?
Terrorists are murdering innocent people and she's torturing murderers.
I thought that "two wrongs don't make a right" was still taught to young children. Apparently you skipped school that day...
Moreover, while your first point is broadly correct the second is merely an assumption. i.e. "she's torturing alleged murderers." I'd suggest this is still a moot point but, since I'm not sure how your moral reasoning works, it might be worth lodging objections at varying degrees of 'wrong' in case something triggers a response.
That's why I said "with current technology", I totally agree with you that if we have a leap like anti-gravity...
The world is not ready for anti-gravity.
There would be no practical (or ethical, at least) means of keeping its mode of operation secret, and I would not trust every person on Earth with that knowledge. After all, flying mountains and gravity wells don't mix!
I don't think you quite grasp the scale of this issue for larger countries, and the inability to buy dykes and pumps for poor countries. The US would need more concrete than has ever been produced. Making concrete produces a lot of CO2, so producing the unprecedented quantities of concrete will help ensure those structures are ineffective.
Also, you don't need concrete to build dykes and if the Netherlands could do it with 17th century tech I'm sure most countries can manage either that or relocating people to slightly higher ground. It doesn't matter though because if you cannot handle a meter of sea level rise you could get wiped out tomorrow by a mid size storm.
Yeah, I'm going to have to side with the GP here, on a number of points:
Netherlands Length of Coastline - 1,914 km GDP - $770 billion GDP / km of Coastline - $402 million / km
USA Length of Coastline - 133,312 km GDP - $18.57 trillion GDP / km of Coastline - $139 million / km
So, firstly, the cost to build dykes around the coast of the US would be, proportionally, about 3 times as expensive for them as it is for the Netherlands. Secondly, close to 2 orders of magnitude (well 70 times) more dykes would be required. Thirdly, you keep going on about storm surge being more pertinent than sea level rise, and while technically you're correct here the effects happen to be cumulative.
In fact, in addition to being cumulative, since storm surge is driven by storms (duh) and storms derive their strength from sea temperatures as sea level rises due to warming so to does the size of the storm surge.
I can't really be bothered to go deeply into the topic of materials, as I'm hungry, but again, unless you want to incur unsustainable upkeep costs for those dykes concrete is pretty much the only long term option available - and even then the upkeep will be merely astronomical. And, like the GP says, producing that quantity of concrete, if there's even enough of the right type of sand to make it all, would only exacerbate the problem.
Or you could get a consortium of concerned individuals to invest in making the suggested infrastructure into a tidal lagoon, albeit one that won't benefit from the full tidal range - for obvious reasons. Selling the generated electricity, green electricity at that if you ignore ecosystem changes, would cover the capital costs in about 40-50 years*.
*Numbers based partly on numbers from a suggested local scheme and partly pulled out of my arse because of peak flow restrictions based on having to cap inflows to below maximum tidal range.
There is a reason why current free trade is set the way it is. Because US was the party that set it up in Bretton-Woods, and because for US, free trade is not about trade. It's about security. US itself didn't actually invest into the free trade mechanisms it created, and foreign trade as a portion of national GDP in US is very low compared to developed world average. As a point of comparison, even Afghanistan, a land locked, war torn country has a higher portion of foreign trade as national GDP than US. Look it up if you don't believe me.
I'm wasn't sure of the point you were trying to make here, so I did look the figures up. Now I'm completely baffled. Just so we can 'agree' on some basic figures I've reproduced them below:
Afghanistan is the 104th largest export economy in the world. In 2016, Afghanistan exported $482M and imported $3.77B, resulting in a negative trade balance of $3.29B. Its GDP in the same year was 19.47B.
The United States is the 2nd largest export economy in the world. In 2016, the United States exported $1.42T and imported $2.21T, resulting in a negative trade balance of $783B. Its GDP in the same year was $18.6T.
In other words the US has a higher exports / GDP ratio than Afghanistan (roughly +7.6% compared to +2.5%) and a far better net, i.e. balance of trade, ratio (roughly -4.2% compared to -16.9%).
In fact, like most developed economies, the net ratio for the US is not too far from zero, which is important when it comes to the long term stability of a country's economy, and the standard of living of its inhabitants.
You may be right in the rest of your assessment, but your apparent 'shock' at the comparative trade ratios of the US and Afghanistan is, frankly, hilarious, as you're either missing the fact that some numbers are negative, or don't understand what they're telling you - I mean, who would have thought that a country like Afghanistan, given its history over the last century, would have a limited export market and little foreign investment? Oh wait, just about anyone...
Would that be the Taiwan that was actually part of a unified China up until just after the second world war, when the (seen as) rather corrupt Kuomintang retreated there after losing the Chinese civil war to the Communist Party?
History is rarely simple, never one sided, and carries a lot of baggage into the present...
Some examples include Switzerland, UK (the Princes (Harry and Andrew) had to do it as well - so royalty is no exception)...
You are mistaken.
Unlike Switzerland, the UK does not have mandatory military service, not even for royalty.
The reason, as I understand it, that the Princes did serve was out of a sense of obligation (literally the notion of noblesse oblige). If, as titular leaders of the country's military, they were to give orders sending soldiers into combat they'd better be in a position to understand what being a soldier is. There is also historical precedent to consider. When it comes to the nobility it has long been the case that the first (male) child was groomed to inherit, the second went to serve, while the third would often go into the church.
Anyway, when it comes to the modern age, to emphasise, while serving in the military might have been expected of them it was not required of them.
Actually, this, combined with suggestions further up the thread, makes perfect sense.
Get rid of:
-1 Flamebait
Add:
-1 Spam +0 Disinformation / Contested
Of course I'd still rather, if a post, especially one rated Informative, contains something that is factually incorrect, that someone post a reply pointing out the error and presenting the 'actual facts'. Moderation can only go so far, especially as none of us can be knowledgeable about everything.
From memory, there are 3(?) options for down-voting. Depending on the moderation used I can envisage issues:
The main issue would be with the "Overrated" mod. Whilst I rarely down-mod (off the top of my head 3% of my mod points) this is the negative mod I use most frequently. I tend to use it on posts that are rated 4 or, more often, 5*, not because I disagree, per se, with the content of the post but because I don't think it warrants scoring that highly. Now, because of the way I, and possibly others, load stories from the main page this can result in posts receiving moderation from multiple people far in excess of what's deserved - either positive or negative. If the excess moderation is positive this in itself is not problematic because this is one of the situations that Overrated was intended to address. If the excess is negative this in itself is not problematic as this can be corrected by additional positive moderation. If however, having down-rated a post from what appeared to be a 5, my nym comes to be associated with down-rating a relatively interesting / insightful / informative post to, for example, a 1 or 2, depending on how other people have also moderated it, I, along with the author of the post no doubt, would feel misrepresented.
As for the other negative moderation options, although I've read the moderator guidelines a couple of times over the ~20 years I've been visiting/. I'm still frequently unsure where the line lies between Troll & Flamebait, so I generally don't use them, or use them almost interchangeably for down-rating the egregious crap that sometimes gets posted. Either way, I'd have absolutely no issues with my nym being associated with a negative moderation of this type. In a sense this 'waste' of mod points is just a community service.
Which unfortunately then creates a system that can be abused when it comes to down-rating posts by a particular person or on a particular subject or from a particular ideological viewpoint. Sigh!
How fortunate I am not to have to worry about how to make the system fair and representative, yet encourage people to post, participate, and moderate. Good luck!
*Somewhat interestingly, on a couple of occasions I can recall, I have moderated a Score: 5 post as -1 Overrated the net result of which has been a Score: 5 post. While I can imagine possible reasons for this behaviour I'm slightly curious as to whether it's intended...
To say America is one of the most expansionist powers is completely ridiculous in that it's borders haven't changed in the modern era.
There are many ways to be expansionist other than simple territorial expansion.
The last 70 years of American global strategy has been to prevent another World War from happening. It does that through inciting democratic and capitalistic reforms.
The last 70 years of US global strategy has been enforcing, with extreme prejudice if necessary, it's hegemonic dominance and, in the last 40, exporting it's brand of neo-liberal free market capitalism. As for inciting capitalist reforms... Inciting? That has to be the best euphemism I've heard this year!
Let's look at a bit of recent history. In 2003 the US (and the UK) invaded Iraq. In the first few months of the occupation that followed their victory Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, issued Order 39 which essentially scrapped laws limiting foreign ownership of Iraqi companies as well as repealing requirements to reinvest profits within the country. He also slashed the top rate of income tax from 45% to 15%. Dozens of major companies were privatised within the following few months - and you can guess that the majority of the buyers were not Iraqi citizens or companies.
So, to sum up, Bush and Blair (or the US and the UK if you prefer not to get personal) illegally, according to the UN at least, invaded a sovereign nation on false pretenses and then proceeded to undemocratically alter its laws enabling the transfer of wealth from that country to US and UK companies.
And you call it inciting.
The basic idea being, if people are working together they are enriching each other. We have more to gain working together than fighting against each other.
That sounds like a great idea. So how about we do that rather than invading other countries?
Proof? The modern era is the most peaceful time in history, despite what you hear and read on how horrible everything is.
I guess you don't live in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria, to name but a few.
Slashdot Mirror
They even questioned me on my address being different, as if I should have updated my drivers license after buying a house. That is the kind of misinformation that is incredibly commonly spread to game the system and only the tip of the iceberg.
Caveat 'Emptor'!
In the UK it is an offence, albeit a minor one that will most probably result in only a caution, to fail to inform the DVLA (Driver & Vehicle Licensing Authority) of a change of address.
However, based on the rest of your post, I'm going to hazard a guess that you live in the US. It's not clear which state, but, despite what I thought I'd originally found, it turns out it doesn't matter: "every state requires you to update your address after any move, typically within thirty days ... failing to update a license or registration is actually a crime in most states. Generally, the crime is a misdemeanor (punishable by less than a year in jail) and/or fines. Of course, the harshest of these penalties are rarely imposed absent blatant and knowing disregard of the law, but best not to chance fate."
Of course taking legal advice from a random pseudanonymous poster (fwiw ianal) is no different to taking legal advice from a.n. other random anonymous poster is no different from taking legal advice from a random unverified website.
Like I said, 'buyer' beware!
The crucial point about AI is the training they need. Unless the americans have been collecting data for decades (given how few armed conflicts there are and that each one is different from the one before) there won't be any realistic scenarios for the AIs to learn from.
And how do you think they train real flesh and blood soldiers in teamwork, tactics and so on, without risking their lives for real? Ah, that's right, they use a game. Yeah, ok, that's probably a fairly small part of their training, with a great chunk of the rest being physical training, group bonding, inculcation of muscle memory (think time spent on the firing range) and technical training. Robots don't require any of that stuff because it comes under the guise of engineering, manufacture, and basic algorithms and programmatic rules. The experience that makes good soldiers, whether they be made of flesh, blood and brains or plastic, metal and neural nets, can be learned through virtual environments.
It would also be quite easy to defeat AIs that had been trained - just do the unexpected, as all gifted military leaders do.
Although once they get past the initial phase of monumentally screwing up everything they touch - another facet of "superpower" military might - they could easily develop new strategies.
I'd say it's a given that the first generation of fully autonomous 'battle bots' will comes with some 'interesting' quirks, and woeful gaps and oversights that will only become apparent when properly tested in the field of battle. I say this not to contradict what I've said above but because it's practically impossible to make things foolproof as fools are so ingenious - and there are no fools like military fools.
The best strategy would be for the AIs to decide that the battle isn't worth fighting.
No, the best outcome, should we (bah, who am I trying to fool... when we) develop these things, would be for them to decide the battle is not worth fighting. There is no best strategy because strategy is always dependent on what the other side does. For example it might be argued that the best strategy would be to develop these 'tools' ahead of everyone else then forbid their development by anyone else, using such force as necessary to ensure compliance. However, given that this is a potential best strategy the best strategy for everyone thus becomes rush to develop these systems as fast as possible to prevent becoming a permanent underdog in global affairs.
Which is kind of where we find ourselves today.
Personally I've never been particularly convinced by the notion of mutually assured destruction, but it is an oddly rational irrationality and seems to have held the world to a certain level of both stability and balance for the last 70 odd years. Patriotism aside, let's just hope that either the 'hard problem' doesn't get solved in our lifetimes or that, in solving it, the balance is preserved...
Wasn't there a 'study' a while ago linking hot drinks to cancer?
I'm not sure why you've put 'quotes' around the word study, but the answer is, partially, yes. Drinking very hot tea has been shown to marginally increase incidence of oesophageal cancers, albeit only in smokers or people who regularly drink alcohol.
So if you swallow the water, a hot tub 'may cause cancer'... doubly so if you fill it with coffee...
Only if you're smoking and/or drinking whilst in the tub, or if your tub is located in California ...
I'm not sure it's the role of a 'responsible adult' to conform, or to force others to conform, to a system that only suits a proportion of the population.
If anything the role of a responsible adult would be to change the system, or at the very least allow changes to the system without having to be browbeaten into it, to ensure it suits everybody.
It has long been known that there's a biological basis between groups' waking and sleeping times. Back in the dawn of time this would have been a good thing, as it would have provided round the clock security for your tribe. In the modern world it's similarly a boon as it enables shift workers to work at times that suit them - though I'm not sure we truly benefit from this as much as we could be.
But, for some reason, when it comes to education we find people turning all authoritarian, saying "suck it up buttercup", and accusing those who genuinely find early morning lectures a struggle of being snowflakes. While I have found educational psychology to be fascinating I must confess I find ex-students' (i.e. most of us adults') attitudes towards education equally interesting. What stories do they tell about our experiences when we were students.
For all that you mean well, respectfully, your advice is actually part of the problem, because you're not seeing the real problem. The problem for those 'people out of time' is the system, not themselves and those who, for whatever (likely mostly subconscious) reasons strive so hard against anyone changing that system. You're trying to fix the wrong thing!
The Constitution is an abstract concept. Guns and taxes are only "stupid stuff" in the sense that anything that isn't an actual Platonic ideal is stupid stuff.
High taxes enable perversion of the intent of the Constitution. Nigh-indiscriminate gun-grabbing is both a perversion of the intent of the Constitution and enables more perversion. Military escapades abroad are a perversion, but guess how much worse it would be if all we did was debate that all while acquiescing to higher taxes and more government micromanagement.
I agree with everything you said, and did appreciate the irony in the last sentence, but I would like to add, to expand upon the section I highlighted: Nigh-indiscriminate gun-ownership is both a perversion of the intent of the Constitution and enables more perversion. In addition, from an outside perspective, background checks, licensing and registration, and so on, the seemingly sensible reforms to the current almost-free-for-all, don't add up to 'gun-grabbing' whichever way you slice it. I understand that they are seen as a step in that direction but opposing reform based on this 'slippery slope' fallacy strikes me as ideological / illogical, rather than a logical and sensible compromise.
Having said that, I'm not American, and haven't visited for many years, nor lived there for many more. Feel free to ignore my observations or treat them as irrelevant based on it not being my problem.
I've just realised that the Wikipedia page I linked to in my previous reply was distinctly light on detail. Sorry.
There's an excellent chapter on Moonlight Maze in Thomas Rid's book Rise of the Machines (The Lost History of Cybernetics). Well worth borrowing from the library, in my opinion.
China has been hacking the US for longer than Russia and far more pervasively.
You might want to look up "Moonlight Maze" before making statements like that.
Like everything the situation is perhaps slightly more complicated than we would like it to be, and there are groups on both sides who are heavily invested (financially or ideologically), hence vocal and unwilling to give any ground at all.
For links, I found this document, which was presented to Human Rights Council of the UN, by their appointed 'Special Rapporteur', last year to be rather an eye opener.
I have previously seen documentaries about the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides and their effect on bees, by university biologists, which, while clearly stating that (some) pesticides are harmful to beneficial wildlife, did suggest that without pesticides we would see a roughly 30% reduction in crop yields. However the report I just linked to states (paragraph 96):
"Despite their widespread use, chemical pesticides have not achieved reduction in crop losses in the last 40 years. This has been attributed to their indiscriminate and nonselective use, killing not only pests but also their natural enemies and insect pollinators. Efficacy of chemical pesticides is also greatly reduced owing to pesticide resistance over time."
This nugget is apparently sourced from “Crop losses due to pests”, by E.C. Oerke, in the Journal of Agricultural Science, vol. 144, No. 1 (February 2006), so I took a quick browse, only to find the initial summary goes on to say (among other things):
"However, pesticide use has enabled farmers to modify production systems and to increase crop productivity without sustaining the higher losses likely to occur from an increased susceptibility to the damaging effect of pests"
The study itself strikes me as somewhat more balanced than the UN report, which clearly has an slant, but I don't know who funded the study and I'm not confident of my ability to concretely identify any possible bias within it.
Like I said ... complicated...
It's almost as if the wealthy and powerful within China realized, "Oh, shit! I don't have anywhere I can run to, if this all goes to Hell in a handbasket! We better make sure that doesn't happen!"
This is a realization which the rich and powerful of the US and Europe have yet to arrive at.
I'm pretty sure someone linked to this story yesterday.
Problem is that History is not taught in schools. People do not know China's recent history.
During Mao's strong man Great Leap Forward some 30 *Million* people starved to death. A billion went hungry -- the birth rate plummeted. All due to Mao.
Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. The problem is, when you're basically a dictator the consequences of your mistakes tend to be magnified. It is for this very reason that I call businesses moral amplifiers.
Of course in retrospect it's easy to tell that 'close planting', based on bullshit by Lysenko, and 'deep ploughing', based on bullshit by Lysenko's colleague Maltsev, were horrendous ideas but even the wisest among us sometimes falls for bullshit.
In my view Mao's egregious & unforgivable error was in refusing to admit he'd made mistakes, and refusing to accept that perhaps he wasn't the best man for the job, which essentially led to the Cultural Revolution.
Since Deng Xioping there has been an economic miracle.
I'd say there has been an ongoing convergence between the economies of China and the west, but this is more an inevitability than a miracle. In a global market you'd actually have to struggle, or fuck up really really badly, to achieve anything else. Their general economic indicators such as GDP growth will mostly settle at the same level as those of the west once convergence has been achieved, with one caveat: It remains to be seen what their net foreign ownership will be at that point - because of their laws limiting inward foreign investment they are likely to be better off than us (i.e. net positive rather than net negative for e.g. the US / UK) once the dust settles.
But now we have a new emperor, Emperor Xi Jinping. Ruler for life.
Yeah, you've got a point here! Given the current 'state of the system' in China his removal of term limits has, to all intents and purposes, done just that. It does remain to be seen if he will be good for China, but bear in mind my first point: Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone.
What might save them from another disaster, in whatever form that takes (and it's extremely unlikely to take the same form as the 'Great Leap Forward') is if he has aides and advisors who are strong enough to face up to him, and he's 'secure' enough to admit he could be wrong.
Time will tell...
It's a wonder that any women at Microsoft manged to keep their jobs at all during the 90's, what with the number of them that used to (allegedly) wear T-shirts emblazoned with 'slogans' like "Marry Me, Bill".
That poor guy put up with years of harassment... (*cough*)
Having said that, just to check - as you say you've been on harassment seminars: It would be considered wrong for guys in the office to wear hats / t-shirts /etc. asking their female coworkers or managers to marry them, right?
Terrorists are murdering innocent people and she's torturing murderers.
I thought that "two wrongs don't make a right" was still taught to young children. Apparently you skipped school that day...
Moreover, while your first point is broadly correct the second is merely an assumption. i.e. "she's torturing alleged murderers." I'd suggest this is still a moot point but, since I'm not sure how your moral reasoning works, it might be worth lodging objections at varying degrees of 'wrong' in case something triggers a response.
That's why I said "with current technology", I totally agree with you that if we have a leap like anti-gravity...
The world is not ready for anti-gravity.
There would be no practical (or ethical, at least) means of keeping its mode of operation secret, and I would not trust every person on Earth with that knowledge. After all, flying mountains and gravity wells don't mix!
Yeah, I'm going to have to side with the GP here, on a number of points:
Netherlands
Length of Coastline - 1,914 km
GDP - $770 billion
GDP / km of Coastline - $402 million / km
USA
Length of Coastline - 133,312 km
GDP - $18.57 trillion
GDP / km of Coastline - $139 million / km
So, firstly, the cost to build dykes around the coast of the US would be, proportionally, about 3 times as expensive for them as it is for the Netherlands. Secondly, close to 2 orders of magnitude (well 70 times) more dykes would be required. Thirdly, you keep going on about storm surge being more pertinent than sea level rise, and while technically you're correct here the effects happen to be cumulative.
In fact, in addition to being cumulative, since storm surge is driven by storms (duh) and storms derive their strength from sea temperatures as sea level rises due to warming so to does the size of the storm surge.
I can't really be bothered to go deeply into the topic of materials, as I'm hungry, but again, unless you want to incur unsustainable upkeep costs for those dykes concrete is pretty much the only long term option available - and even then the upkeep will be merely astronomical. And, like the GP says, producing that quantity of concrete, if there's even enough of the right type of sand to make it all, would only exacerbate the problem.
Or you could get a consortium of concerned individuals to invest in making the suggested infrastructure into a tidal lagoon, albeit one that won't benefit from the full tidal range - for obvious reasons. Selling the generated electricity, green electricity at that if you ignore ecosystem changes, would cover the capital costs in about 40-50 years*.
*Numbers based partly on numbers from a suggested local scheme and partly pulled out of my arse because of peak flow restrictions based on having to cap inflows to below maximum tidal range.
There is a reason why current free trade is set the way it is. Because US was the party that set it up in Bretton-Woods, and because for US, free trade is not about trade. It's about security. US itself didn't actually invest into the free trade mechanisms it created, and foreign trade as a portion of national GDP in US is very low compared to developed world average. As a point of comparison, even Afghanistan, a land locked, war torn country has a higher portion of foreign trade as national GDP than US. Look it up if you don't believe me.
I'm wasn't sure of the point you were trying to make here, so I did look the figures up. Now I'm completely baffled. Just so we can 'agree' on some basic figures I've reproduced them below:
Afghanistan is the 104th largest export economy in the world. In 2016, Afghanistan exported $482M and imported $3.77B, resulting in a negative trade balance of $3.29B. Its GDP in the same year was 19.47B.
The United States is the 2nd largest export economy in the world. In 2016, the United States exported $1.42T and imported $2.21T, resulting in a negative trade balance of $783B. Its GDP in the same year was $18.6T.
In other words the US has a higher exports / GDP ratio than Afghanistan (roughly +7.6% compared to +2.5%) and a far better net, i.e. balance of trade, ratio (roughly -4.2% compared to -16.9%).
In fact, like most developed economies, the net ratio for the US is not too far from zero, which is important when it comes to the long term stability of a country's economy, and the standard of living of its inhabitants.
You may be right in the rest of your assessment, but your apparent 'shock' at the comparative trade ratios of the US and Afghanistan is, frankly, hilarious, as you're either missing the fact that some numbers are negative, or don't understand what they're telling you - I mean, who would have thought that a country like Afghanistan, given its history over the last century, would have a limited export market and little foreign investment? Oh wait, just about anyone...
Would that be the Taiwan that was actually part of a unified China up until just after the second world war, when the (seen as) rather corrupt Kuomintang retreated there after losing the Chinese civil war to the Communist Party?
History is rarely simple, never one sided, and carries a lot of baggage into the present...
Some examples include Switzerland, UK (the Princes (Harry and Andrew) had to do it as well - so royalty is no exception)...
You are mistaken.
Unlike Switzerland, the UK does not have mandatory military service, not even for royalty.
The reason, as I understand it, that the Princes did serve was out of a sense of obligation (literally the notion of noblesse oblige). If, as titular leaders of the country's military, they were to give orders sending soldiers into combat they'd better be in a position to understand what being a soldier is. There is also historical precedent to consider. When it comes to the nobility it has long been the case that the first (male) child was groomed to inherit, the second went to serve, while the third would often go into the church.
Anyway, when it comes to the modern age, to emphasise, while serving in the military might have been expected of them it was not required of them.
This seems to be in concordance with my philosophy, one rule of which roughly translates as:
0 It's not worth killing yourself over!
0 It's not worth killing someone else over!
0 All rules have exceptions!
0 It is sometimes ok to kill!
I would just like to echo his comment.
Albeit, I'll add that, we're only upset because we missed 'you' so much.
So, we're glad you're back, we're sorry you had such a crap couple of days, but, please, a bit more consideration would not go amiss in future.
& thanks :-)
Actually, this, combined with suggestions further up the thread, makes perfect sense.
Get rid of:
-1 Flamebait
Add:
-1 Spam
+0 Disinformation / Contested
Of course I'd still rather, if a post, especially one rated Informative, contains something that is factually incorrect, that someone post a reply pointing out the error and presenting the 'actual facts'. Moderation can only go so far, especially as none of us can be knowledgeable about everything.
From memory, there are 3(?) options for down-voting. Depending on the moderation used I can envisage issues:
The main issue would be with the "Overrated" mod. Whilst I rarely down-mod (off the top of my head 3% of my mod points) this is the negative mod I use most frequently. I tend to use it on posts that are rated 4 or, more often, 5*, not because I disagree, per se, with the content of the post but because I don't think it warrants scoring that highly. Now, because of the way I, and possibly others, load stories from the main page this can result in posts receiving moderation from multiple people far in excess of what's deserved - either positive or negative. If the excess moderation is positive this in itself is not problematic because this is one of the situations that Overrated was intended to address. If the excess is negative this in itself is not problematic as this can be corrected by additional positive moderation. If however, having down-rated a post from what appeared to be a 5, my nym comes to be associated with down-rating a relatively interesting / insightful / informative post to, for example, a 1 or 2, depending on how other people have also moderated it, I, along with the author of the post no doubt, would feel misrepresented.
As for the other negative moderation options, although I've read the moderator guidelines a couple of times over the ~20 years I've been visiting /. I'm still frequently unsure where the line lies between Troll & Flamebait, so I generally don't use them, or use them almost interchangeably for down-rating the egregious crap that sometimes gets posted. Either way, I'd have absolutely no issues with my nym being associated with a negative moderation of this type. In a sense this 'waste' of mod points is just a community service.
Which unfortunately then creates a system that can be abused when it comes to down-rating posts by a particular person or on a particular subject or from a particular ideological viewpoint. Sigh!
How fortunate I am not to have to worry about how to make the system fair and representative, yet encourage people to post, participate, and moderate. Good luck!
*Somewhat interestingly, on a couple of occasions I can recall, I have moderated a Score: 5 post as -1 Overrated the net result of which has been a Score: 5 post. While I can imagine possible reasons for this behaviour I'm slightly curious as to whether it's intended...
The Art of the Artful Troll...
To say America is one of the most expansionist powers is completely ridiculous in that it's borders haven't changed in the modern era.
There are many ways to be expansionist other than simple territorial expansion.
The last 70 years of American global strategy has been to prevent another World War from happening. It does that through inciting democratic and capitalistic reforms.
The last 70 years of US global strategy has been enforcing, with extreme prejudice if necessary, it's hegemonic dominance and, in the last 40, exporting it's brand of neo-liberal free market capitalism. As for inciting capitalist reforms... Inciting? That has to be the best euphemism I've heard this year!
Let's look at a bit of recent history. In 2003 the US (and the UK) invaded Iraq. In the first few months of the occupation that followed their victory Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, issued Order 39 which essentially scrapped laws limiting foreign ownership of Iraqi companies as well as repealing requirements to reinvest profits within the country. He also slashed the top rate of income tax from 45% to 15%. Dozens of major companies were privatised within the following few months - and you can guess that the majority of the buyers were not Iraqi citizens or companies.
So, to sum up, Bush and Blair (or the US and the UK if you prefer not to get personal) illegally, according to the UN at least, invaded a sovereign nation on false pretenses and then proceeded to undemocratically alter its laws enabling the transfer of wealth from that country to US and UK companies.
And you call it inciting.
The basic idea being, if people are working together they are enriching each other. We have more to gain working together than fighting against each other.
That sounds like a great idea. So how about we do that rather than invading other countries?
Proof? The modern era is the most peaceful time in history, despite what you hear and read on how horrible everything is.
I guess you don't live in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria, to name but a few.
Not if it's lunch.
Or "sport".