Just to be clear, this was NOT the first, not by a long shot.
Pontifex is still probably the 'purest' version of this, and IMO still the best in some ways. IIRC it's available on your phone now.
But when Pontifex came out, there was no kickstarter/indie "community" nor a Steam to act as a marketing/delivery agent. The ecosystem really has matured, for sure.
I *entirely* agree with you, except that it has been a standard mantra of the Left for the last 40 years that "fairness" is identified by demographics. Not enough blacks in college? Not enough women CEOs? Not enough women in computer science?
All of these very common concerns that have driven policy and funding are based on the fundamental premise that any subsegment of society should apparently perfectly represent the demographics of the larger society, or "bias" is at work.
"Those add nothing to the discussion and are worthless." No, because opportunity costs are a thing. Having a fanciful belief that something works leads to a lot of wasted effort and energy that could be more usefully guided toward something that is accomplishable.
Oh, re your point about "move closer to Democracy"? You realize that as recently as 2011, "democracy" would have cheerfully banned gay marriage? http://www.pewforum.org/2015/0... Understand that "democracy" isn't a bunch of enlightened hipsters with progressive views deciding policy around their non-dairy lattes. Democracy can be ugly, reactionary, and easily manipulated.
I'm genuinely curious: how many awards this year went to white men (or if we throw out this year, let's take the last 5 instead)? Was it approximately proportional to their demographic representation in the field? Too high? Too low?
Both sides are so busy screaming at each other, I've never seen actual data. To determine whether I feel that the 'puppies' groups were reactionary wreckers (the popular narrative) or whether they identified a actual "politically correct" slant toward a nomination process that was preferentially putting forth female and "ethnic" candidates.
Why in the hell would we let a for-profit corporation have any say in curriculum?
Just wondering. I mean, if they want to spend their $ to sponsor initiatives, go nuts. If they want to be racist (blacks only need apply) and sexist (women only need apply), it's their money, go to it.
But if the Ford Motor Co said "let's get more people in classes that have to do with working assembly line jobs" even Congress would have to recognize that for its transparent motivation, no?
Mars 3 is BELIEVED to have soft-landed, according to the general consensus (if 20m/s = 45 mph = being dropped from a 6-story building here on Earth... is "soft" but you get my point) but failed to return any meaningful data. It quit after 20 seconds just sending a garbled partial picture that can't even be interpreted to find a horizon.
It's just as likely that the lander crashed, and some of it managed to still barely function for 20 seconds.
In any case, even the SOVIETS would likely agree that the Viking 1 was the first successful Mars lander.
"...Remember, this is about aggregates, rather than whether some specific job has been replaced...."...which means it's about lying. The submitter/editor is specifically trying to contradict what you know otherwise to be true, and so had to remind you that the story's data need to be specifically interpreted to be true.
Not to invoke Godwin's Law but to dismiss moral concerns here as "knee-jerk responses" is a bit shallow, frankly.
As far as we understand (I'm not a brain scientist), we conceptualize that whatever makes us "us" resides entirely in the brain; not the spleen, liver, nor (despite general anecdotal experience from half the population of the other half) the penis.
We don't know *what* process activates "personhood" within that little clump of cells within a growing fetus, nor even have a conceptual yardstick against what to measure when a cell is self-aware, nor finally understand ethically if/when that matters to us.
This isn't a quasi-religious camouflage for an abortion discussion: cows are at least reasonably conscious if not sapient, and we kill them by the millions for food; most would argue that dolphins and dogs are reasonably intelligent and at least some of us kill at least one of them for food, too.
To create what is, as is presented here, a reasonable facsimile of a functioning brain at an early stage of development is to raise some ABSOLUTELY VALID questions. I mention Godwin's only because your justifications appear utilitarian, and of course the response to that would be the valuable and important research done in a number of different fields (such as hypothermia) done absent moral constraint by Germany circa 1940-45. I can't imagine anyone today would be ok with that, despite the data being very, very useful.
Utility is not - it CANNOT - be the entirety of the discussion here.
Like any such 'auditing', this tool runs into a "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" problem. 1) granted, I didn't dig deeply into the site more than a skim of the 'about' information, but I'm not sure I understand what sort of credentials qualify someone to contribute? 2) this - and the meta-narrative - suggests that the commenters are somehow objective. Scientists (contrary to some anecdotal experience, for sure) are humans like the rest of us. They have motivations, biases, and varying levels of tendentiousness, *particularly* when it comes to a subject important to them. 3) I see that anonymous reviews are also allowed, which means that this tool is fundamentally no more credible than, say, any comment system that allows anonymous cowards. And we all know how those can suck.
Lomborg is a divisive figure among the Global Warming movement; a credible, well-informed, reasonably charismatic spokesman for "the enemy", his point in recent years has been consistent: YES, it appears that warming is happening; YES, it appears that humans are to blame, but NO, it's not worth addressing with limited funds and resources - not even in the top 10 'big' subjects we should try to attack.
For example, the criticisms of his article reflect this: "The author tries to rebut the narrative âoethat the worldâ(TM)s climate is changing from bad to worseâ. In doing so, he erects a straw-man, cherry-picks studies and misrepresents current climate science. Furthermore, the logic that since things are not âworst-than-we-thoughtâ(TM), we shouldnâ(TM)t take action and do the things we would do if things were simply âbadâ(TM), is lost on meâ¦", "Tries and fails to make a convincing case for why humans need to worry about climate change less than they currently do." and "The author on multiple occasions presents blatantly inaccurate information and otherwise uses selective information to argue his point, which is highly misleading." is NOT 'scientific' criticism. That's just bitching.
Moreover, on a technical note, the shorthand 'rating' system of the tool seems to vary as well. Other articles are rated from +2 (very high scientific credibility) to -2 (very low scientific credibility) while his strangely goes from 4 to 0 (excellent to very poor).
It's not in any sense public subsidized, and it's a pretty huge stretch to assert so.
No, what people are getting in an Uber driver is an unlicensed cab service, with the risks that implies - ie the lack of coverage in case of a catastrophic event.
How is that public-subsidized? (Ok, yes, one can rationalize that if someone is hurt in an uber accident, and they end up on the public welfare, that's somehow public subsidy, but that would be no different than if they had a catastrophic sidewalk accident with no insurance.)
The fact is, that risk is so tiny, people are willing to risk it. (Frankly, I'm surprised that the giant taxi interests haven't "arranged" for some woman to be brutally raped and murdered by a highly-rated uber driver to publicly taint the brand.)
Not to mention, of course, the begged question about public subsidy: what would be wrong with it? Every other fucking thing from massive oil firms to (now) your health insurance is public-subsidized, why not taxis?
Nonsense. The reflexive self-loather is no more 'valid' than the reflexive patriot: both are blind. The fact is - as usual - the reality is somewhere in the middle.
Simply put, yes, I might be posting at/. at work, but I also sit here 50+ hours a week.
If you want to 'monitor' my productivity so that I'm working every minute of every day, damn sure I'm leaving at 5:00:01, and not walking in here one second early, either.
"..someday a large portion of the world's traffic will flow through networks controlled by governments that are, at least to some extent, hostile to the core values of Western democracies.."
You mean, like the US government?/That was way too easy.
I'm not one of the many self-loathing Americans, but it's pretty irrefutable that the US government is "at least to some extent" hostile to the core Western, humanist values that are even laid out in its own Constitution.
Exactly correct. I'm not saying the F-35 is great, I don't know; but the metric of dogfighting is almost silly. A Sopwith Camel can almost certainly turn inside a modern jet fighter, I'm also pretty sure which would win a REAL WORLD fight without artificial constraints.
And people wonder why Utopia so quickly turns to Stalinism.
If they don't think the way WE want them to, then fuck them. We know better, after all. And we're good people, right? So who wouldn't want to do what we want, except EVIL people?
Jesus Christ life would be simpler in such a world.
Personally, I'd suspect that it would be far simpler, and likely more thorough, and even perhaps more efficient energywise to simply steer (or create) a small black hole to hit the earth. Even a small one would likely accumulate mass faster than it would evaporate, and would eventually, almost certainly, destroy the earth.
A big asteroid of antimatter is ridiculously dangerous, ridiculously hard to move, and has the problem of fratricide: that is, blowing chunks of earth far enough away from the antimatter that they're reasonably safe.
A black hole would ostensibly get every single atom. You could even say it 'cleans up' when it's done.
If you're simply looking for enough destruction to wreck (ie not annihilate) earth, hell, that's easy-mode. You wouldn't even need too big of an asteroid, just something you could accelerate to near-c velocities over decades from the oort cloud and put on a collision course. Earth's on a nice, perfectly-predictable path for the next several-thousand years. It's not even that much of a trick shot.
Hell, I'd be delighted if someone would simply tell admins that buying 10,000 fucking ipads and handing them to kids isn't a ED TECH program, it's an entertainment program, or a white wash, or a corrupt-kickback program, but in no sense is handing out such - without a deeply thought-through and integrated curriculum to back it up - an "educational" program.
Of course they're targeting kids; companies always have, in order to increase revenue by proxy.
No, what this story suggests to me is that the "for the children" narrative that usefully scares the right and center, is now being deployed in a way that might better trigger the anti corporate left.
We've now had 20 years of hyperbolic, ridiculous claims from the AGW advocates, none of which has actually come to pass.
There have been histrionic predictions about disappearing glaciers, extinct polar bears, 50cm+ rising seas, 50 million climate refugees, catastrophic hurricane seasons, ice-free arctic, all which should have come to pass by now. We've had spurious statistics, cooked data, 'smoothing', manufactured data, bent hockey-sticks, collusive behavior outright mendacity and "dog ate my homework"-level excuses for missing original data. I won't even begin to describe the number of errors in An Inconvenient Truth. Couple that to the near-zealotry exhibited by the faithful, and it's not hard to understand why the moderate middle reacts negatively to the latest FUD.
I'm not saying that the anti-Global Warming "industry" hasn't been equally egregious in their attack on global warming, but truth isn't determined by whoever shouts the loudest. If you have a radical assertion, that will require significant proof.
When the voters repeatedly demand that the government protect them from the consequences of their own decisions, that's what the government will do. Insist that the government protect you from 'hate speech' or 'racism' or 'sexism' or anything that makes you sad, the government will then ask for tools to do so. If you give them these tools, you can hardly be surprised when they then use these tools to follow some other majority-agenda that you might not be comfortable with.
And governments have never been notoriously good at giving up power, once they have it.
Phone communication is instant and interactive. Failures are highlighted more by their very nature, where a text (or whatever) might have 'failed to send' a dozen times invisibly before it actually gets sent.
Slashdot Mirror
the check point scanner page (not the app itself, that would be silly to link to in this context) is https://play.google.com/store/...
Again.....porn.
You thought dick pics were obnoxious? Wait until you see what comes out of your 3d printer.
Just to be clear, this was NOT the first, not by a long shot.
Pontifex is still probably the 'purest' version of this, and IMO still the best in some ways. IIRC it's available on your phone now.
But when Pontifex came out, there was no kickstarter/indie "community" nor a Steam to act as a marketing/delivery agent. The ecosystem really has matured, for sure.
I *entirely* agree with you, except that it has been a standard mantra of the Left for the last 40 years that "fairness" is identified by demographics. Not enough blacks in college? Not enough women CEOs? Not enough women in computer science?
All of these very common concerns that have driven policy and funding are based on the fundamental premise that any subsegment of society should apparently perfectly represent the demographics of the larger society, or "bias" is at work.
"Those add nothing to the discussion and are worthless."
No, because opportunity costs are a thing.
Having a fanciful belief that something works leads to a lot of wasted effort and energy that could be more usefully guided toward something that is accomplishable.
Oh, re your point about "move closer to Democracy"? You realize that as recently as 2011, "democracy" would have cheerfully banned gay marriage?
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/0...
Understand that "democracy" isn't a bunch of enlightened hipsters with progressive views deciding policy around their non-dairy lattes. Democracy can be ugly, reactionary, and easily manipulated.
I'm genuinely curious: how many awards this year went to white men (or if we throw out this year, let's take the last 5 instead)? Was it approximately proportional to their demographic representation in the field? Too high? Too low?
Both sides are so busy screaming at each other, I've never seen actual data. To determine whether I feel that the 'puppies' groups were reactionary wreckers (the popular narrative) or whether they identified a actual "politically correct" slant toward a nomination process that was preferentially putting forth female and "ethnic" candidates.
Why in the hell would we let a for-profit corporation have any say in curriculum?
Just wondering. I mean, if they want to spend their $ to sponsor initiatives, go nuts. If they want to be racist (blacks only need apply) and sexist (women only need apply), it's their money, go to it.
But if the Ford Motor Co said "let's get more people in classes that have to do with working assembly line jobs" even Congress would have to recognize that for its transparent motivation, no?
Is it totally ironic or just an effort at scatological humor that you misspelled 'ignoramus'?
I'd say that's being pedantic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Mars 3 is BELIEVED to have soft-landed, according to the general consensus (if 20m/s = 45 mph = being dropped from a 6-story building here on Earth... is "soft" but you get my point) but failed to return any meaningful data. It quit after 20 seconds just sending a garbled partial picture that can't even be interpreted to find a horizon.
It's just as likely that the lander crashed, and some of it managed to still barely function for 20 seconds.
In any case, even the SOVIETS would likely agree that the Viking 1 was the first successful Mars lander.
"...Remember, this is about aggregates, rather than whether some specific job has been replaced...." ...which means it's about lying.
The submitter/editor is specifically trying to contradict what you know otherwise to be true, and so had to remind you that the story's data need to be specifically interpreted to be true.
Not to invoke Godwin's Law but to dismiss moral concerns here as "knee-jerk responses" is a bit shallow, frankly.
As far as we understand (I'm not a brain scientist), we conceptualize that whatever makes us "us" resides entirely in the brain; not the spleen, liver, nor (despite general anecdotal experience from half the population of the other half) the penis.
We don't know *what* process activates "personhood" within that little clump of cells within a growing fetus, nor even have a conceptual yardstick against what to measure when a cell is self-aware, nor finally understand ethically if/when that matters to us.
This isn't a quasi-religious camouflage for an abortion discussion: cows are at least reasonably conscious if not sapient, and we kill them by the millions for food; most would argue that dolphins and dogs are reasonably intelligent and at least some of us kill at least one of them for food, too.
To create what is, as is presented here, a reasonable facsimile of a functioning brain at an early stage of development is to raise some ABSOLUTELY VALID questions. I mention Godwin's only because your justifications appear utilitarian, and of course the response to that would be the valuable and important research done in a number of different fields (such as hypothermia) done absent moral constraint by Germany circa 1940-45. I can't imagine anyone today would be ok with that, despite the data being very, very useful.
Utility is not - it CANNOT - be the entirety of the discussion here.
Like any such 'auditing', this tool runs into a "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" problem.
1) granted, I didn't dig deeply into the site more than a skim of the 'about' information, but I'm not sure I understand what sort of credentials qualify someone to contribute?
2) this - and the meta-narrative - suggests that the commenters are somehow objective. Scientists (contrary to some anecdotal experience, for sure) are humans like the rest of us. They have motivations, biases, and varying levels of tendentiousness, *particularly* when it comes to a subject important to them.
3) I see that anonymous reviews are also allowed, which means that this tool is fundamentally no more credible than, say, any comment system that allows anonymous cowards. And we all know how those can suck.
To use what's probably a good example:
http://climatefeedback.org/eva...
Lomborg is a divisive figure among the Global Warming movement; a credible, well-informed, reasonably charismatic spokesman for "the enemy", his point in recent years has been consistent: YES, it appears that warming is happening; YES, it appears that humans are to blame, but NO, it's not worth addressing with limited funds and resources - not even in the top 10 'big' subjects we should try to attack.
For example, the criticisms of his article reflect this:
"The author tries to rebut the narrative âoethat the worldâ(TM)s climate is changing from bad to worseâ. In doing so, he erects a straw-man, cherry-picks studies and misrepresents current climate science. Furthermore, the logic that since things are not âworst-than-we-thoughtâ(TM), we shouldnâ(TM)t take action and do the things we would do if things were simply âbadâ(TM), is lost on meâ¦", "Tries and fails to make a convincing case for why humans need to worry about climate change less than they currently do." and "The author on multiple occasions presents blatantly inaccurate information and otherwise uses selective information to argue his point, which is highly misleading." is NOT 'scientific' criticism. That's just bitching.
Moreover, on a technical note, the shorthand 'rating' system of the tool seems to vary as well.
Other articles are rated from +2 (very high scientific credibility) to -2 (very low scientific credibility) while his strangely goes from 4 to 0 (excellent to very poor).
It's not in any sense public subsidized, and it's a pretty huge stretch to assert so.
No, what people are getting in an Uber driver is an unlicensed cab service, with the risks that implies - ie the lack of coverage in case of a catastrophic event.
How is that public-subsidized? (Ok, yes, one can rationalize that if someone is hurt in an uber accident, and they end up on the public welfare, that's somehow public subsidy, but that would be no different than if they had a catastrophic sidewalk accident with no insurance.)
The fact is, that risk is so tiny, people are willing to risk it. (Frankly, I'm surprised that the giant taxi interests haven't "arranged" for some woman to be brutally raped and murdered by a highly-rated uber driver to publicly taint the brand.)
Not to mention, of course, the begged question about public subsidy: what would be wrong with it? Every other fucking thing from massive oil firms to (now) your health insurance is public-subsidized, why not taxis?
Nonsense.
The reflexive self-loather is no more 'valid' than the reflexive patriot: both are blind.
The fact is - as usual - the reality is somewhere in the middle.
Simply put, yes, I might be posting at /. at work, but I also sit here 50+ hours a week.
If you want to 'monitor' my productivity so that I'm working every minute of every day, damn sure I'm leaving at 5:00:01, and not walking in here one second early, either.
Two can play at the "bullshit minutiae game".
"..someday a large portion of the world's traffic will flow through networks controlled by governments that are, at least to some extent, hostile to the core values of Western democracies.."
You mean, like the US government? /That was way too easy.
I'm not one of the many self-loathing Americans, but it's pretty irrefutable that the US government is "at least to some extent" hostile to the core Western, humanist values that are even laid out in its own Constitution.
Exactly correct.
I'm not saying the F-35 is great, I don't know; but the metric of dogfighting is almost silly. A Sopwith Camel can almost certainly turn inside a modern jet fighter, I'm also pretty sure which would win a REAL WORLD fight without artificial constraints.
Simple American hyperbole, to the power of narcissism.
Americans use "awesome" for trivial things, so it's natural that anyone merely competent at a task would be called a "rock star".
And people wonder why Utopia so quickly turns to Stalinism.
If they don't think the way WE want them to, then fuck them. We know better, after all. And we're good people, right? So who wouldn't want to do what we want, except EVIL people?
Jesus Christ life would be simpler in such a world.
Personally, I'd suspect that it would be far simpler, and likely more thorough, and even perhaps more efficient energywise to simply steer (or create) a small black hole to hit the earth. Even a small one would likely accumulate mass faster than it would evaporate, and would eventually, almost certainly, destroy the earth.
A big asteroid of antimatter is ridiculously dangerous, ridiculously hard to move, and has the problem of fratricide: that is, blowing chunks of earth far enough away from the antimatter that they're reasonably safe.
A black hole would ostensibly get every single atom. You could even say it 'cleans up' when it's done.
If you're simply looking for enough destruction to wreck (ie not annihilate) earth, hell, that's easy-mode. You wouldn't even need too big of an asteroid, just something you could accelerate to near-c velocities over decades from the oort cloud and put on a collision course. Earth's on a nice, perfectly-predictable path for the next several-thousand years. It's not even that much of a trick shot.
Hell, I'd be delighted if someone would simply tell admins that buying 10,000 fucking ipads and handing them to kids isn't a ED TECH program, it's an entertainment program, or a white wash, or a corrupt-kickback program, but in no sense is handing out such - without a deeply thought-through and integrated curriculum to back it up - an "educational" program.
Of course they're targeting kids; companies always have, in order to increase revenue by proxy.
No, what this story suggests to me is that the "for the children" narrative that usefully scares the right and center, is now being deployed in a way that might better trigger the anti corporate left.
It's called Crying Wolf effect.
We've now had 20 years of hyperbolic, ridiculous claims from the AGW advocates, none of which has actually come to pass.
There have been histrionic predictions about disappearing glaciers, extinct polar bears, 50cm+ rising seas, 50 million climate refugees, catastrophic hurricane seasons, ice-free arctic, all which should have come to pass by now. We've had spurious statistics, cooked data, 'smoothing', manufactured data, bent hockey-sticks, collusive behavior outright mendacity and "dog ate my homework"-level excuses for missing original data. I won't even begin to describe the number of errors in An Inconvenient Truth. Couple that to the near-zealotry exhibited by the faithful, and it's not hard to understand why the moderate middle reacts negatively to the latest FUD.
I'm not saying that the anti-Global Warming "industry" hasn't been equally egregious in their attack on global warming, but truth isn't determined by whoever shouts the loudest. If you have a radical assertion, that will require significant proof.
At a certain point, people stop listening.
When the voters repeatedly demand that the government protect them from the consequences of their own decisions, that's what the government will do. Insist that the government protect you from 'hate speech' or 'racism' or 'sexism' or anything that makes you sad, the government will then ask for tools to do so. If you give them these tools, you can hardly be surprised when they then use these tools to follow some other majority-agenda that you might not be comfortable with.
And governments have never been notoriously good at giving up power, once they have it.
What an over-complicated load of bollocks.
Phone communication is instant and interactive. Failures are highlighted more by their very nature, where a text (or whatever) might have 'failed to send' a dozen times invisibly before it actually gets sent.
That, and people are stupid, impatient chimps.