that's a half truth. People agree its a problem but they do not agree on the means of solving the problem.
The radical environmental fringe wants radical action. The majority want a slow and measured response that doesn't upset things too much.
the other side of the radical coin wants to do nothing at all.
Every time either radical fringe encounters anyone that doesn't want to everything they want right away the exact way they want they accuse them of belonging to the rival fringe when of course 95 percent of the time they're just yelling at someone in the middle.
And they've already asked for the cookie, because not only do they want the issue fixed by throwing literally trillions of dollars at the issue, they want to control that funding and regulation themselves. Which means the entire planetary economy would be in their hands.
And no... I don't think that's a reasonable request. And yes, they have effectively demanded that.
They want a global regulatory system that can order nations to comply indifferent to the wishes of their citizens. And they want that system to be in the hands of some UN body that they've seeded with their own people.
And because I'm sure you'll say it isn't trillions... I'm not just counting the money they're asking for but also the money the global economy will lose by complying... it does work out to trillions. Which isn't that hard to do really.
Consider that the US economy is something like 11-12 trillion a year all by itself. Cost the US 10 percent and you're looking at trillions in effective costs JUST in the US alone. Expand that over the whole world and its a lot more money.
And then factor that given economies have less money or are more reliant on dirty industry and so will be disproportionately harmed by the whole thing. Which means some of them won't comply or will fight compliance... and then you'll have to go through a trade war process in each situation.
Look at the problems the US has had getting sanctions on Iran for example. The EU says they'll comply. The UN says they'll comply... but the Iranians seem to be able to sell their oil anyway. So what exactly did that accomplish?
I personally think the solution is making fossil fuels uncompetitive through superior technology. I don't want to regulate them or tax them out of existence. I don't think that's practical.
What I do think will work is replacing them with something better. ACTUALLY better. The crux of our problem is energy storage. We have reasonable energy generation with solar and wind. But we have no reasonable system to store it. Batteries are not practical. At least as they currently exist. Maybe flow batteries would be okay... but I'm dubious.
wto hasn't responded to many issues that china has violated in the past... I see no reason why they would in the future.
Regardless, they will only push if the US stands behind it. And that means the whole thing is backed by us and the chinese will attempt to punish us directly for that.
Long story short, get ready for it to be ugly. if you don't have the stamina for a fight then don't waste our time and money by starting something you can't finish.
as to the different groups of environmentalists... I know... every group has that problem.
But the issue is that to some extent we're all environmentalists. We all live in this environment and we all generally want our planet to be healthy etc.
So as a political cause or faction, its hard to claim ownership of it unless you're in the extreme radical fringe. Because pretty much everyone agrees with everything BUT that fringe. And its the fringe that causes all the controversy.
Cut them out and you get no disagreement.
The environmental movement that you and I believe in already won. It got everything it was trying to get.
But like all the lobbying and advocacy groups when they get what they want they just ask for more and more and more until people say no... and then they paint whomever is denying them anything as an enemy of EVERYTHING they've ever done.
For example, if people that have come out against reparations for American blacks are frequently labeled racists, advocates of slavery, or other things. Never mind that they were against all those things they just don't believe in reparations for some reason.
Likewise you get the same thing in the environmental movement.
You come out against anything they want and they say you want to kill the world with toxic smog and heavy metal contamination.
You come out against putting in gender quotas for female hiring and the feminists will say you want to end women's suffrage, you're a misogynist, etc.
Every group is doing this... you see it amongst the bible thumpers as well... you don't like mandated religious education in public schools? Oh suddenly we all hate Christians and want to take away people's right to freedom of religion.
Every group is doing this... And I really don't understand why anyone lets them get away with it. Its obviously completely stupid. But every day... the same shit.
I'm pretty sure the Soylents will be against any energy program that isn't in tune with mother gaia though. Fusion doesn't sound like something they'd sign off on does it?
imagine if we could build big fusion plants that could power cities... would they be all over that?
I honestly don't know but given their attitude toward the nuclear programs I don't think they'd like it. I think fusion is tolerated mostly because they don't think its viable or worth worrying about right now. But if they suddenly made a viable reactor... I don't think they'd allow it.
At this point, I've grown pretty cynical about all these programs. We are at this point a house so divided that I don't think we're able to do anything anymore.
Okay... but was the pacific always higher then the Atlantic or is this something just just happened in last few years?
I live on the US west coast... we have no problem with flooding from the pacific. We have big beautiful beaches, mild storms, no hurricanes, and days that alternate between foggy and sunny.
None of which is relevant to the central point... but I sort of question whether there is one.
You're right, if I show anything short of blind faith to any report in the media... if I fail to believe utterly any story in the newspaper or in any press release, then I must question the total sum of all human knowledge./s
The expert in this case is the media not the scientists. Failing to believe the media because they've lied and misrepresented in the past and failed to offer enough evidence to make me trust them is not in any way dishonorable or foolish.
You can't blame that on global warming though or global sea levels.
You start talking about global warming and now you're talking about global stats. How is the sea going to CONSISTENTLY be higher in one part of the world then another if its all really one giant body of water? That doesn't make any sense.
I think there's a lot of erosion that has always been going on that is often blamed on global warming.
Well, I know Venice's big problem is that the city is actually sinking into the mud. That's been known for a long time. There are parts of the city that are always a good more then 5 inches under water. You'll see buildings with door ways that are about 4 feet submerged. So I'm a little dubious of that reference.
As to this situation. I'd have to see the thing. I can't take anyone's word for this sort of thing anymore. There's too much "opinion making" going on with people trying to distort the issue to suit their own personal grinding axe.
I could do the same thing... but I won't... I'll just say I'll need to see more to believe a word of it.
Its hard to have a reasonable discussion with someone when they assume so much about what position and then dismiss you before you elaborate.
As to the chinese trade war... you may be correct that they've been in trade war with us. We've seen similar things over time. That said, we also do a lot of dumping on the market as well. Mostly with food but there are probably other things as well.
Anyway, I'd like to avoid a trade war if possible because I think we're getting closer to an actual war with the chinese. And that's a war that would really hurt us.
Even if both sides refrained from striking their respective homelands and kept the whole thing between navies in the pacific... it would be very very expensive.
The US is ever so slowly losing the ability to project its power as its military budget is reduced. That's simply a fact. Now we could increase that budget but then we'd have to cut something else.
We can't get anyone to cut the entitlements. In fact, they keep getting increased. So that means the US is done as an international power. Over.
The US should rather start winding down its operations to avoid an embarrassing war that claims american lives to no purpose.
The ONLY way the US is going to be able to engage internationally is if it can balance its budget.
If we can't do that then we're a banana republic. End of story.
Yeah but the AI isn't trying to kill anyone... it has no will. They're not even real AIs at this point.
Most of the time we just point them at things and say "fire your missile at that"... and they hit the target. What the target is doesn't really matter and the machines can be no more held responsible for that then a knife can be... they're still very much tools at this stage.
Now, I grant there are robots being tested that can be set loose to choose their own targets. But those again are more like anti personnel mines. Step in that mine field and you're going to get blown up. Enter airspace grid A by grid B without swaking a valid IFF signal and IF the system's radar picks you up... and IF you display various features consistent with an enemy aircraft then the system will attempt to intercept and destroy.
That is currently about the limit of anything we've ever tried. And that's again not capable of being good or evil. It really doesn't make any choices besides how to get from point A to point B. But both of those points are defined by us. The system has no ability to redefine these values on the fly.
It can of course make mistakes but those mistakes are a product of erronious design by its human masters not some hidden desire by the machine to strike a different target.
For good and evil you need choice. None of our so called AIs have choice. I've heard of some AIs at MIT that have something like freewill but those articles that reference such machines appear to be baseless hype because the damn things never pop up anywhere else or are really demonstrated to any great extent on camera. And if they were that interesting they would be... but they never are... so I have to assume they're either so amazing that they're secret or its all crock of shit.
The machines as yet aren't smart enough or dynamic enough to be evil. One day who can say... but today... no.
Actually I'm not young. I remember the Commodore 64.
And regardless, my point was not that consoles should never have existed any more then I would say that sail boats should never have been used to ferry colonists or freight cargo across the ocean in rickety wooden boats.
things that made sense at one point because that was the technology of the time don't have to make sense forever... and neither does saying their time has past mean that they must never have been.
Regardless, the old Commodore actually makes the argument that they never needed to exist valid.
Compare the games on either side by side and you'll find that the ones on the computer have pretty much always been better... like always.
Sure, the personal computers sell for more then a console usually. But at least initially that was almost all profit margin. The actual cost to build either system was pretty comparable. Today that might still be true if you consider that the consoles have a much more efficient supply system then PC assembly and distribution.
Either way, my real point here... and please note this... is that the PC can do the same job the console does and do it better.
All it needs is a console like GUI skin/theme. Throw that on and most people won't notice the difference. you can still put it in your living room... give the thing a console form factor if that's something you care about. etc. Its no big deal... there are no cons... only pros.
MS long ago could have released a windows PC with a gaming GUI instead of the xbox line.
Users could then either buy that machine or put any gaming PC in the same role.
That would eliminate all of these problems.
Someone is going to say something bad about windows... but its fully capable of running any game you can imagine just about as efficently as anything.
And again... this would be with a custom GUI that was designed for the living room. Obviously they wouldn't be lugging a mouse and keyboard around the thing unless they actually wanted to do that.
There are only upsides to MS doing this and no downsides to MS.
They increase their market by combining two gaming markets. They annihilate Sony because sony can't compete with the game library, backward compatibility, and adaptability of a PC.
Ports become instant rather then an annoying expense devs go through to get their game to multiple markets.
Etc etc etc.
Also the hardware doesn't matter so much because a lot of people are going to buy from one of many companies making machines on this line.
MS from what I understand also tends to make nothing or lose money when it sells an xbox. Okay... why not simply go back to software and leave hardware to people that want to do hardware? By all means, come out with peripherals such as the kinnect... but its in everyone's interest if the thing isn't directly associated with gaming. Its a very cool piece of technology... don't hobble it by tying it to a system mostly used for halo.
you know the ones that caused the crash through corruption and fraud...
Exactly why do the hackers go to jail for making machines write "poop" on the home screen but bankers can cause literal trillions to evaporate and we just shrug?
Fuck their cable. They can run it and I wouldn't stop them.
My issue is in telling other people they can't run cable in competition to them.
I don't give a shit about comcast's cable or Verizon's cable. They're welcome to it. It just shouldn't be the only cable in existence on pain of death.
Which is what happens when government gives them a monopoly. If I try to run cable in competition, you won't give me a permit.
And if I try anyway... you send men with guns to explain the error of my ways.
Thus by the transitive property... local governments around the country are putting a gun against the head of anyone that tries to diversify the ISP business and bring real competition to that sphere.
And for what? Some cheap bribes apparently. Its pathetic... You're obviously ashamed of it... We all are... its disgusting.
Tell you what Federal Government... if you consider this a defense against destroying evidence, then certainly you'd be okay with lowly citizens that are supposed to be EQUAL to you before the law to use the same defense when you bring us to trial...
Right? Or are we the only ones that have to follow the rules?
Slashdot Mirror
then who cares... either way... your argument is that the tech is so far beyond our ken that we're just wasting our time with it.
that's a half truth. People agree its a problem but they do not agree on the means of solving the problem.
The radical environmental fringe wants radical action. The majority want a slow and measured response that doesn't upset things too much.
the other side of the radical coin wants to do nothing at all.
Every time either radical fringe encounters anyone that doesn't want to everything they want right away the exact way they want they accuse them of belonging to the rival fringe when of course 95 percent of the time they're just yelling at someone in the middle.
And they've already asked for the cookie, because not only do they want the issue fixed by throwing literally trillions of dollars at the issue, they want to control that funding and regulation themselves. Which means the entire planetary economy would be in their hands.
And no... I don't think that's a reasonable request. And yes, they have effectively demanded that.
They want a global regulatory system that can order nations to comply indifferent to the wishes of their citizens. And they want that system to be in the hands of some UN body that they've seeded with their own people.
And because I'm sure you'll say it isn't trillions... I'm not just counting the money they're asking for but also the money the global economy will lose by complying... it does work out to trillions. Which isn't that hard to do really.
Consider that the US economy is something like 11-12 trillion a year all by itself. Cost the US 10 percent and you're looking at trillions in effective costs JUST in the US alone. Expand that over the whole world and its a lot more money.
And then factor that given economies have less money or are more reliant on dirty industry and so will be disproportionately harmed by the whole thing. Which means some of them won't comply or will fight compliance... and then you'll have to go through a trade war process in each situation.
Look at the problems the US has had getting sanctions on Iran for example. The EU says they'll comply. The UN says they'll comply... but the Iranians seem to be able to sell their oil anyway. So what exactly did that accomplish?
I personally think the solution is making fossil fuels uncompetitive through superior technology. I don't want to regulate them or tax them out of existence. I don't think that's practical.
What I do think will work is replacing them with something better. ACTUALLY better. The crux of our problem is energy storage. We have reasonable energy generation with solar and wind. But we have no reasonable system to store it. Batteries are not practical. At least as they currently exist. Maybe flow batteries would be okay... but I'm dubious.
wto hasn't responded to many issues that china has violated in the past... I see no reason why they would in the future.
Regardless, they will only push if the US stands behind it. And that means the whole thing is backed by us and the chinese will attempt to punish us directly for that.
Long story short, get ready for it to be ugly. if you don't have the stamina for a fight then don't waste our time and money by starting something you can't finish.
as to the different groups of environmentalists... I know... every group has that problem.
But the issue is that to some extent we're all environmentalists. We all live in this environment and we all generally want our planet to be healthy etc.
So as a political cause or faction, its hard to claim ownership of it unless you're in the extreme radical fringe. Because pretty much everyone agrees with everything BUT that fringe. And its the fringe that causes all the controversy.
Cut them out and you get no disagreement.
The environmental movement that you and I believe in already won. It got everything it was trying to get.
But like all the lobbying and advocacy groups when they get what they want they just ask for more and more and more until people say no... and then they paint whomever is denying them anything as an enemy of EVERYTHING they've ever done.
For example, if people that have come out against reparations for American blacks are frequently labeled racists, advocates of slavery, or other things. Never mind that they were against all those things they just don't believe in reparations for some reason.
Likewise you get the same thing in the environmental movement.
You come out against anything they want and they say you want to kill the world with toxic smog and heavy metal contamination.
You come out against putting in gender quotas for female hiring and the feminists will say you want to end women's suffrage, you're a misogynist, etc.
Every group is doing this... you see it amongst the bible thumpers as well... you don't like mandated religious education in public schools? Oh suddenly we all hate Christians and want to take away people's right to freedom of religion.
Every group is doing this... And I really don't understand why anyone lets them get away with it. Its obviously completely stupid. But every day... the same shit.
I'm pretty sure the Soylents will be against any energy program that isn't in tune with mother gaia though. Fusion doesn't sound like something they'd sign off on does it?
imagine if we could build big fusion plants that could power cities... would they be all over that?
I honestly don't know but given their attitude toward the nuclear programs I don't think they'd like it. I think fusion is tolerated mostly because they don't think its viable or worth worrying about right now. But if they suddenly made a viable reactor... I don't think they'd allow it.
At this point, I've grown pretty cynical about all these programs. We are at this point a house so divided that I don't think we're able to do anything anymore.
Okay... but was the pacific always higher then the Atlantic or is this something just just happened in last few years?
I live on the US west coast... we have no problem with flooding from the pacific. We have big beautiful beaches, mild storms, no hurricanes, and days that alternate between foggy and sunny.
None of which is relevant to the central point... but I sort of question whether there is one.
That seems much more likely then a significant rise in global sea levels that is only really evident in a couple isolated places.
On what do you base that claim? Or do you only have baseless insults?
You're right, if I show anything short of blind faith to any report in the media... if I fail to believe utterly any story in the newspaper or in any press release, then I must question the total sum of all human knowledge. /s
You're a fucking moron.
The expert in this case is the media not the scientists. Failing to believe the media because they've lied and misrepresented in the past and failed to offer enough evidence to make me trust them is not in any way dishonorable or foolish.
You can't blame that on global warming though or global sea levels.
You start talking about global warming and now you're talking about global stats. How is the sea going to CONSISTENTLY be higher in one part of the world then another if its all really one giant body of water? That doesn't make any sense.
I think there's a lot of erosion that has always been going on that is often blamed on global warming.
Well, I know Venice's big problem is that the city is actually sinking into the mud. That's been known for a long time. There are parts of the city that are always a good more then 5 inches under water. You'll see buildings with door ways that are about 4 feet submerged. So I'm a little dubious of that reference.
As to this situation. I'd have to see the thing. I can't take anyone's word for this sort of thing anymore. There's too much "opinion making" going on with people trying to distort the issue to suit their own personal grinding axe.
I could do the same thing... but I won't... I'll just say I'll need to see more to believe a word of it.
... I thought total it was couple centimeters.... which shouldn't be enough to uncover anything but sand crabs...
Are we sure this isn't erosion? Because that seems far more likely then sea levels changing.
Good luck with that. What the chinese say they agree to and what they don't retaliate for in various ways are two very different things.
Its hard to have a reasonable discussion with someone when they assume so much about what position and then dismiss you before you elaborate.
As to the chinese trade war... you may be correct that they've been in trade war with us. We've seen similar things over time. That said, we also do a lot of dumping on the market as well. Mostly with food but there are probably other things as well.
Anyway, I'd like to avoid a trade war if possible because I think we're getting closer to an actual war with the chinese. And that's a war that would really hurt us.
Even if both sides refrained from striking their respective homelands and kept the whole thing between navies in the pacific... it would be very very expensive.
The US is ever so slowly losing the ability to project its power as its military budget is reduced. That's simply a fact. Now we could increase that budget but then we'd have to cut something else.
We can't get anyone to cut the entitlements. In fact, they keep getting increased. So that means the US is done as an international power. Over.
The US should rather start winding down its operations to avoid an embarrassing war that claims american lives to no purpose.
The ONLY way the US is going to be able to engage internationally is if it can balance its budget.
If we can't do that then we're a banana republic. End of story.
and possibly actual war... they are building up in the south china sea for a take over of basically everything that isn't nailed down.
I don't know if this will help that situation.
depends... it could effectively allow more domestic production.
Yeah but the AI isn't trying to kill anyone... it has no will. They're not even real AIs at this point.
Most of the time we just point them at things and say "fire your missile at that"... and they hit the target. What the target is doesn't really matter and the machines can be no more held responsible for that then a knife can be... they're still very much tools at this stage.
Now, I grant there are robots being tested that can be set loose to choose their own targets. But those again are more like anti personnel mines. Step in that mine field and you're going to get blown up. Enter airspace grid A by grid B without swaking a valid IFF signal and IF the system's radar picks you up... and IF you display various features consistent with an enemy aircraft then the system will attempt to intercept and destroy.
That is currently about the limit of anything we've ever tried. And that's again not capable of being good or evil. It really doesn't make any choices besides how to get from point A to point B. But both of those points are defined by us. The system has no ability to redefine these values on the fly.
It can of course make mistakes but those mistakes are a product of erronious design by its human masters not some hidden desire by the machine to strike a different target.
For good and evil you need choice. None of our so called AIs have choice. I've heard of some AIs at MIT that have something like freewill but those articles that reference such machines appear to be baseless hype because the damn things never pop up anywhere else or are really demonstrated to any great extent on camera. And if they were that interesting they would be... but they never are... so I have to assume they're either so amazing that they're secret or its all crock of shit.
The machines as yet aren't smart enough or dynamic enough to be evil. One day who can say... but today... no.
Actually I'm not young. I remember the Commodore 64.
And regardless, my point was not that consoles should never have existed any more then I would say that sail boats should never have been used to ferry colonists or freight cargo across the ocean in rickety wooden boats.
things that made sense at one point because that was the technology of the time don't have to make sense forever... and neither does saying their time has past mean that they must never have been.
Regardless, the old Commodore actually makes the argument that they never needed to exist valid.
Compare the games on either side by side and you'll find that the ones on the computer have pretty much always been better... like always.
Sure, the personal computers sell for more then a console usually. But at least initially that was almost all profit margin. The actual cost to build either system was pretty comparable. Today that might still be true if you consider that the consoles have a much more efficient supply system then PC assembly and distribution.
Either way, my real point here... and please note this... is that the PC can do the same job the console does and do it better.
All it needs is a console like GUI skin/theme. Throw that on and most people won't notice the difference. you can still put it in your living room... give the thing a console form factor if that's something you care about. etc. Its no big deal... there are no cons... only pros.
MS long ago could have released a windows PC with a gaming GUI instead of the xbox line.
Users could then either buy that machine or put any gaming PC in the same role.
That would eliminate all of these problems.
Someone is going to say something bad about windows... but its fully capable of running any game you can imagine just about as efficently as anything.
And again... this would be with a custom GUI that was designed for the living room. Obviously they wouldn't be lugging a mouse and keyboard around the thing unless they actually wanted to do that.
There are only upsides to MS doing this and no downsides to MS.
They increase their market by combining two gaming markets. They annihilate Sony because sony can't compete with the game library, backward compatibility, and adaptability of a PC.
Ports become instant rather then an annoying expense devs go through to get their game to multiple markets.
Etc etc etc.
Also the hardware doesn't matter so much because a lot of people are going to buy from one of many companies making machines on this line.
MS from what I understand also tends to make nothing or lose money when it sells an xbox. Okay... why not simply go back to software and leave hardware to people that want to do hardware? By all means, come out with peripherals such as the kinnect... but its in everyone's interest if the thing isn't directly associated with gaming. Its a very cool piece of technology... don't hobble it by tying it to a system mostly used for halo.
you know the ones that caused the crash through corruption and fraud...
Exactly why do the hackers go to jail for making machines write "poop" on the home screen but bankers can cause literal trillions to evaporate and we just shrug?
Just curious...
Fuck their cable. They can run it and I wouldn't stop them.
My issue is in telling other people they can't run cable in competition to them.
I don't give a shit about comcast's cable or Verizon's cable. They're welcome to it. It just shouldn't be the only cable in existence on pain of death.
Which is what happens when government gives them a monopoly. If I try to run cable in competition, you won't give me a permit.
And if I try anyway... you send men with guns to explain the error of my ways.
Thus by the transitive property... local governments around the country are putting a gun against the head of anyone that tries to diversify the ISP business and bring real competition to that sphere.
And for what? Some cheap bribes apparently. Its pathetic... You're obviously ashamed of it... We all are... its disgusting.
Tell you what Federal Government... if you consider this a defense against destroying evidence, then certainly you'd be okay with lowly citizens that are supposed to be EQUAL to you before the law to use the same defense when you bring us to trial...
Right? Or are we the only ones that have to follow the rules?
Its effectively a contract to form monopolies.
I don't see how it could... and even if it did... just leak it.