In the lecture transcript some mention is made of Maxwell's Demon; I've heard about this before (through Thomas Pynchon) but I'm still pretty vague on the details. Is there anybody out there with enough background in hard science and free time to explain this or point me in the direction of good references? Thanks . . . .
-- Mexico's GDP per capita: purchasing power parity - $8,500 (1999 est.)
And the United States' GDP - per capita: purchasing power parity - $33,900 (1999 est.)
Now granted I'm not an economist by trade, but I think this means that your dollar, on average, goes four times as far in Mexico; i.e., if an hour's wage here in the States buys you a BigMac and a pack of smokes, you should be able to take that hour's wage across the border and buy four BigMacs and four packs of smokes. Note that this also generally implies that some dude in Mexico doing the same job you do is probably making about a quarter what you're making (if you converted his paycheck to American dollars.)
Of course it's all more complicated than that, otherwise you'd be able to get a degree in Econometrics (which I don't have) from a box of Captain Crunch.
Also, it's quite possible that Microsoft charges the same dollar amount wherever you are in the world; that is, just because prevailing wage and cost of living are both four times less in Mexico, that doesn't mean Windows is four times less. That's the thing about international monopolies.
Hell, I got no dukes. Hope this has been useful to someone.
Unfair? I did say rather right wing; surely not too unfair in light of the generally libertarian standard of discourse on this site? And of course liberalism and conservatism are subjective judgements, but as far as British publications go, I think they're quite conservative, especially fiscally.
What, particularly, makes you consider them economically liberal? They've always seemed like staunch defenders of free-market operation to me. Don't make the mistake of assuming that because they don't at all resemble American Republicans (a rare breed, them) they're not fairly conservative by world, and especially Commonwealth, standards.
Playing devil's advocate here, I don't think the automotive analogy holds up entirely:
1.)Starting a car company is incredibly capital-intensive and will always be so, just because you're making a very large bulky object. D'you have any idea how much an industrial sheet-metal press costs for instance? Or prime real estate with good access to transportation networks like highways and railroads? Breaking into the electronics market is no where near as difficult -- most of your raw materials, i.e. individual parts made by sub-contractors, are small enough to ship by UPS. Hard still, but not nearly so difficult as trying to compete with GM from your basement.
2.)Cars and their antecedants, wagons, donkeys, whatever, fulfil a pretty basic need -- they attempt to get you and your shit from point A to point B as quickly and comfortably as technology allows -- as this need is fairly immutable, you don't see a lot of basic structural change, only improvements: you add a wagon to your donkey, then a couple thousand years later you replace the donkey with an engine, pretty soon you start making the wagon out of metal instead of wood, et cetera. Most consumer electronics don't fill any long standing need like this: it's either shit you don't really need, like networkable coffee machines; or shit you didn't know you needed until someone invented it, like the PC, GPSs, whatever. So unlike the automotive industry, the fundamental demand-side market forces are liable to change very quickly, and it's much easier to come out of left field with some new gadget which doesn't so much address a demand as create a demand.
Like empires, I think all monopolies are doomed from their very beginnings. The premise of each is that one guy gets to be god and everyone else grovels. The human will to power -- the fact that almost all of us would rather be in charge if we had the choice -- ensures they'll eventually break down. And fear of monopolies is a very American thing, just like distrusting the government.
"The Economist" pretty much rocks. I recommend it to all/.ers for good, if rather right-wing analysis of current events. All your Consumer Price Index forecasts are belong to us.
Agreed, except Spike (he's the Southerner right?) will be Dr McCoy-ish, in a desperate gambit to re-invent the holy tripartate of the original series: Kirk, Spock, and Bones. I'll bet you a dollar he'll like arguing with Vulcans . . .
You've gotta wonder if our extradition treaty with Canada covers vandalism . . . or are the CHiPs going to just saunter up to Vancouver and drag these guys back by their hair?
but don't forget that this is part of an ongoing process that we can trace back to the invention of the written word, and later, the rise of literacy. I can't remember phone numbers worth a damn, but I have developed the abililty to sort through a phone book pretty fast by way of ennumeration. There are draw-backs, but the incredible value of being able to store thoughts somewhere other than inside our heads is one of the foundation stones of Civilization. (yes, with a capital C, if I may) Also, these draw-backs are fairly minor, in the sense that idea storing devices haven't been around nearly long enough for them to have any effect on our evolution.
But it's not a question of morality, chief. It's a question of legality, and mala en se isn't much of a legal arguement. Morality is a personal thing -- it lodges in your mind, or soul, or WeverTF you want to call it. Law is a societal thing; as societies don't have minds, or souls, or suchlike, they can't very well be moral, and law is our best substitute. Mistaking the one for the other is tantamount to mistaking the personal for the universal.
"If we ever moved that way, though, would we have to come up with new color words -- words that most of the population couldn't understand?"
Humanity is pretty good at getting by without good linguistic handles for sensory experiences. At the very least, our descriptions tend to be circular, that is, use terminology borrowed from other senses.
I don't think I'm stating this very clearly, so here's an example: the sound of a nice old jazz guitar could be described as warm, ruddy, full, mellow, dark, smoldering, et cetera. Almost any description you come up with refers or likens to another sense. And we seem to get by alright; so no, I don't think our terminology would need to evolve much, even if an entirely new sense was discovered. And by way of corrolary, your average non-mutant would have a fairly good idea of what you were talking about, just because your vocabulary would tend to draw on senses he's familiar with.
Re:Intelligent computers are inevitable and essent
on
Son of HAL For Sale
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· Score: 1
'Verging on AI' does bring back warmfuzzysticky memories of all those computers whom Kirk destroyed by convincing them they were illogical. (smoke pours out of CPU, colored lights flash faster and faster . . ..)
He's starting to look a little decrepit these days. He is of course a wonderful amazing scientist and all, that's hard to deny, but could it be that he's seen the eternal footman hold his coat and snicker, and that after a lifetime of predicting and inventing the future he's a little over-eager to see one more grand prediction come true within his lifetime? I'm speculating of course.
On the matter of the Clarke Omni-thingy automatically recognizing and correcting user errors: The presumption here is that the computer has a better idea of what I'm trying to accomplish than I do, and won't take no for an answer once its mind is made up. We get pissed off when our governments, girlfriends, parents, et cetera do this, and they're ostensibly intelligent, incredibly complex machines resulting from millions of years of trial and error research, aka evolution.
Am I rambling?
Am I preaching to the choir?
'Is this my house?'
'No, Ralph. You live somewhere else.'
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In the lecture transcript some mention is made of Maxwell's Demon; I've heard about this before (through Thomas Pynchon) but I'm still pretty vague on the details. Is there anybody out there with enough background in hard science and free time to explain this or point me in the direction of good references? Thanks . . . .
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index .html
-- Mexico's GDP per capita: purchasing power parity - $8,500 (1999 est.)
And the United States' GDP - per capita: purchasing power parity - $33,900 (1999 est.)
Now granted I'm not an economist by trade, but I think this means that your dollar, on average, goes four times as far in Mexico; i.e., if an hour's wage here in the States buys you a BigMac and a pack of smokes, you should be able to take that hour's wage across the border and buy four BigMacs and four packs of smokes. Note that this also generally implies that some dude in Mexico doing the same job you do is probably making about a quarter what you're making (if you converted his paycheck to American dollars.)
Of course it's all more complicated than that, otherwise you'd be able to get a degree in Econometrics (which I don't have) from a box of Captain Crunch.
Also, it's quite possible that Microsoft charges the same dollar amount wherever you are in the world; that is, just because prevailing wage and cost of living are both four times less in Mexico, that doesn't mean Windows is four times less. That's the thing about international monopolies.
Hell, I got no dukes. Hope this has been useful to someone.
BTW, commas continue to be a useful type of punctuation.
What, particularly, makes you consider them economically liberal? They've always seemed like staunch defenders of free-market operation to me. Don't make the mistake of assuming that because they don't at all resemble American Republicans (a rare breed, them) they're not fairly conservative by world, and especially Commonwealth, standards.
1.)Starting a car company is incredibly capital-intensive and will always be so, just because you're making a very large bulky object. D'you have any idea how much an industrial sheet-metal press costs for instance? Or prime real estate with good access to transportation networks like highways and railroads? Breaking into the electronics market is no where near as difficult -- most of your raw materials, i.e. individual parts made by sub-contractors, are small enough to ship by UPS. Hard still, but not nearly so difficult as trying to compete with GM from your basement.
2.)Cars and their antecedants, wagons, donkeys, whatever, fulfil a pretty basic need -- they attempt to get you and your shit from point A to point B as quickly and comfortably as technology allows -- as this need is fairly immutable, you don't see a lot of basic structural change, only improvements: you add a wagon to your donkey, then a couple thousand years later you replace the donkey with an engine, pretty soon you start making the wagon out of metal instead of wood, et cetera. Most consumer electronics don't fill any long standing need like this: it's either shit you don't really need, like networkable coffee machines; or shit you didn't know you needed until someone invented it, like the PC, GPSs, whatever. So unlike the automotive industry, the fundamental demand-side market forces are liable to change very quickly, and it's much easier to come out of left field with some new gadget which doesn't so much address a demand as create a demand.
Like empires, I think all monopolies are doomed from their very beginnings. The premise of each is that one guy gets to be god and everyone else grovels. The human will to power -- the fact that almost all of us would rather be in charge if we had the choice -- ensures they'll eventually break down. And fear of monopolies is a very American thing, just like distrusting the government.
"The Economist" pretty much rocks. I recommend it to all /.ers for good, if rather right-wing analysis of current events. All your Consumer Price Index forecasts are belong to us.
Agreed, except Spike (he's the Southerner right?) will be Dr McCoy-ish, in a desperate gambit to re-invent the holy tripartate of the original series: Kirk, Spock, and Bones. I'll bet you a dollar he'll like arguing with Vulcans . . .
You've gotta wonder if our extradition treaty with Canada covers vandalism . . . or are the CHiPs going to just saunter up to Vancouver and drag these guys back by their hair?
but don't forget that this is part of an ongoing process that we can trace back to the invention of the written word, and later, the rise of literacy. I can't remember phone numbers worth a damn, but I have developed the abililty to sort through a phone book pretty fast by way of ennumeration. There are draw-backs, but the incredible value of being able to store thoughts somewhere other than inside our heads is one of the foundation stones of Civilization. (yes, with a capital C, if I may) Also, these draw-backs are fairly minor, in the sense that idea storing devices haven't been around nearly long enough for them to have any effect on our evolution.
But it's not a question of morality, chief. It's a question of legality, and mala en se isn't much of a legal arguement. Morality is a personal thing -- it lodges in your mind, or soul, or WeverTF you want to call it. Law is a societal thing; as societies don't have minds, or souls, or suchlike, they can't very well be moral, and law is our best substitute. Mistaking the one for the other is tantamount to mistaking the personal for the universal.
"If we ever moved that way, though, would we have to come up with new color words -- words that most of the population couldn't understand?"
Humanity is pretty good at getting by without good linguistic handles for sensory experiences. At the very least, our descriptions tend to be circular, that is, use terminology borrowed from other senses.
I don't think I'm stating this very clearly, so here's an example: the sound of a nice old jazz guitar could be described as warm, ruddy, full, mellow, dark, smoldering, et cetera. Almost any description you come up with refers or likens to another sense. And we seem to get by alright; so no, I don't think our terminology would need to evolve much, even if an entirely new sense was discovered. And by way of corrolary, your average non-mutant would have a fairly good idea of what you were talking about, just because your vocabulary would tend to draw on senses he's familiar with.
'Verging on AI' does bring back warmfuzzysticky memories of all those computers whom Kirk destroyed by convincing them they were illogical. (smoke pours out of CPU, colored lights flash faster and faster . . . .)
He's starting to look a little decrepit these days. He is of course a wonderful amazing scientist and all, that's hard to deny, but could it be that he's seen the eternal footman hold his coat and snicker, and that after a lifetime of predicting and inventing the future he's a little over-eager to see one more grand prediction come true within his lifetime? I'm speculating of course.
On the matter of the Clarke Omni-thingy automatically recognizing and correcting user errors: The presumption here is that the computer has a better idea of what I'm trying to accomplish than I do, and won't take no for an answer once its mind is made up. We get pissed off when our governments, girlfriends, parents, et cetera do this, and they're ostensibly intelligent, incredibly complex machines resulting from millions of years of trial and error research, aka evolution.
Am I rambling?
Am I preaching to the choir?
'Is this my house?'
'No, Ralph. You live somewhere else.'