This really worries me because if blatant fraud and deceit become accepted business practices that are allowed to succeed, what does that say about the state of our civilization?
Oh I can answer that. We probably have 20 to 50 years left of civilization before it completely tears itself apart at the seams. If the end of cheap oil doesn't kill us, then our overly aggressive, competitive, and consumptive habits will finish the trick. These patent based "attacks" by Microsoft serve as a warning about a much deeper malady of the human condition. If human greed continues unchecked, we have no chance at all.
I don't have much time but I'd like to make a quick point. I'll get to the other points later this weekend. Thanks for the conversation.
As for useful garbage, or Municipal Solid Waste as the government likes to call it, we make about 220 million tons (Good to get some governmnent facts in there! *grin*) Even if it returned double the efficiency of animal parts, it is only 5% or less solution. And we have become better with recycling so less of this will be around to turn into oil... (or it may replace recycling entirely, it seems likely)
As for TD oil playing a larger role as oil prices rise, I completely agree. I have done some reading on it and I feel completely down with its "cool" factor. It solves an entire grip of environmental problems and some consumptive problems. But as for providing all of our energy, I have to disagree with you.
Lets look at the US
We have a quick look at the animal waste side. Animal waste accounts for 130 times the amount of waste compared to a human. So the human component to the bio-waste system seems negligible. (But let's get these TD toilets installed asap. It sure beats a septic tank!!!!)
The US animal industry produced 1.4 billion tons(us)[5] of waste.
Oil makes 45 GJ/ton roughly[6,7].
8.9% of mass can get extacted as oil. [8,4]
The system boasts a 15% inefficiency.[4]
So we have 1,270,417,422waste*ton_us *.089oil/waste[8,4] *.9(ton/ton_us)* 45GJ/ton *.85 Efficient [4] =
3892336657GJ(10^9J) or 3.89EJ (10^18J)
(and does this include the inefficiencies for central processing and removal of solid wastes?)
Take this against a US energy requirement of 100EJ[2] of which about 35EJ(10^18J)[9] of which absolutely has to be in the form of oil. (90% of all transportation is oil, oil is needed for fertilizers, you only get 10th as much energy from the natural gas, etc)
Needs vs Production by TD
35000000000000000000 J == 35EJ
3892336657000000000 J == 3.9EJ
So it could cover perhaps 1/10 of our oil requirements. So we will have to turn to marginal lands, forests, and perhaps even replace arable land that produces human food with gas food. And we have no data to show that this amount of conversion into oil and burning of our ecosystem will not irreparably harm it. Nor do we have any data to show that we can get 10 times as much out of Agriculture solutions than our horribly inefficient livestock industry. (All non agricultural conversions work as non-renewable resources, so I'll leave that out of the discussion.) So we still don't have enough energy and we have to convert the environment into oil to make up any losses. And if we only begin building this infrastructure after oil prices rise to dangerously high levels, we have no assurance that we can build it fast enough to prevent systematic collapse of economies, especially given the inefficiencies outlined above. And we would have to start making food for oil instead of people.
It just doesn't seem reasonable to estimate its ability to produce more than 100 EJ of energy on a global level. So it at maximum has the ability to delay the inevitable for a very short time. Especially given that world energy use will rise to 800EJ by 2020[8]. You may have found security in thinking TD will save the human race, but the numbers don't seem to back you up.
And please note, the efficiencies I quoted were from studies done of real biomater TD [8], not the hypothetical human conversion rate of 21% oil.
Seriously though, read up on Peak Oil a bit more. I will include a clip below about TD. It suffers from exactly the same problem as a free energy device as well, namely that we use the energy we get to destroy all other lifeforms and thus will do nothing but prolong the inevitable lifestyle change.
Let me know what you think. Check out the info below.
"Thermal Depolymerization" (TD) which can transform many kinds of waste into oil, could help us raise our energy efficiency as we lose power due to oil depletion. While it could help us ameliorate the crash, it is not a true solution for the following reasons:
1. Like all other forms of alternative energy, we have run out of time to implement it before the crash. Currently, only one TD plant is operational. Thousands of such plants would need to come online before this technology would make even a small difference in our situation.
2. TD is really nothing more than high-tech recycling. Most of the waste input (such as plastics and tires) requires high-grade oil to make it in the first place.
3. It is unclear what the EPR of oil derived from TD is. How much energy does the TD process require to produce a barrel of oil? If the EPR of oil derived from TD does not approach the EPR of traditional oil, it will not alleviate our problems.
In the immortal words of Homestar Runner, "System Report: Everything is fine. Nothing is ruined." And while you can keep on thinking that, you may want to understand the complete unsustainability of what we are doing as a race. As we convert all resources of the planet into humans, food for humans, and stuff for humans, we deny all the other animals resources that they need for them to survive. Now if humans somehow had no ties to the environment, we would be just fine. Unfortunately for us, we happen to be intrinsically tied to the planets ecosystem. We require lots of things from it to survive. Now as you mention, none of the "singular" points of failure that you mentioned have even come anywhere near happening. However, we now have begun to see system wide areas of failure. This causes, with ample empirical evidence to back it up, massive die-off of larger species of animals. We pretty much have taken care of most anything significantly larger than us. And we now have moved down the chain to smaller and smaller life forms. Regardless, the trend will continue until either
Humans kill off the ability for this planet to support larger forms of life. (Believe me, the bacteria have nothing to worry about.)
Humans change the way they live and restart to compete fairly with other forms of life. (If you need a definition of "compete fairly" think of a sport such as Baseball or Football. Then think of someone going in with a gun, injuring all the other players, and declaring themselves "Ultimate Victor". True in a sense, but not fair.)
However, we have bigger worries ahead on a civilization level. As the latest rounds of wars have shown, people "up there" have begun to get very touch about their oil. And for good reason too. For the last 4 years, global oil production has fallen. It seems more and more evident that we have reached Peak Oil. And as you will find out shortly, it isn't something that solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear power can help us out with in the timeframe of the downslide of oil production.
This problem has many facets and thus can take a long time to wrap your brain around. I'll run down a quick summary here, but I would do more research to come up with your own opinion.
The world's economies run on oil. Duh.
The world agriculture runs on oil. We can only sustain our 150 tons per acre of food production with the plethora of cheap oil that we now have available. Without that oil, our yields will drop at least 50% if not 70% or more.
The worlds transportation runs on oil. 90% of it in fact. That 150 tons of food needs to get to your grocery store somehow.
Given that our demand for oil has increased and looks to continue to do so due to population pressures and that we cannot get more oil out of the ground, oil prices will rise indefinitely.
Given that the production of food and resources has such a strong tie to oil. As the oil prices rise, prices for food must rise with it. Thus the price of food will rise indefinitely. This will get exacerbated by the decline in food output given the scarcity of oil.
No amount of research and development can save us from this. We don't have the time to implement any of the readily apparent solutions (gas, coal, nuclear, solar.. etc) unless we devise a way of generating infinite energy, and even still we would be without many of the chemicals that we need to maintain our food supply. And given even that much free energy, we would have trouble manufacturing and distributing the necessary devices to stem these problems, especially in poorer nations. (Though limitless energy would alleviate many of the harder aspects of our coming population slide).
And even with that infinite energy, as long as we continue to destroy our ecosystem with that energy, the result will look the same, just 50 to 100 years later.
So in short, if you don't have a free energy device up your sleeve that you haven't sold to
Many people probably don't understand from her broken English, but she took
this picture IN FRONT OF THE
SARCOPHAGUS OF CHORNOBYL!!!!
Man. I cannot even begin to imagine.
---
Remember, there is no sig.
While I would tend to side with the economic argument of Shirky over the more emotional argument (and hopes) of Scott McCloud, I think that they both miss the point.
This system does not count as "micropayment"!!!
In fact, it costs $3.00. The reason for this comes from our credit card system, which really doesn't allow for transactions that small. You get charged a transaction fee by an amount depending on the merchant agreement and that eliminates your micropayment profit margin. And you always pay a percentage of volume, further eroding your profits. So you cannot use the CC system directly for your micropayments. So you need to develop another payment system to bootstrap over the minimum hassel of a credit card transaction which far exceeds a typical micropayment. For this reason, they introduce the "gift card" (call it what you want) which has a minimum transaction amount appropriate to our Credit Card system.
So in actuality, any of these micropayment systems really present the customer with the choice, "Would you buy into a micropayment system for $3.00?" Almost every one I know would answer no to that question. I certainly never would, no matter how funny the comic strip. Very few people will pay $3.00 for $0.25 cents worth of material, no matter what the promise of "future content" will hold. And for things over $3.00 in value, the Current Credit card system works just fine.
This situation cannot get abrogated by anyone other than the Credit Card companies themselves. If they open up their systems for reasonable micropayment, it may work, albeit under the preasures indicated by the article due to the marginal cost of the items.
The only other alternative I can think of would involve the ISP. If the user could say "Have my ISP charge me.25 at the end of the month.", I think micropayments would have a much stronger footing. Even in this situation though, having googled for a piece of information and comming up with a free site and a micropay site, I choose the free site. If I don't get what I need out of free sites, a rarity in this day and age and less likely in the future, then I will choose the pay site.
Given the fundimental problem with the Credit Card issue, and the even more fundimental problem of the fact that to humans "free is just plain different from pay" I just don't see any future for micropayments. I wish every one who clicked on my sites gave me $0.25 and everyone else wishes everything cost nothing at all. That gap cannot get bridged and to missunderstand why can only come from a fundimental misunderstanding of human nature.
Wonderful! I knew beneath the calm exterior lurked a human being somewhere!
How are they getting fucked over? Because someone can find them? If that's the definition of fucked over, I want to know what the hell it's called to go through some of the shit that I've been calling fucked over for my whole life.
*laugh* The cart always comes before the horse with you. It has nothing to do whatever with "getting tracked" Vs "no healthcare". You can only see the cause/effect relationship. These things do not seem as separate to me. The consequence of this decision means that some people will not get health care that they currently get due to consequences beyond their control. That's getting fucked over.
The shit you call getting fucked over has no difference between this situation and itself. As long as we always go out to "fix" the problems we create by our "fixes", we will continue to fuck everyone over. We really don't have to do anything at all.
Unless I'm going to make a full recovery, I don't want to be plugged in. I'd be pissed if I woke up 30 years later without use of my body and confused why my wife is now an old woman and my kids are married.
And if you woke up a week later, would you feel the same way? Whine about the "lost week"? I think not.
I think that people who choose not to work and don't shouldn't be entitled to anything.
Ha ha! The jig is up! You don't even think they should get this healthcare in the first place. You don't like the game where everyone gets a bit of food and some medicine from society. They MUST work. But that game just doesn't work for some people. So you want to remove any ability for them to live, i.e. kill them. See what a monstrous murder you are?!?!
What I do want is not to be harassed by people unwilling to work, and expect a free lunch.
Yep. You want life to always go your way. And you feel perfectly willing to kill to do it. So you really don't seem like an individual to me, just another murderous asshole created by civilization and greed. I feel ok with that. But you want to deny it!
If the minority is a little less happy, so the majority is a lot more happy, that is just fine by me.
So would everyone else. Your style of living has ultimate supremacy in this world. And it eats at you every day. But you could just as easily recognize that all of your little so called "individual" opinion just came to you based on your past experiences and the knowledge gained from others. You really haven't said one original word. And neither have I! *laugh* How can one such as you do anything good at all? Why even live like that? And who is the "you" that wants to change things?
*smile* I read everything you said! You read everything I said. We still do not even come close to understanding each other. I feel ok with that. You feel I "... need to step back and re-read some things."
Lets put it this way. You fall into a coma due to an accident. You get put on life support. Now someone comes and makes a "no work/no health care" law. So they come and pull the plug from you, you lazy bastard. All the while, they chant "No free lunch! No free lunch!" Would you say that you got fucked over?
You cannot chose to work as an invalid any more than a homeless person who does not want to work can choose. The choice comes from the past, you attack them in the present.
And THEN you go and talk about all the homeless people who "...do want to get back on their feet but are having a hard time." You don't understand that your perception of people "working to get on their feet" will never fit with many of the homeless. I HAVE talked to many homeless. Some want to work, many do not. Your primary interest lies in finding homeless people who want to fit in and "rehabilitate" them, by which you mean making them act like you and work for 40 hours per week and have a house. You think giving them all jobs will "help them out".
What you fail to understand, what many fail to understand, can get summed up as follows. THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY TO LIVE! Just different ways of living. You don't need to help the homeless at all. Give them food if you feel the need. Or not, they will find a way regardless. But it will not be YOUR way. Never never never. So you want to deny them the health care and food they get now because of this. And you chant "No Free Lunch!" without any sort of understanding whatsoever. And you can do nothing about it. Nor can I, nor anyone else. So why do you feel the need to do anything?
*laugh* Angst?! I don't feel that way at all. I have a totally positive outlook on the situation. I also completely understood what you said. You feel that 70% of the homeless who currently avail themselves to free care have "mental soundness" and thus engage the care by "willful and intelligent choice". I say that they already have made the "willful choice" of abandoning most of the benefits of civilization, which you would reintroduce by tracking them and "helping them." Some will accept, many will not. They already made the choice in the past, you just want to fuck them over for it now. Making it impossible to "get care" because of their choices sounds like the definition of fucking someone over to me.
I see many "sucessful" people who have no ability to feel happy and take care of themselves. Have you watched "The Osbornes"? They don't seem to happy to me... but you would have a hard argument to call them "unsucessful." When you create this concept of "sucesss" you create the concept of "unsucessful". No matter how you slice it, you end up with contradictions.
You say "Medication, man. Take it and enjoy it." and "I would seriously re-evaluate your stances..." You even call my position moronic! I love it! I have no disagreement with you at all! But I call your positon moronic and you feel "he's crazy and needs to be sedated by medication" in EXACTLY the same way you feel that homeless people should get tracked and if they want "help."
I don't want to change anything about you even in the slightest. Why do you want to change me or anyone else? I didn't even respond to your post to engage you or change you. I think that you have no ability to get out of your situation and you don't realize it. I responded because your post invoked a response out of me. I didn't want to do anything about anything at all. Maybe someone will read this and see what I point to. Maybe not.
Xerithane wrote: And yes, it is possible to go from homeless to successful.
And impossible to "be sucessful" as a homeless person right?
You said, "If they choose not to accept free care on condition of tracking..." You don't even understand that they ALREADY MADE the choice! You simply fuck them over for that choice. You say "... rebuild their lives." You mean, "act like me or I'll starve you to death." You don't even understand a word you say! WAKE UP!!!!!!!!! *laugh*
Really, we can do nothing at all about the situation. Until we realize that as long as we posit a "sucessful person" we will split the world in two and kill everyone on the wrong side of the fence, we will live in misery.
Why do need to help them at all? I just don't understand the value of "improving their situation." Many "mentally ill" homeless actually have a good deal of intelligence and could rejoin society if they wanted to. Your "helping" them actually hinders what they want to do. You say "help", I hear "brainwash". The homeless that want homes get back into civilization, just read this thread to hear from the homeless who have done this. Those homeless that do not want your help will not accept it.
You people run around, think up some crazy idea like "improving the lot of the homeless", and go out and do it. And then you feel surprised when it turns out all fucked up!!! How about a program called "Helping the Homeless to Live as Homeless"? Wow! Helping people... to not buy stuff?!?!? What a concept! Do you feel the least bit ashamed that you never thought of it? Probably not, because your little ego always tries to make everything better and everything ok. Sorry, that will not happen. Because your little ego has the great wish to never die. So you fist fuck your planet, your friends, your children, your wives to get what you want most, safety (which you call "happiness" or "love" or whatever). Security requires conformity and in your desperate search to be "safe", you will disrupt the lives of anyone who has the misfortune of meeting you.
So fuck the homeless. They can take care of themselves. If you want to help, give them some food and leave them the alone.
Fuck the other countries. They will deal with their problems, we will deal with ours. What did you say? You want their stuff? Hmmm...
And fuck your tiny little ego. Because it will die and "you" cannot stop it. And as long as that "you" exists, you will try to make the whole world "safe". But life has not safety. And that makes it worth living. The thing you live in, I wouldn't even want to crap on.
Relax. We can just sit back and watch ego destroy itself. The little divisions of the world come from the divisions in our minds. The world will lose history. We will lose self. But anything you do about it could turn something wonderful into something really, really terrible. It can go either way. We should stop asking, "What should we choose?" and instead ask, "Why do I choose?"
While the details surrounding the choices that humanity made 10,000 years ago or so may never get unearthed, we can surmise the nature of the mental change they made by the way it effects human society today. First, we must point out, as you did in your post, that the change that humans made involved thought. Humans before this had very similar genetics to us and non-civilized peoples our culture has met certainly have our intellectual potential, if not the huge knowledge set our culture posesses. So knowing this change has an intellectual basis, we should look for its root ideas. I wish to set out the basic Memes of our civilization.
Meme 1: Humans have a special place in the universe before all other forms of life.
We feel that we no longer need to obey the laws that other animals follow. We feel that we have a âoespecialâ place in the universe, given to us by God for the religious or Reason for the atheist. Our legal system carefully systematizes this distinction between Human and Animal. It pervades most peoplesâ(TM) thoughts without them realizing it.
Meme 2: Our particular civilization has the TRUE way to live.
This way involves a totalitarian form of agriculture in which we constantly choose humans and food for humans over all other forms of life. Chickens must live so foxes must die. Cows must live so wolves must die. Wherever our civilization has gone, we have robbed the local environment to produce food or space for our human species.
Another part of this involves the notion of a âoejobâ. We feel that everyone should make products to sell so that we can buy products. This make product/get product habit encompasses every aspect of life and we have developed many theories to handle it, ie economics. A more realistic understanding of âoeeconomyâ would include the resource limitations put on the system by our environment.
Meme 3: All other humans must live this way.
Humans in this civilization always defend aggressively to the death their system. Even very minor deviances from the current cultural system, be it economic belief, religious belief, or even particular habits can cause massive wars. Whenever we encounter another group of humans, âoemissionariesâ flock to the location in order to indoctrinate these people and give them âoethe one true way.â
The agricultural system ties into it power on this planet. By constantly pushing the Food side of the population equation, we consistently have increased our human population. For 10,000 years we have grown âoemore food for a growing population.â From the look of it, we intent to do that right to the point where we completely outstrip the global environments ability to replenish itself.
Most of you who read this believe these 3 things, even if reading them separately causes you to âoefeel above that.â Please make an effort to rid yourself of these ideas because within them contains the destruction of all of the lifeforms on this planet.
By this argument, you say that by selling crack to all your friends so you could make money would count as an ethical action just like the musicians selling out and making RIAA music for the masses. What else could these poor people do? I happen to agree on both the drug dealer and musician front. People do what they can to make a living, always and almost always foremost. But it doesn't make crack any less of an addicitve drug. Nor does it make the rythmic thumpy 3-cord crap the music industry puts out any less addictive. Try driving in the car with an American without music sometime. They behave very interestingly.
The reason they have an iron fisted rule comes from the reason they exist, to pedel their wares to their addicts. The poster claimed that people don't admit to their addiction to music and that serves as the fundimental cause of the music industry. I don't fault the RIAA/artists any more than I fault drug producers/dealers or pimps/whores. They do what they can to survive. They happen to survive in a market caused by addiction. Remove the addiction, remove the problem.
But the personal responsiblity line rarely gets much press. I feel glad that/. managed to get the parent to such a high rating.
Seriously, we need to address this problem of "stuff addiction". We don't need it. And it causes all of these horror stories that we hear. Maybe if we looked, we could find another way.
I liked several of the points you made! They of course do make implications that the average human does have as much control over the Matrix as a cow in a stockyard. They definately point to the dehumanizing nature of the Matrix and conversely the need for even its Agents to regain their humanity from it. I feel a very strong critisim comming from the movie towards corporate culture.
However, I think you should realize that you would have a very hard time over-intellectualizing this movie. It holds many layers, symbolisms, and metaphors. The Wachowskis have said that they drew heavily from Gnostic and Buddhist traditions. They make refrence to the Shadow Cave argument from the Republic. Many of the characters have mythological names evoking their characteristics. I would recommend not selling this movie series short.
Regardless, that it has so many different ways to find meaning in the Matrix will make it a talked about movie for years to come. I have a feeling that this will especially come true when the next movie comes out.
I agree. The metaphor works so much better it seems impossible to me that they did not think it up and dismiss it as too complicated. However I never have seen anyone ask this question of them. If I had one thing to ask about the Matrix, that question would get ranked as the first.
According to the Architect, the Matrix exists because people choose it to exist. Reality forms because we choose it too according to Buddhist philosophy. If you notice, the Matrix spends a bunch of time talking about choice. So the why of the "sideshow" stems entirely from the choice of the humans to believe in the Matrix. Thus any hole in the movie plot stems from the disconnect of these ideas and the vechicle they chose to express these ideas, i.e. a future robot war.
Of course, the notion that the Matrix uses people to gain real energy disobeys Thermodynamics. Someone above made a comment about using humans as "processors", which would have made a much more plausible technical reason for the AI keeping the humans around. But I think this discussion misses the real reason that they went with the power rational with The Matrix. I feel that they wanted to make a metaphorical statement about how people fuel "the Matrix" in reality. Given the heavy Gnostical and Buddhist themes in the movie, we can understand that they mean to show that when we make the choice to believe in reality, we reinforce its power, not only over us, but over others as well. The more we believe that what we see and discern has meaning and substance, the more we get locked into the cycle of arising desires and beliefs. This, in Buddhist terminology, turns the wheel of life by forming a duality between that which we want and that which we do not want, which generates karma and hence causes reality to appear right before our eyes. Thus the power metaphor seems appropriate. Those "plugged into the Matrix", i.e. those who continue to believe in reality, "power the Matrix", i.e. cause the wheel of rebirth to turn. Honestly, I would feel surprised if the W bros didn't heavily debate using a flawed physical representation ("power plants") over using a much more profound, but subtler, idea of humans adding processing power as a reason for imprisonment. They must have decided that the computer metaphor would get lost on most of the audience and thus dumbed it down. You notice that the "power plant" idea does not appear in the 2nd movie at all except for an oblique reference to "you need us". They merely used it as a crutch to help people suspend disbelief while watching the movie.
By understanding the Message of The Matrix, you will come to understand many of the logical inconsistencies in the film. Everything in that movie got put there for a reason and the W bros felt no shame altering some of the content so more people would understand the Message. So while it may ire geeks, it makes the movie easier to swallow for people new to these sorts of ideas. I personally just pretend that Morphius said, "Humans can perform up to 10^5 Teraflops (or whatever) of complex operations that the robots steal to add to their available processing power." I think you can see how this would require a much longer dialog between Neo and Morphius to inform the average viewer of what that means.
While I personally would love harder Go opponents to play against on the computer, I don't feel that Go will get anywhere near the level of Chess for a long time. Jay Burmeister wrote an excellent paper on the topic of computational Go and I'll use some of his points to show why many Computer Scientists feel that Go will take significantly more work than Chess to acheieve a grandmaster level of play.
Features | Chess | Go # moves in a game | ~80 | ~300 Branching factor | ~35 | ~200 Horizion effect | Applies basically at Grandmaster level | Applies at beginner level End of game | Strictly defined checkmate | Loosely defined territory conquest(see seki and ko fights) Evaluation of board position | Correlates to number and quality of pieces on board | Poor correlation with either pieces or territory
A quote from his paper may also help,
"3.3 Why Go Cannot be Programmed Like Chess
Chess programs typically use a heuristic search and evaluation technique. Search trees of board positions are generated to a fixed depth and are heuristically pruned according to an evaluation of the merit of the board positions. This approach works well in Chess because the board size is sufficiently small and the nature of Chess is more tactical than strategic.
Evaluation of a board position in Go presents problems not encountered in Chess. Go is a much more strategic game in comparison to Chess. Unlike Chess, Go does not focus around the capture of a single piece. Positional advantages are slowly built up in achieving the long term goal of acquiring more territory than the opponent. There are many direct and indirect ways to achieve this goal such as making territory, building influence, attacking weak enemy groups, securing friendly groups, destroying enemy territory etc. Due to the large size of the board, a Go game is comprised of many small local skirmishes. If a game of Chess were described as a battle, a game of Go could be described as a war. Many good tactical moves at the local level must all compete for selection in the context of strategic global considerations. Thus a player must balance resources to achieve local goals at many locations whilst trying to pursue an overall global objective."
Read more about computer Go at Mike's Computer Go. Sit down and try a game of Go for yourself and you will see why computers won't get to the same level anytime soon.
Many of the slashdotter's responses scare me. We have strange arguments about carrying capacity that don't understand that you can OVERSHOOT the carrying capacity by a long shot, through environmental destruction. We have arguments about simply needing more energy, as if we do not require the other life forms on the planet to maintain our oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water, and a million other biosystems that keep us alive. We have discussions on the first worlds slowing population with assurances that everything will just work itself out when the third world "grows up" which ignore basic scientific law on the subject of population growth.
I will list what I know of population dynamics, in order to show you my point of view.
Humans beings belong to the animal family. We obey laws of population dynamics like all other animals. That we can effect the situation to take better advantage of biological laws doe not make us immune to their effects.
All animals have a population size that food supply appears as a principal functor. Any "win" on the amount of food produces a "win" in the population size. "You are what you eat" does not only have meaning as a cliché. It speaks a truth about animal populations. The more we have to eat, the more of us we can make.
Through our agricultural processes, we have embarked a journey of converting all biomass into human and food for humans. We did this by denying our competition any food. Chickens must live so foxes must die. Cows must live so wolves must die. Corn must live so bugs must die. We currently consume about 200 species a day to make room for humans and food for humans.
Each year, on average, we produce more food. Each year, on average, we had more children. Our outlook on Nature as an infinite resource meant for human taming covered up the dynamic nature that species depend on each other.
We require several biosystems to survive. We need oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen to form our atmosphere and grease the wheels of us and other life forms we depend on for food. We need dense plant cover to prevent erosion and facilitate temperate climates. We require fungus and bacterial systems to dispose of waste. Without these systems, we will not survive.
The only variable of the food/population cycle that we have the strongest control over seems like the food side. Extra food always brings a win on the population side, if not where the food grew then where that food got shipped.
Thus to reduce the human population in order to stop the consumption of our life support biosystems, we must produce less food.
Even if a 50-year limit seems like an alarmist position, many conservative scientists agree that 100 years looks like the maximum timeframe. Change must happen quickly for us to save a habitat that humanity can live in.
This looks like a path finding problem to you? You can connect all the nodes (ie timerequests) together in some meaningful way AND you have a function that always returns a weight less than the sum of the path?
Nice try with the A*. Next time look up what it means.
In AI, this problem gets called "Constraint Satisfaction." Typically, a logic based programing language gets used, such as Prolog. While he can write the program in C, the nonintuitive way he would have to handle backtracking would seem difficult for other coders to understand. Prolog seems understandable to anyone who knows logic (ie any programmer). Writing backtracking programs in Prolog becomes very easy since Prolog has backtracking as a fundimental component. Let us look at how this program would look in Prolog.
We have 5 days to fill and 4 workers to do it. Ann can work on Thu. Betty can work Mon-Tue. Joe can work Mon and Fri. Katie can work Tue - Thu.
% Something fits the schedule iff. schedule(Mon,Tue,Wed,Thu,Fri):- % Every day has someone available available(Mon,1), available(Tue,2), available(Wed,3), available(Thu,4), available(Fri,5).
% ask about who can work when. ?- schedule(Mon,Tue,Wed,Thu,Fri). Mon = betty Tue = betty Wed = katie Thu = ann Fri = joe;
That finishes the program! You cannot do that as easily and as simply in almost any other language. You can also continue to ask for alternatives for the schedule (the program lists 9 plans). He can extend this by adding times (obviously) and even preferences for times. The system should feel simple and seems easy to maintain.
I don't mean to dethrone your CS knowledge, but A* doesn't even apply in this domain. Logic planning can take a great amount of time in other language. He needs the right tools for the job.
Yes, well the first world isn't as large of a percentage of the planet's population as the third world. And the third world is happily eating up all that food that we don't need now but keep producing more of. So no, the world will not be filled with old people, just the developed world. As for the rest of the planet, they will happily walk hand in hand with the US in consuming us into destruction.
Read more about it here.
There is no love in torturing babies, and don't even pretend that there is. You tread perilously close to Godwin's Law.
Critisim is great! Yes, bad art exists. And as reasoning entities we must decide what we like and what we do not like. Critisize it all you want. It is your right to. And I fully respect and am a proud member of people who think that just because we have entered whatever we have entered here, we still have the right and the duty to criticize what we feel is wrong with the world.
But you said the video was NOT art. And let me be blunt here. I say, Fuck that!
You mistake the finger for that which is being pointed at.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh I can answer that. We probably have 20 to 50 years left of civilization before it completely tears itself apart at the seams. If the end of cheap oil doesn't kill us, then our overly aggressive, competitive, and consumptive habits will finish the trick. These patent based "attacks" by Microsoft serve as a warning about a much deeper malady of the human condition. If human greed continues unchecked, we have no chance at all.
Good Luck
crulx
I don't have much time but I'd like to make a quick point. I'll get to the other points later this weekend. Thanks for the conversation.
As for useful garbage, or Municipal Solid Waste as the government likes to call it, we make about 220 million tons (Good to get some governmnent facts in there! *grin*) Even if it returned double the efficiency of animal parts, it is only 5% or less solution. And we have become better with recycling so less of this will be around to turn into oil... (or it may replace recycling entirely, it seems likely)
Talk to you soon.
As for TD oil playing a larger role as oil prices rise, I completely agree. I have done some reading on it and I feel completely down with its "cool" factor. It solves an entire grip of environmental problems and some consumptive problems. But as for providing all of our energy, I have to disagree with you.
Lets look at the US We have a quick look at the animal waste side. Animal waste accounts for 130 times the amount of waste compared to a human. So the human component to the bio-waste system seems negligible. (But let's get these TD toilets installed asap. It sure beats a septic tank!!!!)
(and does this include the inefficiencies for central processing and removal of solid wastes?)
Take this against a US energy requirement of 100EJ[2] of which about 35EJ(10^18J)[9] of which absolutely has to be in the form of oil. (90% of all transportation is oil, oil is needed for fertilizers, you only get 10th as much energy from the natural gas, etc)
Needs vs Production by TD
35000000000000000000 J == 35EJ
3892336657000000000 J == 3.9EJ
So it could cover perhaps 1/10 of our oil requirements. So we will have to turn to marginal lands, forests, and perhaps even replace arable land that produces human food with gas food. And we have no data to show that this amount of conversion into oil and burning of our ecosystem will not irreparably harm it. Nor do we have any data to show that we can get 10 times as much out of Agriculture solutions than our horribly inefficient livestock industry. (All non agricultural conversions work as non-renewable resources, so I'll leave that out of the discussion.) So we still don't have enough energy and we have to convert the environment into oil to make up any losses. And if we only begin building this infrastructure after oil prices rise to dangerously high levels, we have no assurance that we can build it fast enough to prevent systematic collapse of economies, especially given the inefficiencies outlined above. And we would have to start making food for oil instead of people.
It just doesn't seem reasonable to estimate its ability to produce more than 100 EJ of energy on a global level. So it at maximum has the ability to delay the inevitable for a very short time. Especially given that world energy use will rise to 800EJ by 2020[8]. You may have found security in thinking TD will save the human race, but the numbers don't seem to back you up.
And please note, the efficiencies I quoted were from studies done of real biomater TD [8], not the hypothetical human conversion rate of 21% oil.
References
Seriously though, read up on Peak Oil a bit more. I will include a clip below about TD. It suffers from exactly the same problem as a free energy device as well, namely that we use the energy we get to destroy all other lifeforms and thus will do nothing but prolong the inevitable lifestyle change.
Let me know what you think. Check out the info below.
"Thermal Depolymerization" (TD) which can transform many kinds of waste into oil, could help us raise our energy efficiency as we lose power due to oil depletion. While it could help us ameliorate the crash, it is not a true solution for the following reasons:
1. Like all other forms of alternative energy, we have run out of time to implement it before the crash. Currently, only one TD plant is operational. Thousands of such plants would need to come online before this technology would make even a small difference in our situation.
2. TD is really nothing more than high-tech recycling. Most of the waste input (such as plastics and tires) requires high-grade oil to make it in the first place.
3. It is unclear what the EPR of oil derived from TD is. How much energy does the TD process require to produce a barrel of oil? If the EPR of oil derived from TD does not approach the EPR of traditional oil, it will not alleviate our problems.
However, we have bigger worries ahead on a civilization level. As the latest rounds of wars have shown, people "up there" have begun to get very touch about their oil. And for good reason too. For the last 4 years, global oil production has fallen. It seems more and more evident that we have reached Peak Oil. And as you will find out shortly, it isn't something that solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear power can help us out with in the timeframe of the downslide of oil production.
This problem has many facets and thus can take a long time to wrap your brain around. I'll run down a quick summary here, but I would do more research to come up with your own opinion.
So in short, if you don't have a free energy device up your sleeve that you haven't sold to
Many people probably don't understand from her broken English, but she took this picture IN FRONT OF THE SARCOPHAGUS OF CHORNOBYL!!!!
Man. I cannot even begin to imagine.
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Remember, there is no sig.
This system does not count as "micropayment"!!!
In fact, it costs $3.00. The reason for this comes from our credit card system, which really doesn't allow for transactions that small. You get charged a transaction fee by an amount depending on the merchant agreement and that eliminates your micropayment profit margin. And you always pay a percentage of volume, further eroding your profits. So you cannot use the CC system directly for your micropayments. So you need to develop another payment system to bootstrap over the minimum hassel of a credit card transaction which far exceeds a typical micropayment. For this reason, they introduce the "gift card" (call it what you want) which has a minimum transaction amount appropriate to our Credit Card system.
So in actuality, any of these micropayment systems really present the customer with the choice, "Would you buy into a micropayment system for $3.00?" Almost every one I know would answer no to that question. I certainly never would, no matter how funny the comic strip. Very few people will pay $3.00 for $0.25 cents worth of material, no matter what the promise of "future content" will hold. And for things over $3.00 in value, the Current Credit card system works just fine.
This situation cannot get abrogated by anyone other than the Credit Card companies themselves. If they open up their systems for reasonable micropayment, it may work, albeit under the preasures indicated by the article due to the marginal cost of the items.
The only other alternative I can think of would involve the ISP. If the user could say "Have my ISP charge me .25 at the end of the month.", I think micropayments would have a much stronger footing. Even in this situation though, having googled for a piece of information and comming up with a free site and a micropay site, I choose the free site. If I don't get what I need out of free sites, a rarity in this day and age and less likely in the future, then I will choose the pay site.
Given the fundimental problem with the Credit Card issue, and the even more fundimental problem of the fact that to humans "free is just plain different from pay" I just don't see any future for micropayments. I wish every one who clicked on my sites gave me $0.25 and everyone else wishes everything cost nothing at all. That gap cannot get bridged and to missunderstand why can only come from a fundimental misunderstanding of human nature.
How are they getting fucked over? Because someone can find them? If that's the definition of fucked over, I want to know what the hell it's called to go through some of the shit that I've been calling fucked over for my whole life.
*laugh* The cart always comes before the horse with you. It has nothing to do whatever with "getting tracked" Vs "no healthcare". You can only see the cause/effect relationship. These things do not seem as separate to me. The consequence of this decision means that some people will not get health care that they currently get due to consequences beyond their control. That's getting fucked over.
The shit you call getting fucked over has no difference between this situation and itself. As long as we always go out to "fix" the problems we create by our "fixes", we will continue to fuck everyone over. We really don't have to do anything at all.
Unless I'm going to make a full recovery, I don't want to be plugged in. I'd be pissed if I woke up 30 years later without use of my body and confused why my wife is now an old woman and my kids are married.
And if you woke up a week later, would you feel the same way? Whine about the "lost week"? I think not.
I think that people who choose not to work and don't shouldn't be entitled to anything.
Ha ha! The jig is up! You don't even think they should get this healthcare in the first place. You don't like the game where everyone gets a bit of food and some medicine from society. They MUST work. But that game just doesn't work for some people. So you want to remove any ability for them to live, i.e. kill them. See what a monstrous murder you are?!?!
What I do want is not to be harassed by people unwilling to work, and expect a free lunch.
Yep. You want life to always go your way. And you feel perfectly willing to kill to do it. So you really don't seem like an individual to me, just another murderous asshole created by civilization and greed. I feel ok with that. But you want to deny it!
If the minority is a little less happy, so the majority is a lot more happy, that is just fine by me.
So would everyone else. Your style of living has ultimate supremacy in this world. And it eats at you every day. But you could just as easily recognize that all of your little so called "individual" opinion just came to you based on your past experiences and the knowledge gained from others. You really haven't said one original word. And neither have I! *laugh* How can one such as you do anything good at all? Why even live like that? And who is the "you" that wants to change things?
Good luck!
Jt
Lets put it this way. You fall into a coma due to an accident. You get put on life support. Now someone comes and makes a "no work/no health care" law. So they come and pull the plug from you, you lazy bastard. All the while, they chant "No free lunch! No free lunch!" Would you say that you got fucked over?
You cannot chose to work as an invalid any more than a homeless person who does not want to work can choose. The choice comes from the past, you attack them in the present.
And THEN you go and talk about all the homeless people who "...do want to get back on their feet but are having a hard time." You don't understand that your perception of people "working to get on their feet" will never fit with many of the homeless. I HAVE talked to many homeless. Some want to work, many do not. Your primary interest lies in finding homeless people who want to fit in and "rehabilitate" them, by which you mean making them act like you and work for 40 hours per week and have a house. You think giving them all jobs will "help them out".
What you fail to understand, what many fail to understand, can get summed up as follows. THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY TO LIVE! Just different ways of living. You don't need to help the homeless at all. Give them food if you feel the need. Or not, they will find a way regardless. But it will not be YOUR way. Never never never. So you want to deny them the health care and food they get now because of this. And you chant "No Free Lunch!" without any sort of understanding whatsoever. And you can do nothing about it. Nor can I, nor anyone else. So why do you feel the need to do anything?
Good luck!
Jt
I see many "sucessful" people who have no ability to feel happy and take care of themselves. Have you watched "The Osbornes"? They don't seem to happy to me... but you would have a hard argument to call them "unsucessful." When you create this concept of "sucesss" you create the concept of "unsucessful". No matter how you slice it, you end up with contradictions.
You say "Medication, man. Take it and enjoy it." and "I would seriously re-evaluate your stances..." You even call my position moronic! I love it! I have no disagreement with you at all! But I call your positon moronic and you feel "he's crazy and needs to be sedated by medication" in EXACTLY the same way you feel that homeless people should get tracked and if they want "help."
I don't want to change anything about you even in the slightest. Why do you want to change me or anyone else? I didn't even respond to your post to engage you or change you. I think that you have no ability to get out of your situation and you don't realize it. I responded because your post invoked a response out of me. I didn't want to do anything about anything at all. Maybe someone will read this and see what I point to. Maybe not.
Good luck!
Jt
And yes, it is possible to go from homeless to successful.
And impossible to "be sucessful" as a homeless person right?
You said, "If they choose not to accept free care on condition of tracking..." You don't even understand that they ALREADY MADE the choice! You simply fuck them over for that choice. You say "... rebuild their lives." You mean, "act like me or I'll starve you to death." You don't even understand a word you say! WAKE UP!!!!!!!!! *laugh*
Really, we can do nothing at all about the situation. Until we realize that as long as we posit a "sucessful person" we will split the world in two and kill everyone on the wrong side of the fence, we will live in misery.
Good luck!
Jt
Why do need to help them at all? I just don't understand the value of "improving their situation." Many "mentally ill" homeless actually have a good deal of intelligence and could rejoin society if they wanted to. Your "helping" them actually hinders what they want to do. You say "help", I hear "brainwash". The homeless that want homes get back into civilization, just read this thread to hear from the homeless who have done this. Those homeless that do not want your help will not accept it.
You people run around, think up some crazy idea like "improving the lot of the homeless", and go out and do it. And then you feel surprised when it turns out all fucked up!!! How about a program called "Helping the Homeless to Live as Homeless"? Wow! Helping people... to not buy stuff?!?!? What a concept! Do you feel the least bit ashamed that you never thought of it? Probably not, because your little ego always tries to make everything better and everything ok. Sorry, that will not happen. Because your little ego has the great wish to never die. So you fist fuck your planet, your friends, your children, your wives to get what you want most, safety (which you call "happiness" or "love" or whatever). Security requires conformity and in your desperate search to be "safe", you will disrupt the lives of anyone who has the misfortune of meeting you.
So fuck the homeless. They can take care of themselves. If you want to help, give them some food and leave them the alone.
Fuck the other countries. They will deal with their problems, we will deal with ours. What did you say? You want their stuff? Hmmm...
And fuck your tiny little ego. Because it will die and "you" cannot stop it. And as long as that "you" exists, you will try to make the whole world "safe". But life has not safety. And that makes it worth living. The thing you live in, I wouldn't even want to crap on.
Relax. We can just sit back and watch ego destroy itself. The little divisions of the world come from the divisions in our minds. The world will lose history. We will lose self. But anything you do about it could turn something wonderful into something really, really terrible. It can go either way. We should stop asking, "What should we choose?" and instead ask, "Why do I choose?"
Good luck!
Jt
While the details surrounding the choices that humanity made 10,000 years ago or so may never get unearthed, we can surmise the nature of the mental change they made by the way it effects human society today. First, we must point out, as you did in your post, that the change that humans made involved thought. Humans before this had very similar genetics to us and non-civilized peoples our culture has met certainly have our intellectual potential, if not the huge knowledge set our culture posesses. So knowing this change has an intellectual basis, we should look for its root ideas. I wish to set out the basic Memes of our civilization.
Meme 1: Humans have a special place in the universe before all other forms of life.
We feel that we no longer need to obey the laws that other animals follow. We feel that we have a âoespecialâ place in the universe, given to us by God for the religious or Reason for the atheist. Our legal system carefully systematizes this distinction between Human and Animal. It pervades most peoplesâ(TM) thoughts without them realizing it.
Meme 2: Our particular civilization has the TRUE way to live.
This way involves a totalitarian form of agriculture in which we constantly choose humans and food for humans over all other forms of life. Chickens must live so foxes must die. Cows must live so wolves must die. Wherever our civilization has gone, we have robbed the local environment to produce food or space for our human species.
Another part of this involves the notion of a âoejobâ. We feel that everyone should make products to sell so that we can buy products. This make product/get product habit encompasses every aspect of life and we have developed many theories to handle it, ie economics. A more realistic understanding of âoeeconomyâ would include the resource limitations put on the system by our environment.
Meme 3: All other humans must live this way.
Humans in this civilization always defend aggressively to the death their system. Even very minor deviances from the current cultural system, be it economic belief, religious belief, or even particular habits can cause massive wars. Whenever we encounter another group of humans, âoemissionariesâ flock to the location in order to indoctrinate these people and give them âoethe one true way.â
The agricultural system ties into it power on this planet. By constantly pushing the Food side of the population equation, we consistently have increased our human population. For 10,000 years we have grown âoemore food for a growing population.â From the look of it, we intent to do that right to the point where we completely outstrip the global environments ability to replenish itself.
Most of you who read this believe these 3 things, even if reading them separately causes you to âoefeel above that.â Please make an effort to rid yourself of these ideas because within them contains the destruction of all of the lifeforms on this planet.
From animist perspective:
Daniel Quinn's Ishmael site
From the enlightenment perspective:
J Krishnamurti
From the pop culture perspective:
The Matrix
By this argument, you say that by selling crack to all your friends so you could make money would count as an ethical action just like the musicians selling out and making RIAA music for the masses. What else could these poor people do? I happen to agree on both the drug dealer and musician front. People do what they can to make a living, always and almost always foremost. But it doesn't make crack any less of an addicitve drug. Nor does it make the rythmic thumpy 3-cord crap the music industry puts out any less addictive. Try driving in the car with an American without music sometime. They behave very interestingly.
/. managed to get the parent to such a high rating.
The reason they have an iron fisted rule comes from the reason they exist, to pedel their wares to their addicts. The poster claimed that people don't admit to their addiction to music and that serves as the fundimental cause of the music industry. I don't fault the RIAA/artists any more than I fault drug producers/dealers or pimps/whores. They do what they can to survive. They happen to survive in a market caused by addiction. Remove the addiction, remove the problem.
But the personal responsiblity line rarely gets much press. I feel glad that
Seriously, we need to address this problem of "stuff addiction". We don't need it. And it causes all of these horror stories that we hear. Maybe if we looked, we could find another way.
Jt
However, I think you should realize that you would have a very hard time over-intellectualizing this movie. It holds many layers, symbolisms, and metaphors. The Wachowskis have said that they drew heavily from Gnostic and Buddhist traditions. They make refrence to the Shadow Cave argument from the Republic. Many of the characters have mythological names evoking their characteristics. I would recommend not selling this movie series short.
Regardless, that it has so many different ways to find meaning in the Matrix will make it a talked about movie for years to come. I have a feeling that this will especially come true when the next movie comes out.
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Jt Gleason
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Jt Gleason
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Jt Gleason
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Jt Gleason
By understanding the Message of The Matrix, you will come to understand many of the logical inconsistencies in the film. Everything in that movie got put there for a reason and the W bros felt no shame altering some of the content so more people would understand the Message. So while it may ire geeks, it makes the movie easier to swallow for people new to these sorts of ideas. I personally just pretend that Morphius said, "Humans can perform up to 10^5 Teraflops (or whatever) of complex operations that the robots steal to add to their available processing power." I think you can see how this would require a much longer dialog between Neo and Morphius to inform the average viewer of what that means.
What do you think?
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Crulx
At least read the website before you decide to bash it please. You will end up looking less foolish.
A quote from his paper may also help,
"3.3 Why Go Cannot be Programmed Like Chess
Chess programs typically use a heuristic search and evaluation technique. Search trees of board positions are generated to a fixed depth and are heuristically pruned according to an evaluation of the merit of the board positions. This approach works well in Chess because the board size is sufficiently small and the nature of Chess is more tactical than strategic.
Evaluation of a board position in Go presents problems not encountered in Chess. Go is a much more strategic game in comparison to Chess. Unlike Chess, Go does not focus around the capture of a single piece. Positional advantages are slowly built up in achieving the long term goal of acquiring more territory than the opponent. There are many direct and indirect ways to achieve this goal such as making territory, building influence, attacking weak enemy groups, securing friendly groups, destroying enemy territory etc. Due to the large size of the board, a Go game is comprised of many small local skirmishes. If a game of Chess were described as a battle, a game of Go could be described as a war. Many good tactical moves at the local level must all compete for selection in the context of strategic global considerations. Thus a player must balance resources to achieve local goals at many locations whilst trying to pursue an overall global objective."
Read more about computer Go at Mike's Computer Go. Sit down and try a game of Go for yourself and you will see why computers won't get to the same level anytime soon.
crulx
I will list what I know of population dynamics, in order to show you my point of view.
Even if a 50-year limit seems like an alarmist position, many conservative scientists agree that 100 years looks like the maximum timeframe. Change must happen quickly for us to save a habitat that humanity can live in.
Some possible research materials for you:
http://www.ku.edu/~hazards/foodpop.pdf
1 02 6074943.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/10/01
http://www.ishmael.com/Education/Science/
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Jt
crulx@iaxs.net
Nice try with the A*. Next time look up what it means.
In AI, this problem gets called "Constraint Satisfaction." Typically, a logic based programing language gets used, such as Prolog. While he can write the program in C, the nonintuitive way he would have to handle backtracking would seem difficult for other coders to understand. Prolog seems understandable to anyone who knows logic (ie any programmer). Writing backtracking programs in Prolog becomes very easy since Prolog has backtracking as a fundimental component. Let us look at how this program would look in Prolog.
We have 5 days to fill and 4 workers to do it. Ann can work on Thu. Betty can work Mon-Tue. Joe can work Mon and Fri. Katie can work Tue - Thu.That finishes the program! You cannot do that as easily and as simply in almost any other language. You can also continue to ask for alternatives for the schedule (the program lists 9 plans). He can extend this by adding times (obviously) and even preferences for times. The system should feel simple and seems easy to maintain.
I don't mean to dethrone your CS knowledge, but A* doesn't even apply in this domain. Logic planning can take a great amount of time in other language. He needs the right tools for the job.
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Crulx
Sorry. It isn't over yet.
Jt
There is no love in torturing babies, and don't even pretend that there is. You tread perilously close to Godwin's Law.
Critisim is great! Yes, bad art exists. And as reasoning entities we must decide what we like and what we do not like. Critisize it all you want. It is your right to. And I fully respect and am a proud member of people who think that just because we have entered whatever we have entered here, we still have the right and the duty to criticize what we feel is wrong with the world.
But you said the video was NOT art. And let me be blunt here. I say, Fuck that!
You mistake the finger for that which is being pointed at.
Jt