how about an insurance optimization algorithm that denies coverage or treatment, sometimes fatally?
Right now, humans make the decisions about what treatments will be denied. That is true in government-run healthcare programs as well as in private health insurance companies. As long as resources continue to be finite, it's a truism that some treatments must be denied. (That is, it will forever be a truism that some treatments must be denied.)
(Ideological tangent: if multiple private insurers compete with each other on the basis of how few treatments they deny, and you can switch to insurer B if you feel insurer A is being too stingy, you're in a good system. If you're covered by a single government-run monopoly and there's nowhere else to turn when their inefficient bureaucracy consumes many of the dollars that should be going toward your treatment, you're in a bad system.)
But in either system, an algorithm could potentially make fairer, more objective decisions than human decisionmakers can.
Such a large percentage of our economy is based around energy being limited and expensive that if we found a cheap, environmentally friendly, and sustainable way of producing vast amounts of energy, our economy wouldn't be able to deal with it.
There's so much wrong with your comment, I hardly know where to begin.
In our current economy, energy is vastly more plentiful and inexpensive than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago. And that's one of the main reasons the economy is much bigger than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago, and the standard of living of the average human is much higher than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago.
Unless you're an absolute pacifist, you agree with the proposition that not only is it ethical to try to control human beings who are attacking you (or attacking your family, or subjugating your nation), it is ethical to kill them.
It follows that it's also ethical to pull the plug on AIs that are seeking to attack you (or attack your family, or subjugate your nation).
As for AIs that are merely competing with humans for resources; will wealthy robots, say, book all the cabins on luxury cruise ships, crowding out the humans? Only if they are programmed to covet such things. (It would make no sense to give them such programming, but that wouldn't be the first time humans have done things that made no sense. So there is perhaps a role for regulations that would prevent AIs from being programmed to lower humans' standard of living by seeking the same resources that humans seek.)
Yep, I'd love to see a dozen more labs replicate this finding.
Now, you are demanding that investigators look for a picogram-level mass delta. But really, how much proof would that add; isn't it much easier to fake a tiny mass delta than to fake an overwhelming shift from Nickel-58/Nickel-60 to Nickel-62?
after a few ICU places and a few quarantine beds, modern medicine is left with aspirin and electrolytes as far as 'treatment' goes which doesn't give us much edge on African medicine.
Probably not a good idea to mention aspirin in conjunction with Ebola treatment. Ebola patients suffer from decreased blood clotting and internal and external bleeding. Aspirin, a blood thinner, would exacerbate that situation.
The US has a huge shortage in the trades because we stopped telling high school students to go into plumbing, welding, electrical
Thanks... that explains why half the time when I turn on the faucet or the light switch, nothing happens, and the other half of the time, it only works because I've spent a large fraction of my income on maintaining those systems, due to the exorbitant wages those tradesmen are able to demand due to the shortage of those skillsets.
Oh... the previous paragraph wasn't true at all? There isn't a shortage of those skillsets?
Those who participate in net metering are selling surplus power when they have a surplus to sell, and buying power when they don't. It's rather absurd to say the power they purchase at night is "free," when in fact every single kilowatt-hour they purchase eats into the proceeds from their daytime power sales. If they are selling power at, say, a wholesale rate of $0.02 per kilowatt-hour, and buying power at a retail rate of $0.12 per kilowatt-hour, it massively eats into the proceeds from their daytime power sales.
If you were correct that every kilowatt-hour sold by a solar facility has to be "thrown away," or discharged into the ground, then you would also be correct that that's not a sustainable business model. But you present no evidence for this. Here I present evidence to the contrary:
A utility can look at the forecast for how sunny it will be, and then conservatively scale back production at its peaking plants and at its load-following plants, to minimize the amount of solar power that needs to be "thrown away."
Since their net use is zero, their electric bill is zero
Wrong for several reasons.
Some households that participate in net metering are net producers of power, "exporting" more than they "import." Other households have remained net consumers of power. But no household has perfectly balanced exports with imports, resulting in zero net usage.
And even if a household did happen, one month, to export exactly the same number of kilowatt-hours as it imports, the fact of net metering does not guarantee that the utility will pay retail price for the exported power. The term "net metering" also applies when a utility pays wholesale price:
Net metering policies can vary significantly by country and by state or province: if net metering is available, if and how long you can keep your banked credits, and how much the credits are worth (retail/wholesale).
It doesn't make sense that a utility should be forced to pay retail price for each tiny trickle of power generated by amateur mom-and-pop producers, when bulk power generated by professionally-managed plants can be purchased at wholesale price.
A one- or two-percent annual failure rate for such an expensive device is a financial catastrophe, at the very least.
Nope... that means it will fail, on average, every 50 - 100 years. That's a pretty good service life for any device... and if it became commonplace for households to have a flywheel, failure should be covered by homeowner's insurance, just as roof replacement is (which needs to be done every 20 - 30 years).
a flywheel that has a distressing tendency to self-disassemble. Catastrophically.
GP did specify a buried flywheel. If pieces of flywheel become embedded in the soil four or five feet under my lawn, I fail to see the catastrophe. A one- or two-percent annual failure rate for a device like that would be quite acceptable.
If everyone is doing net metering, you need a magic free energy source the other 20 hours per day.
Why, when we already have a non-magic, non-free network of generating plants? Some of them burn fossil fuels, some of them don't, but that network as a whole becomes more robust when supplemented by distributed solar power installations that produce during hours of peak demand. Brownouts become less likely, etc.
I'm not in favor of going solar when other sources are more cost-effective -- and I'm not in favor of subsidies that merely give solar the illusion of being more cost-effective. Having said that, you've built a strawman: I haven't heard anyone asking to be provided with "free" energy from the grid during hours when the sun's not shining.
Allowing utilities to pass along 100% of "the fixed cost for just being hooked up" will -- in the long run, and not-so-ironically, if you think about it -- actually be good for adoption of solar power.
Because the alternative -- bankruptcy for the entities that add value to solar power installations, by maintaining the grid that ties them together and delivering power when the sun's not shining -- is not sustainable.
The utilities' current opposition to solar implies that they're being forced to provide money-losing subsidies for grid connections. Eliminate those, and everyone will benefit from the new transparency in the cost structure.
Actually capitalism is the only thing that is encouraging Americans to install solar power systems in any significant numbers. And within my city's limits, nobody has solar because the government-owned utility forbids residents from doing business with that capitalistic company (or its competitors).
One problem with your reasoning. Polish leaders very heartily embraced the West and NATO membership. In Cuba, on the other hand, the Castro brothers managed to hang on to power despite the economic crisis caused by the disappearance of theirr USSR sugar-daddy. If Cuba's economy had gotten a boost from the USA, the Castros would have used the additional revenue to further solidify their grip on power. I don't see a path to obtaining a Poland-like outcome, and you sure haven't pointed out such a path.
A lot of people are completely against this idea (government intrusion on freedom, etc.) but that's the only way we've ever solved problems based on the "tragedy of the commons"
Really... government coercion the only way? No one voluntarily shares their assets for the benefit of the greater good? The facts say otherwise:
"Total giving to charitable organizations was $335.17 billion in 2013 (about 2% of GDP). This is an increase of 4.4% from 2012. Although this is the fourth straight year that giving has increased, it is still not at the pre-recession level of $349.5 billion seen in 2007."
Charitable giving increases as a person's disposable income increases -- and not linearly, either: as income grows to exceed a person's basic needs, people tend to increase the percentage of income given to charity. That's why a 10x increase in GDP would result in greater than a 10x increase in charitable giving.
So if we just resume pursuing pro-growth policies for a few more decades, private charity will be more than capable of providing the entire social safety net -- bigger and better than our current social safety net -- and government will be able to streamline itself and stop performing that function. (Which will be a quite virtuous circle that has further benefits for the economy.) There is also quite a bit of value in the fact that it will be 100% funded by voluntary contributions, and 0% by coercive confiscation.
When philanthropists perceive that the social safety net is well-funded, they will shift a portion of their giving to other charitable purposes of their choosing: for example, subsidizing clean energy projects.
Remember, pursuing pro-growth policies is the key to realizing this rosy future. That means growth we come by honestly, as opposed to short-term growth that is forced by unsustainable, house-of-cards measures -- like deficit spending, or the Fed holding interest rates artificially low.
If we let the free market sort it out, no doubt Consumer Reports will print an article revealing which ISPs deliver Netflix content at good speeds, and which ISPs deliver Netflix content at lousy speeds. It's no different than when Consumer Reports prints an article revealing which detergents do a good job of getting grass stains out of your clothes, and which detergents do a lousy job.
Are you arguing for a "Detergent Neutrality Act" that would force all makers of laundry detergent to offer equally-effective products?
Should netflix pay premium for every mb because they're a "high bandwidth user"
In every other industry, heavy users get a bulk discount for commodities: The Sara Lee bakery pays a lot less per pound for flour than I do. The bauxite-smelting plant pays a lot less per kilowatt-hour for electricity than I do.
Why are you so worried that bandwidth providers will go against their own self-interest and set up a pricing structure that's completely different from every other industry? Why aren't you also fighting for "flour neutrality" and "electricity neutrality"?
Do you think those that pay for the supersonic speed should be shuttled to the Grayhound station for certain destinations
How about allowing consumers to choose, instead of imposing regulations that may not benefit me in any way?
Simplified hypothetical example:
Mega-ISP offers three tiers of service: 1. 7 Mbps to all destinations - $30 per month 2. 40 Mbps to all destinations web services, with some exceptions: you get 7 Mpbs when visiting foo.com, foo2.com, and foo4.com - $50 per month 3. 40 Mbps to all destinations, period -- $60 per month
If a fast connection to foo2.com is important to me, I'd probably choose Tier 3. If not, I'd choose Tier 2 and save $120 per year. Let ME have that choice.
I can see how this will go down... "No matter how we reform the 'net, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your internet plan, you will be able to keep your internet plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
After reading this, please let me know what would be so awful about 100% toll roads.
All roads are already toll roads, in that their maintenance is paid for by gas taxes. What would be so awful about that money going to an efficient enterprise, as opposed to an inefficient bureaucracy?
Without it you get toll roads everywhere, and you constantly have to pay by the mile, or bit the MB
We've been paying for roads by the mile for decades, via gas taxes -- an effective way of making people who drive more, pay more.
Do you feel that all electricity users should pay the same cost, regardless of whether they wastefully use many kilowatt-hours, or frugally use few kilowatt-hours? I'm guessing no. So why impose a completely different price structure for bandwidth (which is a finite resource, just like electricity)? Why penalize grandma for her thrifty usage pattern (she receives a few emails per week and never surfs the web), by charging her as much as someone who downloads movies several times per week?
Slashdot Mirror
how about an insurance optimization algorithm that denies coverage or treatment, sometimes fatally?
Right now, humans make the decisions about what treatments will be denied. That is true in government-run healthcare programs as well as in private health insurance companies. As long as resources continue to be finite, it's a truism that some treatments must be denied. (That is, it will forever be a truism that some treatments must be denied.)
(Ideological tangent: if multiple private insurers compete with each other on the basis of how few treatments they deny, and you can switch to insurer B if you feel insurer A is being too stingy, you're in a good system. If you're covered by a single government-run monopoly and there's nowhere else to turn when their inefficient bureaucracy consumes many of the dollars that should be going toward your treatment, you're in a bad system.)
But in either system, an algorithm could potentially make fairer, more objective decisions than human decisionmakers can.
Such a large percentage of our economy is based around energy being limited and expensive that if we found a cheap, environmentally friendly, and sustainable way of producing vast amounts of energy, our economy wouldn't be able to deal with it.
There's so much wrong with your comment, I hardly know where to begin.
In our current economy, energy is vastly more plentiful and inexpensive than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago. And that's one of the main reasons the economy is much bigger than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago, and the standard of living of the average human is much higher than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago.
willfully overmodel on the human brain
Gee... "Having created a biologically accurate computer model of a neocortical column scientists are now planning to model the entire human brain within just 10 years."
Unless you're an absolute pacifist, you agree with the proposition that not only is it ethical to try to control human beings who are attacking you (or attacking your family, or subjugating your nation), it is ethical to kill them.
It follows that it's also ethical to pull the plug on AIs that are seeking to attack you (or attack your family, or subjugate your nation).
As for AIs that are merely competing with humans for resources; will wealthy robots, say, book all the cabins on luxury cruise ships, crowding out the humans? Only if they are programmed to covet such things. (It would make no sense to give them such programming, but that wouldn't be the first time humans have done things that made no sense. So there is perhaps a role for regulations that would prevent AIs from being programmed to lower humans' standard of living by seeking the same resources that humans seek.)
Yep, I'd love to see a dozen more labs replicate this finding.
Now, you are demanding that investigators look for a picogram-level mass delta. But really, how much proof would that add; isn't it much easier to fake a tiny mass delta than to fake an overwhelming shift from Nickel-58/Nickel-60 to Nickel-62?
after a few ICU places and a few quarantine beds, modern medicine is left with aspirin and electrolytes as far as 'treatment' goes which doesn't give us much edge on African medicine.
Probably not a good idea to mention aspirin in conjunction with Ebola treatment. Ebola patients suffer from decreased blood clotting and internal and external bleeding. Aspirin, a blood thinner, would exacerbate that situation.
The US has a huge shortage in the trades because we stopped telling high school students to go into plumbing, welding, electrical
Thanks... that explains why half the time when I turn on the faucet or the light switch, nothing happens, and the other half of the time, it only works because I've spent a large fraction of my income on maintaining those systems, due to the exorbitant wages those tradesmen are able to demand due to the shortage of those skillsets.
Oh... the previous paragraph wasn't true at all? There isn't a shortage of those skillsets?
Actually, contrary to being a shortage, demand for most kinds of workers is too low. That's why the labor participation rate just fell to a 36-year low.
Fill out this worksheet. Nobody actually benefits from you doing this
Most of the worksheets I filled out in school benefitted me, by presenting opportunities to practice valuable skills.
If your school passed out dumb worksheets that didn't reinforce vaulable skills (see: stupid Common Core math worksheet stumps dad with PhD), your school was doing it wrong. Sorry you had to go through that.
See this nice description of a solar power facility on the lunar surface.
Those who participate in net metering are selling surplus power when they have a surplus to sell, and buying power when they don't. It's rather absurd to say the power they purchase at night is "free," when in fact every single kilowatt-hour they purchase eats into the proceeds from their daytime power sales. If they are selling power at, say, a wholesale rate of $0.02 per kilowatt-hour, and buying power at a retail rate of $0.12 per kilowatt-hour, it massively eats into the proceeds from their daytime power sales.
If you were correct that every kilowatt-hour sold by a solar facility has to be "thrown away," or discharged into the ground, then you would also be correct that that's not a sustainable business model. But you present no evidence for this. Here I present evidence to the contrary:
A utility can look at the forecast for how sunny it will be, and then conservatively scale back production at its peaking plants and at its load-following plants, to minimize the amount of solar power that needs to be "thrown away."
Since their net use is zero, their electric bill is zero
Wrong for several reasons.
Some households that participate in net metering are net producers of power, "exporting" more than they "import." Other households have remained net consumers of power. But no household has perfectly balanced exports with imports, resulting in zero net usage.
And even if a household did happen, one month, to export exactly the same number of kilowatt-hours as it imports, the fact of net metering does not guarantee that the utility will pay retail price for the exported power. The term "net metering" also applies when a utility pays wholesale price:
Net metering policies can vary significantly by country and by state or province: if net metering is available, if and how long you can keep your banked credits, and how much the credits are worth (retail/wholesale).
It doesn't make sense that a utility should be forced to pay retail price for each tiny trickle of power generated by amateur mom-and-pop producers, when bulk power generated by professionally-managed plants can be purchased at wholesale price.
A one- or two-percent annual failure rate for such an expensive device is a financial catastrophe, at the very least.
Nope... that means it will fail, on average, every 50 - 100 years. That's a pretty good service life for any device... and if it became commonplace for households to have a flywheel, failure should be covered by homeowner's insurance, just as roof replacement is (which needs to be done every 20 - 30 years).
a flywheel that has a distressing tendency to self-disassemble. Catastrophically.
GP did specify a buried flywheel. If pieces of flywheel become embedded in the soil four or five feet under my lawn, I fail to see the catastrophe. A one- or two-percent annual failure rate for a device like that would be quite acceptable.
If everyone is doing net metering, you need a magic free energy source the other 20 hours per day.
Why, when we already have a non-magic, non-free network of generating plants? Some of them burn fossil fuels, some of them don't, but that network as a whole becomes more robust when supplemented by distributed solar power installations that produce during hours of peak demand. Brownouts become less likely, etc.
I'm not in favor of going solar when other sources are more cost-effective -- and I'm not in favor of subsidies that merely give solar the illusion of being more cost-effective. Having said that, you've built a strawman: I haven't heard anyone asking to be provided with "free" energy from the grid during hours when the sun's not shining.
Allowing utilities to pass along 100% of "the fixed cost for just being hooked up" will -- in the long run, and not-so-ironically, if you think about it -- actually be good for adoption of solar power.
Because the alternative -- bankruptcy for the entities that add value to solar power installations, by maintaining the grid that ties them together and delivering power when the sun's not shining -- is not sustainable.
The utilities' current opposition to solar implies that they're being forced to provide money-losing subsidies for grid connections. Eliminate those, and everyone will benefit from the new transparency in the cost structure.
Actually capitalism is the only thing that is encouraging Americans to install solar power systems in any significant numbers. And within my city's limits, nobody has solar because the government-owned utility forbids residents from doing business with that capitalistic company (or its competitors).
Not only can the West trade with such people, the West is trading with such people, via black-market oil sales.
One problem with your reasoning. Polish leaders very heartily embraced the West and NATO membership. In Cuba, on the other hand, the Castro brothers managed to hang on to power despite the economic crisis caused by the disappearance of theirr USSR sugar-daddy. If Cuba's economy had gotten a boost from the USA, the Castros would have used the additional revenue to further solidify their grip on power. I don't see a path to obtaining a Poland-like outcome, and you sure haven't pointed out such a path.
Another journalist misuses the word "accurately."
Astronomers can calculate quite accurately how much lithium they expect to find in the early Universe
They can calculate it quite precisely; but if the number doesn't match observations, the model is not accurate.
A lot of people are completely against this idea (government intrusion on freedom, etc.) but that's the only way we've ever solved problems based on the "tragedy of the commons"
Really... government coercion the only way? No one voluntarily shares their assets for the benefit of the greater good? The facts say otherwise:
"Total giving to charitable organizations was $335.17 billion in 2013 (about 2% of GDP). This is an increase of 4.4% from 2012. Although this is the fourth straight year that giving has increased, it is still not at the pre-recession level of $349.5 billion seen in 2007."
Charitable giving increases as a person's disposable income increases -- and not linearly, either: as income grows to exceed a person's basic needs, people tend to increase the percentage of income given to charity. That's why a 10x increase in GDP would result in greater than a 10x increase in charitable giving.
So if we just resume pursuing pro-growth policies for a few more decades, private charity will be more than capable of providing the entire social safety net -- bigger and better than our current social safety net -- and government will be able to streamline itself and stop performing that function. (Which will be a quite virtuous circle that has further benefits for the economy.) There is also quite a bit of value in the fact that it will be 100% funded by voluntary contributions, and 0% by coercive confiscation.
When philanthropists perceive that the social safety net is well-funded, they will shift a portion of their giving to other charitable purposes of their choosing: for example, subsidizing clean energy projects.
Remember, pursuing pro-growth policies is the key to realizing this rosy future. That means growth we come by honestly, as opposed to short-term growth that is forced by unsustainable, house-of-cards measures -- like deficit spending, or the Fed holding interest rates artificially low.
If we let the free market sort it out, no doubt Consumer Reports will print an article revealing which ISPs deliver Netflix content at good speeds, and which ISPs deliver Netflix content at lousy speeds. It's no different than when Consumer Reports prints an article revealing which detergents do a good job of getting grass stains out of your clothes, and which detergents do a lousy job.
Are you arguing for a "Detergent Neutrality Act" that would force all makers of laundry detergent to offer equally-effective products?
Should netflix pay premium for every mb because they're a "high bandwidth user"
In every other industry, heavy users get a bulk discount for commodities: The Sara Lee bakery pays a lot less per pound for flour than I do. The bauxite-smelting plant pays a lot less per kilowatt-hour for electricity than I do.
Why are you so worried that bandwidth providers will go against their own self-interest and set up a pricing structure that's completely different from every other industry? Why aren't you also fighting for "flour neutrality" and "electricity neutrality"?
Do you think those that pay for the supersonic speed should be shuttled to the Grayhound station for certain destinations
How about allowing consumers to choose, instead of imposing regulations that may not benefit me in any way?
Simplified hypothetical example:
Mega-ISP offers three tiers of service:
1. 7 Mbps to all destinations - $30 per month
2. 40 Mbps to all destinations web services, with some exceptions: you get 7 Mpbs when visiting foo.com, foo2.com, and foo4.com - $50 per month
3. 40 Mbps to all destinations, period -- $60 per month
If a fast connection to foo2.com is important to me, I'd probably choose Tier 3. If not, I'd choose Tier 2 and save $120 per year. Let ME have that choice.
I can see how this will go down... "No matter how we reform the 'net, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your internet plan, you will be able to keep your internet plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
After reading this, please let me know what would be so awful about 100% toll roads.
All roads are already toll roads, in that their maintenance is paid for by gas taxes. What would be so awful about that money going to an efficient enterprise, as opposed to an inefficient bureaucracy?
Without it you get toll roads everywhere, and you constantly have to pay by the mile, or bit the MB
We've been paying for roads by the mile for decades, via gas taxes -- an effective way of making people who drive more, pay more.
Do you feel that all electricity users should pay the same cost, regardless of whether they wastefully use many kilowatt-hours, or frugally use few kilowatt-hours? I'm guessing no. So why impose a completely different price structure for bandwidth (which is a finite resource, just like electricity)? Why penalize grandma for her thrifty usage pattern (she receives a few emails per week and never surfs the web), by charging her as much as someone who downloads movies several times per week?