Not wanting to claim to be smart, but assuming there are some around here, why are you punishing them by making them read your comment? Couldn't you just be merciful and say nothing when you have nothing to say?
Should be a place for related books and references on such a rich topic. Currently reading "Future Crimes", which is highly relevant to this topic. The discussion also reminded me of "The Filter Bubble" and I just remembered "The Future of the Internet" and "Who Owns the Future?" as related books.
The current model of push-based advertising is insane. There is NO limit to how much of your time they would be willing to consume. Even if they are consuming 100% of your attention and free time, they would only respond by shifting the focus to higher margin goods and services. (NEVER again Amazon!)
The financial model I want to support would be pull driven. I would specify what good and services I want to buy and how much time I want to spend considering the options, and then the legitimate companies would bid for my time to consider what they have. The intermediary handling the auction could have additional personal information, and they could use that information to boost the value of the auctions based on my qualifications as a potential customer, but the intermediary would have a strong interest in protecting my privacy and keeping my information secure because that is protecting their OWN position in future auctions. If they leak my personal information, they are cutting themselves out of the deal. (I would also want a setting to get at least 3 companies' offers.)
The interesting question is how to divide the proceeds of the auctions, and this is where the competition between intermediaries should take place. One intermediary might pay a higher percentage directly back to the users, but I would be more likely to consider an auctioneer who offered a balanced package of services, including spammer killing and a fraction of the proceeds that is used to pay for REAL journalism instead of the advertiser-driven click-bait crap we see these days.
By the way, a similar approach could be applied even on slashdot. Details (if speculative) available upon (polite) request.
I'm still allergic to stupid liars, but if you're a paid troll (and not as stupid as you appear), then I'm terrified of enriching you with 10-cent bonus for replies.
I like the basic idea of crowd funding, but ALL of the websites I've examined so far have been more or less terrible. The more "successful" are more like lotteries than anything else. Clear success criteria are needed (and the same model could be applied to slashdot, too).
Before I want to donate my hard earned money I think the project proposal needs to be quite complete. It should have a budget and a schedule. Neither has to be perfect, but they have to be realistic at minimum. Required resources including the people need to be described, and I even think the serious contributors should be guaranteed some compensation from the budget (though discounted from the top market rate in exchange for the freedom of choosing to do the work). The project proposal needs a good sanity check to make sure nothing crucial is important, with sufficient testing being the most frequent omission in software-related projects. Most importantly to my way of thinking there should be clear success criteria so the donors will know what success looks like.
Sounds like preparing the project is a lot of work, but there has to be some planning for good results. However, the up-front work also justifies a commission for the agent (I think of the agent as a "charity share brokerage") who helps make sure it gets done properly and who also evaluates the finished project and reports on the results to the donors and the world. Hopefully the donors are going to find out how much good they've accomplished so they can be motived to donate to future projects.
Too busy to write more just now, but lots of details available upon request, or even more interested to hear your suggested improvements.
The framing of your question says otherwise. No, you do NOT want to see any "specific examples of Hillary Clinton's competence" and you would reject ANY evidence of reality that conflicts with your ideological preferences.
Doesn't it bother you to lie so flagrantly? Don't you have any reputation to protect?
No, I guess not. "Bartles" with a 7-digit ID is probably just your sock puppet of the week. Or are you a paid professional troll? I heard some of them make as much as 50 cents.
About 95% of what you said is completely irrelevant, but I guess the last 5% might be based on your medications (or recreational drugs).
Only one actual response to your advocacy of civil war. Or perhaps you want to argue that assuming inevitability is somehow different from advocacy?
No, I do not think that relatively peaceful evolution (as by peaceful elections) is the only mechanism of change. The "bigger picture" is that change happens, and on the long-term big-picture average things do get better, even if some individual elections are "won" by an incompetent like Dubya. As individuals we just don't get to live long enough to see the trends. However, the problem with actual revolutions is that some people have to die in the process, and there's still no guarantee of improvement from one short-term event, even if it is a legitimate revolution.
Do you read so badly? Or are you trying to prove my points?
Anyway, everything you speculated about my personal beliefs is completely incorrect. 'Nuff said.
Please feel free to come back after you READ what I wrote and have something relevant to write. I actually enjoy rational discourse and even political debate.
And Teddy Roosevelt did some good stuff, too. Today's politics don't seem to be too linked to the old systems, and in particular today's so-called Republican Party is just a brand hijack. No relation to the progressive and liberal Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln or the pragmatic if too-pro-business-for-my-taste GOP.
Your sources are crap. Only a delusional lunatic would have cited them as "proof" of anything.
Only four possibilities make sense. (1) You are sincerely but still amazingly ignorant. (2) You aren't very bright, but still managed to turn on the computer. (3) You're a troll and loving it. (4) You're a paid propagandist. In China the going rate for such a post is around 50 cents. Are you making that much?
Your tone sounds like you disagree with me, but the content seems to be in agreement? On the theory we're actually in agreement, I think I should note that I'm largely basing that part of my analysis on what Stephen Colbert said about some of his fans from the right wing.
My newest thought on the topic is that President Obama was playing 3-D chess when he "surrendered" his birth certificate to the Donald's demands and threats.
Libya is suddenly such a crucial existential threat to the United States. No, you just revealed you're a FAUX "news" viewer, but even you have yet to come up with a positive reason to support Trump. Or perhaps that's only because are actually aware of the Donald's self-contradictions on every issue?
That's okay. I'm sure he'll sell you a lovely bridge.
Today's so-called GOP believes "government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% should rule the earth."
Trump believes in "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald."
Obviously Abe Lincoln's version is not compatible with either of these philosophies, but a large chunk of their voters have no idea what sort of man Lincoln was.
You seem to be confused about lies. Because Trump has been on every side of every issue, most of his lies are simple Class 0 lies of self-contradiction, where you don't even need to check the facts to know that at least half has to be false. (Actually it's logically possible for both sides of Trump's statements to be lies, but not possible for both to be true.)
Class 1 lies are counterfactual statements, and Trump has an awesome track record here, though any fool can check the facts.
Class 2 lies are partial truths, which are probably the most popular type, but that's where Cruz starts lying and Trump tends to taper off. That's a metric of Cruz's technical sophistication in lying while Trump can't even keep track of the reality, so he can't use the technique effectively. In contrast, Cruz understands most of the facts and simply rejects the parts he doesn't like. (Especially excellent examples in Cruz's handling of difficult questions.)
Class 3 is the high-level lies that I currently lump as "framing", and I almost never detect Trump using anything along these lines. Framing involves presenting the truth in a misleading frame so that it is rejected, or redefining some of the key terms so that the statements no longer mean what they should in the newly framed context. There are also psychological tricks such as anchoring that fit into framing lies. Again, Cruz is a technical master of these lies, but so are most skilled lawyers, especially the trial lawyers.
Within this framework, I concluded that Trump is likely to be relatively harmless, while Cruz had enormous potential for extreme damage. However, I think I learned from my mistake in regarding Dubya as "relatively harmless" in 2000. My mistake was in underestimating what the big dick Cheney would accomplish in the leadership vacuum Dubya created, but I believe that Trump cannot and would not get a V-P of such virulence. (Right now I think he may go with Ben Carson, but the reasons are too long for this post.)
The fundamental problem is that most of the so-called Republican Party now stands for "government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%", while Trump is much simpler. He just wants "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald", and that is why they hate him.
The threat is that his supporters are gullible or ignorant or both. The gullible ones believe whatever Trump says that they personally agree with, even though he has been on every side of every issue. The ignorant ones have fundamentally short attention spans and can't even remember what he said yesterday.
Going forward Trump is going to create so much confusion that he might actually win. He is a master of playing the mass media for fools, and I'm strongly reminded of a book Harlan Ellison wrote in 1968, when he predicted that Reagan would eventually become president only because he really understood television. As I've already noted, Trump is a con man or liar (or both), but he understands how the new social media work.
Perfectly spoken for someone who has now idea how democracy works and who doesn't actually understand much. Do you even know who said "I didn't vote for him, but he's my president and I hope he does a good job"?
Hint: He was a sincere conservative but too wise to run for president. Unlike a certain fool who took the country halfway down the rathole, mostly by destroying most of public education.
Actually, the so-called Republican Party has already split itself into at least 5 factions, but two of them are pretty much extinct. The extinct (or possibly just extremely endangered) species were the progressive Republicans (of the Abe Lincoln stripe) and the pragmatic conservatives (like Ike and Teddy). The currently dominant species is the former Dixiecrats (AKA pre-Reagan Southern Democrats AKA "Remember the War of Northern Aggression" Anti-Republicans). They dominate the major subspecies of religious fanatics (who hoped to push their morals on everyone else) and the minor subspecies of extremely short-sighted super-greedy businessmen (who thought investing in the cheapest professional politicians to rig the rules wouldn't cause corporate cancer). Today's fake Republicans are walking dead.
That Bruce Perens? I thought someone's sig was citing you for something... So are you interested in discussion of alternative economic models to make Linux and OSS much more successful? Oh wait. Back to the topic at hand...
I was just going to comment that Reagan's reelection caused me to get my first passport, the voters' acceptance of Quayle as V-P helped move me to Japan, and Dubya's reelection contributed to my decision to become a permanent resident. I still did my civic duty until the dictators of Texas finally got around to removing my vestigial vote. I'm not too worried about Trump's election, because in that case I'm pretty sure the Chinese will just occupy Japan while the Donald is busy playing with his wall, and I think they have become the world's sharpest businessmen these years... (You read it here first, eh?)
Can't say I like Hillary that much, but there is one major aspect I do like: She has excellent taste in enemies. Not saying that the enemy of my enemy is automatically my friend, but her loudest and most prominent enemies are on the scale from "despicable" to totally "despicable". I'm liking her more and more just for the nasty things the flagrant bastards say about her.
The second thing I rather like about her candidacy is that she is obviously vastly more qualified and competent than Trump (or Cruz) and significantly better than any of the other prominent candidates the so-called Republicans were considering. If they had found a candidate like Abe Lincoln, Teddy, or Ike, today's fake Republicans would have booed him out of the first debate.
The main reason I still prefer Bernie is that his primary personal identity is "idealist", and I think they are basically harmless compared to most of the alternatives. Hillary's #1 identity is probably "corporate lawyer" and "idealist" probably isn't in her top 10. I'm not sure "politician" is in the top 5, but she has Bill on her side, and his clear #1 is "politician", so I think she's covered there. (President Obama is also a primary politician, if you ask me, and I regard that as a bad (but evidently almost absolute) requirement for the office these years. I think Carter and Ford were the last exceptions.)
Again, I wish I had a funny mod point to give you.
Anyway, as bad as Trump is, Cruz would have been worse. The Donald's primary identity is "con man" or "salesman" and he doesn't believe most of the crazy stuff he says. He's just saying those things because the suckers want to hear them. In contrast, Cruz's primary personal identity is "religious fanatic", supported by a secondary identity as "technically skilled liar", and he sincerely believed all of the crazy stuff he said, and some more besides.
Trump's nomination actually gives me some hope for the future of America. The so-called Republican Party has become a travesty of itself. Just an insane brand hijack of the actual Republican Party of Abe Lincoln and the pragmatic if overly business-friendly GOP of Ike and Teddy. It is overdue to follow the Whig and Federalists Parties into oblivion so the American political system can have a REAL choice. Yeah, the Democratic Party will win too easily, but it's not like they've ever been able to figure out what they want to do with political power even when they have it. I doubt the new challenger will be the Libertarian Party, but the election of 2018 may reveal which way things are actually going. Hey, it's even conceivable the so-called Republicans can reform themselves enough to earn their own name again.
I wish I had a mod point to give you for that, but mine would be funny, not insightful. Of course the funniest part is that anyone thought Cruz was intelligent beyond the minimal skills to lie skillfully while mostly trying to hide his own insane fanaticism.
Anyway, lots of funny jokes about Carly. My favorite is that Cruz picked her because he thought the presidential campaign was an UNpupularity contest. Or maybe the joke that he picked her in the hopes of finding someone who made him look relatively less like a weasel. Or...trump
Interesting point, but I have to stop short of calling it good for several reasons. One is that the death rate also declines over time and may pass the declining birth rate at some point. Another is that naturally evolved Turing machines (such as homo sapiens) may replace themselves with artificial Turing machines (AKA AIs) without completely disrupting the society in question. (My overly optimistic interpretation of the Culture books by Iain M Banks?)
I think the estimate is MUCH too low for two reasons:
One, artificial pandemics are ignored. Just because we haven't had one yet is NOT evidence. At this point, a well funded research lab could probably create a doomsday virus or fungi, and as genetic technologies continue to advance, the threat will soon be within the economic capabilities of individual madmen. Unfortunately, we've never had a sufficient shortage of madmen.
Two, the Fermi Paradox. Any intelligent and long-lived (on the order of 100,000 years) species could (with our own pitiful level of technology) create a radio beacon that would have spanned the entire Milky Way Galaxy by now. Either they want to want to be quiet (and presumably have good reason) or no technological society lasts that long.
Slashdot Mirror
Not wanting to claim to be smart, but assuming there are some around here, why are you punishing them by making them read your comment? Couldn't you just be merciful and say nothing when you have nothing to say?
Should be a place for related books and references on such a rich topic. Currently reading "Future Crimes", which is highly relevant to this topic. The discussion also reminded me of "The Filter Bubble" and I just remembered "The Future of the Internet" and "Who Owns the Future?" as related books.
The current model of push-based advertising is insane. There is NO limit to how much of your time they would be willing to consume. Even if they are consuming 100% of your attention and free time, they would only respond by shifting the focus to higher margin goods and services. (NEVER again Amazon!)
The financial model I want to support would be pull driven. I would specify what good and services I want to buy and how much time I want to spend considering the options, and then the legitimate companies would bid for my time to consider what they have. The intermediary handling the auction could have additional personal information, and they could use that information to boost the value of the auctions based on my qualifications as a potential customer, but the intermediary would have a strong interest in protecting my privacy and keeping my information secure because that is protecting their OWN position in future auctions. If they leak my personal information, they are cutting themselves out of the deal. (I would also want a setting to get at least 3 companies' offers.)
The interesting question is how to divide the proceeds of the auctions, and this is where the competition between intermediaries should take place. One intermediary might pay a higher percentage directly back to the users, but I would be more likely to consider an auctioneer who offered a balanced package of services, including spammer killing and a fraction of the proceeds that is used to pay for REAL journalism instead of the advertiser-driven click-bait crap we see these days.
By the way, a similar approach could be applied even on slashdot. Details (if speculative) available upon (polite) request.
I'm still allergic to stupid liars, but if you're a paid troll (and not as stupid as you appear), then I'm terrified of enriching you with 10-cent bonus for replies.
Stop lying. Ted Cruz isn't hiring now.
Yeah, I admit it is a personal medical thing. I'm allergic to stupid liars.
Even worse if you're a paid troll. It's conceivable you got a rider in your contract for a 10-cent bonus on replies. I'd hate to make you rich.
I like the basic idea of crowd funding, but ALL of the websites I've examined so far have been more or less terrible. The more "successful" are more like lotteries than anything else. Clear success criteria are needed (and the same model could be applied to slashdot, too).
Before I want to donate my hard earned money I think the project proposal needs to be quite complete. It should have a budget and a schedule. Neither has to be perfect, but they have to be realistic at minimum. Required resources including the people need to be described, and I even think the serious contributors should be guaranteed some compensation from the budget (though discounted from the top market rate in exchange for the freedom of choosing to do the work). The project proposal needs a good sanity check to make sure nothing crucial is important, with sufficient testing being the most frequent omission in software-related projects. Most importantly to my way of thinking there should be clear success criteria so the donors will know what success looks like.
Sounds like preparing the project is a lot of work, but there has to be some planning for good results. However, the up-front work also justifies a commission for the agent (I think of the agent as a "charity share brokerage") who helps make sure it gets done properly and who also evaluates the finished project and reports on the results to the donors and the world. Hopefully the donors are going to find out how much good they've accomplished so they can be motived to donate to future projects.
Too busy to write more just now, but lots of details available upon request, or even more interested to hear your suggested improvements.
The framing of your question says otherwise. No, you do NOT want to see any "specific examples of Hillary Clinton's competence" and you would reject ANY evidence of reality that conflicts with your ideological preferences.
Doesn't it bother you to lie so flagrantly? Don't you have any reputation to protect?
No, I guess not. "Bartles" with a 7-digit ID is probably just your sock puppet of the week. Or are you a paid professional troll? I heard some of them make as much as 50 cents.
About 95% of what you said is completely irrelevant, but I guess the last 5% might be based on your medications (or recreational drugs).
Only one actual response to your advocacy of civil war. Or perhaps you want to argue that assuming inevitability is somehow different from advocacy?
No, I do not think that relatively peaceful evolution (as by peaceful elections) is the only mechanism of change. The "bigger picture" is that change happens, and on the long-term big-picture average things do get better, even if some individual elections are "won" by an incompetent like Dubya. As individuals we just don't get to live long enough to see the trends. However, the problem with actual revolutions is that some people have to die in the process, and there's still no guarantee of improvement from one short-term event, even if it is a legitimate revolution.
Do you read so badly? Or are you trying to prove my points?
Anyway, everything you speculated about my personal beliefs is completely incorrect. 'Nuff said.
Please feel free to come back after you READ what I wrote and have something relevant to write. I actually enjoy rational discourse and even political debate.
And Teddy Roosevelt did some good stuff, too. Today's politics don't seem to be too linked to the old systems, and in particular today's so-called Republican Party is just a brand hijack. No relation to the progressive and liberal Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln or the pragmatic if too-pro-business-for-my-taste GOP.
Let me fix that for you.
Your sources are crap. Only a delusional lunatic would have cited them as "proof" of anything.
Only four possibilities make sense. (1) You are sincerely but still amazingly ignorant. (2) You aren't very bright, but still managed to turn on the computer. (3) You're a troll and loving it. (4) You're a paid propagandist. In China the going rate for such a post is around 50 cents. Are you making that much?
Your tone sounds like you disagree with me, but the content seems to be in agreement? On the theory we're actually in agreement, I think I should note that I'm largely basing that part of my analysis on what Stephen Colbert said about some of his fans from the right wing.
My newest thought on the topic is that President Obama was playing 3-D chess when he "surrendered" his birth certificate to the Donald's demands and threats.
Libya is suddenly such a crucial existential threat to the United States. No, you just revealed you're a FAUX "news" viewer, but even you have yet to come up with a positive reason to support Trump. Or perhaps that's only because are actually aware of the Donald's self-contradictions on every issue?
That's okay. I'm sure he'll sell you a lovely bridge.
My simpleminded reduction:
Today's so-called GOP believes "government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% should rule the earth."
Trump believes in "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald."
Obviously Abe Lincoln's version is not compatible with either of these philosophies, but a large chunk of their voters have no idea what sort of man Lincoln was.
You seem to be confused about lies. Because Trump has been on every side of every issue, most of his lies are simple Class 0 lies of self-contradiction, where you don't even need to check the facts to know that at least half has to be false. (Actually it's logically possible for both sides of Trump's statements to be lies, but not possible for both to be true.)
Class 1 lies are counterfactual statements, and Trump has an awesome track record here, though any fool can check the facts.
Class 2 lies are partial truths, which are probably the most popular type, but that's where Cruz starts lying and Trump tends to taper off. That's a metric of Cruz's technical sophistication in lying while Trump can't even keep track of the reality, so he can't use the technique effectively. In contrast, Cruz understands most of the facts and simply rejects the parts he doesn't like. (Especially excellent examples in Cruz's handling of difficult questions.)
Class 3 is the high-level lies that I currently lump as "framing", and I almost never detect Trump using anything along these lines. Framing involves presenting the truth in a misleading frame so that it is rejected, or redefining some of the key terms so that the statements no longer mean what they should in the newly framed context. There are also psychological tricks such as anchoring that fit into framing lies. Again, Cruz is a technical master of these lies, but so are most skilled lawyers, especially the trial lawyers.
Within this framework, I concluded that Trump is likely to be relatively harmless, while Cruz had enormous potential for extreme damage. However, I think I learned from my mistake in regarding Dubya as "relatively harmless" in 2000. My mistake was in underestimating what the big dick Cheney would accomplish in the leadership vacuum Dubya created, but I believe that Trump cannot and would not get a V-P of such virulence. (Right now I think he may go with Ben Carson, but the reasons are too long for this post.)
The fundamental problem is that most of the so-called Republican Party now stands for "government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%", while Trump is much simpler. He just wants "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald", and that is why they hate him.
The threat is that his supporters are gullible or ignorant or both. The gullible ones believe whatever Trump says that they personally agree with, even though he has been on every side of every issue. The ignorant ones have fundamentally short attention spans and can't even remember what he said yesterday.
Going forward Trump is going to create so much confusion that he might actually win. He is a master of playing the mass media for fools, and I'm strongly reminded of a book Harlan Ellison wrote in 1968, when he predicted that Reagan would eventually become president only because he really understood television. As I've already noted, Trump is a con man or liar (or both), but he understands how the new social media work.
Perfectly spoken for someone who has now idea how democracy works and who doesn't actually understand much. Do you even know who said "I didn't vote for him, but he's my president and I hope he does a good job"?
Hint: He was a sincere conservative but too wise to run for president. Unlike a certain fool who took the country halfway down the rathole, mostly by destroying most of public education.
Should be "UNpopularity". Obviously, but irrevocably.
Actually, the so-called Republican Party has already split itself into at least 5 factions, but two of them are pretty much extinct. The extinct (or possibly just extremely endangered) species were the progressive Republicans (of the Abe Lincoln stripe) and the pragmatic conservatives (like Ike and Teddy). The currently dominant species is the former Dixiecrats (AKA pre-Reagan Southern Democrats AKA "Remember the War of Northern Aggression" Anti-Republicans). They dominate the major subspecies of religious fanatics (who hoped to push their morals on everyone else) and the minor subspecies of extremely short-sighted super-greedy businessmen (who thought investing in the cheapest professional politicians to rig the rules wouldn't cause corporate cancer). Today's fake Republicans are walking dead.
That Bruce Perens? I thought someone's sig was citing you for something... So are you interested in discussion of alternative economic models to make Linux and OSS much more successful? Oh wait. Back to the topic at hand...
I was just going to comment that Reagan's reelection caused me to get my first passport, the voters' acceptance of Quayle as V-P helped move me to Japan, and Dubya's reelection contributed to my decision to become a permanent resident. I still did my civic duty until the dictators of Texas finally got around to removing my vestigial vote. I'm not too worried about Trump's election, because in that case I'm pretty sure the Chinese will just occupy Japan while the Donald is busy playing with his wall, and I think they have become the world's sharpest businessmen these years... (You read it here first, eh?)
Can't say I like Hillary that much, but there is one major aspect I do like: She has excellent taste in enemies. Not saying that the enemy of my enemy is automatically my friend, but her loudest and most prominent enemies are on the scale from "despicable" to totally "despicable". I'm liking her more and more just for the nasty things the flagrant bastards say about her.
The second thing I rather like about her candidacy is that she is obviously vastly more qualified and competent than Trump (or Cruz) and significantly better than any of the other prominent candidates the so-called Republicans were considering. If they had found a candidate like Abe Lincoln, Teddy, or Ike, today's fake Republicans would have booed him out of the first debate.
The main reason I still prefer Bernie is that his primary personal identity is "idealist", and I think they are basically harmless compared to most of the alternatives. Hillary's #1 identity is probably "corporate lawyer" and "idealist" probably isn't in her top 10. I'm not sure "politician" is in the top 5, but she has Bill on her side, and his clear #1 is "politician", so I think she's covered there. (President Obama is also a primary politician, if you ask me, and I regard that as a bad (but evidently almost absolute) requirement for the office these years. I think Carter and Ford were the last exceptions.)
Again, I wish I had a funny mod point to give you.
Anyway, as bad as Trump is, Cruz would have been worse. The Donald's primary identity is "con man" or "salesman" and he doesn't believe most of the crazy stuff he says. He's just saying those things because the suckers want to hear them. In contrast, Cruz's primary personal identity is "religious fanatic", supported by a secondary identity as "technically skilled liar", and he sincerely believed all of the crazy stuff he said, and some more besides.
Trump's nomination actually gives me some hope for the future of America. The so-called Republican Party has become a travesty of itself. Just an insane brand hijack of the actual Republican Party of Abe Lincoln and the pragmatic if overly business-friendly GOP of Ike and Teddy. It is overdue to follow the Whig and Federalists Parties into oblivion so the American political system can have a REAL choice. Yeah, the Democratic Party will win too easily, but it's not like they've ever been able to figure out what they want to do with political power even when they have it. I doubt the new challenger will be the Libertarian Party, but the election of 2018 may reveal which way things are actually going. Hey, it's even conceivable the so-called Republicans can reform themselves enough to earn their own name again.
I wish I had a mod point to give you for that, but mine would be funny, not insightful. Of course the funniest part is that anyone thought Cruz was intelligent beyond the minimal skills to lie skillfully while mostly trying to hide his own insane fanaticism.
Anyway, lots of funny jokes about Carly. My favorite is that Cruz picked her because he thought the presidential campaign was an UNpupularity contest. Or maybe the joke that he picked her in the hopes of finding someone who made him look relatively less like a weasel. Or...trump
Interesting point, but I have to stop short of calling it good for several reasons. One is that the death rate also declines over time and may pass the declining birth rate at some point. Another is that naturally evolved Turing machines (such as homo sapiens) may replace themselves with artificial Turing machines (AKA AIs) without completely disrupting the society in question. (My overly optimistic interpretation of the Culture books by Iain M Banks?)
I think the estimate is MUCH too low for two reasons:
One, artificial pandemics are ignored. Just because we haven't had one yet is NOT evidence. At this point, a well funded research lab could probably create a doomsday virus or fungi, and as genetic technologies continue to advance, the threat will soon be within the economic capabilities of individual madmen. Unfortunately, we've never had a sufficient shortage of madmen.
Two, the Fermi Paradox. Any intelligent and long-lived (on the order of 100,000 years) species could (with our own pitiful level of technology) create a radio beacon that would have spanned the entire Milky Way Galaxy by now. Either they want to want to be quiet (and presumably have good reason) or no technological society lasts that long.