With the total inability of government to do anything that benefits the people, I often wonder if it's possible to crowd-source activism.
Suppose we had a web site where people could register discontent with selected issues. Something like "Fix It Or Else.com".
In the manner of We The People, people could find or create petitions which demand actions from politicians on specific issues, and promise to vote against the incumbent if the issues are not resolved.
For example, you could petition your senators to abolish the TSA, and if that doesn't happen you promise to vote against them at the next election. Similar for other issues - end the war on drugs, legalize gay marriage, increase NASA's budget, and so on.
Many elections are decided by a thin margin - a couple of thousand votes is usually enough to swing the election. Frequently a couple of hundred will do. You wouldn't have to give up the belief that your party is better than the other party; just resolve to punish them for inaction this one time.
Would this have an effect? Could crowd-sourcing bring accountability to the rulers of government?
Some details:
.) Issues would be addressed to specific politicians. Petitions could be addressed to the president, your senators, your governor, and so on - depending on the scope of the issue.
.) If a petition reaches a registration goal, a copy is sent to the addressed people.
.) Six weeks before the election, the system invites petition registrants to vote whether the issue was resolved
.) One week before the election, the system sends the voting results back. You would get an E-mail "95% of respondents feel this issue was not addressed, and will be voting against Senator Jack Johnson at the upcoming election".
.) The system will close petition registrations some months before the election (at the party convention?) to prevent paid shills from swaying the results.
Taking bets on when 3d printers and other 'manufacturing devices' get on the board to be regulated somehow... It's comming. Bet. Bet money. Bet MY money.
...Seriously guys, you're not helping. Stop it. Or at least keep it to yourselves.
Should we blame these people for inciting others to action?
I don't think that's right. We should put the blame where it rightly belongs, which is with whatever regulation agency decides to ban things.
Also, should we worry about repercussions before there actually *are* repercussions? Aren't we guessing an extreme consequence here? I mean, do we want to be the "game over, man" guy from that Aliens movie?
And finally, should we be calling people morons and dictating their actions in a dismissive tone on the subject of gun control? There are reasoned arguments on both sides - the percentage spread between pro and con arguments is not totally convincing one way or another - certainly not at the p<0.05 confidence level we typically use. We may disagree with their position, but can we say without reservation that their position has no merit?
Personally, I'm against dictating the actions of others in the first place. I like to hold people responsible for their actions, and these people have done nothing that harms others. The sophistry "they're enabling others to kill" is just that - an emotional narrative with no basis used to sway an argument. If (and that's a big if) others are enabled by these acts, then the others would be responsible, not these people.
Most online courses to date have been lacking in one aspect or another, most notably student interest - drop rates of over 95% are common. Teething pains probably, as teachers begin to recognize that a) courses online must be presented in a different way, and b) teaching techniques must be effective (in terms of keeping student interest) when the audience is not captive.
Recently I saw this gem, which is extremely good. Good presentation, good technical quality (web form scoring &c), good content, and some experimental techniques in keeping student interest.
While I don't like the techniques used for keeping student interest in this course, they are at least experimenting with new techniques and learning from past mistakes. The quality keeps getting better.
Their business model varies, but one site hopes to provide an MBA ensemble for $50 (Udacity) and another gets finders fees from companies that hire the top scorers (edX). And of course there's Kahn academy, which is turning high-school education upside down.
In a couple of years, you will probably be able to get a complete high-quality education by self-study over the internet for thin money. You'll be able to study as much as you want for whatever topic you want and for as long as you want.
The question to ask is: which way will build value?
If Verizon and AT&T will just sit on the spectrum doing nothing, then the government gets 12 billion extra and it will be wasted. The government doesn't do anything that's useful or valuable to the people any more - it only generates pointless bureaucracy and sweetheart deals. It's the aristocracy of "pull".
If players other than Verizon and AT&T will use the spectrum for new and innovative products, generate intellectual property (ugh! that word...) and add value to the economy, then the government gets 12 billion less which will go unnoticed (a minor drop in the bucket), but it will enrich America and perhaps generate tax revenue over time.
Let's give Verizon and AT&T a chance at the new spectrum. They kept the 200 billion we gave them to bring broadband to 86 million homes in America and did nothing, but that was a long time ago.
The question of whether anti-matter experiences anti-gravity goes back as far as I can personally remember (1970's) and probably some decades before that.
For most of the past 300 years in physics, experiment has led theory. We measure something, it leads to a theory, and then experiments are done to check the theory. Examples abound of theories that explain previous observations, and also predict something new - probably the most famous is relativity predicting the precession of Mars, but there are lots of others. (Newton predicting elliptical orbits based on the inverse square law of gravity comes to mind.)
Since about 1970 the situation is reversed - theory has led experiment. We have a satchel of theories which attempt to explain questions in physics which have no discriminatory evidence. Theories such as "Super Symmetry", "Loop Quantum Gravity", and "String Theory". I'm reading a book right now which claims 10^500 different string theories (yes, that's 10 with 500 zeroes after it), and lamenting the fact that few of these actually make testable predictions.
Relativity predicts that anti-matter should have positive gravity, but this has never been tested.
Until recently, the only antimatter we had access to has been charged particles: anti-protons and anti-electrons. Measuring the gravitational force on a charged particle is nigh impossible because the EM force is so large (relative to the gravitational force) that any EM effects swamp the readings. You can't just see if the particle falls in the container, because it's essentially impossible to shield a container well enough. It's like trying to measure the mass of a cork floating in a tornado.
Anti-hydrogen would work, but until recently we had none to test. Antiparticles tend to have high velocities when produced - they have to escape their anti-nemesis which is also produced - so they have to be slowed down enough to "pair" to make the neutral antimatter particle.
The vacuum used for the experiments has a big effect also. Depending on the level of vacuum used, any particle has a "mean free path" before it will impinge on another particle. You have to get your anti-particles to slow down, form antimatter, and conduct the experiment before another particle comes in and annihilates it. This requires insanely good vacuum which is both hard to achieve and highly expensive.
The ALPHA experiment at CERN now produces antimatter, so the referenced paper asks the question: what is the ratio "F" between the inertial mass and the gravitational mass of antihydrogen? For normal matter it's 1 and for "antigravity matter" it would be -1.
The paper reports that they have measurements within specific confidence levels that F < 110 almost certainly, and F < 75 at the 95% confidence level.
If the experiments outlined in the paper are continued (and perhaps refined), over time they can statistically narrow the results and ultimately settle the question by experiment.
I think that this would be a good thing, it would confirm (or contradict) by experiment something that is predicted by theory.
Everyone will point out how "doom and gloom" predictions of automation have been made before, and the historical results.
This is extrapolating future conditions from past events. All previous predictions of "doom and gloom" turned out to be a non-problem.
The question is, will it be a problem this time? To answer this, we must examine whether the current situation is like the historical examples. If the same assumptions hold, then we can be reasonably confident that future events will play out as they have done in the past. If the assumptions are different, then there is chance for a different outcome.
In this situation, macroeconomics makes an assumption with one corollary: the assumption of infinite consumption, and the corollary of infinite need for labor.
If people are like microorganisms, then consumption increases exponentially. Humans will tend to consume more and more goods and services if given the chance. Who wouldn't own a mansion and a yacht if given the choice? And more mansions and more yachts if they were essentially free.
Furthermore, like microorganisms, people will increase in population without limit if given the chance. If population increases exponentially even at constant per-capita consumption, consumption must increase exponentially.
Corollary: With infinite consumption, there will be an infinite need for labor. No matter how efficient and effective the system is at providing goods and services, there will always be a need for labor to produce more. Infinite consumption implies infinite labor.
Those are the assumptions. Now let's see if the assumptions are valid this time.
The population in industrialized nations is declining. Industrialized nations are below the "replacement rate" fertility level and have been for some time. The US would have negative population growth if we had no immigration, and since the fertility rate has been steadily dropping it's likely that we will have negative growth even *with* immigration in the near future. Third world nations are predicted to enjoy the same decline in population once they become modernized.
That's population, how about consumption?
The productive level of America has about doubled since 1970. If the productive wealth were evenly distributed, every man, woman, and infant in the country could spend $38,000 on goods and services this year, and then do it again next year. Every "family of four" could have 4 times this amount in spending power each year, while breadwinners put in the same number of hours at work.
The question we should ask: Is consumption infinite? Will people always say "it's not enough - I need more in my life than I have at the moment"?
If the answer to this (largely psychological) question is no, then the assumptions of macroeconomics are false in this instance and we must predict from a different model. We cannot rely on historical evidence to guide future decisions, because the situation is different.
If the answer is yes, then continue on as before. Doom and gloom naysayers are simply Luddites, and we all know how that movement turned out.
I sometimes wonder at all the victimless crimes we seem to have.
In this case federal prosecutors not only don't have a victim, they don't have evidence of a crime. The only way to convict the defendant is to get the evidence from him.
I think the constitution was made specifically to protect us from these sorts of "investigations of suspicion"; specifically, the founding fathers recognized that many activities may seem suspicious from the outside and in certain contexts, but that the government can't simply come in and rummage around for reasons to arrest someone.
This is especially salient in today's world, where innumerable crimes go unaddressed even though there are real victims, and investigating and prosecuting would be trivial. Spam, phishing fraud, identity theft, stolen laptops where the laptop tells the owner where it is, robocalling - all crimes where an average citizen has to beg the government to intercede... to no avail.
Having "suspicious activity" but no evidence should be a clear signal to the authorities. Drop the case, or do something to get real evidence. This general "he's done something wrong, we only need the tools to do our job" thing has to stop.
It's a subtle point described in the judges decision.
If the government has knowledge of particular documents, they can force you to present them. This includes forcing you to open your safe or decrypting your hard drive.
If the government has no knowledge of the contents of the hard drive, no information from other sources that indicate that you have specific documents it wants, then it can't force you to decrypt your hard drive.
The judge's position was that since the government had no indication of whatever documents are on the hard drive, producing them tied the defendant to the documents - providing evidence of control and ownership. Since that evidence (control and ownership) was not available to the government beforehand, it would be compelled testimony.
I think this is also reasonable in light of the fourth amendment. If the government doesn't have knowledge of specific documents, it can't go "rummaging around" on your disk looking for things.
According to the Phinergy link, they're using the battery as a range extender.
They propose that an electric car would have Lithium rechargeable batteries, and also a fuel-air battery (55 lbs of extra weight). You would charge your car normally for "drive around town" daily use, but have the extended range when you need it. (Such as, when you suddenly have to drive out to the Everglades to get rid of a body.)
At 1000 miles per battery and 20 MPG times $4/Gal = $200. If they can make the unit cost less than that, it makes a lot of sense.
Aluminum is around $1/lb, so the bulk aluminum cost should be around $50 (assuming most of the weight comes from aluminum). That's not a lot of profit margin for a tech product, but as a consumer product it might be.
First of all, the paper is steeped in jargon. Phrases such as (2nd para) "characterized by the formalism of" instead of "described by" obfuscate the meaning and confuse the reader.
Count the number of uses of the verb "to be" (is, are, "to be", were, &c). It's everywhere! Nothing runs or changes, everything "is running" or "is changing". Passive voice removes the actor in a paper describing - largely - actions.
Useless words and phrases litter the landscape, such as "To better understand", "for concreteness", "as a simple means", "to the best of our knowledge". Cushiony adverb goodness pads the document to the required length. "Explicitly propose" (instead of just "propose"), "dynamically revealed information" (as opposed to that other kind of revealed information), "remarkably sophisticated behaviours" (as opposed to the pedestrian kind, I guess).
This paper is all kinds of awesome! It should be the touchstone for Stanford's "Writing in the Sciences" online course.
My first impression (it's really dense!) is that the author conflates maximum entropy with the agent goal. It's not always the case that the goal is the maximally entropic state. This is likely true when actors must cooperate (as shown in the paper), but when actors compete the individual goal may not be maximum entropy.
For example, consider competing for mates. Instead of choosing mates based on competitive merit, should an individual limit their offspring in order to give everyone in society a chance to reproduce? The non-cooperative goal isn't for maximal entropy.
It also appears to describe intelligence as an evolutionary process seeking a function minimum over multiple-parameter phase space. While this might solve physical puzzles such as walking or throwing a ball, I'm not convinced that chess can be solved in this way. The search space is too big for an evolutionary solution.
Still, I may be misapprehending the point of the article (it's really dense!). Read the paper and make your own assessment.
I'm into AI development, post on slashdot, and don't get spam E-mail to begin with.
Reactive measures to deal with SPAM are pointless, they're a waste of time. The right way is to not get spam in the first place.
I'm careful about giving away my E-mail, use disposable addresses with everyone except close friends and family, and simply "turn off" any address that receives unwanted messages.
Filters are a PITA, they take time to create, tune, check, and manage. Have any useful messages been mistakenly put in your spam folder? I've never had that problem. I also don't scan for viruses, and have never been infected. My firewall is pretty solid.
Your intelligence project is doomed.
Thank you. I base my life on the opinions of others, and yours has added valuable input to that effort.
If memory serves, four years ago the Iran elections resulted in much oppression and general chaos. A global call went out for Tor nodes and other resources in order to help the Iranian people at the time.
The next Iranian elections will be in June of this year. Perhaps we should be forward-looking and set up a robust network ahead of time?
I attend an AI group in Boston (for about two years ongoing) and I've learned to not give out my E-mail for this very reason.
Giving an E-mail address results in them entering it into LinkedIn, which results in me being spammed forever by that system. People I've never heard of send messages "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn" (some store owner in a distant city).
The message has a convenient opt-out link, whose page is hilariously ambiguous:
"You're receiving these emails because a LinkedIn member invited you to become a part of their professional network. By clicking the "Unsubscribe" button, you will stop receiving these emails"
Two checkboxes below are labelled "Invitations to connect" and "Reminders to connect".
It took me awhile to realize that you have to *check* the boxes to stop receiving E-mails, instead of *uncheck* the boxes which is how pretty-much all other sites handle it.
I've never seen a compelling need for this LinkedIn service. Sure, if a member could manage their contacts effectively it might be useful, but the system auto-encourages bigger and more comprehensive webs... which are at the same time less and less useful.
My impression is that many of the people on the site are "salesmen" types, who think contact circles indicate how impressive they are. Professional networks just for the purpose of having professional networks.
Thanks, but no thanks. The address-book in my E-mail client works just fine. It even lets me add notes about the person - where I met them, what they do, &c.
It also doesn't hold my contact info up for everyone to see.
Thank you. An island of expertise in a roiling sea of opinion.
You're correlation hunting.
I sometimes wonder about the general reaction to "correlation hunting". I'm not in any way defending the position, only asking whether it's a coincidence. Is calling something a "conspiracy theory" the new way to shut down a conversation?
I always thought good science starts with the phrase "that's odd...", but maybe it doesn't apply in some circumstances.
I appreciate the effort, but for all the well-chosen words in your post, it's nothing more than a restatement of your initial position.
I see no reference to experience or external authority, no allusions to history or similar situations, and no compelling logical flow from a premise to a conclusion. It fairly reeks of sophistry, using such vague terms as "large number of players", "overwhelming majority", and "number rapidly increases".
For contrast, a credible argument could have compared the amount of Cyprus gold with the world total amount, or cited previous (ie - historical) stock market drops with similar causes and drawn an analogy with the present situation. Facts and reference combine to make a powerful argument.
In short, you've added nothing to your premise, which is essentially attacking the person while hand-waving and storytelling.
I knew what your position was, the challenge was to defend it.
A troll would not have done more than you did. This was rather easy. When you attacked the person instead of the argument, it became shooting fish in a barrel.
And I'm especially suspicious of wild-ass conspiracy theories that would require the cooperation of a massive number of players. Sure, a half dozen people could know about attacks and keep it secret. But enough people to significantly move the national exchange averages and world gold market (without all the sales coming from a suspiciously tiny number of sources), all conspiring together to keep a terrorist attack secret? Not a single whistle-blower unnerved by the thought of murdering civilians who might call in a tip in advance? Your blind paranoia, and deep misunderstanding of how actual institutions work, is astounding.
Are you sure "wild-ass conspiracy theory" is the right term, since a) I'm pointing to actual events that could be investigated, and b) I'm not stating that it happened that way, only that some investigation would be prudent?
Also, is "blind paranoia" the appropriate term, since c) I'm not especially afraid, emotional, or irrational and I'm not trying to make others feel afraid?
If you're so astounded, then tell me how actual institutions work. Allay my suspicions and reassure me by using logic and reference (also acceptable: opinion backed by experience and scholarship).
Apropos of nothing, note that the day before the Marathon bombings:
1) The DOW dropped 250 points (1.7%). 3) Gold (GLD) dropped $20 or so, (roughly 15%).
An explanation for this could be: some large players in the financial arena knew of the bombings ahead of time, and sold stock/gold in anticipation of the market response to another 9/11-style incident.
I'm not suggesting that this is what happened, it might be a coincidence. I'm hoping some of the investigation will show that this is indeed a coincidence (or not)*. This is a good fit for the definition of "suspicious".
*I'm aware that the news media (and financial pundits in general) post explanations for market behaviour every day. Gold dropped because Cyprus is being forced to sell of its gold, and the Dow dropped because of worse-than-expected China growth. I'm suspicious that the Cyprus situation was unknown and suddenly revealed last Friday, and I'm especially suspicious of reports that explain past activity which cannot predict future activity - even conditionally.
Similarly while the dinosaurs roamed the Earth the mammals were 'under the ice'; a lot of/lib changes, but no possibility to get big or more varied than your primitive rat because of the competition. Then once the big guys got wiped out all those ecological niches were available and filled out faster than one would expect from standard selection processes; simply because the genotype had lots of diversity already: it just needed to show in the phenotype and a few minor mutations did that.
Nice metaphor ("under the ice").
I like the explanation, where species have forced evolution to survive in a limited and changed environment, then fan out when new niches become available.
I'm told that there are niches which aren't populated, such as birds making holes in trees for nests. (The niche is not populated everywhere.) This would neatly fit in with that explanation - the species doesn't *need* to fill new niches to survive, until some environment-limiting catastrophe puts pressure to evolve, then when the limits are removed the newly-developed methods spread to new areas.
...another explanation might be that genome complexity is related to genome size, which does not have much selection pressure. It's not a peer-reviewed paper.
To be clear, I mean to say "genome size is not related to species complexity". Genomic data may be complex simply because it's large and presents a large target for evolutionary change, but a large genome doesn't necessarily result in a complex organism.
... Cataclysmic events happen every now and then and causes extinctions and hardship on surviving organisms
Indeed, it appears that periodic cataclysmic events are required in order to keep evolution going.
We've seen several eras in Earth's history where life appears to "stagnate" at some level, proceeding with little-or-no change for long periods. The last of which was the "age of dinosaurs", which lasted 170 million years or so, depending on how you define the starting point. It ended with the Chicxulub impact.
We also see numerous examples of species which are largely unevolved; for example, ants have been around for 120 million years and one species of prehistoric ant is apparently still living in the Amazon. Coelacanths have been around in their present form for about 400 million years.
The overall impression is that life tends to "stagnate": once life evolves into an efficient survival mechanism, there's no pressure to evolve further. Evolution aims at being a better "fit" for the unchanging environment, but more complexity is simply not needed.
This is why I believe the Drake equation is overly optimistic. I think it omits the factor "fraction of star systems that experience occasional planetary meteor strikes". If we ever travel to another star, we're likely to find it teeming with life, but stagnated at some level.
This may be one factor (of possibly several) that explains the Fermi paradox.
The "doubling rate" identified in the article may be an artifact of Earth, and that's only if Genome complexity is even a reasonable measure to make. Lilies have 30x the genome size of humans - another explanation might be that genome complexity is related to genome size, which does not have much selection pressure. It's not a peer-reviewed paper.
... why the fuck should we be paying both of you to sit on your ass all day for yet ANOTHER generation?
Because that's an emotional argument, not a rational one?
Rather than do whatever "feels" right, we should put our emotions on hold and make decisions based on evidence and effectiveness.
So my question to you is - will the new rule be more effective in educating children than the current system?
Note that poor, uneducated children are more likely to grow up to be criminals. By choosing the "justice feels right" option, you may be inadvertently sending your children into a less safe future. Education is the best way we know to bring people out of poverty.
It is well known that proper diet has a beneficial effect on schooling, so *my* gut feeling is that the new law will do more harm than good. But I can put that aside and look at the evidence.
Do you have any evidence that the new law won't make matters worse?
My Social Studies teacher mentioned that there was so much black market trading in colonial America that we decided to base our currency on the Spanish dollar and "centavo" instead of the pound.
Official is what people use. If something isn't official and enough people use it, "official" changes to compensate; as in, for example, dictionaries.
There are a lot of groups and organizations that declare themselves the authorities in certain areas and set up rules and regulations largely by fiat, with no democratic representation whatsoever. The DEA and TSA come to immediately mind, but I know of at least a half-dozen others.
Of course, when the DEA makes a new rule or regulation, it goes into effect immediately and everyone changes to accommodate...
Slashdot Mirror
With the total inability of government to do anything that benefits the people, I often wonder if it's possible to crowd-source activism.
Suppose we had a web site where people could register discontent with selected issues. Something like "Fix It Or Else.com".
In the manner of We The People, people could find or create petitions which demand actions from politicians on specific issues, and promise to vote against the incumbent if the issues are not resolved.
For example, you could petition your senators to abolish the TSA, and if that doesn't happen you promise to vote against them at the next election. Similar for other issues - end the war on drugs, legalize gay marriage, increase NASA's budget, and so on.
Many elections are decided by a thin margin - a couple of thousand votes is usually enough to swing the election. Frequently a couple of hundred will do. You wouldn't have to give up the belief that your party is better than the other party; just resolve to punish them for inaction this one time.
Would this have an effect? Could crowd-sourcing bring accountability to the rulers of government?
Some details:
.) Issues would be addressed to specific politicians. Petitions could be addressed to the president, your senators, your governor, and so on - depending on the scope of the issue.
.) If a petition reaches a registration goal, a copy is sent to the addressed people.
.) Six weeks before the election, the system invites petition registrants to vote whether the issue was resolved
.) One week before the election, the system sends the voting results back. You would get an E-mail "95% of respondents feel this issue was not addressed, and will be voting against Senator Jack Johnson at the upcoming election".
.) The system will close petition registrations some months before the election (at the party convention?) to prevent paid shills from swaying the results.
... You're just hurting the world of 3d-printing.
Taking bets on when 3d printers and other 'manufacturing devices' get on the board to be regulated somehow... It's comming. Bet. Bet money. Bet MY money.
...Seriously guys, you're not helping. Stop it. Or at least keep it to yourselves.
Should we blame these people for inciting others to action?
I don't think that's right. We should put the blame where it rightly belongs, which is with whatever regulation agency decides to ban things.
Also, should we worry about repercussions before there actually *are* repercussions? Aren't we guessing an extreme consequence here? I mean, do we want to be the "game over, man" guy from that Aliens movie?
And finally, should we be calling people morons and dictating their actions in a dismissive tone on the subject of gun control? There are reasoned arguments on both sides - the percentage spread between pro and con arguments is not totally convincing one way or another - certainly not at the p<0.05 confidence level we typically use. We may disagree with their position, but can we say without reservation that their position has no merit?
Personally, I'm against dictating the actions of others in the first place. I like to hold people responsible for their actions, and these people have done nothing that harms others. The sophistry "they're enabling others to kill" is just that - an emotional narrative with no basis used to sway an argument. If (and that's a big if) others are enabled by these acts, then the others would be responsible, not these people.
We're really living in amazing times.
Most online courses to date have been lacking in one aspect or another, most notably student interest - drop rates of over 95% are common. Teething pains probably, as teachers begin to recognize that a) courses online must be presented in a different way, and b) teaching techniques must be effective (in terms of keeping student interest) when the audience is not captive.
Recently I saw this gem, which is extremely good. Good presentation, good technical quality (web form scoring &c), good content, and some experimental techniques in keeping student interest.
While I don't like the techniques used for keeping student interest in this course, they are at least experimenting with new techniques and learning from past mistakes. The quality keeps getting better.
Their business model varies, but one site hopes to provide an MBA ensemble for $50 (Udacity) and another gets finders fees from companies that hire the top scorers (edX). And of course there's Kahn academy, which is turning high-school education upside down.
In a couple of years, you will probably be able to get a complete high-quality education by self-study over the internet for thin money. You'll be able to study as much as you want for whatever topic you want and for as long as you want.
No more massive student loans just to get a decent education.
Another example of a moribund business model being overtaken by new technology.
Amazing times indeed.
The question to ask is: which way will build value?
If Verizon and AT&T will just sit on the spectrum doing nothing, then the government gets 12 billion extra and it will be wasted. The government doesn't do anything that's useful or valuable to the people any more - it only generates pointless bureaucracy and sweetheart deals. It's the aristocracy of "pull".
If players other than Verizon and AT&T will use the spectrum for new and innovative products, generate intellectual property (ugh! that word...) and add value to the economy, then the government gets 12 billion less which will go unnoticed (a minor drop in the bucket), but it will enrich America and perhaps generate tax revenue over time.
Let's give Verizon and AT&T a chance at the new spectrum. They kept the 200 billion we gave them to bring broadband to 86 million homes in America and did nothing, but that was a long time ago.
They wouldn't do that to us again, right?
Mental typo: typed "Mars" when I meant to say "Mercury". Relativity predicted the precession of Mercury.
The question of whether anti-matter experiences anti-gravity goes back as far as I can personally remember (1970's) and probably some decades before that.
For most of the past 300 years in physics, experiment has led theory. We measure something, it leads to a theory, and then experiments are done to check the theory. Examples abound of theories that explain previous observations, and also predict something new - probably the most famous is relativity predicting the precession of Mars, but there are lots of others. (Newton predicting elliptical orbits based on the inverse square law of gravity comes to mind.)
Since about 1970 the situation is reversed - theory has led experiment. We have a satchel of theories which attempt to explain questions in physics which have no discriminatory evidence. Theories such as "Super Symmetry", "Loop Quantum Gravity", and "String Theory". I'm reading a book right now which claims 10^500 different string theories (yes, that's 10 with 500 zeroes after it), and lamenting the fact that few of these actually make testable predictions.
Relativity predicts that anti-matter should have positive gravity, but this has never been tested.
Until recently, the only antimatter we had access to has been charged particles: anti-protons and anti-electrons. Measuring the gravitational force on a charged particle is nigh impossible because the EM force is so large (relative to the gravitational force) that any EM effects swamp the readings. You can't just see if the particle falls in the container, because it's essentially impossible to shield a container well enough. It's like trying to measure the mass of a cork floating in a tornado.
Anti-hydrogen would work, but until recently we had none to test. Antiparticles tend to have high velocities when produced - they have to escape their anti-nemesis which is also produced - so they have to be slowed down enough to "pair" to make the neutral antimatter particle.
The vacuum used for the experiments has a big effect also. Depending on the level of vacuum used, any particle has a "mean free path" before it will impinge on another particle. You have to get your anti-particles to slow down, form antimatter, and conduct the experiment before another particle comes in and annihilates it. This requires insanely good vacuum which is both hard to achieve and highly expensive.
The ALPHA experiment at CERN now produces antimatter, so the referenced paper asks the question: what is the ratio "F" between the inertial mass and the gravitational mass of antihydrogen? For normal matter it's 1 and for "antigravity matter" it would be -1.
The paper reports that they have measurements within specific confidence levels that F < 110 almost certainly, and F < 75 at the 95% confidence level.
If the experiments outlined in the paper are continued (and perhaps refined), over time they can statistically narrow the results and ultimately settle the question by experiment.
I think that this would be a good thing, it would confirm (or contradict) by experiment something that is predicted by theory.
Everyone will point out how "doom and gloom" predictions of automation have been made before, and the historical results.
This is extrapolating future conditions from past events. All previous predictions of "doom and gloom" turned out to be a non-problem.
The question is, will it be a problem this time? To answer this, we must examine whether the current situation is like the historical examples. If the same assumptions hold, then we can be reasonably confident that future events will play out as they have done in the past. If the assumptions are different, then there is chance for a different outcome.
In this situation, macroeconomics makes an assumption with one corollary: the assumption of infinite consumption, and the corollary of infinite need for labor.
If people are like microorganisms, then consumption increases exponentially. Humans will tend to consume more and more goods and services if given the chance. Who wouldn't own a mansion and a yacht if given the choice? And more mansions and more yachts if they were essentially free.
Furthermore, like microorganisms, people will increase in population without limit if given the chance. If population increases exponentially even at constant per-capita consumption, consumption must increase exponentially.
Corollary: With infinite consumption, there will be an infinite need for labor. No matter how efficient and effective the system is at providing goods and services, there will always be a need for labor to produce more. Infinite consumption implies infinite labor.
Those are the assumptions. Now let's see if the assumptions are valid this time.
The population in industrialized nations is declining. Industrialized nations are below the "replacement rate" fertility level and have been for some time. The US would have negative population growth if we had no immigration, and since the fertility rate has been steadily dropping it's likely that we will have negative growth even *with* immigration in the near future. Third world nations are predicted to enjoy the same decline in population once they become modernized.
That's population, how about consumption?
The productive level of America has about doubled since 1970. If the productive wealth were evenly distributed, every man, woman, and infant in the country could spend $38,000 on goods and services this year, and then do it again next year. Every "family of four" could have 4 times this amount in spending power each year, while breadwinners put in the same number of hours at work.
The question we should ask: Is consumption infinite? Will people always say "it's not enough - I need more in my life than I have at the moment"?
If the answer to this (largely psychological) question is no, then the assumptions of macroeconomics are false in this instance and we must predict from a different model. We cannot rely on historical evidence to guide future decisions, because the situation is different.
If the answer is yes, then continue on as before. Doom and gloom naysayers are simply Luddites, and we all know how that movement turned out.
I sometimes wonder at all the victimless crimes we seem to have.
In this case federal prosecutors not only don't have a victim, they don't have evidence of a crime. The only way to convict the defendant is to get the evidence from him.
I think the constitution was made specifically to protect us from these sorts of "investigations of suspicion"; specifically, the founding fathers recognized that many activities may seem suspicious from the outside and in certain contexts, but that the government can't simply come in and rummage around for reasons to arrest someone.
This is especially salient in today's world, where innumerable crimes go unaddressed even though there are real victims, and investigating and prosecuting would be trivial. Spam, phishing fraud, identity theft, stolen laptops where the laptop tells the owner where it is, robocalling - all crimes where an average citizen has to beg the government to intercede... to no avail.
Having "suspicious activity" but no evidence should be a clear signal to the authorities. Drop the case, or do something to get real evidence. This general "he's done something wrong, we only need the tools to do our job" thing has to stop.
Do your job by protecting real victims.
It's a subtle point described in the judges decision.
If the government has knowledge of particular documents, they can force you to present them. This includes forcing you to open your safe or decrypting your hard drive.
If the government has no knowledge of the contents of the hard drive, no information from other sources that indicate that you have specific documents it wants, then it can't force you to decrypt your hard drive.
The judge's position was that since the government had no indication of whatever documents are on the hard drive, producing them tied the defendant to the documents - providing evidence of control and ownership. Since that evidence (control and ownership) was not available to the government beforehand, it would be compelled testimony.
I think this is also reasonable in light of the fourth amendment. If the government doesn't have knowledge of specific documents, it can't go "rummaging around" on your disk looking for things.
According to the Phinergy link, they're using the battery as a range extender.
They propose that an electric car would have Lithium rechargeable batteries, and also a fuel-air battery (55 lbs of extra weight). You would charge your car normally for "drive around town" daily use, but have the extended range when you need it. (Such as, when you suddenly have to drive out to the Everglades to get rid of a body.)
At 1000 miles per battery and 20 MPG times $4/Gal = $200. If they can make the unit cost less than that, it makes a lot of sense.
Aluminum is around $1/lb, so the bulk aluminum cost should be around $50 (assuming most of the weight comes from aluminum). That's not a lot of profit margin for a tech product, but as a consumer product it might be.
First of all, the paper is steeped in jargon. Phrases such as (2nd para) "characterized by the formalism of" instead of "described by" obfuscate the meaning and confuse the reader.
Count the number of uses of the verb "to be" (is, are, "to be", were, &c). It's everywhere! Nothing runs or changes, everything "is running" or "is changing". Passive voice removes the actor in a paper describing - largely - actions.
Useless words and phrases litter the landscape, such as "To better understand", "for concreteness", "as a simple means", "to the best of our knowledge". Cushiony adverb goodness pads the document to the required length. "Explicitly propose" (instead of just "propose"), "dynamically revealed information" (as opposed to that other kind of revealed information), "remarkably sophisticated behaviours" (as opposed to the pedestrian kind, I guess).
This paper is all kinds of awesome! It should be the touchstone for Stanford's "Writing in the Sciences" online course.
My first impression (it's really dense!) is that the author conflates maximum entropy with the agent goal. It's not always the case that the goal is the maximally entropic state. This is likely true when actors must cooperate (as shown in the paper), but when actors compete the individual goal may not be maximum entropy.
For example, consider competing for mates. Instead of choosing mates based on competitive merit, should an individual limit their offspring in order to give everyone in society a chance to reproduce? The non-cooperative goal isn't for maximal entropy.
It also appears to describe intelligence as an evolutionary process seeking a function minimum over multiple-parameter phase space. While this might solve physical puzzles such as walking or throwing a ball, I'm not convinced that chess can be solved in this way. The search space is too big for an evolutionary solution.
Still, I may be misapprehending the point of the article (it's really dense!). Read the paper and make your own assessment.
I'm into AI development, post on slashdot, and don't get spam E-mail to begin with.
Reactive measures to deal with SPAM are pointless, they're a waste of time. The right way is to not get spam in the first place.
I'm careful about giving away my E-mail, use disposable addresses with everyone except close friends and family, and simply "turn off" any address that receives unwanted messages.
Filters are a PITA, they take time to create, tune, check, and manage. Have any useful messages been mistakenly put in your spam folder? I've never had that problem. I also don't scan for viruses, and have never been infected. My firewall is pretty solid.
Your intelligence project is doomed.
Thank you. I base my life on the opinions of others, and yours has added valuable input to that effort.
If memory serves, four years ago the Iran elections resulted in much oppression and general chaos. A global call went out for Tor nodes and other resources in order to help the Iranian people at the time.
The next Iranian elections will be in June of this year. Perhaps we should be forward-looking and set up a robust network ahead of time?
Anyone remember these Slashdot posts of note?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/06/29/1230216/the-technology-keeping-information-flowing-in-iran
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/06/22/1347228/mass-arrests-of-journalists-follow-iran-elections
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/06/16/2137203/statistical-suspicions-in-irans-election
I attend an AI group in Boston (for about two years ongoing) and I've learned to not give out my E-mail for this very reason.
Giving an E-mail address results in them entering it into LinkedIn, which results in me being spammed forever by that system. People I've never heard of send messages "I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn" (some store owner in a distant city).
The message has a convenient opt-out link, whose page is hilariously ambiguous:
"You're receiving these emails because a LinkedIn member invited you to become a part of their professional network. By clicking the "Unsubscribe" button, you will stop receiving these emails"
Two checkboxes below are labelled "Invitations to connect" and "Reminders to connect".
It took me awhile to realize that you have to *check* the boxes to stop receiving E-mails, instead of *uncheck* the boxes which is how pretty-much all other sites handle it.
I've never seen a compelling need for this LinkedIn service. Sure, if a member could manage their contacts effectively it might be useful, but the system auto-encourages bigger and more comprehensive webs... which are at the same time less and less useful.
My impression is that many of the people on the site are "salesmen" types, who think contact circles indicate how impressive they are. Professional networks just for the purpose of having professional networks.
Thanks, but no thanks. The address-book in my E-mail client works just fine. It even lets me add notes about the person - where I met them, what they do, &c.
It also doesn't hold my contact info up for everyone to see.
Thank you. An island of expertise in a roiling sea of opinion.
You're correlation hunting.
I sometimes wonder about the general reaction to "correlation hunting". I'm not in any way defending the position, only asking whether it's a coincidence. Is calling something a "conspiracy theory" the new way to shut down a conversation?
I always thought good science starts with the phrase "that's odd...", but maybe it doesn't apply in some circumstances.
Anyway, thank you for the reassuring perspective.
Don't PV panels require a transparent conductor as a top layer? Something that lets the light through and conducts away the electricity?
Once the side of your house is painted with this stuff, how would you gather the energy?
Cheap photovoltaic molecules is part of the problem. We still need a cheap transparent conductor to gather the generated energy.
I appreciate the effort, but for all the well-chosen words in your post, it's nothing more than a restatement of your initial position.
I see no reference to experience or external authority, no allusions to history or similar situations, and no compelling logical flow from a premise to a conclusion. It fairly reeks of sophistry, using such vague terms as "large number of players", "overwhelming majority", and "number rapidly increases".
For contrast, a credible argument could have compared the amount of Cyprus gold with the world total amount, or cited previous (ie - historical) stock market drops with similar causes and drawn an analogy with the present situation. Facts and reference combine to make a powerful argument.
In short, you've added nothing to your premise, which is essentially attacking the person while hand-waving and storytelling.
I knew what your position was, the challenge was to defend it.
A troll would not have done more than you did. This was rather easy. When you attacked the person instead of the argument, it became shooting fish in a barrel.
And I'm especially suspicious of wild-ass conspiracy theories that would require the cooperation of a massive number of players. Sure, a half dozen people could know about attacks and keep it secret. But enough people to significantly move the national exchange averages and world gold market (without all the sales coming from a suspiciously tiny number of sources), all conspiring together to keep a terrorist attack secret? Not a single whistle-blower unnerved by the thought of murdering civilians who might call in a tip in advance? Your blind paranoia, and deep misunderstanding of how actual institutions work, is astounding.
Are you sure "wild-ass conspiracy theory" is the right term, since a) I'm pointing to actual events that could be investigated, and b) I'm not stating that it happened that way, only that some investigation would be prudent?
Also, is "blind paranoia" the appropriate term, since c) I'm not especially afraid, emotional, or irrational and I'm not trying to make others feel afraid?
If you're so astounded, then tell me how actual institutions work. Allay my suspicions and reassure me by using logic and reference (also acceptable: opinion backed by experience and scholarship).
A troll wouldn't be able to do that. Can you?
Apropos of nothing, note that the day before the Marathon bombings:
1) The DOW dropped 250 points (1.7%).
3) Gold (GLD) dropped $20 or so, (roughly 15%).
An explanation for this could be: some large players in the financial arena knew of the bombings ahead of time, and sold stock/gold in anticipation of the market response to another 9/11-style incident.
I'm not suggesting that this is what happened, it might be a coincidence. I'm hoping some of the investigation will show that this is indeed a coincidence (or not)*. This is a good fit for the definition of "suspicious".
*I'm aware that the news media (and financial pundits in general) post explanations for market behaviour every day. Gold dropped because Cyprus is being forced to sell of its gold, and the Dow dropped because of worse-than-expected China growth. I'm suspicious that the Cyprus situation was unknown and suddenly revealed last Friday, and I'm especially suspicious of reports that explain past activity which cannot predict future activity - even conditionally.
Similarly while the dinosaurs roamed the Earth the mammals were 'under the ice'; a lot of /lib changes, but no possibility to get big or more varied than your primitive rat because of the competition. Then once the big guys got wiped out all those ecological niches were available and filled out faster than one would expect from standard selection processes; simply because the genotype had lots of diversity already: it just needed to show in the phenotype and a few minor mutations did that.
Nice metaphor ("under the ice").
I like the explanation, where species have forced evolution to survive in a limited and changed environment, then fan out when new niches become available.
I'm told that there are niches which aren't populated, such as birds making holes in trees for nests. (The niche is not populated everywhere.) This would neatly fit in with that explanation - the species doesn't *need* to fill new niches to survive, until some environment-limiting catastrophe puts pressure to evolve, then when the limits are removed the newly-developed methods spread to new areas.
...another explanation might be that genome complexity is related to genome size, which does not have much selection pressure. It's not a peer-reviewed paper.
To be clear, I mean to say "genome size is not related to species complexity". Genomic data may be complex simply because it's large and presents a large target for evolutionary change, but a large genome doesn't necessarily result in a complex organism.
... Cataclysmic events happen every now and then and causes extinctions and hardship on surviving organisms
Indeed, it appears that periodic cataclysmic events are required in order to keep evolution going.
We've seen several eras in Earth's history where life appears to "stagnate" at some level, proceeding with little-or-no change for long periods. The last of which was the "age of dinosaurs", which lasted 170 million years or so, depending on how you define the starting point. It ended with the Chicxulub impact.
We also see numerous examples of species which are largely unevolved; for example, ants have been around for 120 million years and one species of prehistoric ant is apparently still living in the Amazon. Coelacanths have been around in their present form for about 400 million years.
The overall impression is that life tends to "stagnate": once life evolves into an efficient survival mechanism, there's no pressure to evolve further. Evolution aims at being a better "fit" for the unchanging environment, but more complexity is simply not needed.
This is why I believe the Drake equation is overly optimistic. I think it omits the factor "fraction of star systems that experience occasional planetary meteor strikes". If we ever travel to another star, we're likely to find it teeming with life, but stagnated at some level.
This may be one factor (of possibly several) that explains the Fermi paradox.
The "doubling rate" identified in the article may be an artifact of Earth, and that's only if Genome complexity is even a reasonable measure to make. Lilies have 30x the genome size of humans - another explanation might be that genome complexity is related to genome size, which does not have much selection pressure. It's not a peer-reviewed paper.
... why the fuck should we be paying both of you to sit on your ass all day for yet ANOTHER generation?
Because that's an emotional argument, not a rational one?
Rather than do whatever "feels" right, we should put our emotions on hold and make decisions based on evidence and effectiveness.
So my question to you is - will the new rule be more effective in educating children than the current system?
Note that poor, uneducated children are more likely to grow up to be criminals. By choosing the "justice feels right" option, you may be inadvertently sending your children into a less safe future. Education is the best way we know to bring people out of poverty.
It is well known that proper diet has a beneficial effect on schooling, so *my* gut feeling is that the new law will do more harm than good. But I can put that aside and look at the evidence.
Do you have any evidence that the new law won't make matters worse?
My Social Studies teacher mentioned that there was so much black market trading in colonial America that we decided to base our currency on the Spanish dollar and "centavo" instead of the pound.
Official is what people use. If something isn't official and enough people use it, "official" changes to compensate; as in, for example, dictionaries.
There are a lot of groups and organizations that declare themselves the authorities in certain areas and set up rules and regulations largely by fiat, with no democratic representation whatsoever. The DEA and TSA come to immediately mind, but I know of at least a half-dozen others.
Of course, when the DEA makes a new rule or regulation, it goes into effect immediately and everyone changes to accommodate...
Whoosh...