For each issue you can come up there is a human created solution which does not rely on the fickle nature of potentially dangerous bacteria. Take your vitamin B example: supplementation is the solution, and one does not need to worry about dangerous bacteria. Just because many of the human created substitutes are not practical at this time does not mean they will not be practical in the future. A bit over sixty years before we reached the moon, powered flight wasn't practical either. Luckily, not everyone back then listened to people like you.
Chemicals are better: bad bacteria can be killed off by antibiotics, and good ones can be replaced by administration of appropriate enzymes etc. If you have trouble, say, killing off some of the bacteria, that just means your chemicals aren't good enough yet. With your world view, we have to be at the mercy of the bacteria and play by their rules. I do not accept that.
This article is a huge disappointment for me. We're giving up--this is what the article is advocating--at least from a pessimist's view (that is, mine). The basic argument I see presented is that--if we can't defeat them--let's work with them, even if they can be dangerous. The various examples given, say of C. difficile being mostly benign until it is stressed by changes in host physiology due to stress/surgery/etc. can be restated as follows "we ought to work by their rules because it is too difficult otherwise". If I were a troll I'd make an analogy with a Western government negotiating with the Taliban... The author and those whose opinion he builds are at best unprincipled pragmatists, and at worst cowards that betray the early great crusades of medicine such as Fleming's discovery of penicillin. I think that humanity ought to have as great a vision in medicine as in other endeavours such as space travel, and I offer my version of it: the eradication of all even potentially pathogenic bacteria living in the human host and continued guard against them by perpetual administration of new antibiotics and/or (possibly genetic) immunomodulation. We are nowhere near being able to pull of something like this and keep a person completely free of all bacterial life, but I see no theoretical barrier to achieving this in the future, especially with predicted advances in nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and so on. Bacteria can be very useful, but at the same time that is no reason to ignore that they also kill people and cause enormous amount of human suffering even in non-fatal attacks on their hosts. Is this really an acceptable compromise? Ask yourselves.
If you check the second link in the slashdot summary you'll see that this is a serious paper, and cannot be dismissed merely by the flippant comment of a random slashdotter. Although arxiv is a preprint repository, virtually all papers you find there have ended up published in peer-reviewed publications.
Anyway, an analogy can be made between any two things, and it's just a matter of degree how suitable an analogy is; it's not a black and white choice.
"vanity is not a rational reason to participate in something"
Every motivation of a human always ultimately reduces to something that cannot be rationally justified. Reason only can say whether a given way to get to some goal is rational, but the goal setting itself (major goals, not sub-goals) is always a 100% subjective thing.
The US has two orders of magnitude more nukes than china.
The only thing to be afraid is not taking action now and waiting until China achieves nuclear primacy.
This is why the US must act fast, before China achieves nuclear primacy. You know what I'm talking about. Finding a pretense for pre-emption shouldn't be that hard, considering the US experience with it. If the threat is not dealt with, China will become a world power, and the US will fade away--and with it, its defense of western culture and western values, something which, having lived in China before, I fear enormously.
Back up to a non-encrypted IPD file and put it into a TrueCrypt volume--or better yet, don't back up to an insecure machine! This story would have been much more newsworthy if they had broken the actual phone's encryption, AES and elliptic curve D-H.
The laws of physics are complex enough. Moreover, not just Godel but even Turing's limit applies to all physical thinking artifacts (including brains) because of the Bekenstein bound guaranteeing that information density is finite, i.e. makes things in essence discrete. You cannot have arbitrary precision real numbers etc. which might have allowed you to escape Turing. Uncountable infinities are a mathematical fantasy and have no real-world analogue.
Any physical process within the universe cannot be more powerful than a finite computational machine due to the Bekenstein bound. Humans cannot even be as powerful as Turing machines, only as powerful as linearly bounded automata, because you cannot grow your Turing "tape" (memory) infinitely as your light cone includes ever increasing spatial extent because accelerating expansion means you will still only have finite matter and energy to encode things in, even in infinite time.
How is it uncountable? By the Bekenstein bound, within any finite volume there is a finite number of distinguishable quantum states, related to the volume's surface area. Since these volumes are not infinitesimally small, there is only a countable infinity of them in an infinite space/time extent universe. So there is only a countably infinite number of distinguishable quantum states in the universe.
I am replying to your signature, because something this offensive cannot be left unaddressed. Libertarianism is ethically unsatisfactory exactly because it judges based on merit; but you cannot blame most people for lack of merit, as aptitude in most things is genetic, as evolutionary psychology has well established by now. In nature vs nurture, it's pretty much all nature. As Steven Pinker points out, the blank slate is a myth. Meritocracy makes sense as long as merit is ONLY used to evaluate suitability for positions in employment or government; but a libertarian utopia will inevitably result in social darwinism where those with less merit on dimensions such as the ability to make a living, lead a group, etc., will not be able to have a decent life, or even possibly survive. In the extreme, libertarianism will fall either into anarchy, or with power becoming concentrated in the hands of a cunning and ruthless few (not all that different from today, just more exacerbated). It holds no promise for bettering society as a whole as it inevitably leaves those less blessed with leadership/technical/skills talent to rot behind.
Think of it this way: it's just like with a computer--if physical security is breached, all bets are off regardless of what crypto you're using. Your whole hard drive can be encrypted with TrueCrypt, but there was an article posted here (months ago I think) where they can spray the RAM with a freeze spray as they cut power to the machine and then recover the plain text keys because there's still some charge. Protecting yourself from say retina scans by wearing glasses is a pain, so what we need for biometrics to be more reasonable is some biometric that is easy to conceal without effort. I'm thinking something along the lines of remote but near field EEG which can be affected by thinking along, without having to type in a password.
There are two separate issues, physical and electronic compromises. Compromising the database is a much bigger problem and more likely scenario than compromising the actual physical feature. The schemes mentioned above solve the electronic issue. Physical security of oneself is fairly reasonable, and if compromised then one should switch to a different biometric ID or a password. Of course, I always believe the option has to be there to use a password. But revocable biometric IDs can still be useful for most cases where there has not been reason to suspect a physical compromise--these would be rare occurrences.
Using a tablet for lenghts of time makes my hands get tired. It's the case with any touchscreen that's too large to be handheld. In my view, voice is the true way of the future, just needing a sufficient level of AI such that natural language can be used. That would allow for voice queries that are much more concise than having to tap or click on a million things to accomplish tasks that you can ask someone else to do with a single sentence.
I think we need a third term between ethical and unethical, in the same way that we have a third term between moral and immoral--amoral. It would more accurately apply to most companies, IMHO.
All that's really needed here is managing the hype until the system is deployment-ready. I know it's a difficult for a small team already overloaded with to-do lists to have to deal with PR as well, but this is critical to a project with a planned large social scope. They need to do all they can to keep this lying low until the resolution of all major issues that would sour the public's fickle and first-impression-is-everything opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
For each issue you can come up there is a human created solution which does not rely on the fickle nature of potentially dangerous bacteria. Take your vitamin B example: supplementation is the solution, and one does not need to worry about dangerous bacteria. Just because many of the human created substitutes are not practical at this time does not mean they will not be practical in the future. A bit over sixty years before we reached the moon, powered flight wasn't practical either. Luckily, not everyone back then listened to people like you.
Great post and a sorely needed injection of reality into the debate created by a sensationalist and often fantastical article.
Chemicals are better: bad bacteria can be killed off by antibiotics, and good ones can be replaced by administration of appropriate enzymes etc. If you have trouble, say, killing off some of the bacteria, that just means your chemicals aren't good enough yet. With your world view, we have to be at the mercy of the bacteria and play by their rules. I do not accept that.
Excuse the typo; "he builds are" ought to read "he builds upon are".
This article is a huge disappointment for me. We're giving up--this is what the article is advocating--at least from a pessimist's view (that is, mine). The basic argument I see presented is that--if we can't defeat them--let's work with them, even if they can be dangerous. The various examples given, say of C. difficile being mostly benign until it is stressed by changes in host physiology due to stress/surgery/etc. can be restated as follows "we ought to work by their rules because it is too difficult otherwise". If I were a troll I'd make an analogy with a Western government negotiating with the Taliban... The author and those whose opinion he builds are at best unprincipled pragmatists, and at worst cowards that betray the early great crusades of medicine such as Fleming's discovery of penicillin. I think that humanity ought to have as great a vision in medicine as in other endeavours such as space travel, and I offer my version of it: the eradication of all even potentially pathogenic bacteria living in the human host and continued guard against them by perpetual administration of new antibiotics and/or (possibly genetic) immunomodulation. We are nowhere near being able to pull of something like this and keep a person completely free of all bacterial life, but I see no theoretical barrier to achieving this in the future, especially with predicted advances in nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and so on. Bacteria can be very useful, but at the same time that is no reason to ignore that they also kill people and cause enormous amount of human suffering even in non-fatal attacks on their hosts. Is this really an acceptable compromise? Ask yourselves.
"I've plenty of crappy non-peer reviewed papers" I'm sure yours are.
If you check the second link in the slashdot summary you'll see that this is a serious paper, and cannot be dismissed merely by the flippant comment of a random slashdotter. Although arxiv is a preprint repository, virtually all papers you find there have ended up published in peer-reviewed publications. Anyway, an analogy can be made between any two things, and it's just a matter of degree how suitable an analogy is; it's not a black and white choice.
A study (see URL below) shows that the US could even get away with a first strike on Russia (good intelligence means only submarine nukes will not be hit in the initial counterforce strike and then submarine missiles will be few enough to be all shot down). Where does that leave poor China, with its handful of nukes? http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/737/end_of_mad_the_nuclear_dimension_of_us_primacy.html?breadcrumb=%2Fexperts%2F1088%2Fdaryl_press
Proof you're wrong by counterexample: Razorfish Inc.
"vanity is not a rational reason to participate in something"
Every motivation of a human always ultimately reduces to something that cannot be rationally justified. Reason only can say whether a given way to get to some goal is rational, but the goal setting itself (major goals, not sub-goals) is always a 100% subjective thing.
The US has two orders of magnitude more nukes than china. The only thing to be afraid is not taking action now and waiting until China achieves nuclear primacy.
This is why the US must act fast, before China achieves nuclear primacy. You know what I'm talking about. Finding a pretense for pre-emption shouldn't be that hard, considering the US experience with it. If the threat is not dealt with, China will become a world power, and the US will fade away--and with it, its defense of western culture and western values, something which, having lived in China before, I fear enormously.
for me was to see who was NOT suing anyone.
Back up to a non-encrypted IPD file and put it into a TrueCrypt volume--or better yet, don't back up to an insecure machine! This story would have been much more newsworthy if they had broken the actual phone's encryption, AES and elliptic curve D-H.
The laws of physics are complex enough. Moreover, not just Godel but even Turing's limit applies to all physical thinking artifacts (including brains) because of the Bekenstein bound guaranteeing that information density is finite, i.e. makes things in essence discrete. You cannot have arbitrary precision real numbers etc. which might have allowed you to escape Turing. Uncountable infinities are a mathematical fantasy and have no real-world analogue.
Any physical process within the universe cannot be more powerful than a finite computational machine due to the Bekenstein bound. Humans cannot even be as powerful as Turing machines, only as powerful as linearly bounded automata, because you cannot grow your Turing "tape" (memory) infinitely as your light cone includes ever increasing spatial extent because accelerating expansion means you will still only have finite matter and energy to encode things in, even in infinite time.
How is it uncountable? By the Bekenstein bound, within any finite volume there is a finite number of distinguishable quantum states, related to the volume's surface area. Since these volumes are not infinitesimally small, there is only a countable infinity of them in an infinite space/time extent universe. So there is only a countably infinite number of distinguishable quantum states in the universe.
I am replying to your signature, because something this offensive cannot be left unaddressed. Libertarianism is ethically unsatisfactory exactly because it judges based on merit; but you cannot blame most people for lack of merit, as aptitude in most things is genetic, as evolutionary psychology has well established by now. In nature vs nurture, it's pretty much all nature. As Steven Pinker points out, the blank slate is a myth. Meritocracy makes sense as long as merit is ONLY used to evaluate suitability for positions in employment or government; but a libertarian utopia will inevitably result in social darwinism where those with less merit on dimensions such as the ability to make a living, lead a group, etc., will not be able to have a decent life, or even possibly survive. In the extreme, libertarianism will fall either into anarchy, or with power becoming concentrated in the hands of a cunning and ruthless few (not all that different from today, just more exacerbated). It holds no promise for bettering society as a whole as it inevitably leaves those less blessed with leadership/technical/skills talent to rot behind.
It's actually called 'crema': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crema_%28coffee%29#crema
And looks like someone already thought of that http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10963-brain-activity-provides-novel-biometric-key.html as is usually the case for most things.
Think of it this way: it's just like with a computer--if physical security is breached, all bets are off regardless of what crypto you're using. Your whole hard drive can be encrypted with TrueCrypt, but there was an article posted here (months ago I think) where they can spray the RAM with a freeze spray as they cut power to the machine and then recover the plain text keys because there's still some charge. Protecting yourself from say retina scans by wearing glasses is a pain, so what we need for biometrics to be more reasonable is some biometric that is easy to conceal without effort. I'm thinking something along the lines of remote but near field EEG which can be affected by thinking along, without having to type in a password.
There are two separate issues, physical and electronic compromises. Compromising the database is a much bigger problem and more likely scenario than compromising the actual physical feature. The schemes mentioned above solve the electronic issue. Physical security of oneself is fairly reasonable, and if compromised then one should switch to a different biometric ID or a password. Of course, I always believe the option has to be there to use a password. But revocable biometric IDs can still be useful for most cases where there has not been reason to suspect a physical compromise--these would be rare occurrences.
Using a tablet for lenghts of time makes my hands get tired. It's the case with any touchscreen that's too large to be handheld. In my view, voice is the true way of the future, just needing a sufficient level of AI such that natural language can be used. That would allow for voice queries that are much more concise than having to tap or click on a million things to accomplish tasks that you can ask someone else to do with a single sentence.
I think we need a third term between ethical and unethical, in the same way that we have a third term between moral and immoral--amoral. It would more accurately apply to most companies, IMHO.
All that's really needed here is managing the hype until the system is deployment-ready. I know it's a difficult for a small team already overloaded with to-do lists to have to deal with PR as well, but this is critical to a project with a planned large social scope. They need to do all they can to keep this lying low until the resolution of all major issues that would sour the public's fickle and first-impression-is-everything opinion.