I don't suppose you'd care to elaborate on what your brilliantly simple Theory of Everything involves, would you? (Presumably not, since it's much easier to just imply you have one and act smug, rather than proposing a theory and running the risk of actual criticism)
I've already made more than the machine/electricity costs
In actual widely-accepted money, or bitcoins? Because if you haven't traded the latter in for the former, you haven't actually "made" anything. If the bitcoin market crashed completely, you'd be left with a bunch of worthless pseudo-random numbers.
That's a stupid statement on all sorts of levels. "We haven't had two airliners collide in mid-air in a long time, we should just get rid of air traffic control!"
It's because it is a concern and they take steps to mitigate it. There's a reason the Shuttles have so many layers of redundancy, and it's not just for internal equipment failures.
The articles pretty much all say that the sun has only a minor effect on global average temperature, one that can be superceded by other factors, not that it has none at all. Which is reasonable, given that the sun's average output doesn't change much year-to-year.
And I'm not sure you even read the last article beyond the headline (which is admittedly kind of stupidly sensationalistic, but that's probably the blog author and not CNN, the original source). They were talking about the spot at the geographic North Pole happening to be water, not the entire Arctic, and it was only presented as a possibility, not definite.
I don't have much of a dog in this fight, not having looked into the whole issue much, but you're pretty much just convincing me that the scientists are right and you don't know what you're talking about.
I think that's the first time in like a decade I've seen someone say that honestly without hedging in an online conversation. You deserve some sort of Internets medal, sir!
Logically, if all the voters who normally vote for taxes, just volunteered, then they would raise a bunch of money, right? Unless the people who vote for more taxes tend not to be the ones who expect to pay for them...
People keep saying things like this and thinking they're clever... It's a pretty stupid argument. Tragedy of the commons, perception of fairness, and all that. There's a difference between being willing to pay more taxes if everyone else at a similar income level is going to do the same, and volunteering to do it by oneself.
I don't have any ideological opposition to a government/welfare system run entirely by voluntary contributions, it just doesn't seem remotely practical at present. This makes me a dirty statist sheep by Libertariandot standards, no doubt.
Also as a minor note, you can already give money directly to help pay down the debt (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm), and I believe the IRS accepts intentional overpayments as well. The former program usually gets a couple million per year at best, thus demonstrating both our points to some extent.
Ah, the "you can't talk about this issue without first talking about this other, unrelated random issue" fallacy. I thought you yourself said we were done here? I never claimed this was the most important question facing humanity at present; it's a speculative issue that will likely become relevant in the future. And I doubt most outside observers would pick me as the douchy (-est) one in this thread. But if you still want to respond I'll let you have the last word, since you're just kind of flailing about at this point anyway.
That's kind of a stupid comment; you act as if there are no risk scales involved. I'd much rather have a chest x-ray without protection than be locked in a room full of coal dust for a week.
We're presumably talking about long-term cancer risk here, not acute radiation poisoning.
It would likely need some form of input to develop, true. An output would be useful as well, although even passive monitoring should be able to detect activity consistent with consciousness, or at least response to stimulus, pain, etc. Artificial chemical systems and the like would presumable be part of any functioning complex artificial brain. The idea that it deserves no ethical consideration until it can participate economically is odd; I certainly wouldn't want to be a paraplegic in your family. And as for "elections", if the definition of personhood was expanded to cover artificially grown brains as well, that would presumably come as well (although there might be issues with potential vote-fixing, so perhaps not). That's rather more advanced than necessary for the discussion, though. Animal vivisection at present is heavily regulated and usually requires anesthesia, I would imagine similar guidelines should apply to anything on the order of complexity of a vertebrate brain. There are a lot of potential tricky issues involved with such technologies unless we want to be responsible for bringing a large amount of unnecessary suffering into the world, and it's not as simple as "they can't pay taxes, so experiment away!" I know you don't care, but luckily not everyone shares your mindless sociopathy to non-humans. And the idea that a human brain which is conscious and can communicate deserves no consideration even if it were in an artificial body with all the functions of a real one seems ludicrous given that such technologies are steadily moving forward for people whose bodies are damaged due to birth or accident. Don't give me some "artificial origin" nonsense, there's nothing magical about a natural human brain, it's made of matter and as such should be replicable by different means.
It's not "over", you're just kind of stubborn and narrowminded (and possibly a closet Cartesian Dualist, which if so you should have admitted right off so I could have safely ignored you). But I'll leave you to it, since you're rather unpleasant to communicate with as well.
I hope for your sake that if sentient AI of any sort is possible, you're dead before it comes about, otherwise you'll probably give yourself an aneurism being a cranky old biological supremacist coot.
I didn't say this particular example, I'm talking about a hypothetical more advanced version, you thick-skulled idiot. Humans are similarly pieces of meat grown in a womb. And if it had to same number of neurons as a human brain, and the ability to communicate, would you say the same thing?
Challenged on what grounds? We already have laws against animal cruelty. Laws regarding artificially created brains would presumably be handled the same way, at the state level, or else a constitutional amendment could be passed to expand the definition of personhood, if that's the only way to do it federally (I'm honestly not sure, it's not something I've looked into).
Why no modification of the law? According to you, it would be a matter of criminal code, not "rights". Or does it only matter once the clonebrains/whatever are rich enough to count as people to you?
Let's replace the word "rights" (which clearly sends you into a frothing and extremely-emotional-despite-your-protestations-to-the-contrary rage) with "ethics". Is it now a debate worth having? Or are you simply a complete sociopath indifferent to the potential suffering of sentient beings?
Slavery is presumably fine by you, I take it, because to say otherwise would be a violation of your right to own slaves. On behalf of your future hypothetical clone-slaves that you would no doubt regard it as immoral to prevent you from abusing, allow me to say, no, fuck *you*.
Also, acting contemptuous because everyone (icluding Merriam-Webster) doesn't share your narrow definition of the word "rights" seems somewhat insane.
No matter, I get the feeling you're going to start ranting about gold fringing on the flag meaning you don't have to pay taxes any minute now.
Are you sneaking a $1 deduction in there somewhere?
Just to answer the pedantry, I'm assuming the cutoff point is $30,000, not $29,999, so the other extra dollar in the example would still be at the lower rate.
It's the same reason why we don't replace the income brackets [20k-30k$/year], [30k-50k$/year], etc by an exponential formula. It would be more correct mathematically, more just when you go from 29999$ to 30001$ but people are too dumb to understand it.
Going from 29999$ to $30001 means you would only be taxed the higher rate on $1 of income, not the whole amount. If it wasn't your intent to imply otherwise I apologize, but I see people making that mistake all the time for some reason.
I fail to see why (or how) Bitcoin is any more reprehensible than any other kind of barter system. Our current taxation systems are primarily geared towards funding government wastage (at best) or blatant pork-barrelling (at worst).
You're right, governments don't provide any useful functions, at all.
The world is ready for anarchy.
Yes, because Somalia is such a libertarian utopia.
The only reason to deny them access is if you were lying about it.
Emphasis "only". That seems pretty definitive to me. And they didn't ban anyone from seeing the body exactly, just disposed of it once it was verified and had no more value except as a propaganda tool of dubious and likely backfiring usefulness (according to them- I personally believe it was taken to a secret base for the purposes of Project Zombie Jihad).
I actually do hope they release the pictures at some point, but more out of a selfish desire to make the internet commentosphere slightly less irritatingly paranoid by a few percentage points than any real historical utility.
Would it have hurt to have MI-6 or others access to the body for confirmation? The only reason to deny them access is if you were lying about it.
Why is it that paranoid conspiracy theorists ("conspiracies" obviously exist, they're just not likely as widespread and all-encompasing as the above group likes to think) always have to make such definitive statements they have little evidence for? Is it some kind of overconfidence-in-one's-own-wild-suppositions variety of Tourettes? Is it impossible for you to admit that you don't, in fact, know everything? Perhaps they were on a ship in foreign waters, had documented the body all they needed to, and wanted to get the thing over with, minimizing the perceived slight to the Muslim world by disposing of the body soon after death. Perhaps they didn't want the whole thing to turn into a circus, or a focus for attacks. Maybe US Navy/CIA black ops divisions aren't in the habit of having every operation they perform double-checked by the freaking British Secret Intelligence Service for some random reason.
Or maybe Bin Laden was already dead and there was no operation, or it killed someone else, or he never existed in the first place, or was actually a CIA plant, or any number of a dozen theories of varying degress of likelyness I've heard over the past week. There's no such thing as absolute certain Truth (reality could all be a computer simulation, or you could be the only real mind in existence and everyone else is hallucinations, etc), only different weights given to proposed possibilites based on sensory input and past experiences.
For myself, I think Bin Laden was probably just killed in Pakistan, that there was a capture-or-kill order with the understanding that no one was going to cry about it if the latter happened, and that the photos haven't been released because of their potential propaganda value and they might give evidence that his shooting wasn't defensive in nature. The reasons I've seen for people thinking he died around 2001 have been rather weak and circumstantial, although admittedly both the US government and Al Quaeda would have had reasons to keep up such a pretense (Al Quaeda for morale, the USG for the usual military/industrial/security apparatus reasons, although I have a hard time believing the former could pass up the chance to embarass the latter as fighting a phantom all this time [Paranoid Conspiracist]UNLESS THEY WERE IN CAHOOTS![/PC]).
Also, the intial inaccurate picture of events seems consistent with a top secret mission on the other side of the globe being reported through various games of Telephone and levels of ass-covering.
You are assuming that things like company towns and stores and oppressive corporate control in general is something that would happen by default without government regulation.
Why wouldn't they be? Unregulated monopolies are a great business model! (They just generally suck for everyone but the owners of the company) And why would it matter if "the public actually starts to care about specific abuses" if the government has no regulatory power to do anything about them?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't suppose you'd care to elaborate on what your brilliantly simple Theory of Everything involves, would you? (Presumably not, since it's much easier to just imply you have one and act smug, rather than proposing a theory and running the risk of actual criticism)
You do realize there are billions of people who couldn't afford pretty much any product you care to name?
Consistent spelling and grammar are an aid to quick, effortless reading and comprehension, you illiterate jackanape.
I've already made more than the machine/electricity costs
In actual widely-accepted money, or bitcoins? Because if you haven't traded the latter in for the former, you haven't actually "made" anything. If the bitcoin market crashed completely, you'd be left with a bunch of worthless pseudo-random numbers.
What study was that? Because it goes against the actual research I've seen on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
That's a stupid statement on all sorts of levels. "We haven't had two airliners collide in mid-air in a long time, we should just get rid of air traffic control!"
It's because it is a concern and they take steps to mitigate it. There's a reason the Shuttles have so many layers of redundancy, and it's not just for internal equipment failures.
The articles pretty much all say that the sun has only a minor effect on global average temperature, one that can be superceded by other factors, not that it has none at all. Which is reasonable, given that the sun's average output doesn't change much year-to-year.
And I'm not sure you even read the last article beyond the headline (which is admittedly kind of stupidly sensationalistic, but that's probably the blog author and not CNN, the original source). They were talking about the spot at the geographic North Pole happening to be water, not the entire Arctic, and it was only presented as a possibility, not definite.
I don't have much of a dog in this fight, not having looked into the whole issue much, but you're pretty much just convincing me that the scientists are right and you don't know what you're talking about.
I stand corrected. Thank you.
I think that's the first time in like a decade I've seen someone say that honestly without hedging in an online conversation. You deserve some sort of Internets medal, sir!
No, the GW adherents have already stated that the sun has absolutely no effect on global temperature. None at all.
Citation needed. Seriously.
Logically, if all the voters who normally vote for taxes, just volunteered, then they would raise a bunch of money, right? Unless the people who vote for more taxes tend not to be the ones who expect to pay for them...
People keep saying things like this and thinking they're clever... It's a pretty stupid argument. Tragedy of the commons, perception of fairness, and all that. There's a difference between being willing to pay more taxes if everyone else at a similar income level is going to do the same, and volunteering to do it by oneself.
I don't have any ideological opposition to a government/welfare system run entirely by voluntary contributions, it just doesn't seem remotely practical at present. This makes me a dirty statist sheep by Libertariandot standards, no doubt.
Also as a minor note, you can already give money directly to help pay down the debt (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm), and I believe the IRS accepts intentional overpayments as well. The former program usually gets a couple million per year at best, thus demonstrating both our points to some extent.
Ah, the "you can't talk about this issue without first talking about this other, unrelated random issue" fallacy. I thought you yourself said we were done here? I never claimed this was the most important question facing humanity at present; it's a speculative issue that will likely become relevant in the future. And I doubt most outside observers would pick me as the douchy (-est) one in this thread. But if you still want to respond I'll let you have the last word, since you're just kind of flailing about at this point anyway.
That's kind of a stupid comment; you act as if there are no risk scales involved. I'd much rather have a chest x-ray without protection than be locked in a room full of coal dust for a week.
We're presumably talking about long-term cancer risk here, not acute radiation poisoning.
It would likely need some form of input to develop, true. An output would be useful as well, although even passive monitoring should be able to detect activity consistent with consciousness, or at least response to stimulus, pain, etc. Artificial chemical systems and the like would presumable be part of any functioning complex artificial brain. The idea that it deserves no ethical consideration until it can participate economically is odd; I certainly wouldn't want to be a paraplegic in your family. And as for "elections", if the definition of personhood was expanded to cover artificially grown brains as well, that would presumably come as well (although there might be issues with potential vote-fixing, so perhaps not). That's rather more advanced than necessary for the discussion, though. Animal vivisection at present is heavily regulated and usually requires anesthesia, I would imagine similar guidelines should apply to anything on the order of complexity of a vertebrate brain. There are a lot of potential tricky issues involved with such technologies unless we want to be responsible for bringing a large amount of unnecessary suffering into the world, and it's not as simple as "they can't pay taxes, so experiment away!" I know you don't care, but luckily not everyone shares your mindless sociopathy to non-humans. And the idea that a human brain which is conscious and can communicate deserves no consideration even if it were in an artificial body with all the functions of a real one seems ludicrous given that such technologies are steadily moving forward for people whose bodies are damaged due to birth or accident. Don't give me some "artificial origin" nonsense, there's nothing magical about a natural human brain, it's made of matter and as such should be replicable by different means.
It's not "over", you're just kind of stubborn and narrowminded (and possibly a closet Cartesian Dualist, which if so you should have admitted right off so I could have safely ignored you). But I'll leave you to it, since you're rather unpleasant to communicate with as well.
I hope for your sake that if sentient AI of any sort is possible, you're dead before it comes about, otherwise you'll probably give yourself an aneurism being a cranky old biological supremacist coot.
I didn't say this particular example, I'm talking about a hypothetical more advanced version, you thick-skulled idiot. Humans are similarly pieces of meat grown in a womb. And if it had to same number of neurons as a human brain, and the ability to communicate, would you say the same thing?
Challenged on what grounds? We already have laws against animal cruelty. Laws regarding artificially created brains would presumably be handled the same way, at the state level, or else a constitutional amendment could be passed to expand the definition of personhood, if that's the only way to do it federally (I'm honestly not sure, it's not something I've looked into).
Why no modification of the law? According to you, it would be a matter of criminal code, not "rights". Or does it only matter once the clonebrains/whatever are rich enough to count as people to you?
Let's replace the word "rights" (which clearly sends you into a frothing and extremely-emotional-despite-your-protestations-to-the-contrary rage) with "ethics". Is it now a debate worth having? Or are you simply a complete sociopath indifferent to the potential suffering of sentient beings?
Slavery is presumably fine by you, I take it, because to say otherwise would be a violation of your right to own slaves. On behalf of your future hypothetical clone-slaves that you would no doubt regard it as immoral to prevent you from abusing, allow me to say, no, fuck *you*.
Also, acting contemptuous because everyone (icluding Merriam-Webster) doesn't share your narrow definition of the word "rights" seems somewhat insane.
No matter, I get the feeling you're going to start ranting about gold fringing on the flag meaning you don't have to pay taxes any minute now.
Are you sneaking a $1 deduction in there somewhere?
Just to answer the pedantry, I'm assuming the cutoff point is $30,000, not $29,999, so the other extra dollar in the example would still be at the lower rate.
It's the same reason why we don't replace the income brackets [20k-30k$/year], [30k-50k$/year], etc by an exponential formula. It would be more correct mathematically, more just when you go from 29999$ to 30001$ but people are too dumb to understand it.
Going from 29999$ to $30001 means you would only be taxed the higher rate on $1 of income, not the whole amount. If it wasn't your intent to imply otherwise I apologize, but I see people making that mistake all the time for some reason.
I fail to see why (or how) Bitcoin is any more reprehensible than any other kind of barter system. Our current taxation systems are primarily geared towards funding government wastage (at best) or blatant pork-barrelling (at worst).
You're right, governments don't provide any useful functions, at all.
The world is ready for anarchy.
Yes, because Somalia is such a libertarian utopia.
(I'm using sarcasm! On the Internet!)
I assume he meant in the sense of being the "new hot technology that's just over the horizon" for the next couple decades.
I'm not saying there is a conspiracy
Your words:
The only reason to deny them access is if you were lying about it.
Emphasis "only". That seems pretty definitive to me. And they didn't ban anyone from seeing the body exactly, just disposed of it once it was verified and had no more value except as a propaganda tool of dubious and likely backfiring usefulness (according to them- I personally believe it was taken to a secret base for the purposes of Project Zombie Jihad).
I actually do hope they release the pictures at some point, but more out of a selfish desire to make the internet commentosphere slightly less irritatingly paranoid by a few percentage points than any real historical utility.
Would it have hurt to have MI-6 or others access to the body for confirmation? The only reason to deny them access is if you were lying about it.
Why is it that paranoid conspiracy theorists ("conspiracies" obviously exist, they're just not likely as widespread and all-encompasing as the above group likes to think) always have to make such definitive statements they have little evidence for? Is it some kind of overconfidence-in-one's-own-wild-suppositions variety of Tourettes? Is it impossible for you to admit that you don't, in fact, know everything? Perhaps they were on a ship in foreign waters, had documented the body all they needed to, and wanted to get the thing over with, minimizing the perceived slight to the Muslim world by disposing of the body soon after death. Perhaps they didn't want the whole thing to turn into a circus, or a focus for attacks. Maybe US Navy/CIA black ops divisions aren't in the habit of having every operation they perform double-checked by the freaking British Secret Intelligence Service for some random reason.
Or maybe Bin Laden was already dead and there was no operation, or it killed someone else, or he never existed in the first place, or was actually a CIA plant, or any number of a dozen theories of varying degress of likelyness I've heard over the past week. There's no such thing as absolute certain Truth (reality could all be a computer simulation, or you could be the only real mind in existence and everyone else is hallucinations, etc), only different weights given to proposed possibilites based on sensory input and past experiences.
For myself, I think Bin Laden was probably just killed in Pakistan, that there was a capture-or-kill order with the understanding that no one was going to cry about it if the latter happened, and that the photos haven't been released because of their potential propaganda value and they might give evidence that his shooting wasn't defensive in nature. The reasons I've seen for people thinking he died around 2001 have been rather weak and circumstantial, although admittedly both the US government and Al Quaeda would have had reasons to keep up such a pretense (Al Quaeda for morale, the USG for the usual military/industrial/security apparatus reasons, although I have a hard time believing the former could pass up the chance to embarass the latter as fighting a phantom all this time [Paranoid Conspiracist]UNLESS THEY WERE IN CAHOOTS![/PC]).
Also, the intial inaccurate picture of events seems consistent with a top secret mission on the other side of the globe being reported through various games of Telephone and levels of ass-covering.
You are assuming that things like company towns and stores and oppressive corporate control in general is something that would happen by default without government regulation.
Why wouldn't they be? Unregulated monopolies are a great business model! (They just generally suck for everyone but the owners of the company) And why would it matter if "the public actually starts to care about specific abuses" if the government has no regulatory power to do anything about them?