If a business is dependent upon their employees working for free after 40 hours, then their business model is flawed and it is better for everyone if they go under.
Or more accurately, poor labor laws like this encourage companies to tap other supplies of labor, such as China or automation. Welcome to the reality of unintended consequences.
Excuse me, but could you lose your shit on somebody else's internet? I'll just note that this goes beyond making plastic pieces smaller, since the bacteria are actually digesting it and breaking it down into smaller, simpler, more digestible molecules.
Baldrson, do you still have that decade-old cellular automata code you did studying this sort of behavior? As I dimly recall, two cells would be randomly chosen near one another (with "nearness" an adjustable parameter). They would first communicate (cooperate or defect) and then enable in a Prisoners' Dilemma exchange. There was also some sort of memory, but I don't recall how that worked. I believe there was also a steady, adjustable "rain" of the resource ("food"?) used in the exchange.
As I further recall, it showed the power of migration in enabling defection behavior. A number of different strategies were explored such as the defector (who always communicates cooperation and always defects), the tit for tat, the always cooperating agent, and so on.
The results I saw indicated that the ability to migrate was a strong benefit to the more parasitic strategies. The problem was that successful defectors, for example, would eventually cull the local always cooperating population and fill the area with defectors and tit for tats. Meanwhile a region with a lot of tit for tats would eventually build up a population of always cooperators too. With migration, it enabled defectors to move to new, more exploitable populations in the simulation. The most extreme case where CAs could interact anywhere with other CAs led to a global suppression of any population which was susceptible to the defector strategy.
Similarly, the "rain" of "food" was important to the success of defectors. Lots of food was good to defectors, while very thin food supplies led to earlier death of susceptible populations and the resulting inability of defector populations to grow even in the absence of tit for tat CAs.
A car goes on your schedule, not the other way around. Which is why driverless cars will win.
You say:
Really the big problem with buses (driverless or no) is that it's hard for local movers and shakers to get rich off of them.
pepty wins. How can you ignore clear public preference for cars and claim it's all about construction contracts? As it turns out, it's pretty easy to get rich off of public transportation too (light rail and other massive infrastructure projects) which I might add has a higher get rich density than highways (say as cost per unit length), but that doesn't make these modes of transportation popular or usable.
And do you have a reason you disagree with me? I thought you were going to actually quote relevant history before I saw the link to the Crusades. The Church did have a list of censored books that lasted till 1966.
But no, you link to the crusades which were never relevant to book censorship and which ended in the 15th Century over 600 years ago. That's a pretty lame response.
Why not? It's been our philosophy for centuries not to worry about the future and just expect that future generations will have more wits and basic decency than us.
That's an odd bit of sarcasm given that the grandparent post is actually worrying about the future in a constructive way. Fuel rod recycling is a rather odd thing to overlook.
Horse-drawn wagons and chariots are tools, not people.
Human bodies are tools as well.
If augments are invented in the free market capitalist way humanity has been doing since, like, forever, it's going to be costly at first. This means even if the writing is on the wall that it's in everybody's interest to get augmented, the shift will be gradual, which goes back to my point that people will still recognize each other as "human".
So what? So let's say it takes a century to get those costs down to the point where such augmentations are affordable for the average person. You still have 900 years left.
What is the practical and economical reason that humans abandon their old forms for a new non-human form? This implicitly assumes that this is a more economical solution than developing a tool to take on those non-human characteristics.
Because the new forms are better, practically and economically. The killer app here is health. If you have a body and mind that can last thousands of years, then that's a huge advantage over the current human body. And while the human body and mind aren't bad as tools, we probably can do a lot better than that in terms of pushing physical and mental limits, or in interfacing with our other tools.
Certainly the collapse of both the Weimar Republic and the French 4th Republic are usually blamed on their use of PR; I remain to be convinced its the optimal solution.
It's interesting how people retcon history.
The Wiemar Republic was imposed by force by parties who wanted to keep Germany weak following Germany's defeat in the First World War. So sure, the selection of a proportional representation system is a bit damning.
But various parties (particularly, the German military and allied industrialists and nobility) were working towards the destruction of the Weimar Republic since its creation (long before Hitler became a factor). A more unified government would have just made the transition even faster.
As to the Fourth French Republic, they lost Dien Bien Phu (and as a result French Indochina) and were set to repeat that performance in Algeria. That gets blamed on the disunity from proportional representation, but I just don't see France keeping these territories no matter what government it has. They were still rebuilding after the destruction of the Second World War. First-Past-The-Post doesn't magically build up a powerful military in a few short years.
But not so radical that we won't be "recognizably" human.
[...]
Consider Google glass, and people with artificial limbs, hearing aids, etc. Stephen Hawking communicates trough a machine. Technically, we are already radically altering ourselves. Do we call those users not recognizably human? No, we call them glassholes;p
Artificial limbs have been around for a long time, but the first using signals from nerves date from the mid 90s according to Wikipedia. Glancing at Wikipedia, Hawking's speech synthesizer was in use since around 1985. Google Glass entered the market this year. Technically, we are already radically altering ourselves over the past few decades.
Biologically, they may deserve a new scientific name (no longer homo sapiens), but they would still be considered human, and refer to themselves as humans in everyday conversations, while the rest of us may be the ones who get a new label in the variation of "old" humans.
Unless it doesn't happen that way, of course.
Actually, it was labor being too expensive that created the incentive for machines and automation and AI to be created in the first place. To compete with machines, labor doesn't need to augment themselves. They just need to lower their price.
Horse-drawn wagons and chariots created the need for roads, but they aren't on the roads now.
This is one of the great misconceptions many first worlders have. People only think about the cost, as opposed to getting value for their buck. For example, what good is going to a more expensive school when it lands you the same job as somebody with a degree from a less known but cheaper school, or no degree at all?
OTOH, if it's not that way, then your argument wouldn't hold.
To compete with machines, labor doesn't need to augment themselves. They just need to lower their price.
Many if not most people choose to work more than 40 hours of work a week. They could choose to work less and earn less. Just because someone could choose to be unaugmented, doesn't mean they will choose to do so due to the compromises involved.
So far the US bombed every remotely important country wanting to sell oil for Euros back into the stone age. Last time Ahmedingbats pondered aloud that he plans to have the Iran do so caused him to be pushed into the Axle of Evil.
Correlation doesn't imply causation. And it's worth noting that Iran hasn't experienced any serious consequences from the US for its alleged Euro-based oil trading since it doesn't sell its oil to the US.
Yes. My point though is that humanity is about to come up with all sorts of ways to radically change itself as well as incentive for doing so (namely, labor competition with sophisticated automation and strong AI).
They don't realize that the worst is yet to come once it really breaks out of the 3 African countries where is is pretty much out of control.
The thing is, it is under control in Guinea with new cases declining. Liberia and Sierra Leone seems to be the true make or break cases, but with some success in the past few weeks. It's still exponential growth, but doubling time has lengthened considerably. Even if they fail to contain Ebola in the end, this buys us some time.
The political-military industrial complex has forced the oil producing countries to only accept U.S. dollars for their oil. Every other country that needs oil must sell products to the U.S. for U.S. dollars in order to buy oil.
No, they can buy oil in other currencies like Euros. The problem is that there aren't many reliable currencies out there. Despite the inflation of currencies like the dollar or Euro, those still are the best choice for long term contracts.
So we've had the current high tech civilization for 200,000 years? There might be a reason why I think things are different now than they've been for the past 200,000 years.
Lower transportation costs, well frankly if those go up, I see a likely benifit regarding more local jobs.
Unless, of course, you live in the developing world. It is rare to find some societal or global policy no matter how bad that doesn't further someone's interest.
Slashdot Mirror
Except nobody is working for nothing. This seems to be forgotten rather often.
If a business is dependent upon their employees working for free after 40 hours, then their business model is flawed and it is better for everyone if they go under.
Or more accurately, poor labor laws like this encourage companies to tap other supplies of labor, such as China or automation. Welcome to the reality of unintended consequences.
Yes, they do have this choice. Just get a different job that has fewer hours and pays less.
And the fact that they go along with this indicates that while employees maybe don't WANT to work overtime, they do want money.
Forcing the entire US to support your broken life style model is no different than forcing the US to support your broken business model.
We don't have enough fake grammar nazi-ing on the Intarweb. Please more.
Excuse me, but could you lose your shit on somebody else's internet? I'll just note that this goes beyond making plastic pieces smaller, since the bacteria are actually digesting it and breaking it down into smaller, simpler, more digestible molecules.
And more importantly, cattle traps.
Eh, that's even less likely to stop deer than the fences. Even people can jump those.
If deer crossings turn out to be a problem then they can have slower night time speed limits.
Baldrson, do you still have that decade-old cellular automata code you did studying this sort of behavior? As I dimly recall, two cells would be randomly chosen near one another (with "nearness" an adjustable parameter). They would first communicate (cooperate or defect) and then enable in a Prisoners' Dilemma exchange. There was also some sort of memory, but I don't recall how that worked. I believe there was also a steady, adjustable "rain" of the resource ("food"?) used in the exchange. As I further recall, it showed the power of migration in enabling defection behavior. A number of different strategies were explored such as the defector (who always communicates cooperation and always defects), the tit for tat, the always cooperating agent, and so on.
The results I saw indicated that the ability to migrate was a strong benefit to the more parasitic strategies. The problem was that successful defectors, for example, would eventually cull the local always cooperating population and fill the area with defectors and tit for tats. Meanwhile a region with a lot of tit for tats would eventually build up a population of always cooperators too. With migration, it enabled defectors to move to new, more exploitable populations in the simulation. The most extreme case where CAs could interact anywhere with other CAs led to a global suppression of any population which was susceptible to the defector strategy.
Similarly, the "rain" of "food" was important to the success of defectors. Lots of food was good to defectors, while very thin food supplies led to earlier death of susceptible populations and the resulting inability of defector populations to grow even in the absence of tit for tat CAs.
A car goes on your schedule, not the other way around. Which is why driverless cars will win.
You say:
Really the big problem with buses (driverless or no) is that it's hard for local movers and shakers to get rich off of them.
pepty wins. How can you ignore clear public preference for cars and claim it's all about construction contracts? As it turns out, it's pretty easy to get rich off of public transportation too (light rail and other massive infrastructure projects) which I might add has a higher get rich density than highways (say as cost per unit length), but that doesn't make these modes of transportation popular or usable.
And do you have a reason you disagree with me? I thought you were going to actually quote relevant history before I saw the link to the Crusades. The Church did have a list of censored books that lasted till 1966.
But no, you link to the crusades which were never relevant to book censorship and which ended in the 15th Century over 600 years ago. That's a pretty lame response.
Either way, that was then, this is now.
The funny thing is that I bet the actual religious authority of the Roman Catholic Church wouldn't agree with this sort of censorship.
Why not? It's been our philosophy for centuries not to worry about the future and just expect that future generations will have more wits and basic decency than us.
That's an odd bit of sarcasm given that the grandparent post is actually worrying about the future in a constructive way. Fuel rod recycling is a rather odd thing to overlook.
That's why I said "may".
You don't say "may" till third paragraph.
Horse-drawn wagons and chariots are tools, not people.
Human bodies are tools as well.
If augments are invented in the free market capitalist way humanity has been doing since, like, forever, it's going to be costly at first. This means even if the writing is on the wall that it's in everybody's interest to get augmented, the shift will be gradual, which goes back to my point that people will still recognize each other as "human".
So what? So let's say it takes a century to get those costs down to the point where such augmentations are affordable for the average person. You still have 900 years left.
What is the practical and economical reason that humans abandon their old forms for a new non-human form? This implicitly assumes that this is a more economical solution than developing a tool to take on those non-human characteristics.
Because the new forms are better, practically and economically. The killer app here is health. If you have a body and mind that can last thousands of years, then that's a huge advantage over the current human body. And while the human body and mind aren't bad as tools, we probably can do a lot better than that in terms of pushing physical and mental limits, or in interfacing with our other tools.
Certainly the collapse of both the Weimar Republic and the French 4th Republic are usually blamed on their use of PR; I remain to be convinced its the optimal solution.
It's interesting how people retcon history.
The Wiemar Republic was imposed by force by parties who wanted to keep Germany weak following Germany's defeat in the First World War. So sure, the selection of a proportional representation system is a bit damning.
But various parties (particularly, the German military and allied industrialists and nobility) were working towards the destruction of the Weimar Republic since its creation (long before Hitler became a factor). A more unified government would have just made the transition even faster.
As to the Fourth French Republic, they lost Dien Bien Phu (and as a result French Indochina) and were set to repeat that performance in Algeria. That gets blamed on the disunity from proportional representation, but I just don't see France keeping these territories no matter what government it has. They were still rebuilding after the destruction of the Second World War. First-Past-The-Post doesn't magically build up a powerful military in a few short years.
Because only renewable rubbishers would disparage poor writing.
But not so radical that we won't be "recognizably" human.
[...]
Consider Google glass, and people with artificial limbs, hearing aids, etc. Stephen Hawking communicates trough a machine. Technically, we are already radically altering ourselves. Do we call those users not recognizably human? No, we call them glassholes ;p
Artificial limbs have been around for a long time, but the first using signals from nerves date from the mid 90s according to Wikipedia. Glancing at Wikipedia, Hawking's speech synthesizer was in use since around 1985. Google Glass entered the market this year. Technically, we are already radically altering ourselves over the past few decades.
Biologically, they may deserve a new scientific name (no longer homo sapiens), but they would still be considered human, and refer to themselves as humans in everyday conversations, while the rest of us may be the ones who get a new label in the variation of "old" humans.
Unless it doesn't happen that way, of course.
Actually, it was labor being too expensive that created the incentive for machines and automation and AI to be created in the first place. To compete with machines, labor doesn't need to augment themselves. They just need to lower their price.
Horse-drawn wagons and chariots created the need for roads, but they aren't on the roads now.
This is one of the great misconceptions many first worlders have. People only think about the cost, as opposed to getting value for their buck. For example, what good is going to a more expensive school when it lands you the same job as somebody with a degree from a less known but cheaper school, or no degree at all?
OTOH, if it's not that way, then your argument wouldn't hold.
To compete with machines, labor doesn't need to augment themselves. They just need to lower their price.
Many if not most people choose to work more than 40 hours of work a week. They could choose to work less and earn less. Just because someone could choose to be unaugmented, doesn't mean they will choose to do so due to the compromises involved.
So far the US bombed every remotely important country wanting to sell oil for Euros back into the stone age. Last time Ahmedingbats pondered aloud that he plans to have the Iran do so caused him to be pushed into the Axle of Evil.
Correlation doesn't imply causation. And it's worth noting that Iran hasn't experienced any serious consequences from the US for its alleged Euro-based oil trading since it doesn't sell its oil to the US.
Yes. My point though is that humanity is about to come up with all sorts of ways to radically change itself as well as incentive for doing so (namely, labor competition with sophisticated automation and strong AI).
They don't realize that the worst is yet to come once it really breaks out of the 3 African countries where is is pretty much out of control.
The thing is, it is under control in Guinea with new cases declining. Liberia and Sierra Leone seems to be the true make or break cases, but with some success in the past few weeks. It's still exponential growth, but doubling time has lengthened considerably. Even if they fail to contain Ebola in the end, this buys us some time.
The political-military industrial complex has forced the oil producing countries to only accept U.S. dollars for their oil. Every other country that needs oil must sell products to the U.S. for U.S. dollars in order to buy oil.
No, they can buy oil in other currencies like Euros. The problem is that there aren't many reliable currencies out there. Despite the inflation of currencies like the dollar or Euro, those still are the best choice for long term contracts.
we all share the benefits of them whether we like it or not
I'm sure we all share in those kickbacks from the defense contracts, right?
I see. So being passed by the established legal process is now considered "threat and fraud".
Your "legal process", reconciliation is used for budget change bills not new law.
nor Turing complete
No real world computer can be Turing complete because it can't have infinite storage.
In 1K years we will be almost exactly the same.
Unless we're either extinct through our own devices or so heavily modified that we are no longer biologically human.
So we've had the current high tech civilization for 200,000 years? There might be a reason why I think things are different now than they've been for the past 200,000 years.
Lower transportation costs, well frankly if those go up, I see a likely benifit regarding more local jobs.
Unless, of course, you live in the developing world. It is rare to find some societal or global policy no matter how bad that doesn't further someone's interest.