The problem is that it'd be hard to track everyone at once, even with super computers and satellites like LACROSSE there are just too many people to track, so they can probably actively track a few thousand to a million people.
This is true. I expect that machines are sifting as fast as they can, and people are rapidly eyeballing the results (or listening to audio keyword excerpts at high speed) for human judgements. Something like what Phil Dick described in A Scanner Darkly.
Consider also that analysis of collective behavior can be useful in a variety of ways: controlling the individuals as a herd saves you the trouble of controlling the individuals as individuals.
The phrase "small pox blanket", while applicable to cases where the disease was spread accidentally via blankets, is better reserved for those cases where disease-carrying blankets were deliberately used as vectors of infection against enemy peoples, such as the seige of Fort Pitt.
It's not a poor decision up front that got them here it's an impossible to predict growth. Success sometimes makes fools of us and our plans....
Very true: mod parent +Insightful.
We see the same principle when some individual acquires Sudden Wealth, as for example by winning the lottery. Sudden Wealth -- it's every man's dream, right?
On closer inspection, Sudden Wealth is not a miracle cure for unhappiness or any other problem. Quite the contrary: Sudden Wealth brings new problems, new diseases of the soul.
Example: there is, I'm told, a self-help group (somewhere in America) whose members are Sudden Wealth lottery winners, who meet to share and discuss the problems brought on by Sudden Wealth, ranging from vague and inexplicable dissatisfaction, through family crises and grasping relatives and bitter divorces, all the way to abject misery and blatant death wish.
So too with corporations and other collective enterprises. Growth without preparedness can elevate a Mom 'n' Pop storefront operation to the skyscraper heights of corporate power... but I would keep a watchful eye for embittered alcoholics and starry-eyed madmen among the board members and executives.
"The only way for us to continue to have crime reduction is to start anticipating where crime is going to occur."
-- Lt. Sean Malinowski, Los Angeles Police Department
"The only way...?"
Never trust a Social Engineer who asserts that their plan is "the only way".
So does that mean that if you leave a light on and run your battery down, you have to take it to the dealer to get it repaired?
Inded, that is exactly what it means.
Volkswagen, same thing. Happened to my 1996 Golf. I left the lights on, ran down the battery -- so the radio locked itself tight, awaiting the release code.
Am I alone in feeling disturbed at the trend to separate the combatants by ever increasing distances?
You're not alone: I understand and share your feelings, and I'm sure many other people feel much the same.
But let me put a twist on this. The military also knows it's a problem.
For most of the history of warfare (I'm riffing here on War by Gwynne Dyer), soldiers were usually in close company with their fellow soldiers -- a line of a dozen (or a hundred, or a thousand) men, carrying spears or muskets, facing a line of men similarly armed. This was true right up through the First World War: men packed into trenches.
The Second World War changed the pattern: increasing lethality of weapons, combined with motorized troop mobility, dictated dispersion of soldiers -- large numbers of them -- into individual, isolated foxholes.
After the war, the US Army did a study: how effective were the foxhole-isolated soldiers? How did those men actually behave? What percentage fired their rifles?
It turned out that a large number of soldiers never fired their weapons. They stayed down in their holes, stricken by fear. And ashamed: each soldier thought that he was the only one, that his buddies from Boot Camp must be doing their duty, but me, I'm cowering in my own shit in a hole because I'm so fucking scared of death.
Courage in the face of death. Not an easy thing to muster. But most men can do it, if they're in the company of their fellow soldiers.
So, naturally, the Army -- the most pragmatic institution Humankind has ever devised -- asked: what do we do about courage in this new age of dispersed warfare?
And the answer was: train men to greater levels of violence. So that, even when isolated from his fellows, the individual soldier will still be capable of killing and dying as ordered.
"This question is as ludicrous as asking which god is most powerful.. It's Zeus, isn't it?"
Not necessarily. I don't know about Zeus, but there may be a parallel with Jupiter (the Roman Zeus, "Jupiter" = "Zeus Pater").
Jupiter was the supreme Roman god in most things, and he was rightly respected for hurling lightning bolts, but there was one greater than he:
Terminus, the divine personification of boundaries and boundary-stones, to which even Jupiter was subordinate. (The Romans were very, very big on property law.)
You did remember to make a backup planet before commissioning those reactors, right...?
No. Okay. Plan B: We dig a hole the size of Japan, and put all the contaminated stuff in there. Warning, it may prove necessary to dig the Japan-sized hole where Japan is currently located.
The device in Michael Crichton's Looker was a different flashy-light effect -- it triggered a neurological state of extreme passive suggestibility, not actual blindness. You get hit with it, you go into a trance, you're unaware of time passing: one minute you're driving your car, then there's a bright light in the rear view mirror, next thing you know, your car is in a public fountain, and you don't know how you got there.
The underlying plot was not a weapon as such, but a mind-control device that could be broadcast over television to make people passively receptive to political and commercial advertising.
I remember it as a great idea, but kind of a low-budget movie. Now, The Andromeda Strain -- there's a great Crichton novel that made a great movie.
Slashdot Mirror
Chicago Molecular Gastronomy Restaurant Moto
The world's most perfect lie detector will fail to detect the world's most perfect liars.
Worse, the machine will assure us that those who are not liars, are good and honest men and women.
And we're supposed to trust this machine?
Fatigue does not "cause" crashes.
People cause crashes, as a direct consequence of their decisions -- such as the decision to drive while fatigued.
This is true. I expect that machines are sifting as fast as they can, and people are rapidly eyeballing the results (or listening to audio keyword excerpts at high speed) for human judgements. Something like what Phil Dick described in A Scanner Darkly.
Consider also that analysis of collective behavior can be useful in a variety of ways: controlling the individuals as a herd saves you the trouble of controlling the individuals as individuals.
The phrase "small pox blanket", while applicable to cases where the disease was spread accidentally via blankets, is better reserved for those cases where disease-carrying blankets were deliberately used as vectors of infection against enemy peoples, such as the seige of Fort Pitt.
Very true: mod parent +Insightful.
We see the same principle when some individual acquires Sudden Wealth, as for example by winning the lottery. Sudden Wealth -- it's every man's dream, right?
On closer inspection, Sudden Wealth is not a miracle cure for unhappiness or any other problem. Quite the contrary: Sudden Wealth brings new problems, new diseases of the soul.
Example: there is, I'm told, a self-help group (somewhere in America) whose members are Sudden Wealth lottery winners, who meet to share and discuss the problems brought on by Sudden Wealth, ranging from vague and inexplicable dissatisfaction, through family crises and grasping relatives and bitter divorces, all the way to abject misery and blatant death wish.
So too with corporations and other collective enterprises. Growth without preparedness can elevate a Mom 'n' Pop storefront operation to the skyscraper heights of corporate power ... but I would keep a watchful eye for embittered alcoholics and starry-eyed madmen among the board members and executives.
"The only way ...?"
Never trust a Social Engineer who asserts that their plan is "the only way".
So does that mean that if you leave a light on and run your battery down, you have to take it to the dealer to get it repaired?
Inded, that is exactly what it means.
Volkswagen, same thing. Happened to my 1996 Golf. I left the lights on, ran down the battery -- so the radio locked itself tight, awaiting the release code.
Apple's new iEvil Bit will make it easier than ever to [CENSORED BY RIAA INFRA-RED CODEC].
Flying wings, piloted by child-sized aviators ... makes me think of the The Turk, piloted by a child-sized chess master.
+Informative, thx.
Ouch. I'm afraid you are right on target -- "circumvention devices".
"Guilty of wanting free speech," indeed. Nice phrase, I'll keep it handy.
Robotic "Tongue" Lets Other People French Kiss Over The Internet.
You're not alone: I understand and share your feelings, and I'm sure many other people feel much the same.
But let me put a twist on this. The military also knows it's a problem.
For most of the history of warfare (I'm riffing here on War by Gwynne Dyer), soldiers were usually in close company with their fellow soldiers -- a line of a dozen (or a hundred, or a thousand) men, carrying spears or muskets, facing a line of men similarly armed. This was true right up through the First World War: men packed into trenches.
The Second World War changed the pattern: increasing lethality of weapons, combined with motorized troop mobility, dictated dispersion of soldiers -- large numbers of them -- into individual, isolated foxholes.
After the war, the US Army did a study: how effective were the foxhole-isolated soldiers? How did those men actually behave? What percentage fired their rifles?
It turned out that a large number of soldiers never fired their weapons. They stayed down in their holes, stricken by fear. And ashamed: each soldier thought that he was the only one, that his buddies from Boot Camp must be doing their duty, but me, I'm cowering in my own shit in a hole because I'm so fucking scared of death.
Courage in the face of death. Not an easy thing to muster. But most men can do it, if they're in the company of their fellow soldiers.
So, naturally, the Army -- the most pragmatic institution Humankind has ever devised -- asked: what do we do about courage in this new age of dispersed warfare?
And the answer was: train men to greater levels of violence. So that, even when isolated from his fellows, the individual soldier will still be capable of killing and dying as ordered.
Well reasoned.
Finally -- the answer to those tough guys who say that I can't punch my way out of a wet paper bag!
Who can't punch their way out of a wet paper bag now, tough guy?
Ahh, SNOBOL. I'm getting misty-eyed ... those were the days, my friend ....
Made me laugh! Thanks!
The "Feynmans and McGyvers" bit made me chuckle, but your point is well taken.
Running a nuclear power plant is one thing. Managing damaged reactors is quite another.
Not necessarily. I don't know about Zeus, but there may be a parallel with Jupiter (the Roman Zeus, "Jupiter" = "Zeus Pater").
Jupiter was the supreme Roman god in most things, and he was rightly respected for hurling lightning bolts, but there was one greater than he:
Terminus, the divine personification of boundaries and boundary-stones, to which even Jupiter was subordinate. (The Romans were very, very big on property law.)
Your zen trumps my sarcasm.
The question arises: What if ______________________________________?
The question then goes away and stops bothering people.
Mr. Non-Boolean
You did remember to make a backup planet before commissioning those reactors, right ...?
No. Okay. Plan B: We dig a hole the size of Japan, and put all the contaminated stuff in there. Warning, it may prove necessary to dig the Japan-sized hole where Japan is currently located.
The device in Michael Crichton's Looker was a different flashy-light effect -- it triggered a neurological state of extreme passive suggestibility, not actual blindness. You get hit with it, you go into a trance, you're unaware of time passing: one minute you're driving your car, then there's a bright light in the rear view mirror, next thing you know, your car is in a public fountain, and you don't know how you got there.
The underlying plot was not a weapon as such, but a mind-control device that could be broadcast over television to make people passively receptive to political and commercial advertising.
I remember it as a great idea, but kind of a low-budget movie. Now, The Andromeda Strain -- there's a great Crichton novel that made a great movie.