oh, so you're saying we just make up new meanings for old terms and act like their the same! oh now i get it!
Redefine? They're direct analogues of their biological terms. It's not like they're using the terms for something completely different.
If you have a problem with the specification of a bit pattern that defines the robot's behavior as a "genome", state it. The choice to refer to it as such is not simply a made-up meaning. It works perfectly in theory and in practice.
see that's the problem. the robots do not deceive; they do not see food.
They do deceive, and they do see the thing they are rewarded for acquiring.
the article is a misconstrual of what is happening.
Only in the sense that they use a couple terms that may seem odd out of context if you aren't familiar with how they are used in this conetxt. "Evolve", "learn", and "deceive" are all 100% accurate. "Food" is somewhat of a misnomer in that the robots don't eat, but they are rewarded for finding the "food" just like living organisms are both in nature and in the lab. They could have just said "reward item" to be 100% accurate, but "food" gets the idea across perfectly well that it is the thing that the robot is seeking much like a rat in a maze.
I wish you'd be more open minded about this. Genetic algorithms are fascinating, and amazingly successful. They not only are a fantastic aid in solving engineering problems, they also show insights into natural evolution, which is similarly guided by a random changes selected from according to which performs better.
I did. Did you understand the meaning behind the paragraphs you cite?
I did! Whenever you hear about a robot/AI "evolving", you should immediately think Genetic Algorithms. Most frequently in association with Neural Networks as is the case here (mentioned lower in TFA).
I am confused as to how it was possible to understand the claims it made. Robots don't have genomes and don't eat food. Their "genomes" cannot be recombined. Robots have code and programmers. What does a random change mean in this context? Do they use faulty dram or mess with the voltage?
Robots have code. That code can be (is) represented as a series of bits. That series of 1s and 0s can be considered the "genome" of the robot. And can you randomly change bits, or recombine portions of bit patterns? Absolutely. When you have a "population" of such bit patterns which you test out, then take the best ones and copy them, randomly mutate them, and recombine them together, then test the new population and repeat, you have a Genetic Algorithm.
Now that's possible but time consuming to do with the actual instruction bytes of the AI. In the case of Neural Networks with Genetic Algorithms, the "genome" is actually just the organization of the neural net -- the connections and weights between the neurons.
The robots still have programmers, but the programmer is not directly writing instructions for the AI to follow. Instead, they're writting an interface between the robot's sensors and the neural network, the neural network code itself (not its organization), and the code that does the genome mutation/recombination. From there, the AIs "evolve" and "learn" on their own and arrive at often fascinating solutions to problems.
For example in this case, the programmers did not teach the robots how to deceive each other. That behavior emerged on its own from the genetic algorithm. So, there really isn't any hyperbole at all in the summary/TFA. Though it would be helpful if they at least mentioned genetic algorithms so skeptical people have something to google.:)
It turns out the algorithm had evolved to take advantage of the analog properties of the specific chips in that particular board. The algorithm didn't see the board as a digital thing. It saw it as a collection of opamps, amplifiers, and other analog parts. Move the program to a board that is identical digitally, and it failed because the chips weren't analog exact. You wouldn't have seen that behavior in a purely digital simulation.
Yeah, I remember that, but differently (or maybe it's a similar but different incident). What I recall is that he looked at the working design, and saw that it included a section that wasn't connected to anything else. Thinking this was just random waste, he removed it. Then it stopped working. Capacitive and inductive effects from the 'disconnected' section was affecting the main 'working' section and making a complicated analog circuit.
In either case (and both are certainly possible outcomes), this outlines what is so awesome about Genetic Algorithms and the natural evolution that inspires them -- no preconceived notions about what the solution should look like. Whatever works, works, and that's literally all that matters. Us humans very often start with a picture in mind of what the answer "should" be, and it limits our thinking. On the other hand, a lot of times we have those preconceived notions like "this circuit should be digital not analog" for very good reasons, and we simply fail to notify the GA of that requirement. Which also makes GAs fun.:)
From TFA: "First simulated in software before using actual bots, five hundred generations were evolved this way with different selective pressures by roboticists and biologists at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland in 2007."
So yes, that's exactly what they did.
Also, I'm sure this is at least a rehash of a previous/. article, because I remember discussing the deceptive behavior with the light-flashing. It's still interesting.
So yes, I can vouch for the existence of bad publicity. You don't want it.
Speak for yourself. I can't exactly build archvillain cred on the back of good publicity, now can I? "The Annihilator rescues puppy from well." "The Annihilator releases new line of environmentally conscious sneakers." It just doesn't work.
As far as avoiding martial arts "where being struck in the head is seen as a core part of training" Well a quick hit on the jaw or throat for that matter, is a good way to drop someone, or be dropped. It may not be the be all and end all of martial training, but it should be a very real concern.
I think they were talking about where being hit was part of the training. Not training to strike and defend vulnerable areas, but actually getting punched.
Any martial arts class where I was expected to actually take punches to the throat as part of my training is a martial arts class I would walk right the fuck out of because that's just stupid dangerous.:)
But on the other hand, a class where even light head contact was verboten would be pretty unrealistic.
Do you know why Japan never invaded the United States? Simple, because EVERYONE was armed. They could never put down resistance in such a population. Switzerland maintained its neutrality by the same feature. Armed citizens can't be oppressed by any external force.
That and the rather significant fact that they never had any feasible location for launching such an invasion. Yes I'm aware a Japanese general cited American arms as a reason they didn't want to invade. I'm sure physical impossibility of landing troops on our soil had nothing to do with it. Switzerland is able to maintain neutrality for a lot of reasons, an armed populace being but one.
But anyway, we're not talking about a foreign invader trying to conquer the country. We're talking about the local land and industry baron who provides 70% of the jobs and homes in town hiring the former police and NG troops to make sure his employees pay the new Employment Tax. Or Halliburton deciding they could make more profits if the people in one of the Halliburton-owned towns of Texas were a little less free, and using Blackwater to enforce the new rules. There's a big difference between one town being oppressed by locals, and an entire country oppressed by foreigners.
Somalia is not an anarchy, but rather it is a series of small despotic states. It also is not an armed society.
Duh, that was the whole point -- the lack of a meaningful central government leads directly to despotic rule at the local level. Actual anarchy never exists in practice outside of tiny hippie communes, because it transmutes almost instantly into some other form of government. You can see this in practice in any situation where a government collapses -- new governments rise up in the place of the old, and when the government did not fall because of a revolution, the result is a Balkanized mess of oppressive rulers rising up to fill the power vacuum. Deliberately creating such a vacuum is foolishness in the extreme. It. Is. Not. Stable.
And anyone who can afford an AK-47 in Somalia can get one. Or an RPG for that matter. It's very Free Market that way.
You GREATLY underestimate the power of the rifle. Mere rifles become deadly precision in the hands of a population of marksmen.
No, I'm not underestimating it. Don't you realize, they are marksmen too? And they have their rifle pointed at your family. You can fight them, but then they'll target your family. You can take them with you and hide in the wilderness. Then they'll laugh and give your job to a more compliant citizen. Meanwhile, you and your family are living like the Viet Cong.
I think it's pretty awesome that your idea of Utopia is basically living like an insurgent fighting off bandits and barons with your amazing marksman skills. Yeah I really wish I lived in the Old West too. It sounds like great fun. They had tons of freedom out there. And of course the fact that everyone owned a gun meant that nobody was ever oppressed by criminals or corrupt businessmen. And if you think that could have possibly not been sarcasm, you need to read some history!
Your ideology is disturbing, it reeks of Orwellian "Freedom is Slavery" doublespeak.
This paragraph reeks of doublespeak.
You think that a system based on non-aggression and freedom leads directly to slavery and oppression, so you propose instituting slavery and oppression to stop our society from falling into slavery and oppression. This is madness of the type that our Orwellian overlords have wanted to instill their subjects with from the beginning.
WTF? Who is proposing instituting slavery? Oh right, not-anarchy is slavery. THAT makes sense and isn't just abusing language to your own ends. But WAIT a minute... how is it possible that my non-anarchy idea could result in slavery and oppression when we are still an armed populace? You just said that was impossible!
Personally, I think "free to do anything but take freedom
Sad fact? That you are exposed to ideas that you disagree with? Surely that's a good thing.
Ugh, no, I disagree with reasonable libertarianism too, and hearing about it was a good thing. What's sad is that because my first exposure to the concept was in its most extreme and illogical form, it colored my impression of everyone claiming to be "libertarian" and assuming they were unrealistic kooks, until I learned the difference. Had I talked to the reasonable libertarians first, I would have been exposed to the new non-crazy idea sooner, and realized immediately that the extremists were exactly that, not representative of libertarians at large.
And why crazy? Again just because you find the ideas uncomfortable, how does that make it 'crazy'?
It doesn't make me uncomfortable in the slightest; it's an old idea i was quite comfortable thinking about before the first libertarian spoke of it in earnest. It's crazy because it is completely disconnected with reality in every way, shape, and form. That's pretty much the definition of crazy.
If you agree with the general axioms of the libertarian movement then anarcho-capitalism is just taking the ideas to their natural logical conclusion. If you don't think that the axioms are crazy then you cannot think that the outcome is crazy.
"If you agree that drinking water is good for you, then you must agree that drinking three hundred gallons of water in one minute is good for you."
No, that's neither natural nor logical. "Logic" is not pretending that things react the same at different scales even though they don't. "Logic" is not ignoring consequences that contradict your axioms because you like your assumptions better than reality. That's insanity.
. You might not like that outcome, or think it's unrealistic in practice or even impossible, but that's another issue.
No, no it isn't. It's the only salient issue. "What will actually happen if this was actually implemented?" The impossibility of a stable anarchy of any significant size, and the natural outcome of anarchy, are exactly the issues that make anarcho-capitalism dumb. The belief that this natural outcome doesn't matter or can be ignored is why it's crazy.
These anarcho-capitalists were advocating their ideas be implemented in reality so their effect in reality is much more than a matter of principle.
Many anarcho-capitalists think the small-govt minarchists are the crazy ones for thinking they can have their cake and eat it. Minarchists are still statists, the only difference between them and totalitarian states is the arbitrary point they choose on the spectrum for where *they* would like freedom to end.
Choosing where you want freedom to end is vastly superior than letting others stronger than you choose where your freedom will end, which is exactly what anarchy results in. Basically "minarchists" are anarchists with the tiniest amount of reason and reality put in. Which of course means the anarchists think they're crazy.
And I strongly disagree with your implicit statement that anarchy is the end-point on the spectrum of freedom. I believe that the maximal point of freedom is when freedom is maximized for everyone, which means their freedom must be protected. In other words, in the most free society, you are free to do anything but take freedom from others. Anarchy is explicitly and intentionally incapable of providing that. And it is exactly because of that flaw that anarchy may start high (but not maximal) on the freedom scale, but quickly devolves into a very low point on the scale.
"Minarchists" are at least trying to achieve the ideal where freedom not only exists, but it is preserved.
If you choose an ethical philosophy (which is what libertarianism is at heart, rather than a political one) then you simply cannot pick and choose where you decide to stop following the conclusions of your philosophy (just because it is 'convenient'
we got three wireless internet providers blanketing our city
Three overlapping service providers? That's nice. Too bad if the government dropped all of its regulations, you'd be fubar because interference would be through the roof. Oh but right, businesses would just play nice with the spectrum, and never try to deliberately degrade a competitor's service.
You get more of something when you tax it less, you get less of something when you tax it more. This is fifth grade economics.
Maybe you should have stayed in school. Taxes are not the only costs associated with things. There is such a thing as a natural monopoly. I guess those are sixth grade topics.
How do they get to make the rules when EVERYONE is armed, and any type of weapon or army that they can raise to institute rules that people don't want is similarly available to anyone else?
LOL. Seriously? You want to know why anarchy is unstable and results in people more powerful than you telling you what to do? Okay, fine. Because they have more money than you, many orders of magnitude more, and can thus raise a much larger army than you can. You and whatever gun you can afford isn't going to mean crap when a group of heavily armed thugs show up at your door and demand you pay the taxes you thought you had abolished. You and all your neighbors with their guns aren't going to mean crap.
You want to see anarchy in action? Look at Somalia. Everyone has a weapon, fat fucking lot of good it does them. And that's only a de facto anarchy -- it still has a central government, it's just too weak to enforce the law outside of a small area of Mogadishu, so the warlords effectively control everywhere else -- and you better believe the warlords aren't implementing anarchy. And this is the kind of government the extremist libertarians actually want! Obviously because they're imagining themselves as the wealth warlord.
Even under a slightly less (but still retardedly) extreme libertarian ideal, the government and its police force exist basically to enforce contract, property, and personal safety law. So, the guys with the orders-of-magnitude more resources than you can still define the terms of any contract you enter into since all the laws that are supposed to prevent them from abusing their position of power have been abolished, resulting in basically the same thing only this time you don't have the 'right' to fight back. That's the whole point of Randian libertarianism -- to unfetter the ultra-wealthy from abusing their wealth to further their own ends at the expense of others'.
You are forced if you are a developer OF GPL SOFTWARE.
Who forced you to improve GNU GPL software?
And, in any case, YES "forcing" you to respect the freedoms of others is a good thing. Since this only occurs if you deliberately decide to use software which ensures freedom of users, you have no complaint.
Oh yeah, it's only regulations that make costs high. You could start an ISP out of pocket if not for those horrible regulations. All you have to do is set up some equipment and then politely ask Comcast if you can use their cable... wait... Okay, you have to lay your own cable, and politely ask everyone in the city if you can dig up their yards to lay a redundant cable line. That will be nice and cheap, and efficient too! Free market at work!
Well after the sudden mass unemployment by the majority of people involved in the creation of said works, I suppose something would come back. Software would be no more open, however.
No, I meant actually think about what changes in societal attitudes would have to take place for the abolition of (software) copyright to take place. Only considering the hypothetical where Congress takes a collective hit of acid and accidentally abolishes copyright law, but nothing else changes, is stupid. To actually get to the situation where this could realistically occur, attitudes about software and the rights of authors and users would have to change. So, think about that.
Besides, most programmers aren't employed writing shrink-wrapped or pay-per-copy software.
Would it? I suspect the majority would still not distribute the code, and would still require EULAs (since they come into effect before copyright does) and make you agree to everything they do now.
Yes, absolutely, because the right to use, modify, and share software would have to be considered such an important right that we got rid of the copyright to ensure it. Open source would be the norm, and people still attempting to peddle closed source software would be considered backwards and their software less useful by default. In any case, EULAs ultimately depend on copyright law as well, relying on the fact that you must 'copy' the software to your harddrive to install it, and into memory to use it. When it's completely legal to distribute said software to anyone, and modify the software not to include the EULA, how are they going to enforce it on 3rd parties?
Besides, the context was free software which currently relies upon the GPL. No copyright, no need for GPL. People trying to redistribute modified free software without source surely would be pariahs.
We'd roll back to the days of trade guilds, where everything done was kept secret. I doubt that removing copyright would eliminate trade secret law, and closed-source companies would simply move all the source code under that umbrella.
How is that supposed to work? It can't be more secret than it is now. You can't keep a secret and distribute binaries. All trade secret law would do is prevent company employees or certain other entities from revealing the secret. It's not like patents, or copyrights -- once the secret is out, it is no longer protected. You can't use trade secret law to prevent 3rd parties from reverse engineering your binaries, or distributing them.
Sure you could get the files via a 3rd party and modify the binaries, but reverse engineering isn't always successful and modifying binaries in place is hazardous at best.
No it's hazardous at worst, trivial at best. Reverse engineering only has to be done once, and decompilers are getting better all the time. And if all you're having to reverse engineer are some "proprietary" modifications to formerly free software then this is even less of an issue.
In the end you would likely be no freer. In fact I suspect that the move towards signed binaries and TPM/Palladium would only be accelerated.
Except at minimum everything currently prohibited by copyright, wouldn't be, so we would necessarily be freer. As far as Palladium goes, without the DMCA to prohibit the discussion and dissemination of information on cracking TPM, that would be just as big a waste of time as DRM on music is today, only more so because neither the cracking nor subsequent usage of signed binaries in any way be illegal.
And again, why would the same people who agreed that sharing and modifying software was a fundamental right then turn right around and agree to tether themselves once again to unsharable, unmodifiable programs? Some companies might try it, but they would fail, both to keep their secrets, and in the marketplace.
So the GPL's purpose - allowing software set free to STAY free - would be realized and the GPL would be unnecessary.
Exactly. And the one thing the GPL mandates that the absence of copyright wouldn't -- source code -- would almost certainly be a non-issue if you sit back and think about the society that decided to get rid of software copyrights if not copyright all together. Getting source code along with your binaries -- since you can copy, reverse engineer, modify etc the binaries anyway -- would be a basic expectation. The few who refused would be pariahs.
Maybe if you didn't get your libertarian news/opinion pieces from places that are anti-libertarian, you might realize that most of us are reasonable.
Sadly enough, my first impressions of Libertarianism came not from anti-libertarian sources, but from listening to Libertarians themselves and in the vast majority of cases they were anything but reasonable. It started off nice-sounding -- "less government, more freedom" -- which is why I kept listening, but given enough time they always ended up essentially espousing anarcho-capitalism (even if they didn't call it that, though some did). At which point I can't help but laugh, as I would to anyone saying they were going to guarantee my freedom with "anarcho-" anything, because anarchy lasts exactly long enough for someone strong enough to impose their own rules which will always be in their own favor.
It also didn't help when they started talking about Ayn Rand, since I hadn't realized at the time that she was such an inspiration for certain branches of Libertarianism, but did think that The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were two of the most hateful books I'd ever had the displeasure of reading.
Anyway, since then, I've had discussions with reasonable libertarians, and I realize that my initial impression was in a way a stereotype, but that association has still lingered. Sadly the reasonable libertarians I've known haven't included any of the candidates for office that I've been aware of.
I say this as a political libertarian with social conservative sensibilities. The single biggest reason why libertarianism is going nowhere is because it's such an unfocused movement that grabs whatever liberty it can and that doesn't even pretend to have a higher vision than "I'll get mine." That turns off most voters.
Indeed. It very much seems to me that most libertarians always think from a point of view that assumes they will be in an advantageous position in this hypothetical libertarian utopia. When a libertarian argues that all or nearly all government regulation should be eliminated, including labor and wage laws, quality and safety laws, and virtually every statutory limitation on contracts, it's very hard to imagine who this would benefit except for the wealthy businessmen who feel stifled by these restrictions. It doesn't help that the most prominent libertarians are people who appear to be in such a position of power to have the advantage in future contract negotiations. For those of us who would be on the "we need a job so we can not die of starvation or exposure" end of the bargaining power scale, it doesn't look so hot, and the libertarians appear not to care at all.
So I'm interested on your take of the issue, since you seem to reject the "i'll get mine" philosophy that defines Randian Libertarianism. It's a sad fact that my first impression and most of my interactions with libertarians have been with the crazy anarcho-capitalist form. There are reasonable ones out there, I've talked to em. I want to hear what they think.:)
Even though under a libertarian system there'd be no corporate welfare at all (since there'd be a simple tax code and subsidizes would be outlawed in the constitution), their behavior gives normal, non-ideological people good reason to believe that a libertarian government would look like a plutocratic-kleptocratic oligarchy of rich people burdening the poor while enriching themselves
Even though there'd be no corporate welfare? We don't think a libertarian system would lead to a plutocracy because the government would be in the pocket of business, we think a libertarian system would lead to plutocracy because the government would, by design, be too weak to prevent it.
I wrote this here years ago, but it bears repeating: Libertarianism is the carrying out of fascism by other means. The one thing it precisely does not guarantee is liberty.
Ah, but those ten seconds of pure unadulterated anarcho-capitalism, before someone with power and money realizes that no rules means they get to make the rules, would be fucking sweet. =)
I hear the octopus is quite smart, and could easily move around inside of cases. I wonder though, will this provoke cries of "fight octopus outsourcing now!" from the Slashdot crowd?
That depends... are these First World octopi who enjoy all the legal protection of modern democracies? Or are these exploited Chinese sweatshop octopi?
Slashdot Mirror
Save your soul! Also remember to make regular off-site backups!
oh, so you're saying we just make up new meanings for old terms and act like their the same! oh now i get it!
Redefine? They're direct analogues of their biological terms. It's not like they're using the terms for something completely different.
If you have a problem with the specification of a bit pattern that defines the robot's behavior as a "genome", state it. The choice to refer to it as such is not simply a made-up meaning. It works perfectly in theory and in practice.
see that's the problem. the robots do not deceive; they do not see food.
They do deceive, and they do see the thing they are rewarded for acquiring.
the article is a misconstrual of what is happening.
Only in the sense that they use a couple terms that may seem odd out of context if you aren't familiar with how they are used in this conetxt. "Evolve", "learn", and "deceive" are all 100% accurate. "Food" is somewhat of a misnomer in that the robots don't eat, but they are rewarded for finding the "food" just like living organisms are both in nature and in the lab. They could have just said "reward item" to be 100% accurate, but "food" gets the idea across perfectly well that it is the thing that the robot is seeking much like a rat in a maze.
I wish you'd be more open minded about this. Genetic algorithms are fascinating, and amazingly successful. They not only are a fantastic aid in solving engineering problems, they also show insights into natural evolution, which is similarly guided by a random changes selected from according to which performs better.
I did. Did you understand the meaning behind the paragraphs you cite?
I did! Whenever you hear about a robot/AI "evolving", you should immediately think Genetic Algorithms. Most frequently in association with Neural Networks as is the case here (mentioned lower in TFA).
I am confused as to how it was possible to understand the claims it made. Robots don't have genomes and don't eat food. Their "genomes" cannot be recombined. Robots have code and programmers. What does a random change mean in this context? Do they use faulty dram or mess with the voltage?
Robots have code. That code can be (is) represented as a series of bits. That series of 1s and 0s can be considered the "genome" of the robot. And can you randomly change bits, or recombine portions of bit patterns? Absolutely. When you have a "population" of such bit patterns which you test out, then take the best ones and copy them, randomly mutate them, and recombine them together, then test the new population and repeat, you have a Genetic Algorithm.
Now that's possible but time consuming to do with the actual instruction bytes of the AI. In the case of Neural Networks with Genetic Algorithms, the "genome" is actually just the organization of the neural net -- the connections and weights between the neurons.
The robots still have programmers, but the programmer is not directly writing instructions for the AI to follow. Instead, they're writting an interface between the robot's sensors and the neural network, the neural network code itself (not its organization), and the code that does the genome mutation/recombination. From there, the AIs "evolve" and "learn" on their own and arrive at often fascinating solutions to problems.
For example in this case, the programmers did not teach the robots how to deceive each other. That behavior emerged on its own from the genetic algorithm. So, there really isn't any hyperbole at all in the summary/TFA. Though it would be helpful if they at least mentioned genetic algorithms so skeptical people have something to google. :)
It turns out the algorithm had evolved to take advantage of the analog properties of the specific chips in that particular board. The algorithm didn't see the board as a digital thing. It saw it as a collection of opamps, amplifiers, and other analog parts. Move the program to a board that is identical digitally, and it failed because the chips weren't analog exact. You wouldn't have seen that behavior in a purely digital simulation.
Yeah, I remember that, but differently (or maybe it's a similar but different incident). What I recall is that he looked at the working design, and saw that it included a section that wasn't connected to anything else. Thinking this was just random waste, he removed it. Then it stopped working. Capacitive and inductive effects from the 'disconnected' section was affecting the main 'working' section and making a complicated analog circuit.
In either case (and both are certainly possible outcomes), this outlines what is so awesome about Genetic Algorithms and the natural evolution that inspires them -- no preconceived notions about what the solution should look like. Whatever works, works, and that's literally all that matters. Us humans very often start with a picture in mind of what the answer "should" be, and it limits our thinking. On the other hand, a lot of times we have those preconceived notions like "this circuit should be digital not analog" for very good reasons, and we simply fail to notify the GA of that requirement. Which also makes GAs fun. :)
Evolving their AIs, yes, not their physical capabilities. Genetic Algorithms have been in use for AI programming for quite some time now.
On an unrelated topic, have you heard the good news of Robot Jesus?
From TFA: "First simulated in software before using actual bots, five hundred generations were evolved this way with different selective pressures by roboticists and biologists at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland in 2007."
So yes, that's exactly what they did.
Also, I'm sure this is at least a rehash of a previous /. article, because I remember discussing the deceptive behavior with the light-flashing. It's still interesting.
Yeah that's what I thought of too. That movie was hilarious. But I don't think it's widely known.
So yes, I can vouch for the existence of bad publicity. You don't want it.
Speak for yourself. I can't exactly build archvillain cred on the back of good publicity, now can I? "The Annihilator rescues puppy from well." "The Annihilator releases new line of environmentally conscious sneakers." It just doesn't work.
The rabbit is also excellent eating. For bonus points, make a fur hat or some ear warmers.
And with Halloween just around the corner, think inexpensive costume!
You love Fluffy, don't you honey? Well now you can go out on Halloween as Fluffy!
As far as avoiding martial arts "where being struck in the head is seen as a core part of training" Well a quick hit on the jaw or throat for that matter, is a good way to drop someone, or be dropped. It may not be the be all and end all of martial training, but it should be a very real concern.
I think they were talking about where being hit was part of the training. Not training to strike and defend vulnerable areas, but actually getting punched.
Any martial arts class where I was expected to actually take punches to the throat as part of my training is a martial arts class I would walk right the fuck out of because that's just stupid dangerous. :)
But on the other hand, a class where even light head contact was verboten would be pretty unrealistic.
That's a round-about way of saying that you think Bill Gates is way too healthy and should be constantly hyperventilating.
Do you know why Japan never invaded the United States? Simple, because EVERYONE was armed. They could never put down resistance in such a population. Switzerland maintained its neutrality by the same feature. Armed citizens can't be oppressed by any external force.
That and the rather significant fact that they never had any feasible location for launching such an invasion. Yes I'm aware a Japanese general cited American arms as a reason they didn't want to invade. I'm sure physical impossibility of landing troops on our soil had nothing to do with it. Switzerland is able to maintain neutrality for a lot of reasons, an armed populace being but one.
But anyway, we're not talking about a foreign invader trying to conquer the country. We're talking about the local land and industry baron who provides 70% of the jobs and homes in town hiring the former police and NG troops to make sure his employees pay the new Employment Tax. Or Halliburton deciding they could make more profits if the people in one of the Halliburton-owned towns of Texas were a little less free, and using Blackwater to enforce the new rules. There's a big difference between one town being oppressed by locals, and an entire country oppressed by foreigners.
Somalia is not an anarchy, but rather it is a series of small despotic states. It also is not an armed society.
Duh, that was the whole point -- the lack of a meaningful central government leads directly to despotic rule at the local level. Actual anarchy never exists in practice outside of tiny hippie communes, because it transmutes almost instantly into some other form of government. You can see this in practice in any situation where a government collapses -- new governments rise up in the place of the old, and when the government did not fall because of a revolution, the result is a Balkanized mess of oppressive rulers rising up to fill the power vacuum. Deliberately creating such a vacuum is foolishness in the extreme. It. Is. Not. Stable.
And anyone who can afford an AK-47 in Somalia can get one. Or an RPG for that matter. It's very Free Market that way.
You GREATLY underestimate the power of the rifle. Mere rifles become deadly precision in the hands of a population of marksmen.
No, I'm not underestimating it. Don't you realize, they are marksmen too? And they have their rifle pointed at your family. You can fight them, but then they'll target your family. You can take them with you and hide in the wilderness. Then they'll laugh and give your job to a more compliant citizen. Meanwhile, you and your family are living like the Viet Cong.
I think it's pretty awesome that your idea of Utopia is basically living like an insurgent fighting off bandits and barons with your amazing marksman skills. Yeah I really wish I lived in the Old West too. It sounds like great fun. They had tons of freedom out there. And of course the fact that everyone owned a gun meant that nobody was ever oppressed by criminals or corrupt businessmen. And if you think that could have possibly not been sarcasm, you need to read some history!
Your ideology is disturbing, it reeks of Orwellian "Freedom is Slavery" doublespeak.
This paragraph reeks of doublespeak.
You think that a system based on non-aggression and freedom leads directly to slavery and oppression, so you propose instituting slavery and oppression to stop our society from falling into slavery and oppression. This is madness of the type that our Orwellian overlords have wanted to instill their subjects with from the beginning.
WTF? Who is proposing instituting slavery? Oh right, not-anarchy is slavery. THAT makes sense and isn't just abusing language to your own ends. But WAIT a minute... how is it possible that my non-anarchy idea could result in slavery and oppression when we are still an armed populace? You just said that was impossible!
Personally, I think "free to do anything but take freedom
Sad fact? That you are exposed to ideas that you disagree with? Surely that's a good thing.
Ugh, no, I disagree with reasonable libertarianism too, and hearing about it was a good thing. What's sad is that because my first exposure to the concept was in its most extreme and illogical form, it colored my impression of everyone claiming to be "libertarian" and assuming they were unrealistic kooks, until I learned the difference. Had I talked to the reasonable libertarians first, I would have been exposed to the new non-crazy idea sooner, and realized immediately that the extremists were exactly that, not representative of libertarians at large.
And why crazy? Again just because you find the ideas uncomfortable, how does that make it 'crazy'?
It doesn't make me uncomfortable in the slightest; it's an old idea i was quite comfortable thinking about before the first libertarian spoke of it in earnest. It's crazy because it is completely disconnected with reality in every way, shape, and form. That's pretty much the definition of crazy.
If you agree with the general axioms of the libertarian movement then anarcho-capitalism is just taking the ideas to their natural logical conclusion. If you don't think that the axioms are crazy then you cannot think that the outcome is crazy.
"If you agree that drinking water is good for you, then you must agree that drinking three hundred gallons of water in one minute is good for you."
No, that's neither natural nor logical. "Logic" is not pretending that things react the same at different scales even though they don't. "Logic" is not ignoring consequences that contradict your axioms because you like your assumptions better than reality. That's insanity.
. You might not like that outcome, or think it's unrealistic in practice or even impossible, but that's another issue.
No, no it isn't. It's the only salient issue. "What will actually happen if this was actually implemented?" The impossibility of a stable anarchy of any significant size, and the natural outcome of anarchy, are exactly the issues that make anarcho-capitalism dumb. The belief that this natural outcome doesn't matter or can be ignored is why it's crazy.
These anarcho-capitalists were advocating their ideas be implemented in reality so their effect in reality is much more than a matter of principle.
Many anarcho-capitalists think the small-govt minarchists are the crazy ones for thinking they can have their cake and eat it. Minarchists are still statists, the only difference between them and totalitarian states is the arbitrary point they choose on the spectrum for where *they* would like freedom to end.
Choosing where you want freedom to end is vastly superior than letting others stronger than you choose where your freedom will end, which is exactly what anarchy results in. Basically "minarchists" are anarchists with the tiniest amount of reason and reality put in. Which of course means the anarchists think they're crazy.
And I strongly disagree with your implicit statement that anarchy is the end-point on the spectrum of freedom. I believe that the maximal point of freedom is when freedom is maximized for everyone, which means their freedom must be protected. In other words, in the most free society, you are free to do anything but take freedom from others. Anarchy is explicitly and intentionally incapable of providing that. And it is exactly because of that flaw that anarchy may start high (but not maximal) on the freedom scale, but quickly devolves into a very low point on the scale.
"Minarchists" are at least trying to achieve the ideal where freedom not only exists, but it is preserved.
If you choose an ethical philosophy (which is what libertarianism is at heart, rather than a political one) then you simply cannot pick and choose where you decide to stop following the conclusions of your philosophy (just because it is 'convenient'
we got three wireless internet providers blanketing our city
Three overlapping service providers? That's nice. Too bad if the government dropped all of its regulations, you'd be fubar because interference would be through the roof. Oh but right, businesses would just play nice with the spectrum, and never try to deliberately degrade a competitor's service.
You get more of something when you tax it less, you get less of something when you tax it more. This is fifth grade economics.
Maybe you should have stayed in school. Taxes are not the only costs associated with things. There is such a thing as a natural monopoly. I guess those are sixth grade topics.
How do they get to make the rules when EVERYONE is armed, and any type of weapon or army that they can raise to institute rules that people don't want is similarly available to anyone else?
LOL. Seriously? You want to know why anarchy is unstable and results in people more powerful than you telling you what to do? Okay, fine. Because they have more money than you, many orders of magnitude more, and can thus raise a much larger army than you can. You and whatever gun you can afford isn't going to mean crap when a group of heavily armed thugs show up at your door and demand you pay the taxes you thought you had abolished. You and all your neighbors with their guns aren't going to mean crap.
You want to see anarchy in action? Look at Somalia. Everyone has a weapon, fat fucking lot of good it does them. And that's only a de facto anarchy -- it still has a central government, it's just too weak to enforce the law outside of a small area of Mogadishu, so the warlords effectively control everywhere else -- and you better believe the warlords aren't implementing anarchy. And this is the kind of government the extremist libertarians actually want! Obviously because they're imagining themselves as the wealth warlord.
Even under a slightly less (but still retardedly) extreme libertarian ideal, the government and its police force exist basically to enforce contract, property, and personal safety law. So, the guys with the orders-of-magnitude more resources than you can still define the terms of any contract you enter into since all the laws that are supposed to prevent them from abusing their position of power have been abolished, resulting in basically the same thing only this time you don't have the 'right' to fight back. That's the whole point of Randian libertarianism -- to unfetter the ultra-wealthy from abusing their wealth to further their own ends at the expense of others'.
You are forced if you are a developer OF GPL SOFTWARE.
Who forced you to improve GNU GPL software?
And, in any case, YES "forcing" you to respect the freedoms of others is a good thing. Since this only occurs if you deliberately decide to use software which ensures freedom of users, you have no complaint.
Oh yeah, it's only regulations that make costs high. You could start an ISP out of pocket if not for those horrible regulations. All you have to do is set up some equipment and then politely ask Comcast if you can use their cable... wait... Okay, you have to lay your own cable, and politely ask everyone in the city if you can dig up their yards to lay a redundant cable line. That will be nice and cheap, and efficient too! Free market at work!
Well after the sudden mass unemployment by the majority of people involved in the creation of said works, I suppose something would come back. Software would be no more open, however.
No, I meant actually think about what changes in societal attitudes would have to take place for the abolition of (software) copyright to take place. Only considering the hypothetical where Congress takes a collective hit of acid and accidentally abolishes copyright law, but nothing else changes, is stupid. To actually get to the situation where this could realistically occur, attitudes about software and the rights of authors and users would have to change. So, think about that.
Besides, most programmers aren't employed writing shrink-wrapped or pay-per-copy software.
Would it? I suspect the majority would still not distribute the code, and would still require EULAs (since they come into effect before copyright does) and make you agree to everything they do now.
Yes, absolutely, because the right to use, modify, and share software would have to be considered such an important right that we got rid of the copyright to ensure it. Open source would be the norm, and people still attempting to peddle closed source software would be considered backwards and their software less useful by default. In any case, EULAs ultimately depend on copyright law as well, relying on the fact that you must 'copy' the software to your harddrive to install it, and into memory to use it. When it's completely legal to distribute said software to anyone, and modify the software not to include the EULA, how are they going to enforce it on 3rd parties?
Besides, the context was free software which currently relies upon the GPL. No copyright, no need for GPL. People trying to redistribute modified free software without source surely would be pariahs.
We'd roll back to the days of trade guilds, where everything done was kept secret. I doubt that removing copyright would eliminate trade secret law, and closed-source companies would simply move all the source code under that umbrella.
How is that supposed to work? It can't be more secret than it is now. You can't keep a secret and distribute binaries. All trade secret law would do is prevent company employees or certain other entities from revealing the secret. It's not like patents, or copyrights -- once the secret is out, it is no longer protected. You can't use trade secret law to prevent 3rd parties from reverse engineering your binaries, or distributing them.
Sure you could get the files via a 3rd party and modify the binaries, but reverse engineering isn't always successful and modifying binaries in place is hazardous at best.
No it's hazardous at worst, trivial at best. Reverse engineering only has to be done once, and decompilers are getting better all the time. And if all you're having to reverse engineer are some "proprietary" modifications to formerly free software then this is even less of an issue.
In the end you would likely be no freer. In fact I suspect that the move towards signed binaries and TPM/Palladium would only be accelerated.
Except at minimum everything currently prohibited by copyright, wouldn't be, so we would necessarily be freer. As far as Palladium goes, without the DMCA to prohibit the discussion and dissemination of information on cracking TPM, that would be just as big a waste of time as DRM on music is today, only more so because neither the cracking nor subsequent usage of signed binaries in any way be illegal.
And again, why would the same people who agreed that sharing and modifying software was a fundamental right then turn right around and agree to tether themselves once again to unsharable, unmodifiable programs? Some companies might try it, but they would fail, both to keep their secrets, and in the marketplace.
So the GPL's purpose - allowing software set free to STAY free - would be realized and the GPL would be unnecessary.
Exactly. And the one thing the GPL mandates that the absence of copyright wouldn't -- source code -- would almost certainly be a non-issue if you sit back and think about the society that decided to get rid of software copyrights if not copyright all together. Getting source code along with your binaries -- since you can copy, reverse engineer, modify etc the binaries anyway -- would be a basic expectation. The few who refused would be pariahs.
Maybe if you didn't get your libertarian news/opinion pieces from places that are anti-libertarian, you might realize that most of us are reasonable.
Sadly enough, my first impressions of Libertarianism came not from anti-libertarian sources, but from listening to Libertarians themselves and in the vast majority of cases they were anything but reasonable. It started off nice-sounding -- "less government, more freedom" -- which is why I kept listening, but given enough time they always ended up essentially espousing anarcho-capitalism (even if they didn't call it that, though some did). At which point I can't help but laugh, as I would to anyone saying they were going to guarantee my freedom with "anarcho-" anything, because anarchy lasts exactly long enough for someone strong enough to impose their own rules which will always be in their own favor.
It also didn't help when they started talking about Ayn Rand, since I hadn't realized at the time that she was such an inspiration for certain branches of Libertarianism, but did think that The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were two of the most hateful books I'd ever had the displeasure of reading.
Anyway, since then, I've had discussions with reasonable libertarians, and I realize that my initial impression was in a way a stereotype, but that association has still lingered. Sadly the reasonable libertarians I've known haven't included any of the candidates for office that I've been aware of.
I say this as a political libertarian with social conservative sensibilities. The single biggest reason why libertarianism is going nowhere is because it's such an unfocused movement that grabs whatever liberty it can and that doesn't even pretend to have a higher vision than "I'll get mine." That turns off most voters.
Indeed. It very much seems to me that most libertarians always think from a point of view that assumes they will be in an advantageous position in this hypothetical libertarian utopia. When a libertarian argues that all or nearly all government regulation should be eliminated, including labor and wage laws, quality and safety laws, and virtually every statutory limitation on contracts, it's very hard to imagine who this would benefit except for the wealthy businessmen who feel stifled by these restrictions. It doesn't help that the most prominent libertarians are people who appear to be in such a position of power to have the advantage in future contract negotiations. For those of us who would be on the "we need a job so we can not die of starvation or exposure" end of the bargaining power scale, it doesn't look so hot, and the libertarians appear not to care at all.
So I'm interested on your take of the issue, since you seem to reject the "i'll get mine" philosophy that defines Randian Libertarianism. It's a sad fact that my first impression and most of my interactions with libertarians have been with the crazy anarcho-capitalist form. There are reasonable ones out there, I've talked to em. I want to hear what they think. :)
Even though under a libertarian system there'd be no corporate welfare at all (since there'd be a simple tax code and subsidizes would be outlawed in the constitution), their behavior gives normal, non-ideological people good reason to believe that a libertarian government would look like a plutocratic-kleptocratic oligarchy of rich people burdening the poor while enriching themselves
Even though there'd be no corporate welfare? We don't think a libertarian system would lead to a plutocracy because the government would be in the pocket of business, we think a libertarian system would lead to plutocracy because the government would, by design, be too weak to prevent it.
I wrote this here years ago, but it bears repeating: Libertarianism is the carrying out of fascism by other means. The one thing it precisely does not guarantee is liberty.
Ah, but those ten seconds of pure unadulterated anarcho-capitalism, before someone with power and money realizes that no rules means they get to make the rules, would be fucking sweet. =)
Service providin' ain't easy...
Hm, doesn't have the same ring to it.
since whether water will freeze or not is the main transition point in daily temperature.
Surely you meant whether carbon dioxide will freeze or not. Wait... what planet is this site hosted on?
I hear the octopus is quite smart, and could easily move around inside of cases. I wonder though, will this provoke cries of "fight octopus outsourcing now!" from the Slashdot crowd?
That depends... are these First World octopi who enjoy all the legal protection of modern democracies? Or are these exploited Chinese sweatshop octopi?