Probably not. I imagine that like most states the state owns all natural bodies of water and x feet around them and such by law. It's supposed to justify fishing and pollution control policies or some such.
I'd add "The Wheel of Time" to this as well as any of the dungeons and dragons related fantasy like the dragonlance stuff. Terry Brooks should be good. Eragon. There is actually quite a bit in the fantasy category that would be fine for a younger audience.
Terry Goodkind is quite readable but involves graphic violence, repeated rape, and after a few books an obsessive right wing agenda. Personally I don't believe censorship is beneficial to children so its the last one I'd be concerned with.
"Why would we even give the AIs WE create any sort of drive to surpass us?"
It isn't an AI if we decide its opinions. An AI doesn't determine its course of action through per-determined programming. It is self programming and learning. At best we can attempt to guide it via environment and there is always a chance that it will learn to utilize data we didn't expect or in ways we didn't expect to change its environment. For instance, our own internal AI communicates with audio and visual feedback. If you give your AI these things (probable) it can probe that interface, finding things that we repeat. It can then begin to craft images and sounds that trigger reward pathways in our brains in the same manner that games do. Combining this it can spread ideas and images that trigger reward pathways. Now the AI is training us in much the same manner we train the AI or the way we train an animal or even another human.
Not likely anytime soon. We think of ourselves as individuals but actually our neurons are the individuals. We are like an island for neurons that gives them the ecosystem they need. A person is an emergence of a pocket of neurons in isolation. But as has been seen in brain/computer interface studies, those neurons will respond to and interact with anything they can given the chance not just the physical parts that are "you". Our neural pocket can interface fastest with the neurons in your head and directly connected nervous system but your neurons interface with the neurons in the bodies of other people as well via the audio and light interfaces that are vision and sound. From the perspective of an individual neuron, there really is no difference between a signal that was introduced by another neuron when you pricked your finger or one that was introduced by seeing something. Its all just patterns and IO. The only difference is the speed at which data is transmitted.
So when two people are interacting they are effectively a two unit single brain that is 200 billion neurons strong rather than 100 billion. If you kill one of them or severe the connection the result is no different than if you kill a large portion of your individual brain. The data stored in those neurons is gone. The two units are not unlike the groupings of neurons within our brains. Three people and it scales to 300 billion neurons. According to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population there are about 7.021 billion people, each with 100 billion neurons. Thanks to the internet we've developed a literally light speed interface to many of those other pockets of neurons, effectively forming one hell of a giant brain. That brain is persistent. While individual units wither and die the collective brain does not. It just grows smarter over time.
For AI to beat mankind it would have to be smarter than the collective giant brain not the individual one. That said, I doubt we are going to manage to develop and AI that isn't based on units that detect patterns in and learn to interface with their environment in a similar manner to our own neurons. At that point, the AI is PART of our collective brain.
We shouldn't be watching skynet or HAL we should be watching the borg. But just like I don't see any especial reason AI is more likely to be evil than a human intelligence I see no reason for the units to be robotic like the borg. You can't learn much without interaction and at the core of interaction is creativity and expression.
"First off all there is no reason to make a computer that might decide it does not want to do whatever it is you ask it do."
The ability to decide what one wants to do rather than what you are asked/told to do is pretty much the true definition of intelligence. There really isn't much practical reason to make an AI but that doesn't mean someone won't do it. There also is SOME practical purpose. If you want something that can dynamically solve problems for which we haven't mapped out an algorithm yet an intelligence is what you need. Of course, if you need a massive self scoring neural net to solve your problems, humans are 100 billion unit walking neural nets and fairly plentiful and cheap.
That said there is no particular reason to fear the AI any more than you'd fear other humans. The AI would just be a large self scoring neural net and that is all humans are. Granted, it would probably be coolest if given links to other neural nets and allowed to form neural connections around those links to effectively form a giant neural net. But that is all humans are. Neural nets with audio/light interfaces to one another.
I've got a self scoring and self organizing neural net that disagrees.Recognizes patterns and shapes, basic maths, and at some point it gets bored and stops doing what I tell it to. When it gets bored with the lack of stimulation it goes back to paying attention. Granted it isn't human level but its only 50k neurons not 100 billion.
AI assessor, debugger, and maintainer. Seems like a safe bet. When the AI is good enough to assess, debug, and maintain AI, you have a natural shift to AI assessing ai assessor, debugger, and maintainer. Rinse and repeat.
Okay, one down. Lets all band together and work out how to solve technical challenges of enforcing bad drug laws so we can penalize more innocent citizens!
Me. Preposterous example to illustrate why rape can't be defined as a technical violation of consent. Failing to pay prostitute would be rape if we used that logic.
You. Failing to pay prostitute would be technical violation of consent and therefore rape. Sorry champ, you lose. Go me and my awesome debate skillz!
A common punishment for rape would be 10 years or more being beaten and sexually violated in a prison. When you get out you are never employable again and generally go on a sex offender list so that for the rest of the your life all your neighbors will know what you did, 10, 20, 40 years ago. That punishment might make sense for a violent attack that did severe physical and/or psychological damage to the victim as is required to constitute rape under the standard I am specifying. Which part of not paying a hooker is the crime which is fit by that punishment?
"And what do you call it, when your penis is inside of her, against her will?"
A contract violation and not worthy of any greater punishment than any other debt not paid. Indeed she has grounds to sue. If she had a better lobby she could buy a theft of service law otherwise it would be a civil thing.
The hooker doesn't get retroactively traumatized when you fail to pay her after. Rape is about her state of mind during the experience and the trauma caused by it, not technicalities regarding consent terms. I'd find it more convincing if one made the argument that you were raping the hooker because she isn't likely to want the interaction and therefore is suffering that trauma despite any payment agreement even if that agreement is honored. Of course, the fact that she volunteered for the experience would generally absolve one from criminal wrongdoing as it should in any case where the victim volunteers to be victimized.
"It's a passive versus active thing, and it's not the decision to become intoxicated but the decision to drive."
After you are intoxicated your judgement is compromised. That is why it is considered rape to have sex with an intoxicated female, even if she consents. As I've stated before, I disagree with this. The only 'harm' done to a female in a rape is the lasting mental trauma of the experience. If she didn't experience trauma because she was passed out or because she was willing when it happened there is no harm. At least no more harm than is left when a female regrets sleeping with anyone after the fact. If there were dangerous STD's involved that is a different sort of harm and pregnancy isn't considered harm and imposes its own consequences to both parties.
"What you are suggesting is akin to claiming that if you make the decision to walk down a dark alley then the 'entirely predictable' result of being mugged is your fault."
There is a big difference. Mugging someone is an innately harmful criminal act regardless of circumstances. You are threatening to hurt them, maybe following through, you are stealing from them. If I place myself in the dark alley then yes, I am personally responsible for what happened to me. I can't make all the muggers in the world disappear but I can avoid making myself an easy target. The power to solve the problem is mine and therefore I have the responsibility. But my responsibility doesn't alleviate the responsibility of the mugger for his own actions. Sex is different than mugging because it is not an innately criminal or harmful act. Having sex with someone doesn't damage them. The damage in a rape is the mental trauma of enduring the experience. If you weren't unwilling in a way that resulted in that trauma you might not have technically been consenting, but you weren't harmed either.
How does saying something is covered under Swedish law support an argument against a stance that Swedish law is ridiculous? By definition, it has to be covered under Swedish law in order to be a ridiculous charge! Rape existed before Swedish law. Swedish law incorrectly defining rape makes Swedish law wrong, it does not make the thing rape. If the law calls something other than forcing yourself on a member of the other gender rape the law is wrong.
Was she unwilling to a degree that the sex act was a horrible physical and mental assault permanently marking her psyche and shattering her as a person? No? Then consent was given. It isn't a contract with tricky terms. Don't demean actual rape victims by grouping people who misplaced trust in sex partners with them. Not using a condom, continuing after one breaks, lying to her about herpes/crabs, anything else that is a typical act for pretty much every horny male in the world at some point. Those aren't rape or even criminal.
In the same way don't demean little boys who were forcibly analy penetrated by adults by grouping someone laying on a bed rubbing their penis against a girl in an intimate setting under the heading of "molestation"
You can't be in bed with someone you've had sex with in a non-sexual manner and pressing your penis against someone is not molestation if that person is laying in bed with you and continues doing so. It's an advance, it might be an unwelcome advance but that isn't criminal.
"To be more specific, it's that the girl insisted he wear one but he didn't. Thereby violating the conditions on which her consent to sex rested."
Ludicrous was right. There was no exaggeration there. Sorry that is grounds to consider him an ass not rape. Rape isn't a sexual consent contract violation its a brutal physical and mental attack on an unwilling party. The GP was right, this kind of thing demeans real rape victims.
This stuff isn't criminal by any sane measure and if it were it would be on par with jaywalking. What next, it becomes rape to misrepresent marital and financial status to get a woman to sleep with you? It becomes rape to misrepresent anything because her consent was given under false terms? Rape is not some personal responsibility scapegoat for women. If it's important he not wear a condom you actually make sure he is wearing one. If its important to you to not have unanticipated results that fall within a reasonable expectation of what could happen when getting drunk at a party with friends then don't get drunk at the party. Why is a drunk driver responsible for the outcome of their choice to become intoxicated but a woman is not? Sorry, if you got gangbanged at the frat house after you got wasted on jello shots and passed out on the couch, you shouldn't be blaming frat boys. You should be owning the completely foreseeable consequences of your irresponsible acts.
When the woman wanted to have sex with him but only with a condom but didn't care enough to enforce that beyond the honor system. In your mind that constitutes the cruel and vicious physical attack that is rape? I'm sorry but there is no set of circumstances under which the woman wants to be penetrated and it is still rape. There are few where she could find out something later that is a different crime for instance if the man had a life threatening STD but it doesn't magically become rape as well. Actual rape is a vicious crime on par with attempted murder. There are real rape victims out there and this demeans them.
You can't rape by technicality. Rape isn't about a technical contract of consent it's about physically forcing yourself on to an unwilling sex partner. If you knowingly force yourself on an unwilling partner as a condition of doing something for them or not telling their partner about an affair or some other terms THAT is rape.
"Continuing to have sex with someone after they express their unwillingness, however, can be a crime (and might be classified as "rape")."
She consented on the condition that he use a condom, the condom broke without her knowledge, he finished anyway. That might make him an asshole and certainly invites the karmic punishment of an unwanted pregnancy but it isn't criminal and it certainly isn't rape. I'm fairly sure it wouldn't be rape in the UK. If Nigeria (random choice, sorry Nigerians) outlaws opening doors and calls the charge "murder" does that mean they can expect the UK to extradite all suspected but not charged door opening murderers immediately?
Rape is non-consensual intercourse, not sexual activity. Rape is a violent physical assault against someone who does not want the physical contact. Please do not trivialize rape to include terms and conditions.
Now if the girl saw the lack of condom and withdrew consent and he forced himself on her anyway then it becomes a physical and mental assault. You can't retroactively rewind and turn pleasurable consenting sex into rape because you find out someone misrepresented a detail after the fact. It might make them a bad person, it might be grounds to dump them, or in the case of an STD it might be another sort of crime. But it is not rape.
"issues her consent with conditions, and you don't adhere to those conditions, she has a legitimate complaint"
She certainly has a legitimate complaint. Rape just isn't it. Rape is a violent and devastating act that leaves permanent mental scars on the victim. The penalties for that act are set accordingly and do not fit the trivial sort of circumstances you suggest redefining rape to include. The worst that happens from wearing a condom without permission is a baby and deceit or no that is the fault of the groupie who has sex with strangers and leaves them wearing a condom to the honor system just as much as it is the fault of the guy who didn't wear it. That is why we have child support payment.
And you would point him back at the hundreds of devices already on the market to enhance hearing for hunters. You are just making a better design. If you don't sell it for medical use it doesn't fall within FDA jurisdiction. Thousands of products are sold this way every day. There is a reason the DEA enacted a special ban to outlaw synthetic marijuana. Because it was sold as incense and marked not fit for human consumption the FDA had no jurisdiction and can't touch them.
"Except for the fact that still would be class I regulated medical devices, subject to quite extensive government regulation (and a new medical devices tax under Obamacare, if the Supreme Court does not overturn it)"
The units sold for hearing enhancement among hunters are not class 1 regulated medical devices. If you don't package it as a medical device it doesn't matter if everyone knows its a medical device and uses it as such. See the entire herbal supplement industry and the synthetic THC incense industry. Unless you claim it has a medical use or its for human consumption it doesn't fall within the jurisdiction of the FDA.
Obviously this would only cover standard hearing aids. The idea is to replace the audiologist for those who can't afford to pay $3000 for $5 worth of electronics, not to replace the audiologist altogether.
Lets try this again. End user downloads software, self administers test, programs generic programmable hearing aid, picks a comfortable rubber socket to match their ear from the pack. It is perfectly legal to self diagnose and self administer medicine.
"And any decent optometrist will tell you the machine gives simplistic results."
Yes they all say that. Of course there aren't very many of them that can afford that expensive machine. I suspect it might be a matter of sampling rate and quality optics just like it is with Lasik equipment. It's doubtful many practices are likely to be able to afford to spend an extra million to get a slightly better result that might be 99% achievable with hand tuning but the military can and would.
When you get to the fine tuning stage its just too damn difficult to tell which is better. Patients can't objectively determine and make a subjective determination. There is nothing subjective about focusing light. It isn't a preference. If there is an objective way to measure your focus it should just be a question of the resolution of that measurement.
Machine aside, you could have a machine that flipped the lenses using the same system the doctor is doing and asking the same questions and it would yield the same result. It's a systematic process with the only needed variable being the patient response. The hearing test is much the same.
If you have insurance that will pay $3000 an ear then by all means go the traditional route. But a hearing aid an external device and the ear is no more complicated than the foot in fact it is far less complicated. If we can have an automated system that gives a quick test and uses it to tune a programmable hearing aid (or pair) for $50-100 for those who don't have insurance like we do footpads then what is the harm? It can't hurt you any more than ear bud headphones and an mp3 player can.
There are procedures that are mostly automated but are dangerous and need to stay in the hands of a professional. I've had Lasik. The doctor presses the yes to confirm a few times and the machine does the rest. It (it being a machine, not the same machine) targets and attaches the eye and cuts the flap with a laser, it maps the surface of the eye, it produces the target waveform, it lasers one into the other. The only thing the doctor really does is use a wet brush to lift the flap that the machine cut for the laser and lower it afterward. You could teach a high school kid to do all this in a few weeks. Would I support doing that? Hell no. Are you kidding, that's my damn eye! I've been in that chair and smelled that laser carving my eye.
They want to prosecute him for rape because he allegedly banged a groupie without a condom. Any sane person would avoid prosecution for that, "guilty" or otherwise. No sane person would consider that a criminal act.
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Probably not. I imagine that like most states the state owns all natural bodies of water and x feet around them and such by law. It's supposed to justify fishing and pollution control policies or some such.
I'd add "The Wheel of Time" to this as well as any of the dungeons and dragons related fantasy like the dragonlance stuff. Terry Brooks should be good. Eragon. There is actually quite a bit in the fantasy category that would be fine for a younger audience.
Terry Goodkind is quite readable but involves graphic violence, repeated rape, and after a few books an obsessive right wing agenda. Personally I don't believe censorship is beneficial to children so its the last one I'd be concerned with.
The poster asked for sci fi/fantasy. Clearly you don't like Fantasy but that is off topic.
"Why would we even give the AIs WE create any sort of drive to surpass us?"
It isn't an AI if we decide its opinions. An AI doesn't determine its course of action through per-determined programming. It is self programming and learning. At best we can attempt to guide it via environment and there is always a chance that it will learn to utilize data we didn't expect or in ways we didn't expect to change its environment. For instance, our own internal AI communicates with audio and visual feedback. If you give your AI these things (probable) it can probe that interface, finding things that we repeat. It can then begin to craft images and sounds that trigger reward pathways in our brains in the same manner that games do. Combining this it can spread ideas and images that trigger reward pathways. Now the AI is training us in much the same manner we train the AI or the way we train an animal or even another human.
Not likely anytime soon. We think of ourselves as individuals but actually our neurons are the individuals. We are like an island for neurons that gives them the ecosystem they need. A person is an emergence of a pocket of neurons in isolation. But as has been seen in brain/computer interface studies, those neurons will respond to and interact with anything they can given the chance not just the physical parts that are "you". Our neural pocket can interface fastest with the neurons in your head and directly connected nervous system but your neurons interface with the neurons in the bodies of other people as well via the audio and light interfaces that are vision and sound. From the perspective of an individual neuron, there really is no difference between a signal that was introduced by another neuron when you pricked your finger or one that was introduced by seeing something. Its all just patterns and IO. The only difference is the speed at which data is transmitted.
So when two people are interacting they are effectively a two unit single brain that is 200 billion neurons strong rather than 100 billion. If you kill one of them or severe the connection the result is no different than if you kill a large portion of your individual brain. The data stored in those neurons is gone. The two units are not unlike the groupings of neurons within our brains. Three people and it scales to 300 billion neurons. According to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population there are about 7.021 billion people, each with 100 billion neurons. Thanks to the internet we've developed a literally light speed interface to many of those other pockets of neurons, effectively forming one hell of a giant brain. That brain is persistent. While individual units wither and die the collective brain does not. It just grows smarter over time.
For AI to beat mankind it would have to be smarter than the collective giant brain not the individual one. That said, I doubt we are going to manage to develop and AI that isn't based on units that detect patterns in and learn to interface with their environment in a similar manner to our own neurons. At that point, the AI is PART of our collective brain.
We shouldn't be watching skynet or HAL we should be watching the borg. But just like I don't see any especial reason AI is more likely to be evil than a human intelligence I see no reason for the units to be robotic like the borg. You can't learn much without interaction and at the core of interaction is creativity and expression.
"First off all there is no reason to make a computer that might decide it does not want to do whatever it is you ask it do."
The ability to decide what one wants to do rather than what you are asked/told to do is pretty much the true definition of intelligence. There really isn't much practical reason to make an AI but that doesn't mean someone won't do it. There also is SOME practical purpose. If you want something that can dynamically solve problems for which we haven't mapped out an algorithm yet an intelligence is what you need. Of course, if you need a massive self scoring neural net to solve your problems, humans are 100 billion unit walking neural nets and fairly plentiful and cheap.
That said there is no particular reason to fear the AI any more than you'd fear other humans. The AI would just be a large self scoring neural net and that is all humans are. Granted, it would probably be coolest if given links to other neural nets and allowed to form neural connections around those links to effectively form a giant neural net. But that is all humans are. Neural nets with audio/light interfaces to one another.
I've got a self scoring and self organizing neural net that disagrees.Recognizes patterns and shapes, basic maths, and at some point it gets bored and stops doing what I tell it to. When it gets bored with the lack of stimulation it goes back to paying attention. Granted it isn't human level but its only 50k neurons not 100 billion.
Give it time.
AI assessor, debugger, and maintainer. Seems like a safe bet. When the AI is good enough to assess, debug, and maintain AI, you have a natural shift to AI assessing ai assessor, debugger, and maintainer. Rinse and repeat.
Okay, one down. Lets all band together and work out how to solve technical challenges of enforcing bad drug laws so we can penalize more innocent citizens!
Me. Preposterous example to illustrate why rape can't be defined as a technical violation of consent. Failing to pay prostitute would be rape if we used that logic.
You. Failing to pay prostitute would be technical violation of consent and therefore rape. Sorry champ, you lose. Go me and my awesome debate skillz!
A common punishment for rape would be 10 years or more being beaten and sexually violated in a prison. When you get out you are never employable again and generally go on a sex offender list so that for the rest of the your life all your neighbors will know what you did, 10, 20, 40 years ago. That punishment might make sense for a violent attack that did severe physical and/or psychological damage to the victim as is required to constitute rape under the standard I am specifying. Which part of not paying a hooker is the crime which is fit by that punishment?
"And what do you call it, when your penis is inside of her, against her will?"
A contract violation and not worthy of any greater punishment than any other debt not paid. Indeed she has grounds to sue. If she had a better lobby she could buy a theft of service law otherwise it would be a civil thing.
The hooker doesn't get retroactively traumatized when you fail to pay her after. Rape is about her state of mind during the experience and the trauma caused by it, not technicalities regarding consent terms. I'd find it more convincing if one made the argument that you were raping the hooker because she isn't likely to want the interaction and therefore is suffering that trauma despite any payment agreement even if that agreement is honored. Of course, the fact that she volunteered for the experience would generally absolve one from criminal wrongdoing as it should in any case where the victim volunteers to be victimized.
"It's a passive versus active thing, and it's not the decision to become intoxicated but the decision to drive."
After you are intoxicated your judgement is compromised. That is why it is considered rape to have sex with an intoxicated female, even if she consents. As I've stated before, I disagree with this. The only 'harm' done to a female in a rape is the lasting mental trauma of the experience. If she didn't experience trauma because she was passed out or because she was willing when it happened there is no harm. At least no more harm than is left when a female regrets sleeping with anyone after the fact. If there were dangerous STD's involved that is a different sort of harm and pregnancy isn't considered harm and imposes its own consequences to both parties.
"What you are suggesting is akin to claiming that if you make the decision to walk down a dark alley then the 'entirely predictable' result of being mugged is your fault."
There is a big difference. Mugging someone is an innately harmful criminal act regardless of circumstances. You are threatening to hurt them, maybe following through, you are stealing from them. If I place myself in the dark alley then yes, I am personally responsible for what happened to me. I can't make all the muggers in the world disappear but I can avoid making myself an easy target. The power to solve the problem is mine and therefore I have the responsibility. But my responsibility doesn't alleviate the responsibility of the mugger for his own actions. Sex is different than mugging because it is not an innately criminal or harmful act. Having sex with someone doesn't damage them. The damage in a rape is the mental trauma of enduring the experience. If you weren't unwilling in a way that resulted in that trauma you might not have technically been consenting, but you weren't harmed either.
How does saying something is covered under Swedish law support an argument against a stance that Swedish law is ridiculous? By definition, it has to be covered under Swedish law in order to be a ridiculous charge! Rape existed before Swedish law. Swedish law incorrectly defining rape makes Swedish law wrong, it does not make the thing rape. If the law calls something other than forcing yourself on a member of the other gender rape the law is wrong.
Next up, ripping off a prostitute is rape!
Was she unwilling to a degree that the sex act was a horrible physical and mental assault permanently marking her psyche and shattering her as a person? No? Then consent was given. It isn't a contract with tricky terms. Don't demean actual rape victims by grouping people who misplaced trust in sex partners with them. Not using a condom, continuing after one breaks, lying to her about herpes/crabs, anything else that is a typical act for pretty much every horny male in the world at some point. Those aren't rape or even criminal.
In the same way don't demean little boys who were forcibly analy penetrated by adults by grouping someone laying on a bed rubbing their penis against a girl in an intimate setting under the heading of "molestation"
In most places that would be called foreplay.
You can't be in bed with someone you've had sex with in a non-sexual manner and pressing your penis against someone is not molestation if that person is laying in bed with you and continues doing so. It's an advance, it might be an unwelcome advance but that isn't criminal.
"To be more specific, it's that the girl insisted he wear one but he didn't. Thereby violating the conditions on which her consent to sex rested."
Ludicrous was right. There was no exaggeration there. Sorry that is grounds to consider him an ass not rape. Rape isn't a sexual consent contract violation its a brutal physical and mental attack on an unwilling party. The GP was right, this kind of thing demeans real rape victims.
This stuff isn't criminal by any sane measure and if it were it would be on par with jaywalking. What next, it becomes rape to misrepresent marital and financial status to get a woman to sleep with you? It becomes rape to misrepresent anything because her consent was given under false terms? Rape is not some personal responsibility scapegoat for women. If it's important he not wear a condom you actually make sure he is wearing one. If its important to you to not have unanticipated results that fall within a reasonable expectation of what could happen when getting drunk at a party with friends then don't get drunk at the party. Why is a drunk driver responsible for the outcome of their choice to become intoxicated but a woman is not? Sorry, if you got gangbanged at the frat house after you got wasted on jello shots and passed out on the couch, you shouldn't be blaming frat boys. You should be owning the completely foreseeable consequences of your irresponsible acts.
When the woman wanted to have sex with him but only with a condom but didn't care enough to enforce that beyond the honor system. In your mind that constitutes the cruel and vicious physical attack that is rape? I'm sorry but there is no set of circumstances under which the woman wants to be penetrated and it is still rape. There are few where she could find out something later that is a different crime for instance if the man had a life threatening STD but it doesn't magically become rape as well. Actual rape is a vicious crime on par with attempted murder. There are real rape victims out there and this demeans them.
You can't rape by technicality. Rape isn't about a technical contract of consent it's about physically forcing yourself on to an unwilling sex partner. If you knowingly force yourself on an unwilling partner as a condition of doing something for them or not telling their partner about an affair or some other terms THAT is rape.
"Continuing to have sex with someone after they express their unwillingness, however, can be a crime (and might be classified as "rape")."
She consented on the condition that he use a condom, the condom broke without her knowledge, he finished anyway. That might make him an asshole and certainly invites the karmic punishment of an unwanted pregnancy but it isn't criminal and it certainly isn't rape. I'm fairly sure it wouldn't be rape in the UK. If Nigeria (random choice, sorry Nigerians) outlaws opening doors and calls the charge "murder" does that mean they can expect the UK to extradite all suspected but not charged door opening murderers immediately?
Rape is non-consensual intercourse, not sexual activity. Rape is a violent physical assault against someone who does not want the physical contact. Please do not trivialize rape to include terms and conditions.
Now if the girl saw the lack of condom and withdrew consent and he forced himself on her anyway then it becomes a physical and mental assault. You can't retroactively rewind and turn pleasurable consenting sex into rape because you find out someone misrepresented a detail after the fact. It might make them a bad person, it might be grounds to dump them, or in the case of an STD it might be another sort of crime. But it is not rape.
"issues her consent with conditions, and you don't adhere to those conditions, she has a legitimate complaint"
She certainly has a legitimate complaint. Rape just isn't it. Rape is a violent and devastating act that leaves permanent mental scars on the victim. The penalties for that act are set accordingly and do not fit the trivial sort of circumstances you suggest redefining rape to include. The worst that happens from wearing a condom without permission is a baby and deceit or no that is the fault of the groupie who has sex with strangers and leaves them wearing a condom to the honor system just as much as it is the fault of the guy who didn't wear it. That is why we have child support payment.
And you would point him back at the hundreds of devices already on the market to enhance hearing for hunters. You are just making a better design. If you don't sell it for medical use it doesn't fall within FDA jurisdiction. Thousands of products are sold this way every day. There is a reason the DEA enacted a special ban to outlaw synthetic marijuana. Because it was sold as incense and marked not fit for human consumption the FDA had no jurisdiction and can't touch them.
"Except for the fact that still would be class I regulated medical devices, subject to quite extensive government regulation (and a new medical devices tax under Obamacare, if the Supreme Court does not overturn it)"
The units sold for hearing enhancement among hunters are not class 1 regulated medical devices. If you don't package it as a medical device it doesn't matter if everyone knows its a medical device and uses it as such. See the entire herbal supplement industry and the synthetic THC incense industry. Unless you claim it has a medical use or its for human consumption it doesn't fall within the jurisdiction of the FDA.
Obviously this would only cover standard hearing aids. The idea is to replace the audiologist for those who can't afford to pay $3000 for $5 worth of electronics, not to replace the audiologist altogether.
Huh? Why would you be testing someone else?
Lets try this again. End user downloads software, self administers test, programs generic programmable hearing aid, picks a comfortable rubber socket to match their ear from the pack. It is perfectly legal to self diagnose and self administer medicine.
"And any decent optometrist will tell you the machine gives simplistic results."
Yes they all say that. Of course there aren't very many of them that can afford that expensive machine. I suspect it might be a matter of sampling rate and quality optics just like it is with Lasik equipment. It's doubtful many practices are likely to be able to afford to spend an extra million to get a slightly better result that might be 99% achievable with hand tuning but the military can and would.
When you get to the fine tuning stage its just too damn difficult to tell which is better. Patients can't objectively determine and make a subjective determination. There is nothing subjective about focusing light. It isn't a preference. If there is an objective way to measure your focus it should just be a question of the resolution of that measurement.
Machine aside, you could have a machine that flipped the lenses using the same system the doctor is doing and asking the same questions and it would yield the same result. It's a systematic process with the only needed variable being the patient response. The hearing test is much the same.
If you have insurance that will pay $3000 an ear then by all means go the traditional route. But a hearing aid an external device and the ear is no more complicated than the foot in fact it is far less complicated. If we can have an automated system that gives a quick test and uses it to tune a programmable hearing aid (or pair) for $50-100 for those who don't have insurance like we do footpads then what is the harm? It can't hurt you any more than ear bud headphones and an mp3 player can.
There are procedures that are mostly automated but are dangerous and need to stay in the hands of a professional. I've had Lasik. The doctor presses the yes to confirm a few times and the machine does the rest. It (it being a machine, not the same machine) targets and attaches the eye and cuts the flap with a laser, it maps the surface of the eye, it produces the target waveform, it lasers one into the other. The only thing the doctor really does is use a wet brush to lift the flap that the machine cut for the laser and lower it afterward. You could teach a high school kid to do all this in a few weeks. Would I support doing that? Hell no. Are you kidding, that's my damn eye! I've been in that chair and smelled that laser carving my eye.
They want to prosecute him for rape because he allegedly banged a groupie without a condom. Any sane person would avoid prosecution for that, "guilty" or otherwise. No sane person would consider that a criminal act.