I seem to recall a talk about sulphur-eating archaea in a hydrothermal vent environment in which no evolution has taken place for millions of years, because they've apparently reached an optimal solution (local maximum anyway) in utilizing the resources in the simple and small environment.
Evolution only works (and takes place) if you can still do better. Otherwise, you get the "surprising continuation" aspect of life without the (further) evolution aspect.
Simplish version: A complex system, constructed and guided by a conserved information pattern, which acts so as to sustain itself (and by "itself" we mean a causally-connected sequence and/or group of instances of its constrained system pattern.)
Bafflegab-level Detail: A Matter/energy system which embodies/contains a particular (that is, constrained in variation) complex information pattern. When processed by the matter/energy system, the information pattern constructs instances of the system, and by constraining and guiding the form and function of the system, allows a collection of causally connected instances of the system, and the constrained information pattern, to persist in its environment significantly longer than the thermodynamics and forces in the region would allow by random chance. In other words, the particular form and function of the complex system, and the consequent particular and constrained interactions of the system and its environment, ensures unexpected continuation of the particular complex system pattern in an entropic environment that would, without counteracting function, rapidly break down the complex order of a system of similar complexity.
like what's causing the warming, and what the speed and essential content of response needs to be, should be decided by science, and then the results of that should be respected by political leadership.
Note that for the probability of impact to be 1 chance in 10,000, you have to be able to measure the relative position with an error less than about 100 Earth diameters.
Your error in the angle of approach of the asteroid, added to your error in Earth orbital position extrapolation, has to come to less than that amount. Very unlikely (impossible probably) to be that accurate years back from the possible collision.
So political decision making would fail to allocate sufficient funds and time for response.
The other problem is, with error bars, you probably don't know which direction to push the asteroid to be reducing the probability of impact rather than increasing it.
The real problem it seems to me is, how accurately can you predict the trajectory and the collision, 5 or 10 years out, or even a year out?
Would we spend the trillion-ish dollars to attempt to counter something that has according to calculations, say, a 1 in 10,000 chance of striking Earth in 5 years. Or say a 1 in 1 million chance. I'm guessing that the error bars might be at least that big.
Anyone know the facts on that math and measurement and extrapolation capabilities?
of energy production and use throughout sectors of economy to get us to global temperature only rising 1.5 degrees Celcius.
We need to be substantially off carbon at or shortly after mid-century, for everything. A little bit of remaining petrochemicals is fine, but other than that, off of the fossil carbon.
Thing is, it's well known that the neighborhood you moved into is the one with uniform design standards, exclusivity, quality control etc. It's also well known that freedom-lovers tend to move across the street, where anything goes.
So my analogy is fine, and one more thing.... get off my lawn!:-)
And I decide to let some of the neighbors sell their stuff too at my lawn sale, by renting a table, should I be able to decide which stuff they can sell there? Like. You can't sell those bicycles because I'm trying to sell mine. Or you can't sell edible, sharp-cornered kids toys. Or coffee mugs with stupid logos on them, because, well just because.
The general point is you are perfectly free to set up your own lawn sale in your yard if you don't like the conditions, and as a shopper, you can go to their yard, with all the sketchy stuff for sale, or my nice orderly yard.
You have free choice. You are not locked in to my yard.
Let me just send you a case of beer by self-driving beer truck https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and delivery drone so we can drink to that proposition.
Oh look at that, Google Tomorrow (next version of Google Now) already scheduled and ordered that on my behalf.
Net neutrality gone. Check. Pipe companies being TV megachannels. Check. Only thing that's left is to squeeze the upstart internet content providers (Youtube, Netflix) out.
Meanwhile, you'll be defiantly sitting out in the backyard on your broken down tractor's seat with a straw in your mouth shouting yeehah! while you wave the confederate flag and down contraband turpentine as you pretend in your mind to be cruising down the main street (well the only street really) of Lower Trump's Rump, Kentucky in search of painted trailer trash... In your dreams.
"We have a labor market characterized by churning -- continual job creation and destruction,"
That is OLD SCHOOL THINKING. No longer applicable.
That will no longer be true once AI and automated systems capabilities generally get better than the corresponding human ability. Example: There's a technology that is better now at detecting certain types of tumours in images than radiologists.
We have to change our analysis of future job prospects, and not just rely on "something else will come up for people to do."
There will be a cross-over point for each type of job when automated system will be better at it and more cost effective than a person. That will start happening to more and more job categories (or at least their most important tasks) faster and faster, as AI and automation continue their rapid advancement in capability.
Automation and AI are improving fast. People are not. Get used to it.
"Just think of the October announcement of the reexamination of the case and it being shut again two days later as a way to reinforce that this is a non-issue right before the election."
Are you kidding me?
Imagine tables reversed: FBI director has a press conference 11 days before the election and states "The FBI is reviewing allegations that Mr. Trump molested an under-age female."...and then two days later has a press conference saying "on further review, not enough evidence has been found to proceed with charges."
And you're telling me that wouldn't have been an election-killing attack on Trump?
That lead to the only appropriate response being "yeah, whatever" followed by "I'll just set up my research or company on a beautiful carribean island."
Obviously we have to move to the larger address space, but IPv6 was invented by those most dangerous of engineers, those who think they're f'ing clever because they can make something complex and have lots of options.
When making the most core standard imaginable, that's like, the stupidest thing you could possibly do.
Many original core internet standards were widely adopted because they were simple for people to understand and program to. 204.92.16.108 etc is an example of this.
So in short, the IPv6 transition was made way more messy that it should have been, because of fundamentally incompetent design of the new standard. Multiple ways of expressing addresses? Lots of special little address spaces reserved for this and that thing of the present day? Both of those are complete counterproductive bullshit. For example.
So was it a security? Or "gas" for a crypto-contract platform?
Was it a scam? Probably not.
How will government decide which tokens are securities vs some functional thing or (attempted) currency, e.g. what about stable coins?
Is it going to be arbitrary, with a few grandfathered lucky winners that got through before the regulations, or are the regulations going to be updated to handle the subtleties of the crypto-token economy? I mean bitcoins are tokens just as much as anything else is; that is, a unique and hard to forge bitstring with some external respresentational significance?
What should the principles and distinctions for regulation really be?
If GWB is smart, then he was evil as fnck! for attacking Iraq "because" of their (non-existent) role in 9/11 and "because" of their (fictitious) weapons of mass destruction. If he was smart enough to know the stuff he and his administration were spouting about all that in the lead-up to the war was pure lies from the get-go, then as I say he was a moral vacuum.
Firstly, tens of thousands of wind turbines seems easy. It's a well established technology and business, and cheaper per kWh than most other energy technologies. Wind and solar together, at scale, is slightly more effective, since the timing of their power generation often complements each other. If we were serious about eliminating the fossil fuel use in power generation, we would combine more wind and solar with pumped hydro storage, compressed air storage including possibly under-lake storage, and possibly a large central hydrogen electrolysis and storage facility. The later has poor round trip energy efficiency, but roughly, you just have to build twice as many wind turbines and solar farms as you were going to, and that's easy and cheap.
It's all doable. We just have to stop kicking out the governments that try moving in these directions, and stop electing the populist reactionary log-heads.
There's nothing more or less tyrannical about a carbon tax than any other tax. So what you're saying is "tax == tyranny at gunpoint". A radical extreme libertarian viewpoint, in other words.
Tax is how nation-state super-organisms collect and distribute resources for larger-than-the-individual functions. This allows the super-organism to behave in a hierarchically organized and energy efficient manner. Tax is somewhat analogous to blood circulation of nutrients in a body. You can argue what the appropriate rate of taxation is, but arguing against tax is just stupid and belies ignorance of how larger organised complex systems work. The main rule of thumb is: The organization configuration is stable if both the individual constituents and the larger whole (the organization meme) get benefits from their hierarchical relationship of semi-autonomous agents. Tax (collected usable energy resources) for co-ordination purposes is an inherent part of the logic of operation of stable hierarchical organization/co-ordination memes.
But they have to be high enough to start ratcheting down demand for fossil fuels and causing a switch to alternatives.
Government leaders need to have more brains and courage to implement that.
And populations need to be better educated (in systems thinking, how the dots connect, basic science and why it is more valid than random opinion) so that they begin choosing rational, well-informed, physically effective policy.
There are enough effective alternatives now for many applications that a carbon tax should no longer be punitive, if mixed with incentives to switch.
European-level carbon taxes would be a good starting point, but we have to go further than that. Sweden: USD $131/tonne, Switzerland $86, Norway $52
How many humans are employed in fulfilment and shipping across the whole retail economy, which Amazon is reported to be eating a large chunk of.
How many fewer people per $ value of goods shipped across that whole sector. That's a key metric.
Another one is what does the trend curve of employed people / $ value of goods shipped across the whole sector look like, over last 10 years, and projected next 10 or 20 years.
(I think the real solution is to give robots/AIs an income, so they can be the customers too.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to recall a talk about sulphur-eating archaea in a hydrothermal vent environment in which no evolution has taken place for millions of years, because they've apparently reached an optimal solution (local maximum anyway) in utilizing the resources in the simple and small environment.
Evolution only works (and takes place) if you can still do better. Otherwise, you get the "surprising continuation" aspect of life without the (further) evolution aspect.
Simplish version: A complex system, constructed and guided by a conserved information pattern, which acts so as to sustain itself (and by "itself" we mean a causally-connected sequence and/or group of instances of its constrained system pattern.)
Bafflegab-level Detail:
A Matter/energy system which embodies/contains a particular (that is, constrained in variation) complex information pattern. When processed by the matter/energy system, the information pattern constructs instances of the system, and by constraining and guiding the form and function of the system, allows a collection of causally connected instances of the system, and the constrained information pattern, to persist in its environment significantly longer than the thermodynamics and forces in the region would allow by random chance. In other words, the particular form and function of the complex system, and the consequent particular and constrained interactions of the system and its environment, ensures unexpected continuation of the particular complex system pattern in an entropic environment that would, without counteracting function, rapidly break down the complex order of a system of similar complexity.
like what's causing the warming, and what the speed and essential content of response needs to be,
should be decided by science,
and then the results of that should be respected by political leadership.
Oh what a wonderful world that would be....
"If the oil companies turn off the tap, people will die."
Oh, rubbish.
There are alternatives. If the tap-turning-off is managed and gradual, no one will die. What you said is pure propaganda.
who waste their life coming up with ways to fuck up other peoples' day by hacking their computer.
Pondscum basically. Or pathogenic bacteria. Take your pick. But such is life I guess.
That was my point.
Note that for the probability of impact to be 1 chance in 10,000, you have to be able to measure the relative position with an error less than about 100 Earth diameters.
Your error in the angle of approach of the asteroid, added to your error in Earth orbital position extrapolation, has to come to less than that amount. Very unlikely (impossible probably) to be that accurate years back from the possible collision.
So political decision making would fail to allocate sufficient funds and time for response.
The other problem is, with error bars, you probably don't know which direction to push the asteroid to be reducing the probability of impact rather than increasing it.
The real problem it seems to me is, how accurately can you predict the trajectory and the collision, 5 or 10 years out, or even a year out?
Would we spend the trillion-ish dollars to attempt to counter something that has according to calculations, say, a 1 in 10,000 chance of striking Earth in 5 years. Or say a 1 in 1 million chance. I'm guessing that the error bars might be at least that big.
Anyone know the facts on that math and measurement and extrapolation capabilities?
of energy production and use throughout sectors of economy to get us to global temperature only rising 1.5 degrees Celcius.
We need to be substantially off carbon at or shortly after mid-century, for everything. A little bit of remaining petrochemicals is fine, but other than that, off of the fossil carbon.
Thing is, it's well known that the neighborhood you moved into is the one with uniform design standards, exclusivity, quality control etc.
It's also well known that freedom-lovers tend to move across the street, where anything goes.
So my analogy is fine, and one more thing.... get off my lawn! :-)
And I decide to let some of the neighbors sell their stuff too at my lawn sale, by renting a table,
should I be able to decide which stuff they can sell there?
Like. You can't sell those bicycles because I'm trying to sell mine.
Or you can't sell edible, sharp-cornered kids toys.
Or coffee mugs with stupid logos on them, because, well just because.
The general point is you are perfectly free to set up your own lawn sale in your yard if you don't like the conditions,
and as a shopper, you can go to their yard, with all the sketchy stuff for sale, or my nice orderly yard.
You have free choice. You are not locked in to my yard.
https://www.samsung.com/us/mob...
close enough. Functionally equivalent. More open policy toward apps. Use at own risk.
But a clear, simple option.
IOS is an operating system. So is Android. You don't really care which one you use, as the user experience is similar.
Step 1.
Buy Android Phone:
Step 2. Go to one of:
Play Store
Aptoide.
ApkMirror.
Amazon Appstore.
GetJar.
SlideMe.
AppBrain.
F-Droid.
Mobogenie.
Let me just send you a case of beer by self-driving beer truck https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and delivery drone so we can drink to that proposition.
Oh look at that, Google Tomorrow (next version of Google Now) already scheduled and ordered that on my behalf.
in the US anyway.
Net neutrality gone. Check.
Pipe companies being TV megachannels. Check.
Only thing that's left is to squeeze the upstart internet content providers (Youtube, Netflix) out.
and raise you a:
Meanwhile, you'll be defiantly sitting out in the backyard on your broken down tractor's seat with a straw in your mouth shouting yeehah! while you wave the confederate flag and down contraband turpentine as you pretend in your mind to be cruising down the main street (well the only street really) of Lower Trump's Rump, Kentucky in search of painted trailer trash... In your dreams.
"We have a labor market characterized by churning -- continual job creation and destruction,"
That is OLD SCHOOL THINKING. No longer applicable.
That will no longer be true once AI and automated systems capabilities generally get better than the corresponding human ability.
Example: There's a technology that is better now at detecting certain types of tumours in images than radiologists.
We have to change our analysis of future job prospects, and not just rely on "something else will come up for people to do."
There will be a cross-over point for each type of job when automated system will be better at it and more cost effective than a person.
That will start happening to more and more job categories (or at least their most important tasks) faster and faster, as AI and automation continue their rapid advancement in capability.
Automation and AI are improving fast.
People are not.
Get used to it.
"Just think of the October announcement of the reexamination of the case and it being shut again two days later as a way to reinforce that this is a non-issue right before the election."
Are you kidding me?
Imagine tables reversed: ...and then two days later has a press conference saying "on further review, not enough evidence has been found to proceed with charges."
FBI director has a press conference 11 days before the election and states "The FBI is reviewing allegations that Mr. Trump molested an under-age female."
And you're telling me that wouldn't have been an election-killing attack on Trump?
Get real.
That lead to the only appropriate response being "yeah, whatever"
followed by "I'll just set up my research or company on a beautiful carribean island."
Obviously we have to move to the larger address space, but IPv6 was invented by those most dangerous of engineers, those who think they're f'ing clever because they can make something complex and have lots of options.
When making the most core standard imaginable, that's like, the stupidest thing you could possibly do.
Many original core internet standards were widely adopted because they were simple for people to understand and program to.
204.92.16.108 etc is an example of this.
So in short, the IPv6 transition was made way more messy that it should have been, because of fundamentally incompetent design of the new standard.
Multiple ways of expressing addresses? Lots of special little address spaces reserved for this and that thing of the present day? Both of those are complete counterproductive bullshit. For example.
Ether was introduced with an ICO.
So was it a security? Or "gas" for a crypto-contract platform?
Was it a scam? Probably not.
How will government decide which tokens are securities vs some functional thing or (attempted) currency, e.g. what about stable coins?
Is it going to be arbitrary, with a few grandfathered lucky winners that got through before the regulations, or are the regulations going to be updated to handle the subtleties of the crypto-token economy? I mean bitcoins are tokens just as much as anything else is; that is, a unique and hard to forge bitstring with some external respresentational significance?
What should the principles and distinctions for regulation really be?
If GWB is smart, then he was evil as fnck! for attacking Iraq "because" of their (non-existent) role in 9/11 and "because" of their (fictitious) weapons of mass destruction.
If he was smart enough to know the stuff he and his administration were spouting about all that in the lead-up to the war was pure lies from the get-go, then as I say he was a moral vacuum.
Perhaps (R != dumb) but (R == dumb | evil)
Firstly, tens of thousands of wind turbines seems easy. It's a well established technology and business, and cheaper per kWh than most other energy technologies.
Wind and solar together, at scale, is slightly more effective, since the timing of their power generation often complements each other.
If we were serious about eliminating the fossil fuel use in power generation, we would combine more wind and solar with pumped hydro storage, compressed air storage including possibly under-lake storage, and possibly a large central hydrogen electrolysis and storage facility. The later has poor round trip energy efficiency, but roughly, you just have to build twice as many wind turbines and solar farms as you were going to, and that's easy and cheap.
It's all doable. We just have to stop kicking out the governments that try moving in these directions, and stop electing the populist reactionary log-heads.
There's nothing more or less tyrannical about a carbon tax than any other tax.
So what you're saying is "tax == tyranny at gunpoint".
A radical extreme libertarian viewpoint, in other words.
Tax is how nation-state super-organisms collect and distribute resources for larger-than-the-individual functions. This allows the super-organism to behave in a hierarchically organized and energy efficient manner. Tax is somewhat analogous to blood circulation of nutrients in a body.
You can argue what the appropriate rate of taxation is, but arguing against tax is just stupid and belies ignorance of how larger organised complex systems work.
The main rule of thumb is: The organization configuration is stable if both the individual constituents and the larger whole (the organization meme) get benefits from their hierarchical relationship of semi-autonomous agents. Tax (collected usable energy resources) for co-ordination purposes is an inherent part of the logic of operation of stable hierarchical organization/co-ordination memes.
But they have to be high enough to start ratcheting down demand for fossil fuels and causing a switch to alternatives.
Government leaders need to have more brains and courage to implement that.
And populations need to be better educated (in systems thinking, how the dots connect, basic science and why it is more valid than random opinion) so that they begin choosing rational, well-informed, physically effective policy.
There are enough effective alternatives now for many applications that a carbon tax should no longer be punitive, if mixed with incentives to switch.
European-level carbon taxes would be a good starting point, but we have to go further than that. Sweden: USD $131/tonne, Switzerland $86, Norway $52
No but seriously, the key questions are:
How many humans are employed in fulfilment and shipping across the whole retail economy, which Amazon is reported to be eating a large chunk of.
How many fewer people per $ value of goods shipped across that whole sector. That's a key metric.
Another one is what does the trend curve of employed people / $ value of goods shipped across the whole sector look like, over last 10 years, and projected next 10 or 20 years.
(I think the real solution is to give robots/AIs an income, so they can be the customers too. :-)