Parking is the biggest issue. When you go downtown, you can't find a parking spot. But that's not an issue with self driving cars, you just tell it to circle the block at low speed for 4 hours while you're in the mall. Now imagine everyone doing that downtown.
Yes, because the autonomous vehicles will generate their own power and have parts that never wear out. With all of those slow moving vehicles circling around, how will regular traffic get through?
By platooning, SDCs can drive much closer together than HDCs, and they also help to smooth out the "accordion effect" in stop-and-go traffic. It is unlikely that they will increase congestion. It is far more likely that they will help relieve congestion.
Large fixed-route public buses will be replaced by small self-driving vans, with flexible on-demand routing. As public transit becomes faster and more convenient, more people will use it, reducing congestion even more.
I wonder why the transportation researchers interviewed in the linked article didn't think of that? Or maybe they did and their research shows that platooning won't be enough to offset the problem?
As for replacing buses, with on demand cars, who will purchase those vehicles? The people who ride busses? They could purchase cars today, but don't. The government? Well, that would be one way to subsidize the auto industry -- replace one bus carrying 50 people with 50 vehicles carrying one person. But again, that model is already in existence. It's called a cab or uber if available in your area.
There is faster, more convenient and cost effective. It's likely you can't have all three of those for public transit.
There were no commercial airlines on September 12, 2001.
Assuming you mean in the US, there were as many commercial airlines that day as on Sept 11, 2001. They might have not had planes in the sky, but they were still commercial airlines.
Isn't this just censorship? Banning ads that are misleading or otherwise harmful would be fine. Banning all ads for any company in a certain industry seems a bit draconian, particulary when M$oft sells services in those same fields.
Maybe a better solution would be to fix Windows, so somebody doesn't compromise their machine by inadvertantly clicking on a link that could do harm. We are on the verge of having cars smart enough to drive themselves. Surely AI has come far enough to determine that what you are trying to do may hurt your computer.
There is no doubt that drones could do many things more efficiently, which would add to the corporate bottom line. However that $127B is predominately paid out to human beings as workers. While it would first appear that the change to the economy is $0, the wages paid out no longer go to the workers, but instead the shareholders. However, the workers use those wages to purchase goods and services that the shareholders typically don't
Normally, it is figured in economics that wages paid to workers are multiplied seven times through the purchase of goods and services. Therefore, that $127B savings for the companies and transfer to the shareholder has an $889B decrease in purchases, thus causing potential economic contraction.
In short, replacing workers with drones, can boost short term profits, but will erode the purchasing power of the middle class ultimately causing long term decline. (This isn't new to drones, it has happened in other areas, but then there were ample jobs for the displaced workers to go to. It is happening now, in similar fashion, with offshoring)
Most people in America know how to write, but that does not make them novelists. Many know how to use a hammer and a saw, but that does not make them a carpenter. Likewise, knowing how to code does not make one a programmer, nor will it guarantee success in life.
With this push on programming, we will simply turn what was once a respectable profession held by those with a real aptitude into the next classification of menial labor. That might be good for business, but not for the individual if they are trying to support a family.
I'm not saying that people should avoid learning to program. However, it isn't the solution for future success like it is being portrayed. Besides, regardless of what programming is taught to the masses, it will be outdated before their studies are completed.
Hybrids are readily available, but they aren't mainstream. Sure, people can purchase them, but the cost and performance differentials keep many from doing so. Likewise, cars that can automatically brake or self-park have been available for some time, but people don't buy vehicles for that feature, its more of a perk. Even with wide available, it will be decades before cars with these features are in the majority or mainstream. The same will be true of autonomous vehicles. They will be available, but they won't be mainstream. And, by the time they are mainstream, there will be some other newer/better technology available.
Finally, the push for autonomous vehicles is predominately American thing. Most of the world doesn't drive like the USA does. Most of the world's first world countries dealt with the issue that autonomous vehicles are meant to solve with mass transit programs. More cars, whether self driving or not on the streets of London or Paris won't help things there. Third world countries won't have the capital to spend on such vehicles. So who is left? The US. There is no doubt that there will be a market in the US for autonomous vehicles. The question is whether or not it will be sustainable for manufacturers to have enough ROI to keep shareholders happy. After all, we can talk all we want about the coolness of such vehicles or the safety they may or may not have, but ultimately, it is the bottom line that will dictate whether or not this new mode of transportation replaces the old.
So the question really is about whether or not the US can produce enough of these vehicles at a low enough selling price to entice enough purchasers so the market is profitable and sustainable. If the answer is no, or at least not at a low enough price point, then these vehicles will be something for the upper echelon of society, which may still be a profitable segment, but would not make them mainstream.
Either from a technology perspective or an economic one, it does not appear likely that autonomous vehicles will be mainstream -- at least not without government intervention to subsidize the costs either in manufacturing or purchasing. The question then becomes whether or not there is enough market in the US and at what price point, for autonomous vehicles to be more than just a niche?
This is all extremely interesting. Could you work up a similar pro/con for the efforts to forgo Mars or Venus and colonize the ocean shelf? It would seem to me to be more feasible. It doesn't protect from a massive meteor or comet strike, but then that possibility exists, regardless the planet. In short, I am asking, if we have messed up the surface of the planet and need to seek habitation elsewhere, would undersea be a more viable and simpler solution?
If people aren't interested in fixing this planet, there's not much hope that they'll do better on Mars or Venus.
The purpose of going to Mars isn't about survival of the species. Mars is far more dangerous to life than what we have caused on this planet. No, the purpose of going to Mars is to be able to exploit any resources that planet may have. Having a colony there is to get public buy-in.
Then we started to turn the clouds sulphuric and potentially initiated runaway greenhouse effects which started to turn it into an inhospitable barren desert with un-survivable atmospheric heat.
Or was that Venus again, I forget?
It would be far easier to colonize the oceans on this planet than the surface of Mars.
How is that anything more complicated than merely providing additional training data? I'm assuming that all self-driving cars will involve machine learning, no?
You know, the railroads have a saying that the rule book is written in blood, meaning for every rule in it, there was an accident caused the change. Wouldn't autonomous vehicles be the same thing? After all, they are assumed safe until they aren't in which case, there is an update to the system.
Look, these cars are being developed by engineers in an industry that looks at risk in terms of the cost of a lawsuit versus the cost of doing something in a different way. The more safe a vehicle is, the more costly it is, so there has to be a trade off if it is going to be affordable.
Simple case, a non autonomous vehicle is coming down the wrong side of the road, does your autonomous vehicle go to the left or to the right to try and avoid it? At best the car will guess correctly 50% of the time. Now, add other traffic, pedestrians and what ever other real world obstacles you want and it gets increasingly complex.
The reason people have accidents is because they can't factor in all of the variables in the time allotted before a decision must be made, so they use pattern matching to come up with the best option given what they know. The same will be true with autonomous vehicles. Yes, they can process faster, but they can't take into account every variable or factor. There is a reason why weather models are less accurate the further out the forecast goes. There isn't a computer around that can factor in all of the variables and all of the possibilities for them to interact. There is no doubt that an autonomous vehicle will make the best choice given the information it has available to it. But, so does the weather models and they are less than accurate more often than not.
I trust an autonomous car to perform evasive maneuvers to avoid accidents or mitigate their damage much more than I trust the general population. I trust a wealthy fuck in an autonomous car more than a trust someone putting on makeup or texting in a regular car.
You seem to trust the technology more than the people designing it, then.
What's the issue here? Shit if the car is driving you to your destination then what you do inside the car is your own business. Besides we all worry about people becoming too absorbed in games/VR and other tech that we'd face population decline. This way the nerds can reproduce.
The concern raised was about being distracted in a way that the driver would not be able to take over in a timely manner in a situation where the AI could not deal with. Same concern is raised with autonomous vehicles being the solution to drunk driving. If the driver must be able to take over, then they really shouldn't be behind the wheel.
With regards to autonomous vehicles being used for sex, personally, that would be one big reason not to let my autonomous vehicle be available for others to use while I am at work or otherwise not using it.
I mean there's cheap and there's throw them out because you don't like the color cheap.
I just bought a 128 GB SANDisk USB3 stick from Amazon for $31.
How cheap does a 32GB drive need to be to be cheap?
I already think they're cheap enough that I wish Microsoft would quit refusing to install and boot from USB drives as a kind of copy protection.
Well, you could buy 10 2GB flash drives for less than that and give 9 of them to your friends with Linux ready to be installed ( http://www.amazon.com/10pcs-Sw...).
Put differently, how many people are going to spend $31 to try out this thing called Linux?
With 32 gig usb sticks so cheap, there's no reason not to make it the size of a full dvd or more. This way, multiple installations would not have to individually download tons of packages. It would "just work."
Other distros have full 4.7gb isos and people still ahve to individually download tons of packages. Of course those that do use full sized isos usually do so to allow the option of various other desktops in one iso, Are you proposing getting rid of the dirivatives like Xubuntu, Kubuntu, UbuntGnome, etc. and just have one iso to rule them all and you select the flavor you want at install time?
Besides, not everybody on the planet has access to uncapped, very high speed internet. Why make people download a 4.7GB iso, when 99% of them don't need and won't use the other 3GB of stuff installed?.
Is this supposed to make the developer's life easier or the user's?
"In the US, women are paid a fraction of what men are paid."
I think the poster made a comment about Sharia Law because it is so awful to women. How can anyone have a meaningful conversation about differences in wage equality, compared to being stoned to death under Sharia Law?
"...the reality is that human beings can be pretty cruel to each other, with or without religion."
Yes, but religion codifies barbaric practices and provides twisted opportunities to justify horrific behavior. I'd much rather a world free of religion though permeated with your inevitable* latent barbarism and cruel behaviour than *both* the cruel behaviour and religion.
*probably not actually, but that's a different argument, let's assume it to be true for now.
The OP's use of a sharia law was a red herring type of fallacy (specifically called an Appeal to Emothion), which seemed to serve his/her purpose based on your response. Nobody is arguing that shariah law is terrible. It just doesn't have anything to do with the discussion at hand, or only does so on a tangent path.
That said, it does not change the fact that institutionalized wage discrimination (the value of a person in the workplace) and the way sharia law treats women are just two injustices on a continuum. To be abusive to another human being, psychologist hold that you must first not value them as a person. Once their value is lessened, it is much easier to deny them rights, to physically and emotionally beat them. After all, they are not a person, they are a thing.
One only has to examine the Stanford prison experiment to see this in action. Porn, as opposed to sensuality, is just one more way to objectify a person or a class of people and see them as objects. It is this devaluation that is abusive and this abuse that leads to further abuses. Likewise, for various discriminatory actions against women or minorities or any group. Once a society no longer values a class of people, it is very easy for things like the Holocaust or sharia law to occur. That is why there is such an outcry of pornography by many different groups.
As for religion codifying barbaric practices, is that inherent in religion or in some religions? If only some, then it is not religion that codifies the practice. In most case, the religion doesn't either, but the religion is used by individuals in power, to devalue classes of people and then atrocities are enacted. Of course, religion can also be used to produce much good. In the end, religion is neither good or bad, it is how the leaders of such religious groups use it that is good or bad. Take Islamic terrorist attacks. The Koran expressly prohibits harming non-combatants, particularly women and children. That is the part that is actually codified by the religion. However, individual practitioners of that religion have twisted the teaching so that it is not only permissible but encouraged. Is all of Islam to be blamed (some 1.57 billion proponents) for the actions of a few (estimated at less than 40,000)?
Often, when people complain about religion, they are really complaining about the "faithful's" adherence to an ideology. Blind adherence to any ideology, not just a religious one, is dangerous. It's just that religious ideologies are very evident, but we often are blind to the other ideologies that we have bought into and influence our actions and decisions.
"most nudity that is porn portrays abusive behavior"
Disagree. I don't know what you or your clients watch but that does not describe most of the porn that I've seen.
Now, if people go looking for fucked up porn they're going to find it but most porn is just naked people having normal, if well lighted, sex.
Abuse occurs in so many more ways than physical violence. In a different post on this thread, I already posted a serious of examples that occur frequently in porn that are abusive, even though we often don't even realize it. Normal, naked people having sex, is not porn. However, most porn is not simply normal naked people having sex. That is a conditioned response to think it is.
That said, if one really does enjoy watching normal naked people having sex, ie voyeurism, that isn't really healthy habit, and should be addressed. Because research shows that even if what they are now watching isn't porn, eventually, to get the same gratification, it eventually will be. Just like there is a state between having a normal blood sugar and being diabetic (called pre-diabetic), so, too, with porn. We just don't have a universal term to describe it yet.
(Note: this is the case for most addicitons, we call people heavy drinkers and when it is heavy enough, they are alcoholics. Or they use drugs recreationally but if they recreate too much, they are addicts, etc. In other words, it is a matter of degree which determines if there is a problem or not, but eventually, almost all, "almost addictions" become full blown addictions. Porn is no exception and even triggers chemical responses in the brain as chemical dependency does).
most nudity that is porn portrays abusive behavior
Citation needed. If I pull up Xvideos or Redtube or some other site mega-site, most of the videos on the first few pages, which is a reasonably diverse selection of heterosexual-oriented porn, doesn't look like it features chicks getting fishhooked, donkey punched, facialed, or otherwise degraded.....well, beyond the stereotypically rapey Japanese stuff, anyway. There is some for sure, but definitely not >50%, which I would consider a minimum cutoff for "most". And given the rise of camwhore shows and amateur couples uploading their sexcapades, I'd say abuse in porn products is overall in a decline. The sort of stuff produced by the crew at Facial Abuse is not an industry standard.
Do any of those videos state that they are brother/sister, teens, or whatever, even if they are not in reality? Then, they are pornographic because they are describing abusive sexual acts. Whether you agree that sex between an adult and their teen baby sitter or incest or whatever are pornographic or not or have some psycho-sexual effect on you or not, does not change whether they portray an abusive situation or not. I'm sure that Bill Cosby didn't view his actions as abusive either, as everybody was doing it.
Is there any data that supports the idea that these psychological problems are rampant and increasing with porn consumption? It seems like we have a great natural experiment here, given that over the past couple of generations, porn consumption is up, what, 100x? 1000x? If there was a really strong effect, I'd expect to see it pretty obviously in the data. If it's not there or the effect is only weak, I'd have to ask what other relatively benign things would start causing problems at the fringes if consumption went up by that much across the board.
Yes, and a simple internet search will get you more references than could possible be listed here.
Sugary, caffeinated drinks cause people to eat more. It probably is one of the root causes of obesity.
I'm not saying that the loss of interest is due to attractiveness, but due to changes in biology that make it less so. Being overweight changes parts of your entire personality, due to the fact that fat cells cause increased estrogen levels (even in men) and can actually decrease your sex drive.
The New England Journal of Medicine research showed that estrogen increases the sex drive in both women and men. It is the conversion of testosterone into estrogen which controls the sex drive. As males age, they produce less testosterone, which means less estrogen and the libido decreases. So, obesity would actually increase libido and in many cultures, where being overweight was a sign of one's wealth and ability to provide, that was exactly the case. This was also the case in the US until WWI. Today, research shows that obese individuals, both male and female have a lower sex drive through cultural conditioning versus biology. Simply put, they are told they are not attractive and they believe it. As with orgasm, most of it depends on what is going on in our head, not our genitals.
...most nudity that is porn portrays abusive behavior...
What kind of porn sites are you regularly viewing? I ask because it doesn't sound like any mainstream site that I know of. Perhaps you should stop projecting, hmm?
Are you saying that all nudity is porn? Because that is the opposite of what I was saying. However, if you are having difficulty in distinguishing what is porn and what is not then here is a simple test.
1) does the sexual act imply non-consenting adults? 2) does the sexual act objectify any of the participants? 3) does the sexual act inflict violence, willing or otherwise on any of the participants? 4) does the sexual act include minors, or those portrayed as minors? 5) does the sexual act include animals? 6) does the sexual act include acts held to be commonly known as fetishes?
If the answer is yes to any of those, then it is objectively abusive and the sexual act being portrayed in pornographic. By the way, that isn't my opinion, but the court's definition of obscenity. Sexual acts that are pornographic, according to the courts, are always obscene. Sexual acts that are not pornographic, may still be obscene, but not necessarily so.
As for projecting, one doth protest too much, it seems.
What you describe through your own experiences doesn't just fit just mormonism; I've seen baptists behave the same way as well. Look what happens to females after a town goes under sharia law.
Religion has done more damage to females in all cultures than any p0rn could ever hope to do.
CAP === 'Physique'
Exploitation of women and children was around long before sharia law and organized religion. It's easy to blame religion or any other group for things, but the reality is that human beings can be pretty cruel to each other, with or without religion. Take China - they are not considered a religious state. How do their women and children fair there (at least the female ones who were allowed to be born in the first place)?
I did find it interesting how you tied Baptists to sharia law, though. But why pick on them? In the US, women are paid a fraction of what men are paid. Oppression, which I assume is what you are meaning, takes many forms. And when it is around long enough, it is just assumed to be normal.
Of course, none of that has anything to do with pornography. Or it has everything to do with it. After all, when a society objectifies individuals, they are no longer human persons and it is easy to oppress them in all sorts of manners.
The AMA and other medical professionals and groups have been dealing with porn for years now and they are anything other than religious. Porn is real and is more than nude pictures. Equating the two is a bit like saying a Star Wars and a snuff film are synonymous because people die in both of them.
As for all of the things you list as being the results of Mormonism being an oppressive religion, that would seem to be a simple experiment to design. Do other states that are not dominated by Mormonism have greater or lessor incidences of these things. Well, Utah is ranked 43 in teen pregnancies with 48 per 1,000. That would seem to be that if Mormonism does not encourage the practice. What about depression? Again, Utah ranks in the lower third of states. In both cases, the States one tends to think of as poor tend to have the highest incidences of both teen pregnancy and depression, so it would appear that socio-economic factors are more to blame than religion. Mormonism may have its problems, but Utah, the only state with a large percentage of Mormons, is just the most recent state to come out against pornography. There are 29 others, none of which have identified religious oppression as part of the cause.
I would suggest, with all due respect, that based on your own admission of being an "ex-Mormon" that you still have a lot of baggage to deal with and it is coloring your perspective
You seem to underestimate the damage that porn is doing to people's lives. The only significant difference between being addicted to porn and being addicted to alcohol is that one can still watch porn and then drive without getting in trouble.
Maybe the difficulty that you are having is that you are equating nudity with pornography. They are synonymous. For instance, the movie/book Fifty Shades of Grey is not pornographic (although some may argue that it is obscene in nature). Bondage and S&M may or may not be pornographic. Videos that graphical show gang rape or exploitation of children or acts that might be consensual among the actors, but portrayed that they are not consensual among the characters the actors are portraying, however, usually are pornographic. A 20 year old, made up to look like she is sixteen and watching the high school baseball practice, whereupon she is then assualted by the team and coaches and has a baseball bat inserted in various orifices, is they type of pornography the governor is refering to, not somebody looking at Penthouse. The latter may be obscene, but it is not pornographic. Pornography is rampant and extremely harmful to one's psyche and seriously impacts the life of those obsessed with it. The State of Utah is not the only group trying to deal with the devastation it causes in people's lives.
As for treating obesity or diabetes as conditions best treated by counseling, I never made that claim. However, studies do show that weight loss is best achieved by having a support group which is a type of therapy. Likewise for managing diabetes. Why? Probably because both require lifestyle changes in addition to whatever medical intervention that may be required.
But, assuming you are in the US, this is a free society and you are welcome to hold onto whatever beliefs you like about things whether they are supported by evidence or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Parking is the biggest issue. When you go downtown, you can't find a parking spot. But that's not an issue with self driving cars, you just tell it to circle the block at low speed for 4 hours while you're in the mall. Now imagine everyone doing that downtown.
Yes, because the autonomous vehicles will generate their own power and have parts that never wear out. With all of those slow moving vehicles circling around, how will regular traffic get through?
By platooning, SDCs can drive much closer together than HDCs, and they also help to smooth out the "accordion effect" in stop-and-go traffic. It is unlikely that they will increase congestion. It is far more likely that they will help relieve congestion.
Large fixed-route public buses will be replaced by small self-driving vans, with flexible on-demand routing. As public transit becomes faster and more convenient, more people will use it, reducing congestion even more.
I wonder why the transportation researchers interviewed in the linked article didn't think of that? Or maybe they did and their research shows that platooning won't be enough to offset the problem?
As for replacing buses, with on demand cars, who will purchase those vehicles? The people who ride busses? They could purchase cars today, but don't. The government? Well, that would be one way to subsidize the auto industry -- replace one bus carrying 50 people with 50 vehicles carrying one person. But again, that model is already in existence. It's called a cab or uber if available in your area.
There is faster, more convenient and cost effective. It's likely you can't have all three of those for public transit.
There were no commercial airlines on September 12, 2001.
Assuming you mean in the US, there were as many commercial airlines that day as on Sept 11, 2001. They might have not had planes in the sky, but they were still commercial airlines.
My home town still doesn't have a commercial airline.
My home town doesn't have a nuclear power plant, what's your point?
Isn't this just censorship? Banning ads that are misleading or otherwise harmful would be fine. Banning all ads for any company in a certain industry seems a bit draconian, particulary when M$oft sells services in those same fields.
Maybe a better solution would be to fix Windows, so somebody doesn't compromise their machine by inadvertantly clicking on a link that could do harm. We are on the verge of having cars smart enough to drive themselves. Surely AI has come far enough to determine that what you are trying to do may hurt your computer.
There is no doubt that drones could do many things more efficiently, which would add to the corporate bottom line. However that $127B is predominately paid out to human beings as workers. While it would first appear that the change to the economy is $0, the wages paid out no longer go to the workers, but instead the shareholders. However, the workers use those wages to purchase goods and services that the shareholders typically don't
Normally, it is figured in economics that wages paid to workers are multiplied seven times through the purchase of goods and services. Therefore, that $127B savings for the companies and transfer to the shareholder has an $889B decrease in purchases, thus causing potential economic contraction.
In short, replacing workers with drones, can boost short term profits, but will erode the purchasing power of the middle class ultimately causing long term decline. (This isn't new to drones, it has happened in other areas, but then there were ample jobs for the displaced workers to go to. It is happening now, in similar fashion, with offshoring)
Most people in America know how to write, but that does not make them novelists. Many know how to use a hammer and a saw, but that does not make them a carpenter. Likewise, knowing how to code does not make one a programmer, nor will it guarantee success in life.
With this push on programming, we will simply turn what was once a respectable profession held by those with a real aptitude into the next classification of menial labor. That might be good for business, but not for the individual if they are trying to support a family.
I'm not saying that people should avoid learning to program. However, it isn't the solution for future success like it is being portrayed. Besides, regardless of what programming is taught to the masses, it will be outdated before their studies are completed.
Hybrids are readily available, but they aren't mainstream. Sure, people can purchase them, but the cost and performance differentials keep many from doing so. Likewise, cars that can automatically brake or self-park have been available for some time, but people don't buy vehicles for that feature, its more of a perk. Even with wide available, it will be decades before cars with these features are in the majority or mainstream. The same will be true of autonomous vehicles. They will be available, but they won't be mainstream. And, by the time they are mainstream, there will be some other newer/better technology available.
Finally, the push for autonomous vehicles is predominately American thing. Most of the world doesn't drive like the USA does. Most of the world's first world countries dealt with the issue that autonomous vehicles are meant to solve with mass transit programs. More cars, whether self driving or not on the streets of London or Paris won't help things there. Third world countries won't have the capital to spend on such vehicles. So who is left? The US. There is no doubt that there will be a market in the US for autonomous vehicles. The question is whether or not it will be sustainable for manufacturers to have enough ROI to keep shareholders happy. After all, we can talk all we want about the coolness of such vehicles or the safety they may or may not have, but ultimately, it is the bottom line that will dictate whether or not this new mode of transportation replaces the old.
So the question really is about whether or not the US can produce enough of these vehicles at a low enough selling price to entice enough purchasers so the market is profitable and sustainable. If the answer is no, or at least not at a low enough price point, then these vehicles will be something for the upper echelon of society, which may still be a profitable segment, but would not make them mainstream.
Either from a technology perspective or an economic one, it does not appear likely that autonomous vehicles will be mainstream -- at least not without government intervention to subsidize the costs either in manufacturing or purchasing.
The question then becomes whether or not there is enough market in the US and at what price point, for autonomous vehicles to be more than just a niche?
This is all extremely interesting. Could you work up a similar pro/con for the efforts to forgo Mars or Venus and colonize the ocean shelf? It would seem to me to be more feasible. It doesn't protect from a massive meteor or comet strike, but then that possibility exists, regardless the planet. In short, I am asking, if we have messed up the surface of the planet and need to seek habitation elsewhere, would undersea be a more viable and simpler solution?
If people aren't interested in fixing this planet, there's not much hope that they'll do better on Mars or Venus.
The purpose of going to Mars isn't about survival of the species. Mars is far more dangerous to life than what we have caused on this planet. No, the purpose of going to Mars is to be able to exploit any resources that planet may have. Having a colony there is to get public buy-in.
There was.
Then we started to turn the clouds sulphuric and potentially initiated runaway greenhouse effects which started to turn it into an inhospitable barren desert with un-survivable atmospheric heat.
Or was that Venus again, I forget?
It would be far easier to colonize the oceans on this planet than the surface of Mars.
How is that anything more complicated than merely providing additional training data? I'm assuming that all self-driving cars will involve machine learning, no?
You know, the railroads have a saying that the rule book is written in blood, meaning for every rule in it, there was an accident caused the change. Wouldn't autonomous vehicles be the same thing? After all, they are assumed safe until they aren't in which case, there is an update to the system.
Look, these cars are being developed by engineers in an industry that looks at risk in terms of the cost of a lawsuit versus the cost of doing something in a different way. The more safe a vehicle is, the more costly it is, so there has to be a trade off if it is going to be affordable.
Simple case, a non autonomous vehicle is coming down the wrong side of the road, does your autonomous vehicle go to the left or to the right to try and avoid it? At best the car will guess correctly 50% of the time. Now, add other traffic, pedestrians and what ever other real world obstacles you want and it gets increasingly complex.
The reason people have accidents is because they can't factor in all of the variables in the time allotted before a decision must be made, so they use pattern matching to come up with the best option given what they know. The same will be true with autonomous vehicles. Yes, they can process faster, but they can't take into account every variable or factor. There is a reason why weather models are less accurate the further out the forecast goes. There isn't a computer around that can factor in all of the variables and all of the possibilities for them to interact. There is no doubt that an autonomous vehicle will make the best choice given the information it has available to it. But, so does the weather models and they are less than accurate more often than not.
I trust an autonomous car to perform evasive maneuvers to avoid accidents or mitigate their damage much more than I trust the general population. I trust a wealthy fuck in an autonomous car more than a trust someone putting on makeup or texting in a regular car.
You seem to trust the technology more than the people designing it, then.
What's the issue here? Shit if the car is driving you to your destination then what you do inside the car is your own business. Besides we all worry about people becoming too absorbed in games/VR and other tech that we'd face population decline. This way the nerds can reproduce.
The concern raised was about being distracted in a way that the driver would not be able to take over in a timely manner in a situation where the AI could not deal with. Same concern is raised with autonomous vehicles being the solution to drunk driving. If the driver must be able to take over, then they really shouldn't be behind the wheel.
With regards to autonomous vehicles being used for sex, personally, that would be one big reason not to let my autonomous vehicle be available for others to use while I am at work or otherwise not using it.
I mean there's cheap and there's throw them out because you don't like the color cheap.
I just bought a 128 GB SANDisk USB3 stick from Amazon for $31.
How cheap does a 32GB drive need to be to be cheap?
I already think they're cheap enough that I wish Microsoft would quit refusing to install and boot from USB drives as a kind of copy protection.
Well, you could buy 10 2GB flash drives for less than that and give 9 of them to your friends with Linux ready to be installed ( http://www.amazon.com/10pcs-Sw...).
Put differently, how many people are going to spend $31 to try out this thing called Linux?
With 32 gig usb sticks so cheap, there's no reason not to make it the size of a full dvd or more. This way, multiple installations would not have to individually download tons of packages. It would "just work."
Other distros have full 4.7gb isos and people still ahve to individually download tons of packages. Of course those that do use full sized isos usually do so to allow the option of various other desktops in one iso, Are you proposing getting rid of the dirivatives like Xubuntu, Kubuntu, UbuntGnome, etc. and just have one iso to rule them all and you select the flavor you want at install time?
Besides, not everybody on the planet has access to uncapped, very high speed internet. Why make people download a 4.7GB iso, when 99% of them don't need and won't use the other 3GB of stuff installed?.
Is this supposed to make the developer's life easier or the user's?
"In the US, women are paid a fraction of what men are paid."
I think the poster made a comment about Sharia Law because it is so awful to women. How can anyone have a meaningful conversation about differences in wage equality, compared to being stoned to death under Sharia Law?
"...the reality is that human beings can be pretty cruel to each other, with or without religion."
Yes, but religion codifies barbaric practices and provides twisted opportunities to justify horrific behavior. I'd much rather a world free of religion though permeated with your inevitable* latent barbarism and cruel behaviour than *both* the cruel behaviour and religion.
*probably not actually, but that's a different argument, let's assume it to be true for now.
The OP's use of a sharia law was a red herring type of fallacy (specifically called an Appeal to Emothion), which seemed to serve his/her purpose based on your response. Nobody is arguing that shariah law is terrible. It just doesn't have anything to do with the discussion at hand, or only does so on a tangent path.
That said, it does not change the fact that institutionalized wage discrimination (the value of a person in the workplace) and the way sharia law treats women are just two injustices on a continuum. To be abusive to another human being, psychologist hold that you must first not value them as a person. Once their value is lessened, it is much easier to deny them rights, to physically and emotionally beat them. After all, they are not a person, they are a thing.
One only has to examine the Stanford prison experiment to see this in action. Porn, as opposed to sensuality, is just one more way to objectify a person or a class of people and see them as objects. It is this devaluation that is abusive and this abuse that leads to further abuses. Likewise, for various discriminatory actions against women or minorities or any group. Once a society no longer values a class of people, it is very easy for things like the Holocaust or sharia law to occur. That is why there is such an outcry of pornography by many different groups.
As for religion codifying barbaric practices, is that inherent in religion or in some religions? If only some, then it is not religion that codifies the practice. In most case, the religion doesn't either, but the religion is used by individuals in power, to devalue classes of people and then atrocities are enacted. Of course, religion can also be used to produce much good. In the end, religion is neither good or bad, it is how the leaders of such religious groups use it that is good or bad. Take Islamic terrorist attacks. The Koran expressly prohibits harming non-combatants, particularly women and children. That is the part that is actually codified by the religion. However, individual practitioners of that religion have twisted the teaching so that it is not only permissible but encouraged. Is all of Islam to be blamed (some 1.57 billion proponents) for the actions of a few (estimated at less than 40,000)?
Often, when people complain about religion, they are really complaining about the "faithful's" adherence to an ideology. Blind adherence to any ideology, not just a religious one, is dangerous. It's just that religious ideologies are very evident, but we often are blind to the other ideologies that we have bought into and influence our actions and decisions.
"most nudity that is porn portrays abusive behavior"
Disagree. I don't know what you or your clients watch but that does not describe most of the porn that I've seen.
Now, if people go looking for fucked up porn they're going to find it but most porn is just naked people having normal, if well lighted, sex.
Abuse occurs in so many more ways than physical violence. In a different post on this thread, I already posted a serious of examples that occur frequently in porn that are abusive, even though we often don't even realize it. Normal, naked people having sex, is not porn. However, most porn is not simply normal naked people having sex. That is a conditioned response to think it is.
That said, if one really does enjoy watching normal naked people having sex, ie voyeurism, that isn't really healthy habit, and should be addressed. Because research shows that even if what they are now watching isn't porn, eventually, to get the same gratification, it eventually will be. Just like there is a state between having a normal blood sugar and being diabetic (called pre-diabetic), so, too, with porn. We just don't have a universal term to describe it yet.
(Note: this is the case for most addicitons, we call people heavy drinkers and when it is heavy enough, they are alcoholics. Or they use drugs recreationally but if they recreate too much, they are addicts, etc. In other words, it is a matter of degree which determines if there is a problem or not, but eventually, almost all, "almost addictions" become full blown addictions. Porn is no exception and even triggers chemical responses in the brain as chemical dependency does).
most nudity that is porn portrays abusive behavior
Citation needed. If I pull up Xvideos or Redtube or some other site mega-site, most of the videos on the first few pages, which is a reasonably diverse selection of heterosexual-oriented porn, doesn't look like it features chicks getting fishhooked, donkey punched, facialed, or otherwise degraded.....well, beyond the stereotypically rapey Japanese stuff, anyway. There is some for sure, but definitely not >50%, which I would consider a minimum cutoff for "most". And given the rise of camwhore shows and amateur couples uploading their sexcapades, I'd say abuse in porn products is overall in a decline. The sort of stuff produced by the crew at Facial Abuse is not an industry standard.
Do any of those videos state that they are brother/sister, teens, or whatever, even if they are not in reality? Then, they are pornographic because they are describing abusive sexual acts. Whether you agree that sex between an adult and their teen baby sitter or incest or whatever are pornographic or not or have some psycho-sexual effect on you or not, does not change whether they portray an abusive situation or not. I'm sure that Bill Cosby didn't view his actions as abusive either, as everybody was doing it.
Is there any data that supports the idea that these psychological problems are rampant and increasing with porn consumption? It seems like we have a great natural experiment here, given that over the past couple of generations, porn consumption is up, what, 100x? 1000x? If there was a really strong effect, I'd expect to see it pretty obviously in the data. If it's not there or the effect is only weak, I'd have to ask what other relatively benign things would start causing problems at the fringes if consumption went up by that much across the board.
Yes, and a simple internet search will get you more references than could possible be listed here.
Sugary, caffeinated drinks cause people to eat more. It probably is one of the root causes of obesity.
I'm not saying that the loss of interest is due to attractiveness, but due to changes in biology that make it less so. Being overweight changes parts of your entire personality, due to the fact that fat cells cause increased estrogen levels (even in men) and can actually decrease your sex drive.
The New England Journal of Medicine research showed that estrogen increases the sex drive in both women and men. It is the conversion of testosterone into estrogen which controls the sex drive. As males age, they produce less testosterone, which means less estrogen and the libido decreases. So, obesity would actually increase libido and in many cultures, where being overweight was a sign of one's wealth and ability to provide, that was exactly the case. This was also the case in the US until WWI. Today, research shows that obese individuals, both male and female have a lower sex drive through cultural conditioning versus biology. Simply put, they are told they are not attractive and they believe it. As with orgasm, most of it depends on what is going on in our head, not our genitals.
...most nudity that is porn portrays abusive behavior...
What kind of porn sites are you regularly viewing? I ask because it doesn't sound like any mainstream site that I know of. Perhaps you should stop projecting, hmm?
Are you saying that all nudity is porn? Because that is the opposite of what I was saying. However, if you are having difficulty in distinguishing what is porn and what is not then here is a simple test.
1) does the sexual act imply non-consenting adults?
2) does the sexual act objectify any of the participants?
3) does the sexual act inflict violence, willing or otherwise on any of the participants?
4) does the sexual act include minors, or those portrayed as minors?
5) does the sexual act include animals?
6) does the sexual act include acts held to be commonly known as fetishes?
If the answer is yes to any of those, then it is objectively abusive and the sexual act being portrayed in pornographic. By the way, that isn't my opinion, but the court's definition of obscenity. Sexual acts that are pornographic, according to the courts, are always obscene. Sexual acts that are not pornographic, may still be obscene, but not necessarily so.
As for projecting, one doth protest too much, it seems.
Well written and insightful post.
What you describe through your own experiences doesn't just fit just mormonism; I've seen baptists
behave the same way as well. Look what happens to females after a town goes under sharia law.
Religion has done more damage to females in all cultures than any p0rn could ever hope to do.
CAP === 'Physique'
Exploitation of women and children was around long before sharia law and organized religion. It's easy to blame religion or any other group for things, but the reality is that human beings can be pretty cruel to each other, with or without religion. Take China - they are not considered a religious state. How do their women and children fair there (at least the female ones who were allowed to be born in the first place)?
I did find it interesting how you tied Baptists to sharia law, though. But why pick on them? In the US, women are paid a fraction of what men are paid. Oppression, which I assume is what you are meaning, takes many forms. And when it is around long enough, it is just assumed to be normal.
Of course, none of that has anything to do with pornography. Or it has everything to do with it. After all, when a society objectifies individuals, they are no longer human persons and it is easy to oppress them in all sorts of manners.
The AMA and other medical professionals and groups have been dealing with porn for years now and they are anything other than religious. Porn is real and is more than nude pictures. Equating the two is a bit like saying a Star Wars and a snuff film are synonymous because people die in both of them.
As for all of the things you list as being the results of Mormonism being an oppressive religion, that would seem to be a simple experiment to design. Do other states that are not dominated by Mormonism have greater or lessor incidences of these things. Well, Utah is ranked 43 in teen pregnancies with 48 per 1,000. That would seem to be that if Mormonism does not encourage the practice. What about depression? Again, Utah ranks in the lower third of states. In both cases, the States one tends to think of as poor tend to have the highest incidences of both teen pregnancy and depression, so it would appear that socio-economic factors are more to blame than religion. Mormonism may have its problems, but Utah, the only state with a large percentage of Mormons, is just the most recent state to come out against pornography. There are 29 others, none of which have identified religious oppression as part of the cause.
I would suggest, with all due respect, that based on your own admission of being an "ex-Mormon" that you still have a lot of baggage to deal with and it is coloring your perspective
You seem to underestimate the damage that porn is doing to people's lives. The only significant difference between being addicted to porn and being addicted to alcohol is that one can still watch porn and then drive without getting in trouble.
Maybe the difficulty that you are having is that you are equating nudity with pornography. They are synonymous. For instance, the movie/book Fifty Shades of Grey is not pornographic (although some may argue that it is obscene in nature). Bondage and S&M may or may not be pornographic. Videos that graphical show gang rape or exploitation of children or acts that might be consensual among the actors, but portrayed that they are not consensual among the characters the actors are portraying, however, usually are pornographic. A 20 year old, made up to look like she is sixteen and watching the high school baseball practice, whereupon she is then assualted by the team and coaches and has a baseball bat inserted in various orifices, is they type of pornography the governor is refering to, not somebody looking at Penthouse. The latter may be obscene, but it is not pornographic. Pornography is rampant and extremely harmful to one's psyche and seriously impacts the life of those obsessed with it. The State of Utah is not the only group trying to deal with the devastation it causes in people's lives.
As for treating obesity or diabetes as conditions best treated by counseling, I never made that claim. However, studies do show that weight loss is best achieved by having a support group which is a type of therapy. Likewise for managing diabetes. Why? Probably because both require lifestyle changes in addition to whatever medical intervention that may be required.
But, assuming you are in the US, this is a free society and you are welcome to hold onto whatever beliefs you like about things whether they are supported by evidence or not.