You'll notice that population growth is inversely proportional to (technological) development. So that throws your hypothesis out the window. If anything, one should expect population to decrease with development.
Also, keep in mind that the earth can support the population. In fact, I claim that earth can support 50 billion. The problem, of course, is the modern day lifestyle. We need to be environmentally friendly and improve efficiency (in an environmental sense, not in a capitalist sense). The developed world may pollute far more than the undeveloped world, it still manages to do some things better. For instance, water distribution is far more effective. Yes, people waste a lot more, but the means of recyling is better. It is not inconceivable for humans to significantly reduce pollution and environmental destruction by switching to more environmentally-friendly systems. Of course, no one wants to do that now but it can be done.
Raising children IS the most important thing. However, due to capitalism (and other elitist systems), you end up undervaluing the luxurious and non-essential stuff. For example, ever notice how farming is one of the worst sectors to be in (low profits, etc), whereas non-essential sectors like manufacturing do far better. One can hardly claim that food is not important but one is willing to spend more on non-essential things...a severe human flaw in the modern world...
Yes, you are right: we don't know what the motivations of the machines will be. My view was based on the assumption that the computers will behave like us.
If computers DO behave like us, what I said is correct. Challenge does come in at the top of the Maslow's hierarchy (I guess it would fit in self-actualization or something). But it would be the ultimate goal. The lower level stuff (like need for shelter, food, etc) are more important but they will be readily satisfied--hopefully. Therefore, the machines will end up with the highest one and they will attempt to tackle that for their whole lives. That is what happens in humans. Most people are always climbing up and many actually end up at the top spot. Once we reach that point, we spend our whole lives trying to make sense of what we perceive to be the highest challenge for us. For instance, there are billions of people seeking the meaning of life. There are others attempting to solve some mystery in the universe (and hence take on a scientist-like vigour).
I DO think that humans spend most of their lives trying to satisfy their highest challenge. Most people who are past 40 years of age usually take on these challenges. When you are younger, your needs are more immediate (and lower on the hierarchy)
I think you are wrong. Humans DO think for themselves--except when brainwashed by entites such as the governments:( People do NOT have anything pre-coded, except for some basic stuff like breathing, etc. Humans actually LEARN. Throw a human into a new environment, and he/she will adjust and learn things. We are definitely not REACTING to already known knowledge.
Your idea seems to be along the line of Aristotle (I think it was him??), who claimed that humans already know everything there is to know, and they are simply re-learning what they have forgetten. I claim that is completely wrong and hence your reasoning is wrong too. We pre-compute almost nothing.
...it should be possible to build a computer that follows the same statistical laws as the human brain.
But if the states are RANDOM, you will never be able to simulate the brain, or anything else for that matter. What you are sayin is akin to trying to predict the EXACT position of an electron in a nucleus. It just cannot be done. However, you can give the probability of the electron at a certain position.
Even if you can model the system reasonably well, you won't know the exact outcome because of "randomness".
Just because our brains are probabilistic doesn't mean we have "true" free will.
It is not just the probabilistic view that matters; the notion of randomness goes hand in hand. If things in the universe happen randomly (say the chemical reaction in your brain is random) then humans indeed have free will, IN THE SENSE THAT you cannot predict what humans--or any process for that matter--will do.
On top of all this, can computers (a deterministic finite system) ever generate random numbers? I'm not too knowledgeable in this matter but my feeling was that computers only generate pseudo-random numbers and other questionable numbers passed off as "random".
... there is also the reality that women and men think differently. The typical man will have an improved sense of spacial relationships, whereas the typical woman will have stronger language centre skills (for example).
Yeah that's true to some extent but we don't really know a whole lot about it. For example, what makes one deviate? Also, I am unhappy with the lack of emphasis placed on environment--too much genetics and too little environment...
Chess is very much about being able to envisage the spatial relationships of the board many moves in advance...
We don't know about that. I don't think anyone has done a study to indicate that. You may be right but I'm not too confident yet.
The bigger issue is why activities that are dominated by men (such as football or chess) are considered of greater importance than activities that are dominated by women (bringing up children?)?
The answer is fairly obvious--is it not? Since nearly all societies are patriarchial, activities by men will be valued more.
Sara...
yes; female, a slashdotter, a geek and a gamer; plus I can play chess and read a map...
Actually quantum mechanics is exactly what I have in mind. Why do you say it is silly? That is the theory that scientists believe in nowadays.
If you go with quantum theory, what happens is that you can't know the outcome state of an action. The outcome spans a probability distribution. Not a great example but I'll use it anyway: When you flip a coin, deterministic view would say that the coin can only be heads or tails. But if you go with a probabilistic framework, the coin can stand on its edge, it can blow up and disintegrate, etc. That's how the universe is.
According to this view, two IDENTICAL brains will end up doing different things simply because the end state has a probability attached with it. This essentially means that humans are not automatons.
Chomsky has no talent whatsoever for accurately describing anything politically or socially with any degree of accuracy.
lol... I guess this is the case of a fool dismissing someone intelligent because he couldn't understand a word that was said...
Capitalism will never collapse: free trade and the people having control over their own lives is a natural state that things gravitate to.
That's what all you capitalists like to believe. Anyway, there are many reasons it won't happen but I'll just cite one: class war. Capitalism will result in wealth being hoarded by a few. It's already happening but it will get worse. There will come a point when the lower classes, who always outnumber the upper classes, will overthrow the system. It's inevitable... On another note, if you think capitalism is "natural", how come it didn't exist 500 years ago? If you look at capitalism from a historical perspective, its life is so short to be meaningless. Fedualism, monarchy, and theocracies have lived longer. Mind you, some of these aren't economic systems. However, you can't practice capitalism with these systems (eg. you can't have capitalism and monarchy because monarchy limits property based on blood).
The only time it goes away is when fascist dictators take over...
Actually you can practice fascism on top of capitalism (as Nazis and Fascists (in Italy) did). Fascism is not the enemy of capitalism; socialism and to some extent anarchism are!
Let's put it this way... as long as USA is out on its Imperialist adventures, this isn't going to happen. My history is weak but I do not think there is a case in history of a nation/civilization/etc managing to achieve something while going on an imperial pursuit. Even the richest of them have problems financing it.
Ever heard of something called Iran-Contra? US did invade with the CIA (of course, I'm not implying that they invaded with their military). Check out this link: The history of U.S. intervention in Nicaragua.
While you are at it, here are all the US interventions in the last hundread years or so:
I don't know if I understand what you mean by cellular automata. Is that the same idea that everything in the universe is deterministic? If yes, you are wrong. The universe can be shown to be non-deterministic. Modern day science is heading in the direction that everything is probabilistic. What this means is that humans are NOT automatons.
Are you equating the abolitionist movement with the invastion of Iraq? You have no idea what you are talkin about but I'll just throw one argument towards you...
What you are saying would actually mean something if:
you held to your principles (i.e. ended up overthrowing all despotic, totalitarian, etc regimes starting with Kuwait)
If the newly formed govt was democracy-like. So far, the Iraqi govt is a hand-picked govt run by Chalabi (a thief who actually stole millions of dollars from the US govt). And all the signs indicate that Iraq will be run by an autocratic govt.
The Free State Project is supposed to be liberatarian-right. You certainly are on the right but I doubt that you are much of a liberatarian. I don't know how your state is going to survive with people like you around. The first statement alone shows that you are not much of a liberatarian. I don't see how a liberatarian can support an open-ended war with no trials, indefinite jail, etc. In addition, you seem to imply that you support imperialist wars. Again, this is contrary to many liberatarian views.
Then they shouldn't have taken on the loans if they can't meet the terms.
Actually the people who are going to get a shock when these countries stop paying their debt will be those in the rich countries (read: you and me). The so-called loans that countries like USA give out are nothing more than grants. Don't expect to see them back ever again. What USA and others are doing is what Noam Chomsky roughly referred to as "socializiation of debt"--a concept that makes no sense whatsoever to anyone on the left. USA doesn't write off the debt and when these countries do collapse, USA will get hit big time.
I predict that the collapse of the developing countries due to debt might cause the collapse of capitalism. Let's wait and see if I'm right...
Maybe if USA didn't invade those countries (yes USA did invade, not with the military but with the CIA) then some of those countries wouldn't be as badly off as they are.
I never thought of it that way. Wow. That's an interesting way of looking at the differences. A slow, parallel computation device (i.e. brain) vs fast, linear computation device (i.e. computer). I never looked at it that way but it makes a lot of sense.
I guess one result of this view is that IF computers can compute in parallel* they will totally destroy the human brain.
* note: modern day notion of parallelism is very primitive compared to the brain...so the computers aren't really "parallel" yet...
There are approximately 35^100 legal options for a chess game (that's a 2 with about one hundred and fifty four trailing 0's).
How did you get that number? I'll bet it's a lot lower in practice. You can probably eliminate many magnitudes of moves simply by the generally acception notion of 'dumb moves'. For instance, moving a rook pawn on your first move is 'dumb' so you can eliminate that. Similarly, you can probably cut down several zeroes by eliminating dumb moves.
Assuming you can process... 2 million moves per second, just like Deep Blue, the universe would end by the time you finished (i.e. 4.1477e+137 millenia away!)
hmm... the universe doesn't END! I'm not sure what you are referring to??? Maybe the computer components will overheat or fail before it finishes playing the game...but the universe will still be around:)
I think what he/she is asking for is a sentient being. Until a computer that can THINK for ITSELF (i.e. sentient), he says it is not worthy. Right now, the computer simply COMPUTES some pre-coded PROGRAM.
In other words, he is asking for something that can EVOLVE by ITSELF. Right now, computers don't evolve--they die.
I disagree with you--and your anthropologist friend:)--on this issue.
There have actually been matriarchial societies. Though they have been few and obscure. I think the reason history was mostly patriarchial is because POWER rules! And regardless of how you look at it, men had more power than women back then. This is especially true since physical power (as opposed to mental) was the only thing that mattered before. Needless to say, women simply were inferior to men when it came to physical power.
You can see what I mean when you look at econopolitical systems. The past was ruled by elitist systems (this is still true today but not as badly as the past). And elitist systems usually mean that one person, or one family, or one ethnicity, or one region, or one profession, ruled over others. Since men had more physical power (and this is all that mattered back then, before the advent of science and stuff), men ruled women--simple as that.
As far as women not being good at something like chess, it may have more to do with the environment and discrimination than anything else. One reason could be that women just aren't interested in games like chess (just like how they aren't really into certain computer games). In addition, women in most of the world (I'm talking a massive majority) are treated as inferiors to men. Even Russia/USSR, where a lot of grandmasters come from, did not empower women. So what you get in the world is that only a small percentage of women actually play chess.
I'm not saying that you will get equal number of men and women at the top. But what you should see is far more women in the top rankings. The present listings have very few. I think this will increase.
Your football vs cooking analogy is misleading because football is a physical activity. Women will always be worse off than men and hence sports like football will be dominated by men. Chess isn't physical so that restriction isn't presnet...
If computers rule earth (let's hope not:) ), the computers will carry out what they perceive to be the highest goal, or highest challenge.
If Chess is the highest challenge for them, they will spend all their time trying to master that...
If war is the highest challenge, they will spend centuries warring each other...
If peace is the highest, they will attempt to initiate and maintain peace...
If trying to explore the whole galaxy is the most challenging, they will spend billions of light-years doing that...
Having said all that, I personally don't think none of those will be challenging to a computer. What will be challenging to a computer is art. I suspect computers will attempt to master art and never succeed (since it is subjective and can't be quantified)...
The guy raises the possibility that computers will never be better at chess than humans. That should set off immediate alarm bells that the author doesn't know what he's talking about.
Why? Is it not conceivable that computers may perhaps be weaker in some THING than humans?
But he doesn't back up this assertion with any compelling logic.
I think you need to wait for part III lol no joke:) The first part had absolutely nothing. It seemed like an intro...he claims to support his position with empirical evidence but that was lacking in part I
No, if Bush had his way, the defecit would have been much smaller, since the tax cuts he wanted would have caused economic growth and resulted in more tax revenues.
Contrary to your supply-side capitalist fantasy, nothing of that sort would have happened. Even when the capitalists, such as the CATO institute and the Wall Street Journal, starts questioning the massive deficit, you know you are on thin ice.
And, more non-wealthy people would have been able to keep more of their own money (the wealthy were a minority of those who kept more of their own money under his plan)
What you are saying is in contrast to what the media and most politicians indicated...
...have every major financial measure he's ever sent passed (all massive tax cuts, of course)...
Give some credit to Bush. His massive tax cuts were actually reduced quite a bit. Instead of having a $500b deficit, USA could have ended up with an even greater deficit--not to mention the wealthy receiving even greater of the taxes back.
Slashdot Mirror
You'll notice that population growth is inversely proportional to (technological) development. So that throws your hypothesis out the window. If anything, one should expect population to decrease with development.
Also, keep in mind that the earth can support the population. In fact, I claim that earth can support 50 billion. The problem, of course, is the modern day lifestyle. We need to be environmentally friendly and improve efficiency (in an environmental sense, not in a capitalist sense). The developed world may pollute far more than the undeveloped world, it still manages to do some things better. For instance, water distribution is far more effective. Yes, people waste a lot more, but the means of recyling is better. It is not inconceivable for humans to significantly reduce pollution and environmental destruction by switching to more environmentally-friendly systems. Of course, no one wants to do that now but it can be done.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Raising children IS the most important thing. However, due to capitalism (and other elitist systems), you end up undervaluing the luxurious and non-essential stuff. For example, ever notice how farming is one of the worst sectors to be in (low profits, etc), whereas non-essential sectors like manufacturing do far better. One can hardly claim that food is not important but one is willing to spend more on non-essential things...a severe human flaw in the modern world...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Yes, you are right: we don't know what the motivations of the machines will be. My view was based on the assumption that the computers will behave like us.
If computers DO behave like us, what I said is correct. Challenge does come in at the top of the Maslow's hierarchy (I guess it would fit in self-actualization or something). But it would be the ultimate goal. The lower level stuff (like need for shelter, food, etc) are more important but they will be readily satisfied--hopefully. Therefore, the machines will end up with the highest one and they will attempt to tackle that for their whole lives. That is what happens in humans. Most people are always climbing up and many actually end up at the top spot. Once we reach that point, we spend our whole lives trying to make sense of what we perceive to be the highest challenge for us. For instance, there are billions of people seeking the meaning of life. There are others attempting to solve some mystery in the universe (and hence take on a scientist-like vigour).
I DO think that humans spend most of their lives trying to satisfy their highest challenge. Most people who are past 40 years of age usually take on these challenges. When you are younger, your needs are more immediate (and lower on the hierarchy)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I think you are wrong. Humans DO think for themselves--except when brainwashed by entites such as the governments :( People do NOT have anything pre-coded, except for some basic stuff like breathing, etc. Humans actually LEARN. Throw a human into a new environment, and he/she will adjust and learn things. We are definitely not REACTING to already known knowledge.
Your idea seems to be along the line of Aristotle (I think it was him??), who claimed that humans already know everything there is to know, and they are simply re-learning what they have forgetten. I claim that is completely wrong and hence your reasoning is wrong too. We pre-compute almost nothing.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
...it should be possible to build a computer that follows the same statistical laws as the human brain.
But if the states are RANDOM, you will never be able to simulate the brain, or anything else for that matter. What you are sayin is akin to trying to predict the EXACT position of an electron in a nucleus. It just cannot be done. However, you can give the probability of the electron at a certain position.
Even if you can model the system reasonably well, you won't know the exact outcome because of "randomness".
Just because our brains are probabilistic doesn't mean we have "true" free will.
It is not just the probabilistic view that matters; the notion of randomness goes hand in hand. If things in the universe happen randomly (say the chemical reaction in your brain is random) then humans indeed have free will, IN THE SENSE THAT you cannot predict what humans--or any process for that matter--will do.
On top of all this, can computers (a deterministic finite system) ever generate random numbers? I'm not too knowledgeable in this matter but my feeling was that computers only generate pseudo-random numbers and other questionable numbers passed off as "random".
Sivaram Velauthapillai
... there is also the reality that women and men think differently. The typical man will have an improved sense of spacial relationships, whereas the typical woman will have stronger language centre skills (for example).
;)
Yeah that's true to some extent but we don't really know a whole lot about it. For example, what makes one deviate? Also, I am unhappy with the lack of emphasis placed on environment--too much genetics and too little environment...
Chess is very much about being able to envisage the spatial relationships of the board many moves in advance...
We don't know about that. I don't think anyone has done a study to indicate that. You may be right but I'm not too confident yet.
The bigger issue is why activities that are dominated by men (such as football or chess) are considered of greater importance than activities that are dominated by women (bringing up children?)?
The answer is fairly obvious--is it not? Since nearly all societies are patriarchial, activities by men will be valued more.
Sara... yes; female, a slashdotter, a geek and a gamer; plus I can play chess and read a map...
Are you sure you aren't a man?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Actually quantum mechanics is exactly what I have in mind. Why do you say it is silly? That is the theory that scientists believe in nowadays.
If you go with quantum theory, what happens is that you can't know the outcome state of an action. The outcome spans a probability distribution. Not a great example but I'll use it anyway: When you flip a coin, deterministic view would say that the coin can only be heads or tails. But if you go with a probabilistic framework, the coin can stand on its edge, it can blow up and disintegrate, etc. That's how the universe is.
According to this view, two IDENTICAL brains will end up doing different things simply because the end state has a probability attached with it. This essentially means that humans are not automatons.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Chomsky has no talent whatsoever for accurately describing anything politically or socially with any degree of accuracy.
lol... I guess this is the case of a fool dismissing someone intelligent because he couldn't understand a word that was said...
Capitalism will never collapse: free trade and the people having control over their own lives is a natural state that things gravitate to.
That's what all you capitalists like to believe. Anyway, there are many reasons it won't happen but I'll just cite one: class war. Capitalism will result in wealth being hoarded by a few. It's already happening but it will get worse. There will come a point when the lower classes, who always outnumber the upper classes, will overthrow the system. It's inevitable... On another note, if you think capitalism is "natural", how come it didn't exist 500 years ago? If you look at capitalism from a historical perspective, its life is so short to be meaningless. Fedualism, monarchy, and theocracies have lived longer. Mind you, some of these aren't economic systems. However, you can't practice capitalism with these systems (eg. you can't have capitalism and monarchy because monarchy limits property based on blood).
The only time it goes away is when fascist dictators take over...
Actually you can practice fascism on top of capitalism (as Nazis and Fascists (in Italy) did). Fascism is not the enemy of capitalism; socialism and to some extent anarchism are!
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Let's put it this way... as long as USA is out on its Imperialist adventures, this isn't going to happen. My history is weak but I do not think there is a case in history of a nation/civilization/etc managing to achieve something while going on an imperial pursuit. Even the richest of them have problems financing it.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I don't think you know your history very well.
Ever heard of something called Iran-Contra? US did invade with the CIA (of course, I'm not implying that they invaded with their military). Check out this link: The history of U.S. intervention in Nicaragua.
While you are at it, here are all the US interventions in the last hundread years or so:
A history of U.S. intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean
A Brief History of U.S. Interventions: 1945 to the Present
Hope you learn something...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I don't know if I understand what you mean by cellular automata. Is that the same idea that everything in the universe is deterministic? If yes, you are wrong. The universe can be shown to be non-deterministic. Modern day science is heading in the direction that everything is probabilistic. What this means is that humans are NOT automatons.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
What you are saying would actually mean something if:
- you held to your principles (i.e. ended up overthrowing all despotic, totalitarian, etc regimes starting with Kuwait)
- If the newly formed govt was democracy-like. So far, the Iraqi govt is a hand-picked govt run by Chalabi (a thief who actually stole millions of dollars from the US govt). And all the signs indicate that Iraq will be run by an autocratic govt.
Sivaram VelauthapillaiI'm not a liberatarian but...
The Free State Project is supposed to be liberatarian-right. You certainly are on the right but I doubt that you are much of a liberatarian. I don't know how your state is going to survive with people like you around. The first statement alone shows that you are not much of a liberatarian. I don't see how a liberatarian can support an open-ended war with no trials, indefinite jail, etc. In addition, you seem to imply that you support imperialist wars. Again, this is contrary to many liberatarian views.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Then they shouldn't have taken on the loans if they can't meet the terms.
Actually the people who are going to get a shock when these countries stop paying their debt will be those in the rich countries (read: you and me). The so-called loans that countries like USA give out are nothing more than grants. Don't expect to see them back ever again. What USA and others are doing is what Noam Chomsky roughly referred to as "socializiation of debt"--a concept that makes no sense whatsoever to anyone on the left. USA doesn't write off the debt and when these countries do collapse, USA will get hit big time.
I predict that the collapse of the developing countries due to debt might cause the collapse of capitalism. Let's wait and see if I'm right...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Maybe if USA didn't invade those countries (yes USA did invade, not with the military but with the CIA) then some of those countries wouldn't be as badly off as they are.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I never thought of it that way. Wow. That's an interesting way of looking at the differences. A slow, parallel computation device (i.e. brain) vs fast, linear computation device (i.e. computer). I never looked at it that way but it makes a lot of sense.
I guess one result of this view is that IF computers can compute in parallel* they will totally destroy the human brain.
* note: modern day notion of parallelism is very primitive compared to the brain...so the computers aren't really "parallel" yet...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
There are approximately 35^100 legal options for a chess game (that's a 2 with about one hundred and fifty four trailing 0's).
:)
How did you get that number? I'll bet it's a lot lower in practice. You can probably eliminate many magnitudes of moves simply by the generally acception notion of 'dumb moves'. For instance, moving a rook pawn on your first move is 'dumb' so you can eliminate that. Similarly, you can probably cut down several zeroes by eliminating dumb moves.
Assuming you can process... 2 million moves per second, just like Deep Blue, the universe would end by the time you finished (i.e. 4.1477e+137 millenia away!)
hmm... the universe doesn't END! I'm not sure what you are referring to??? Maybe the computer components will overheat or fail before it finishes playing the game...but the universe will still be around
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I think what he/she is asking for is a sentient being. Until a computer that can THINK for ITSELF (i.e. sentient), he says it is not worthy. Right now, the computer simply COMPUTES some pre-coded PROGRAM.
In other words, he is asking for something that can EVOLVE by ITSELF. Right now, computers don't evolve--they die.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I disagree with you--and your anthropologist friend :)--on this issue.
There have actually been matriarchial societies. Though they have been few and obscure. I think the reason history was mostly patriarchial is because POWER rules! And regardless of how you look at it, men had more power than women back then. This is especially true since physical power (as opposed to mental) was the only thing that mattered before. Needless to say, women simply were inferior to men when it came to physical power.
You can see what I mean when you look at econopolitical systems. The past was ruled by elitist systems (this is still true today but not as badly as the past). And elitist systems usually mean that one person, or one family, or one ethnicity, or one region, or one profession, ruled over others. Since men had more physical power (and this is all that mattered back then, before the advent of science and stuff), men ruled women--simple as that.
As far as women not being good at something like chess, it may have more to do with the environment and discrimination than anything else. One reason could be that women just aren't interested in games like chess (just like how they aren't really into certain computer games). In addition, women in most of the world (I'm talking a massive majority) are treated as inferiors to men. Even Russia/USSR, where a lot of grandmasters come from, did not empower women. So what you get in the world is that only a small percentage of women actually play chess.
I'm not saying that you will get equal number of men and women at the top. But what you should see is far more women in the top rankings. The present listings have very few. I think this will increase.
Your football vs cooking analogy is misleading because football is a physical activity. Women will always be worse off than men and hence sports like football will be dominated by men. Chess isn't physical so that restriction isn't presnet...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
If computers rule earth (let's hope not :) ), the computers will carry out what they perceive to be the highest goal, or highest challenge.
If Chess is the highest challenge for them, they will spend all their time trying to master that...
If war is the highest challenge, they will spend centuries warring each other...
If peace is the highest, they will attempt to initiate and maintain peace...
If trying to explore the whole galaxy is the most challenging, they will spend billions of light-years doing that...
Having said all that, I personally don't think none of those will be challenging to a computer. What will be challenging to a computer is art. I suspect computers will attempt to master art and never succeed (since it is subjective and can't be quantified)...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
You mean US imperialism will be replaced with XReR-74 imperialism?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
The guy raises the possibility that computers will never be better at chess than humans. That should set off immediate alarm bells that the author doesn't know what he's talking about.
:) The first part had absolutely nothing. It seemed like an intro...he claims to support his position with empirical evidence but that was lacking in part I
Why? Is it not conceivable that computers may perhaps be weaker in some THING than humans?
But he doesn't back up this assertion with any compelling logic.
I think you need to wait for part III lol no joke
Sivaram Velauthapillai
No, if Bush had his way, the defecit would have been much smaller, since the tax cuts he wanted would have caused economic growth and resulted in more tax revenues.
Contrary to your supply-side capitalist fantasy, nothing of that sort would have happened. Even when the capitalists, such as the CATO institute and the Wall Street Journal, starts questioning the massive deficit, you know you are on thin ice.
And, more non-wealthy people would have been able to keep more of their own money (the wealthy were a minority of those who kept more of their own money under his plan)
What you are saying is in contrast to what the media and most politicians indicated...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
...have every major financial measure he's ever sent passed (all massive tax cuts, of course)...
Give some credit to Bush. His massive tax cuts were actually reduced quite a bit. Instead of having a $500b deficit, USA could have ended up with an even greater deficit--not to mention the wealthy receiving even greater of the taxes back.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I suspect that only a buffoon would carry on a conversation with another buffoon... I guess that makes it two of us...
Sivaram Velauthapillai