Finally, why does Linus insist on acting like a child?
I don't suppose you'll truly know the answer to the last question but I'd appreciate any speculation.
I'd imagine it's the classic "drunk on power" -syndrome: People are supported by their own internal structure and the social pressure around them. Having power removes some of that pressure, and some people are too weak to maintain their shape without it, so the part of their mind responsible for dealing with other people degenerates.
Basically, being able to be rude without consequences is every teenager's wet dream, and some people never advance beyond that.
Did the fact that not all members of the Nazi party were fully committed to "the cause" make that group any less dangerous? No, it did not.
The Nazi party was an organization. The religion of Islam is not an organization. All nazis followed Hitler's orders. All muslims do not follow the orders of any particular leader.
The religion of Islam has as its cause the conversion of all people to its faith, either willingly or by force.
The religion of Islam has no cause, on the account of not being a thinking entity and not under the control of any such entity. This is unlike the Nazi party, which was given and kept at a cause by its leader.
This group, as a whole, is dangerous.
There is no group of all muslims that could be described any particular qualities, any more than there is, say, a group of all christians. The whole notion is just as ridiculous than, say, claiming that all protestants as a group are secretly planning to invade Vatican and kill the pope.
Nope! It turns out, Senator McCarthy was right. There really were Communists in the State Department.
This forces us to re-evaluate the entire phrase of "McCarthyism" as the current (wrong) meaning implies falsehood. Please stop using this phrase, it is deprecated.
It is useful as ever. McCarthy took the allegation "there are communist spies", expanded that to "all communists are spies" and finally conducted show trials to condemn more or less random people, all to boost his own career. This is, of course, entirely analogous to this story: "there are muslim terrorists" -> "all muslims are terrorists" -> "this guy might be a muslim! Break down his door!"
It's a tactic with a long and bloody pedigree. McCarthy was simply a less capable Hitler wannabe. And so are the current anti-muslim fearmongers.
Yeah, this was a bad idea. Unfortunately choosing to make such a public statement on this will basically give the highly vocal Conservatives some more ammunition to use against him, basically in their eyes invalidating the stuff she leaked. While we all know that it's got absolutely nothing to do with anything, that's never stopped the highly vocal Conservative minority from making a big deal of this stuff.
Authoritarians will always find some excuse to side with authority, so what difference does this make? "Any excuse will serve a tyrant."
You'll have an incentive to moderate and you bypass the entire problem of trying to objectively rate comments; each user gets to see what they prefer.
And you don't see any problem with feeding people's confirmation bias by keeping them from seeing any opinion they might disagree with?
Hate racist comments and don't want to see them at all? Eventually you'll build up enough connections to people who always downmod them to have them rapidly filtered out.
So racist comments go unchallenged because they're only seen by people who agree with them, thus sending a clear message to their poster that he's right, encouraging him to go ever further. He doesn't have to go to some hive of villainy like Stormfront to spew his bullshit, he'll just have to post it to see less and less disagreement and more and more posts calling him awesome over time. Do you see how this could have nasty consequences IRL?
Sometimes I wonder if proposals like this are the work of some shadowy conspiracy with the specific goal of keeping people from having meaningful conversations by trapping everyone in their own personal echo chamber.
Moderation isn't bad, but troll posts still waste a lot of space if you browse at -1. It would be nice to see blatant troll posts deleted altogether.
So why browse at -1? Would you rather wade through GNAA posts to get to whatever gems you presumably think are undeservedly modded -1 Troll, or have said gems deleted altogether?
Allowing such posts to remain is somewhat similar to leaving graffiti on a wall - they start to proliferate.
And since these particular graffiti are located in a back alley no one enters unless they are specifically looking to see them, what's the problem?
Besides, the problem with deleting trolls is that "troll" is simply a deliberately provocative post, and nothing provokes people more than someone disagreeing with them. Someone has to decide what is to be deleted, and they're going to go with whatever they disagree with. The end result is a forum where the scope of the discussion has been narrowed to fit inside whatever fits the preconceived notions of most members. And we already have enough of those on every topic under the sun for those who need the ego-boost of constant confirmation to use.
You can't cut the noise without cutting some of the signal as well. The fact that you ever bother browsing at -1 should be proof enough of that.
Everything goes into the garbage can...no recycling whatsoever....
So... is this some weird perversion brough on by American party politics? Because for the life of me I can't figure out why anyone would be proud of shitting on their own nest.
I would say that we should make it a requirement that you had to rinse out recyclables before putting them in the bin, but let's face it, that would only lead to people just tossing it in the trash.
Or you could use machines like we do here in Finland at every store alcove. You simply feed everything you have - plastic bottles, glass bottles, cans - into the machine and it sorts them and gives you a small reimbursement for your trouble. Some people actually get a side income from looking for abandoned bottles to recycle.
Why expect people to do the right thing when it's easy to have machines do it instead?
People who lack enough decent food or sanitation, and suffer from chronic diseases and lack of even the most rudimentary health care, have things they need more than the Internet.
But they still also need the Internet, not only because it contains information on disease treatment and sanitation but also because communication infrastructure makes it far easier to build other infrastructure and get out of poverty. You don't need more than an Internet connection to start offering services world-wide nowadays, and for Shitholestan being the next offshoring target for a completely nonpolluting industry like programming, graphic arts, etc. would be a godsend.
Also, I really don't understand why the summary seems to think Facebook promoting worldwide Internet connectivity to expand its markets is cynical. Would it also be cynical to teach someone to fish because you have a diabolical plan to buy some delicious salmon from him later on? Sure, he can now feed himself and also earn money but you also benefit so it's cynical? Wut?
Manning released over 10,000 documents. Are you sure he read them all and confirmed that every single of the 10,000 documents contained evidence of a war crime and made sure that the release would not help the enemy?
Of course he didn't, that's an impossible task. Which means it's damned if you do, damned if you don't: release it all and risk aiding the enemy (whoever that happens to be at the moment), or only release the parts which you've confirmed document war crimes (which of course helps any enemy since it's bad publicity for America) and risk leaving some covered.
In any case, it was obvious Manning was going to get a harsh sentence to make an example out of him. Which, when combined with other recent events like the Snowden affair, does make it increasingly look like the US government is waging a more or less open war against its citizens. It'll be interesting to see which way it'll go.
Seems like it would balance out the karma in life a bit, no?
No, but having your DNA turn out all over a crime scene you've never been near of because you happen to be compatible with the head investigators sick daughter might. That's something to consider before applauding a scheme that gives the state an incentive to execute as many people as it can. Karma oves irony.
I'm sure there are worse national traits than self-deception
I'm not an asshole, I'm just honest. I'm not a thief, I just forgot to pay for this. I'm not a rapist, the bitch secretly wanted it. I'm not a murderer, I was just defending my honor. I'm not a robber baron, I'm just a smart businessman. I'm not a genocidal lunatic, they were just vermin in human form and besides I was just doing God's will.
Self-deception is the worst possible trait to have, for individuals or groups, because once you become comfortable with lying to yourself there's no atrocity you won't partake in with a clear conscience and a beautific smile your lips, utterly secure in your own rationality and righteousness.
But seriously, what possible good can come from a war-oriented defense projects agency trying to model the human intellect/neocortex?
Less casualties on both sides. The Terminator corps can take risks the Marine corps couldn't, so they don't have to, say, shoot a suspected suicide bomber from a distance rather than close in and investigate. Sure, one might get blown up, but so what? By the time the shrapnel hits the ground ten more have popped out from the assembly line.
Expendable unfeeling industrially manufactured troops is exactly what you need to avoid civilian casualties when fighting guerilla warfare with a non-uniformed enemy.
Every time I hear that, I remember that old Impossible Mission episode where the team is infiltrating a Soviet agent training camp only for the Soviets to start demanding papers - which, as it turns out after the commercial break, is just a training regime to prepare the agents for the American environment where the proper response to that is an angry refusal and demanding to see warrants. Because, after all, that is a very stark difference between the Soviet and American systems.
Can a nuclear power do anything? Yes, I think we can.
What, exactly speaking? Are you going to nuke Washington? That would be suicide. So what will that "nuclear power" do for you? Nothing whatsoever, unless you're already in World War III.
"Run a simulation" is typically not understood to be substantially similar to "imagination".
But of course it is. Constructing a model and evolving it based on some ruleset is the very definition of simulation. Humans simply like to represent the input and results in terms of sensory stimulus rather than numbers.
In this particular example the real difference is most humans would blindly guess, with no simulation at all. They'd either guess that alligators can jump, or that they can't, and answer based on that essentially unsupported guess.
Most people have at least a vague idea of what alligators are and how they move and would base their answer on that. And in fact, when someone says "alligator", what comes to your mind? An animated image of a crawling beast. A simulator. Those are what human brain stores and recalls, not factoids like whether alligators can jump hurdles. And why not? If the abilities of alligators is ever going to have some impact on you beyond academic curiosity, it's likely you need the relevant info in a hurry, and simply reactivating a stored simulator is faster than building one from known facts.
Which, on an unrelated topic, is why humans have such problems remembering passwords, but it becomes trivial if you can attach a story - a simulator - to one which generates the passcode. And also why witnesses tend to be unreliable: a remembered past event is stored as a simulator, which (re)generates sensory stimuli associated with the event, and will happily fill gaps with procedurally generated garbage which the witness then represents as a sworn testimony - not because he's a liar, but because remembering is the same as imagining for humans.
All of which means that strong AI, should it ever exist, will likely be just as prone to irrationality as humans are.
So, you would take away the freedom to advertise one's products or services, on the grounds that it's a parasitic activity.
Nobody was talking about making advertising illegal (altough constant tracking probably should fall under existing stalking laws), just about whether we should "frustrate the efforts" of the marketers. Why do you feel the need to twist the issue?
Should we frustrate the efforts of people who design advertising, when they are just doing their jobs by trying to improve the targeting and effectiveness of ads? No
Yes, we should. Killing off parasites is in everyone's interest. If they can stay alive by preying on the weak today, they might evolve enough to prey on me tomorrow. And even if they don't, they still distort the marketplace so that the best product might not win, which will end up hurting me. And even if they fail at that, as long as advertising remains a viable career it draws capable people off from actually useful occupations, thus resulting in an opportunity cost for the society as a whole.
So yes, you should do anything you can to frustrate the efforts of advertisers. Doing so serves both your own interests and the common good at the same time.
There are two basic forms. One involves training the human on the commands the computer will respond to properly and the other involves training the computer to recognize an individuals speech patterns.
And neither helps here. The fact is, you don't know if an alligator can run the hundred-metre hurdles. When you're asked to answer the question, you imagine the scenario - construct and run a simulation - and answer the question based on the results. In other words, an AI needs imagination to answer questions like these. Or to plan its actions, for that matter.
Suppose the ancient Greeks were considering homeopathy, before they had confirmed the existence of molecules and so forth. Homeopathy could have been plausible to them.
Not really. Ancient Greeks had wine, and were familiar with the practice of diluting it to control (lessen) the effects. It seems unlikely they wouldn't had made the obvious connection.
So, either you fix this by making people suffer dementia, and forget things in order to avoid this "post death" era overload, or you end up with vegetables who have siezures.
So go ahead and forget things (which is not the same as dementia, BTW). It's not like you can remember every last second of your life anyway.
Sure, you could possibly find a way to liberate a brain from its bony prison, and gently loosen the neural fibers in a nutrient bath, to allow nueronal and axonal migration to continue, but then the patient isn't really human anymore, are they? Congratulations, your immortal person is a giant, energy hungry brain in a tank.
Or go one step further and do mind uploading, turning your into an AI (Virtual Human? Uploaded Biological? Evolved Intelligence?). It solves all these problems, with the added benefit that you are now in a form more suitable for taking on the challenge of space colonization. And should you need it, you can still use the old-fashioned human form, either in a virtual world or via a remote-controlled robot.
And surely humanity, if it's worth anything at all, is not dependent on flesh.
And then, you run out of resources, because neural tissue is absurdly energy hungry, (your existing brain consumes a full third of all calories consumed!)
Which amounts to 30 watts.
And space doesn't exactly have raw material in infinite abundance.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd imagine it's the classic "drunk on power" -syndrome: People are supported by their own internal structure and the social pressure around them. Having power removes some of that pressure, and some people are too weak to maintain their shape without it, so the part of their mind responsible for dealing with other people degenerates.
Basically, being able to be rude without consequences is every teenager's wet dream, and some people never advance beyond that.
The Nazi party was an organization. The religion of Islam is not an organization. All nazis followed Hitler's orders. All muslims do not follow the orders of any particular leader.
The religion of Islam has no cause, on the account of not being a thinking entity and not under the control of any such entity. This is unlike the Nazi party, which was given and kept at a cause by its leader.
There is no group of all muslims that could be described any particular qualities, any more than there is, say, a group of all christians. The whole notion is just as ridiculous than, say, claiming that all protestants as a group are secretly planning to invade Vatican and kill the pope.
It is useful as ever. McCarthy took the allegation "there are communist spies", expanded that to "all communists are spies" and finally conducted show trials to condemn more or less random people, all to boost his own career. This is, of course, entirely analogous to this story: "there are muslim terrorists" -> "all muslims are terrorists" -> "this guy might be a muslim! Break down his door!"
It's a tactic with a long and bloody pedigree. McCarthy was simply a less capable Hitler wannabe. And so are the current anti-muslim fearmongers.
Authoritarians will always find some excuse to side with authority, so what difference does this make? "Any excuse will serve a tyrant."
Not very well in this regard, according to the grandparent, which gets us back to my question: why do it this way?
But thanks for your +5 Informative comment anyway. I certainly know more having read it.
And you don't see any problem with feeding people's confirmation bias by keeping them from seeing any opinion they might disagree with?
So racist comments go unchallenged because they're only seen by people who agree with them, thus sending a clear message to their poster that he's right, encouraging him to go ever further. He doesn't have to go to some hive of villainy like Stormfront to spew his bullshit, he'll just have to post it to see less and less disagreement and more and more posts calling him awesome over time. Do you see how this could have nasty consequences IRL?
Sometimes I wonder if proposals like this are the work of some shadowy conspiracy with the specific goal of keeping people from having meaningful conversations by trapping everyone in their own personal echo chamber.
So why browse at -1? Would you rather wade through GNAA posts to get to whatever gems you presumably think are undeservedly modded -1 Troll, or have said gems deleted altogether?
And since these particular graffiti are located in a back alley no one enters unless they are specifically looking to see them, what's the problem?
Besides, the problem with deleting trolls is that "troll" is simply a deliberately provocative post, and nothing provokes people more than someone disagreeing with them. Someone has to decide what is to be deleted, and they're going to go with whatever they disagree with. The end result is a forum where the scope of the discussion has been narrowed to fit inside whatever fits the preconceived notions of most members. And we already have enough of those on every topic under the sun for those who need the ego-boost of constant confirmation to use.
You can't cut the noise without cutting some of the signal as well. The fact that you ever bother browsing at -1 should be proof enough of that.
Which rises question of just why are they part of the kernel? Why does a mouse driver need to run at Ring 0?
So... is this some weird perversion brough on by American party politics? Because for the life of me I can't figure out why anyone would be proud of shitting on their own nest.
Or you could use machines like we do here in Finland at every store alcove. You simply feed everything you have - plastic bottles, glass bottles, cans - into the machine and it sorts them and gives you a small reimbursement for your trouble. Some people actually get a side income from looking for abandoned bottles to recycle.
Why expect people to do the right thing when it's easy to have machines do it instead?
But they still also need the Internet, not only because it contains information on disease treatment and sanitation but also because communication infrastructure makes it far easier to build other infrastructure and get out of poverty. You don't need more than an Internet connection to start offering services world-wide nowadays, and for Shitholestan being the next offshoring target for a completely nonpolluting industry like programming, graphic arts, etc. would be a godsend.
Also, I really don't understand why the summary seems to think Facebook promoting worldwide Internet connectivity to expand its markets is cynical. Would it also be cynical to teach someone to fish because you have a diabolical plan to buy some delicious salmon from him later on? Sure, he can now feed himself and also earn money but you also benefit so it's cynical? Wut?
Of course he didn't, that's an impossible task. Which means it's damned if you do, damned if you don't: release it all and risk aiding the enemy (whoever that happens to be at the moment), or only release the parts which you've confirmed document war crimes (which of course helps any enemy since it's bad publicity for America) and risk leaving some covered.
In any case, it was obvious Manning was going to get a harsh sentence to make an example out of him. Which, when combined with other recent events like the Snowden affair, does make it increasingly look like the US government is waging a more or less open war against its citizens. It'll be interesting to see which way it'll go.
Well, a properly designed AC can pump heat either way...
No, but having your DNA turn out all over a crime scene you've never been near of because you happen to be compatible with the head investigators sick daughter might. That's something to consider before applauding a scheme that gives the state an incentive to execute as many people as it can. Karma oves irony.
I'm not an asshole, I'm just honest. I'm not a thief, I just forgot to pay for this. I'm not a rapist, the bitch secretly wanted it. I'm not a murderer, I was just defending my honor. I'm not a robber baron, I'm just a smart businessman. I'm not a genocidal lunatic, they were just vermin in human form and besides I was just doing God's will.
Self-deception is the worst possible trait to have, for individuals or groups, because once you become comfortable with lying to yourself there's no atrocity you won't partake in with a clear conscience and a beautific smile your lips, utterly secure in your own rationality and righteousness.
Less casualties on both sides. The Terminator corps can take risks the Marine corps couldn't, so they don't have to, say, shoot a suspected suicide bomber from a distance rather than close in and investigate. Sure, one might get blown up, but so what? By the time the shrapnel hits the ground ten more have popped out from the assembly line.
Expendable unfeeling industrially manufactured troops is exactly what you need to avoid civilian casualties when fighting guerilla warfare with a non-uniformed enemy.
Every time I hear that, I remember that old Impossible Mission episode where the team is infiltrating a Soviet agent training camp only for the Soviets to start demanding papers - which, as it turns out after the commercial break, is just a training regime to prepare the agents for the American environment where the proper response to that is an angry refusal and demanding to see warrants. Because, after all, that is a very stark difference between the Soviet and American systems.
My, how times change.
What, exactly speaking? Are you going to nuke Washington? That would be suicide. So what will that "nuclear power" do for you? Nothing whatsoever, unless you're already in World War III.
But will they actually do something? Can they do anything?
I'd guess not. Which means it's just a matter of time.
But of course it is. Constructing a model and evolving it based on some ruleset is the very definition of simulation. Humans simply like to represent the input and results in terms of sensory stimulus rather than numbers.
Most people have at least a vague idea of what alligators are and how they move and would base their answer on that. And in fact, when someone says "alligator", what comes to your mind? An animated image of a crawling beast. A simulator. Those are what human brain stores and recalls, not factoids like whether alligators can jump hurdles. And why not? If the abilities of alligators is ever going to have some impact on you beyond academic curiosity, it's likely you need the relevant info in a hurry, and simply reactivating a stored simulator is faster than building one from known facts.
Which, on an unrelated topic, is why humans have such problems remembering passwords, but it becomes trivial if you can attach a story - a simulator - to one which generates the passcode. And also why witnesses tend to be unreliable: a remembered past event is stored as a simulator, which (re)generates sensory stimuli associated with the event, and will happily fill gaps with procedurally generated garbage which the witness then represents as a sworn testimony - not because he's a liar, but because remembering is the same as imagining for humans.
All of which means that strong AI, should it ever exist, will likely be just as prone to irrationality as humans are.
Nobody was talking about making advertising illegal (altough constant tracking probably should fall under existing stalking laws), just about whether we should "frustrate the efforts" of the marketers. Why do you feel the need to twist the issue?
Nobody was talking about that either. Why do you feel the need to twist the issue? Are you perhaps a marketroid yourself?
Yes, we should. Killing off parasites is in everyone's interest. If they can stay alive by preying on the weak today, they might evolve enough to prey on me tomorrow. And even if they don't, they still distort the marketplace so that the best product might not win, which will end up hurting me. And even if they fail at that, as long as advertising remains a viable career it draws capable people off from actually useful occupations, thus resulting in an opportunity cost for the society as a whole.
So yes, you should do anything you can to frustrate the efforts of advertisers. Doing so serves both your own interests and the common good at the same time.
And neither helps here. The fact is, you don't know if an alligator can run the hundred-metre hurdles. When you're asked to answer the question, you imagine the scenario - construct and run a simulation - and answer the question based on the results. In other words, an AI needs imagination to answer questions like these. Or to plan its actions, for that matter.
Not really. Ancient Greeks had wine, and were familiar with the practice of diluting it to control (lessen) the effects. It seems unlikely they wouldn't had made the obvious connection.
So go ahead and forget things (which is not the same as dementia, BTW). It's not like you can remember every last second of your life anyway.
Or go one step further and do mind uploading, turning your into an AI (Virtual Human? Uploaded Biological? Evolved Intelligence?). It solves all these problems, with the added benefit that you are now in a form more suitable for taking on the challenge of space colonization. And should you need it, you can still use the old-fashioned human form, either in a virtual world or via a remote-controlled robot.
And surely humanity, if it's worth anything at all, is not dependent on flesh.
Which amounts to 30 watts.
For all practical purposes it does.