DANTE:
My friend is trying to convince me
that any contractors working on the
uncompleted Death Star were innocent
victims when the space station was
destroyed by the rebels.
...
BLUE-COLLAR MAN:
You know, any contractor willing to
work on that Death Star knew the
risks. If they were killed, it was
their own fault. A roofer listens
to this...
(taps his heart)
not his wallet.
Come on. Are we really supposed to believe that they had a Director of Product Marketing named Mike Evangelist?
Wayne: Worst Name. CNN Pentagon Correspondent, Wolf Blitzer? Shyeah, right! Garth: It's so obvious the guy made it up for the war! Wayne: Yeah! I know, it's like, "Hi, we now take you to our War Correspondent, Howitzer Explosion Guy."
Go after Sony through the shareholders directly (they own the business and allowed the breach of a basic human right).
You might not think its so great when they come after you because you have Sony shares in your 401k. Or your union's retirement account is bankrupted or your life/car/homeowner's insurance is cancelled because it held stock.
It's pretty simple: a physical thing that you're in possession of cann't be separated from you without violating your natural right to your own body. i.e. the sandwich is yours because I have to fight you to get it away from you
It's not that simple. What if the sandwich is on the table and I take it without you looking? I did not have to fight you for it. What if I stand on your lawn, I'm not hurting you directly. If I take your sandwich forcibly, do you have the right to violate my rights to take it back forcibly?
Most of societies rules don't deal with the self evident (I'm not allowed to kill you), they deal with the complex systems to maintain order and establish "fairness" (I can't stand on your front porch singing showtunes all day and night). Intellectual property is a construct to try and address issues related to things which are valuable yet intangible.
the natural rights of an individual cannot be given away
Yes they can and do through social contract.
you can't sell yourself into slavery
Not necessarily sell, but you can become essentially a slave by commiting a serious crime. You give up a significant amount of your rights and become the ward of the state.
you can't tell a higher power that it's ok to kill you
Euthanasia, living wills, and state execution are all examples of agreements allowing somebody else the right to terminate your life under certain circumstances.
One such right is the right to private property, closed to others' prying eyes or presence.
No it isn't. Socialism is an entire economic system based on the principle that property is shared. Privacy can be invaded given a set of circumstances (eg obtaining a search warrant)
Natural rights are self evident influences on the establishment of society. They are the key things that must be addressed through social contract (how is property handled, how is human life handled). They are not unbreakable fundamental laws.
It said that schools should present evolution as a flawed theory. This has the effect of students looking at evolution and saying "oh, it's not good enough to explain what we see...". A side effect of this is that the students now become more receptive to kooky ideas like Intelligent Design.
Should they teach it as a perfect theory, rather than teach the science of evolution. The flaws are where the interesting stuff lies. You know the kooky ideas like relativity that helped fill in the flaws of Newtonian Physics. Sure most of the kids will be lazy and just throw God in the gap, but others might find intrigue into actually trying to figure out why things aren't perfect. You inspire kids by challenging them, so instead of saying "here's evolution, accept it", say "here's evolution, make it work"
How exactly will international organizations have the ability to damage the US economy when the UN makes sure that no country has too much power over the internet?
Something small like requiring all US based sites to use.US, which means business need to spend large amounts of money to change all their advertising, business cards, etc. There are alot of small changes that can have major impact on existing systems.
And why should the EU accept that the US controlles a major part of their infrastructure?
I never said they should. Just explaining why each side is turning this into pissing contest. There's big money at stake, and everybody wants some sort of control.
It's beginning to make sense to me... taking a stand against the US on an issue without severe economic impact. Testing the waters before taking a stand on issues with greater impact, like trade or fishing rights.
I think the reason is because the internet does have greater economic impact. It was fine for the US to run things as long as the EU had little to lose, but now as Europe has become more dependent on the internet, the stakes are higher and the fear from the EU is that the US has unilateral authority to damage their economies. On the flip side the US is afraid of giving up control because then some international organization will have the ability to damage the US economy.
will come from the barrel of a gun. It doesn't matter what laws are passed right now, whoever gets up there first and can protect their property will rule the land. Once a presence is established you become the defacto owner, and somebody has to force you off.
True, but part of disproving a theory includes a better theory which explains all observed phenomenon
No it doesn't. All it takes is a verified observation to disprove a theory. There are disproven theories in science that can remain for years without something better taking its place.
Programming in BASIC and learning COBOL (starting so young is why I think I burned out and now do Mat Sci). Kids at that age are eager to learn, there's a professional football coach who started breaking down film and doing scouting reports for his father at age 9.
It's a good point, the difference between intelligence and wisdom. It's relatively easy to learn something, even Schrodinger's equation. It's far more difficult to try and explain the implications, or to formulate your own perspective. Breakthroughs in knowledge come from experience and creating your own version of the universe, not what is taught.
The point is, companies can afford to have the sort of expertise that is simply beyond the reach of individuals making decisions.
What ethical guidelines should they follow? In most situations international businesses provide significantly better conditions than local employment. Morally they can justify they are doing the right thing. Now if you want the company to impose your ethics you have the power to do so, through how you spend your money. If a company sees their brand is more popular because they show up on the news doing great things for their employees, then others will follow suit trying to one-up each other in "Moral Popularity"
Anyone who has any allusions about cracking this scheme might be in for a surprise... Changing TPM_Owner isn't exactly trivial, as you have to set the value during manufacturing.
Why do people willingly put crap like this into their bodies? Caffeine isn't good for you. Neither is alcohol. Combine the two and you're not helping yourself.
It's fun to play chemistry with your body. Showdowns between Starbucks and NyQuil, NoDoz and Sudafed, Red Bull and Sleeping pills. It's legal so it can't possibly hurt me, right?;)
R2D2 knew he needed to get to Obi-Wan, knew he would live near Luke & knew where Luke lived - why else would he be so insistent on going in that direction?
Because the rocky area would be a more likely location for settlements in the desert because of the shelter they provide (technically speaking).
Yea, as oppossed to all those honest politicians that run. Its not ever a matter of lesser evils anymore, just different flavors.
Because people are apathetic. In democracy you get the government you deserve. If people vote for the candidate who shows up on TV the most, of course politicians will work to get the most money for TV ads.
Logic versus Emotion: Perhaps I should have phrased this - rational reasoning in support of maximizing self-reproductive success, versus, irrational reasoning, not necessarily in support of any particular goal.
Why should emotion necessarily be irrational? It may be difficult to understand, and at times be outside of our concious reasoning, that doesn't necessarily mean it is irrational. Human thought is like the weather, it is so complex to understand, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. For example, lets say the first robots start to gain conciousness, and then humans try to fight them. Although not all humans pose a threat, they may logically deduce that the risk of harm any human poses outweighs possible positive value. It could be argued they fear/hate humans.
So what I'm saying is likewise a robot's fight or flight reflex (or it's analog) will most likely be under high level control.
That may be true if they had unlimited computing resources, but there will always be some sort of limitation. Power, computing cycle, and time limitations force machines to develop prioritization to maximize life. An example of this exists already in laptops. When a big task comes they forego power efficiency for computing power. The hard drive spins up, the CPU speeds up, the CPU fan turns on. This is analgous to a heightened state of awareness in humans (heart beats faster, sweating, etc). I'd expect similar prioritization to occur with computing cycles. Spend the 1 second to make a decision logically analyzing the overall situation looking for diplomatic solution, or increase visual analysis and run through different scenarios on how to take down an opponent.
Which will be the path of survival, the machine that takes time and thinks everything through logically, or the machine that prioritizes sometimes taking action that may not be fully understood? One of the keys to evolution is it depends on the environment.
So we end up with self-reproducing robots that are not under our control.
So the next question is what happens to us? Do they wipe us out (or perhaps keep a few of us around for pets etc.?) In other words, would they want to conquer/kill us? And would they succeed?
We will probably end up with self-reproducing robots not under our control before the robots become sentient. That should give us the first scare (possibly last one) when we face a nano-machine pandemic.
We can dimiss sentimentality, and other emotions the unconstrained robots might have. The most efficient self-reproducing robots will be ones that self-reproduce using pure logic (as opposed to something like emotion) to find the most efficient strategies. So this type will predominate through evolutionary pressure. In other words, they will coldly unemotionally maximize their self-reproduction, and wipe us out (or consider us a resource to use) if it helps with that end.
Why does pure logic outweigh emotion? We barely understand how emotion works in humans, much less understand how it might evolve in machines. Evolutionary process do not always give advantage to the most efficient, but rather the one that is most suited to it's environment. Just an example of a mechanism that may evolve that would not always support complete logical analysis but give practical advantage: Fight/Flight instinct - just as humans have biological changes that increase our physical abilities when confronted with a dangerous situation, machines may also develop similar characteristics. Imagine a situation where the robot devotes less power to "thinking" and more to it's physical systems, or devote more cycles to visual analysis than other thought function. It's hard to say whether or not things like love, morality, etc would never arise in robots.
Can we defeat them? Again not: The robots can evolve faster than us (they can use something akin to Lamarkian evolution and even design successive generations of themselves), and are non-constrained by biological constraints on body or brain (they will be able to easily out think us). As they can also redesign themselves in successive generations to remove any undesirable characteristics (whereas biological evolution always leaves design flaws, see discussion about the eye for example in the recent Slashdot discussion on Intelligent Design).
That may have been true in the past. But we are quickly becoming more able to control our own evolution. Not just the biology (gene manipulation), we will also start to include machines more and more into our systems (eg nano machines to seek out disease, artifical ears).
In short, humans eventual defeat (leading to extinction or subjugation) by sentient machines is inevitable once such machines are developed.
Through gene manipulation, and robotic augmentation, humans will no longer exist (as we know them) as we evolve ourselves into something like the borg. The question is at which point do we say we are no longer "human"?
So, in other words, since people who create software were dumb enough not ot form unions, actors deserve the same treatment, despite the fact that they do have unions?
The average actor in the union makes $7500 a year acting, the average programmer makes several times that. This has less to do with unions and more to do with standard contract of the industry. Programmers tend to go towards salary (+ maybe stock options) which is a much safer bet than royalty based pay scales.
Re:It doesn't matter what the intention is.
on
Patents vs. Secrecy
·
· Score: 1
After surveying a prison, the ICRC's findings always remain confidential, Gordon-Bates said. If a country holding detainees were to fear that the ICRC would degrade it before the world, the organization could lose its credibility as a neutral party. "We want to ensure we have access to people in prisons around the world," Gordon-Bates said.
The majority is best represented through the election process. The problem with juries is you are choosing only 12 people which is a small cross-section of the majority. You can't always create a balanced jury through random picking, you face localization issues (eg some areas of the US are predominantly one race, religion, etc). It's also easier to use emotion to sway 12 people to disregard the law, than to convice thousands or millions to actually change the law.
If a jury pool selected at random without undue tampering and stacking can't come to unanimous conviction then the accused shouldn't go to jail. Keeping one innocent person out of jail outweighs by far putting 100 guilty people in jail.
It's not about just finding a person innocent, sometimes they disregard how the law tells them to interpret evidence and find people guilty, or award damages in a civil case merely out of gut instinct rather than the facts.
For good or for bad the people are supposed to be running the government. The common population is supposed to pull the strings and the elected officials are supposed to dance.
Yes, and if the people weren't apathetic, and actually informed and involved themselves it would work. If people just vote for the guy on TV the most ( those corporate dollars don't magically turn into votes) then who are they going to listen to?
Giving the judges carte blanche until they really screw up before challenging them with a virtually impossible impeachment process is only asking for trouble. The judge who was steering public defense work to her adulterous boyfriend who killed his wife so he could openly hook up with said judge. As punishment she was given a six month paid vacati.. errr... suspension for lying to police during their investigation.
And no juror has ever been tampered with, corruption will always exist. As for her punishment, I'm not familiar with the case so couldn't comment. I'm sure there are laws that exist for her to be removed.
Can MMO players, used to instant gratification, understand that sometimes their investment fluctuates in value?
Ever try camping something in EQ? People definately show a lot of patience and deal with ups and downs (eg failed raid attempts that lead to long corpse recoveries). If they think there will be a payoff.
Slashdot Mirror
DANTE: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels.
...
BLUE-COLLAR MAN: You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... (taps his heart) not his wallet.
Come on. Are we really supposed to believe that they had a Director of Product Marketing named Mike Evangelist?
Wayne: Worst Name. CNN Pentagon Correspondent, Wolf Blitzer? Shyeah, right!
Garth: It's so obvious the guy made it up for the war!
Wayne: Yeah! I know, it's like, "Hi, we now take you to our War Correspondent, Howitzer Explosion Guy."
Go after Sony through the shareholders directly (they own the business and allowed the breach of a basic human right).
You might not think its so great when they come after you because you have Sony shares in your 401k. Or your union's retirement account is bankrupted or your life/car/homeowner's insurance is cancelled because it held stock.
It's pretty simple: a physical thing that you're in possession of cann't be separated from you without violating your natural right to your own body. i.e. the sandwich is yours because I have to fight you to get it away from you
It's not that simple. What if the sandwich is on the table and I take it without you looking? I did not have to fight you for it. What if I stand on your lawn, I'm not hurting you directly. If I take your sandwich forcibly, do you have the right to violate my rights to take it back forcibly?
Most of societies rules don't deal with the self evident (I'm not allowed to kill you), they deal with the complex systems to maintain order and establish "fairness" (I can't stand on your front porch singing showtunes all day and night). Intellectual property is a construct to try and address issues related to things which are valuable yet intangible.
the natural rights of an individual cannot be given away
Yes they can and do through social contract.
you can't sell yourself into slavery
Not necessarily sell, but you can become essentially a slave by commiting a serious crime. You give up a significant amount of your rights and become the ward of the state.
you can't tell a higher power that it's ok to kill you
Euthanasia, living wills, and state execution are all examples of agreements allowing somebody else the right to terminate your life under certain circumstances.
One such right is the right to private property, closed to others' prying eyes or presence.
No it isn't. Socialism is an entire economic system based on the principle that property is shared. Privacy can be invaded given a set of circumstances (eg obtaining a search warrant)
Natural rights are self evident influences on the establishment of society. They are the key things that must be addressed through social contract (how is property handled, how is human life handled). They are not unbreakable fundamental laws.
It said that schools should present evolution as a flawed theory. This has the effect of students looking at evolution and saying "oh, it's not good enough to explain what we see...". A side effect of this is that the students now become more receptive to kooky ideas like Intelligent Design.
Should they teach it as a perfect theory, rather than teach the science of evolution.
The flaws are where the interesting stuff lies. You know the kooky ideas like relativity that helped fill in the flaws of Newtonian Physics. Sure most of the kids will be lazy and just throw God in the gap, but others might find intrigue into actually trying to figure out why things aren't perfect. You inspire kids by challenging them, so instead of saying "here's evolution, accept it", say "here's evolution, make it work"
How exactly will international organizations have the ability to damage the US economy when the UN makes sure that no country has too much power over the internet?
.US, which means business need to spend large amounts of money to change all their advertising, business cards, etc. There are alot of small changes that can have major impact on existing systems.
Something small like requiring all US based sites to use
And why should the EU accept that the US controlles a major part of their infrastructure?
I never said they should. Just explaining why each side is turning this into pissing contest. There's big money at stake, and everybody wants some sort of control.
Insightful? How much is *your* freedom of speech worth?
:)
I'll shut up for $50,000
It's beginning to make sense to me... taking a stand against the US on an issue without severe economic impact. Testing the waters before taking a stand on issues with greater impact, like trade or fishing rights.
I think the reason is because the internet does have greater economic impact. It was fine for the US to run things as long as the EU had little to lose, but now as Europe has become more dependent on the internet, the stakes are higher and the fear from the EU is that the US has unilateral authority to damage their economies. On the flip side the US is afraid of giving up control because then some international organization will have the ability to damage the US economy.
will come from the barrel of a gun. It doesn't matter what laws are passed right now, whoever gets up there first and can protect their property will rule the land. Once a presence is established you become the defacto owner, and somebody has to force you off.
True, but part of disproving a theory includes a better theory which explains all observed phenomenon
No it doesn't. All it takes is a verified observation to disprove a theory. There are disproven theories in science that can remain for years without something better taking its place.
So, what were you doing at age 8?
Programming in BASIC and learning COBOL (starting so young is why I think I burned out and now do Mat Sci). Kids at that age are eager to learn, there's a professional football coach who started breaking down film and doing scouting reports for his father at age 9.
It's a good point, the difference between intelligence and wisdom. It's relatively easy to learn something, even Schrodinger's equation. It's far more difficult to try and explain the implications, or to formulate your own perspective. Breakthroughs in knowledge come from experience and creating your own version of the universe, not what is taught.
The point is, companies can afford to have the sort of expertise that is simply beyond the reach of individuals making decisions.
What ethical guidelines should they follow? In most situations international businesses provide significantly better conditions than local employment. Morally they can justify they are doing the right thing.
Now if you want the company to impose your ethics you have the power to do so, through how you spend your money.
If a company sees their brand is more popular because they show up on the news doing great things for their employees, then others will follow suit trying to one-up each other in "Moral Popularity"
Anyone who has any allusions about cracking this scheme might be in for a surprise... Changing TPM_Owner isn't exactly trivial, as you have to set the value during manufacturing.
Hmmm maybe TPM_Owner alludes to George Lucas?
Why do people willingly put crap like this into their bodies? Caffeine isn't good for you. Neither is alcohol. Combine the two and you're not helping yourself.
;)
It's fun to play chemistry with your body. Showdowns between Starbucks and NyQuil, NoDoz and Sudafed, Red Bull and Sleeping pills. It's legal so it can't possibly hurt me, right?
R2D2 knew he needed to get to Obi-Wan, knew he would live near Luke & knew where Luke lived - why else would he be so insistent on going in that direction?
Because the rocky area would be a more likely location for settlements in the desert because of the shelter they provide (technically speaking).
Yea, as oppossed to all those honest politicians that run. Its not ever a matter of lesser evils anymore, just different flavors.
Because people are apathetic. In democracy you get the government you deserve. If people vote for the candidate who shows up on TV the most, of course politicians will work to get the most money for TV ads.
The simple audacity of their intentions, or the idea that they think they will actually get away with it, or that it will even be plausible.
Even more amazing is the public elects the people who can make this happen.
Logic versus Emotion: Perhaps I should have phrased this - rational reasoning in support of maximizing self-reproductive success, versus, irrational reasoning, not necessarily in support of any particular goal.
Why should emotion necessarily be irrational? It may be difficult to understand, and at times be outside of our concious reasoning, that doesn't necessarily mean it is irrational. Human thought is like the weather, it is so complex to understand, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.
For example, lets say the first robots start to gain conciousness, and then humans try to fight them. Although not all humans pose a threat, they may logically deduce that the risk of harm any human poses outweighs possible positive value. It could be argued they fear/hate humans.
So what I'm saying is likewise a robot's fight or flight reflex (or it's analog) will most likely be under high level control.
That may be true if they had unlimited computing resources, but there will always be some sort of limitation. Power, computing cycle, and time limitations force machines to develop prioritization to maximize life.
An example of this exists already in laptops. When a big task comes they forego power efficiency for computing power. The hard drive spins up, the CPU speeds up, the CPU fan turns on. This is analgous to a heightened state of awareness in humans (heart beats faster, sweating, etc).
I'd expect similar prioritization to occur with computing cycles. Spend the 1 second to make a decision logically analyzing the overall situation looking for diplomatic solution, or increase visual analysis and run through different scenarios on how to take down an opponent.
Which will be the path of survival, the machine that takes time and thinks everything through logically, or the machine that prioritizes sometimes taking action that may not be fully understood? One of the keys to evolution is it depends on the environment.
So we end up with self-reproducing robots that are not under our control.
So the next question is what happens to us? Do they wipe us out (or perhaps keep a few of us around for pets etc.?) In other words, would they want to conquer/kill us? And would they succeed?
We will probably end up with self-reproducing robots not under our control before the robots become sentient. That should give us the first scare (possibly last one) when we face a nano-machine pandemic.
We can dimiss sentimentality, and other emotions the unconstrained robots might have. The most efficient self-reproducing robots will be ones that self-reproduce using pure logic (as opposed to something like emotion) to find the most efficient strategies. So this type will predominate through evolutionary pressure. In other words, they will coldly unemotionally maximize their self-reproduction, and wipe us out (or consider us a resource to use) if it helps with that end.
Why does pure logic outweigh emotion? We barely understand how emotion works in humans, much less understand how it might evolve in machines. Evolutionary process do not always give advantage to the most efficient, but rather the one that is most suited to it's environment.
Just an example of a mechanism that may evolve that would not always support complete logical analysis but give practical advantage: Fight/Flight instinct - just as humans have biological changes that increase our physical abilities when confronted with a dangerous situation, machines may also develop similar characteristics. Imagine a situation where the robot devotes less power to "thinking" and more to it's physical systems, or devote more cycles to visual analysis than other thought function.
It's hard to say whether or not things like love, morality, etc would never arise in robots.
Can we defeat them? Again not: The robots can evolve faster than us (they can use something akin to Lamarkian evolution and even design successive generations of themselves), and are non-constrained by biological constraints on body or brain (they will be able to easily out think us). As they can also redesign themselves in successive generations to remove any undesirable characteristics (whereas biological evolution always leaves design flaws, see discussion about the eye for example in the recent Slashdot discussion on Intelligent Design).
That may have been true in the past. But we are quickly becoming more able to control our own evolution. Not just the biology (gene manipulation), we will also start to include machines more and more into our systems (eg nano machines to seek out disease, artifical ears).
In short, humans eventual defeat (leading to extinction or subjugation) by sentient machines is inevitable once such machines are developed.
Through gene manipulation, and robotic augmentation, humans will no longer exist (as we know them) as we evolve ourselves into something like the borg. The question is at which point do we say we are no longer "human"?
So, in other words, since people who create software were dumb enough not ot form unions, actors deserve the same treatment, despite the fact that they do have unions?
The average actor in the union makes $7500 a year acting, the average programmer makes several times that. This has less to do with unions and more to do with standard contract of the industry. Programmers tend to go towards salary (+ maybe stock options) which is a much safer bet than royalty based pay scales.
The ICRC keeps its findings confidential.
After surveying a prison, the ICRC's findings always remain confidential, Gordon-Bates said. If a country holding detainees were to fear that the ICRC would degrade it before the world, the organization could lose its credibility as a neutral party. "We want to ensure we have access to people in prisons around the world," Gordon-Bates said.
You think too poorly of the majority.
The majority is best represented through the election process. The problem with juries is you are choosing only 12 people which is a small cross-section of the majority. You can't always create a balanced jury through random picking, you face localization issues (eg some areas of the US are predominantly one race, religion, etc). It's also easier to use emotion to sway 12 people to disregard the law, than to convice thousands or millions to actually change the law.
If a jury pool selected at random without undue tampering and stacking can't come to unanimous conviction then the accused shouldn't go to jail. Keeping one innocent person out of jail outweighs by far putting 100 guilty people in jail.
It's not about just finding a person innocent, sometimes they disregard how the law tells them to interpret evidence and find people guilty, or award damages in a civil case merely out of gut instinct rather than the facts.
For good or for bad the people are supposed to be running the government. The common population is supposed to pull the strings and the elected officials are supposed to dance.
Yes, and if the people weren't apathetic, and actually informed and involved themselves it would work. If people just vote for the guy on TV the most ( those corporate dollars don't magically turn into votes) then who are they going to listen to?
Giving the judges carte blanche until they really screw up before challenging them with a virtually impossible impeachment process is only asking for trouble. The judge who was steering public defense work to her adulterous boyfriend who killed his wife so he could openly hook up with said judge. As punishment she was given a six month paid vacati.. errr... suspension for lying to police during their investigation.
And no juror has ever been tampered with, corruption will always exist. As for her punishment, I'm not familiar with the case so couldn't comment. I'm sure there are laws that exist for her to be removed.
Can MMO players, used to instant gratification, understand that sometimes their investment fluctuates in value?
Ever try camping something in EQ? People definately show a lot of patience and deal with ups and downs (eg failed raid attempts that lead to long corpse recoveries). If they think there will be a payoff.