Once upon a time there was more of a meaningful difference. There still is a difference provincially.
On the federal level however, all that changed with the consolidation of the two major conservative parties into one Conservative Party. You now have the more traditional conservatives, the ones who fall somewhere between the conservative elements of the American Democrats and the libertarian types, paired up with the newer "conservatives" who are somewhat more akin to Republicans. Stephen Harper is undeniably one of the latter variety. He doesn't speak for all Canadian Conservatives (many of the former type dislike him), but technically he only needs to speak for the majority of the party to take and hold his post.
A similar phenomenon happened south of the border a long time ago. The Republicans are a conglomeration of several different brands of political conservatism, many of which clash. Under no circumstances should the fundies from the bible belt who want to push their politics upon everyone get stuck under the same banner as folk seeking a smaller, less intrusive government with greater fiduciary responsibility - those are opposing agendas. Thus are the faults of a two-party system.
This is precisely why there were two conservative parties in Canada, and it is a great loss that there is now only one. And as it is currently dominated by people who, in the United States, would fit in nicely with the GOP, I am not in the least bit convinced that your statement is true anymore.
No, I understood the analogy (and yes, there was an element of subtle humour in my reply). My presumption was that "peaceful" does not preclude measures of self-defence.
To use your own analogy, the non-hostile aliens who make contact are unarmed and unversed in combat, as a hospital staff would be. But just as a hospital is part of a larger civilization, so too would the aliens making contact. It is extremely doubtful that they have no capacity whatsoever for self-defence, even if it only boils down to tools that can be re-purposed as weapons.
So we, the would-be legionnaires, sack the peaceful aliens and suddenly find ourselves facing the non-peaceful alternative. The "cops" would be whatever elements of the alien civilization saw fit to intervene. Against a modern military, a Roman legion would lose - hell they might not even be able to take a swat team or an angry mob with guns. Would we, the legionnaires in your analogy, fair any better?
That is essentially public health insurance, although there are ways it could be semi-privatized. However, for it to work the government needs to rule with an iron hand and make sure everybody pays in.
I don't know where you live but, regardless of the particulars of the health care system, the "iron hand" you refer to no doubt exists already (assuming you aren't in, say, Somalia),. Taxation.
Most government health insurance programs in the world are tax funded, including the "semi-privatized" ones. This is both a good and bad thing - it makes sure everyone pays in, and everyone gets covered, but it also raises the tax burden. Most people living with such systems consider this worthwhile, provided of course that the money isn't being misused. (Not that money is any less likely to be misused in the private sector, given how most insurance companies behave, but people raise more of a stink about how their own tax dollars are spent.)
Every government in existence is pretty particular when it comes to tax collection. Iron handed would be a good descriptor.
It really comes down to a choice for the citizenry. Whether they would rather have universal coverage, without the headaches that come with a private health insurer, but at the cost of higher taxes and limited health resources (two problems which are inextricably linked - less of one means more of the other). Or whether they want to have less taxation at the cost of paying for their own health.
Which would you pick, Slashdot - a (creepy) guy getting his rocks off to a simulation, or the real thing? Ban the simulation out of existence, then tell me what's left.
Do you have any evidence that less rape is committed as a result of the availability of rape simulation? Until such evidence is provided, this argument is on a par with the idea that rape games cause people to rape.
I'd go a step further and say both arguments are utter BS. They're both grounded in the same untested premise - that people are largely unable to tell fantasy from reality.
If a person is going to commit rape, offering them the alternative of a game that simulates it isn't going to stop them. This argument seems to boil down to the idea that the culprit can get what he wants from pixels, which is a bit like assuming that your average serial killer will be content with GTA.
Conversely, assuming that the game will make a creepy, but otherwise harmless man into a rapist, is equal crap. It assumes a level of mental malleability that adults generally don't have. People don't undergo radical changes in personality and ethics simply because of some piece of media they've taken to.
Humans are generally given far less credit than is due when it comes to their capacity to make their own decisions. If people were changed so drastically by what they consumed for entertainment, the world would be a far, far bleaker place.
That being said, I'd say "rape simulator" rates right up there with "torture for dummies" as something that really doesn't need to exist. On the other hand, I'm loath to suggest censorship in even such an extreme case - I'm of the opinion that the act of censorship is generally worse than the thing being censored. So in this case I'm torn...
Depressing as this may sound, I'm inclined to suspect that such a game would succeed on this side of the pacific. Ditto just about any country. The only real reason you don't see such things is that the public outcry they would raise and the mob behaviour that would in turn be incited would burn them clean out of existence in no time flat.
"Demand for perverse behaviour" isn't a Japanese thing, it's a human one.
You might be wiser to ask why there is no such backlash in Japan, but then I could point out TFA as an example of backlash in action. Perhaps it simply took longer, or perhaps the threshold for such an outcry was set higher. Cultures vary, but the basic response when enough people are sufficiently outraged is universal.
The fact is that the US military today could annihilate any army on that was on the planet in World War I.
A modern hospital or the geeks at a LAN party have tons of modern technology at their disposal, but neither could defeat a Roman legion.
The aliens could have very advanced technology, but only for peaceful purposes.
True, and if some group of would-be legionnaires decided to sack a hospital, how quickly do you think they'd garner a response from the local cops/national guard/army?
What would an alien civilization able to travel to earth consider a "resource"?
For our purposes, we'd count fossil fuels, electricity, metals, arable land, industrial and commercial infrastructure, livestock, water, building materials, manufactured items, people... All things which are finite and useful.
If a species has the tech to cross a few dozen light years, they won't need some of the above. Water, for example, is easy to come by even in our own star system. Electrical generating capacity would be far in advance of our own, given the amount of energy needed to move a spacecraft over such distances. Fossil fuels and uranium would very likely be useless to a species far ahead of us technologically.
On the other hand, things we don't consider to be resources might be valuable to aliens. For example, we don't yet need He3 for anything, but we might want it some day as fuel. There are likely isotopes of elements we don't yet know the uses for, but an alien might.
The point I'm getting at is that we don't know what an alien civilization considers a "resource", or what scarcity they'd have.
However, I strongly suspect that there's no profit in travelling interstellar distances to get resources. The energy requirements for such a trip are too large; that same technology could almost certainly be put to use to acquire or synthesize resources much more easily.
So we've got guns. I wonder how intimidated a civilization that has the technology to traverse light-years through space would be of our bullets and bombs. If they wished to annihilate us, I wager they'd be able to do it without even giving us a chance to react. If an alien race should contact Earth, I think our best bet would be to at least assume that they have peaceful intentions.
^ What he said ^
Seriously, people. Whoever it was from TFA who suggested "we've got guns and know how to use them" as a response was clueless.
If an extraterrestrial species is remotely close to human beings technologically, then there is no way for them to reach us anymore than we can reach them. Interstellar space is a wonderfully effective buffer. If we're communicating with a neighbouring species via radio, with no chance of visitation, then we needn't worry about hostilities. Try to imagine fighting a war between North America and Australia without ships, missiles or aircraft. And that analogy vastly understates the distances involved.
If they can reach us, and we can't reach them, then threats or hostility is a non-starter. Any spacecraft capable of crossing the gulf between stars is very likely so far ahead of us that we'd be unable to scratch the finish. And any craft able to cross that distance at a significant fraction of the speed of light is, by definition, able to render this entire planet sterile by way of a RKV. Think muskets vs. nukes here.
Good point. However, please note that when I made my post, it was not directed at the sensible parents of gamers (like yourself).
There is a regrettably large percentage of people who are, for lack of any less insulting term, knee-jerk Luddites. People for whom this sort of technology is "Evil". Those are, by and large, the ones who want to ban video games - always "for the children", mind you, since that makes it okay.
To these people I say, keep the consoles away from the kids, limit the use of computers, and the imaginary problem goes away. Laws aren't needed. If their concern was in the slightest bit genuine, or if they had but an inkling of a clue, they wouldn't be pushing this crap on the rest of us.
If their intent is different from what they say it is, and is in fact pushing their own restrictive technophobia upon parents throughout the state they live in, then they can kindly stick their agenda lengthwise up an orifice of their choosing.
If a parent actually lives in the 21st century and doesn't mind their kid playing games, more power to them. If I reproduce some day, that will likely be my way of doing things. Hell, play the games with the kids, and you'll not only monitor their intake, you'll also have a chance to spend time with them (something too often lacking).
Your formulae is completely adequate and quite sensible. It is those who lack the sense to do as you prescribe who need to be told why these laws and the politicians who support them are wrong.
(Side note: in your example you mention knowing what your kid plays. You very likely already know what games he owns. That should be enough to tell you he's exposed to, since I'm going to guess you at least check the ratings before buying them.)
If the parent doesn't want their kid playing a game they got off a friend, all they need to do is ensure the kid doesn't have the means to run it. No console means no borrowed console games. An old computer, or an computer other than a windows box would also serve. If you've got some state of the art game-ready PC, then require a password to install software (always a good safety procedure anyway, especially on a windows machine, since you never know what fool is going to run an EXE they got from a strange email addy).
If the kid nags the parent, then the parent can and should say no. Honestly, if a parent hasn't figured this out by the time the kid is old enough to reach a keyboard, then there are bigger problems at work than any video game could ever be.
Therefore, I maintain that your definition of "robot" is incorrect regardless of which of the proposed definitions of "AI" is used.
Check the names, please. I am the person you replied to just now (RsG), but am not the person you've been sparring with (Stoolpigeon). I weighed in here because you asked an interesting question. Consequent to this, I did not give you any definition of "robot".
Now, back to the matter under discussion; the definition of AI.
For purposes of computer science, we don't need to get philosophical.
Most of the stuff I've seen written on the theoretical problem of AI is fairly dry. But it says more or less the same thing when it comes to human level processing: We don't know enough, yet.
Would it be suitably non-philosophical of me to say that "our understanding on such matters as sapience and self-awareness is insufficient to duplicate those states artificially?" That is, from my reading, the point of view held by many in the actual AI field.
Software tackling certain problems which are easy for humans but hard for computers, such as visual object recognition, is considered "AI." Clearly, not all robots run software which tackles such problems, therefore "AI" is not a requirement for something to be considered a robot.
Here I suggest we separate one AI from the other.
I've heard the term "Strong AI" used to describe software that equals or exceeds us meatbags. Strong AI naturally remains in the realm of fiction - we don't have it yet. When most geeks talk about AI, we're implicity referring to this sort. When I responded to your question, I took it for granted that you were asking about this subject, specifically.
Now that I've seen your point of view stated more clearly, I begin see where you're coming from. You're using "AI" in the sense of software that duplicates basic human functionality. Not "Strong AI", but "Modern, computer science AI".
Which, come to think of it, makes more sense when talking about combat robots, so I'll concede the point to you. They certainly don't need strong AI. They may or may not need weak AI depending on mission parameters, but with or without it they still count as robots.
Your "strong" definition, which could be stated as "software which is unpredictable," is not one I've heard, and certainly not one that applies to defining a robot. Furthermore, I doubt your definition could exist even in theory, but I digress.
Back to the interesting stuff for me.
I'd say unpredictability is very likely the best indicator we could find for intelligence. I'm not the first to hold this view, obviously, but I put it to you that it is correct.
You asked how an AI system would be different from traditional code (I believe the phrase used was "a string of IF statements"). Traditional code is predictable. If given a set of inputs, it produces only one output.
Human beings don't work that way. A single human can produce multiple outputs when given the same input. This is especially true if the input is repeated over and over again; the response changes each time based on the experience of the previous time. This is the functionality of intelligence we've yet to duplicate.
This is Slashdot, not the supermarket. I think it is reasonable to assume CS terminology, especially when discussing CS and related fields.
When talking about purely CS subjects, I would be inclined to agree.
When talking about subjects wherein CS, science fiction, and psychology overlap... not so much.
Also, I think you missed the point of my supermarket example. An organic chemist with a pedantic streak is going to roll his eyes every time he sees a head of lettuce described as "organic", because it's a term he knows to mean something else entirely. An advanced CS student is going to have the same reaction to the term "AI" similarly abused. I myself find the misuse of several terms annoying to no end - but correcting them is, ultimately, futile. Just gotta learn to live with it.
The stupid thing is, parents already have those capabilities, no new laws required. A parent controls their child's finances, access to electronics, and most other decision making.
A parent can easily keep their kid from violent games. Don't buy a console, use proper precautions with computers (like requiring root access to install software and withholding the password), or failing that own a computer that can't be used for gaming (old, cheap or both). Don't buy them the games and assure relatives that you do not want the games given as presents. Do some very basic research.
None of these things are difficult. Most don't even require action, merely inaction, on the parent's part. A modern luddite, like those who support these laws, shouldn't find it difficult.
So, there are only two excuses for this idiocy. The first is that the people supporting these laws really are that lazy, or that unable to say no to their children. In which case, they need only look into a mirror to see the real problem. Laws won't solve the problem, unless those laws make reproduction a privilege.
The second, more likely, explanation is that they want to enforce their own style of parenting on everyone. Which isn't "assisting parents", it's forcing them to do things their way.
More seriously, you're asking a question that I'm not sure anyone, including the other slashdot poster you were sparring with, is equipped to answer fully. If we don't understand intelligence in human beings, despite trying to for millennia, then how are we going to duplicate it?
Best definition I can think of for "strong" AI is: A software program that is capable of adapting and acting in a manner not specifically covered in its own programming. In other words, software that we cannot fully predict the actions of based on the inputs received (wherein this is a feature not a bug - we're excluding buggy code doing what it isn't supposed to).
Even this is incomplete, since it doesn't cover all aspects of intelligence, but it'll do for a sort of AI litmus test.
Also, I think you need to differentiate the CS term "AI" from the generalized term "AI". If you hear one whenever someone uses the other, you'll go as batty as a pedantic organic chemist in a supermarket aisle.
These kind of discussions often end up with someone quoting the Asimovian three laws and this even happens on forums with relatively intelligent informed readers but, apart from the fact that laws designed to ensure safety can't really apply to a device designed for killing, that's totally irrelevant since the three laws are stated in English. The real problem is how to state them in actual program code.
The second and third laws could still apply though. The whole "shall not harm, or by inaction allow harm to come to, a human being" law does make for a fairly useless war machine, but you'd want to hardcode the robot to follow orders from a human operator and preserve its own integrity.
The second law is at least easy to approximate in modern code. If a given order with the right authorization is received through whatever channels the robot is designed to listen to, then it obeys. That actually could be a problem if the machine is used against an enemy with significant electronic warfare capability - they might be able to block orders entirely or substitute new ones.
There's a world of difference between a machine autonomous enough to need ethical programming and what we have today. I could fairly easily envision a combat robot that had nothing even remotely approximating strong AI, yet still functioned autonomously (would need general orders, but not step by step instructions). A sort of middle ground between an Asimov robot and a modern combat drone.
For ground robots to fill the role of infantry or armoured vehicles, you'd need some fairly advanced terrain navigation software. This isn't too far off, but we're not there yet. You'd need software to evaluate standing orders versus mission orders and prioritize them accordingly, which seems like it could be accomplished with modern code. You'd need to be able to phrase instructions in a way that a machine can understand, which is as you rightly pointed out difficult, but obviously still possible.
The real challenge is going to be IFF software - how do you judge a civilian from a combatant, or one side's soldiers from the other? This would be on par with robotic ethics, but target recognition is bound to be simpler to program than right or wrong.
If those problems were solved, then a combat robot could operate on orders that amount to "proceed to the following GPS coordinates, engage targets, report back."
My own estimate is that we'll reach this middle ground in a matter of decades, if we're quick about it. We'll doubtlessly see fully autonomous aircraft before ground units - say at least 5-10 years between the former and the later. Will we ever see strong AI deployed independently in warfare? I doubt it. No commander is going to trust a machine that implicitly. What we may see is a centralized strong AI used to manage a network of drones and soldiers, since that at least leaves human decision making in the system.
Best option is biodiesel. Hydrocarbon fuel that's grown via plants instead of extracted from the ground. Carbon neutral, though still a potential source of city air pollution.
Second best option is hydrogen fuel cells. The one small problem is that to use these in an environmentally neutral fashion requires a whole lot of nonpolluting generating capacity, which we lack. Essentially we'd need either more nuclear power stations or a completely new technology like fusion to make them work.
Neither solution is going to happen in the immediate future. In the mean time, curbing emissions while doing the needed R&D is our only real option.
Ignoring climate concerns, there are three problems I see here.
First up, you take for granted that we will find and implement a replacement in time. The less time we give ourselves, the less likely this is. You can't simply put a deadline on innovation.
What if we use up all the oil, and find out that we don't have the generating capacity for cells (fuel or power) or the infrastructure for biodiesel in place? Oops. Bye bye personal transportation, we hardly knew ye.
Second problem, we need that oil for things other than fuel. I take it you've got quite a bit of plastic in front of you. Hate to break it too you, but it probably didn't come from recycled sources. It came from oil, which could just as easily be used as fuel.
Final problem, you're setting up a scenario that puts the US and its allies on a collision course with China and India, which have something like two thirds of the world's population. Wars get started that way. Wars that can't be won, and we can't afford to fight.
If we do things the way you suggest, I'm inclined to think Fallout 1, 2 & 3 are going to look positively prophetic in a hundred years. If anyone's left to look back, that is.
I just visited that website and reviewed all PDFs in their Glossary. Not once does it explicitly define CO2 as a pollutant.
No, it wouldn't. Technically, I'm not sure I would either.
The issue with CO2 is not pollution per se, it's one of imbalance. We do not generally define exhaled breath as "pollution", nor would we call CO2 from the decay of biomass such.
Where CO2 from fossil fuels becomes an issue is carbon sink depletion. Carbon that was previously sequestered from the atmosphere for millenia as oil or coal is released predominantly be human activities. This throws the existing system out of whack. We don't know by how much - most estimates are pretty pessimistic, though even the optimistic ones aren't exactly reassuring.
The CO2 coming out a vehicles tailpipe doesn't matter. The hydrocarbons going into the fuel tank do. If they're fossil fuel derived, burning them adds to the problem; otherwise, it's carbon-neutral. So, to give a hypothetical example, a heat engine that uses hydrocarbon fuel does not cause any problem if the carbon involved comes from inside the carbon cycle; think a bio-diesel IC engine.
I know we're venturing a bit offtopic here. But that conception (if you'll pardon the pun) isn't really accurate.
Most of the developed world is now down at or below replacement fertility. Assuming the rates stay static (they won't), this means the population of those countries will drop when the population inertia slows, right around the time the baby boomers start dying off. This trend is unlikely to reverse itself, and if anything, the rates may drop further.
This is offset by immigration, but you must remember that every immigrant in one place is an emigrant elsewhere. The net population stays the same when somebody moves from a developing country to a developed one.
So, kids aren't the pollutant most people seem to think. People who wish for the voluntary extinction of the species may think otherwise, but I'd class that view as pretty damned extreme.
We could save a lot of money by putting all that light-bulb heat to use.. to bad entropy makes these sorts of schemes uneconomical.
Entropy doesn't make those situations uneconomical. It makes them quite literally impossible.
However, define "use". Remember that you can use heat for more than electricity generation (made impossible in this case). You can't get net energy out of it, thermodynamically speaking. Entropy reigns. But you can still use it as heat.
Hypothetical example: you build a cooling system for a server (water, air, it doesn't matter). You now have a radiator giving off waste heat. That waste heat can be used for some other, non power-generating purpose. What matters is that the heat is carried away from the radiator at a constant rate, or the cooling system will have to work harder to get the same result.
You could use a water tank as a heat sink, then use the heated water for the usual purposes (washing, cooking, what have you). As the hot water heater/heat sink is drained, cool water is pumped in to replace it, allowing the radiator to continue functioning. In this instance the heat is used directly, as heat.
The reason this doesn't run up against thermodynamics is that the hypothetical second use of the heat replaces an existing system you'd have to generate heat for (a conventional hot water heater). The system is still entropic and inefficient, it's just less inefficient than generating the same heat energy a second time. You go from the net waste being X% to the waste being X%. Whether this is worth the bother is a question of the circumstances.
I've seen both explanations for the disparity in atmospheres, and I'm inclined to think both have merit.
Venus has more to separate it than volcanism. Earth, which is its closest neighbour in size, has a moon, and very likely gained it by way of an ancient collision some 3-4 billion years ago. The atmosphere would have been blown away, reforming at a reduced density after the fact. Moreover, it's possible the moon itself may have skimmed off some of the upper atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years. Venus has had no similar events, leading to an atmosphere that's only gotten thicker.
Mars, which is much smaller than either, has two moons, frequent asteroid collisions (though none as violent as the one that led to our moon), and a cooling interior leading to reduced volcanism and the failure of the magnetic field. When it comes to explaining mars' relative lack of air, any of the above could be contributing factors.
Perhaps the GP knew this and meant simple in that sense. I didn't read his post that way however, since he described plants and bacteria in the same breath as "simple", which is incorrect in several ways.
Best comparison I can give you is this: A single celled organism is simpler than a multicellular one in the same way a microchip is simpler than a computer. To describe either as less advanced is obviously wrong, but it is fair to say the larger entity is more complicated than the smaller one.
Although, now that I think about it, three by one still works as a description, if you take the starting position of the piece as 1 instead of 0. That works out logically to 2 grids forward from where you started.
So: 3 empty 2 pawn 1 knight
Knight moves from where it is at square 1 to a square one left or one right of the empty space.
However, when I posted 3 by 1, that wasn't what I was thinking, I just didn't pay that much attention to what I wrote.
You are implying something, which the grand-parent did not. simple is lesser, complex -> more advanced -> better.
Perhaps I misunderstood him. In the event I did, I apologize, however my point stands for anyone else who agrees with the misconception I thought I saw in his post.
So there are more complex lifeforms. Who said something about more advanced? Still, even more advanced wouldn't be wrong. It just means later in time or intricate.
No, more advanced would in fact be wrong. So too would later in time - bacteria are older than us, not the other way around.
What measure are you using for "advanced"? Intelligence, size, number of parts maybe? Those aren't what matters, biologically or evolutionarily. Those matter to us, because we are a large, intelligent species with a great many components, and we like to think of ourselves as "best". We place a moral imperative on intelligence, and then go looking for evidence to support it.
That people implicate better or higher is the mistake, as you already put it correctly.
Excellent, you understand. I don't need to belabour the point with you. But I want you to bear in mind that even here on slashdot this myth persists, so it is entirely reasonable for me to keep debunking it when it crops up.
Also because they are simpler. Smash a rock and a clock with a hammer, and what are the chances you get something useful of either things?
Not sure what you're trying to show with this metaphor. Are you saying smaller life forms are less fragile? Or was the metaphor intended to refer to the entire ecology, instead of life forms within it?
Another reason is, that more complex life-forms are usually dependent on simpler ones.
True, I did gloss over that point. But it's more applicable for something like an asteroid impact, which does far nastier things to plants than animal, eventually killing the later via starvation. In a nuclear event, the radiation damage affects every living thing; the smaller life forms come back first because they're the first the develop resistance. Its really more complex than that (what isn't?), but as short explanations go, it'll do.
Simple versus advanced, which is the way most people use the word, is plainly wrong when talking about biology. The myth of the "higher" and "lower" forms of life is one that persists in the public consciousness, but it's been rejected in scientific circles for the better part a century.
Simple versus complex is a slightly different story. You can describe a multi-cellular organism as more complex in biological terms than a single-celled one in the same way you can say a personal computer is more complex than a single microchip. In those cases, complexity is a shorthand way of referring to the number of "parts" involved, be those parts organ systems or machine components.
It's still not the preferred way of distinguishing the two, owing to the confusion it causes. When a biologist says "simple" people take it for granted that the opposite is "advanced", which is wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Once upon a time there was more of a meaningful difference. There still is a difference provincially.
On the federal level however, all that changed with the consolidation of the two major conservative parties into one Conservative Party. You now have the more traditional conservatives, the ones who fall somewhere between the conservative elements of the American Democrats and the libertarian types, paired up with the newer "conservatives" who are somewhat more akin to Republicans. Stephen Harper is undeniably one of the latter variety. He doesn't speak for all Canadian Conservatives (many of the former type dislike him), but technically he only needs to speak for the majority of the party to take and hold his post.
A similar phenomenon happened south of the border a long time ago. The Republicans are a conglomeration of several different brands of political conservatism, many of which clash. Under no circumstances should the fundies from the bible belt who want to push their politics upon everyone get stuck under the same banner as folk seeking a smaller, less intrusive government with greater fiduciary responsibility - those are opposing agendas. Thus are the faults of a two-party system.
This is precisely why there were two conservative parties in Canada, and it is a great loss that there is now only one. And as it is currently dominated by people who, in the United States, would fit in nicely with the GOP, I am not in the least bit convinced that your statement is true anymore.
No, I understood the analogy (and yes, there was an element of subtle humour in my reply). My presumption was that "peaceful" does not preclude measures of self-defence.
To use your own analogy, the non-hostile aliens who make contact are unarmed and unversed in combat, as a hospital staff would be. But just as a hospital is part of a larger civilization, so too would the aliens making contact. It is extremely doubtful that they have no capacity whatsoever for self-defence, even if it only boils down to tools that can be re-purposed as weapons.
So we, the would-be legionnaires, sack the peaceful aliens and suddenly find ourselves facing the non-peaceful alternative. The "cops" would be whatever elements of the alien civilization saw fit to intervene. Against a modern military, a Roman legion would lose - hell they might not even be able to take a swat team or an angry mob with guns. Would we, the legionnaires in your analogy, fair any better?
That is essentially public health insurance, although there are ways it could be semi-privatized. However, for it to work the government needs to rule with an iron hand and make sure everybody pays in.
I don't know where you live but, regardless of the particulars of the health care system, the "iron hand" you refer to no doubt exists already (assuming you aren't in, say, Somalia),. Taxation.
Most government health insurance programs in the world are tax funded, including the "semi-privatized" ones. This is both a good and bad thing - it makes sure everyone pays in, and everyone gets covered, but it also raises the tax burden. Most people living with such systems consider this worthwhile, provided of course that the money isn't being misused. (Not that money is any less likely to be misused in the private sector, given how most insurance companies behave, but people raise more of a stink about how their own tax dollars are spent.)
Every government in existence is pretty particular when it comes to tax collection. Iron handed would be a good descriptor.
It really comes down to a choice for the citizenry. Whether they would rather have universal coverage, without the headaches that come with a private health insurer, but at the cost of higher taxes and limited health resources (two problems which are inextricably linked - less of one means more of the other). Or whether they want to have less taxation at the cost of paying for their own health.
We all hold different opinions.
No we don't :-P
Which would you pick, Slashdot - a (creepy) guy getting his rocks off to a simulation, or the real thing? Ban the simulation out of existence, then tell me what's left.
Do you have any evidence that less rape is committed as a result of the availability of rape simulation? Until such evidence is provided, this argument is on a par with the idea that rape games cause people to rape.
I'd go a step further and say both arguments are utter BS. They're both grounded in the same untested premise - that people are largely unable to tell fantasy from reality.
If a person is going to commit rape, offering them the alternative of a game that simulates it isn't going to stop them. This argument seems to boil down to the idea that the culprit can get what he wants from pixels, which is a bit like assuming that your average serial killer will be content with GTA.
Conversely, assuming that the game will make a creepy, but otherwise harmless man into a rapist, is equal crap. It assumes a level of mental malleability that adults generally don't have. People don't undergo radical changes in personality and ethics simply because of some piece of media they've taken to.
Humans are generally given far less credit than is due when it comes to their capacity to make their own decisions. If people were changed so drastically by what they consumed for entertainment, the world would be a far, far bleaker place.
That being said, I'd say "rape simulator" rates right up there with "torture for dummies" as something that really doesn't need to exist. On the other hand, I'm loath to suggest censorship in even such an extreme case - I'm of the opinion that the act of censorship is generally worse than the thing being censored. So in this case I'm torn...
Depressing as this may sound, I'm inclined to suspect that such a game would succeed on this side of the pacific. Ditto just about any country. The only real reason you don't see such things is that the public outcry they would raise and the mob behaviour that would in turn be incited would burn them clean out of existence in no time flat.
"Demand for perverse behaviour" isn't a Japanese thing, it's a human one.
You might be wiser to ask why there is no such backlash in Japan, but then I could point out TFA as an example of backlash in action. Perhaps it simply took longer, or perhaps the threshold for such an outcry was set higher. Cultures vary, but the basic response when enough people are sufficiently outraged is universal.
A modern hospital or the geeks at a LAN party have tons of modern technology at their disposal, but neither could defeat a Roman legion.
The aliens could have very advanced technology, but only for peaceful purposes.
True, and if some group of would-be legionnaires decided to sack a hospital, how quickly do you think they'd garner a response from the local cops/national guard/army?
Wandering slightly offtopic...
What would an alien civilization able to travel to earth consider a "resource"?
For our purposes, we'd count fossil fuels, electricity, metals, arable land, industrial and commercial infrastructure, livestock, water, building materials, manufactured items, people... All things which are finite and useful.
If a species has the tech to cross a few dozen light years, they won't need some of the above. Water, for example, is easy to come by even in our own star system. Electrical generating capacity would be far in advance of our own, given the amount of energy needed to move a spacecraft over such distances. Fossil fuels and uranium would very likely be useless to a species far ahead of us technologically.
On the other hand, things we don't consider to be resources might be valuable to aliens. For example, we don't yet need He3 for anything, but we might want it some day as fuel. There are likely isotopes of elements we don't yet know the uses for, but an alien might.
The point I'm getting at is that we don't know what an alien civilization considers a "resource", or what scarcity they'd have.
However, I strongly suspect that there's no profit in travelling interstellar distances to get resources. The energy requirements for such a trip are too large; that same technology could almost certainly be put to use to acquire or synthesize resources much more easily.
So we've got guns. I wonder how intimidated a civilization that has the technology to traverse light-years through space would be of our bullets and bombs. If they wished to annihilate us, I wager they'd be able to do it without even giving us a chance to react. If an alien race should contact Earth, I think our best bet would be to at least assume that they have peaceful intentions.
^ What he said ^
Seriously, people. Whoever it was from TFA who suggested "we've got guns and know how to use them" as a response was clueless.
If an extraterrestrial species is remotely close to human beings technologically, then there is no way for them to reach us anymore than we can reach them. Interstellar space is a wonderfully effective buffer. If we're communicating with a neighbouring species via radio, with no chance of visitation, then we needn't worry about hostilities. Try to imagine fighting a war between North America and Australia without ships, missiles or aircraft. And that analogy vastly understates the distances involved.
If they can reach us, and we can't reach them, then threats or hostility is a non-starter. Any spacecraft capable of crossing the gulf between stars is very likely so far ahead of us that we'd be unable to scratch the finish. And any craft able to cross that distance at a significant fraction of the speed of light is, by definition, able to render this entire planet sterile by way of a RKV. Think muskets vs. nukes here.
Good point. However, please note that when I made my post, it was not directed at the sensible parents of gamers (like yourself).
There is a regrettably large percentage of people who are, for lack of any less insulting term, knee-jerk Luddites. People for whom this sort of technology is "Evil". Those are, by and large, the ones who want to ban video games - always "for the children", mind you, since that makes it okay.
To these people I say, keep the consoles away from the kids, limit the use of computers, and the imaginary problem goes away. Laws aren't needed. If their concern was in the slightest bit genuine, or if they had but an inkling of a clue, they wouldn't be pushing this crap on the rest of us.
If their intent is different from what they say it is, and is in fact pushing their own restrictive technophobia upon parents throughout the state they live in, then they can kindly stick their agenda lengthwise up an orifice of their choosing.
If a parent actually lives in the 21st century and doesn't mind their kid playing games, more power to them. If I reproduce some day, that will likely be my way of doing things. Hell, play the games with the kids, and you'll not only monitor their intake, you'll also have a chance to spend time with them (something too often lacking).
Your formulae is completely adequate and quite sensible. It is those who lack the sense to do as you prescribe who need to be told why these laws and the politicians who support them are wrong.
(Side note: in your example you mention knowing what your kid plays. You very likely already know what games he owns. That should be enough to tell you he's exposed to, since I'm going to guess you at least check the ratings before buying them.)
Your example only serves to underscore my point.
If the parent doesn't want their kid playing a game they got off a friend, all they need to do is ensure the kid doesn't have the means to run it. No console means no borrowed console games. An old computer, or an computer other than a windows box would also serve. If you've got some state of the art game-ready PC, then require a password to install software (always a good safety procedure anyway, especially on a windows machine, since you never know what fool is going to run an EXE they got from a strange email addy).
If the kid nags the parent, then the parent can and should say no. Honestly, if a parent hasn't figured this out by the time the kid is old enough to reach a keyboard, then there are bigger problems at work than any video game could ever be.
Therefore, I maintain that your definition of "robot" is incorrect regardless of which of the proposed definitions of "AI" is used.
Check the names, please. I am the person you replied to just now (RsG), but am not the person you've been sparring with (Stoolpigeon). I weighed in here because you asked an interesting question. Consequent to this, I did not give you any definition of "robot".
Now, back to the matter under discussion; the definition of AI.
For purposes of computer science, we don't need to get philosophical.
Most of the stuff I've seen written on the theoretical problem of AI is fairly dry. But it says more or less the same thing when it comes to human level processing: We don't know enough, yet.
Would it be suitably non-philosophical of me to say that "our understanding on such matters as sapience and self-awareness is insufficient to duplicate those states artificially?" That is, from my reading, the point of view held by many in the actual AI field.
Software tackling certain problems which are easy for humans but hard for computers, such as visual object recognition, is considered "AI." Clearly, not all robots run software which tackles such problems, therefore "AI" is not a requirement for something to be considered a robot.
Here I suggest we separate one AI from the other.
I've heard the term "Strong AI" used to describe software that equals or exceeds us meatbags. Strong AI naturally remains in the realm of fiction - we don't have it yet. When most geeks talk about AI, we're implicity referring to this sort. When I responded to your question, I took it for granted that you were asking about this subject, specifically.
Now that I've seen your point of view stated more clearly, I begin see where you're coming from. You're using "AI" in the sense of software that duplicates basic human functionality. Not "Strong AI", but "Modern, computer science AI".
Which, come to think of it, makes more sense when talking about combat robots, so I'll concede the point to you. They certainly don't need strong AI. They may or may not need weak AI depending on mission parameters, but with or without it they still count as robots.
Your "strong" definition, which could be stated as "software which is unpredictable," is not one I've heard, and certainly not one that applies to defining a robot. Furthermore, I doubt your definition could exist even in theory, but I digress.
Back to the interesting stuff for me.
I'd say unpredictability is very likely the best indicator we could find for intelligence. I'm not the first to hold this view, obviously, but I put it to you that it is correct.
You asked how an AI system would be different from traditional code (I believe the phrase used was "a string of IF statements"). Traditional code is predictable. If given a set of inputs, it produces only one output.
Human beings don't work that way. A single human can produce multiple outputs when given the same input. This is especially true if the input is repeated over and over again; the response changes each time based on the experience of the previous time. This is the functionality of intelligence we've yet to duplicate.
This is Slashdot, not the supermarket. I think it is reasonable to assume CS terminology, especially when discussing CS and related fields.
When talking about purely CS subjects, I would be inclined to agree.
When talking about subjects wherein CS, science fiction, and psychology overlap... not so much.
Also, I think you missed the point of my supermarket example. An organic chemist with a pedantic streak is going to roll his eyes every time he sees a head of lettuce described as "organic", because it's a term he knows to mean something else entirely. An advanced CS student is going to have the same reaction to the term "AI" similarly abused. I myself find the misuse of several terms annoying to no end - but correcting them is, ultimately, futile. Just gotta learn to live with it.
The stupid thing is, parents already have those capabilities, no new laws required. A parent controls their child's finances, access to electronics, and most other decision making.
A parent can easily keep their kid from violent games. Don't buy a console, use proper precautions with computers (like requiring root access to install software and withholding the password), or failing that own a computer that can't be used for gaming (old, cheap or both). Don't buy them the games and assure relatives that you do not want the games given as presents. Do some very basic research.
None of these things are difficult. Most don't even require action, merely inaction, on the parent's part. A modern luddite, like those who support these laws, shouldn't find it difficult.
So, there are only two excuses for this idiocy. The first is that the people supporting these laws really are that lazy, or that unable to say no to their children. In which case, they need only look into a mirror to see the real problem. Laws won't solve the problem, unless those laws make reproduction a privilege.
The second, more likely, explanation is that they want to enforce their own style of parenting on everyone. Which isn't "assisting parents", it's forcing them to do things their way.
What, specifically, does "AI" mean
Artificial Intelligence perhaps? :-P
More seriously, you're asking a question that I'm not sure anyone, including the other slashdot poster you were sparring with, is equipped to answer fully. If we don't understand intelligence in human beings, despite trying to for millennia, then how are we going to duplicate it?
Best definition I can think of for "strong" AI is: A software program that is capable of adapting and acting in a manner not specifically covered in its own programming. In other words, software that we cannot fully predict the actions of based on the inputs received (wherein this is a feature not a bug - we're excluding buggy code doing what it isn't supposed to).
Even this is incomplete, since it doesn't cover all aspects of intelligence, but it'll do for a sort of AI litmus test.
Also, I think you need to differentiate the CS term "AI" from the generalized term "AI". If you hear one whenever someone uses the other, you'll go as batty as a pedantic organic chemist in a supermarket aisle.
These kind of discussions often end up with someone quoting the Asimovian three laws and this even happens on forums with relatively intelligent informed readers but, apart from the fact that laws designed to ensure safety can't really apply to a device designed for killing, that's totally irrelevant since the three laws are stated in English. The real problem is how to state them in actual program code.
The second and third laws could still apply though. The whole "shall not harm, or by inaction allow harm to come to, a human being" law does make for a fairly useless war machine, but you'd want to hardcode the robot to follow orders from a human operator and preserve its own integrity.
The second law is at least easy to approximate in modern code. If a given order with the right authorization is received through whatever channels the robot is designed to listen to, then it obeys. That actually could be a problem if the machine is used against an enemy with significant electronic warfare capability - they might be able to block orders entirely or substitute new ones.
There's a world of difference between a machine autonomous enough to need ethical programming and what we have today. I could fairly easily envision a combat robot that had nothing even remotely approximating strong AI, yet still functioned autonomously (would need general orders, but not step by step instructions). A sort of middle ground between an Asimov robot and a modern combat drone.
For ground robots to fill the role of infantry or armoured vehicles, you'd need some fairly advanced terrain navigation software. This isn't too far off, but we're not there yet. You'd need software to evaluate standing orders versus mission orders and prioritize them accordingly, which seems like it could be accomplished with modern code. You'd need to be able to phrase instructions in a way that a machine can understand, which is as you rightly pointed out difficult, but obviously still possible.
The real challenge is going to be IFF software - how do you judge a civilian from a combatant, or one side's soldiers from the other? This would be on par with robotic ethics, but target recognition is bound to be simpler to program than right or wrong.
If those problems were solved, then a combat robot could operate on orders that amount to "proceed to the following GPS coordinates, engage targets, report back."
My own estimate is that we'll reach this middle ground in a matter of decades, if we're quick about it. We'll doubtlessly see fully autonomous aircraft before ground units - say at least 5-10 years between the former and the later. Will we ever see strong AI deployed independently in warfare? I doubt it. No commander is going to trust a machine that implicitly. What we may see is a centralized strong AI used to manage a network of drones and soldiers, since that at least leaves human decision making in the system.
Best option is biodiesel. Hydrocarbon fuel that's grown via plants instead of extracted from the ground. Carbon neutral, though still a potential source of city air pollution.
Second best option is hydrogen fuel cells. The one small problem is that to use these in an environmentally neutral fashion requires a whole lot of nonpolluting generating capacity, which we lack. Essentially we'd need either more nuclear power stations or a completely new technology like fusion to make them work.
Neither solution is going to happen in the immediate future. In the mean time, curbing emissions while doing the needed R&D is our only real option.
Ignoring climate concerns, there are three problems I see here.
First up, you take for granted that we will find and implement a replacement in time. The less time we give ourselves, the less likely this is. You can't simply put a deadline on innovation.
What if we use up all the oil, and find out that we don't have the generating capacity for cells (fuel or power) or the infrastructure for biodiesel in place? Oops. Bye bye personal transportation, we hardly knew ye.
Second problem, we need that oil for things other than fuel. I take it you've got quite a bit of plastic in front of you. Hate to break it too you, but it probably didn't come from recycled sources. It came from oil, which could just as easily be used as fuel.
Final problem, you're setting up a scenario that puts the US and its allies on a collision course with China and India, which have something like two thirds of the world's population. Wars get started that way. Wars that can't be won, and we can't afford to fight.
If we do things the way you suggest, I'm inclined to think Fallout 1, 2 & 3 are going to look positively prophetic in a hundred years. If anyone's left to look back, that is.
I just visited that website and reviewed all PDFs in their Glossary. Not once does it explicitly define CO2 as a pollutant.
No, it wouldn't. Technically, I'm not sure I would either.
The issue with CO2 is not pollution per se, it's one of imbalance. We do not generally define exhaled breath as "pollution", nor would we call CO2 from the decay of biomass such.
Where CO2 from fossil fuels becomes an issue is carbon sink depletion. Carbon that was previously sequestered from the atmosphere for millenia as oil or coal is released predominantly be human activities. This throws the existing system out of whack. We don't know by how much - most estimates are pretty pessimistic, though even the optimistic ones aren't exactly reassuring.
The CO2 coming out a vehicles tailpipe doesn't matter. The hydrocarbons going into the fuel tank do. If they're fossil fuel derived, burning them adds to the problem; otherwise, it's carbon-neutral. So, to give a hypothetical example, a heat engine that uses hydrocarbon fuel does not cause any problem if the carbon involved comes from inside the carbon cycle; think a bio-diesel IC engine.
Well, kids are pollutants too.
*ducks*
I know we're venturing a bit offtopic here. But that conception (if you'll pardon the pun) isn't really accurate.
Most of the developed world is now down at or below replacement fertility. Assuming the rates stay static (they won't), this means the population of those countries will drop when the population inertia slows, right around the time the baby boomers start dying off. This trend is unlikely to reverse itself, and if anything, the rates may drop further.
This is offset by immigration, but you must remember that every immigrant in one place is an emigrant elsewhere. The net population stays the same when somebody moves from a developing country to a developed one.
So, kids aren't the pollutant most people seem to think. People who wish for the voluntary extinction of the species may think otherwise, but I'd class that view as pretty damned extreme.
We could save a lot of money by putting all that light-bulb heat to use.. to bad entropy makes these sorts of schemes uneconomical.
Entropy doesn't make those situations uneconomical. It makes them quite literally impossible.
However, define "use". Remember that you can use heat for more than electricity generation (made impossible in this case). You can't get net energy out of it, thermodynamically speaking. Entropy reigns. But you can still use it as heat.
Hypothetical example: you build a cooling system for a server (water, air, it doesn't matter). You now have a radiator giving off waste heat. That waste heat can be used for some other, non power-generating purpose. What matters is that the heat is carried away from the radiator at a constant rate, or the cooling system will have to work harder to get the same result.
You could use a water tank as a heat sink, then use the heated water for the usual purposes (washing, cooking, what have you). As the hot water heater/heat sink is drained, cool water is pumped in to replace it, allowing the radiator to continue functioning. In this instance the heat is used directly, as heat.
The reason this doesn't run up against thermodynamics is that the hypothetical second use of the heat replaces an existing system you'd have to generate heat for (a conventional hot water heater). The system is still entropic and inefficient, it's just less inefficient than generating the same heat energy a second time. You go from the net waste being X% to the waste being X%. Whether this is worth the bother is a question of the circumstances.
I've seen both explanations for the disparity in atmospheres, and I'm inclined to think both have merit.
Venus has more to separate it than volcanism. Earth, which is its closest neighbour in size, has a moon, and very likely gained it by way of an ancient collision some 3-4 billion years ago. The atmosphere would have been blown away, reforming at a reduced density after the fact. Moreover, it's possible the moon itself may have skimmed off some of the upper atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years. Venus has had no similar events, leading to an atmosphere that's only gotten thicker.
Mars, which is much smaller than either, has two moons, frequent asteroid collisions (though none as violent as the one that led to our moon), and a cooling interior leading to reduced volcanism and the failure of the magnetic field. When it comes to explaining mars' relative lack of air, any of the above could be contributing factors.
See here, where I make that point clear:
Simple versus complex as opposed to simple versus advanced
Perhaps the GP knew this and meant simple in that sense. I didn't read his post that way however, since he described plants and bacteria in the same breath as "simple", which is incorrect in several ways.
Best comparison I can give you is this: A single celled organism is simpler than a multicellular one in the same way a microchip is simpler than a computer. To describe either as less advanced is obviously wrong, but it is fair to say the larger entity is more complicated than the smaller one.
Whoops.
Although, now that I think about it, three by one still works as a description, if you take the starting position of the piece as 1 instead of 0. That works out logically to 2 grids forward from where you started.
So:
3 empty
2 pawn
1 knight
Knight moves from where it is at square 1 to a square one left or one right of the empty space.
However, when I posted 3 by 1, that wasn't what I was thinking, I just didn't pay that much attention to what I wrote.
You are implying something, which the grand-parent did not. simple is lesser, complex -> more advanced -> better.
Perhaps I misunderstood him. In the event I did, I apologize, however my point stands for anyone else who agrees with the misconception I thought I saw in his post.
So there are more complex lifeforms. Who said something about more advanced? Still, even more advanced wouldn't be wrong. It just means later in time or intricate.
No, more advanced would in fact be wrong. So too would later in time - bacteria are older than us, not the other way around.
What measure are you using for "advanced"? Intelligence, size, number of parts maybe? Those aren't what matters, biologically or evolutionarily. Those matter to us, because we are a large, intelligent species with a great many components, and we like to think of ourselves as "best". We place a moral imperative on intelligence, and then go looking for evidence to support it.
That people implicate better or higher is the mistake, as you already put it correctly.
Excellent, you understand. I don't need to belabour the point with you. But I want you to bear in mind that even here on slashdot this myth persists, so it is entirely reasonable for me to keep debunking it when it crops up.
Also because they are simpler. Smash a rock and a clock with a hammer, and what are the chances you get something useful of either things?
Not sure what you're trying to show with this metaphor. Are you saying smaller life forms are less fragile? Or was the metaphor intended to refer to the entire ecology, instead of life forms within it?
Another reason is, that more complex life-forms are usually dependent on simpler ones.
True, I did gloss over that point. But it's more applicable for something like an asteroid impact, which does far nastier things to plants than animal, eventually killing the later via starvation. In a nuclear event, the radiation damage affects every living thing; the smaller life forms come back first because they're the first the develop resistance. Its really more complex than that (what isn't?), but as short explanations go, it'll do.
Depends on what the opposite is.
Simple versus advanced, which is the way most people use the word, is plainly wrong when talking about biology. The myth of the "higher" and "lower" forms of life is one that persists in the public consciousness, but it's been rejected in scientific circles for the better part a century.
Simple versus complex is a slightly different story. You can describe a multi-cellular organism as more complex in biological terms than a single-celled one in the same way you can say a personal computer is more complex than a single microchip. In those cases, complexity is a shorthand way of referring to the number of "parts" involved, be those parts organ systems or machine components.
It's still not the preferred way of distinguishing the two, owing to the confusion it causes. When a biologist says "simple" people take it for granted that the opposite is "advanced", which is wrong.