It is a limited monopoly. Reference: the Constitution. The whole point of my post is that it is wrong to treat copyright like a piece of land that can be bought and sold. I know that's how it is now, but my point is that that ignores its original formulation, which was as a right for individuals. Don't make the mistake of thinking I don't understand. I can (and do) recognise and understand the way things are--but I disagree with them.
Your analogy to land is wrong in three ways.
First, land does not expire, while copyright and patents do. In fact this is the key difference between real property and "intellectual property."
Second, limiting right to sell does not limit right to charge for use. When I buy a CD I'm not buying "intellectual property," I'm buying a use of intellectual property. The proper land analogy is putting up a restaurant on a piece of land. You can make money with the restaurant without ever selling the land. In fact you can make just as much money with the restaurant if you don't even own the land, but are simply granted use of it for free. You can serve as many people as you want in that restaurant, just like you can sell as many CDs as you want based on one set of music.
Third, if you read the Constitutional language it does not convey ownership, it literally conveys a "Right." It's not like it's ambiguous. That is why I compared it other legally granted rights.
The Constitution reserves for Congress the power to secure "for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
A lot of copyright problems would obviated if this were enforced as written. The Beatles' works for instance would be controlled by Sir Paul and Ringo. Mickey Mouse would be in the public domain because his inventor and author is dead. Bands, not labels, would control their music. Inventors, not IP holding corporations, would control their inventions.
You cannot sign away your inherent legal rights--no matter how many contracts I sign with you, it does not allow you to act fraudulently or negligently toward. Imagine if copyright worked the same way--if it were illegal to sign away your copyright. A lot of bullshit would be avoided IMO.
If you felt the way do you would not champion China, who has exerted at least as much influence on its neighbors in Asia as the U.S. has on its neighbors in the Americas.
China does not have the global influence the U.S. does simply because it is not as powerful a nation as the U.S. is, economically or militarily. If it was it would exert its influence as powerfully. If you really believe in what you're typing your ideal nation would be Switzerland perhaps.
The U.S. system of government makes it more open to foreign influence than China's government is. No nation has spent as much to influence U.S. elections as China has. And it has paid off--despite the negative opinion of China that many Americans have, it is continually renewed to Most Favored Nation status and the U.S. currently has an annual $200 billion trade deficit with China.
The funniest part of TFA, for me, was when Dvorak invoked Apple's 5% market share. Obviously he's making the point that it's time for little Apple to grow up and go get the big market shares of Dell and HP.
The funny part is that Dell leads all computer manufacturers world wide with only about an 18% market share (in desktops). In fact in desktops Apple is the 9th largest computer maker in the world by desktop market share. In the U.S. they rank 5th (Dell is first with ~35% share).
It's not like Apple is some small fry. They are one of the 10 biggest computer makers in the world, and top 5 in the U.S. And this IS the proper way to rank them--against other computer manufacturers. It's stupid to rank Apple against Windows because it's apples (pun) and oranges. It's like ranking Mercedes against Delphi--they're at different layers in the industry.
Anyway there are many ways in which Dvorak is mis- or uninformed in that article. I just thought I'd point that one out. I agree with the parent--Apple is right where they want to be--big enough, but still commanding significant margins.
TFA is not claiming that we've "hit the end of the oil pan." Peak oil simply means the supply and demand curves will never be closer again than they are now, as demand begins to increase faster than supply.
It's as much an economic condition as a geologic condition, because one of its attributes is that oil companies slow the rate of their exploration and new development because of economic constraints, despite high demand.
It's true that as price rises, the greater potential returns allow for some new development that would not otherwise be possible. But the price elasticity of oil is not infinite, and at some point new development gets so expensive that the resulting prices exceed the market's willingness to buy oil.
For a clue we might be entering that realm in the U.S., take a look at prime-time TV car ads, a fair number of which are now touting energy efficiency. Or talk to U.S. manufacturing companies, who today obsess about efficiency and energy costs. The evidence is that the market is seeking ways to reduce oil consumption. This implies that despite high demand, supply is unable to be met at an acceptable price, and the market is seeking alternatives
This is a big clue that demand and supply are starting to separate. They could come back together only if the rate of change of demand drops or rate of supply discovery/development increases. But we know from data that demand continues to increase at larger and larger rates, while the rate of development of new oil sources continues to drop.
Does this mean the end of Western civilization as we know it? No, of course not. Peak oil is not a peak like the Matterhorn, it's like pointing to the highest hummock on a plateau and saying "there's the peak." Its effects will be gradual enough for the world market to create coping mechanisms and alternatives, which as I mentioned above we are seeing the beginnings of now.
That's the path technology is just beginning to start down--taking human intelligence and augmenting it synthetically. Google and Wikipedia are great examples; in seconds I can have information at my disposal on almost any subject or topic. The systems are dumb tools under human direction, but highly complex in their operations. The future holds greater responsiveness, availability, portability, and customization. The future will still be led by humans, but they'll be remarkably well-informed, with near perfect recall, thanks to their tools.
It does not hold self-aware robots with personality who converse with us as equals (let alone superiors). There is just too great a fundamental distinction in the modes of operation between intelligent life and machines--life survives to reproduce, while machines follow orders even if it means their death. I don't know of any evidence that this distinction will change any time soon. Without selfishness and the survival imperative there can be no intelligence.
We don't use rocket to get above the atmosphere. Planes can pretty much do that. Balloons can (and regularly do) do that. That's the easy part.
"Pretty much" only scores with horseshoes and hand grenades. To orbit, you have to get all the way out of the atmosphere, which neither planes nor ballons can do. Unless you know how to orbit in the atmosphere, you're going to need a rocket. Note that the X-15 has stubby little wings but that does not make it a plane. It produced enough thrust to lift itself straight up and it did not breath atmosphere--it was a rocket.
We use rockets to get velocity, because you need a ridiculous velocity in order to actually orbit the Earth at a low height.
Definitely true, but we also use rockets just to escape the atmosphere. See: SpaceShipOne.
You do not, however, need a ridiculous velocity in order to orbit at a very, very high height. At geosynchronous orbit, you need no velocity, because you've already got the speed from the Earth's rotation.
Actually no. At geosynchronous height you still need orbital speed. If you measure it as an angular velocity, you are correct that it is equal to your angular velocity on the ground. But if you measure it as a speed it is clearly far greater. The higher you go, the more speed you need for a stable orbit. That's why it takes bigger rockets to achieve higher orbits.
There are two ways to make it work--either give the user the power to tweak to whatever hardware they want, or limit the hardware choices and tweak it before it leaves the factory. Linux/Unix takes the former route, Apple the latter. Both are very stable operating systems. Microsoft does not take either route, and thus suffers from stability problems. OSX is not open-source and thus would be likely to face similar problems if run on unsupported hardware.
I would love to know when they are going to put the Powerbooks on sale. Soon I hope, now that the MacBooks are actually shipping. As soon as the "sales droids" can push the MacBook in the store, I bet they'll have to cut price on the Powerbooks to move them.
I have $thousands worth of PPC software that won't be available in univseral binary for a year at least, and I'd love to pick up the last and greatest PPC Mac laptop to hold me over a couple years until all the Intel kinks are worked out.
What we need is a Web site to aggregate any known information about this project, especially the IP ranges from which it is operating. They can't spider anything if they don't get past the firewall.
The power of monolithic government can only be opposed by the organized efforts of informed citizens. The Internet makes it easier for us to be spied upon, but it also makes it easier for us to know who is doing the spying--and stop them.
Any story out of copyright is fair game for repurposing and reinterpretation. The company of Disney was built on such practices...Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, etc all "rip off" public domain stories and characters. As a result to much of the American public, these are "Disney stories" not "Brothers Grimm" stories.
This is why it is especially ironic that Disney is one of the primary drivers behind the continual re-extending of the copyright limits, to protect Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy. If they pass into the public domain, anyone could make a Donald Duck t-shirt, TV show, or movie.
Just look at how many movies are based on Shakespeare plays or other classics. No, they did not have to pay royalties to use those stories and characters.
Your argument makes no sense because it assumes some sort of constant static backdrop to history. It's like saying "humans lived for thousands of years without pollution laws so why do we need them now?"
Times change. The parent is 100% right that there is an obvious difference between handing a friend a book to read for the afternoon, and handing them a perfect copy of a book to take home and keep. Saying there is no difference just makes you look like an incompetent or a liar, neither of which does much to support any other argument you're likely to make.
And please don't make the mistake of thinking that I must be some pro-DRM, pro-IP plant. I think there are a lot of good reasons to oppose DRM and the dramatic expansion of IP law that is now being pushed by industry associations. I just think it's not helpful to call a rake a spade and expect to win people's minds.
I'm going to ignore the rest of the points for the moment, because this one deserves a proper answer. It is, in fact, completely wrong.
I'm not sure what you think you read, but my comment was in the present tense. At this point in time, private ownership of gold is not illegal, and neither is the use of it to barter. Furthermore, if the American populace wanted a gold standard they could legislate it or elect someone who will enact it. Nothing I wrote is incorrect. It is not my problem that you read more into it than was written.
I'm aware of the history, but I also recognize that it is history. We've had over 30 years to come back to the gold standard and not only has it not happened, but the whole idea of it has fallen out of mainstream favor. It used to be a subject of popular debate earlier in the century. When was the last time a politician or journalist even bothered to bring it up? What industrialized nation has a gold standard currency right now? I say this not to try to prove a point of view for or against, but rather to demonstrate that the world as a whole, democracies included, has moved away from it at this time. This is in specific rebuttal to your assertion that the only time anyone uses "fiat" currency is when they are forced to. If that's true, then the entire world is forcing itself to all at once.
First of all, a strong economy depends on many factors, and probably the least of them is monetary policy. I'm not saying that it doesn't have an effect, but as long as the changes to policy come slowly enough for the market to adjust, the actual effect isn't all the much. In particular, the economy in this country has nearly always been fairly strong, except for those cases where those in charge of monetary policy managed to mess things up. The less monetary policy we've had, the better the economy's been, but it's almost always been a "strong" economy despite the interference. I would define a successful monetary policy as one the left things well enough alone!
This paragraph is highly ironic considering your links above. Monetary policy is considered by many economists to be one of the most important factors in both causing and alleviating the Great Depression. Roosevelt's move away from the gold standard was a defining moment in beginning the recovery. This 2004 lecture by our newly minted Fed chair covers this story.
Second, the only thing we have to compare the state of our economy to is the "could-have-been". We only have one history, after all, our national history makes comparisons to other countries questionable at best. Since no "concrete" comparison is possible, would you prefer that we set our policies arbitrarily? The only sane way to evaluate monetary policy is to consider the alternatives: they way things could have been had we made different choices.
Other nations can provide a basis for comparative analysis of economic policies. International economic study can also illustrate the ways in which one nation's monetary policy can affect another's. In addition one can look for specific echoes of policy changes--rather than saying "we did ok but could have done better", tying specific economic data to specific policy changes.
From your post, it appears that you believe that a good currency is something that only has value in its role as an exchange medium. Why is that?
To maximize flexibility and ease of use.
After all, the remainder of your post clearly indicates that you believe your "good currency" is a poor choice as a long-term representation of value, while concrete investments -- in capital goods, in land -- are far more valuable over time.
Currency is not intended to represent value long-term. It is a placeholder used during transactions of value. Over time the only thing that is valuable is a real asset. It does not have to be a physical good; I'd say that IBM stock has been a good asset over the last 40 years.
Given the choice, wouldn't people rather receive something in exchange that will retain its value for decades, or even centuries, to come, rather than your "ideal currency" that loses most of its value almost immediately?
Sure, I guess I wouldn't mind receiving my salary in shares of mutual funds or ounces of gold. But if I receive dollars as a placeholder for that value, I get to choose which mutual funds or commodity I receive. Currency as a placeholder is better because it allows maximum flexibility for both parties, with minimal cost of negotiation.
The general tendency is for items with long-term value to be chosen as currency, not worthless bits of paper. Only in cases where fiat currency was forced on a population have such fiat currencies become widely used.
This is ludicrous; barter is not illegal. If you can convince your bank to accept mortgage payments in pearls or gold bullion you are free to transact that way.
Further, the U.S. is not a dictatorship. If the populace really wanted to transact only in gold the law could be drafted and passed and then everyone would have to. Instead, the direction of this country and every other developed country has been away from the gold standard and toward abstract currency. In fact one of the most abstract consumer representations of currency today--the checkcard--has quickly become ubiquitous. People choose abstract currencies because of their flexibility and ease of use.
I'm not saying that anyone should buy gold or silver instead of investing in the economy, although most would consider it wise to include pure savings among one's investments as a hedge against unforseen economic disasters. That is only practical in a non-inflationary economy, where you can save your money -- just put it aside -- and expect it to hold its value.
There is no such thing as saving your money; there are simply risky investments and less risky investments. Depending on the size of the unforseen economic disaster, money in a bank or even gold in your basement may not hold its value to you. However I agree (of course) that it is wise to diversify your investments to manage risk.
However, that is not the case in an inflationary economy, as I pointed out before. The loss on immediate purchases is nearly insignificant, because you're not holding on to the currency for all that long. However, at a national level, continually making purchases out of inflationary currency ("deficit spending") devalues the currency and effectively redistributes wealth unfairly from savers (former earners) to (present) earners. Thus, there is additional incentive to enter into the lower-order land/labor portions of the economy, at the expense of long-term investments. As a result, capital goods are not maintained, and the production of higher-order goods declines. As a result, the economy shrinks.
This would be true if people saved currency, but they don't. They save by investing in the economy, so that when money is spent into the economy they experience financial growth. As a result the U.S. has experienced overall economic growth since coming off the gold standard.
I'm not saying that our current standard of living isn't higher than it was in 1913. A lot of that is due to our defi
From your reply, I can see we're not going to agree -- yet.
Well we can agree on that.:-)
Have you read Rothbard's (free e-)book I linked to? Here is another link. It's a simple book, you can read it in one sitting.
I have not. I'll have to take a look at that tonight.
Have you read Cheuvreux's report I linked to? Here is another link. It isn't quite as simple, but it offers great insight for an investment house that realizes how much collusion has been involved in the markets -- stock, currency, housing and consumer.
I have skimmed it. My problem with reports like this one is that they are focused on gold a priori. The whole report exists to study gold, and in doing so assumes its importance from the beginning. Yes it has historically been important, but so was cavalry at one time. I will have to take a closer look.
You may feel wealthier than the previous generation, but you aren't. The previous generation owned 70% of their homes by the age of 35, our average homeowner at 35 owns less than 10% -- and with house prices as inflated as they are, that number might actually be negative ownership.
I wasn't referring to myself personally, I was careful to say "overall." I'm perfectly willing to concede that certain members of previous generations were better off than I am at this same age. But there is also the question of what percentage of the total population are represented. A far greater percentage of the population owns homes now than in the 1920s. (This no doubt has had an effect on the average equity status.) A far greater percentage of the population has access to good health care, sane working hours, retirement security, good food and water, etc, etc. Life is better now for most Americans than it was at the beginning of the century. I really don't see any way to argue differently.
The previous generation would put their gold-backed currency in the bank to keep it safe, but they also allowed the bank to loan out a portion of that gold at a nice interest rate to people with real business plans and real plans to pay the bank back.
I allow my bank to loan out a portion of the money I keep in there too. They loan it out to real businesses with real business plans, they pay it back, and I receive an interest rate on my savings account. The risk of the loan is controlled by the underwriting process, not the currency.
BUT unlike in the days of yore, it's also extremely easy for me to loan my money to businesses directly by buying stock, or indirectly by buying mutual funds. It's easy to lend my money directly to the government by buying bonds. It's easy for me to put my money in any commodity I feel like, including gold. In many ways the role of banks in this process has been radically reduced, as more and more people rely on direct investment to plan for the future.
Today, debt is based on nothing, so there is no real reason to pay it back over time (this is why bankruptcies are so high and consumer debt is out of control).
Debt today is based on what it has always been based on--contracts and our legal system. Gold did not magically make loans safe, loans have always been made safe first by good underwriting standards, and second by legal contracts and guarantees. In the U.S., a person has always been able to declare bankruptcy, regardless of what particular commodity backed the loan. The problem today is simply that consumer credit companies have lowered their underwriting standards in an effort to find new customers and increase fees.
Both the links I provided offer a very strong argument for returning to a free market currency. Let Chase offer gold-backed dollars (100% reserve), let Citibank offer silver-backed dollars, let First Bank of Kansas offer corn-backed dollars. In the end, the market will decide what is the best medium of exchange.
This is already the way it works, but it's even freer than that. My wealth is backed not in dollars, but in percentages of companies on the stock market and percentages of the U.S. government. It is usually expressed in dollars because I am in the U.S. But I could just as easily express the same wealth in Euros or ears of corn or gold at any given moment.
The invisible hand only reaches the correct solution when the correct information is available to the market. The true cost of oil is being hidden from U.S. citizens by a government system of targetted subsidies funded by universal taxation. Since the tax is applied universally, the public does not experience the true connection between cost and product, and therefore it not incented to move to lower-cost products.
Universal health insurance causes a similar effect in health care prices. When it costs the same to go to the emergency room as it does to go to the local clinic, the average person does not discern a financial reason to choose one over the other. The insurance system does experience the price difference, but rather than exposing the person to it, distributes it equally among all actors. The result is a greater financial burden on all, with no free-market mechanism to correct it. The problem is typically then solved by regulatory oversight, which introduces a new cost to the system.
The value of any good used in indirect exchange has two components, the good-value and the exchange-value.
An ideal currency has no good value, it simply represents exchanged value. In this respect digital money is more ideal even than paper money. I mean ideal in the sense of the purest expression of the concept of currency.
Yes, you're right, if the country goes in the shitter paper dollars will be worthless. Well, guess what, if the country goes in the shitter gold ozs will be worthless too if you cannot possess, protect, and transport them. Say your entire fortune is held in gold. Where is that gold? How do you gain access to it and use it to complete transactions?
Perhaps you think it is safe because it's in a safe deposit vault in Switzerland? Really all this means is that you place your trust in the sanctity and security of the Swiss government and economic system rather than the U.S. Pick your poison, I guess. Unless you have your own vault and standing army, the value of your fortune is dependent on the security and trust provided by others, regardless of whether it's expressed in gold or dollars.
For a concrete demonstration of this, look at what happened when the US substituted fiat paper currency for precious metals in 1913...Since 1913, however, the value of the dollar has decreased over 96%; in other words, what cost $1.00 in 1913 now costs over $96.00. Consider the consequences to someone planning their retirement, or leaving an inheritance to their children, when the effective value of their savings drops by that much in just 93 years -- and the process is accelerating.
I really have no idea what point you're trying to make with this statement, as by almost every objectively measurable metric, retired people in the U.S. are much better off overall today than they were in 1913. They live longer, have a higher standard of life, greater wealth, better health, greater security, etc. In addition the wealth and stature of the nation as a whole has increased dramatically since 1913.
Are there more dollars in circulation? Yes, but who cares, since monetary value is a shared hallucination. Whether it costs $1 or $1000 for a sandwich, what actually matters is the real standard of living it affords me. Inflation is only bad when costs go up, not just prices. In other words, not when the total number of dollars goes up, but when the real cost goes up--i.e. the percentage of your total wealth it takes to buy a sandwich. If both salaries and prices rise evenly, the effect is transparent.
While the prices have increased dramatically since 1913, the real costs to citizens have actually declined. This is easily measured by simply calculating what percentage of citizens are able to aquire certain things--like sandwiches for example.
As long as the amount of paper currency in circulation is limited, and is expected to remain that way, it remains useful.
You can just as easily say that as long as the price of gold is limited it is useful. In fact for most of the time the U.S. was on the "gold standard", the dollar exchange rate was government-limited--THAT was the source of stability. Of course the dollar-to-gold conversion rate will be stable if it is forced to be! Now that it is not, it is subject to the same pressures as paper money. Just look at the price fluctuations of gold since 1975.
Besides, I think you are overestimating the importance of physical paper money in our economy. The majority of monetary value in our economy is tied up in negotiable instruments such as stock and bonds, not dollar bills. Smart people don't hoard $100 dollar bills in their mattresses, they invest their money in appreciating assets. Sure, you're right that someone with $10,000 of gold under their mattress since 1960 is better off than someone with $10,000 of paper money under their mattress since 1960. I think that's a lot less true of someone who held $10,000 of Dow Jones index fund since 1960, or $10,000 worth of Manhattan real estate.
All perceptions of value are ultimately backed up by violence. Even gold has no value to you if you cannot keep others from taking it. Saying that there is nothing backing U.S. currency strikes me as very naive.
Your understanding of money is incomplete
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Money is VERY easy to understand -- it is merely a store of time.
I had mod points but I'm giving them up to post a reply instead. In short, you are wrong. Money is very easy to understand, but it's not time--it is a placeholder for value. You are exchanged money for your time not because money represents time, but because money represents value, and your time has certain value. How much value your time has is the result of a human negotiation of differing opinions. Currency is simply the formalization of such negotiation.
Using a market-valued medium to exchange value (example: gold) is NOT a currency, it is simply an advanced form of barter, since the value of the exchange is limited by the market value of the medium.
Economics ultimately comes down to a human perception of value, and as such it is imaginary. Monetary value is imaginary--without human agreement it does not exist. Paper or digital money is an ideal currency for this reason, in that it does a better job of abstracting the human concept of value from the market worth of a limited-supply raw material such as gold.
Put another way, tangible materials like gold are zero-sum, while monetary value is not. If I IPO my hot new company and its stock price soars, the stock prices of other companies do not have to sink in compensation. Whereas if I want to buy a certain amount of gold, someone has to sell it to me.
To come back to your statement that money is literally time, consider the valuation of a start-up company like Google. What "time" is represented by the rapid valuation of that company? Consider the price difference between a BMW and a Hyundai...did the BMW take 3 times as long to make as the Hyundai? Consider salary differences...if money==time, why does a CEO make so much more money than you?
Every one of these questions can be understood by considering money as the placeholder for the negotiation of human opinions of value. As such it of course has implications of control, as in any negotiation one party is likely to be in a stronger position than the other, and therefore better able to bend the negotiations to their will. That's life. If you don't like people being able to control you or tell you what to do, you basically have two options--grow your strength so that YOU can exert the control, or drop out of society and live as a hermit.
There's plenty of evidence that humans are pathetically bad at it. Quite simply, you overestimate the number of variables in play.
And you completely over-estimate how bad humans are at it. Think how many accidents the average American gets into, then think about how much of their lives are spent behind the wheel of a car. The percentage of accidents per hour traveled is vanishing small across the entire population. It's even smaller if you take out single-actor accidents like backing into sign posts or parked cars.
How many times have you seen someone: - Pulle out in front of you - Stop abruptly - Change lanes without signaling - Run a red-light - Fail to yield 100s? 1000s?
I've seen stuff like this probably hundreds of thousands of times in my life, and out of all those times I've only been in an accident as a result once. Assuming it's 100,000 times even, with one accident, that is 3 9s of reliability in what you claim is a completely unpredicable, chaotic environment. That is very good reliability.
Even if we assume I'm an order of magnitude off, that still means I have avoided accidents in those situations 99.99% of the time! And those are only the worst-case scenarios...you're apparently not even counting the number of times I've pre-emptively taken myself out of dangerous situations, by changing lanes, slowing down, speeding up, etc.
How many times have you been caught completely off guard? If you're like most drivers, it's probably too many to remember. Rule number one of driving is that other people are unpredictable and stupid. That's why it's important to keep a safe following distance, to check carefully at 4-way stops, and to do the 100s of other "checks" that we do to avoid accidents.
Wait, if driving is so simple, why do we have to do "100s of other checks"? Isn't that my point?
If we really could tell what everyone else was going to do, then why would we need delayed lights, stop signs, or turn signals at all?
Way to completely miss my point. I never claimed that we could absolutely predict what other people do, I claimed that we monitor other vehicles and pedestrians with a system far more complex than simple read and react. Safe drivers anticipate potential problems and take action to minimze the likelihood of an accident.
A sense of self-preservation has little to do with safe driving.
Uh huh. Remind me never to ride with you. Personally I have a pretty healthy sense of self-preservation when I'm driving.
Most accidents occur because we are unable to anticipate danger, unable to react to danger quickly enough, or are unable to make the right decision. Self-preservation is irrelivent because we don't *know* what's dangerous, or because we make choices that are bad.
Humans cannot predict future danger with 100% accuracy, so they sometimes get into accidents. Does that therefore mean, as you seem to assert, that self-preservation is irrelevant? I think you're getting a little carried away. The issue at stake is not why humans get into accidents, but whether robots would be better or worse at avoiding accidents. One of the reasons they would be worse is that they execute bad commands whether it kills them or not. That is the nature of machinery.
Machinery only operates reliably safely when a) it has been exhaustingly checked by humans (who do so out of self-preservation, I might add) and b) it is operated within its design limits. If you believe that driving is as chaotic and unpredictable as you've described here, I don't see how any robot or computer could be designed to operate reliably safely.
The autopilot on a 777 has no sense of self-preservation either, yet 700+ flights per day confirm the safety of the system. The 777 autopilot isn't concerned with "saving lives", it's running the numbers and doing what is necessary to keep the aircraft on-course and flying properly.
Every 777 that flies, does so with a human pilot and backup
Personally, I would much rather have a robot driving a car than a teenager. Or an old person. Or a drunk. Or somebody on a cellphone. Or me, when I'm daydreaming, frankly.
I read things like this here occasionally and the only way I can make sense of it is by figuring the writer has read too many science fiction books.
There's simply no evidence that computers are capable of handling the number of variables in play when driving on busy roads with people, and I don't see how they ever will on their current development path. Driving involves way way more than just piloting the thing down the lane and not hitting things in front of you. To really drive safely you need to be monitoring the environment and anticipating what every person near you is going to do. This requires basically running multiple people simulators simultaneously and monitoring for emerging solutions that represent a threat.
Your brain automates this in the background; building these simulations is part of the 18+ year process of becoming a functioning adult. To get a computer to the same level it would have to start with the processing power of the human brain, then interact with humans 16 hours a day for nearly 2 decades.
In addition computers and robots have absolutely no sense of self-preservation. If you give a computer a wrong instruction it will follow it, to its own destruction even, without hesitation. There's no billion-year-old base programming that checks every single action for self-danger.
Really, one HUGE problem in this country is that nobody understands risk assessment.
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It is a limited monopoly. Reference: the Constitution. The whole point of my post is that it is wrong to treat copyright like a piece of land that can be bought and sold. I know that's how it is now, but my point is that that ignores its original formulation, which was as a right for individuals. Don't make the mistake of thinking I don't understand. I can (and do) recognise and understand the way things are--but I disagree with them.
Your analogy to land is wrong in three ways.
First, land does not expire, while copyright and patents do. In fact this is the key difference between real property and "intellectual property."
Second, limiting right to sell does not limit right to charge for use. When I buy a CD I'm not buying "intellectual property," I'm buying a use of intellectual property. The proper land analogy is putting up a restaurant on a piece of land. You can make money with the restaurant without ever selling the land. In fact you can make just as much money with the restaurant if you don't even own the land, but are simply granted use of it for free. You can serve as many people as you want in that restaurant, just like you can sell as many CDs as you want based on one set of music.
Third, if you read the Constitutional language it does not convey ownership, it literally conveys a "Right." It's not like it's ambiguous. That is why I compared it other legally granted rights.
The Constitution reserves for Congress the power to secure "for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
A lot of copyright problems would obviated if this were enforced as written. The Beatles' works for instance would be controlled by Sir Paul and Ringo. Mickey Mouse would be in the public domain because his inventor and author is dead. Bands, not labels, would control their music. Inventors, not IP holding corporations, would control their inventions.
You cannot sign away your inherent legal rights--no matter how many contracts I sign with you, it does not allow you to act fraudulently or negligently toward. Imagine if copyright worked the same way--if it were illegal to sign away your copyright. A lot of bullshit would be avoided IMO.
If you felt the way do you would not champion China, who has exerted at least as much influence on its neighbors in Asia as the U.S. has on its neighbors in the Americas.
China does not have the global influence the U.S. does simply because it is not as powerful a nation as the U.S. is, economically or militarily. If it was it would exert its influence as powerfully. If you really believe in what you're typing your ideal nation would be Switzerland perhaps.
The U.S. system of government makes it more open to foreign influence than China's government is. No nation has spent as much to influence U.S. elections as China has. And it has paid off--despite the negative opinion of China that many Americans have, it is continually renewed to Most Favored Nation status and the U.S. currently has an annual $200 billion trade deficit with China.
I need to take a nap before deciding whether to read such a long and over-thought post.
The funniest part of TFA, for me, was when Dvorak invoked Apple's 5% market share. Obviously he's making the point that it's time for little Apple to grow up and go get the big market shares of Dell and HP.
The funny part is that Dell leads all computer manufacturers world wide with only about an 18% market share (in desktops). In fact in desktops Apple is the 9th largest computer maker in the world by desktop market share. In the U.S. they rank 5th (Dell is first with ~35% share).
It's not like Apple is some small fry. They are one of the 10 biggest computer makers in the world, and top 5 in the U.S. And this IS the proper way to rank them--against other computer manufacturers. It's stupid to rank Apple against Windows because it's apples (pun) and oranges. It's like ranking Mercedes against Delphi--they're at different layers in the industry.
Anyway there are many ways in which Dvorak is mis- or uninformed in that article. I just thought I'd point that one out. I agree with the parent--Apple is right where they want to be--big enough, but still commanding significant margins.
TFA is not claiming that we've "hit the end of the oil pan." Peak oil simply means the supply and demand curves will never be closer again than they are now, as demand begins to increase faster than supply.
It's as much an economic condition as a geologic condition, because one of its attributes is that oil companies slow the rate of their exploration and new development because of economic constraints, despite high demand.
It's true that as price rises, the greater potential returns allow for some new development that would not otherwise be possible. But the price elasticity of oil is not infinite, and at some point new development gets so expensive that the resulting prices exceed the market's willingness to buy oil.
For a clue we might be entering that realm in the U.S., take a look at prime-time TV car ads, a fair number of which are now touting energy efficiency. Or talk to U.S. manufacturing companies, who today obsess about efficiency and energy costs. The evidence is that the market is seeking ways to reduce oil consumption. This implies that despite high demand, supply is unable to be met at an acceptable price, and the market is seeking alternatives
This is a big clue that demand and supply are starting to separate. They could come back together only if the rate of change of demand drops or rate of supply discovery/development increases. But we know from data that demand continues to increase at larger and larger rates, while the rate of development of new oil sources continues to drop.
Does this mean the end of Western civilization as we know it? No, of course not. Peak oil is not a peak like the Matterhorn, it's like pointing to the highest hummock on a plateau and saying "there's the peak." Its effects will be gradual enough for the world market to create coping mechanisms and alternatives, which as I mentioned above we are seeing the beginnings of now.
That's the path technology is just beginning to start down--taking human intelligence and augmenting it synthetically. Google and Wikipedia are great examples; in seconds I can have information at my disposal on almost any subject or topic. The systems are dumb tools under human direction, but highly complex in their operations. The future holds greater responsiveness, availability, portability, and customization. The future will still be led by humans, but they'll be remarkably well-informed, with near perfect recall, thanks to their tools.
It does not hold self-aware robots with personality who converse with us as equals (let alone superiors). There is just too great a fundamental distinction in the modes of operation between intelligent life and machines--life survives to reproduce, while machines follow orders even if it means their death. I don't know of any evidence that this distinction will change any time soon. Without selfishness and the survival imperative there can be no intelligence.
We don't use rocket to get above the atmosphere. Planes can pretty much do that. Balloons can (and regularly do) do that. That's the easy part.
"Pretty much" only scores with horseshoes and hand grenades. To orbit, you have to get all the way out of the atmosphere, which neither planes nor ballons can do. Unless you know how to orbit in the atmosphere, you're going to need a rocket. Note that the X-15 has stubby little wings but that does not make it a plane. It produced enough thrust to lift itself straight up and it did not breath atmosphere--it was a rocket.
We use rockets to get velocity, because you need a ridiculous velocity in order to actually orbit the Earth at a low height.
Definitely true, but we also use rockets just to escape the atmosphere. See: SpaceShipOne.
You do not, however, need a ridiculous velocity in order to orbit at a very, very high height. At geosynchronous orbit, you need no velocity, because you've already got the speed from the Earth's rotation.
Actually no. At geosynchronous height you still need orbital speed. If you measure it as an angular velocity, you are correct that it is equal to your angular velocity on the ground. But if you measure it as a speed it is clearly far greater. The higher you go, the more speed you need for a stable orbit. That's why it takes bigger rockets to achieve higher orbits.
There are two ways to make it work--either give the user the power to tweak to whatever hardware they want, or limit the hardware choices and tweak it before it leaves the factory. Linux/Unix takes the former route, Apple the latter. Both are very stable operating systems. Microsoft does not take either route, and thus suffers from stability problems. OSX is not open-source and thus would be likely to face similar problems if run on unsupported hardware.
I would love to know when they are going to put the Powerbooks on sale. Soon I hope, now that the MacBooks are actually shipping. As soon as the "sales droids" can push the MacBook in the store, I bet they'll have to cut price on the Powerbooks to move them.
I have $thousands worth of PPC software that won't be available in univseral binary for a year at least, and I'd love to pick up the last and greatest PPC Mac laptop to hold me over a couple years until all the Intel kinks are worked out.
What we need is a Web site to aggregate any known information about this project, especially the IP ranges from which it is operating. They can't spider anything if they don't get past the firewall.
The power of monolithic government can only be opposed by the organized efforts of informed citizens. The Internet makes it easier for us to be spied upon, but it also makes it easier for us to know who is doing the spying--and stop them.
editing press releases, kid.
Not sure how this affects your point, but it turns out that cold fusion actually does exist.
Read about it here.
Any story out of copyright is fair game for repurposing and reinterpretation. The company of Disney was built on such practices...Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, etc all "rip off" public domain stories and characters. As a result to much of the American public, these are "Disney stories" not "Brothers Grimm" stories.
This is why it is especially ironic that Disney is one of the primary drivers behind the continual re-extending of the copyright limits, to protect Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy. If they pass into the public domain, anyone could make a Donald Duck t-shirt, TV show, or movie.
Just look at how many movies are based on Shakespeare plays or other classics. No, they did not have to pay royalties to use those stories and characters.
Your argument makes no sense because it assumes some sort of constant static backdrop to history. It's like saying "humans lived for thousands of years without pollution laws so why do we need them now?"
Times change. The parent is 100% right that there is an obvious difference between handing a friend a book to read for the afternoon, and handing them a perfect copy of a book to take home and keep. Saying there is no difference just makes you look like an incompetent or a liar, neither of which does much to support any other argument you're likely to make.
And please don't make the mistake of thinking that I must be some pro-DRM, pro-IP plant. I think there are a lot of good reasons to oppose DRM and the dramatic expansion of IP law that is now being pushed by industry associations. I just think it's not helpful to call a rake a spade and expect to win people's minds.
I'm going to ignore the rest of the points for the moment, because this one deserves a proper answer. It is, in fact, completely wrong.
I'm not sure what you think you read, but my comment was in the present tense. At this point in time, private ownership of gold is not illegal, and neither is the use of it to barter. Furthermore, if the American populace wanted a gold standard they could legislate it or elect someone who will enact it. Nothing I wrote is incorrect. It is not my problem that you read more into it than was written.
I'm aware of the history, but I also recognize that it is history. We've had over 30 years to come back to the gold standard and not only has it not happened, but the whole idea of it has fallen out of mainstream favor. It used to be a subject of popular debate earlier in the century. When was the last time a politician or journalist even bothered to bring it up? What industrialized nation has a gold standard currency right now? I say this not to try to prove a point of view for or against, but rather to demonstrate that the world as a whole, democracies included, has moved away from it at this time. This is in specific rebuttal to your assertion that the only time anyone uses "fiat" currency is when they are forced to. If that's true, then the entire world is forcing itself to all at once.
First of all, a strong economy depends on many factors, and probably the least of them is monetary policy. I'm not saying that it doesn't have an effect, but as long as the changes to policy come slowly enough for the market to adjust, the actual effect isn't all the much. In particular, the economy in this country has nearly always been fairly strong, except for those cases where those in charge of monetary policy managed to mess things up. The less monetary policy we've had, the better the economy's been, but it's almost always been a "strong" economy despite the interference. I would define a successful monetary policy as one the left things well enough alone!
This paragraph is highly ironic considering your links above. Monetary policy is considered by many economists to be one of the most important factors in both causing and alleviating the Great Depression. Roosevelt's move away from the gold standard was a defining moment in beginning the recovery. This 2004 lecture by our newly minted Fed chair covers this story.
Second, the only thing we have to compare the state of our economy to is the "could-have-been". We only have one history, after all, our national history makes comparisons to other countries questionable at best. Since no "concrete" comparison is possible, would you prefer that we set our policies arbitrarily? The only sane way to evaluate monetary policy is to consider the alternatives: they way things could have been had we made different choices.
Other nations can provide a basis for comparative analysis of economic policies. International economic study can also illustrate the ways in which one nation's monetary policy can affect another's. In addition one can look for specific echoes of policy changes--rather than saying "we did ok but could have done better", tying specific economic data to specific policy changes.
From your post, it appears that you believe that a good currency is something that only has value in its role as an exchange medium. Why is that?
To maximize flexibility and ease of use.
After all, the remainder of your post clearly indicates that you believe your "good currency" is a poor choice as a long-term representation of value, while concrete investments -- in capital goods, in land -- are far more valuable over time.
Currency is not intended to represent value long-term. It is a placeholder used during transactions of value. Over time the only thing that is valuable is a real asset. It does not have to be a physical good; I'd say that IBM stock has been a good asset over the last 40 years.
Given the choice, wouldn't people rather receive something in exchange that will retain its value for decades, or even centuries, to come, rather than your "ideal currency" that loses most of its value almost immediately?
Sure, I guess I wouldn't mind receiving my salary in shares of mutual funds or ounces of gold. But if I receive dollars as a placeholder for that value, I get to choose which mutual funds or commodity I receive. Currency as a placeholder is better because it allows maximum flexibility for both parties, with minimal cost of negotiation.
The general tendency is for items with long-term value to be chosen as currency, not worthless bits of paper. Only in cases where fiat currency was forced on a population have such fiat currencies become widely used.
This is ludicrous; barter is not illegal. If you can convince your bank to accept mortgage payments in pearls or gold bullion you are free to transact that way.
Further, the U.S. is not a dictatorship. If the populace really wanted to transact only in gold the law could be drafted and passed and then everyone would have to. Instead, the direction of this country and every other developed country has been away from the gold standard and toward abstract currency. In fact one of the most abstract consumer representations of currency today--the checkcard--has quickly become ubiquitous. People choose abstract currencies because of their flexibility and ease of use.
I'm not saying that anyone should buy gold or silver instead of investing in the economy, although most would consider it wise to include pure savings among one's investments as a hedge against unforseen economic disasters. That is only practical in a non-inflationary economy, where you can save your money -- just put it aside -- and expect it to hold its value.
There is no such thing as saving your money; there are simply risky investments and less risky investments. Depending on the size of the unforseen economic disaster, money in a bank or even gold in your basement may not hold its value to you. However I agree (of course) that it is wise to diversify your investments to manage risk.
However, that is not the case in an inflationary economy, as I pointed out before. The loss on immediate purchases is nearly insignificant, because you're not holding on to the currency for all that long. However, at a national level, continually making purchases out of inflationary currency ("deficit spending") devalues the currency and effectively redistributes wealth unfairly from savers (former earners) to (present) earners. Thus, there is additional incentive to enter into the lower-order land/labor portions of the economy, at the expense of long-term investments. As a result, capital goods are not maintained, and the production of higher-order goods declines. As a result, the economy shrinks.
This would be true if people saved currency, but they don't. They save by investing in the economy, so that when money is spent into the economy they experience financial growth. As a result the U.S. has experienced overall economic growth since coming off the gold standard.
I'm not saying that our current standard of living isn't higher than it was in 1913. A lot of that is due to our defi
From your reply, I can see we're not going to agree -- yet.
:-)
Well we can agree on that.
Have you read Rothbard's (free e-)book I linked to? Here is another link. It's a simple book, you can read it in one sitting.
I have not. I'll have to take a look at that tonight.
Have you read Cheuvreux's report I linked to? Here is another link. It isn't quite as simple, but it offers great insight for an investment house that realizes how much collusion has been involved in the markets -- stock, currency, housing and consumer.
I have skimmed it. My problem with reports like this one is that they are focused on gold a priori. The whole report exists to study gold, and in doing so assumes its importance from the beginning. Yes it has historically been important, but so was cavalry at one time. I will have to take a closer look.
You may feel wealthier than the previous generation, but you aren't. The previous generation owned 70% of their homes by the age of 35, our average homeowner at 35 owns less than 10% -- and with house prices as inflated as they are, that number might actually be negative ownership.
I wasn't referring to myself personally, I was careful to say "overall." I'm perfectly willing to concede that certain members of previous generations were better off than I am at this same age. But there is also the question of what percentage of the total population are represented. A far greater percentage of the population owns homes now than in the 1920s. (This no doubt has had an effect on the average equity status.) A far greater percentage of the population has access to good health care, sane working hours, retirement security, good food and water, etc, etc. Life is better now for most Americans than it was at the beginning of the century. I really don't see any way to argue differently.
The previous generation would put their gold-backed currency in the bank to keep it safe, but they also allowed the bank to loan out a portion of that gold at a nice interest rate to people with real business plans and real plans to pay the bank back.
I allow my bank to loan out a portion of the money I keep in there too. They loan it out to real businesses with real business plans, they pay it back, and I receive an interest rate on my savings account. The risk of the loan is controlled by the underwriting process, not the currency.
BUT unlike in the days of yore, it's also extremely easy for me to loan my money to businesses directly by buying stock, or indirectly by buying mutual funds. It's easy to lend my money directly to the government by buying bonds. It's easy for me to put my money in any commodity I feel like, including gold. In many ways the role of banks in this process has been radically reduced, as more and more people rely on direct investment to plan for the future.
Today, debt is based on nothing, so there is no real reason to pay it back over time (this is why bankruptcies are so high and consumer debt is out of control).
Debt today is based on what it has always been based on--contracts and our legal system. Gold did not magically make loans safe, loans have always been made safe first by good underwriting standards, and second by legal contracts and guarantees. In the U.S., a person has always been able to declare bankruptcy, regardless of what particular commodity backed the loan. The problem today is simply that consumer credit companies have lowered their underwriting standards in an effort to find new customers and increase fees.
Both the links I provided offer a very strong argument for returning to a free market currency. Let Chase offer gold-backed dollars (100% reserve), let Citibank offer silver-backed dollars, let First Bank of Kansas offer corn-backed dollars. In the end, the market will decide what is the best medium of exchange.
This is already the way it works, but it's even freer than that. My wealth is backed not in dollars, but in percentages of companies on the stock market and percentages of the U.S. government. It is usually expressed in dollars because I am in the U.S. But I could just as easily express the same wealth in Euros or ears of corn or gold at any given moment.
The invisible hand only reaches the correct solution when the correct information is available to the market. The true cost of oil is being hidden from U.S. citizens by a government system of targetted subsidies funded by universal taxation. Since the tax is applied universally, the public does not experience the true connection between cost and product, and therefore it not incented to move to lower-cost products.
Universal health insurance causes a similar effect in health care prices. When it costs the same to go to the emergency room as it does to go to the local clinic, the average person does not discern a financial reason to choose one over the other. The insurance system does experience the price difference, but rather than exposing the person to it, distributes it equally among all actors. The result is a greater financial burden on all, with no free-market mechanism to correct it. The problem is typically then solved by regulatory oversight, which introduces a new cost to the system.
The value of any good used in indirect exchange has two components, the good-value and the exchange-value.
An ideal currency has no good value, it simply represents exchanged value. In this respect digital money is more ideal even than paper money. I mean ideal in the sense of the purest expression of the concept of currency.
Yes, you're right, if the country goes in the shitter paper dollars will be worthless. Well, guess what, if the country goes in the shitter gold ozs will be worthless too if you cannot possess, protect, and transport them. Say your entire fortune is held in gold. Where is that gold? How do you gain access to it and use it to complete transactions?
Perhaps you think it is safe because it's in a safe deposit vault in Switzerland? Really all this means is that you place your trust in the sanctity and security of the Swiss government and economic system rather than the U.S. Pick your poison, I guess. Unless you have your own vault and standing army, the value of your fortune is dependent on the security and trust provided by others, regardless of whether it's expressed in gold or dollars.
For a concrete demonstration of this, look at what happened when the US substituted fiat paper currency for precious metals in 1913...Since 1913, however, the value of the dollar has decreased over 96%; in other words, what cost $1.00 in 1913 now costs over $96.00. Consider the consequences to someone planning their retirement, or leaving an inheritance to their children, when the effective value of their savings drops by that much in just 93 years -- and the process is accelerating.
I really have no idea what point you're trying to make with this statement, as by almost every objectively measurable metric, retired people in the U.S. are much better off overall today than they were in 1913. They live longer, have a higher standard of life, greater wealth, better health, greater security, etc. In addition the wealth and stature of the nation as a whole has increased dramatically since 1913.
Are there more dollars in circulation? Yes, but who cares, since monetary value is a shared hallucination. Whether it costs $1 or $1000 for a sandwich, what actually matters is the real standard of living it affords me. Inflation is only bad when costs go up, not just prices. In other words, not when the total number of dollars goes up, but when the real cost goes up--i.e. the percentage of your total wealth it takes to buy a sandwich. If both salaries and prices rise evenly, the effect is transparent.
While the prices have increased dramatically since 1913, the real costs to citizens have actually declined. This is easily measured by simply calculating what percentage of citizens are able to aquire certain things--like sandwiches for example.
As long as the amount of paper currency in circulation is limited, and is expected to remain that way, it remains useful.
You can just as easily say that as long as the price of gold is limited it is useful. In fact for most of the time the U.S. was on the "gold standard", the dollar exchange rate was government-limited--THAT was the source of stability. Of course the dollar-to-gold conversion rate will be stable if it is forced to be! Now that it is not, it is subject to the same pressures as paper money. Just look at the price fluctuations of gold since 1975.
Besides, I think you are overestimating the importance of physical paper money in our economy. The majority of monetary value in our economy is tied up in negotiable instruments such as stock and bonds, not dollar bills. Smart people don't hoard $100 dollar bills in their mattresses, they invest their money in appreciating assets. Sure, you're right that someone with $10,000 of gold under their mattress since 1960 is better off than someone with $10,000 of paper money under their mattress since 1960. I think that's a lot less true of someone who held $10,000 of Dow Jones index fund since 1960, or $10,000 worth of Manhattan real estate.
All perceptions of value are ultimately backed up by violence. Even gold has no value to you if you cannot keep others from taking it. Saying that there is nothing backing U.S. currency strikes me as very naive.
Money is VERY easy to understand -- it is merely a store of time.
I had mod points but I'm giving them up to post a reply instead. In short, you are wrong. Money is very easy to understand, but it's not time--it is a placeholder for value. You are exchanged money for your time not because money represents time, but because money represents value, and your time has certain value. How much value your time has is the result of a human negotiation of differing opinions. Currency is simply the formalization of such negotiation.
Using a market-valued medium to exchange value (example: gold) is NOT a currency, it is simply an advanced form of barter, since the value of the exchange is limited by the market value of the medium.
Economics ultimately comes down to a human perception of value, and as such it is imaginary. Monetary value is imaginary--without human agreement it does not exist. Paper or digital money is an ideal currency for this reason, in that it does a better job of abstracting the human concept of value from the market worth of a limited-supply raw material such as gold.
Put another way, tangible materials like gold are zero-sum, while monetary value is not. If I IPO my hot new company and its stock price soars, the stock prices of other companies do not have to sink in compensation. Whereas if I want to buy a certain amount of gold, someone has to sell it to me.
To come back to your statement that money is literally time, consider the valuation of a start-up company like Google. What "time" is represented by the rapid valuation of that company? Consider the price difference between a BMW and a Hyundai...did the BMW take 3 times as long to make as the Hyundai? Consider salary differences...if money==time, why does a CEO make so much more money than you?
Every one of these questions can be understood by considering money as the placeholder for the negotiation of human opinions of value. As such it of course has implications of control, as in any negotiation one party is likely to be in a stronger position than the other, and therefore better able to bend the negotiations to their will. That's life. If you don't like people being able to control you or tell you what to do, you basically have two options--grow your strength so that YOU can exert the control, or drop out of society and live as a hermit.
There's plenty of evidence that humans are pathetically bad at it. Quite simply, you overestimate the number of variables in play.
And you completely over-estimate how bad humans are at it. Think how many accidents the average American gets into, then think about how much of their lives are spent behind the wheel of a car. The percentage of accidents per hour traveled is vanishing small across the entire population. It's even smaller if you take out single-actor accidents like backing into sign posts or parked cars.
How many times have you seen someone:
- Pulle out in front of you
- Stop abruptly
- Change lanes without signaling
- Run a red-light
- Fail to yield
100s? 1000s?
I've seen stuff like this probably hundreds of thousands of times in my life, and out of all those times I've only been in an accident as a result once. Assuming it's 100,000 times even, with one accident, that is 3 9s of reliability in what you claim is a completely unpredicable, chaotic environment. That is very good reliability.
Even if we assume I'm an order of magnitude off, that still means I have avoided accidents in those situations 99.99% of the time! And those are only the worst-case scenarios...you're apparently not even counting the number of times I've pre-emptively taken myself out of dangerous situations, by changing lanes, slowing down, speeding up, etc.
How many times have you been caught completely off guard? If you're like most drivers, it's probably too many to remember. Rule number one of driving is that other people are unpredictable and stupid. That's why it's important to keep a safe following distance, to check carefully at 4-way stops, and to do the 100s of other "checks" that we do to avoid accidents.
Wait, if driving is so simple, why do we have to do "100s of other checks"? Isn't that my point?
If we really could tell what everyone else was going to do, then why would we need delayed lights, stop signs, or turn signals at all?
Way to completely miss my point. I never claimed that we could absolutely predict what other people do, I claimed that we monitor other vehicles and pedestrians with a system far more complex than simple read and react. Safe drivers anticipate potential problems and take action to minimze the likelihood of an accident.
A sense of self-preservation has little to do with safe driving.
Uh huh. Remind me never to ride with you. Personally I have a pretty healthy sense of self-preservation when I'm driving.
Most accidents occur because we are unable to anticipate danger, unable to react to danger quickly enough, or are unable to make the right decision. Self-preservation is irrelivent because we don't *know* what's dangerous, or because we make choices that are bad.
Humans cannot predict future danger with 100% accuracy, so they sometimes get into accidents. Does that therefore mean, as you seem to assert, that self-preservation is irrelevant? I think you're getting a little carried away. The issue at stake is not why humans get into accidents, but whether robots would be better or worse at avoiding accidents. One of the reasons they would be worse is that they execute bad commands whether it kills them or not. That is the nature of machinery.
Machinery only operates reliably safely when a) it has been exhaustingly checked by humans (who do so out of self-preservation, I might add) and b) it is operated within its design limits. If you believe that driving is as chaotic and unpredictable as you've described here, I don't see how any robot or computer could be designed to operate reliably safely.
The autopilot on a 777 has no sense of self-preservation either, yet 700+ flights per day confirm the safety of the system. The 777 autopilot isn't concerned with "saving lives", it's running the numbers and doing what is necessary to keep the aircraft on-course and flying properly.
Every 777 that flies, does so with a human pilot and backup
Personally, I would much rather have a robot driving a car than a teenager. Or an old person. Or a drunk. Or somebody on a cellphone. Or me, when I'm daydreaming, frankly.
I read things like this here occasionally and the only way I can make sense of it is by figuring the writer has read too many science fiction books.
There's simply no evidence that computers are capable of handling the number of variables in play when driving on busy roads with people, and I don't see how they ever will on their current development path. Driving involves way way more than just piloting the thing down the lane and not hitting things in front of you. To really drive safely you need to be monitoring the environment and anticipating what every person near you is going to do. This requires basically running multiple people simulators simultaneously and monitoring for emerging solutions that represent a threat.
Your brain automates this in the background; building these simulations is part of the 18+ year process of becoming a functioning adult. To get a computer to the same level it would have to start with the processing power of the human brain, then interact with humans 16 hours a day for nearly 2 decades.
In addition computers and robots have absolutely no sense of self-preservation. If you give a computer a wrong instruction it will follow it, to its own destruction even, without hesitation. There's no billion-year-old base programming that checks every single action for self-danger.
Really, one HUGE problem in this country is that nobody understands risk assessment.
The irony of this statement just kills me. (/pun)