Yes, to be fair, oil can be a very bad thing to allow to get out of your control.
However, if we're going to be completely honest with ourselves, characterizing Solar as being "unable to have a spill" is a nice sound byte, but its a deceptive one.
Yes, solar energy can't have a spill, but oil and solar have different characteristics that go beyond "fossil" and "green".
It is important to point out that, oil's liquid state is also one of its prime advantages. It is high density fuel that you can easily store or pipe because it is a liquid. It's products like gasoline and diesel are similar.
Solar does not have the same characteristics. It can't "spill", but it also can't power the average road vehicle directly either or be easily transported in bulk without being transformed. So, to allow solar to become the ultimate green source for vehicles, there is a missing ingredient, and that is batteries.
I won't bore you with how nasty battery production and disposal can be, because I am sure you have heard it all before. It may well be that battery production and disposal is a better problem, although I have not researched the details.
Nevertheless, you do need to consider that at present the scale at which we produce and dispose of batteries is significantly less than if solar was to completely overtake fossil fuels, particularly oil, as the primary power source for vehicles and other things that oil is used for. If we ramp up solar production, and the attendant supporting storage like batteries and other items, we may find we're just having a different kind of crisis.
I certainly don't oppose solar, but I think it is important that we not become complacent about how much better solar is than fossil fuels or we will make some of the same kind of mistakes that have caused oil to become an environmental problem. I actually believe that a good fraction of the problems we are having with fossil fuels is not so much a problem with the source, but the handwaving that our forebears did when someone might have presented them with a similar cautionary point for their then-new fossil fueled advances.
Banks provide actual services that you can't get with just having Bitcoins.
On the bright side, none of these changes prevents you from using Bitcoins in the manner you are accustomed.
In the end, neither the governments nor the Federal Reserve nor the European Central Bank nor any other national banks are controlling the value of the Bitcoin nor are they able to print more by fiat. For many, this is a big benefit by itself. Value will still fluctuate, but not due to a central monetary policy.
The bad news is that such use will likely attract heavy banking regulation since things like markets and managed funds will attract attention from regulators.
And governments can use legislation to make the use of Bitcoin (or any non-national currency) difficult enough to use that it loses its utility, followed quickly by its value. Even drug dealers will not want to use Bitcoin if you can't buy anything legally with it or turn it into legal currency.
I don't see how the corporation encouraged this behavior. If there was a "trophy", yes. However, as far as I know, the trophies are from third party sites and not from Snapchat.
Again, we offer all sorts of capabilities in smartphones today. We can't say that something that simply provides information has to be completely thought through to the greatest possible degree by every company or you start entering a rabbit hole where you have to think of everything, no matter how ridiculous, and somehow prevent it.
You can take pictures with phones, didn't Apple consider that the iPhone could be used to do that while driving? Should we be able to sue Apple because it provided a capability that could have been used while driving?
There is a difference between incitement and merely providing a capability. Back to my example of the speedometer. If you simply allow the speedometer to record speeds above the speed limit, I don't think anyone would call that incitement to go 150. Now, if you made bell sounds and lights and assigned a score to every 10 mph you go, that would be incitement because it provides a reward for using that measurement to its greatest extent.
Snapchat allows measurement of your speed. However, it provides no incitement to use that in excess of safe operation, and in fact, provides warnings against doing it. The third party trophies would be incitement, but not by Snapchat. If you suggested that Snapchat was responsible for enabling them, you'd hold car manufacturers responsible for anyone who made a speed award for driving on streets at high speed, and there is no such responsibility on a car manufacturer.
Right. This is most likely because the girl is completely at fault, but has no money to speak of to pay recompense for the loss of this lady's husband. She could be in very dire straits now if the husband contributed significantly to their shared income and she needed that money for mortgage payments, or health insurance or whatever.
I don't think this case has much merit, but I can see why this lady would try this tactic. She has nothing to lose even if it is deemed frivolous.
Yes, but that is called "in the heat of passion". There is no way that you can suggest that Snapchat caused an immediate response based on passion in this case. There is no instinctive response that makes you want to take a picture of yourself and get some sort of achievement. The only way that is possible is if someone in the car dared her to or something, and then the incitement came not from Snapchat, but from the passenger.
That's like saying a speedometer that goes to 150 is incitement to actually go 150.
Actually, yes, it is dangerous to go at that speed. In the air, there are no hills, or curves and you can avoid people in three dimensions. On the road, you're stuck to the road and every bump, pothole or curve represents a danger to you.
Additionally, you are generally sharing the road with a lot more people than a plane would. The speed of aircraft is why they work hard to keep planes miles from one another in the air. On the road, you can measure the distance between cars in feet and a change in a few yards to the right or left can happen frequently, and relatively suddenly. If you're going 100 mph, you are going to have significantly reduced reaction time to a lane change like this one. If this guy had changed lanes suddenly and possibly without a turn signal, like many people around here do, he'd bear some fault, but at normal speeds you'd generally be able to brake fast enough. If you're doing 100 mph, it is possible that you might not even be able to stop for someone who made a relatively lazy, and fully signaled turn.
You may be able to get away with 100 mph on a straightaway with no one else around, but most roads are not engineered for that speed in the US, and it is clear that this girl was not driving on an empty road.
I think this lady is suing Snapchat for one reason: the girl has no money to pay her to make it worth going to court to get recompense, so she is looking for money elsewhere. Depending on her situation after her husband's death, this may be something she feels she needs to do in order to not suddenly lose a significant amount of income overnight due to this girl's actions. I sympathize, but I wonder if this has any merit as an actual lawsuit.
Let China have their superhumans. There's more to existence than being the next person with more technological "progress".
I love science and what we can do with it, but pursuit of it without an understanding of what you're actually trying to achieve, or if that goal is actually desirable, just leads down a path that doesn't achieve actual happiness for anyone. What good is a superhuman if you can't be one? What good is a superhuman if *everyone* is one?
We can do lots of things, that doesn't mean that those things are a good idea. It's currently possible for us to wipe out human civilization. We built that capacity because we wanted to protect ourselves from aggressors who, if we're really honest with ourselves, even if they had won, they might have been less dangerous to humanity in the long run, than the bombs that resulted from the conflict.
Do you ejaculate fertilized eggs when you wank off into the toilet? Unless you do, your comparison is not applicable. No one, not even the Pope, actually believes a bunch of sperm are a separate person.
I disagree. I don't like Trump, but his message is going to potentially appeal to voters that a Rubio or a Bush could never get.
The Republican establishment can get about 43% of the vote if they try hard enough. Not a bad showing, and maybe it will be better than what Trump will turn out to be getting, but they aren't going to beat the Democratic party's locked in blocs of votes. The Republicans are closed by are going to be perpetually locked out. The Democrats are just handing out too much free shit, and the Republican establishment will have a lot of trouble connecting with the blue collar workers.
Trump... well... I think he's going to lose, but I think his campaign has a better chance of breaking the establishment's barrier. He *will* get votes that no establishment candidate would have gotten. Will that be enough? No idea.
I do think he will put up a better campaign than the stolid Republican sorts have. You will not be able to put a label on him before he labels the crap out of you. And his fumbles in speeches and faux pas? Those usually make for comedy fodder which undermines a candidate. He's been doubling down on that sort of shit and his base loves him for it. In fact, a lot of the mockery that the progressive media usually use to target Republican candidates has failed against Trump so far. What happens when you try to make someone out as a clown and the clown wins?
Unless Trump somehow does a 180 and becomes a serious candidate, I won't be voting for him. But I will be eating popcorn and enjoying the show. Sometimes, there's nothing you can do but board up the windows, get a seat on the porch, and enjoy the show as the hurricane clouds move in.
No. The rules are identical. I do agree that there might be selective enforcement, but that's corruption, not good practice. The fact that people like her could get away with being affected by affluenza doesn't mean that she should get a pass just because all her political appointee colleagues are. That's basically like saying that they are immune from the laws because they're too important for silly regulations to apply to them.
Is this a "manufactured" situation? Yes, but only in the sense that this activity is usually overlooked. However, the first rule of this sort of thing is that all bets are off if you decide to be Above the Law and get yourself in trouble. It's like a bad cop who has gotten away with tons of shit he shouldn't have, but as soon as a camera is on him, he's been thrown to the wolves. Guess what, the selective enforcement on that cop wasn't right either, and it is no more "persecuting" Clinton for breaking the law than it is for throwing that cop in jail for something he'd done dozens of times before but wasn't called on.
It is extremely unlikely in today's climate that Congress would throw the election to someone who was not at least one of the top two contenders. And they would take a lot of shit for not throwing it to the person with the simple majority of votes.
The last time they did anything like that, "separate, but equal" was still considered a jolly good idea by the Supreme Court.
They might be able to get away with screwing #1 for #2 if it was close in some justifiable way (electoral or popular votes), and if they felt particularly secure in their districts. I doubt a #3 pick would be able to effectively govern.
The thing is, I can look at an ant and understand what she is doing and have some idea what her wants and needs are. I do have a whole range of thoughts and emotions and such that the ant can't even comprehend, and the ant's communication and thought processes are probably so simple as to defy my understanding on how they live day to day.
However, I know how to send an ant messages, if only to lure them into traps. I think that is a function of knowledge, rather than sentience.
I do agree that there might need to be some knowledge of a flatland and what a flatland entails for me to communicate with such a being. I think most people mistake the ability to comprehend or communicate with our lack of complete knowledge on how to do so. If we could interact with a Flatland, I think we'd have a lot of trouble learning how flatlanders work, but if we made the effort, we'd be able to understand it.
If sentience does anything, it may distract us from making the effort to learn how to fully communicate with a lower SQ being. Or we may consider them unimportant. But it doesn't prevent communication if we decided that, for some reason, it was now extremely important to try. Ants don't usually occupy much of my attention, but they do occasionally intrude in the spring when I need to get them out of my house.
It can have effects even in a red team vs. blue team situation. For instance, possible cabinet secretaries and legislators who aren't as immune to criticism might distance themselves from her.
She might still be elected, but she may have real trouble governing. If it came to the point she was going to get a pardon, she might be asked to step aside either before or just after the election.
A pardon, however, will never be lived down. A pardon implies you needed to be pardoned for a crime and released from the disadvantages of such, it is not a declaration of innocence. Accepting and especially soliciting a pardon suggests in the court of public opinion that you accept that you might have been found guilty. Running as a Democrat with her endorsement would be tantamount to having an actual criminal endorse you. Few people will be impressed by a pardon issued without a trial.
Not to mention, it would trash Obama's legacy to pardon her unless the investigation was extremely unjust (as opposed to merely highly political). Obama may be loyal, but I don't think he wants his legacy to be overshadowed with a pardon like Gerald Ford's was. And he probably doesn't like Hillary that much to boot.
Most supermodels do not starve themselves. They actually have genetics that are simply that good. And many of them are actually required to be athletic these days. Your Victoria's Secret models of the past used to be curvier. Now they are more athletic by contract requirement. That doesn't make then unhealthy and probably makes them more healthy.
They're also rich. Which should overcome any issues with their ability to birth and raise offspring.
So, yeah, a supermodel is a very good choice for our biology.
You might be thinking about the more run of the mill high fashion runway models, and yes, some of them resemble Holocaust survivors. I can't say that type has ever appealed to me.
A superbeing wouldn't find us very interesting or capable of having a good conversation with, but they would not be incapable of communicating with us, if they learned our language and obtained the means.
The real barrier to communication with lower SQ animals is both our lack of knowledge of the "language" they use, and the inability to produce communication in that language. I can see that a dog is happy if he's wagging his tail. What I can't do is wag my tail to show I am happy, and what is more, the dog will know I am not a dog and is therefore likely to ignore an artificial tail wag from me via some sort of fake tail.
A superbeing may not have an inherent capability to communicate with us (for instance, they may not have vocal cords), but they should be able to figure it out. The next question is whether we'd accept the artificially generated noises from an energy being who is trying to vocalize as actual communication. If they get their vocalization wrong in some manner, they could sound like they are speaking too slowly, or in a shriek, or they may seem to babble in a way that is understandable but gets nothing across to us, so we ignore it.
The chemistry in question is important. We not only believe that in a habitable zone, with the right raw materials, the chemistry for life isn't only possible, it is almost inevitable unless something stops it. Outside the habitable zone, that chemistry may be possible, but is not inevitable.
So, it makes sense to look for life in the places where the chemistry and environment is most likely to bring about a sustainable lifeform in an interval that is less than the age of the known universe. It isn't a matter of "hubris" or "arrogance", it is simply a matter of looking where you have a higher probability that you will find what you are looking for.
You don't understand. A pardon is irrelevant for the campaign. It could even be worse than an indictment. It's not about whether she goes to jail or not, it's whether she can get elected with her credibility broken by an indictment which would then have been nullified by a pardon, without answering the actual charge.
And it would prove the charge that she will have gotten away with something that nobody who worked for her could have gotten away with, just because she is who she is. A pardon would be as close to political suicide as she could get without actually going to jail.
When we look at quantum mechanics, and see probabilities and "spooky" actions involved, we aren't pointing at a void and suggesting that free will is in there somewhere. We're pointing at phenomena that we have reason to believe may be very pertinent to understanding how consciousness works. It may well be that this isn't the case, but it is an investigation that we can undertake.
The "god of the gaps" is the suggestion that there is a void which allows there to be the proof of an entity in there, with no indication that there is an entity to begin with. I think humans would agree that we at least have the experience of what appears to be free will, even if we don't know if it is illusory. We're not making things up and then suggesting that it can still exist in the gaps of our knowledge.
But neither of those things are 100%. It merely indicates that the lawyers or sales people understand underlying responses fairly well. Free will doesn't imply that there are no programmed responses, especially for actions that take much less time than we can evaluate consciously. It merely implies that there are decision forks where we can decide based on our preferences and which have meaningful results.
Yes, for such a person, the hurdle is getting that first job. Few private employers care about what college you went to... as long as you have experience. I barely remark on someone's college if they have the right experience. An Ivy League, Stanford, MIT or some other big names might draw some interest, but experience trumps those too. I'll hire someone who went to the local community college or didn't even go to college if they can demonstrate that they know what they are talking about.
However, college is almost required for someone without experience unless you know someone.
There are a few certifications that would put you though the door, but few of the good ones are able to be attained by entry level workers, since they usually require something like five years experience in-field to get them.
I don't really think that a college degree is needed for most IT jobs, honestly. You're mostly retrained in the first two years anyway. It's just that there is no other accreditation that shows that you might be worth taking a risk on.
I got a job that had nothing to do with my degree simply because I knew people from college who were joining a Dot-com in the late 90's. Although, that is simply my experience.
The rest of the people I knew in college did get their job in their major, and a lot depended on the employers who flocked to the campus to try and hook them up with jobs. They also benefited from their internships, although I don't know anyone who worked with who they interned with after college.
Could I have learned the skills that gave me some success later on without college? Yes. In fact, I am mostly self-taught. Could I have landed my first job in my field without going to college? Answer is very hazy on that one. Knowing people does help.
I agree, though, that what we tend to pay a lot of money for, $100K for me when I was in school, and what looks like $200K for people today, is not really worth that. A lot of IT people, for instance, could have become rather successful with a few good practical classes on logic, operating systems, and moderate scripting and an apprenticeship. You don't need to be a CS major to be a good system administrator. It doesn't hurt, but there's almost no computer science about it. Yet a sysadmin can make almost as much as a programmer if they have the right skills.
College is worth paying some money for, but it is starting to get absurd.
I doubt that either Bush or Obama had to "force" a President's child on an Ivy League. Yeah, they may not have had the usual grades and extracurriculars and all that stuff that you usually have to get admitted to one, but the university looks really good for having them there. Some schools admit sports players, these schools want to have famous alums who have might have influence and possibly friends with deep pockets for various endowments.
Besides, getting into Harvard for undergrad is the hardest part of it. She's not exactly going to find herself over her head. Getting into an Ivy grad school might be another story, though.
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Yes, to be fair, oil can be a very bad thing to allow to get out of your control.
However, if we're going to be completely honest with ourselves, characterizing Solar as being "unable to have a spill" is a nice sound byte, but its a deceptive one.
Yes, solar energy can't have a spill, but oil and solar have different characteristics that go beyond "fossil" and "green".
It is important to point out that, oil's liquid state is also one of its prime advantages. It is high density fuel that you can easily store or pipe because it is a liquid. It's products like gasoline and diesel are similar.
Solar does not have the same characteristics. It can't "spill", but it also can't power the average road vehicle directly either or be easily transported in bulk without being transformed. So, to allow solar to become the ultimate green source for vehicles, there is a missing ingredient, and that is batteries.
I won't bore you with how nasty battery production and disposal can be, because I am sure you have heard it all before. It may well be that battery production and disposal is a better problem, although I have not researched the details.
Nevertheless, you do need to consider that at present the scale at which we produce and dispose of batteries is significantly less than if solar was to completely overtake fossil fuels, particularly oil, as the primary power source for vehicles and other things that oil is used for. If we ramp up solar production, and the attendant supporting storage like batteries and other items, we may find we're just having a different kind of crisis.
I certainly don't oppose solar, but I think it is important that we not become complacent about how much better solar is than fossil fuels or we will make some of the same kind of mistakes that have caused oil to become an environmental problem. I actually believe that a good fraction of the problems we are having with fossil fuels is not so much a problem with the source, but the handwaving that our forebears did when someone might have presented them with a similar cautionary point for their then-new fossil fueled advances.
Banks provide actual services that you can't get with just having Bitcoins.
On the bright side, none of these changes prevents you from using Bitcoins in the manner you are accustomed.
In the end, neither the governments nor the Federal Reserve nor the European Central Bank nor any other national banks are controlling the value of the Bitcoin nor are they able to print more by fiat. For many, this is a big benefit by itself. Value will still fluctuate, but not due to a central monetary policy.
The bad news is that such use will likely attract heavy banking regulation since things like markets and managed funds will attract attention from regulators.
And governments can use legislation to make the use of Bitcoin (or any non-national currency) difficult enough to use that it loses its utility, followed quickly by its value. Even drug dealers will not want to use Bitcoin if you can't buy anything legally with it or turn it into legal currency.
I don't see how the corporation encouraged this behavior. If there was a "trophy", yes. However, as far as I know, the trophies are from third party sites and not from Snapchat.
Again, we offer all sorts of capabilities in smartphones today. We can't say that something that simply provides information has to be completely thought through to the greatest possible degree by every company or you start entering a rabbit hole where you have to think of everything, no matter how ridiculous, and somehow prevent it.
You can take pictures with phones, didn't Apple consider that the iPhone could be used to do that while driving? Should we be able to sue Apple because it provided a capability that could have been used while driving?
There is a difference between incitement and merely providing a capability. Back to my example of the speedometer. If you simply allow the speedometer to record speeds above the speed limit, I don't think anyone would call that incitement to go 150. Now, if you made bell sounds and lights and assigned a score to every 10 mph you go, that would be incitement because it provides a reward for using that measurement to its greatest extent.
Snapchat allows measurement of your speed. However, it provides no incitement to use that in excess of safe operation, and in fact, provides warnings against doing it. The third party trophies would be incitement, but not by Snapchat. If you suggested that Snapchat was responsible for enabling them, you'd hold car manufacturers responsible for anyone who made a speed award for driving on streets at high speed, and there is no such responsibility on a car manufacturer.
Right. This is most likely because the girl is completely at fault, but has no money to speak of to pay recompense for the loss of this lady's husband. She could be in very dire straits now if the husband contributed significantly to their shared income and she needed that money for mortgage payments, or health insurance or whatever.
I don't think this case has much merit, but I can see why this lady would try this tactic. She has nothing to lose even if it is deemed frivolous.
Yes, but that is called "in the heat of passion". There is no way that you can suggest that Snapchat caused an immediate response based on passion in this case. There is no instinctive response that makes you want to take a picture of yourself and get some sort of achievement. The only way that is possible is if someone in the car dared her to or something, and then the incitement came not from Snapchat, but from the passenger.
That's like saying a speedometer that goes to 150 is incitement to actually go 150.
Actually, yes, it is dangerous to go at that speed. In the air, there are no hills, or curves and you can avoid people in three dimensions. On the road, you're stuck to the road and every bump, pothole or curve represents a danger to you.
Additionally, you are generally sharing the road with a lot more people than a plane would. The speed of aircraft is why they work hard to keep planes miles from one another in the air. On the road, you can measure the distance between cars in feet and a change in a few yards to the right or left can happen frequently, and relatively suddenly. If you're going 100 mph, you are going to have significantly reduced reaction time to a lane change like this one. If this guy had changed lanes suddenly and possibly without a turn signal, like many people around here do, he'd bear some fault, but at normal speeds you'd generally be able to brake fast enough. If you're doing 100 mph, it is possible that you might not even be able to stop for someone who made a relatively lazy, and fully signaled turn.
You may be able to get away with 100 mph on a straightaway with no one else around, but most roads are not engineered for that speed in the US, and it is clear that this girl was not driving on an empty road.
I think this lady is suing Snapchat for one reason: the girl has no money to pay her to make it worth going to court to get recompense, so she is looking for money elsewhere. Depending on her situation after her husband's death, this may be something she feels she needs to do in order to not suddenly lose a significant amount of income overnight due to this girl's actions. I sympathize, but I wonder if this has any merit as an actual lawsuit.
Let China have their superhumans. There's more to existence than being the next person with more technological "progress".
I love science and what we can do with it, but pursuit of it without an understanding of what you're actually trying to achieve, or if that goal is actually desirable, just leads down a path that doesn't achieve actual happiness for anyone. What good is a superhuman if you can't be one? What good is a superhuman if *everyone* is one?
We can do lots of things, that doesn't mean that those things are a good idea. It's currently possible for us to wipe out human civilization. We built that capacity because we wanted to protect ourselves from aggressors who, if we're really honest with ourselves, even if they had won, they might have been less dangerous to humanity in the long run, than the bombs that resulted from the conflict.
Do you ejaculate fertilized eggs when you wank off into the toilet? Unless you do, your comparison is not applicable. No one, not even the Pope, actually believes a bunch of sperm are a separate person.
There are actual ethical considerations with this sort of thing that have nothing to do with religion or souls or Baby Jesus.
Human rights is easily subverted when you can just redefine who is actually human.
Well, now we know how he engineers his wives.
I disagree. I don't like Trump, but his message is going to potentially appeal to voters that a Rubio or a Bush could never get.
The Republican establishment can get about 43% of the vote if they try hard enough. Not a bad showing, and maybe it will be better than what Trump will turn out to be getting, but they aren't going to beat the Democratic party's locked in blocs of votes. The Republicans are closed by are going to be perpetually locked out. The Democrats are just handing out too much free shit, and the Republican establishment will have a lot of trouble connecting with the blue collar workers.
Trump... well... I think he's going to lose, but I think his campaign has a better chance of breaking the establishment's barrier. He *will* get votes that no establishment candidate would have gotten. Will that be enough? No idea.
I do think he will put up a better campaign than the stolid Republican sorts have. You will not be able to put a label on him before he labels the crap out of you. And his fumbles in speeches and faux pas? Those usually make for comedy fodder which undermines a candidate. He's been doubling down on that sort of shit and his base loves him for it. In fact, a lot of the mockery that the progressive media usually use to target Republican candidates has failed against Trump so far. What happens when you try to make someone out as a clown and the clown wins?
Unless Trump somehow does a 180 and becomes a serious candidate, I won't be voting for him. But I will be eating popcorn and enjoying the show. Sometimes, there's nothing you can do but board up the windows, get a seat on the porch, and enjoy the show as the hurricane clouds move in.
Seriously, you're going to try and damage her by saying she's got ties to Saudi Arabia and Wall Street? Get outta here with that weak shit.
Bernie Sanders has been working that angle. Someone had better let him know that it's weak.
No. The rules are identical. I do agree that there might be selective enforcement, but that's corruption, not good practice. The fact that people like her could get away with being affected by affluenza doesn't mean that she should get a pass just because all her political appointee colleagues are. That's basically like saying that they are immune from the laws because they're too important for silly regulations to apply to them.
Is this a "manufactured" situation? Yes, but only in the sense that this activity is usually overlooked. However, the first rule of this sort of thing is that all bets are off if you decide to be Above the Law and get yourself in trouble. It's like a bad cop who has gotten away with tons of shit he shouldn't have, but as soon as a camera is on him, he's been thrown to the wolves. Guess what, the selective enforcement on that cop wasn't right either, and it is no more "persecuting" Clinton for breaking the law than it is for throwing that cop in jail for something he'd done dozens of times before but wasn't called on.
It is extremely unlikely in today's climate that Congress would throw the election to someone who was not at least one of the top two contenders. And they would take a lot of shit for not throwing it to the person with the simple majority of votes.
The last time they did anything like that, "separate, but equal" was still considered a jolly good idea by the Supreme Court.
They might be able to get away with screwing #1 for #2 if it was close in some justifiable way (electoral or popular votes), and if they felt particularly secure in their districts. I doubt a #3 pick would be able to effectively govern.
The thing is, I can look at an ant and understand what she is doing and have some idea what her wants and needs are. I do have a whole range of thoughts and emotions and such that the ant can't even comprehend, and the ant's communication and thought processes are probably so simple as to defy my understanding on how they live day to day.
However, I know how to send an ant messages, if only to lure them into traps. I think that is a function of knowledge, rather than sentience.
I do agree that there might need to be some knowledge of a flatland and what a flatland entails for me to communicate with such a being. I think most people mistake the ability to comprehend or communicate with our lack of complete knowledge on how to do so. If we could interact with a Flatland, I think we'd have a lot of trouble learning how flatlanders work, but if we made the effort, we'd be able to understand it.
If sentience does anything, it may distract us from making the effort to learn how to fully communicate with a lower SQ being. Or we may consider them unimportant. But it doesn't prevent communication if we decided that, for some reason, it was now extremely important to try. Ants don't usually occupy much of my attention, but they do occasionally intrude in the spring when I need to get them out of my house.
It can have effects even in a red team vs. blue team situation. For instance, possible cabinet secretaries and legislators who aren't as immune to criticism might distance themselves from her.
She might still be elected, but she may have real trouble governing. If it came to the point she was going to get a pardon, she might be asked to step aside either before or just after the election.
A pardon, however, will never be lived down. A pardon implies you needed to be pardoned for a crime and released from the disadvantages of such, it is not a declaration of innocence. Accepting and especially soliciting a pardon suggests in the court of public opinion that you accept that you might have been found guilty. Running as a Democrat with her endorsement would be tantamount to having an actual criminal endorse you. Few people will be impressed by a pardon issued without a trial.
Not to mention, it would trash Obama's legacy to pardon her unless the investigation was extremely unjust (as opposed to merely highly political). Obama may be loyal, but I don't think he wants his legacy to be overshadowed with a pardon like Gerald Ford's was. And he probably doesn't like Hillary that much to boot.
Most supermodels do not starve themselves. They actually have genetics that are simply that good. And many of them are actually required to be athletic these days. Your Victoria's Secret models of the past used to be curvier. Now they are more athletic by contract requirement. That doesn't make then unhealthy and probably makes them more healthy.
They're also rich. Which should overcome any issues with their ability to birth and raise offspring.
So, yeah, a supermodel is a very good choice for our biology.
You might be thinking about the more run of the mill high fashion runway models, and yes, some of them resemble Holocaust survivors. I can't say that type has ever appealed to me.
A superbeing wouldn't find us very interesting or capable of having a good conversation with, but they would not be incapable of communicating with us, if they learned our language and obtained the means.
The real barrier to communication with lower SQ animals is both our lack of knowledge of the "language" they use, and the inability to produce communication in that language. I can see that a dog is happy if he's wagging his tail. What I can't do is wag my tail to show I am happy, and what is more, the dog will know I am not a dog and is therefore likely to ignore an artificial tail wag from me via some sort of fake tail.
A superbeing may not have an inherent capability to communicate with us (for instance, they may not have vocal cords), but they should be able to figure it out. The next question is whether we'd accept the artificially generated noises from an energy being who is trying to vocalize as actual communication. If they get their vocalization wrong in some manner, they could sound like they are speaking too slowly, or in a shriek, or they may seem to babble in a way that is understandable but gets nothing across to us, so we ignore it.
The chemistry in question is important. We not only believe that in a habitable zone, with the right raw materials, the chemistry for life isn't only possible, it is almost inevitable unless something stops it. Outside the habitable zone, that chemistry may be possible, but is not inevitable.
So, it makes sense to look for life in the places where the chemistry and environment is most likely to bring about a sustainable lifeform in an interval that is less than the age of the known universe. It isn't a matter of "hubris" or "arrogance", it is simply a matter of looking where you have a higher probability that you will find what you are looking for.
You don't understand. A pardon is irrelevant for the campaign. It could even be worse than an indictment. It's not about whether she goes to jail or not, it's whether she can get elected with her credibility broken by an indictment which would then have been nullified by a pardon, without answering the actual charge.
And it would prove the charge that she will have gotten away with something that nobody who worked for her could have gotten away with, just because she is who she is. A pardon would be as close to political suicide as she could get without actually going to jail.
When we look at quantum mechanics, and see probabilities and "spooky" actions involved, we aren't pointing at a void and suggesting that free will is in there somewhere. We're pointing at phenomena that we have reason to believe may be very pertinent to understanding how consciousness works. It may well be that this isn't the case, but it is an investigation that we can undertake.
The "god of the gaps" is the suggestion that there is a void which allows there to be the proof of an entity in there, with no indication that there is an entity to begin with. I think humans would agree that we at least have the experience of what appears to be free will, even if we don't know if it is illusory. We're not making things up and then suggesting that it can still exist in the gaps of our knowledge.
But neither of those things are 100%. It merely indicates that the lawyers or sales people understand underlying responses fairly well. Free will doesn't imply that there are no programmed responses, especially for actions that take much less time than we can evaluate consciously. It merely implies that there are decision forks where we can decide based on our preferences and which have meaningful results.
Yes, for such a person, the hurdle is getting that first job. Few private employers care about what college you went to... as long as you have experience. I barely remark on someone's college if they have the right experience. An Ivy League, Stanford, MIT or some other big names might draw some interest, but experience trumps those too. I'll hire someone who went to the local community college or didn't even go to college if they can demonstrate that they know what they are talking about.
However, college is almost required for someone without experience unless you know someone.
There are a few certifications that would put you though the door, but few of the good ones are able to be attained by entry level workers, since they usually require something like five years experience in-field to get them.
I don't really think that a college degree is needed for most IT jobs, honestly. You're mostly retrained in the first two years anyway. It's just that there is no other accreditation that shows that you might be worth taking a risk on.
I got a job that had nothing to do with my degree simply because I knew people from college who were joining a Dot-com in the late 90's. Although, that is simply my experience.
The rest of the people I knew in college did get their job in their major, and a lot depended on the employers who flocked to the campus to try and hook them up with jobs. They also benefited from their internships, although I don't know anyone who worked with who they interned with after college.
Could I have learned the skills that gave me some success later on without college? Yes. In fact, I am mostly self-taught. Could I have landed my first job in my field without going to college? Answer is very hazy on that one. Knowing people does help.
I agree, though, that what we tend to pay a lot of money for, $100K for me when I was in school, and what looks like $200K for people today, is not really worth that. A lot of IT people, for instance, could have become rather successful with a few good practical classes on logic, operating systems, and moderate scripting and an apprenticeship. You don't need to be a CS major to be a good system administrator. It doesn't hurt, but there's almost no computer science about it. Yet a sysadmin can make almost as much as a programmer if they have the right skills.
College is worth paying some money for, but it is starting to get absurd.
I doubt that either Bush or Obama had to "force" a President's child on an Ivy League. Yeah, they may not have had the usual grades and extracurriculars and all that stuff that you usually have to get admitted to one, but the university looks really good for having them there. Some schools admit sports players, these schools want to have famous alums who have might have influence and possibly friends with deep pockets for various endowments.
Besides, getting into Harvard for undergrad is the hardest part of it. She's not exactly going to find herself over her head. Getting into an Ivy grad school might be another story, though.