Thanks, now I'm flashing back to Kurzgesagt videos... 'cause I didn't have enough existential dread in my day already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun to Be With."

I didn't RTFA; did we also commit to bringing them back?

" No human can compete with a machine in accuracy of pain application."

"You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention."

Has this incident affected the supplies of ranch dressing?

I assume it asks the standard questions and measures the response time, you know, stuff like:

"Youâ(TM)re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, itâ(TM)s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it canâ(TM)t, not without your help. But youâ(TM)re not helping. Why is that?"

Y'all have been using arms and feet to measure things. Why didn't anyone tell me. Oh man, I feel so bad for those nuns now. And they had to wait over 20 minutes for me to show them it was really a 4x8 board.

I haven't read the article, but maybe the author was using the wrong approach? I thought you had to tell the AI to write an episode with an adversary who is capable of defeating Data. Then you get something new and different.

"I guess if you liquidized the elephants..."

Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

There was a lot of inflation in the US following the US leaving the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system, as part of the "Nixon Shock". Has the increase in government spending been driven in part by the need to match spending to inflating prices?

At least this article shows that we are still continuing research into the fundamental fifth state of matter. I know Penny Arcade had documented the initial work a while ago, and I had lost track of who was experimenting in the field.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/c...

So, if in the old days, they would cut up your card if it was denied, what are they going to do if your biometrics are rejected? Is this going to be a Yakuza thing where I have to cut off a knuckle as penance for having bad credit?

Here's a link to the original article over on WaPo
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

I understand what you are saying. I haven't thought about it too much, but I assume for many crimes, some kind of repair-ative justice is appropriate. The perpetrator damaged something, so they have to work to repair it or otherwise make the victim whole, and have to perform extra work as a punishment to encourage the perpetrator to not repeat the act.

The problem is that many punishments don't seem to lead to a reduction in recidivism. I don't know that humanity has _really_ studied how to _really_ change people's behavior to prevent repeated behavior. We _think_ that punishments make it less likely for people commit the same crimes again, but I don't think we have any hard evidence for what punishments are effective in preventing recidivism with what probability in so many year. I guess I am thinking real Ludovico technique kinds of stuff, but non-evidence based punishment is just wasting everyone's time, perpetrator and victim alike. In the United States, you might even be able to argue that punishment that does not actually correct behavior is "cruel" because it is just punishing someone for vengeance without any greater purpose.

The Washington Post had short article on this recently. Here's the link, I am unsure if there's a paywall
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

It sounds like the "issue" is that enough people, especially in vulnerable groups, have received that vaccine that most of them are vaccinated now. So just through statistics and population numbers, there are more vaccinated people than not, so there are more vaccinated people still getting COVID than not. I am sure the Fox team has spun this in some stupid fashion, but the basic data is probably sound.

Of course, the questions are "why are vaccinated people still getting covid?" and "are they just getting head cold-like covid, or pneumonia-like covid that needs hospitalization?" I apologize that I can respond to those properly right now.