I refuted his point. Pharmboy claimed we are hardwired to seek high calorie foods. So I gave examples of high calorie foods that I think most people aren't as addicted to- they may like it (or not), consume it but then they stop fairly easily - they may even stop for days or longer with no urge to reconsume them in the same quantities.

And there are also people like me who aren't as addicted to sugar. I do not feel a great urge to consume more white sugar or a sugar solution after having a bit of it. But for example, after taking a single Lays potato chip, I feel like I have to have another and another etc (I can stop, but the urge is stronger). Lays may be high calorie but it's not as high calorie as pure oil or fat. And there are plenty of foods with similar calorie density that aren't as addictive.

So it's not high calories. Assuming it is won't get you closer to figuring the real reasons.

I bet the snack food people have done a lot more research on addictive snacks and are closer to the truth. Saltiness, sweetness, umaminess, oiliness, stuff like mouthfeel, even the sound a snack makes when you chomp on it (crispy is popular for some reason). There's probably some snack food researcher somewhere working on snacks that are as addictive as possible while remaining legal, cheap and minimally satiating ;).

Hardwired to seek high calorie foods? OK eat a spoon of unsweetened peanut butter. Or drink some olive oil. Or chew on some low sugar biltong. Does that help? :)

The real problem is sugar is addictive for many people - sugar high, then crash, then want more sugar, repeat till obese. I'm lucky that I'd prefer biltong or good beef jerky to candy, or >80% cocoa chocolate. Except that biltong and good quality high cocoa chocolate bars are a lot more expensive... So I end up not snacking much.

By the way there's some research indicating that alcohlics tend to like sweet stuff: http://alcoholism.about.com/library/weekly/aa001218a.htm

Sad? You sound like you have very little idea what Forever or Eternity means (but not surprising - most people don't). Do you really want to still be alive in this universe when all its stars have long died and gone cold, and all other energy sources have been used up? What sort of "greater existence" is that? How would you be "thoroughly enjoying" your life in the dark and cold?

Eventually stuff might start happening again - forever is a very long time after all. But go ask some physicists or astronomers how long that's likely to take.

No. Struldbrugs age and assuming the the brain ages and you eventually go senile it might actually not be as bad. I'm saying if you don't age and are at your best physical form you are unlikely to keep enjoying the experience.

For example, assuming humanity doesn't figure out interstellar space travel, you'd still be stuck in the Solar System when the Sun starts dying. If you can still feel pain and other human things being around/in a dying star would be very unpleasant. And even if you are invulnerable, it would be rather boring just looking at glowing gas not for just one year, but for about a billion years. Then after a brief (few hundred million years) slightly more exciting period of the sun going "poof" it will go dark and you'll be stuck waiting for the other stars to dim and go out. An astronomer can probably give you a better idea of what it would be like.

Even if humanity does figure out interstellar space travel, soon the rest of the stars will start dying too. Then you will be alone in a cold, dark, dead universe for a very long time till a new "big bang" occurs. I'm assuming that a "big crunch" is not going to happen for this particular universe (most physicists think it's likely to keep expanding), but given an eternity there is a chance a new big bang may occur randomly from a quantum vacuum state.

I think a worse curse would be for the target to live forever, NO MATTER WHAT! Heat death of the universe, next big bang, next heat death of next universe, so on and so forth. The first 1000 years might be all fun and games, but long before the last stars dim, I'm sure you'd be wishing you didn't exist any more.

So many people want to live forever the way they are at their prime. I don't, I would only want eternal existence if I was transformed into an entity that could enjoy it. Otherwise it would be hell and not heaven. I'd rather have complete oblivion, total nonexistence instead.

Sure but it's still the voter's decision and responsibility. Nobody is forcing the voter to vote according to the dollar. In other countries candidates can and do win without huge financial backing against those that have deep pockets. The buck stops at the voters. The more they realize that the closer they will be to changing things. If money stops winning elections, the politicians will have to try other methods.

And is money actually winning elections? From what I see, many of the US voters do actually want the stuff the politicians promise them more than the other stuff. For example, their priorities are stuff like gay marriage or no gay marriage, abortion or no abortion, marijuana or not, etc. Not whether their candidate can be bought or not ;). I bet most of the candidates deep down don't really care that much about those issues and are happy to give the majority of the voters whatever they want on those. And return favours to their sponsors (corps) on things that typically most voters don't care that much about - copyright act extensions, patent laws etc.

The problem is when huge numbers of voters want very different things, opposing things even. So naturally huge numbers are going to be unhappy whatever the politician does. So the corporations back more than one candidate, that way whoever wins they get what they want.

So it might be that the money is following the votes about as much as the votes are following the money.

You all stupid? Where do you think the money comes from to treat the poor in ERs? The poor? They have no money, so you still pay for them!

Except you pay in very inefficient and expensive ways - the poor queuing at ERs till they get sick enough to treat, or committing crimes to get into prison to get healthcare ( http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/on-purposely-getting-arrested-to-get-life-saving-surgery/273282/ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/08/27/2535201/sick-oregon-man-robs-bank-dollar-health-care-jail/ ). You also pay if one day you need ER treatment and don't get it because too many ERs have closed down: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/health/18hospital.html

So unless you are willing to euthanize the poor and sick, "single payer public health care" is the rational self-serving route for at least the "middle/upper class". It's still expensive but it provably costs less (just look at other countries). The elite class of course live in a different world - they may have their own doctors and pay proportionately less in taxes.

It should be frigging obvious taxes and other public money are ALREADY paying for the poor. But because of the many stupid AND selfish AND greedy people in the USA, you get some monstrosity of Obamacare. No poor sick person needs 1000 different health plans to choose from. You should automatically be covered by one public plan. If you don't want the public plan (or it doesn't cover your needs) you can go with whatever private plan you can afford.

Bullshit. How did one dollar become one vote?

The buck stops at the voter. The voter still decides who to vote for and thus still has the power to control the government.

Unless your elections are completely made up like in some dictatorships (in which case there would be no need for those dollars either),

Go speak to some voters some time and get your eyes opened by how many voters are indeed voluntarily voting for those people. Some happily even. The government may be giving them exactly what they want - "tough action on drugs" etc.

Corrections:
1) instead of electronic engineers I mean control engineers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_engineering ). But many electrical/electronic engineers learn control theory too.
2) I might spend some of those vast sums of money on other things too, not just building AIs ;).

It's not just that. You can write programs to control simulated robots in a simulated environment. There are even games that involve doing that. And there are people who bot in games...

So I'm personally not impressed when all these robotic stories come up. Yeah they might be working on advances in control theory (but maybe if they asked electronic engineers, many of those might be already solved problems - closed and open loop control etc), whereas the really interesting and difficult bits like AI, dynamic environment+self modelling and prediction, and decision making don't actually require a physical robot. And from what I see the AI field hasn't really advanced much since the 1980s or even the 1960s.

That said the physical stuff is more marketable. Plus you get to play with cool toys. ;)

But if anyone wants to give me vast sums of money to build and run a quantum computing parallel world simulator[1] I'd try to use it to simulate the environment and itself.

[1] Many say quantum computers are good at parallel computing, so simulating multiple possible outcomes of a universe+self and collapsing to a "good enough" decision should be a good fit for a suitably configured quantum computing system. Build a model of the world, send a superposition of decisions, pick the one where you aren't dead. Yeah lots of handwaving there, but have you seen the some of these AI bunch? For example that recent story of "point the AI at the Internet, get common sense". How's my idea worse than that? Other than being more likely to end up with self aware terminator robots ;).

I think that's actually worse than the Tesla/Nissan Leaf pure battery model. Since you can charge battery cars in far more places.

We would still need hydrocarbons because I doubt our airliners will be hydrogen or battery powered. So it'll be great if we can figure out a practical path for "green energy" (e.g. wind/solar) or nuke to hydrocarbon, and hydrocarbon powered electric cars.

If fuel cells aren't up to it yet, maybe small gas turbine generators could do: http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-fuel/electric/jaguar-hybrid-micro-turbine-engineering
http://www.thechargingpoint.com/opinions/James-Allen-on-EV-The-Whisper-turbine-charged-electric-car.html

So you think it won't be in vein? ;)

If they use hydrocarbon fuel cells the cars may be able to use the existing fuel stations (likely to need filters to prevent poisoning from impurities). They'd probably still release CO2 but be more efficient.

Far more convenient than cars with hydrogen tanks.

Copyright infringement is not stealing because it doesn't prevent the owners from using their own copies or restrict their access to them.

Copyright term extensions on the other hand restricts the public's access to works that would otherwise be freely available to them.

Therefore the latter is closer to stealing than the former.

I thought it was more "You break it, you buy it". ;)