Whatever. My point had nothing to do with it being an 'AI' really; I was just using AI in the generic 'computer player of game' sense. Expert system is probably a better technical description.

No more pointless than the original activity. Coding AIs is its own form of entertainment, and if you enjoy that more than minesweeper (Who doesn't really? Minesweeper? Ugh!) you've successfully entertained yourself for a significant chunk of time. And maybe improved your coding skills a touch.

If I could, I would mod you up. That was very insightful. Thanks!

Obama tax? I didn't vote for him, but fact check.

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?city1=USA Average&city2=&city3=&crude=n&tme=96&units=us

There's graph of gasoline prices in the last 8-years; roughly half under Bush, half under Obama. I can't say that the average price is particularly different.

Actually in three different cars with manual transmissions I've driven. I commuted about 55 miles each way in primarily flat, highway driving, and could repeatably beat the EPA figures in Fall and Spring. The best was a Saturn SL2 with a manual, which could easily beat the manufacturer by 4-5 mph. Of course snow/ice/AC and all bets are off.

You know the same things affect endurance in standard cars as well, right? Windows-up vs. down, wind, air-conditioning/heating all have sizable effects on range, and you just get a feel for how it drives in your area. It's really estimating by neural network, but it works.

Of course, range is a bigger issue due to fewer fueling stations for a Tesla, but the estimation of range is actually easier (electricity doesn't vary in octane, for instance.)

It really depends on how high the standard is for a lie. Unambiguously incorrect statements are easy to come by:

"The entire north polar ice cap, which has been there for most of the last 3 million years, is disappearing before our eyes. Forty percent is already gone. The rest is expected to go completely within the next decade." [1]

Clearly not true; the percent gone was actually closer to 24%, and the worst-case projections only show the ice cap nearly disappearing in summer. OTOH, I'm not about to call them lies either; 40% would have been right two years earlier, and I can see forgetting to mention the detail about being ice-free only in summer. Furthermore, that was in a live interview; easy to make mistakes.

Perhaps more damning would be:
"The melting of ice in either West Antarctica or Greenland would result in a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet in the near future." (From An Inconvenient Truth)

Just no. Projections of sealevel rises of 20 feet tend to be looking at millenia-scale warming; for no conceivable definition of "near future" is that true. Worse, it's actually in a movie; presumably the script was edited with a finetooth comb.

You could argue it's still only twisting the data, as it is based on actual research; but it's based on claiming that research says something it really doesn't, which is roughly equivalent to Monckton's shenanigans.

Correction: Nuclear energy does not come from the sun.

Not really. Hundreds of people have pointed out the Al Gore is twisting and outright lying about research. Whether the original researchers were among them is irrelevant; it's simply ideologically motivated deceit either way.

Actually, revolvers and derringers are trivial with equipment in most garages. The only special part they need is a spring, which a fairly innocuous part. It won't be as nice/accurate as on made in a shop (skip rifling the barrel: a tube works, etc.) but it'll fire multiple shots between reloads.

Depends on if I believed he was guilty. If I believed him innocent, I'd let someone nuke the city; their actions aren't my responsibility, mine are.

FTFY

A tough choice; and an irrelevant one. I'd trust either of them more than, say, Andrew Jackson. This is an important precedant, and it doesn't matter who I'd rather have making the call; these calls will indubitably be made in the future by a president I trust substantially less than Bush or Obama. Who makes them now doesn't matter.

"It's bad civic hygiene to build the apparatus of a police state" -- Bruce Schneier

Whoosh!

There's a big distinction between coercive and noncoercive social/governmental pressure. Is there pressure to conform? Yes. To take the society's goals as our own? Yes. It's based on our nature as herd critters. But there's a huge difference between recognizing the existence of social pressure (an inevitable in any society) and attempting to force people to abide by the social norm. I'll admit there are many examples of that in Western countries. Every where from Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant in Canada, to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, folks have been prosecuted for stepping too far outside the 'social norm'. (The US has been remarkably resistant to that, due to a fairly strict interpretation of the first amendment.)

But there is a massive quantitative difference between enforcement like NK, and enforcement like Canada. I think both are qualitatively abominable, and I agree they stem from the same human urge to enforce conformity seen in classroom bullies the world around. But I don't think the Western bubble is really comparable, because the coercion is the exception, rather than the norm. Indeed, we even pride ourselves on how far we go to accommodate radically different ideas.

I guess I'm just saying it's a completely different system when the primary pressure to conform is internal (social) rather than external (coercion).

And no, Aaron Swartz isn't a counter example. Copyright law is idea-agnostic, and so is nonbiasing on ideological bubbles.