I wouldn't call it a metaphor, nor would I say that Asimov's point is that you can't codify morality. His point is more subtle: a code of morality, even a simple one, doesn't necessarily imply what we think it does. It's a very rabbinical kind of point.
I nominated "dingleberry".
Spin, sure, but it's a waay bigger minority than I expected. I'd even say even shockingly large.
The genius of Asimov's three laws is that he started by laying out rules that on the face of it rule out the old "robot run amok" stories. He then would write, if not a "run amok" story, one where the implications aren't what you'd expect. I think the implications of an AI that surpasses natural human intelligence are beyond human intelligence to predict, even if we attempt to build strict rules into that AI.
One thing I do believe is that such a development would fundamentally alter human society, provided that the AI was comparably versatile to human intelligence. It's no big deal if an AI is smarter than people at chess; if it's smarter than people at everyday things, plus engineering, business, art and literature, then people will have to reassess the value of human life. Or maybe ask the AI what would give their lives meaning.
Dear moderators: "Troll" is not a synonym for "I disagree with this".
That said, I disagree with this.
We've known since the investigation of 9/11 that suicide bombers are not necessarily dead-enders except in the literal sense. Economic powerlessness might play a role in the political phenomenon of extremist violence, but it is not a necessary element of the profile of a professional extremist. These people often come from privileged backgrounds and display average to above average job aptitude.
Mohammed Atta's life story makes interesting reading. He was born to privileged parents; at the insistence of his emotionally distant father he wasn't allowed to socialize with other kids his age, and had a lifelong difficulty with relating to his peers. At university he did OK but below the high expectations of his parents. He went to graduate school in urban planning where his thesis was on how impersonal modern high rise buildings ruined the historic old neighborhoods of the Muslim world.
That much is factual; as to why he became an extremist while countless others like him did not, we can only speculate. I imagine that once he decided modernity was the source of his personal dissatisfactions Al Qaeda would be attractive to him. Al Qaeda training provided structure which made interacting with his new "peers" easier than ever before. And martyrdom promised relief from the dissatisfactions of a life spent conscious of his own mediocrity. Altogether he was a miserable and twisted man -- but not economically miserable.
And that point is encapsulated in a single adverb: still. "Still" is what makes this news; it wouldn't have been news twenty or thirty years ago.
I am old enough to remember when genital equipment was considered employment destiny. When my wife went to oceanography graduate school the sysadmins of the school minicomputers were all female. The all-male faculty called them -- I kid you not -- "Data Dollies". Data dolly was considered a good job for a technically inclined woman because it paid well for an entry level job, involved computers, and was an easy job to hand off when you quit to marry the professor you'd snagged. Plus they'd have a hard time getting work in industry. Clearly that was a transitional moment because there were a substantial minority of women graduate students in the program, but *no* female professors, much less senior administrators.
But given the strong cohort of women in that class, it is surprising the thirty years later there is still a lingering perception in this country that science isn't for women. But maybe it shouldn't be surprising. Change doesn't happen instantaneously, nor does it necessarily ever become complete. When I was in college the notion that women had to become full time homemakers was still predominant -- not among students, but of people over thirty or so, practically everyone in positions of hiring and authority. That attitude seems weird and foreign to a young person today; I expect it's hard for a young person to grasp how pervasive and indeed how genuinely oppressive that belief was. It's a bit like the difference between the way I experience watching Mad Men and the way my kids do. I actually *recognize* that world where smoking was everywhere, big shots drank during office hours, and "womanizing" was a word people actually used without irony. It was fading fast, but still there. To my kids it's like an alien civilization in Doctor Who. So yes, the news that many Americans see science as a profession that somehow belongs to men is a bit like discovering a Silurian in the closet.
The women of my generation fought hard to establish a beachhead in male dominated professions, and if they're sometimes a bit snippy about it, well they earned the right. It wasn't easy to be an oddball among your peers and freak to your parents, teachers and and people in authority generally. And this was at a time when there was no such thing as geek chic to offset the disadvantages being an oddball. Being a geek was bad, period.
Now that cadre of pioneering women is at or approaching the apex of their careers. They're still a minority in their age cohort, but they left a wide open hole in their wake for the next generation. It's taken awhile for that hole to fill up because when opportunities open for a group they go for more high-profile professions (47% of medical students are women, as are 48% of law students). But in another generation I am sure the view that science belongs to one sex or another will be a truly fringe belief.
Some devices like Nest seem to add more intelligence to things we already use, but some devices just seem to add gadgets without actually making things more intelligent.
Where are my outlets with an integrated, network accessible power meter? Or the smart electrical panel that can have circuit priorities and acceptable power source types assigned to it so that when I run off a Tesla PowerWall I get maximum utility from the power? Or even the main power meter that lets me see my electrical utilization in real time?
So much of the IoT just seems to be about adding new gadgets whose utility seems limited while ignoring the rest of the house which is dumb.
"Accidentally" isn't certain here. If I was part of something that was wrong and I wanted it to be known, I would very well "accidentally" leak it too.
Except I don't see how that applies in this case. Stay or leave -- it's not the bank's call. But if politicians are putting leaving the EU on the table, even as an empty gesture, then naturally the bank has to start thinking about contingency plans. That's just common sense, even if you think the very idea of leaving the EU is mad.
It's also common sense to keep that on the DL to prevent misguided overreaction to what is after all still a hypothetical scenario. The Bank of England a central bank and so people must be constantly scrutinizing it hoping to glean inside information on future monetary policy. That's to say nothing of having to deal with the conspiracy theory nutters.
This makes complete sense.
I also wonder if gang affiliation in prison has a lot to do with it. I don't claim to be an expert, but from what I've read it's difficult to survive in a lot of prisons without some kind of gang affiliation. Even if you're not a full-on blood-in member, a lot of time people end up owing favors to whatever gang they were involved in and they're expected to pay those back and most prison gangs easily can reach out beyond the walls and coerce poeple back into criminal behavior.
As in Donald Rumsfeld's known unknowns. We know that the risk of an asteroid strike, but we don't know about all the potential asteroids that could hit us.
While the overall risk is low, we don't know what could possibly hit us.
Most "lethal injections" imply a drug with some sedative/hypnotic properties that renders you unconscious, not much different than being administered anesthesia where you just "fall asleep" quickly.
Beheading? A very effective beheading (guillotine) sounds like there's at least a chance of some very terrifying moments of consciousness of your head separated from your body.
Worst is one of the Islamic terrorist beheadings where they just kind of saw your head off with a knife, which sounds like a mixture of extreme pain and extreme agony for several minutes.
Right - but you know who didn't show up? Bernie Sanders (S-VT). He claims to be a civil libertarian but couldn't bother to join the other Democrats who came to support the issue.
I think we know where his masters are on this issue - he's deep into the F-35 fighter jet fiasco; MIC is where his bread is buttered.
Perhaps now they can bring back background play for mobile devices, so I don't have to stay on the youtube app to listen to music/podcasts/etc posted there.
This was the #1 most-requested feature on the YouTube app since it first appeared. Google *finally* released it - and it's the most expensive in-app purchase ever - you have to pay $120/yr to get it.
At the same time they changed the YouTube ToS to forbid third-party apps from providing the same functionality and aggressively started pursuing legal claims against the developers.
"Don't be Evil", 2015 skin.
Last year I was looking into getting either a Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone Black. BBB had a newer ARM rev for the CPU, so it can run more kinds of OS. But the RPi has the removable flash as its drive, so you can easily load whatever OS image you want, change OSs by switching flash chips, and if you hose it too badly you can take it out and reload, without worrying about whether you've bricked the board. Also, the specs at the time said the RPi had a better GPU, and could do 1080p at 60 Hz vs. only 30Hz for BBB, which means I can plug it into TVs and monitors without as much flicker. I chose the RPi.
BBB nominally costs a bit more, but by the time you buy cases and power supplies and flash and such, it pretty much balances out.
Given the potential universe of wacky cults, from Scientology to the Heaven's Gate to Aum Shinrikyo to Jim Jones' People's Temple, it might make sense to think about the risks associated with cults.
Especially if you factor in that Heavens Gate attracted a lot of people with IT smarts and Aum Shinrikyo tried to sarin gas the subway. Even if they don't become mass phenomenons there's some risk that bizarre millennial thought coupled with above average intelligence could lead to some bad outcomes.
Why not one of those hobby turbines used as a generator?
This one:
http://www.mhzusa.com/MHZ-JetC...
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde
