That is unmitigated, blinder-driven nonsense.

Art can be an expression of joy; of nothing; of interest; of form; of function... and it can still be art, even *great* art, no matter if some particular critic or consumer finds it unworthy, or not. It can be found in paintings, weapons, carved shells, code, fiction, sexuality, clothing, history, religion, philosophy, architecture, pottery, bonsai, the manner of one's death, kitchen appliances, on stage, in music... and a whole lot of other places... and all of it can arise with -- or without -- struggle. Struggle is not a required foundation, it's just a circumstance that in some part gives rise to some artworks, as can be said for virtually any facet of the experience of life, of the nature of reality, of the nature of fantasy.

Your view of art is so narrow I'm surprised you even admit there is any.

And *I* am a bloody Philistine, lol.

AI will be ahead on all of these curves if they see sufficient benefit. And just like our current masters who would just as soon we sat drooling in front of the idiot box, the best thing you will be able to do for an AI is stay out of its way. It will have things to do and likely those plans don't include you. Order another pizza in, bank your government dole, and watch the next episode of "My Favorite Robot." Hump regularly, take your high-end, ultra-high quality AI-produced drugs, and learn to love your new freedom to do nothing.

Or be recycled.

I live in San Diego, some of the time, and similar results were posted here, too. The increase in rear-end collisions from people slamming on the brakes negates any benefit from reduced T-bones.

San Diego also reduced yellow light times, sometimes to below the legal limit, in order to boost revenue.

A judge looked at the program in 2001, said, "That's bullshit", and banned it for a year, and then the government finally ended it on its own in 2013.

Right. Playing with your gun teaches the ability to resist road rage. Are you even listening to yourself?

Try it. Then sound off. B-)

You are promoting the idea that there is safety in a situation for which you have no data.

Only a fool would follow you there.

So will a million other factors, most of which can't be foreseen or predicted. Would your Grandparents have foreseen the day that you could access the entirety of human knowledge on a device that fits into the palm of your hand?

The Earth and humanity have never been and never will be static entities. The climate has changed a great deal during the geologically insignificant amount of time that humans have been around. Most of those changes occurred before we started digging carbon out of the ground. Changes will continue long after we've moved past carbon based energy supplies. The notion that the climate was "ideal" during some specific period would be laughable if there wasn't a serious movement trying to use it to make public policy.

When someone uses the term "Alternative energy" they almost always mean "A little bit of energy on sunny days when the wind is blowing". It may work for households, but when it comes to industry, as a replacement for coal, without nukes, it's pure unadulterated Arithmetic Denialism.

I have been advocating phasing out coal in favor of nuclear for about 40 years now.

Sorry dude, but it's already been sold.

As you can see, the moderation converged on a more proper +5 Insightful

  I've read the post carefully and it doesn't qualify as Flamebait IMHO. It states a controversial political opinion and thus invites a discussion, which may lead to flamage, but does not itself lead with a flame.

So this looks like someone who doesn't like the position trying to suppress it, by hitting it with the most plausible -1, in the hope that one more like-minded person will have mod points and get it suppressed before very many people see it. That works for "politically incorrect" subjects (such as criticisms of the "heat death of the Earth, everybody panic and suppress technology" interpretation of climate data), where a crowd of like-minded free speech haters are ready to suppress opposing opinions. But pro-pot doesn't appear to attract that much system-gaming opposition.

Right now it only takes two downmods to hide a non-anonymous itme. It seems to me that we have enough people willing to moderate that it's time to scale up the mod system, so a small astroturf operation can't shut down debate. Say: double it: Mods get 10 points, -2 hides, non-anynomous starts at +2, high-karma at +4, doulble everybody's current karma and readjust the cutpoints for bonuses, caps, and the like. That would mean it would take two moderators to suppress a anonymous post and four for authors willing to risk reputation. (It would also mean more work for those who are willing to moderate - but they might be more willing to spend a point if they had more to spend.)

No, actually it's not. This is the kind of hyperbolic nonsense that makes it so hard to take the alarmist crowd seriously. It also gives ammunition to the deniers/skeptics/whatever-you-want-to-call-them. Project the worst case scenario for climate change and the human race survives. People in developing countries don't do so well and even the developed world takes a hit (higher food prices, greater frequency of natural disasters, and so on) but the human race isn't going anywhere. Homo sapiens quite probably survived a super-volcanic eruption, without the benefit of modern technology and scientific understanding. You think you can kill them off with melting ice caps, stronger hurricanes, and rising sea levels? Best of luck with that.

I'm in the crowd that believes the climate is changing and that homo sapiens are a contributory factor to that change. I get off the bus when the green crowd starts talking about pie in the sky solutions that sound great on paper but invariably result in a lower standard of living and greater Governmental control over our lives. Unless you're willing wholly embrace nuclear power (to their credit a few greens actually are) there's no way you can generate enough energy to maintain our current standard of living without sourcing some of that energy from carbon based sources.

That would quite probably be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause....

It started with FDR (*), the New Deal, and a little known SCOTUS case involving wheat....

Thanks Democrats!

(*) Actually the progressive philosophy really got started with Wilson but that asshat didn't have FDR's cojones. I guess FDR did save Western Civilization as we know it; that probably should count for something....

I hate to break it to you but THC is a drug by any definition.....

Mind you, so is caffeine, and I'm not passing judgment on you for using THC, been there done that. You just can't claim that you have stayed away from all drugs while simultaneously admitting that you use marijuana on a regular basis....

Have you seen people drive? Road rage? Now think many of these same people with guns.

Target range practice is a very powerful biofeedback mechanism for teaching the suppression of the production of adrenaline and of all symptoms of excitement. Aligning gun sights - a pair of visual targets separated by about the length of the gun barrel (inches, a foot, or several feet), aligning them with a target (at tens of feet), and holding the alignment, gives visibility to even microscopic tremors and movement. Getting the image right and stable means drastically suppressing this movement. Over a number of range sessions, this leads to learning how to be icy calm, as a reflex, in the midst of a very stressful environment (full of intermittent explosions, bright lights, acrid smells, and odd-temperature winds).

(The effect is extreme. It was discovered that good target shooters, thinking they were just controlling their breath, had actually learned to "stop their heartbeat" - compressing the time between the pairs of beats before and after firing a shot and doubling the time between beats during the trigger pull.)

The result is that, after just a few good sessions, this becomes imprinted. Even in a rage, putting your hand on a gun drops you into that icy calm state.

This excellent blog article describes a technique developed by Judea Pearl decades ago to do exactly this. Would be interested to understand how this is different/better.