Whatever you think of the various sides of this argument, it's interesting to me to look at how different the sides are.

The US is, on average, far more concerned about pornography and other sexual issues than the UK, but there is not and never will be any significant discussion of government-mandated filters, outside of specific situations like government-run schools. The reason is our belief in the importance of free speech. Although there are plenty of Americans who would like to ban porn, no one at a national level says it out loud. No one seriously talks about it even at local, highly homogeneous levels, because everyone knows it won't fly.

The UK is somewhat less prudish than the US, but is perfectly willing to carve out large exceptions to free speech wherever it's convenient. Therefore, British pols do talk seriously about trying to ban porn, except for adults who opt out.

Europe (as a whole; there are exceptions) is even less concerned about free speech than the UK, but apparently considers porn to be something worth fighting for, to the degree that they're willing to invest at least a little effort in fighting to keep porn available to kids in the UK.

FWIW, I think porn is bad. Conceptually, there's nothing wrong with human sexuality, but porn presents an extremely distorted view of human sexuality. I think regular consumption of hardcore pornography, particularly by adolescents, skews expectations and perceptions in ways that have negative consequences. That said, I have no interest in trying to ban it. I do filter it on my home network, but that's a half measure which mostly serves as an early warning system (I get notified of attempts to get to porn sites) which offers a chance to talk the issues over if I find my kids looking for it.

All of which mostly says that I'm a fairly typical American parent: concerned about porn but unwilling to take the strong anti-freedom steps needed to effectively ban it :-)

That's certainly fine with respect to crimes that justify criminal punishment (e.g. prison). But if regulators choose a market-style punishment (fines), then they're just acting as a market force, and that's a consideration for shareholders as owners.

Utter nonsense. Yes, in some cases that may be the effect, but it's certainly not the design. Your cynicism has gotten the better of you. By design, boards of directors are intended to serve the same role that elected political representatives do for citizens of a nation; to represent the interests of the voters. It's not feasible for every governmental or corporate decision to be voted upon by the whole body, so they choose representatives. A proper board of directors takes a dim view of executives acting against the interests of the shareholders, and boards that fail their jobs badly enough do get ousted.

That just indicates that regulators are not making the fines large enough. If regulators want to use financial penalties, they have to make them large enough that bad actions are unprofitable.

You're assuming that simulating the structure of an organic brain is necessary to accomplish the same functions. That's like assuming that simulating legs is the only way to construct a self-moving machine, just because that's the way that nature has done it. Evolution produces workable schemes and fine tunes them; but it clearly suffers from the local maximum problem, while the scientific approach to generating knowledge is much less prone to that limitation. You're also ignoring the fact that the basic construction of our computers is orders of magnitude faster and more energy-efficient than the neurochemical processes that drive organic intelligence. That fundamental difference in materials has to make a difference at larger scales, I think. There are likely other questionable assumptions underlying your guess.

Your assumptions may be valid, but we have no way of knowing. I suspect they're not, myself. What is certainly true is that we won't know until we understand how intelligence works.

What an odd thing to say. Of course the owners of the bank take the hit when fines are levied. Who else would? And it's up to the owners of the bank to decide how to hold their employees accountable.

No, this is clearly #1. The biggest existential risk, and the most promising opportunity. It all depends on what those 7 billion unusually intelligent apes decide to do.

Very well put. I came here to make this post, but now I don't have to.

One quibble, though:

We also have no reason to believe that we don't have hardware completely capable of running one, and haven't for quite some time. Until we have some idea how intelligence works and how to construct an AI, we really can't have any idea whether or not our hardware is sufficient.

Does the average worker have a retirement investment account? I was under the impression that people saving for retirement were in the minority. Even if you are saving for retirement you have to ask your self which is more important to you, a bit larger of a retirement balance or the proposed benefits from more taxes being collected? My wife and I discuss a variation on this every once in awhile. I would like to save a bit more, she would like to spend more making the house prettier.

My Mother in Law has commented on breastfeeding an infant, while behind the wheel, driving cross country, without wearing seatbelts. That was back in the late 60's early 70's I guess. I wouldn't even consider removing my child from their safety seat while a vehicle isn't parked these days. Of course some of her children were sent home from the hospital in a cardboard box that she was just supposed to put on the floorboards, different times for sure.

My younger brother used to never wear his seatbelt, arguing that he'd rather be thrown clear of an accident than be trapping in a rolling and or crushed vehicle. I had tried to tell him that the odds of that weren't good, even if he ended up out of the vehicle he'd likely get crushed. It all fell on deaf ears.

Then one day a high school buddy of his was in an accident while not wearing his seatbelt. He was thrown halfway out of the pickup truck when the truck rolled over and cut him in half. His friend died almost immediately of course and my brother now religously wears his seatbelt.

I seem to remember a study showing that pornography reduced sexual assaults and such.

Only if the competition can avoid the taxes. If all of the players in the market get hit with the same taxes, then all of them absolutely can and will raise prices, and there will be no consequences.

This is a standard financial calculation, and a trivial one. The tax is 10%, so the increase is 10%, but there's 10% tax on that, so 1%, meaning the increase needs to be 11%, continue ad infinitum (literally). In other words, the new price needs to be 11.1111...% higher than the old one to keep profit margins unchanged. More generally, the increase needs to be the sum of the infinite series with terms r^n. This series is convergent if r < 1, and converges to 1/(1-r). So for a 25% tax, the company needs to increase prices by 1-1/(1-.25) = 33.333...% to keep profit margins unchanged after accounting for the new tax.

Of course, it doesn't quite happen like that. In practice, companies don't instantly raise prices. They do take the hit for a while, where it gets absorbed by the investors, not the customers. Then they allocate a portion of the losses to employees, in the form of reduced raises, or benefits. Then they raise prices. But eventually they get back to a steady state of roughly the same return on assets that they had before the tax hike.

Specifically, all corporate taxes paid come from three categories of individuals: consumers, who pay higher prices for items to cover the taxes; employees, who make lower wages to cover the taxes; and shareholders, who earn lower returns (and note that the two former categories are often also shareholders, via their pension plans). Suppliers can also lose, but they're generally corporations as well, with their own employees and investors who actually eat the loss. In the long run, though, the investors don't lose because capital flows away from lower returns and towards higher ones. So companies must find ways to keep their returns up to somewhere near the mean rate of return.

Once you understand that no taxes are paid by corporations, ever, then you should also recognize that corporate taxes are not only ultimately paid by individuals, but the individuals almost never realize they're paying it. How many people know their prices would be lower, wages higher, or pension more secure, if it weren't for corporate taxes? And, therefore, how many voters have any interest in opposing corporate taxation? To politicians and voters, corporate taxes look almost like free money. Ratchet up the corporate taxes and no people get hurt, just those nasty corporations. (Actually, politicians sometimes get even more value out of threatening corporate taxes than enacting them, since it tends to encourage said corporations to buy off, er, donate to their re-election funds.)

I assert that while taxes are necessary, the electorate should see and understand exactly what they're paying, so they can evaluate the value they're receiving for the money they're paying. Hidden taxes are evil, and therefore corporate taxes are evil, and should be abolished, not raised.

Not accurate at all.

The prosecutor decided that the 137 shots fired by the officers in the dozens of patrol cars involved in the chase were perfectly legal. What the prosecutor didn't think was reasonable was the officer who jumped up on the hood of the car, after the 137 shots had been fired, and unloaded another 15 rounds into the two unarmed people in the car.

I agree with the prosecutor that what that officer did was unreasonable. But I disagree with the previous 137 shots being reasonable, at least given what information I've read so far.

Apparently a quorum requires 51 senators be present. They had enough to get 57 votes already so presumably they have enough to have a quorum. However it isn't help up on that point, they have to vote for cloture which requires 60 votes. They were short 3 votes, so if over this next week they can pickup those 3 they could do it on the sly. However at that point they wouldn't need to do it on the sly anyways. Here's to hoping that all the opposing senators hold their ground.