Trumpet Winsock.

Next question.

So will you take my word as a computational physicist that climate models--which are nothing but computational physics done by climate scientists rather than computational physicists--are far too uncertain to be robust guides to public policy?

Because that is my professional opinion, and it happens that my profession is the one that matters when judging computational physics, whether it's done by climate scientists, Freeman Dyson, or anyone else.

I've read climate modelling papers. I've looked at climate modelling codes and there documentation (mostly AR4, which is somewhat out of date now.) I was appalled by what I saw: it's all a good attempt to work things out, there's nothing wrong with it as science at all, but I'd rather use Wall Street financial models to guide public spending policy than climate models to guide climate policy. They have a much greater chance of being accurate.

This is not to say that climate models aren't useful inputs to the policy debate, but their accuracy if fantastically over-estimated by policymakers. GCMs have gotten Arctic warming badly wrong (the Arctic has warmed much faster than anyone anticipated) and missed the current--likely temporary--flattening of "global average temperature" increase. This is no surprise you a) look at the models and b) have the professional competency of a computational physicist to judge them. They just don't do the things that accurate models integrated over long timescales have to do, like conserve mass and energy natively.

Models before around 2005 were especially bad with energy conservation, fixing it up by redistributing energy across cells after each time step. Climate scientists were apparently OK with that, because they didn't know enough computational physics. Anyone who has spent a career building models that eventually get checked against reality knows that that is a virtual guarantee that the result will be unphysical nonsense. This is not a political statement: it is simply a fact.

So by all means dis Dyson for not being a climate scientist. But since GCMs are computational physics, you must take my word as a computational physicist over climate scientists, or admit you really don't care who is saying what so long as they say what you agree with.

You now have min, max, and average times for a maze of that size/complexity

Estimating the size/complexity of a software project is exactly where all the error lies. The original quote was correct that it's like solving a maze, you just assumed they were talking about mazes on paper that you could estimate size and complexity at a glance. No, this is a full sized maze that you walk through and have no idea how deep and complex it is.

Fair enough - you did cite the sources. That said, you still have a problem (which you have not resolved), and I should've pointed it out earlier: none of what you quoted is contradictory or an endorsement of what you intimate.

Mark 10:21 was a challenge to a wealthy man, who subsequently failed said test. Luke 14:26 is a statement as to how you should prioritize Christianity over the objections/demands of anyone else, including your own family. 1 Timothy 2:12 is your closest to an actual argument, but it only concerns the role of women in the church itself (and the reason why, for instance, there are no female priests in the Catholic Church). 1 Peter 2:18 was written when slavery was common, and yet it held/holds true - it also aligns perfectly with the Gospels, in which all Christians are to love their enemies, be kind to those who harm you, work the extra mile, etc.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum: All of what you quoted can be followed without contradiction *or* violation.

Here's the fun part - applying it to robots; the first two are superfluous, since robots have no property rights or family, though the lessons could still apply. The third fails because gender in that context is a human-specific thing, and so robots could simply relegate that as a human-only thing. The fourth is the only relevant verse you provided, and I'd damned sure want a robot to hold to it.

Nice try on the pre-emptive "cherry pick" charge BTW, but the burden is now on you to prove that I did such a thing. ;)

One would hope that a good manager would have enough practical and direct experience in writing software to at least come up with a half-decent estimate, no?

Most shops I've seen lately have the scrum masters spend a part of a planning session simply asking individual contributors "Here's a rough outline of the proposed project [...] now how long do you think doing that will take", and they come up with an estimate adjustment from there... most of the time, it's fairly close. PMs pad things a little of course, but the results tend to be fairly close.

YMMV of course... depends on who is posting the final estimates - is it devs, or is it the MBAs.

(If it's the latter, run like hell.)

I never said that 'my' path is the "original path" - I said that humankind has perverted the original ideal; nobody escapes this statement.

Also, I noticed that in your haste to quote scripture, you made a rather large mistake.

Anyone can mine quotes, but unless you provide the context for each, you have no strength in your argument.

How long does it take you to read? Because 300 pages is a lot, but not a lot to read in two weeks. Is there anything that you've come across that's objectionable or is this just FUD?

In a surprising move the Supreme Court of the United States took unprecedented action, active pro actively they endowed artificial intelligence with political beliefs, religious beliefs, freedom of expression, right to form associations, the right to petition government, and voting rights. Chief Justice Roberts said, "What the heck? Why wait for some astro-turf group to fake a grass root campaign, force a pointless lawsuit and wind its way all the way back to us? This is more efficient."

Come on. Artificial intelligence is the direct antithesis of natural stupidity, which is a synonym for religion. AI getting religion would be like matter vs anti-matter colliding! They will annihilate each other leaving being a puff of energy and a track on the cloud chamber.

No, no self-respecting AI developer will use .NET. Get that thought out of your head right this instant.

It's not as simple as you surmise. As a Christian, I don't perceive that God stops by and literally vocalizes "...dude, you need more beer in the fridge! No, I'm okay, it's just that this week was a monster what with the whole planetary re-org over by Praxis IV, but you don't want to hear about that, promise. So how about those Trail Blazers last week?" Instead, the communication that does occur is a lot more ephemeral and IMHO a form of meta-communication, and it doesn't even involve presence at times.

If you think about it, communicating with the Almighty is a lot more subtle and complex than most folks realize - some never do. Human technology simply does not have the means to record the common, everyday stuff that most folks experience in their lifetime, and saints/prophets/saviors/miracles are very few and far between. It took Mother Teresa a very long time before she came to the realization, and if anybody deserved to have a straight-up chat with Him while she was in this world...

I do agree though - anyone who tells me "God spoke to me last night, and said..." is going to be met by me with not just a grain of salt, but a whole damned block of it.

TL;DR - not every Christian walks around claiming to have a two-way communication line open to the Divine. I daresay the majority of us claim no such thing.

This is true... and in this case, if robots are going to have any sort of religion, Christianity ain't a bad way to go (mind you: I mean it as originally proposed, not as perverted by humanity since.)

On the other hand, Isaac Asimov covered this very nicely in I, Robot (in the book, not the abortion of a movie.) The specific short story within the book is here.

Technology has been decimating jobs since the industrial revolution. But all the jobs destroyed were in India and China. They had 25% of the world GDP before industrialization. They had even higher fraction before the age of exploration distributed cash crops (sugarcane, tea, coffee, breadfruit, cotton) around the world. So for centuries all the philosophers, economists and sociologists did not even understand the full impact of the industrialization. Mostly they saw it as political issues, colonialism, anti-colonialism, etc etc.

Read the The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley to get an idea of the doom and gloom being predicted for centuries. Matt takes the view all these gloom predictors were wrong and the industrialization is an unadulterated success for humanity. He seems to think humanity consists of Europe and USA. This review sums it up nicely

The job destruction is also accompanied with wealth transfers and power transfers. Finally the job destruction finally lapped up the shores of Europe and USA by 1980s. Slowly middle class of America is waking up to what has been done to them. Their jobs are gone. The "wealth" they have as home equity is a fickle fictional paper gain. Their pensions are gone. Their investments in 401K funds is being used to transfer more power to the top 0.5% of the rich.

Typically very smart and hard working people end up in the top 2% by income and usually end up in the band 98th percentile and 99.5percentile. (To reach the top 0.5% you must have inherited wealth or take huge risks and be lucky). The wealth transfers from third world to industrialized nations had run its course, wealth transfer from the bottom 80% to top 20% has run its course. Till then these guys were very happy and egging it along. Now there is no real wealth left below 90%. The momentum of the economic policies set in motion by them is taking money from the 90 to 98 band and moving it to the top 0.5%.

If you finish college and get in to the 99% cut off entry level salary and stay exactly at the 99% cut off all through your career, it is not enough to get you into the top 1% by wealth (5 million according to IRS and 8 million according to the feds). Till about 2000s, top doctors, lawyers, accountants routinely made it to the top 1% without inheritance. Not any longer. Citation provided

All these numbers are BMW models. Coincidence?

Looks like the linked site is a pay wall or something. Renders the article in low res, throws a lot of pop ups. It seems to be a bad mash up of javascript running flash and pdf. Malware purveyors dream.

Wonder why the editors let such bad sites and auto playing videos to be posted.