if I understand, it is playing 4 heads up matches simultaneously. It is losing in 3 of the matches, and winning in 1. To even be winning in 1 is pretty damn amazing though, as I'm sure they don't lose to anyone who isn't damn good. It also looks like a second match could swing back its way. Nothing certain as they are only half way done, but this computer is doing damn well. I'm sure if I played 20 top level players in heads up, no limit, I would lose against all 20 by a pretty damn large margin.

this isn't uncommon in the arab oil countries even 30 years ago, but now it is getting very rare. it's more complicated than "the government pays". You have to remember just 1-2 generations ago, they were all dirt poor. Having lots of children usually slowly shrinks to having 2-4 then finally 0-2. And of course, you were listening to someone who really doesn't know what they are talking about, and going by (most likely) a couple of people they know. The fertility rate in Kuwait is 2.6. This is significantly higher than other countries with their income, but in the last 50 years it is down from over 7. The national shock of the Iraq invasion stopped the collapse in the fertility rate, but had it continued, it could easily have tracked with the emirates to 1.8.

That's because chess and poker are different. In chess all players know the complete state and the best move is to make the beat move possible, regardless of what your opponent may be thinking.

This is why poker is harder. Chess isn't an AI problem,because it does not need to learn about the nature of your play. The engine need merely take the board and solve for the best move. But a good poker AI must find a way to infer your thinking patterns else it is just playing an odds game and will dump excess information about its own hand every betting round.

the opium experience of china, first, was unique in many respects and was not repeated in any other country, and second is a great example of why governments should not be taxing, especially for general fund uses, any vice. Even the Maoists, the occupying Japanese, and the standing governments for over 100 years derived most of their funds from opium taxes. The Opium wars themselves were complex, and opium imports were not the only reason (note that by the time of the second war, or soon after, domestic production of opium in 19th century China dwarfed imports, Opium was a major economic engine of the country).

And of course, both Opium wars were fought, and lost, not because China was going broke from importing opium, but because the british desperately needed to export opium because they were going broke buying Chinese goods. By the second opium war, even with open opium trade, the British were importing 9x their exports to China (primarily Opium on a silver basis). China, contrary to the common story, was richer than sin and Opium was basically where they were spending all those riches they were sucking from the Brits. Losses were primarily due to the fact China had withered when it became insular after sending out its great fleet and seeing the rest of the world as backwards. It turns out you spend centuries not competing, you will collapse.

For a counter example of society functioning fine, there are estimates that 19th century America had as many opium addicts as we had Heroin addicts at the turn of the millennium. Think about that. Across a much much smaller population, there was heroin dependence on a large scale and yet not only did society function, but it thrived.

Opium usage through out the world points to a pretty self regulating outcome (as in, just like a virus can't kill all humans if it needs humans as a host, opium can't bring down all of society because addicts usually are not capable of influencing said society to make opium more available). And while you can point to the complexities of China as a great warning (as I said, I would not use taxes on these things to fund, say, schools, or medicare, or any such effort because of it) it is pretty unique in showing us a failing society because of widespread opium/heroin (and that assumes you believe Opium was the cause of their problems and not their complete lack of ability to compete with the west). Many of the things Europeans forced on China they forced on Japan as well, without opium as a trigger or a lever.

yes, I'm aware this was quite rambling. it is late, and as your response wasn't filled with righteous indignation about your moral superiority, I thought it would be interesting to reply. apologies for the horrible writing.

there is nothing teenage about it, but I can forgive the fact that you have little knowledge of history and drug use across the millennia, or even a couple hundred years. Society, not just the US or western society but all societies, have had drug use going back far longer than prohibition. And almost all of these countries offered no services to those who found themselves addicted. Just like alcohol, they dealt with it via a series of punishments for those who broke other laws.

Your view isn't invalid, you just gloss over all the assumptions you make, as if they are fundamental or required of a functioning society. It's a pretty common error when people are faced with a suggestion to do things radically different. I personally see absolutely nothing cruel about warning someone against doing drugs because it will lead to a life of poverty, addiction, and early death and then making them face the consequences of their decisions when the turkey comes home to roost. But then, I don't believe it is government's job to try and regulate away stupidity. You obviously believe it is part of government/societies job to regulate away any decisions you deem bad (based on your value system, which again I'm not saying is invalid, just is an assumption). I don't because I feel it fails on a regular basis and leads to the truly detrimental actions of bias being used to determine who gets helps (you know, how a nice middle class white girl caught with heroine goes in for drug treatment and the black male goes in for narcotics distribution). I'm far more scared of prosecutorial discretion in a world with lots of laws and special carve outs than a few drug addicts running around. It didn't bring down 19th century society, or 18th. I figure we will survive it in the 21st.

There has been amazing commentary on why this is. The largest, and most unified group of republican voters are evangelical Christians and within that group, the existance of Israel is seem as a prerequisite to the second coming.

Being all for Israel is a less controversial stance than many others that still panders to a key bloc.

I can only speak from experience in Georgia and NC, but things like "following too close" or "swerving in your own lane" , are completely legitimate excuses to initiate a stop. In my case, a stop because a colored person had obviously too nice a car and I only consented to the search of my car because I was trying to get to Atlanta for a flight and they said they would just hold me there till I missed it.

The law allows cops to stop you as long as they aren't so stupid to forget the standard excuses they can use to initiate a stop without any cause. You know those excuses that boil down to "he said, she said".

freedom also entails the freedom to fuck up your life. Freedom is lots of folks being allowed to make choices you don't approve of, and a lot of those choices may lead to negative consequences. so be it. That is the real price of freedom, people doing things that lead to negative consequences for themselves and their immediate group.

for some reason people seem to assume these decisions were made to be insidious or more infiltrating or all that jazz.

frankly, if you use gmail, they know your real name with a bare minimum of email scanning efforts. I'm sure they not only know my real name, but can draw out my personal and professional network, if they wanted to.

the point, and it made a hell of a lot of sense for folks like me, was to have one account across all services. I hardly ever use Facebook, but I use hangouts, I use g+ to the extent I use any social networks, I watch youtube, I have a gmail account, and I use maps. the better they can integrate across these things, for my use case, the better. I was happy when these accounts all became the same, and I can imagine that for a lot of their customers and devs it was the same.

That they built out a system that fit their use case and learned afterwards a large portion of their customers (who , because they never needed to, never sent an email saying "please keep handles anonymous, don't require real names, etc, etc") hated these changes and it wasn't just a tiny vocal minority. They then did what almost all non-fruit companies do, they backtracked. good for them admitting their error, admitting they didn't realize what so many customers wanted. If apple admitted they created a shit map software and just let people use google maps if they wanted, I'd probably still have an iPhone.

the exact same thing that happens when an alcohol fueled moron gets behind the wheel, or when any tired person gets behind the wheel, or when someone gets behind the wheel after running a marathon and the ensuing endorphin crash makes them conk out.

basically, the exact same thing a trove of other acceptable behaviors cause happens when you take a stim. the real question is why should it be illegal to take when we simply expect people who do all these other activities to not drive. A little education would assuage many of these issues.

That's a pretty out of date complaint I think. A year ago I set up a gmail account for my son and it took me all of 1 minute to kill the g+ account that was generated with it. Maybe it was different at some point, though I can't recall any issues.

huh? we have fines and taxes that regularly force people out of their homes. In fact, non-payment of fines is a valid reason to have your home seized and forcibly sold to pay for the fine. It's why American fines can be very unfair, they are fixed, rather than scaled to impose a burden but not shatter a person.

No one sitting on millions in paid off assets would have any trouble paying a 50,000 dollar fine. But most farmers aren't sitting on paid off assets beyond the land (which is also difficult to sell in small batches, as people want to buy large contiguous land for farms, go try to sell a 7-9 acre plot in the bread basket to pay for a fine like this). Farmers usually have very large debts for all the heavy machinery required to farm (like any capital intensive business) and as they also run large debts to handle all the perishables required. Depending on when in planting season you find yourself, a farmer has a very variable net worth.

But some farmers are just rich, even if you don't "see" it. For example, I knew one who happened to have a family farm in what ended up becoming a major metro area (due to urban sprawl). He very smartly rezoned his agricultural property to residential before rules shifted to make that difficult, and now has a "farm" that sits on 150 acres of residential land. That land, in that area, is worth into the 10s of millions. He specifically is keeping it as a large scale asset that can be sold after his death and passed on to his heirs. But if he did something that required a 50,000 dollar fine, it would be trivial for him to pay it off, as anyone would extend him credit against the assets he is sitting on and he is in no real risk of ever losing that asset.

there is one purpose to charging a higher fine to a very wealthy person than a poor person: incentives.

a 200 dollar fine is more than enough to convince a poor person to drive safe. It is hardly a blip on the radar for a rich person. The purpose of a punishment is to try and induce a change in behavior. You would probably do a lot better if when caught, the driver is forced to walk to his destination (without a cell phone or any such electronics to help pass the time or do work) and his car would be towed there (at his expense). But in a world where creative and highly embarrassing punishments are not allowed, and the only choice is fines, this is the best way to fine someone so it can be felt. That is the only point, a punishment that induces a change in behavior.

There is the other option of suspending licenses, and maybe a choice of "6 month suspension or 50k fine" would be better. Hiring a driver for 6 months would still be a significant cost.

Even switzerland, a country that loves rich people (if you have ever been there, you would understand just how much, including negotiating different income tax rates to induce wealthy people to come) uses this system:
http://www.worldcarfans.com/11...

The university is not a government institution and they didn't send these kids to jail. The university chose to no longer affiliate with that particular frat.

That sounds perfectly reasonable. The university has some standards of behavior to be an affiliated organization and chose because the behavior was not in keeping, to kick them out.

Under what law do you think the frat is protected?

as you said, some regulations are out of date, but that isn't going to royally piss off people (i.e. radio isn't important when your car doesn't have radio in it).

But you get a bit extravagant on some of the arguable ones.

A cab and a customer have a commercial, short term relationship. Unless you want the government to require all cabbies to make their driving record available for inspection before I take the cab (unreasonable) a certain minimum amount of caution is warranted because customers are effectively stuck once in the cab. When a customer has no real way of distinguishing certain types of sellers based on quality, some minimum standards are required. Presumably, if I am a regular speeder, my family knows and has chosen to take the risk of being with me. Why can't the private market adapt? because there is no way for me to know anything about my driver.

Criminals are banned in many places, but without knowing German, Ii'm not sure on the extent of the law. Most places I have seen ban violent offenders, and at times drug offenders or DUI'ers. But of course, maybe Germany bans drivers who were caught jay walking. I doubt it though as I've been through their regulatory framework once and it was pretty damn reasonable (though mine was in a different sector).