Interestingly, up here in NH there was an incident where a cop was shot at a traffic stop.

A passerby stopped to help the cop, the assailant pointed his gun at the passerby's son, so the passerby pulled the cop's own gun and shot the assailant. (link)

Speaking as a student of statistics, I wonder how many times a cop has been shot with their own gun, as opposed to (this one) incident where the assailant was shot using the cop's gun.

And a related observation: the congresscritters are hot to allow a system to disable guns, which has no statistical imperative, yet won't force phone manufacturers to allow owners to disable stolen cellphones, which is itself the root cause of much crime.

Are you suggesting that we vote out the incumbents?

But but... my party! I can't let those other guys into office because they'd be worse!!!

The system is broken, I know that. But I consider myself morally responsible, so I have to vote for the lessor of two evils!

Do you get your children vaccinated?

It's much more likely that your child will have a bad reaction to the vaccine than to actually get the disease. And if everyone *else* gets vaccinated, there's no need for any specific child to take that risk. That's the dilemma facing parents nowadays - from their individual viewpoint, there's a higher risk from the vaccination than there is from the disease.

Taking polio (about 30 years ago) as an example, the chance of getting polio from the vaccine was about 1 in 750,000. Polio became largely non-existent in the US during the later years of the vaccination program, so individually it's easy to see why parents might not want to take the risk.

And yet if everyone makes the best choice for their personal welfare, polio runs rampant in the country with 35,000 cases per year.

This is a variant of the Prisoner's dilemma, where if everyone does what's in their immediate best interest then everyone suffers needlessly.

We must accept the fact that sometimes we forced to take risks, and sometimes those risks will go badly. The risks are structured such that by taking the forced risk we are lowering everyone's total risk, and in the case of diseases, lowering it to a point where eventually no one will have to take the risk in the future.

Unless you live in Africa, population is not exploding. The population growth rate is slowing, the UN predicts that the world population will stabilize around 2090 and fall afterwards. Most (more recent) predictions think that this estimate is pessimistic - it's looking like population will stabilize around 2050 and decline afterwards.

Most industrialized nations have negative population growth already, the US *would* have negative population growth if you discount immigration. Even with immigration, the US population is slowing and will turn the corner sometime in the next couple of decades.

I think the problems you are seeing is due to a lack of an evolved sense of morality. On your part.

Why should they care?

There's no benefit to them keeping your information safe, it costs them time, money, and effort to do so, and there's no real consequences when they screw up. They will just put out a statement saying "all of our customer information was stolen, we recommend everyone change their password, and the hole is now patched - it can't happen again!".

Also, they can blame the thieves. "It wasn't our fault, it was that scoundrel who noticed that you can change the account number in the URL to get into someone else's account."

As to "we value your privacy", what does that actually mean? It means that companies have discovered that people trust companies that make that statement, and are more likely to purchase from such a company.

That's all it means, and no more. It doesn't mean that they care or that they abide by the statement, it means that they think they can get more business by using that phrase liberally in their public-facing documents.

You're living under the naive assumption that companies mean what they say and will do what they promise. They do what the consumer protection laws force them to do - any statement that reflects these laws is probably true, while the rest is simple puffing.

This appears to be a story depicting a sort-of utopian future (of limited extent - an island) where there are no rules.

I'm not sure from the context whether the author is in favor or against the concept. It somehow feels like he is knitting together several uncomfortable consequences of "no rules" in an attempt to paint that future as dystopian.

The thing people always miss, the important overlooked point, is that no one wants a state where there are no rules. What people invariably want is a state which has rules enforcing human rights, and little else.

The most basic human right is to have sovereignty over ones own body. Mat Honan's article shows us that with no rules, outsiders would be able to do anything they wanted to us - even against our consent. It would be the strong doing whatever they wanted to the weak. Typical, obvious, and predictable - we have many examples of lawless societies where the strong do just that.

Many of our rules are violations of that first most basic right, pretty much anything that someone else thinks that you should do or not-do for your own good: rules about drugs, prostitution, abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, and yes, wearing clothes. We could do away with large swaths of the legal landscape and eliminate large parts of government, both local and federal, if we could just say "do anything you want, so long as you don't infringe on the rights of others".

If you would like to read about a rule-less society which enforces basic human rights and is a little less dystopian, try "Manna" by Marshall Brain. It's an easy read and an interesting story.

Another good example is "Voyage From Yesteryear" by James Hogan. A little longer and with more drama, but essentially a rule-less society which enforces basic human rights.

From a casual reading (by a non-lawyer) of the constitution, this makes perfect sense.

This thing about "we can go through all your possessions if we somehow get our hands on it" is ludicrous, and the "if we can pick the lock or break it open we can rummage around inside" thing is stupider still. If I lock my data but the police manage to break the encryption method they can rummage around in the data? Does this work for the locks on my house? The dial on my safe?

The simple search looking for weapons thing "to protect the officer" was an exception, but they've taken it beyond extreme rights violations.

If you see someone committing a crime, arrest them. If you can't convict them without the data on their cell phone, you shouldn't have arrested them in the first place.

Oh, and if someone parrots "how can we do our jobs if we don't have the tools" nonsense, remind them that we're currently enjoying the lowest crime rate in several decades.

A vendor's machine can take money from me without my consent or knowledge.

Apropos of nothing, what would constitute a security breach in your model?

This.

Also, the lack of any sort of a roadmap as to how to do this.

Also, the lack of any sort of definition for "consciousness", or any indication that it is an emergent property, or any way to measure when you've succeeded in making consciousness, or any theoretical evidence at all that it would arise from any specific plan.

We could model as many neurons as we like and it *still* wouldn't be a human brain unless we figure out how those neurons connect with each other. With no detailed plan, it's like trying to build a house by tacking boards together.

The "self-assured scientist" could start by telling us how a Cortical Column is wired up, how the feedback and feed-forward between columns works, and why artificial neural nets have inputs on one side and outputs on the other, when the brain apparently has both inputs and outputs on one side (in the sense of a functional diagram; ie - the efferent and afferent neurons connect to the same level of layer), and what the distinction is between these models.

If he can't solve basic issues, how can he hope to succeed in such a complex and ambitions project?

Obvious Futurama response:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Isjgc0oX0s

This is yet another ridiculous situation, stupid enough that it makes me wonder why such situations exist.

If a website is illegal (for any definition of illegal, including terrorism, pornography, and IP violations), then it should be judged illegal by a court in country with reference to the specific law that the site violates. That country can then mandate that ISPs in that country block that specific website, the government can ask the government of the registrar or hosting company to take action, the government can identify people who access the site and charge them with a crime.

Illegal is illegal, but this thing about "anyone can take action if they think something is illegal" is ludicrous. Letting business advocacy groups, unelected government bureaucrats, and random government departments to suddenly state "we're the governing authority, this is illegal, we're pulling your plug" is complete bullshit. Government departments can certainly make such pronouncements, but should be required to act only with court approval. For instance, if the State Department wants Defense Distributed to take their plans offline, it should get a court order.

The courts exist to protect our rights. Taking action without judicial process is an end-run around those rights, and shouldn't be allowed.

Here's a related question. Do you trust when a car manufacturer tells you to buy new parts?

Specifically, the maintenance schedule in the owner's packet that comes with a new car. For example, at 60,000 miles:

1) Replace engine coolant

2) Replace HEV inverter coolant

3) Replace manual transmission oil

4) Replace automatic transmission/CVT/eCVT fluid

5) Replace differential oil

6) Replace engine drive belts

7) Replace radiator cap

8) Replace transfer case oil

Are all these necessary, or is the dealer trying to squeeze more money from the owner? I've heard various mechanics coming down on both sides of this question. Does the differential oil really need periodic replacing? Do you need new drive belts if there's no visible damage?

(Also: Do you replace the engine oil and filter every 2000 miles, or is this just another way to squeeze money from the consumer?)

Mental health is a large subject, let's take a smaller slice for discussion: depression.

Depression meds work no better than placebo. Depression meds have lots of unpleasant side-effects, so being treated for depression is - on average - worse than going undiagnosed.

Depression is a symptom of many diseases - at least 18 of them commonplace. Many cases of depression are the result of 1) underactive thyroid (40% by one accounting), 2) Low levels of vitamin D, and 3) sleep apnea.

And yet, the symptom is treated as a disease in and of itself. Prescription meds which do more harm than good are commonly prescribed under the flimsiest of circumstances:

Patient: "doctor, I feel tired and run down"

Doctor: "It sounds like depression. Try this and see if it goes away".

After all is said and done, a casual reading of the research would suggest that the scientific method used in psychology research is crap. That's a strong statement, but not completely without merit.

Psychiatrists need to stop worrying about publishing the next trivial follow-on paper, and need to stop theorizing by making up stories. Get your evidence first, make theories to explain the evidence, and then throw out theories which have no testable predictions.

Go back to basics, and stop making money from giving people false hope through increased suffering.

(Grrr! A close friend got chewed up and spit out by the medical profession because of depression.)

Check these out for more info:

"Detection of rolling Element Bearing Damage by Statistical Analysis" by D. Dyer and R.M. Stewart (Journal of Mechanical Design)

"Envelope Analysis - the Key to rolling-element bearing diagnosis" by Joelle Courrech and Mark Gaudet" (Bruel & Kjaer Application Note)

We were using a variant of this to help balance helicopter blades. Put accelerometers on the frame, [carefully] run up the engine while tethered, analyze the vibration, advise the tech how to adjust the blade weights, and repeat. Eventually you get well-balanced blades.

A similar system could diagnose wheel and tire issues. Mount an accelerometer and a microphone on the frame near each of the wheels and try to detect vibration and/or frequencies that correlate with wheel or shaft rotation, and frame vibration.

I'd love to have an onboard diagnostic that shows an X-ray diagram of the engine drive-train, with green/yellow/red circles around the various parts and listings detailing the type of part and level of health.

You could also implement active balance compensation.

You can never balance anything exactly perfect, but if you can measure and analyze the balance you can compensate for minor imperfections. An electromagnet mounted near a shaft can "pull" the shaft slightly at the right point in its rotation, compensating for a tiny amount of imbalance.

For small values of "compensate", you can tune your mechanical system to be much quieter and have much less wear. The same system can measure the amount of compensation needed, and alert the user when the engine exceeds the system's ability to compensate.

Lots of interesting possibilities here for active computer-control of mechanical systems.