It places them in a position of authority and if they are indeed good scientists allows the public's most common fallacy of appeal to authority to become a defacto appeal to reason.

If we let "S" equal the benefit to society of these lectures and let "D" equal the damage done to the victim(s) by this harassment: then, reasonably, only if D > S should the videos be taken down.

Is there any argument that the harm to society of leaving the videos up would be greater than the harm of taking them down?

How does taking them down in any way help the victim(s)?

A single, small event involving individuals affecting the knowledge of countless others - something doesn't seem right here.

OK, so people had to implement this blocking, right?

And it had to have been more than one person, right?

How many individuals would have to have been active and knowingly involved in order to implement such blocking?

From that number, how long until someone straight-up comes out and says they did it and exactly how they did it? You know, instead of having to rely on this external third-party reverse engineering.

I've always been fascinated when software makes dramatic enhancements to the capabilities of existing hardware and data. Like a few years ago there was the release of the TLD algorithm which suddenly turned my old webcam into an futuristic object recognition/tracking device!

What I wonder is, when these software enhancements are made, does hardware usually evolve to converge with the software? Meaning, in this example, if the software is using a new method for processing point data, does that not mean the hardware could be made to collect point data in a way more conducive to this new method?

And is this kind of progress a common thing? Is it common or rare this leapfrog progressive dance of hardware and software?

Hasn't the world only gotten better as intelligence has increased? What is the ratio of negative vs. positive effects of AI so far? Artificial intelligence is intelligence. As an exercise of intelligence, remove "Artificial" from his statements and reevaluate his assertions.

Elon is rich and got there by being controlling: That which may not be controllable terrifies those. No value judgement there, that's just how it is.

I mean, do we even control our own intelligence or does it control us?

Fighting fire with fire is called a "controlled burn".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

It's impractical to douse a wildfire with water. You need to stop it expanding and spreading and let it burn itself out.

You don't put out wildfires, you merely stop them from expanding and cut off their fuel supply.

Now, once the main fire is out, then you cruise around dousing little hot-spots with water and such.

This is all just a devil's-advocate analogy as a punching-bag counter-point for your valid points. I do this to illustrate not the failings of your assertions, but merely because your Insightful post is obviously one-sided.

The security guards at twitter have been proper employees since they moved to Market street. I believe they even hired a couple of the old guards of the last office from the security company they used to contract for. But twitter is a bit of an egalitarian exception, still just wanted to say.

Be careful trimming our claws. You wouldn't want the 501st to have fought without a Lt. Speirs now would you?

"Winters assessed Speirs as being one of the finest combat officers in the battalion. He wrote in his memoirs that Speirs had worked hard to earn a reputation as a killer and had often killed for shock value.[7] Winters stated that Speirs was alleged on one occasion to have killed six German prisoners of war with a Thompson submachinegun and that the battalion leadership must have been aware of the allegations, but chose to ignore the charges because of the pressing need to retain qualified combat leaders."

I don't think they need to be done away with, but maybe they need to be better used or positioned: keep the claws, but keep them away from the face.

I strongly believe that in the not too distant future the number 1 thing that people will wonder why we were so dumb as to not notice it was a horrible idea was having every goddamn thing connected and communicating.

ROM people. ROM!!! (the second ROM was written in allcaps for emphasis)

You can't remotely exploit a device without a network or public interface.

We're so obsessed with connectivity and networks these days that we are blinded to the negatives of all this connectivity - thinking they are just problems of the system to be resolved rather than inherent aspects of the system which can not be gotten rid of.

Alrighty rant(off);
v Now since, like you, I love the internet and connected thingymabobs somebody please reply and give some really good counterarguments against my thinking that IP addresses+Organs is a bad idea.

This is an unintuitive wild speculation, but I wonder if these effects are a linear function of the gravity or if there is a more complex interaction.
In other words, if Alice spent 6 monts in zero-G and Bob spent 6 months in 0.166-G, and assuming equal eye health, would Bob have less damage than Alice or more?

Obviously the human body emerged out of a 1-G environment, so the eye has evolved with those pressures. But just because removing those pressures completely may result in harm, that is not to say that removing those pressures partially would be harmful.

The only non-zero-G astronauts I know of were the Apollo folks - but I can't find any information (or anectdotes from them) on the difference in physiological effects of zero-g versus 1/6th-G.

It seems like they would have experienced less intercranial pressure and would have had an actual reference for up and down.

Oh space be a harsh mistress.

Humans must control the environment, it's just what we do. To quote the late, great Jacob Bronowski, man is, “...not a figure in a landscape, but the shaper of the landscape.” We've already affected the planet - just look at the deforestation in the Amazon (the jungle) from satellite images - it's impossible to ignore, even from space. If your face looked like the Amazon looks right now you would go see a doctor. How could this not be inevitable? First we sow the fields, next we sow the planets.

Those were griefers, not trolls. Trolls do it for the kek but griefers go for the neck. When I troll it is only ever for fun and profit with the only goal being that of enacting some kind of Socratic realization or interaction, but never with the intent to harm somebody emotionally. It's fun to poke, that's what trolls do: griefers don't poke, they stab. Sarcasm and satire are the mainstays of the troll. Personal attacks and such, however, are the M.O. of the griefer. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, there is a difference. Dissent is vital, though understandably a bit unpalatable. I hope one day there will be a widespread understanding of the difference between these two distinct, but superficially similar species and the importance of the one, and the subsequent need to recognize and handle the other.

The jester is not a psychopath. The joker is. There are trolls and there are griefers. One laughs at misfortune, the other thrives on it. There needs to be a distinction before unjust laws might be enacted under which nobody will be able to experience Natalie Portman's hot grits: that would be the real tragedy.

Don't be mistaken, they are a just a lion in a den of other lions. They are all literally fighting over sticks and stones: holy sites. If it were at least Oil we could at least say they were fighting over resources, but that region is obsessed with killing each other over ancient, probably historically inaccurate, vendettas and magical piles of dirt. It is a region of unstoppable forces and immovable objects. This is what happens when they meet - violence and destruction of everything except themselves.

I don't get your sarcasm. Poe's law is a real problem you know. Please be more explicit when you are joking, because I almost thought this was a serious post until I read it again :)