For someone using untruthfulness as a cudgel, you're greatly misrepresenting the facts.

It was never the case that the network was sued because it had "News" in the title but because Tucker Carlson said of Karen McDougal that her actions "sounds like a classic case of extortion." The argument from Tucker's lawyers were "The "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.'"

We provide the same latitude to the editorial and commentary section of any newspaper that they may not be exactly on target, but that the reporting section of the paper is to be held to a much higher standard. Otherwise, you may as well argue that the NY Times is untrustworthy because of something written by Nikole Hannah-Jones. Some people do, but that's simplistic because they are different divisions with different purposes and methods.

Further, it was never argued that either Fox News or Tucker Carlson were for entertainment purposes only. Ctrl-F for "entertainment" in the court decision linked above. You won't find it. The argument I hear from its defenders is that it reports issues not discussed elsewhere, but my anecdote isn't data any more than yours is.

And to provide a fuller context, Rachel Maddow used the same defense when she claimed without any basis that OAN was "paid Russian propoganda". I don't like OAN either, but that couldn't be supported in a court of law. Nevertheless, Maddow's lawyers argued that her show tries "to persuade others to [her] position by use of epithets, fiery rhetoric or hyperbole."

So, yeah, be skeptical when listening to anyone from the left, right, or even with (Score:5, Interesting)

Vacation days are part of your compensation package and if you don't take full advantage of your vacation, you're settling for less than your full compensation.

If your management frowned on you taking your full paycheck, you'd tell them to get bent.

Same thing with vacation. You earned it.

In a thread called "chatbots can never be ethical", you seem to not even try. The likely scenario is that the president was being pursued by 5 foreign agents but you seem to conclude that everyone's status is irrelevant because (*checks your comment again to make sure I'm rephrasing this correctly*) the president being in danger negates the need to treat him special. That... doesn't seem to follow.

And you seem to be further saying that a car manufacturer claiming that this distinction was "circumstantially irrelevant", (perhaps entailing that the car would always kill the one and save the five) that this wouldn't lead to massive lawsuits, Congressional investigations, rebukes by the public, and dictums necessitating changes in the ethical calculators in cars, causing untold number of headaches? Maybe that might show why this distinction is circumstantially relevant, no?

It wasn't meant to be taken seriously.

But if you do want a more serious consideration: What if the one person is the President of the United States and the five old people are on FBI watchlists. Seems more clear cut that we might create a whitelist of protected individuals, so let's press on that idea. How many people on the FBI watchlist is the President worth?

Follow up: What if the baby is Hitler and the old people include Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and my grandparents?

and humans can?

Not being snarky, but there aren't really any universally agreed upon ethics rules, so determining right from wrong is either determined from an individual assessment or through government, and many folks will disagree with both. There aren't any universal principles that we can command an AI to maintain that humans would be just as good at maintaining. We may agree in the abstract but have wide disagreements on the specific meaning of the terms and their implementation. As an example, influencing judges is bad, and yet if a judge rules a way in which we disagree, folks contemplate impeachment or even court packing. Further, if you're a political strategist, an AI incapable of creating strategies like that would be an inferior tool to one that is more creative.

I fear that AI can only reflect our own immorality and when we say, "but what the AI is doing is wrong" the response will be "no less than what we deserve".

Q: âoeWhere do you see yourself in 5 years?â

A: âoeSipping mai tais in Maui.â

A popular line but frequently misunderstood. Killing the lawyers is the same as killing the laws that make up the country. Dick the Butcher, the character who delivers this line, is fine with murder and killing lawyers will let him do that more frequently and make it easier to take over the country.

Justice John Paul Stevens said of this line: "Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government."

Not sure that's a motive I can get behind.

I like Jimmy but just not as president. For his work on the environment and on Habitat for Humanity, I have enormous respect for him. He's done a lot of good for a lot of people by that advocacy. He also did well with the Camp David Accords, a feat for which he should be remembered fondly.

But conducting foreign diplomacy to undermine the first President Bush during the Gulf War by asking foreign countries to oppose the US coalition, I really wish he had stuck to building houses. Not content to undermine a Republican president, he undermined Clinton's North Korea policy, too. Heck, he undermined his own presidency by claiming a crisis of confidence and then not rising to that challenge. His sweater speech basically told people that the only way to make progress is by sacrifice--in other words, by going backwards. Hardly a recipe for rebuilding American confidence. When Reagan asked "Are better off than 4 years ago?" voters took a look at their wallet and voted Carter out.

Carter has his virtues but that doesn't make him a good president or even a good ex-president.

If you're trying to guide people's behavior, the onus is on the people wanting to make the change to communicate well with the people who they want to implement that change.

Obscurantism isn't a positive quality in that endeavor. It's very smug to demand everyone to become expert at statistics and epidemiology and then feign annoyance when they don't go along. Try things like this out and give special consideration to the moment when Tyrian is talking to his jailor.

Leading an argument by claiming 96% efficacy implies that getting the vaccine and COVID is an uncommonly rare occurrence. It isn't. As a result, it comes across as misleading.

It isn't misleading if you work through the science but good communication involves speaking to your audience in terms they'll understand. If we want bad science communication, this is they way you do it and we shouldn't be surprised when people start to distrust scientists.

"Why should the insurance company pay for hospital treatment..." because Democrats required everyone to get insurance in order to take care of stuff like this. You want to require people to pay in to the system but not be allowed to take anything out?

Especially now that it's legally compelled, I have to ask what the bright line is in this line of reasoning that says we should not cover the insurance cost of risky behavior. Does that include the effects of recreational drug use, for example? How about when not wearing a seat belt or motorcycle helmet? Should football players not be insurable? What about the obese?

In the name of compassion, how cruel do you want our society to be?

Everyone I know who got the vaccine also got COVID. I, my wife, and my two kids each have taken the vaccine every 6-8 months since it became available and every single one of us got COVID. I've gotten a booster every 6-8 months as advised and want my family to stay safe and healthy, but reading that the vaccines are 96% effective, my initial thought is: effective at what?

Yes, I know it's effective against a specific strain that is no longer prevalent, but we should be reporting the effectiveness against today's strains and not just yesterday's. Repeating an outdated stat helps perpetuate vaccine skepticism.

Unlikely. They've always been conservative. Why only vote that way now?

61% in Texas is a new state low. 68% voted for Hillary. Follow the trend line and they'll be reliable Republicans in two presidential election cycles.

Trump made gains not just with Latinos but also African Americans. Point being, the story has many more dimensions than race.

I mostly agree. Like I said, I'm an open borders kind of guy (provided we reform our entitlements to prevent us going bankrupt). That said, I can recognize that those who want borders can want them to be secure without calling them racists.

We win over those on the margin with facts, not with epithets.