In his own way, Lem was a visionary. Aimed to be more of a philosopher than a SF writer. I love all of his works, including the Cyberiad.

On the topic of AI ("humanoid" robots, in this instance), I vaguely remember he had one of his characters say something along the lines of: you can either create equals (then with all the flaws they come with) or dumb serfs. You can't have it both ways.

Also, his take on what a superintelligence might actually sound and feel like ("Golem XVI"), is super deep for his time.

Not just in Finland though

I haven't watched linear TV for a long time, and I'm pretty old, plus rather cantankerous, stubborn and grey-bearded. Yet I find it puzzling that this kind of medium is actually holding on so strongly.

It's a new {Space,Robotics,AI,...} race. The West clearly has the means and the resources to keep up, we just need to get our act together. The Chinese put their pants on the same way as we do, they just have a different scale and certain methods at their disposal that we don't have. But they also have weaknesses of their own.

Stanisaw Lem, my favorite SciFi author, may have been obscure and wrong about many things, but he got this one right re AI: you can either create mindless serfs, barely useful, or you must face creating entities way beyond your control. There seems to be no space in between. His novel "Golem XIV" is a good read.

Don't be silly. Automatic is as readily available as stick shift, AC likewise. The problem isn't availability.

I didn't say they were.

Just as likely on the car ride to the airport for the plane to Arizona.

Or, on my side of the pond, as I heard someone say recently: people drive their cars from Hamburg to Alicante, where they're then scared of being eaten by a shark.

afaik:

only one gear switch, completely different location and bigger

gear up: switch up; fuel cutoff: switch down

fuel switches are mechanically locked against accidental operation

Mod parent up. What's with all the innuendo about early 737 models and cutoff switches without mechanical lockout that should have been changed long ago?

They found the bloody switches. They would have known immediately if they were the wrong type, and somehow I think that information would have found its way into the preliminary report.

Happy and content individuals live longer. Big reveal.

Unfortunately, the ability to be constantly happy is largely a function of our genetic disposition. It's not a choice, it's an accident. Unhappiness drives the ever oingoing change, which is why I think so many people are unhappy.

The point is simple. NO may have implemented clever polices, good on them, but I simply don't believe that any of them are pivotal to their being so drastically ahead. Good policies are necessary, but not sufficient. I also don't believe that policymakers in NO are vastly smarter than those in other western countries - no offence.

By and large, good governance tends to converge in its results between comparable political systems, and policies can only optimize, not revolutionize. If a country is so vastly ahead as NO in this instance, it must be down primarily to other factors. I have outlined above what I think these are. I also don't believe that it is down to a lucky strike of unique wealth/geography and unique political genius. Rather it is 1% the latter and 99% the former.

If you're picking NO as an inspiration for good policies, then you are mislead by the wrong metrics. The way I see it, NO's success is not down to innovation enabled by lots of funding, but down to lots of funding and unique geography, luckily not hampered by bad policies, even supported by good ones.

Worldwide figures are not relevant in this context, the question is why NO is ahead of the world by leaps and bounds. Population size is not relevant in isolation but all the more so in conjunction with the other factors. Short answer: they're ahead because a/ they want to be and b/ because they have unique structural advantages, which other countries, who also very much would like to be ahead, do not have.

I'm not talking about the climate at all, that's not a relevant factor imo. Being loaded from fossil sales and having oodles of electricity available for a relatively small population is.

Mmmh. So the metric isn't "100%"!!!, it's how smartly they removed incentives such as bus lanes. We'd see Norway pitched all over the place, even if, in the absence of the actual elephant factors in the room, such measures had only taken them from average to slightly better. Right?

It's the smart incentives and clever policies, not the highest EV adption by far, supported and enabled virtually exclusively by the glaring structural advantages, that get Norway mentioned constantly as the EV trailblazer country.

It also does not matter all that much, in my view, how successful and competent Saudi healthcare is in reality; it's more a question of intent, and if they had a government even 1/10 as competent and functional as Norway's, I'm pretty sure it would work out well, given that money is no object. Yet even then it would make no sense to point to them as visionaries, because it's no great feat to pull something like that off if it causes no pain.

E.g., while I am in no way a supporter of the Cuban government, their universal healthcare, which they stick to on principle and with great pains on all levels, would be a better candidate for a visionary policy.

That Norway has a very small population, primarily. Which is one, but certainly not the only point in their advantage.

Great that China is doing comparatively well. Doesn't alter the fact however that it's somewhat silly to point to Norway, hoping to demonstrate that like them we could all have 100% EV right now if only we really wanted to, rather than stubbornly sticking with ICEs for general principle.