I've read that Heathrow Airport has a small but functioning Personal Rapid Transit system, and that Europe in general much better suited (socially and physically) to public transit in general. Are those things accurate? Is there a chance that expanding PRT would be a better path for Europe than getting into a competition over full on robo-taxis?

Let me get this straight: you are arguing that because you personally use a different definition of the word "premise" from the one I used, even after I explained exactly how I was using it, somehow that means that yesterday was the first time I realized that the founders intentions did not line up with the words they used?

Because what I said is true. It looks like you're whole problem is that you're so worried about seeming right that you're refusing to think through the difference between a premise and an intention.

The written premise behind the our constitution is a principle: the government exists to secure "unalienable rights." The intention, at the time, was that those rights would only go to white male land owners. But that just reveals the contradiction that I was pointing out in the first place: Logically, as well as in practice, if you try to give rights to some people and not to others, by definition, they are "alienable" for everyone. Maybe the government will not take away your rights too, but once they have that power, it's extremely difficult to be sure. That situation is not the same thing as having as "unalienable rights" no matter what the founders or anyone else might wish were true. You know - like that whole "First they Came ..." poem?

The point of my original observation is that it is a shame that we have an entire constitution based on the premise that we have certain unalienable rights, and yet have failed to prevent the current situation from occurring. I stand by that, and will add that understanding and following the implications of that premise is going to do a lot more good than trying to pretend that the bad intentions of a bunch of dead people is somehow new information.

My family was not eligible to vote until after the civil rights movement. When I go visit my family over the holidays, I will be hearing stories from that struggle from people who experienced and participated first hand. You were dead wrong to assume I'm not well aware of the failures you brought up.

If you'd bothered to think for 10 seconds about what I actually said, or understand anything about how principles work, you'd have realized that my observation was accurate about what is necessary in order to actually implement anything resembling "unalienable rights," and can be applied as a direct criticism of anyone, including the original framers, who failed to understand the real world implications of that concept.

It's almost as if you can't systematically take away civil rights for some people without ultimately taking it away for all people. Seems a shame that having an entire constitution written around that basic premise wasn't enough to prevent this.

Maybe. But if we're at the point of turning to robo-taxis, the fact that we ruled out more effective personal rapid transit approaches starts to be more of a profit-making scheme than anything based on engineering or personal liberty.

You're thinking of mutually assured destruction. A zero-sum game is a situation where my profit is your loss, and vice versa.

I am not, hence the (apparently bad) attempt to present that as a quote.

As far as I can tell, we have the technical resources to create a thriving environment for the vast majority of people (and life in general), but have failed to due so because our social systems are predicated on greed. I had the impression that we might agree on that in principle - did I get that wrong?

"No." ~ Effectively "all" investors, business lobbyists, the entire C-suite, and companies promoting or using AI

It does look like you're put-off by his choice of words, and maybe you disagree with my thought that it could be worth forgiving that detail in order to solve the problem he wants to solve.

Based on the context clues, the author may have used the word leaked exactly as you expected, and then used the word allocated as a synonym for "written," and used as a synonym for "written and later read." If I were speaking to the author and uncertain about this, I'd probably ask for clarification directly. People rarely use the exact dictionary definition for every single word they write, and I usually find it more useful to understand what someone intended than what words they should have used.

Your signature says "If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it." How does that compare with what's happening in your comment?

Argumentative, insulting, with an edge of "dafuq," but basically accurate and ready to laugh it off and maybe get a beer.

Yup. Sounds like Philly.

Hasn't it been established that it's always about "owning the libs," even if it means going full doublethink within a single paragraph?

Philosophically: The tech billionaires, AI investors, and the folks arguing "biological consciousness is of no greater worth than the future digital variety" have effectively adopted nihilism and rejected humanism. If I recall my old humanities classes correctly, both of these are fundamentally rationalist - to my knowledge, the only way to make a logical argument for the value of human existence is to found it on the subjective experience of wanting to exist.

Humanism (which is, IIRC, approximately the foundation for modern western civilization), embraces the required component of subjectivity and suggests we enjoy the ride and, you know, maybe not go around killing each other and destroying ourselves because:

1. 1. Subjectively it sucks.
2. 2. Objectively, the only way things can suck is subjectively, therefore if something sucks subjectively then ... it sucks.

In the current context it looks to me like the relationship between humanism and nihilism on a spectrum of existentialism is becoming literal again. We either decide that we want to exist, and we're willing to do what is rationally necessary to support each other in existing, or we're out.

... and, yeah, that "biological consciousness is of no greater worth than the future digital variety" argument, is a literal declaration that the folks making this decision are perfectly happy to end your existence in pursuit of their nihilistic fantasies.

I'm guessing organized crime using crypto now is like Disney doing streaming after Netflix proved the business model.