Most young people don't want to become good at programming in the same way that most young people have no desire to become good at mathematics. They just don't want to shove their minds into that straightjacket of strict logical thought. It's naturally abhorrent to them.
> Large swaths of the population unemployable though... That's a real issue.
IMO the one job that is most threatened by future progress in AI is the job of software developer.
As for the menial jobs, of course nobody cares whether a human or a machine mows your grass. But I do think that most people would rather be nursed by human being than a robot. I think there will be a big increase in care-giving jobs, which would be wonderful because the world is in dire need of care-givers.
Reading discussions on drone strikes makes you wonder what ever happened to pacifism. This whole idea that you can just go around other countries killing people -- even if they intend on killing you, and even if you would be able to hit the right target 100% of the time-- it's just old. It's primitive. And that is not to blame the USA. At this point in history humanity, as a collective, has the maturity of an 11 year old. Maybe it's time to evolve a bit.
A flâneur is someone who walks around leisurely, having time to notice stuff and interact with people. Every self respecting snob should have the word in his vocabulary :)
A while back I was considering Freenas and in the documentation/forums I read dire warnings about running ZFS with less than 8 gigabyte of ram. Apparently, this could actually put your data at risk.
I was a bit nonplussed by this. The least I would expect from a file system is that it degrades gracefully. I wonder if anyone knows more about this?
Note that manufacture, import and sale of drugs is still illegal in Portugal.
I find it hard to understand why so many people in the US want to switch drug policy from one extreme of the spectrum to the other. It's a rash social experiment with consequences that are hard to predict.
Where I live people can, and do, get euthanasia for psychological suffering. Now, research has shown that a rather large percentage of the elderly are suffering from depression. Part of the reason is, of course, that getting old can be very painful. But another part of the reason is that in today's society many old people are almost criminally neglected.
The only right solution to this problem is that society begins to take better care of old people. But now we begin to offer an alternative "solution" which consist of helping these people to kill themselves. And look, now there's extra budget to take care of the old people that remain.
Did you see what just happened? Assisted suicide has, sneakily, become a means to control the cost of elderly care and to avoid addressing the real problem -- while thinking ourselves very enlightened and progressive as a bonus.
Interestingly, in Colorado it's legal for a company to fire an employee who has (legally) smoked marijuana. So even with legalization drug tests may remain a thing.
If your employee is a habitual pot smoker there is still the risk that one day he turns up high for work. Why would you take that risk if you can hire somebody who does not smoke at all?
Other than that, consumption of cannabis is correlated with a bunch of stuff that an employer may want to avoid (for instance increased impulsivity [1])
Given the fact that employers routinely choose to not hire somebody because of even the slightest misgivings, not wanting to employ a pot smoker can hardly be called irrational.
I'm a bit disappointed that the top comment is a plea to legalize all drugs.
I don't see what this has got to do with the topic, namely that a legal drug is killing 19,000 Americans each year while making many more addicted. I was expecting to read some suggestions on how to address this problem.
Here's what the press release says concerning Chernobyl:
> The Fukushima disaster is the single largest release of radioactivity into the ocean and one of only two Level 7 nuclear disasters in world history - the other being Chernobyl.
So, can you explain what is so wrong or inane about this statement? I think it's rather informative and to the point, tbh.
It's a rather dubious claim that "fishes and birds are better off" in the deserted areas around the reactor. The studies mentioned by Greenpeace talk about morphological defects, heritable mutations, decreased fertility and decreasing numbers. Animals have a level of consciousness too. At some level they're going to be aware of being unwell. Are you going to point to mutated fir trees and DNA-damaged butterflies and say they're better off now because they no longer have to suffer the presence of human beings?
So... people who want to sell autonomous driving argue that human behavior and the organization of public space should adapt to accommodate the unsolved problems of autonomous driving.
The emotional appeal regarding 3000 deaths every day is a bit cheap considering the fact that many of those deaths are cause exactly by bad attitudes and bad road infrastructure.
I've never been sure what the difference between physical and psychological addiction is supposed to mean anyway. What we call psychology is a complex of physiological processes. What matters is that marijuana accounts for 17% of rehab admission, more than any other drug with the exception of alcohol. Cute sophistries that we're also addicted to coffee or air will not change the fact that this "psychological" marijuana addiction is a serious threat to quality of life.
Oxycontin is a prescription drug. I suppose it's illegal to acquire this drug without the permission of a doctor. I'm curious how many of people are in favor of making opioid painkillers -- which already kill 16,000 Americans/year -- an over the counter drug for recreational use.
IMO people forget that a human being, as a general-purpose problem solving automaton, is actually a relatively cheap resource. You can make a human being -- at this moment still the most complex object in the universe -- perform tasks for $10/hour.
You worry about "putting your reputation on the line" but if you're really behaving like this you probably already got a reputation of somebody who has a problem with women. It will hurt your career in the end.
So maybe you don't talk about yourself at work, have no doubt that others talk about you.
That is mainly because "these days" 18 year olds are no longer empowered to make any relevant decisions. You propose to keep treating them like children for seven more years. The day they become 25 you'll say "My gosh, they're 25 now but they're STILL like children!".
It is my opinion that this huge collective distrust towards youth is one of the biggest hidden problems of today's society. If it was up to me, kids would get a basic income from the age of 14.
As such, I see no reason why insurance companies would have an agenda against human drivers. Insurance companies will charge rational premiums that make them competitive against other insurance companies. It may very well be that insurance premiums for human drivers go down because AI drivers improve road safety.
> How is prostitution any different than selling our bodies to work in a factory, or construction, or retail, or ....
This sounds true if you have a choice of jobs. But with "regular" jobs, we accept that someone can be forced by circumstances to take such a job, even if it isn't the greatest job in the world.
Suppose a friend of mine is unemployed and complaining about money problems, I can imagine myself saying "So why don't you just take the job of a dishwasher until things get better?"
But I can't really imagine myself saying "So why don't you just sell your body until things get better?"
People recognize there exists, to some extent, a moral obligation to do work. But if we accept prostitution as "just another job", aren't we implying that people come under some measure of moral obligation to accept that job if it's the only job available?
For instance, people may lose unemployment benefits if they turn down a "suitable" job. I cannot imagine anyone would want to extend this rule to prostitution.
I totally agree. In most software projects, memory management isn't a particularly difficult aspect of the problem. With todays software tools, if your code contains memory leaks or pointer bugs you're just being an amateur. And in those cases where memory management requires a bit more thought and design it's rather unlikely that some standard smart pointer protocol is going to be a glove-fit solution. So I never saw the point of smart pointers unless you want to reinvent Python or something.
You have to take into account that the population under study -- drivers who tested positive for marijuana -- are people who consumed some amount of marijuana AND judged themselves capable of driving. Some pot smokers will exclude themselves from this population because they estimate that they can no longer drive safely -- myself being one of them. So from this study you cannot conclude that, in general, smoking pot does not affect your driving skills.
IMO programmers have got more to worry about the future of their job than bricklayers. It seems rather obvious to me that the job of software developer would be the first victim of advances in AI.
I understand that cruise control is not autonomous driving. Still, I would expect cruise control to NOT crash into a stationary object right in front of the car. If you read the disclaimers of TrafficAware in the manual, the only possible conclusion seems to be that you simply cannot use this feature. If you can't trust the system to brake in time, it means you have to do the braking yourself. Every time.
Perhaps the real answer is closer to "it's easy to be tolerant and broad-minded if you don't feel threatened".
You're answer boils down to "because liberals are right and the others are wrong". But there isn't really such a thing as a wrong political opinion. People's political choices are based on their experience of the world. The whole premise of democracy is that if you take the mean of everybody's personal experience you will arrive -- more or less, and with some difficulty -- at the right answer.
Maybe poverty is somewhat like a biological niche -- guaranteed to be occupied as long as human life remains a struggle for resources with other people who may be much smarter than you. In that sense, you can hardly blame the poor for occupying that niche. It's just human beings having their best shot at life under rather difficult circumstances.
Cameron called for the referendum in the hope of shutting up the eurosceptics in his own party forever. At the time it was not a bad idea, given that literally nobody believed that the leave vote could win.
Which is exactly why I didn't much like Juncker's agressive reaction to the Brexit vote. "This is not going to be an amicable divorce" was pretty much the first thing he said. This kind of hostility towards the result of a democratic referendum is totally uncalled for, especially if the EU wants to pretend to be a promotor of pacifism in Europe.
> The very fact that risking (domino-effect) the future of the EU via this referendum just for some political self-interest (internal power struggle Conservative Party ) illustrates this use-at-will mentality.
If the EU is really that unstable why blame the British for it?
And if the British were holding back the EU, maybe we should be happy that they finally got off the fence.
In the past, it was always Britain vs. Germany and France because Britain was the problem child. As from now, Britain has more possibilities to align closer to Germany OR France -- which may possibly divide the partners, especially because German-French relations have been strained in recent years. The time of Mitterand and Kohl holding hands like lovers has gone.
I'm just skeptical about this supposition that a firmly united Europe is going to wipe the floor with the UK. This is not some 5 million people nation that you're going to boss around a bit. The UK has one of the longest running systems of government in the world with a diplomatic tradition going back to the power games of 19th century Europe. It has strong ties to the Commonwealth and the United States. While negotiating with the EU it only needs to look after its own interests. Opposite the UK stands the EU consisting of 27 nations, all with their own interests, many of which have to deal with their own eurosceptics at home. There's been mounting discontent about the domineering role of Germany. I believe that things may become very interesting.
While xenophobia may be the most important factor of the referendum's outcome, it should not be forgotten that a good part of Labor was never too hot on the EU either. Many people on the left regard the EU as a bastion of neoliberalism where a shadowy army of 30,000 lobbyists do a great job at defending the interest of big money. The lackluster performance of Labor during the campaign certainly did not help the remain vote.
One problem of automation is that when an algorithm fails it reverts to 100% stupid mode, without any fallback. In this particular case the program didn't understand there was a truck, so the car drove full speed into the truck. As a result, the outcome of accidents with AI driving, while rare, will probably tend to be rather gruesome and this might lead to some really bad reaction.
Likewise, a quick google search will show you that the pro-marijuana lobby is a thing. In the upcoming California Legalization ballot the side in favor is outfunding the opposition 45 to 1. The pot industry is already a billion dollar business. So if legalization becomes a fact, will you allow me to conclude that marijuana is legal just because of the lobbying powers of Big Marijuana?
