Week 44
Assad should go
What do you mean by “go”?
“Go” as in leave the country and never come back go, or as in, “he wont be the leader of all of Syria, but (most likely) the leader of Alawis, his minority sect, but still in Syria as part of a power sharing agreement” go? The latter is more reasonable and realistic IMO.. Is there a need to destroy this guy? The people who want a caliphate who like and want to be like the Ottoman empire need “attention” first. We mean ISIS of course.
Twitter User
Research shows (at work) sparring over tasks, ideas frequently spills over into personal grudges [..]
Possible
As species we are still new at this stuff, that is, collaborating over ideas, knowledge, data at such a big scale -in terms of participation- is unprecented in human history. Biologically we are still hunter-gatherers at heart. Yes our minds are pretty good at complexity but also, the speed at which the information is bombarded on us is at its highest in history, it is immense. This and similar issues around information overload are the primary topic of Future Shock. Some countries have more experience on this than others. US got there first. They developed a predominantly white-collar work force for the first time - hence its work language, culture has probably most diverse tools (for now) in dealing with this stuff. The rest of the world is catching up tho.
Question
Why dont you call ISIS IS, or ISIL, or [blah]
Who cares?
We picked the common name used at the time, and went with it. The alternative names and the confusion has to do mainly with US government trying to hide the fact that they f**ked up detecting rise of ISIS, and some in gov think by using a name that many people did not commonly use, they would come across “more knowledgeable” on the subject which, of course, they werent.
There is something broken about US intelligence, advising apparatus that should be able to see such events coming, within reason. The NSA shitstorm showed the preference appears to be in some other direction; but piling up data on more and more people does not make the system smarter. What did Gore say: “When you are looking for a needle in a haystack, it’s not always wise to pile more hay on the haystack” (when is this guy becoming the president btw?). Even some simple stuff .. like, when Israeli government came against Hamas-PLO aggreement for united governance, which was insanely irrational, u could sense something bad was coming. Alarm bells went off in my head, and .. we are writing this dinky little blog here. How can ppl whose job is to monitor this stuff miss this?
News
US unemployment rate is at 5.8
Incorrect
Out of a population of 316 million, and the working age ppl between 25-54 being 95.607 million, and since roughly 40% are under this demographic then 95607 / (316000 * 0.40) * 100 = 75% are employed, meaning 25% is unemployed. 1 out of 4 people who can work is out of work.
If there are 10 apples and 10 oranges on a table and I pick one orange and say “I have 1/20th of oranges in my hand” it would be incorrect. This is literally mixing apples and oranges. Correcter thing to say is “I have 1/10th of oranges in my hand”.
Question
I see tech, scientist people equally divided on AI doomsday scenarios.
Which tech people?
Most AI people, that is current researchers in the field, do not feel an urgency about this issue. There are scientists who do, but I believe most of them come from natural sciences / physics background, or related fields. In such areas, especially high-energy physics you are dealing with forces of nature that can go berserk in unexpected directions. The goal is to tame them, use them, etc. It is dangerous stuff… After all, that’s where nuclear energy or A-bomb came from, right? This culture has dominated the view of science for many years. Combined with the industrial age whose structures dwarf the individual reducing people (many workers) to mere automatons, a view of science was formed that paints the field as 1) big 2) can go crazy 3) destroy the planet and humans alike.
AI is different. In this field the practitioners create the algorithms from scratch, they are not trying to tame forces of nature. Yes there are “biologically inspired” algorithms, but they are just that, an “inspiration”, not the thing itself. Even if it was, the end result is data processing and decision making, not seperating the atom, or shooting off lasers.
Looking at the list of people who support the AI calamity scenario can prove this point. Stephen Hawking: physicist. Elon Musk: his company deals with high-energy combustion, propulsion, literally “rocket science”. Peter Thiel: an hi-tech investor (a very good one), but not a practitioner in AI.
Note: all of the people above we respect, and agree with on many issues btw.
Mises.org
As unbelievable as it seems, Central American parents are sending their children [to the US] [Also] In many cases the children flee on their own accord without any guardian.
A decade ago US Border Patrol agents apprehended only several hundred unaccompanied children per year. Over the last nine months they have caught nearly 50,000. Official estimates project the capture rate to reach 10,000 per month by this fall. Those numbers actually hide the enormity of the problem because historically the problem was largely restricted to Mexican children who could be immediately returned to Mexico. During the last couple of years, the majority of growth has come from children from Central American countries [..]
The underlying cause for this mass dangerous migration is the US’s war on drugs [..].
Demand for cocaine in the United States (which, unlike that in Europe, is fed through Central America), combined with the ultimately futile war on drugs, has led to the upsurge in violence. It is American consumers who are financing the drug gangs and, to a large extent, American gun merchants who are arming them. So failing American policies help beget failed states in the neighbourhood.
Yes
Failed policies cause migration then more failed policies are mulled over to try to “stop” the influx of people, which is merely the symptom of the problem not the cause. IMO US needs to legalize drugs and stop persecuting and criminalizing this behavior.
This option is not pondered because according to psychologist Clotaire Rapaille US cultural tug-of-war is between “prohibition” and “letting go”. In their cultural mind ppl are torn apart between these two extremes, and feel constantly pullled to one end or the other - many problems are perceived through this one dimensional lense causing people to see a ‘tradeoff’ in a subject where rationally, there exists none.
On Iraq, US politicians and, to a certain extent, the public felt the need to “let go”, “let it all rip” (after 9/11). Then the pendulum swings, another administration comes in to “contain self”. Earlier in history, there was a period literally called prohibition that ended up backfiring just like the current war on drugs. There is the 60s generation / baby boomers who generally wanted to be “free”, then pendulum swings again, in comes the conservative backlash in politics.
According to Rapaille cultural imprints are below intellect but are stronger then rational thought. For policy making this order needs to be switched, in US as well as in other places.
Because of singularity [..] AI gone wild [..] the world will witness a calamity. Robots will kill us.
Unlikely
AI software is just like any other software - it can have bugs. Especially in the scale some people talk about this stuff, it will lots, which will make it vulnerable to attacks. “But it can evolve dude, like, become more awesome each time”. Yeah, but then it will be like AI with bugs building AI with probably more bugs. The “safest” way for these bots would be to evolve through natural selection (nature is the most stringent QA tester), but, we’ve been evolving like that for years, and we still have bugs, and not enough features. I mean, bats can fly blind with sonar, some animals see wider spectrum of color.. We dont have any of it. I’d like to detect movement behind me with sonar coming out of my ass; but I can’t. It would be an evolutionary advantage if u think about it. Say hunter-gatherer is taking a dump out in the woods, then … he “senses” something.. “I detect incoming tiger in my 6 o’clock sir”.. “Roger that. Mission abort. Take your dump elsewhere”.
This is not to say custom-made, special purpose AI isnt cool, and wont be extremely useful to the point that it will displace (boring, non-creative) jobs. The words “special purpose” are key though. Self-driving cars are here. Playing chess, winning Jeopardy, great. But can the chess playing AI drive the car, or play jeopardy? Rule #1 of machine learning: No Silver Bullet. No single method solves all problems equally well.
And, between now and this “singularity” point, we will have plenty of time to interject, design whatever this AI can do.. Isaac Asimov did nothing else but try to outline the parameters for this future, with his robot laws etc.
Question
How do US Zionist-Christians who are goading all Jews to Israel find such wide-spread acceptance?
Not exactly
For a while they were heard / listened to more than their idiotic argument deserved. But these people are actually patsies themselves - they were maneuvered into this position because they had the right mentality. They were “needed” in a certain ideological and strategic context, so they were put out there getting preferential treatment. The strategic environment is this; Iran is out of the “system”, they have an anti-Israel rhetoric, then there is Israel’s own beligerence that drew ire from all Arabs all of which causes US to defend them. In this context, Christian-Zionist patsies are “plugged in” to bridge the so-called religious right with the rest of the establishment. It is easy to push forward idiots like this - one speech here one there, few think-tanks, couple “conservative” thinkers repeating this non-sense; soon theirs will be the only voice you’ll hear. Stranger things have happened.
Question
What is your favorite song?
My Biznitch Is The Shiznit
Question
Seriously?
No
Seriously; It is Burn, by Deep Purple.
Question
Why do a lot of rappers in videos talk or sing towards the camera?
It represents something
Conciously or subconciously, rappers in these videos represent / act the part of a black man in jail - the camera eye then becomes the tiny hole you, the viewer or in general “the white man” looks at them, at the “brother in lock-up”, and they are protesting, they are in your face. There is a lot of expression there, it is truly art.
Note: Wikipedia: According to Michelle Alexander, the United States “imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid”.