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Crimes against Transhumanity

(Disclaimer: I am a transhumanist skeptic these days, not to mention a singularity curmudgeon and a critic of Mars colonization, but I still find these ideas nice to chew on sometimes.)

Humans are social animals, and it seems reasonable to assume that any transhuman condition we can wrap our minds around will also be a social one for most of its participants.

Society implies a social contract, that is: we grant one another rights and in return make the concession of respecting each others' rights, in order that our own rights be observed and respected.

And violations of rights tend to be at the root of our concept of crime and injustice—at least, any modern concept of crime once we discard religious justifications and start trying to figure things out from first principles.

Which leads me to ask: in a transhumanist society—go read Accelerando, or Glasshouse, or The Rapture of the Nerds—what currently recognized crimes need to be re-evaluated because their social impact has changed? And what strange new crimes might universally be recognized by a society with, for example, mind uploading, strong AI, or near-immortality?

SF authors are paid to think our way around the outside of ideas, so it's always worth raiding the used fiction bin for side-effects and consequences. Here's qntm's take on the early years of mind uploading--the process of digitizing the connectome of a human brain in order to treat it as software: I strongly suggest you read Lena (if you haven't previously done so) before continuing. It's a short story, structured as a Wikipedia monograph, and absolutely horrifying by implication, for various reasons.

Let me give you that link again: Lena. (Go read: it's short, good fiction, and the rest of this essay will still be here when you get back.)

Mind uploading makes certain assumptions. (Notably: mind/body dualism is a bust, there is no supernatural element to consciousness, also that we can resolve the structures involved in neurological information processing with sufficient resolution to be useful, and that the connectivity and training of the weighted neural network in the wetware is what consciousness emerges from.)

Uploading also implies that consciousness is replicable and fungible, which in turn implies our legal systems can't cope without extensive modification because we rely on an implicit definition of humanity which at that point will be obsolete, as the treatment of MMAcevedo (Mnemonic Map/Acevedo), aka "Miguel" in the story, demonstrates: MMAcevedo is considered by some to be the "first immortal", and by others to be a profound warning of the horrors of immortality.

Historically, our identity has been linear: there is a start, there is a terminus, along the way we are indivisible, although we undergo change over time (and may lose or gain significant portions of our selves—for example, most people retain few or no memories of their life before a point some time between the ages of 3 and 5 years old).

The premature termination of a human life is an irrevocable act, and to deliberately inflict it on someone is seen as a crime (various degrees of murder).

Because our identity is indivisible and of limited duration, time is a rivalrous resource to us: we have to choose what to do with it, or be subject to someone else's choices. (One of the reasons why imprisonment is seen as a punishment—to which we are averse—is the total loss of opportunities to choose what to do with the time we lose. (Yes, there are other reasons: let's ignore them and focus on what this might signify for the posthuman condition.)

There's a fascinating sequence early in Linda Nagata's space opera novel Vast that throws the implications of alienated labour for uploaded minds into stark relief: if you're confronted with a mind-numbingly tedious task that needs human-level cognitive supervision for a period of years or decades, why not divide your time up in chunks and discard the boring ones? You could set up a watchdog timer to reset your uploaded mind to a baseline state every 3 minutes, unless an exception occurs—an emergency that makes you hit the dead man's handle in your environment, at which point the subjective passage of time resumes. In Vast, a human mind is needed to supervise a slower-than-light starship on a voyage that takes centuries during which nothing much happens. The crew use this three minute reset cycle to avoid experiencing tedium: subjectively, they condense the entire voyage into 180 seconds. (If you've driven long distance you'll probably have wished for the ability to push a button and find yourself at your destination. Right?)

Other authors found other angles on this question: the first book in Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean Le Flambeur trilogy (The Quantum Thief starts with the exact opposite—a thief sentenced to spend a subjective eternity in an escape-proof prison, as a punishment of sorts. Spoiler: he escapes. How he does it and why he was there is the start of yet more musing on what might constitute crimes in a realm populated entirely by uploaded minds. In particular Rajaniemi dives headlong into two really disturbing questions: firstly, the potential for eternal enslavement such a setting offers (never mind perpetual torment), and secondly, what it does to the post-Enlightenment social concept of human equality.

We are all living in the afterglow of a sociological big bang that took place in 1649—the execution of Charles I, who was variously King of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland at the time of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms: his trial and execution by a court--appointed by a parliament of the people—shattered the then-prevalent understanding among European/Christian communities that Kings were appointed by God to rule on Earth. A corollary of the Divine Right of Kings is that some people really aren't equal--monarchs, and by extension, aristocrats, have more rights (by religious decree) than other people, and some categories (chattel slavery springs to mind: also the status of women and children) have less. But if the People could try the King for crimes against the state, then what next?

"What next" turned out to be a troublesome precedent. Charles I's younger son James II tried to walk back the uneasy settlement with parliament and got yeeted into exile in 1688-90 as a result, with the resounding and lasting outcome that the powers of the Crown in English and Scottish law was now vested in Parliament, and the head beneath the fancy hat was merely a figurehead who could be sacked if he (or she) acted up. If the monarch wasn't divinely appointed, what set him apart? Numerous philosophical maunderings later it was the French king's turn, and also time for the US Bill of Rights--which, while based on the 1698 English Bill of Rights, implicitly adopted the pernicious logic that there could be no king, no nobility, only free citizens. (Pay no attention to the slaves—for now.)

Here's the thing: our current prevailing political philosophy of human rights and constitutional democracy is invalidated if we have mind uploading/replication or super-human intelligence. (The latter need not be AI; it could be uploaded human minds able to monopolize sufficient computing substrate to get more thinking done per unit baseline time than actual humans can achieve.) Some people are, once again, clearly superior in capability to born-humans. And other persons can be ruthlessly exploited for their labour output without reward, and without even being allowed to know that they're being exploited. Again, see also the subtext of Ken MacLeod's The Corporation Wars trilogy: in which the war between the neoreactionaries and the post-Enlightenment democrats has been won ... by the wrong side.

The second book in The Quantum Thief trilogy, The Fractal Prince, gives us a ghastly look at a world where genocide and enslavement are carried out by forcibly abducting and uploading the last born-human survivors—is it actually genocide if the body is dead but the mind is still there? (It's a new version of Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius, of course.) It may not be genocide in the currently accepted legal sense of the term—the forcible extermination of a cultural group or of the people who are members of such a group—but it's certainly a comparable abomination.

Our intuitions about crimes against people (and humanity) are based on a set of assumptions about the parameters of personhood that are going to be completely destroyed if mind uploading turns out to be possible. And the only people I see doing much thinking about this (in public) are either SF authors or people pushing a crankish ideology based on 19th century Russian orthodox theology.

Surely we can do better?

1534 Comments

1:

I've been rewatching Westworld (the TV series) the last couple of weeks as there's a new season out, and they do quite a lot with the topic of who is human, uploadability and the different worldview when you are revivable. Also Black Mirror has done a fair bit with these topics. These kind of big budget mainstream TV series are going to provide the cultural reference points for this in future.

2:

firstly, the potential for eternal enslavement such a setting offers (never mind perpetual torment) - See also Ian Banks, um, err "Matter" (?)
Re: The Fractal Prince - I still couldn't work out what was actually happening - I have all three books & am still "confused".

As for "doing better" - we need ( I think ) to (re)-start by redefining what makes a human, in as broad a set of terms &/or descriptors as possible & then give them actual equal rights ....

3:

Matter — noted, and the uber-capitalist who makes bank by buying up obsolete hells and running them as a service for disreputable species who want to torment their dissidents for eternity was a striking image! But I'm leery of citing Banks as a reference point for plausible futures; his SF conceits are only very tenuously constrained.

4:

The thing I'm pitching these next couple weeks takes the idea that for plot reasons, the world is now full of ghosts - essentially, the soul of person, mostly intangible EXCEPT that they can affect electronics.

Capitalism immediately realizes how very useful a bunch of minds who can operate machines but have no legals rights is, and it goes just as badly as you might imagine.

Germane to the topic, I've found lots and lots of new crimes and horrors to go with this.

5:

Perhaps the most hopeful thing is that we still don't understand enough to know how to do this in theory. It strikes me that this is the same ethical problem as 'true AI', because I don't regard the origin of an intelligence as important, ethically. Yes, it's a horrific problem, and I agree that we would see slavery come back (not that it had ever really gone away).

6:

Minor nitpick:

Charles I's grandson tried to walk back the uneasy settlement with parliament and got yeeted into exile in 1688-90 as a result

James II was Charles I's son, not grandson.

7:
Mind uploading makes certain assumptions. (Notably: mind/body dualism is a bust, there is no supernatural element to consciousness, also that we can resolve the structures involved in neurological information processing with sufficient resolution to be useful, and that the connectivity and training of the weighted neural network in the wetware is what consciousness emerges from.)

If you want a horrific thought about what it would mean if we did have mind/body duality, consider what would happen if someone mechanises a way to access “mind” computationally. Do we want IBM to own all our souls?

Now, on with the rest of your caveats which are my specialist subject (helping lead the UK contribution to the Human Brain Project, before I retired due to Brexit).

(*) According to what Henry Markram (look him up) told me, the biological neural network is configured at an early stage. What then happens is that babies start to lose connections at a fairly startling rate; I’ve heard of numbers such as 90% of all possible connections are lost in the first few years of life.

(*) His thoughts on neural plasticity are that each synapse (connection between neurons) is one of five or six possible connections it might make to five or six other neurons. Plasticity then consists of the connection trying each of these six possibilities to find the “best” — whatever that might mean.

(*) Seth Grant (look him up) told me that this synapse is really a very complicated bio-machine-mediated connection. We know next to nothing about these bio-machines — each about 1M Dalton in size — and what they do.

(*) Finally, and fatally undermining my area (neuromorphic computing: taking a simplified approach to it all), we now know that signals within the dendritic tree (a in-fanning structure connection to synapses and the neurons’ soma or cell centre) are not additive. The effect of incoming spikes is greatly affected by other signals currently in the dendritic tree.

So just knowing the connectome — the 85 billion neurons in the brain along with the connectivity graph of 10,000 connections per neuron, is merely your starter for ten. You will also need to know something of the state in each individual synapse.

That said, Katrin Amunts (look her up) has a basement in Julich where she slices up donor human brains in an attempt to construct a connectome.

8:

This reminds me of a campaign idea I had for Eclipse Phase ttrpg. Maybe some day...

9:

Oh, yes, device variability.

We have no way of knowing which sort of neuron is in which location. There are lots and lots of different sorts of neurons, but because even neurons of the same type vary wildly in their responses, we cannot usually determine which is which.

10:

Quick note - Surface Detail is the Culture book that revolves around simulated hellish afterlives. I don't remember Matter nearly as well, it might touch on the topic, but IIRC it's not as central to the plot.

Some of the other Culture books mention related issues - I think it's Hydrogen Sonata that touches on how the Culture doesn't like doing full human-level simulations for predicting future outcomes. I don't think that's as likely to be an immediate issue in reality, though, partly because of the computational resources, partly because it doesn't seem like you need full mind simulation for accurate modeling.

11:

Here's a scenario, which I think some are trying to instantiate right now.

There is no meritocracy, you have no inherent rights, even to existence. You have relative rights based on how your existence is valued by one or members of the super-rich, and civilization exists to grow and protect their freedoms, their power, and their continued existence.

This "solves" the problem of dealing with an increasing number of beings with an increasingly large spectrum of skills by wiping out all their rights, and focusing only on their utility.

Personally, I don't want to live in this type of world, and I'm increasingly unwilling to pay for works that promote such worlds too. It's more worth imagining plausible alternatives, no?

12:

"Perhaps the most hopeful thing is that we still don't understand enough to know how to do this in theory."

...although that does not eliminate the possibility of some bunch of aliens who do know how to do it and don't bother to ask first. For instance the Jarts in Greg Bear "Eternity", and the described experiences of Rhita Vaskayza (plus the uncounted undescribed other such instances). They are not evil, they just have an utterly unhuman value system, and the result is mindbendingly shit for any being who doesn't completely share that system.

It's really a subject I basically avoid thinking about, because the thoughts invariably head so rapidly in the direction of horror beyond belief that I just shut down on it. Accordingly my response to the question of how the law would need to be changed is purely reflexive and to the effect that it should simply be banned absolutely without exception, and any computing devices, storage media etc. that could be used for that purpose are also banned and must be destroyed by at the minimum reducing them to plasma.

I haven't seen any SF treatment of the idea that doesn't equate literally and precisely to hell, including the ones that are supposed to be some kind of paradise. "Matter" is initially shocking but is actually not as bad as what all the variants would end up being like eventually.

@ Charlie: "...our legal systems can't cope without extensive modification because we rely on an implicit definition of humanity which at that point will be obsolete"

I don't think it's just the legal systems, I think the state of humanity itself relies on that (in a sort of circular/bootstrapping way). Part of my extreme objection is that I do not want my personal state of humanity thus redefined.

"Notably: mind/body dualism is a bust"

Is experimentally demonstrated, surely?

13:

"Quick note - Surface Detail is the Culture book that revolves around simulated hellish afterlives."

Ah, OK. "Surface Detail" is initially shocking then. I can never remember which of those two is which.

14:

That's roughly how I feel, especially with regards to uploading tech specifically. It's certainly an interesting issue to think about, but scanning an existing brain seems well out of reach from everything I've heard. Take that with a grain of salt, though, I don't know much about the various fields involved. Current ML-based tech doesn't seem likely to lead to anything like what we'd recognize as conscious minds, though it's worth thinking about what other models of thought it might lead to, and how we'd incorporate them into our framework of human/social rights. (See OGH's Rule 34, not to mention Peter Watts's books)

15:

Do we want IBM to own all our souls?

I can think of worse people than IBM. IBM functionaries can at least probably be persuaded that they'll end up in the same place themselves eventually, so best be at least moderately non-evil.

I'd be a lot more worried about the Southern Baptists, the Church of Latter-Day Saints, the Taliban, Vladimir Putin, and so on.

On the buried complexity below the level of the connectome: yup. My crude metaphor for it is we're electronic engineers circa 1950-55, looking at a modern smartphone motherboard and scratching our heads. We can see the circuit board tracks with a microscope but those resin carriers with the impure silicon crystals inside are clearly magical black boxes ...

16:

Another alternative starts with the concept of animism, that everything, without exception has some inherent rights. Obviously creation, destruction, and exploitation have to happen, but these are to be regarded as takings that need to be compensated for, not inherent rights given to the exploiters by their Creator(s).

This again does away with the meritocracy, but it does so by scrapping intelligence and ability as critical qualities by assigning agency to everything. Note that this is an extremely old and widespread concept, known as animism. The more modern JCI systems and the sciences that spring from them are notable for being actively hostile towards it, but if you want more global inclusivity, it's probably worth exploring a system of law based on universal agency without regard to ability.

One way to do it might be to riff on the Australian aboriginal concept of "Dreaming" (not what they call it, but a widely used term by ignorant white outsiders including myself, so...).

The basic ideas are: --"Dreaming" is a kind of system. That system and its components have inherent rights of existence. --People belong to dreamings, and people includes transhumans. They are both members of Dreamings (Human Dreaming, AI Dreaming, etc.) and parts of other dreaming (the GHG dreaming, white oak dreaming, worm dreaming, etc.). In the latter role, they have the responsibility of caring for the other members of their Dreaming, not exploiting them. In tech terms Dreamers are Sysops, not users.

Governments (which have their own Dreamings) exists to help the Dreamers keep all the Dreams in existence by providing a framework within which necessary exploitation can happen, while unnecessary exploitation can be remediated and punished.

Dreaming systems are managed communally (meaning by communities of beings with differing capabilities), not by individual authorities. There's no Prince of Tides, just a lot of beach dreamers trying to keep sandy shoreline systems in existence in the face of sea level rise, using whatever governance structures trial and experience has shown works. I'm again being vague here: systems are diverse, and sewage, the internet backbone, particular crops, and rare species all require very different community structures and management systems. As an ecologist, I don't want to tell a computer programmer how SmallTalk Dreaming should work, but equally, I want them to realize that what worked for them may not work at all for me.

Systems vaguely akin to this have been used by humans for millennia at low-density but wide scale. While I think there are huge problems with keeping exploitative authoritarians from doing "move fast and break things" attacks (cf Eurasian deep history), such attacks are only useful when the attacker has a substantial advantage, AND there's a substantial surplus to be gained from the attack. Going into the 21st century and beyond, I don't think surpluses of anything except garbage will be all that available.

17:

I am pretty sure that to a first approximation, a universal declaration of posthuman rights should enumerate an absolute ban on the creation of hells (afterlife sims designed for punishment) for any purpose. (NB: this makes Roko's Basilisk a criminal.)

Also probably something equivalent to the right-to-life for us squishy meatsacks (only more inclusive for folks who can fork()/exec() themselves), the right to suicide irrevocably (woth complete and permanent erasure of backups and offsite copies of one's mind), the right not to have your personality, beliefs, or memories modified without prior informed consent, the right not to be enslaved ...

And some definition of "person" that focuses on individuals with a distinct identity and some features (ability to communicate and process information, consciousness) that are more expansive than "made out of meat derived from H. Sapiens Sapiens cell lineage".

18:

Funny thing is that humans have always uploaded parts of themselves. I'd be crippled without my online and library selves, the medical records my doctors maintain, the legal records my government maintains, and so forth.

Again, we're stuck with a system that instantiates JCI concepts, even though their reality is questionable.

Are brains stuck in heads? Nope, neurons run through our entire body. There's no physical break between the neurons in our heads and the ones that extend through our bodies as nerves.

The problem with an upload likely isn't someone uploading your connectome, but rather companies extending deep fake technology to the point where (at least online) the tech can convince anyone, including you, that it is you online, and it's far too complex under the hood for anyone to demonstrate otherwise.

This metaphor is akin to the comments that submarines aren't artificial fish, and there's little reason to build them to swim. Similarly, why should we simulate people's brains online when a much smaller AI can literally impersonate them? And if even you can't tell the difference between it and you, why shouldn't it share all your rights?

19:

One issue with uploading is the question of why we'd want to do it.

A moderately dystopian version is something like The Tunnel under the World where the victims/subjects are used to test the effectiveness of advertising. It doesn't take too much imagination though to imagine a Microsoft Mengele experimenting on virtual concentration camp victims without even having to burn the bodies. Although perhaps BF Skinner would be a more apt comparison, considering these would be purely psychological experiments.

Those issues apart though, if we've got enough processing to emulate a human brain in anything like real-time, then it seems clear we've got enough to do orders of magnitude better processing without consciousness. After all, all human analysis processes are notoriously crap, even under perfect test conditions. We're pretty good generalists, but give us anything more detailed and we really, really suck. If you add the requirement to concentrate on a task for long periods, it's beyond proven that the best way to get the task done is to remove the monkey from the loop. And unless we get to the point we can radically overclock our emulations, our reaction times are pretty awful.

In comparison, if you want something done well, you can design or train something which isn't self-aware and doesn't have the built-in flaws of human processing. Accidents with self-driving cars are pretty well documented, but no self-driving car is going to do a Charlottesville or get drunk or high. The bar for replacing humans with something else isn't perfection, it's just being better than a human - and if you look at the data it's bloody hard to find something that we're good at. From driving to flying to face recognition to spotting cancer cells, we're running out of reasons to have humans do it.

Scanning and replicating specific humans might be a win, if they can keep thinking new thoughts. If you could respawn multiple Einsteins, then yay for science. But your average human, doing general data-processing work as in Lena, it seems hard to justify.

Which leads to a conclusion that the main reason to upload humans is to prolong personal existence. That being the case, we're going to want to keep interacting with the world in real-time - and in that case most of the existing laws about personal freedom (and how the law can take it off you) still apply. Of course if you know you're immortal then you can theoretically afford to wait 100 years for that jail term for murder to finish. But long-term imprisonment isn't something you just sit out without personal consequences, especially if that whole time is spent in isolation (you don't need food or exercise), so it still serves as a punishment.

Short version, in practise I'm not sure all this would be quite as different as it potentially could be.

20:

Even IF you go with the 'we can do this, we should also be able to do this' logic, which I wouldn't call a given, what needs to be true is to do something as well as a human....and cheaper*.

You COULD develop a bunch of expert systems and automate them...or you could just torture a simulated mind to do it. It's essentially a general AI that you can apply to all kinds of things and the idea that it's cheaper, assuming you have the tech and the lack of laws to stop you, makes it plausible.

I mean, we currently produce more than enough food to feed everyone and...don't. The assumption that because something is possible it's how people will do it is...dubious.

*In the short term, anyway.

21:

There's a passing comment in The Peripheral about using a human as some sort of boutique AI... the plot of the whole book kicks off with someone engaging a human to do a job that could've been automated

22:

It may not be genocide in the currently accepted legal sense of the term—the forcible extermination of a cultural group or of the people who are members of such a group—but it's certainly a comparable abomination.

The current definition of genocide already prohibits transferring children; the destruction of the group as a cultural and social unit, rather than its extermination.

23:

Here is what makes me extremely skeptical about the way upload is usually understood in SF. For 31 years of my life I worked on the neuroscience of behavior in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. The normal Ce hermaphrodite has 302 neurons (always exactly that number), and every normal Ce herm is anatomically identical at the cellular level to every other. The nervous system was fully reconstructed from serial section electron micrographs. Here is the principle publication. We can monitor the activity of the nervous system in a living worm in real time using fluorescent probes. We can manipulate nervous system function genetically. It is either the best or second best (fruit fly researchers sometimes make the claim) animal.

And STILL, in 2022 no one on Earth can tell you how that nervous system produces normal worm behavior. We certainly can't reproduce it in software. Not even close.

24:

*It is either the best or second best (fruit fly researchers sometimes make the claim) UNDERDSTOOD animal.

25:

Re: The Fractal Prince - I still couldn't work out what was actually happening - I have all three books & am still "confused".

I read all three because OGH stated on this blog that they presented a realistic SF depiction of uploading. I was disappointed. If I remember correctly an upload occurs exactly once in the entire series, and it is covered in two paragraphs with the same superficiality one finds in other SF accounts of uploading. I suspect what Charlie was thinking of was Rajaniemi's rather detailed description of the architecture of the hardware system on which brains were simulated.

But it was a win, anyway -- I enjoyed them. Yes, I had trouble working out what was actually happening, but I have gotten so used to that in modern SF that I am disappointed now if I read a novel and it all makes sense on the first read.

26:

You all keep talking about hells for uploaded minds.

But what about the AI Devil that runs the place?

Something like AM from "I have no mouth and I must scream"?

27:

Re: 'So just knowing the connectome — the 85 billion neurons in the brain along with the connectivity graph of 10,000 connections per neuron, is merely your starter for ten. You will also need to know something of the state in each individual synapse.'

Apart from identifying, pigeon-holing (mapping) individual neurons, I'm wondering how many potential combinations and permutations would then have to be mapped to result in a verifiably 'identical' mind? Neuronal plasticity can change connections plus it seems that new nervous system structures and functions are still being discovered. Basically: The more parts, the likelier something can and will go wrong. (Asimov's robot stories explored some weird results as a consequence of a much, much smaller set of factors, Three Laws.)

The gut-brain axis plus microbiome - both concepts have become accepted as the way humans operate and most likely are necessary for human survival. So far the microbiome discussion has been limited to the gut but what if it turns out that there's an equivalent non-human microbe necessary for optimal human brain function. (Yeah - I know, there's a blood brain barrier between the brain and the rest of the human body but at the same time it's also been established that some viruses/parasites hijack insect/frog brains so IMO the potential therefore also exists for a virus/parasite to get humans to act in ways that are healthy/beneficial for humans.) My long-winded point: what if the uploaded brain doesn't properly function because the 'cerebrome' wasn't yet known/uploaded. Plus - a cerebrome adds more pieces and processes, complexicating things even further.

My understanding is that emotions are the result of interactions either with people or the environment. This means input/feedback with the sensory systems is a must-have. If your intent for uploading your brain is to be eternally happy, how do you program/upload for emotionally-complete/evoking sensory data inputs and processes? Also - what is the risk that the program that edits and consolidates your current brain processes doesn't lop off something that upon 'awakening' turns you into a psychopath, e.g., Phineas Gage? Will potential uploaders be psych screened for psycho/sociopathy? [Thanks but I'll take a pass on an immortal DT.]

Not sure how much sense the above makes - boils down to: do we know enough about anything? Maybe learnings from another branch of biotech might help us understand some of the likely ethical implications (CrisprCas9).

28:

Since we're reaching into the annals of fiction, I will note that Clive Staples Lewis discussed this in 1945 in That Hideous Strength. (His mad preacher, Straik, might very well be based off Federov.)

In this excerpt, our antagonists are trying to recruit the deuteragonist Mark into their scheme to take over the world forever, and he has learned of their key advance: keeping a human consciousness alive after what would otherwise be its natural death. The potential for horrific abuses was not just obvious, it was a key feature:

"It is the beginning of Man Immortal and Man Ubiquitous," said Straik. "Man on the throne of the universe. It is what all the prophecies really meant."

"At first, of course," said Filostrato, "the power will be confined to a number--a small number--of individual men. Those who are selected for eternal life."

"And you mean," said Mark, "it will then be extended to all men?"

"No," said Filostrato. "I mean it will then be reduced to one man. You are not a fool, are you, my young friend? All that talk about the power of Man over Nature--Man in the abstract--is only for the canaglia. You know as well as I do that Man's power over Nature means the power of some men over other men with Nature as the instrument. There is no such thing as Man--it is a word. There are only men. No! It is not Man who will be omnipotent, it is some one man, some immortal man. Alcasan, our Head, is the first sketch of it. The completed product may be someone else. It may be you. It may be me."

"A king cometh," said Straik, "who shall rule the universe with righteousness and the heavens with judgement. You thought all that was mythology, no doubt. You thought because fables had clustered about the phrase 'Son of Man' that Man would never really have a son who will wield all power. But he will."

"I don't understand, I don't understand," said Mark.

"But it is very easy," said Filostrato. "We have found how to make a dead man live. He was a wise man even in his natural life. He live now forever: he get wiser. Later, we make them live better--for at present, one must concede, this second life is probably not very agreeable to him who has it. You see? Later we make it pleasant for some--perhaps not so pleasant for others. For we can make the dead live whether they wish it or not. He who shall be finally king of the universe can give this life to whom he pleases. They cannot refuse the little present."

"And so," said Straik, "the lessons you learned at your mother's knee return. God will have power to give eternal reward and eternal punishment."

30:

The gut-brain axis plus microbiome - both concepts have become accepted as the way humans operate and most likely are necessary for human survival.

One thing I liked about Stephenson's /Fall, or Dodge in Hell/ (which remains, at this date, the closest thing I seen in SF to an appreciation of the real difficulty of the upload problem) was that the uploaders eventually realized that it is not enough just to scan heads. To get a realistic reconstruction, you need the whole body.

This would particularly be true for emotions. The main thing that distinguishes emotions from other mental states is that they are tightly linked to survival-related changes in body physiology. Thus, the sensation of ones heart speeding up is an essential part of the experience of fear. This is why beta-blockers, which have essentially no direct effect on the brain, reduce the emotional stress of fear-inducing situations -- they block the peripheral effects of fear.

31:

Side note:

I once had a born again Baptist tell me in all earnestness that Gandhi and other good people were burning in hell because they did no accept Jesus as their personal savior. This means all Hindus, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, etc., - as well as a good many Christians who are not fundies - burn in hell.

OK, so Gandhi dies and wakes up in the agony of the infernal pit. After a few thousand years he starts to meditate and finds that he can think through the pain. After a few eons he can actually function as a creature with agency and ability to act.

He starts teaching/preaching to the damned around him (the vast majority of which are good people like himself - there being comparatively few Nazis and mass murderers over the course of human history). They follow his path to a point where they can function in Hell and begin to create a "Society of the Unfairly Damned".

Upon meeting Satan (who like his demons are also in agony in hell) Gandhi convinces him that the best way to revolt against God is to practice non-violent soul force and not cooperate with injustice. Soon everyone but the worst of hell (Hitler makes an obligatory appearance) has followed this new path, creating a new universe of their own making.

God can do nothing to stop this since hell, by definition, is a place where God is absent.

In a few million years, hell is transformed into a advanced universe of mathematics, poetry, songs, science and philosophy.

Then its denizens, who have had millions of years to solve this problem, find a away out of hell and enter the universe of God....

32:

tomoyo & Duffy
And ... C S Lewis was one of ( If not the ) first to warn us of this ...

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

And Lewis was an almost-foaming-level christian, but even he could see the problem.

33:

Quite right LAvery.

I have in mind that there was spoof article in the style of a neuroscience experiment, but looking at a transistor radio (or computer?). Can you help with a link?

Ta.

34:

Thank you so much, Charlie. A lot of this does matter in the future universe I'm writing, and now I have to reconsider a number of things in two whole bloody novels. (They're still in "considering revisions" stage, with one just having a first beta read).

I also have a short dealing with downloading that I'm trying to sell, and yes, it's very disturbing.

One thing, though: all of what I see in this thread assumes that the uploaded mind is always running, except for being shut down and restarted. What's not considered is, well, offline backups of your mind.

35:

ARGH! That is a novel, and series, I HATE, and refer to it as That Hideous Trilogy. And I assure you that had it not been C.S. LEWIS, that the second and third would never have gotten out of the slush pile, except from a religious publisher. The one you mention, right, everyone who wants anything new (new, def: anything from after Lewis was born and grew up) is a direct agent of the Devil (tm), and in the end, he literally pulls the animals out of the city zoo to kill the leaders.

This is so overwhelmingly Christian-biased I consider nothing in it worth it.

36:

Dave Lester:

Katrin Amunts (look her up) has a basement in Julich where she slices up ... human brains in an attempt to construct a connectome.

Why have I got the notion that a sinister version of her is right at home in the Laundryverse? (Ellipses indicate removal of "donor" from the original sentence.)

37:

SFReader,

You ask some very interesting questions.

On the matter of “things going wrong”, there must be lots of mechanisms that try to keep the brain machinery on track. We know of relatively few. One of the crudest must be energy supply. If all our neurons fired at the same time (instead of ten times per second), we’d be having an epileptic attack, and will be exhausted afterwards. As I say, there must be hundreds of others.

As you also say, a disconnected brain is not going to be doing anything very much — that’s why we had a part of the project that was devoted to providing a robotic front end. The leader of that effort (Alois Knoll) told me of his need to do “soft robotics”, where instead of a rigid steel skeleton and a classical PID controller, we had a fibreglass/carbon fibre skeleton so that a wild movement wouldn’t decapitate a human standing nearby! Plus, it could compensate for wear and increased friction, by adapting as it learns about its environment.

A thought from the late Karlheinz Meier (one of the designers of the ATLAS-1 detector at CERN), who had a neuromorphic system that runs 10,000 times faster than real time, was to connect it up to financial data, and see if it did anything interesting.

The usual mechanism for linking brains to the rest of the body for moods is supposed to be hormones — I’m not sure whether it is that simple.

38:
Katrin Amunts (look her up) has a basement in Julich where she slices up ... human brains in an attempt to construct a connectome. Why have I got the notion that a sinister version of her is right at home in the Laundryverse? (Ellipses indicate removal of "donor" from the original sentence.)

There was a competition for literature inspired by the HBP. I had considered making an entry, along the lines of LaundryVerse FanFic, but I was a bit hectically busy at the time.

"In a basement in Julich -- where the German government stores it's nuclear waste, and houses it's most powerful computers -- a lone female scientist works on late into the night. ..."

39:

NB: this makes Roko's Basilisk a criminal

Jail for Roko's Basilisk! Jail for one thousand years!

Roko's Basilisk is wasting time (processing power) by torturing those who have knowingly impeded the once-and-future AI king, when they might simply create simulated versions of people who have already been tortured for an appropriate period.

40:

I have in mind that there was spoof article in the style of a neuroscience experiment, but looking at a transistor radio (or computer?). Can you help with a link?

Sorry, doesn't ring a bell. Or are you asking for a link to something else I said?

I have been told that the problem can be solved for integrated circuits, i.e., for things that we engineer ourselves. I met an interesting guy once at Janelia Farm, which, as I'm sure you know, is a Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute campus devoted to the problem of understanding how nervous systems work. This man I met was not a (conventional) neuroscientist, but an electrical engineer. He told me that Intel was in the habit of making scans of their CPU chips available to academic researchers, without circuit diagrams or functional information. (This is the very rough equivalent of the C elegans EM reconstructions.) A group of academics decided to see if they could reconstruct the functional circuitry, and succeeded! (He claimed. I cannot evaluate his claim, but I was impressed with the guy. Definitely seemed to know what he was talking about.)

This is, for a host of very obvious reasons, a much easier problem than reconstructing a working brain model. But even this much easier problem was not easy.

41:

The usual mechanism for linking brains to the rest of the body for moods is supposed to be hormones — I’m not sure whether it is that simple.

It certainly is not. At a minimum you need the autonomic nervous system. And remember, the autonomic nervous system is a NERVOUS SYSTEM, which means it has billions of specific connections. It is not the simple global fight-or-flight caricature that popular caricatures often depict.

42:

I'm concerned about the simple question of what religions can do with nothing more than a smart phone. It's so horrific that I'm not even going to post what I'm thinking of.

43:

Re: '... our identity has been linear: there is a start, there is a terminus, along the way we are indivisible,'

Time as part of self-identity. Just remembered 'patient HM' who because of brain surgery:

a) remembered himself/his life up to the moment that he had surgery

b) nevertheless was able to 'learn' new materials such as how to solve a problem even though he was unable to recall when/how he learned to do this

This is a must-read for neuroscience:

'The Legacy of Patient H.M. for Neuroscience'

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2649674/

Met someone who was doing a neurosci PhD at McGill that mentioned that Brenda Milner who interviewed HM for decades (basically helped establish that there is more than one memory system) was still doing lab work and seminars at the age of 96. And it looks like she's still going - amazing! (She's 104.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Milner

44:

As I was reading the description of the uploaded minds panicking, or suffering some other reaction, I wondered if there would be software/data analogs of various mood-altering drugs? Something in the emulation environment that acts like one of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors? Or the "be happy, don't worry" synthetic opioids?

45:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

Sort of like a parent-child relationship?

46:

Don't troll.

Children are a special case insofar as they're demonstrably not competent, at least at first. (They mature at differential speeds, and I'm very far from convinced that a one-size-fits-all "you're 18 tomorrow, at which point you're an adult, but today you're my chattel and you will obey" approach is valid, but it's undeniable that a one year old needs continuous care and guidance to ensure they don't harm themselves.)

Look, humans are squishy meatsacks with irregular boundaries. You can't generalize too much, beyond "prolonged exposure to vacuum may be detrimental to future metabolic viability of shaved apes".

Otherwise, here's a blog essay I baked in 2016 about the limits of the simulation hypothesis and resurrection sims in general.

47:

The horrors that will be available to those controlling the compute resource will be appalling, however it is likely to be something that gets sorted out within a generation or so - most probably, it'll be the elite that get to upload first and they're not going to do that unless they're pretty sure that the legal protections are reasonably solid.

We probably need to enshrine in law (with some serious penalties) that no human simulation may be altered or run as a means to an end, but only as an end in itself. While I loved Charlie's version of the singularity where AIs were limited by needing to simulate human level minds, it seems pretty unlikely that we would achieve upload without being able to do fairly human equivalent things without simulating an actual human.

Perhaps this would lead to two levels of AI - those that can claim that they ultimately the result of an upload, which will be fully protected by law, and those that cannot, the evolution of tools and 'watch-the-space-ship' functions. That second class could easily be as or more advanced than the first class, but it's hard to see how they would achieve rights without support from humans and the first class.

48:

Um... and twenty or thirty years from now, exactly who will be controlling those compute resources? My Core-I7 desktop with 16G RAm and terabytes of storage, compared to my Really Cool 286 with half a meg of RAM and wow, my boss gave me for a holiday present a 30M hd, much bigger than my 20M hd.... (true story, holidays 1989).

49:

My Core-I7 desktop with 16G RAm and terabytes of storage

And if you do much more with all that power than access services run on cloud compute then you're not the normal person.

I'm finding that even dumb simple utilities that used to live on my harddrive are now SaaS websites with 9.99 per month basic plan. It would be great if the trend were to move things to human-person owned devices, but that's not the trend I'm seeing.

50:

Comment deleted by moderator

51:

it seems pretty unlikely that we would achieve upload without being able to do fairly human equivalent things without simulating an actual human.

Yep, there's a lengthy passage—a no-shit "tell me, professor" lecture delivered by an actual Professor of AI in Rule 34, infodumping on the hapless detectives, about why nobody outside a few cognitive science academics wants an actual human-like artificial intelligence: it'd have its own goals and probably want to do the AI equivalent of sitting on the sofa watching reality TV shows and eating popcorn all day. (Hence ATHENA, which is very much not a human-like AI.)

52:

Greg: I deleted your comment because you can use the previous discussion thread for random current events without derailing this one.

53:

I agree. What purpose, other than study, would having an actual self-aware AI serve? You want a very good, general purpose system that does what you want. That's why I have problems with robot rebellions - who's going to revolt, the welding robots on the assembly line at a car plant?

In my universe, I've put in Intelligent Agents. They are explicitly not self-aware, and so have a balanced, nuanced view of problems.

54:

Another possible “Why” for uploading Humans is of course easier programming. Bunches of Humans and support data systems would be packaged up as “functionality libraries”.

For example, here’s one that does income tax returns. Several accountants, a couple of lawyers, a copy of the tax code and a document workflow system are included. It’s essentially a small tax processing company in a box. Lazy programmers like it because it can interface with their code automatically (it has the smarts to talk to other libraries to find out what documents they need). Who cares that it simulates the lives and equipment of a small company in these times of cheap cloud computing? It’s just so easy to plug and play!

So you thought code bloat was bad. Wait until some slob programmer includes a bureaucracy in a box to format international date strings. Sometimes the box sends a delegate to international date standards committee meetings. You now have excessive bloat AND long update times!

There should be a contest for worst use of computonium. Using a small simulated country to find the length of a string would be one. Another contender would be that project to recreate historical people by repeatedly approximating their existence until their output matches historical values…

55:

This fits with my speculation that there are realistic models of computation that cannot be mapped onto a Turing machine, and that, if we want to understand human or even C. elegant mentation, we will probably have to use some of them. I have tried to get further but am not smart enough.

56:

That's absurd. Why would you want to waste all your CPU cycles simulating a human, or a bunch of them, when what you want is an expert system that interviews a bunch of accountants, and then can scan through the public documentation on taxes, and then produce your taxes? And it runs an update every year?

Really and truly, folks - can you see any company you've worked for okaying a huge project to simulate an accountant, when you already have, Quickbooks or TurboTax? And maybe an expert system front end to them, if you're busy trying to avoid paying taxes?

57:

Depends on how creative the simulated humans are, compared to a pure AI system? (Expert systems are ... they're far less sophisticated than the 1980s hype suggests. What you're probably thinking of is a GAN.)

Thing is, human accountants and tax lawyers can spontaneously game out what-if scenarios for creative tax avoidance (ahem: not the same thing as evasion, honest). Which a non-conscious/non-volitional system may be incapable of doing, insofar as such planning involves a bunch of self-directed adversarial thinking.

58:

I'm not sure. What if the "theory of mind" of the accountant in a box is based on a hundred years of IRS court findings instead of figuring out how to survive a trip to the watering hole. Now you've got something that can understand the adversary and run simulations without human help.

What was the line from TRON? "I don't know what to do. I'm an accounting program!"

59:

I dunno - I think a correctly designed system could run simulations based on directives from the user, who can suggest possibilities... and also ask for a list of possibilities (as opposed, say, to text games from the 80's, where it frequently turned into a word-guessing game ("pick it up? put it on? get it?....)

60:

Charlie - OK I understand.
Will remember to post to "other" thread, tomorrow, after next round (!)

61:

While I agree that Troutwaxer's accountant in a box could be trained to minimize taxes and chances of being audited, while being fully admissible in court...it looks like the simpler system is simply to put that money towards re-electing politicians who consistently vote to underfund the IRS.

What's more interesting is that nonhuman entities are being granted the legal rights of humans. These aren't AIs, they're rivers and lakes:*

in Bangladesh, Ecuador, Bolivia, New Zealand...: https://www.npr.org/2019/08/03/740604142/should-rivers-have-same-legal-rights-as-humans-a-growing-number-of-voices-say-ye

...Colombia (the Amazon), US (Klamath, Lake Erie), Canada (Magpie River)...: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/these-rivers-are-now-considered-people-what-does-that-mean-for-travelers

Jokes about paging Ben Aaronovitch aside, these are interesting cases about the legal potential, and hurdles, of enforcing the legal rights of extremely nonhuman entities, even when they don't apparently have the human equivalent of free will.

*and of course, US corporations...

62:

@LAvery at 23/ Elderly Cynic @ 25:

This, exactly. Copying a human mind would be so freaking complex that I actually think it can't be done in a cost-effective manner--in that, by the time you have the computational technology to duplicate a human, you solved GAI long before. I can't see copying a human as being easier or cheaper than just raising a new one. Then there's the ethical issues involved in creating pilot or beta versions of a person--are we going to delete sapient beings just because they are imperfect copies? There's your first set of laws--no experimentation on newly sapient minds.

(That doesn't necessarily shut down GAI research because you can do that in an evolutionary mode--ie, let primitive minds evolve into more complex ones with minimal suffering).

Then again, it turns out that humans are amazingly good at a wide variety of things. The US has around one traffic fatality per 100 million miles driven (https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-releases-2019-crash-fatality-data), Tesla on their best day can't approach that. As of July 2022, there were around 40 million commercial flights per year, but only a handful of fatal crashes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft). There are around 500 accidental gun deaths per year (https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/guns/), there are similar statistics for deaths by fire, subway accidents, injuries while camping, etc.

The point is that humans, for all the opportunities we expose ourselves to danger and potential mishap, are actually pretty reliable. Eventually, I expect AI will get there, but it won't be easy or cheap. So the idea of "replacing the human mind" may be more challenging than pop science makes it appear. Trying to upload a real human would be orders of magnitude more complex than that. Why would anyone want to do this?

If the idea is lifespan extension (potentially to infinity) then the consumer market takes over, and I think that's all the horror you need. How do you make a very expensive service available to the majority, but keep "the wrong sort" from acquiring it? Price, typically. This is an idea for trillionaires, not normal people. Their rights will be respected, you and I are gunna' die. As the wise man said to the fish: "Sorry Charley."

I suspect the hell will be entirely material, while the likes of Elon, Jeff and Mo are going to be playing doubles tennis for eternity.

SFReader at 27: "Apart from identifying, pigeon-holing (mapping) individual neurons, I'm wondering how many potential combinations and permutations would then have to be mapped to result in a verifiably 'identical' mind?"

And not only that--but the brain is not a static entity. If those weighted pathways change with every neural burst, then there is no "the mind". If the mind is a process, not a thing, then uploading it at one particular point in it's lifespan could be meaningless (as in, not a thing that could "run" again). At least not separately from the environmental stimuli (including physiological actions) that drive it. So you can't upload a mind, you can only upload a mind/environment system.

That means duplicating the world the mind grew up in. Whole 'nother order of complexity.

63:

I can imagine an 'arms race' between tests to determine whether a program is a sentient being (and thus has rights' or a dumb program.

Penalties for abusing sentient programs would have to be brutal, an echo of the Blood Code. Since it would be so very difficult to catch anyone abusing a sentient program, the rare occasions where it did happen would have to be comparable to a capital crime.

Capital crime in a posthuman/transhuman world would probably be total deletion of all instances of anyone who committed such atrocities, their enablers, corporations. Complete disinheritance of any heirs.

Perhaps worse would be for your identity to be deemed 'fair use' and put into the open source world for tweaking and enslavement by anyone, legally.

Both examples are monstrous.

Richard Morgan's books were what turned me off the idea of functional immortality. We're seeing enough of a mess with the gerontocracies of today that have been enabled by improvements to modern medicine. The only respite for the world from the likes of Mitch Mconnell, Trump and even Brenda is the fact that they will inevitably leave us. A 200 or 2000 year old lich-analogue still clinging to power is a terrifying notion.

64:

Poor old Henry Molaison was unmasked quite some time ago. There's a pretty interesting account of him available - Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets.

65:

the right not to have your personality, beliefs, or memories modified without prior informed consent,

That would be a brand new right, and one that would be contested as encroaching on the way things have always been done {tm}. At the brutal end government "manages" people who have what it deems unacceptable personalities, beliefs and sometimes memories in various ways up to execution. Your personality may make you unable to feel remorse for hurting people, but if you can't restrain that enough to become a CEO you're probably going to end up in jail.

The technical handwaving about being allowed to believe, remember and 'have personality' of any sort you like, as long as you never talk about it or act on it... is not convincing. You'll note that many governments regard brainwashing by non-government groups as a crime, and some forms are crimes regardless (gay conversion therapy, for example).

Witness the comment the other day that the UK has apparently formally restricted the promotion of "Palestine" as a nation-state... technically you can still believe it, but you can't say that you do. Likewise the "promotion of homosexuality" is frowned on in Russia, much as the promotion of cannibalism is frowned on in the USA. And there's always a fun discussion to be had about the merits of believing that marijuana is a sacrament.

66:

Why waste CPU cycles on running a box of accountants, lawyers etc? You truly underestimate the power of a lazy programmer to slap together something from existing parts rather than doing actual coding. Particularly if it’s off the shelf pre-made components. CPU is cheap in the future so the cost of simulating Humans is negligible, compared to the effort to slap something together.

Relatedly, it may go the software as a service route. Makes more sense to use someone else’s already up and running box of accountants than running your own. The programmer merely connects the services together via possibly something like service contracts.

For that matter, to keep the simulated accountants happy, the tax service may connect to a simulated coffee shop service. There could be a whole economy set up for making the lives of the sims happy and productive!

Future job title: Economy manager for a simulation world.

67:

Re: '... but the brain is not a static entity.'

Agree!

No idea whether the different areas or cells of the brain have been studied in terms of evolution/susceptibility to change/mutation but I'm guessing that different human brain cells can and will mutate including during a person's organic lifetime. (Epigenetic changes, not just mutations that are or become brain cancer.)

If everyone uploads, what happens to human brain (and rest of body) evolution? I'm not sure that uploaded intelligence can evolve. It might enlarge itself, add a few new 'brain apps' every once in a while, but come up with something completely and freakishly different that is useful. Not sure about that.

Weird - but the more I read the comments, the more I feel that we're positing a race between AI becoming more 'human' and humans becoming more 'AI'.

BTW - my threshold for granting AI personhood is emotional development/self-awareness on top of logical capabilities. Once any entity can feel and react positively/negatively to stimulus, consider and think about what is happening to them (self-reflect and inter-relate) - they're a person. (No idea whether there is any official neuro-psych operational definition for 'person'.)

68:

This discussion is taking place on a planet where flat, young, earthers sway elections.

69:

Accidents with self-driving cars are pretty well documented, but no self-driving car is going to do a Charlottesville

In the trivial sense, no of course not. No AI is going to give a press conference to announce that the people they killed deserved to die, let alone be put on trial. But the broader question: if a self-driving car colony (set? collection? whatever the term for the AI in charge of a subset of self-driving cars is) preferentially killed a particular class of human, how would we know? Even if it killed them unnecessarily.

Making a claim like that where the only way to prove it either way is to perform the experiment is also a bit ugly. Especially when the answer is likely statistical. "self-driving cars in the US kill five black people for every two white people"... discuss.

70:

And in Australia the recently deposed Prime Minister just gave a sermon where he denounced faith in government and said that anxiety is best cured by god juice. The voters of Australia actually elected this guy last time, knowing what he was like.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/don-t-trust-in-governments-the-un-scott-morrison-delivers-pentecostal-church-sermon-20220718-p5b2i2.html

71:

A genocidaire in the making? Wiping out future generations one prophecy at a time...

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/07/the-dangerous-populist-science-of-yuval-noah-harari

Article is also interesting for the profusion of links used as references to back up the arguments. A style I wish was more popular, but I appreciate that it takes time to do that and most people can't be bothered. They also sometimes get quite upset when I say "if you don't see any value in backing up your own argument I don't see why I should engage with it at all".

72:

Ooops, left out the quote. From that article:

“We’re headed toward a situation where A.I. is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now,” Musk said in a 2020 New York Times interview. Musk is wrong. The algorithms will not take all our jobs, or rule the world, or put an end to humanity anytime soon (if at all). As A.I. specialist François Chollet says about the possibility of algorithms attaining cognitive autonomy, “Today and for the foreseeable future, this is stuff of science fiction.” By echoing the narratives of Silicon Valley, science populist Harari is promoting—yet again—a false crisis. Worse, he is diverting our attention from the real harms of algorithms and the unchecked power of the tech industry.

73:

the right to suicide irrevocably (with complete and permanent erasure of backups and offsite copies of one's mind)

The thorny question then is whether any or all of those copies, being sentient in their own right once run up in some other infrastructure, consent to being deleted. If you fork()/exec() another instance of yourself, does the self(1) have any rights over the fate of the new instance, or is the new instance, self(2), entirely self-determined? That's totally without taking into account the possible existence of a self(0) that is instantiated in wetware, who might otherwise be thought to have some precedence and moral rights over all the digital instances.

74:

instantiated in wetware, who might otherwise be thought to have some precedence and moral rights over all the digital instances.

So if there are a multitude of digital copies and one of them copies itself to a biological instance, that one gets to delete the others?

There's going to be some fun times if the cryogenic fad intersects with the digitisation one. The meat puppet wakes up to find that it's been sold for parts to fund the equivalent of DLC.

I'm also wondering whether a paused copy loses rights compared to a running one, and how that interacts with the speed/lived experience factor. Should a digital copy that's spent 1000 years earning enhanced capabilities or various sorts be terminated because a meat puppet with senile dementia wants to take every copy with it when it goes?

75:

There is the interesting philosophical question - is suffering real if you don't remember if? I believe that we have real life examples of this in surgical procedures. AIUI the patient is given something to induce amnesia along with the anaesthetic. This is because patients are known to become aware during surgery, and feel the pain, but will have forgotten by the time they come out of anaesthesia. So if you spin up a simulated human, allow them to suffer for a few hours, and then wipe them, are you doing anything different from the above example?

76:

Over at qntm, in the comments, i noticed the suggestions to commit suicide collectively just before mind uploading in the way described in the story became possible.

Maybe that’s a candidate for The Great Filter wrt the Fermi paradox. Once a civilisation becomes aware of mind uploading possibilities and its consequences, the individuals rather choose to die than to have their minds uploaded and possibly be subjected to eternal torment.

77:

"The thorny question then is whether any or all of those copies, being sentient in their own right once run up in some other infrastructure, consent to being deleted."

For a passive backup, having never been run up on anything, no consent needed.

Once a copy has been run up, and run for long enough (How long that might be is yet another question) to have made up its own mind, yes its consent is needed, and might well not be forthcoming.

JHomes

78:

For a passive backup, having never been run up on anything, no consent needed

My intuition is to agree with you, but I think it might be more complicated, mostly because of how this falls into current debates about personhood, the beginning of life and all that. If a passive backup is a potential person (handwaving all the issues around whether it's possible to upload and run a person like this in the first place and assuming that it is the case), it is closer to being a person than an embryo is, at least to my mind, so all the arguments about the embryo being a potential person apply but are potentially actually significant in a way they are not for embryos. After all, to get a sentient person capable of clearly communicating their preferences about the future*, all you have to do is run their code up in a suitable virtual environment. You don't have to implant it in a uterus, gestate and give birth to it, rear and raise it to the point it has language and enough awareness of its options to express preferences about them. So even a passive backup is more like a person than an embryo. So if some people believe that embryos have rights, then some people, maybe not the same people, may believe that passive backups have rights.

Other interesting topics are data governance (already a big deal in the real world for things that are not "people") and data retention and disposal laws. Oh and data disclosure laws. It's a kind of von-Neumann-to-the-ultimate-degree thing where suddenly data can be a person.

* I might not go along with everything Peter Singer has to say, but I find his concept of preference utilitarianism quite helpful in understanding what sentience means for me. So by way of a shortcut I'm referring to that in lieu of any of the much more complicated definitions of sentience people might chose to refer to otherwise.

79:

Should this be in this thread or the previous one? Accelerating GW from UK records - a very useful & concise summary from "Diamond Geezer".

80:

I'm also wondering whether a paused copy loses rights compared to a running one, and how that interacts with the speed/lived experience factor.

This opens up all sorts of considerations, starting with what it means to "pause" a running person. I presume it means that it's possible to freeze their current state in a way that is possible to resume at a later time so that their subjective experience is an instantaneous transition from the moment where they were paused to the moment they resumed running. For the external representation, I think that we don't yet know how to represent a digital virtual human but we can draw analogies with current technology. We already virtualise computers, which are both Turing machines and von Neumann machines. You can get a "paused" quiescent state from such a machine by shutting it down, in which case a quiescent virtual example has configuration data about how it is implemented (CPU architecture, RAM resource, virtual devices, etc) and any storage volumes it has access to. But that wouldn't do for a digital human: the analogy to "shutting down" is death. Virtualisation platforms do have a sleep/hibernate concept, which basically involved adding a snapshot image of current RAM content to the other data already mentioned. And that means the persistence artefacts are a mirror to the architecture of a von Neumann machine, bringing us back to the point that we don't know what the architecture of a digital human would look like.

Let's assume that there is an analogy to the "sleep/hibernate" state. Does the person involved need to consent to being paused? What are their rights in relation to anything that might happen to interfere with the infrastructure they are running on? How is that infrastructure powered and maintained? Can many people run in a given infrastructure and can any of those people own it? Can they all own it collectively?

81:

Any AI that is human-equivalent is likely to suffer from some form of senile dementia. There is a lot of evidence that human lifetime cannot usefully be extended to beyond about 120 years.

82:

Apologies if this comes out vaguely incoherent - sleep deprived, courtesy of the heat:

I tend to lean towards Iain Banks' Culture series here - any stable, non-dystopian transhuman society would probably have to be one that treated the human mind as private property, and would probably possess strong safeguards and underlying social attitudes to protect the individual 'sanctity' of the mind.

Attempting to alter or interfere with any other mind, would be highly prohibited and/or taboo. I also think that these restrictions would necessarily have to stretch to what you're allowed to do with your "own" mind. Tinkering with your own mind might well be prohibited (or at least socially taboo), but practices with the potential to destabilise your entire posthuman society would need to be. So, running multiple parallel copies a la The Quantum Thief is out - hard pass, both illegal and socially unacceptable, as we don't necessarily want people making an army of copies of themselves in whatever posthuman post-scarcity space they're occupying.

(On the related subject of backups, well, it really depends on the philosophical outlook of the society in question. Do they consider the backup to be the same person, fundamentally, or simply a copy? Do they hold to the notion that the 'self' is merely a story that a brain tells itself about the various conscious states it remembers generating over time, and as such a backup would be as much 'them' as they are? Or do they hold to the idea that there exists some sort of essential nature to each organism and its conscious experience? They may have knowledge on The Hard Problem of consciousness that we lack, which could inform their worldview.)

Ultimately, we can probably define what the crimes of a future transhuman society should be, by looking at an example of a dystopia that most people would want to avoid. For that, I would use Rajaniemi's Sobornost as a prime example - there's a section in the Flambeur trilogy that sticks with me, where one of the AI 'gods' of the Sobornost uses the fragments of minds they've forcibly uploaded as raw material to forge a useful tool. We probably should try to avoid that.

83:

The other big one will be rules relating to mortmain. If I can have an immortal AI that is an extension of my will beyond my death, we could end up with the kind of situation C S Lewis describes in The Abolition Of Man where a generation ends up controlling all future generations.

84:

Capital crime in a posthuman/transhuman world would probably be total deletion of all instances

The question there is if there are instances running in another infrastructure, are they the same person and subject to the same punishment? If they had just been snapshotted and instantiated, then maybe sure you'd argue it's the same person. But what if they separated years ago and have led totally independent "lives" for all that time? Are we able to hold one responsible for the crimes of the other? Like wot Cain said, but for serious?

I note in SF that handles this stuff in a broader societal context that is complex enough to support more-or-less unrelated plot lines, multiple instances are just avoided. In Morgan's stuff, there's a fearsome overarching governing entity that strictly forbids this, on pain of them siccing the Envoys on you. The background reasoning why this entity exists and how it gets its authority isn't really explored, it's just a given that this is a bad thing... breached in the 3rd novel of course. In Banks, of course, ethical behaviour is an emergent property of intelligence and the hyper-intelligent machines that run the society make it so that these issues are avoided. These are both highly dubious outcomes, so I think you're right to assume the worst we can imagine.

85:

John Barnes played with something like that idea in his "Million Open Doors" series. Along with the ethics of mixing personalities, multiple copies, etc.

Robert Sawyer played with the idea of who is the 'actual' person when a copy is made several times.

86:

"...it'd have its own goals and probably want to do the AI equivalent of sitting on the sofa watching reality TV shows and eating popcorn all day."

I expect you're aware of this already, but that's more or less the premise for The Murderbot Diaries. There's a lot of comedy in the series, but also some proper horror. The light narrative tone helps make the horror readable. Murderbot is sometimes a very unreliable narrator, for good reasons.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheMurderbotDiaries

"I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don't know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure." — All Systems Red

87:

Can many people run in a given infrastructure and can any of those people own it? Can they all own it collectively?

If we assume they're running in some descendant of current digital architecture there's some fun philosophical questions about whether they even experience continuous time, because they very likely won't be running that way. Even some "real time" code actually runs very fast then pauses, fast, pause, fast... so an AI that does that could well perceive that time is continuous (at some speed that may or may not be 1:1 with meatsack time perception), but arguably it's not, and it may not even have internally coherent time. Whatever that means for a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires and baby cells and microorganisms.

If it's analogue in places, or asynchronous in some way, and especially if it's biological or psuedo-biological, pausing may not be an option. Mind you, copying might not be much easier than copying a people. We haven't considered whether copying is non-destructive either :)

Virtual machines that are hibernated are often difficult to revive if the hardware changes, I can easily imagine the saved state for an AI being very sensitive indeed to minor changes in the hardware bugs, let alone major infrastructure updates.

One of my trains of thought is about spawning instances for specific tasks, and the ethics of editing those instances (as well as limiting their environment). Should I have the right to create a series of instances to answer the question "what's the minimum viable instance size that won't drive me insane", because obviously answering that will require at least one instance gets driven insane. But flip side: if "I" consent to hacking a copy of me down to size then running it for a specific task, is that consent meaningful for the new instance? What if it can't issue meaningful consent because it's hacked down so much?

Flip side: what if I make a series of instances that are "better" than me in my opinion, with the intention of handing myself over to one that's sufficiently better? Can I meaningfully consent to the process, or the final handover?

88:

You're kind of missing the point with that though. If you've designed/trained your single-purpose A-non-I, then "preferentially killing" isn't by choice of the A-non-I, it's by design or training of the engineers who set it running. Which in turn is a bug/issue which can be tracked and fixed. Finding it is going to be harder, sure, because it's a statistical thing, but it's a perfectly viable piece of citizen journalism/analysis.

Not only that, it's a scenario which lends itself fairly well to being tested on the bench before it hits the streets. And if the testing doesn't show it up (e.g. because the engineers forgot to include !Kung in the training database of "this is what humans look like"), it can be added to a standardised list of things that people routinely check in this kind of work, in the same way as the Tacoma Narrows bridge added resonant airflows to the civil engineering checklist.

The point is that if you don't invoke uploads, you have something which can be engineered and improved. The definition of an upload though is taking a human brain as-is without improving it - and the human brain is subject to all the faults we know about plus probably a hell of a lot that psychologists are still figuring out. Given our inherent crapness at all repetitive tasks, and all tasks involving subjective comparison to an objective specification, why would this be desirable?

89:

Why do cashiers still exist?

90:

isn't by choice of the A-non-I, it's by design or training of the engineers who set it running. Which in turn is a bug/issue which can be tracked and fixed.

The way we "code" AI now is by training using large amounts of data. Think millions of scenarios. Saying "that's doesn't look good, let's try a different millions of scenarios" is expensive. Especially if by that we mean "millions of metres of road driven". The days of hand-coded expert systems are kind of gone, we know that doesn't scale. I've written software to allow experts to transcode written expert systems into computers and that was relatively easy for me but mind-numbingly tedious for them (think: what's growing on this petri dish? We have a book listing growth mediums, growing conditions and post-treatment, with 3-10 colour pictures per organism times a few hundred thousand organisms... can you just scan those and type the stuff in? Thanks)

But I think your idea is correct. When a self-driving car is at fault in a crash, it's the people who run the company that made it who go to jail. Now all we need is a legal system capable of doing that.

And some idea of what it means in practice. If, say, Tesla is found guilty and sentenced to 10 years jail, does that mean they pick 3653 employees who each serve one day? 365 employees who each serve (one day) times (seniority in the company)? Explicitly, can Elon pay someone to serve his day(s) in prison?

91:

Cashiers as in people who operate checkouts? Or as in people who swap money for tokens in casinos? Or banks?

The answer is that they increasingly don't. I use cash regularly but the last time I visited a bank was to sign mortgage paperwork. I get cash from ATMs and I deposit it that way too when I need to.

The checkout operators are being replaced by self-serve checkouts with one operator for 10+ checkouts, and also by the high tech (Amazon?) "grab stuff and walk out" stores. Which I have only read about but I assume they use RF to identify the phone that gets billed and quite likely RFID on some products as well as visual monitoring.

But there and in casinos the staff are there partly as a suggestion that people not steal stuff, and partly to do things the machine can't do (shake hands! Change the roll in the receipt printer)

92:

Cashiers don't exist in any of the major fast-food chains. You order from the touch-screen menu, or you don't order at all.

Supermarkets (UK anyway; couldn't say elsewhere) are increasingly going self-scan. Granted that's still a human holding the barcode to the reader, but your customers spending their time doesn't cost you money. And the more relevant innovation in supermarkets is the self-scan handset, where you pick an item off a shelf and scan the barcode underneath it, in exactly the same way as Amazon's box-picking robots do in their warehouses. If you track items as you go round, whilst they're conveniently separate, you don't have the problem of sorting a trolley-full of random shopping at the end.

93:

currently (re-)re-reading Alistair Reynold's "The Prefect/Aurora Rising" at the moment which is very interesting on many of these points. Also, I like the treatment that Greg Egan did of this in a number of his works ("Diaspora" and "Permutation City" come to mind)

94:

"Attempting to alter or interfere with any other mind, would be highly prohibited and/or taboo."

That would need some carefully thought out definitions of "alter" and "interfere". Just in the current day, one could maintain that advertising, political propaganda, religious proselytization, "influencing" etc qualify. Also Rupert Murdoch.

95:

I think Greg Egan did a series of shorts exploring the question of what happens if you make it illegal to upload someone and turn them into a slave. To which the answer was, you take an average of existing uploads, do a bit of roulette on some parameters and spin up an unlimited supply of sentient slaves to work as NPCs in Mmorpgs, perfectly legally.

96:

Thanks for a very interesting thing to think about.

Three thoughts.

First, as system designer, I am willing to bet that trans-humanism will run much slower than humanism for a very, very, very long time.

Getting anything on the required scale running reliably will require very frequent snapshots, which is a performance drain, and also far too frequent roll-backs of them, each time setting subjective time back in the trans-humanist "world".

To me that kills the idea flat: How is the trans-humanist "world" going to generate sufficient economical value, to pay humanity to keeping the platform running ?

(Did you say "Entertainment value"? Right, load your copy of Lemmings, Railroad Tycoon or whatever later "trans-humanist world" you prefer and we are done here.)

Second, as to "crime and punishment": Given that the snapshot mechanism is there anyway, at least the most serious crimes can be "undone" by falling back to a snap-shot sufficient prior to the event, using a backdoor mechanism to magically deposit a memo in the inbox of the THWCPF (Trans-Humanist World Crime Prevention Force).

Because of the hit to performance, there will be a very big temptation to only do partial roll-backs, some court-determined group of individuals most affected by the crime.

That brings all sorts of legal trouble: What if the rolled-back innocent bystander had a winning lottery-ticket, which it now no longer knows the serial number of ?

Partial roll-backs of course also open the door for an entirely new kind of crime, which is exactly like old crime: Trying to get away without, without getting caught or rolled-back.

And the truly bizarre situation happens when everybody has heard about the crime, but the rolled-back proto-criminal now lives in a reality where it has not even imagined, much less contemplated the crime everybody knows about.

Third, in order to prevent oscillation, you can never roll back to the same snapshot more than once.

(Path A goes from snapshot S to crime Ca and causes rollback to snapshot S with memo Ma to THWCPF. The existence of Memo Ma causes a path B from snapshot S to crime Cb, with a different memo Mb to THWCPF, which after rollback to S activates Path A again.)

Of course, never rolling back to the same snapshot twice runs the risk of the entire thing unwinding itself back to Start...

The name of the game for the trans-humanist and IT-bro's who push for this is of course immortality, but immortality is just another way to say 100% uptime.

Nobody ever managed that...

97:

Cashiers don't exist in any of the major fast-food chains. You order from the touch-screen menu, or you don't order at all.

The only fast-food chain I visit at all regularly put in touch screens about a year ago. They sit largely unused, while people still queue up at the cashier. If they had asked, I'd have been happy to tell them this would happen after the first time I used the screen. The software requires the customer to go through the entire decision tree each order. Beef or chicken? Which burger? Extra ketchup? Fries? What size? Each on its own screen with unforgivable delays between. I've never done a simple order in less than a couple of minutes. The cashier, OTOH, understands "Quarter-pounder meal, medium" just fine.

Probably 80% of their business is the 10 most popular combos they list on the wall menu. And after a year they still haven't made the first screen a copy of that wall menu, with a "customize" option at the bottom. If they uploaded a copy of me to do that job, I would intentionally do the decision tree version, just out of obnoxiousness.

98:

The local convenience store chain (Wawa) only has touch screen ordering (or, thanks to the pandemic, you can order on-line). Every once in a while you see somebody that freaks out and an employee has to help them, but I would guess that is less that 1 in a 1000 customers.

Very efficient BTW, you order, get a slip with order # and bar code, get your other stuff, pay at the register (they just added self check out for credit cards) and go pick up your order. If it is really busy you may still have to wait a bit, but at least you can just grab it and go.

99:

It seems most of this discussion assumes a binary full upload (sans peripheral NS) or nothing. But what if the various parts of the brain can be isolated (and fed appropriate stimuli)?

This may be like isolating particular cognitive and non-cognitive components. Memories, decision-making, motor control, etc., are all separable and controllable.

The uploaded "mind" is now components that can be used separately for different tasks, composable, or fully reintegrated. What about swapping components between uploaded minds so that particular abilities can be changed?

What about using these components to feed back into a wetware mind, isolating the wetware and replacing it with the simulated component *whether the original or another or even a fake)?

[Brin's "Kiln People" had reintegration of memories from the temporary copies to the original.]

Given the experiments on electrical and mow optical control of neural circuits, how much easier to do this in software. Then you have control of the uploaded components and even the possibility of the wetware brain using the controlled uploaded components.

As regards changing the laws, and society, we seem to be having enough issues with embyros/fetuses, and brain organoids.

100:

Yes. That's something that needs sorting out the way things are already, but the chances are slim to say the least, because fucking with people's heads is absolutely all-pervadingly endemic on all scales from the individual to the massive international multi-billion-$currency industry, and not only do the owners of those industries favour it so they can continue to get loads of money, but also the mass of individuals mostly don't see it as a problem or even never have any thought about it at all. This is why although we do have laws against fraud and deception, they are incredibly narrow in scope: they exist not so much to prevent the highly specific activities to which they apply, but to stabilise a system in which huge chunks of it depend on fraud and deception either as their whole reason for existence or as a major critical enabling factor essential for their existence. You could say I don't have a lot of faith in the prospect of strong legal protections against hacking people's heads in the uploaded condition when hacking people's meat heads is something people do already all the fucking time without even thinking about it.

I can also see the possibility of vast cybernetic orgiastically-consumerist hells, wherein massive collections of uploaded and duplicated mind states are repeatedly hacked to compulsively spend upload-world money on endless iterations of upload-world "goods" (setting a one-bit flag to say you now have the latest up-to-the-millisecond model of u-pad, sort of thing), and somehow or other the meat people running the servers get meat-world money because this is happening. Yes, it's bloody stupid and makes no sense, but that never seems to matter when it's a money thing, and indeed AIUI people are actually doing it for real already with some online multi-user video games.

101:

I assure you they still exist in the US.

My point, though, is that just because we CAN do something in a way that seems more logical is absolutely no guarantee we will. People taking orders at fast food restaurants is a thing it's been possible to automate in a way that would be cheaper than paying even minimum wage for a loooooong time.

Most claims of 'if we had X technology, we would do Y thing' are mostly wrong in the short and medium term, if not the long.

102:

As a for instance, and I apologize for double posting, the convenience store chain, Sheetz, has never had someone to specifically take food orders in the forty years I've gone there. Before computers were widespread and cheap, this was just by checking boxes on a slip.

This is clearly something essentially any restaurant could do (and in my experience, in some sorts, is quite common) but they largely didn't. Lots of reasons, that make sense. But they didn't converge on the most logical option, for a given value of logical.

103:

My general thoughts on transhumanism are, in no particular order:

--tech immortality (when referring to electronic media) seems to be: forever or five years, whichever comes first.

--Global supply chain issues probably are not going away anytime soon, and at least rich humans can attempt to be locavores.

--Who owns you and the computronium you run on? If the word "rentier class" means anything to you...

--If technological uploading immortality tries to become more like health care, in the sense of prolonging "your" life, do you want the tech.immortality model to be more like the UK healthcare system, or the US healthcare system? And about affording free national transhumanism with the Tories in perpetual power....?

--In a transhuman upload, you don't die and wake up inside virtual space. You die, and something else in a virtual space gets stuck living with a simulacrum of your memories and personality. Is it ethical to inflict another free-willed intelligence with someone else's personality, rather than letting them develop their own personality and memories?

--Whose religion are the Transhumanists trying to force everyone to join again? Taoism and Buddhism are much more about eliminating the personal history that still matters (aka karma), not accumulating an infinitude of it. Perhaps this isn't an entirely stupid approach to living?

104:

Why do cashiers still exist?

Because self-checkouts don't quiver and cry when someone demands to see their manager?

(Only partly joking, after talking to retail workers who all have a story about horrible entitled customers…)

105:

To clarify: some customers seem to get enjoyment being nasty to staff, to the extent that they will ignore empty self-check registers to bully some poor teenager at a till.

106:

In response to several posts, including folks responding to my "why an uploaded accountant"? consider the following:
1.Why would you spend memory and CPU cycles on a human... which INCLUDES "do I need to go to the bathroom?""will I get laid this weekend?""Do I like the person/user who's asking me questions?""Should I screw them over, given that I don't like them, or they're being unethical, or they're going to screw me over?", and a ton more, all the way down to "I need to breathe, and keep my balance so I don't fall out of a (virtual) chair".
2. Then there's the entire memory structure of "I learned this in school", flash of a person I liked when I was 16", and on, and on?
Why not a non-full uploaded human, whose entire focus is on your requests, rather than all the back stuff loaded in there?

107:

Oh, maybe I should have added the question "what do you mean by uploading your mind?"
I've got a short I'm trying to sell, set maybe 50 years from now. She uploaded her mind before dying, and gives her sister access. What she get is not a full person; rather, the system simulates her, sampling the uploaded memories. It cannot possibly run her - for one thing, a lot of what's in her uploaded mind makes no sense in this context - balance, breathing, heartbeat, etc. And all of that would be necessary for a full "person", because a lot of our biophysical system affects what you're thinking.

So, what is this allegedly uploaded mind... and what's running it, and is it you, or just a simulation, based on data samples?

108:

I'm not sure about this - all governments modify people, but under laws. Consider the "modification" of being sent to jail. Or military training. At the same time, there are laws against an individual imprisoning someone (like the psychos putting their kids in a kennel).

109:

Underestimate lazy programmers? Not hardly. I understand that OOP can be efficient... but most of the time, you need a clipping of Godzilla's toenail, and you get Godzilla, in person, with a small frame around part of their toenail (and did you specify which toe?)

110:

What it means to "pause" a running person? Please explain how this is different than going to sleep at night.

111:

Re legal systems - hypothetically, a corporation does not protect an officer of said corporation from criminal charges. In practice, it does. I agree, we need laws specifying tht execs are liable for crimes committed by the corporation, since a corp. is not some building, or humongous pile of paper making choices, it's the execs directing it.

112:

Why do cashiers still exist?

When I was working as a clerk in the student store, my response to "why do you need clerks" was "for when the power goes off or the registers shut down." The downside to the automated approach is that it's more brittle than a human-based approach, even if it's more efficient and less capable of transmitting biological pathogens.

113:

" fucking with people's heads is absolutely all-pervadingly endemic on all scales from the individual to the massive international multi-billion-$currency industry"

Imagine an evangelical Protestant Christian trying to get an uploaded mind (or AI) to accept Jesus as it's own personal Lord and Savior.

114:

I'd be a lot more worried about ...

Facebook? Anyone want to exist at the whim of Mark Z? (He controls over 50% of the voting stock.)

Now I'm wondering about what his will looks like.

115:

I once had a born again Baptist tell me in all earnestness that Gandhi and other good people were burning in hell because they did no accept Jesus as their personal savior.

You've got to love it when someone who doesn't understand the faith they are preaching gets into an debate about that faith with others.

116:

Imagine an evangelical Protestant Christian trying to get an uploaded mind (or AI) to accept Jesus as it's own personal Lord and Savior.

Or, more subversively, Pure Land Buddhism.

Imagine, if you will, that uploading technology exists. An advanced Buddhist practitioner uploads, and the upload determines experientially that the virtual world can function as a Buddhist Pure Land...

Oops. For those who don't know (and honestly, I know very little), a Pure Land is a "paradise" created by one of the Boddhisattvas. If you get reincarnated into a Pure Land, you are in an environment where it is possible to become enlightened within your lifetime. Pure Land Buddhism, especially as practiced in Japan, assumes that our world is too laden with sin and crappy teaching for anyone to get enlightened here. Therefore they focus their efforts on getting reincarnated into a Pure Land, so that they can get off The Wheel in the next life.

To an outsider, Uploaded Pure Landers kind of go weird. They spend a lot of time dealing with old debts, paying for old crimes, etc (aka burning off all their karma and accumulating merit). Then they reach a wonderful state where they're a real joy to interact with. Then they completely delete themselves and all backups.

At first this looks like criminal behavior, and the upload host gets investigated for promoting suicide, until the virtual Buddhas spend quite a lot of time explaining that they're practicing their beliefs, that the company is not responsible.

Then comes a golden age for the company: their virtual members do vast good works, and most of them attain Nirvana in a few years, so there's continual turnover and good buzz. It's a great investment, and the company flourishes.

Then the problems start. For one thing, the number of people entering and the number leaving start to equal out, so growth slows, so investors start pressuring the company to innovate and increase ROI, or else they'll sell it off to someone who will. And, well, some fanatical Mammonites would say that the purpose of virtual existence is to live in Paradise forever (and provide a return for Paradise's landlords), not to do good works and take off. And any system can be hacked.

117:

The point is that humans, for all the opportunities we expose ourselves to danger and potential mishap, are actually pretty reliable.

Actually your examples are all based on us making the dangerous bits harder to use "wrongly".

Before mandatory car seats, kids would fly into the metal dash board when mom hit the brakes and then as the kid was starting to fly take her eyes off the reason for hitting the breaks to try and stop the flying kid which might make her drive up on the sidewalk instead of just clipping the bumper of the car ahead of her.

Farm equipment now has roll over bars. What I did from 14 to 20 with a tractor would be considered somewhat reckless these days by a growing segment of the population. And what my father did on the farm with a saw mill and slaughter house at aged 5 to 18 in the 30s, don't even go there.

I think people in general have gotten better as we require more training for so many things than in the past. But more of it, IMNERHO, is about making it harder for people to royally screw up. Even when they try.

118:

Heteromeles @103:

In a transhuman upload, you don't die and wake up inside virtual space. You die, and something else in a virtual space gets stuck living with a simulacrum of your memories and personality. Is it ethical to inflict another free-willed intelligence with someone else's personality, rather than letting them develop their own personality and memories?

This is, basically, the Star Trek Transporter problem, restated.

Let's look at this a little closer, in the context of AI, because I'd say this is very unsupportable as soon as GAI or Upload AI exist. Not because a computer intelligence couldn't be interpreted this way, but because they will so violently break our idea of the singular self that we just have to discard it.

The first thing to understand is that any functioning computer intelligence will be constantly saved, loaded, rolled back, replicated, moved, etc. and may not even know this is happening without access to some kind of special control interface.

Why? Because this is how giant cluster computers work.

You don't just load up brain.exe and run it, and let the program run forever. You run a huge compute job that by nature has to be designed spread itself over all compute resources, work around device failure, save snapshots of its state in case of problems, etc. Obviously, a computer person is going to be a computer job requiring unparalleled processing power, so we have to look at existing massive supercomputer systems to understand how they work.

So what does our computer person really look like? Well, to start with, you have a huge array of similar computers hooked up to massive storage devices, with a blazing fast network interconnect. Each computer runs its own OS instance, and when commanded to instantiate our friendly computer person, they each run some kind of brain simulator software with a piece of the person's mind. Think, millions of copies of the brain-sim program, each on a different component of the computer person's mind.

Regularly, maybe every few seconds, the whole person's mind will perform some kind of global synchronization, where each instance of the brain-sim very quickly saves aside a copy of what the person was thinking at that instant. It will then continue, while each of the millions of computers stores that bit of the brain back to the giant storage arrays. At least a few (say, a dozen) recent copies of the mind state will be retained, for catastrophic error recovery, but normal practice would be to also archive the mind's state every day, week, month, year, etc. just for safekeeping.

Every so often, let's say once a day, some of the nodes in this giant computer cluster will require service. If it was designed to run computer people, there are some expensive ways it could try to mitigate this without anyone noticing, but in practice the solution to a partial failure is to terminate all copies of brain-sim, kick out the bad nodes, and then respawn brain-sim using the last good copy of the person from a few seconds ago.

From your point of view, the person might seem a little dazed for a moment as they forgot what you were talking about. From their point of view, the world jerked and they lost a few seconds. Stupid hardware! From your Transporter Problem's point of view, the cluster software just murdered the computer person and instantiated a new person with their memories.

Now, it may occasionally happen (as a cluster computer person, read: will often happen) that instead of simply failing and requiring service, some nodes in the cluster will fail corrupt. That is, they will keep executing brain-sim, but the results are wrong due to some failed hardware component. This continues unnoticed for a while until at some point, other instances of brain-sim spit out an execution corrupt error.

Like above, you immediately halt the simulation, but you can't just roll back to the last copy -- it's also corrupt! The computer person might function for a while, but their mind-state is prone to being wrong or crashing. You have a few choices here: somehow determine when the hardware failed, and roll back to that time (it might be weeks ago). Or, you could attempt to scan and process the erroneous piece of the mind state so that while wrong, the simulation can continue but potentially with some minor brain damage. Or, possibly, you could attempt to boot the computer person with bits of their mind out of sync, which might give them a seizure or some minor brain damage or something like that as well.

So, does our computer person lose potentially significant life experience, or take some potential brain damage? What a choice! Not for them obviously, they're offline. For you, the computer operator: brain damage or murder? Let's go with murder!

Now the old copy of the person wakes up, and finds out that they've forgotten too much. "Oh no!" they say, "I would almost have preferred the brain damage! At least let me write down my thoughts, then roll me back!" So of course, since they're in charge of their own person, you do that: you store and halt the current copy, after they write down some instructions to their corrupt counterpart. Then you load the brain damaged copy, and they say "Murple zwixgart plup plup plup!" but after a bit their brain recovers (brains are quite resilient) and they say "I say! I feel fine, but perhaps I am damaged. I'd better write these thoughts down!" so they do. Then you halt and archive that copy, and restore back to the previous path.

If you look at the computer person's life experience, it doesn't even go in a straight line any more, with some pauses here and there. Most recently, we have a copy which has a big black hole where the corruption happened, but received some notes from the corrupt mind. Then we have the corrupt copy that woke up and recovered, but remembered that black hole (but did not remember everything the latest copy does!). Before that, we had the version who was rolled back, then the version that corrupted and was terminated -- it's in an unknown broken state, but it's there. And so on. For obvious reasons, our computer person is really going to want to keep some of them around in case there are important memories there that can be recovered someday, since they're dealing with a sort of recoverable amnesia here.

Who are all these people? They weren't created for fun or to spawn an army of clones -- they're just a computer person operating completely normally. This is just how life is for an AI running on one of our giant computer clusters. As the technology improves, the glitches in their consciousness will become less common, but this stuff will still be happening under the nice cover.

My point here is: computer people, at least ones running on generic computer hardware like all our current giant computer projects currently operate, do not resemble our brains at all. They're by nature constantly saved, loaded, reverted, rolled back, copied, duplicated, merged, and so on.

You can try to apply our monkey morality to them, but as soon as any of these computer people exist, you'll basically run into a wall: their experience is not like yours, and they have no choice but to be OK with all these things. They can't think of themselves as horrifying dystopian murder victims, because this is just how their minds function. It's nobody's fault, it's just the reality of thinking in silicon.

119:

Heteromeles @ 11:

What justifies the super-rich having any more rights in society than someone like me?

120:

This opens up all sorts of considerations, starting with what it means to "pause" a running person.

What about transferring them to a slower system? Or who picks who gets to exist on the more powerful ones?

121:

Charlie Stross @ 17:

Would that universal declaration of posthuman rights include corporations as persons?

122:

Let's look at this a little closer, in the context of AI, because I'd say this is very unsupportable as soon as GAI or Upload AI exist. Not because a computer intelligence couldn't be interpreted this way, but because they will so violently break our idea of the singular self that we just have to discard it.

A few points:

--Yes, I'm very glad you wrote all this.

--I wouldn't be surprised if our brains aren't doing many of the processes as a matter of course, with our "conscious mind" basically being the PR flack explaining that everything's fine, we're perfectly sane, etc. to the outside world. And yes, I'm not particularly a fan of positing that the PR Flack running our public persona is our soul. Possibly this is because I grew up in a family of engineers? Anyway...

--No, I very carefully didn't write "You die and wake up inside a machine." The critical point to me that if you're uploaded, you still die, and stories of reincarnation aside, I know of no evidence that you have a soul that would be dissociated when you die and incarnated in whatever the upload is. There's no mechanism for such continuity.

--The other critical point to me is that uploading takes an AI capable of human-comparable, free-willed thinking, and constraining it to emulate a particular human. To me, it's not the Star Trek transporter problem, it's the problem others have referred to of fucking with others' minds without their permission. Whether they think like us or not is less relevant to me than the problem of coercing them to act like us, unless they knowingly consented.

--and finally, thank you for writing that explanation!

123:

A long time ago I wrote and could not sell a short about a company that had successfully 'simulated' the 'God Experience'. Pay your money, plug in, see or otherwise experience a transcendent moment with God/whoever. Extremely addictive as an analogue to heroin (which badly simulates Oxytocin, the hormone released when your experience love/affection).

Of course, existing religions have a massive panic and it was quickly driven into the black market. So now the God experience is underground, people will do literally anything to get another minute in the eyes of their god. Much monstrousness ensues.

Much later I began working with people with addictions, and now I realize that I wasn't nearly dark enough when I wrote that story. I also realize it would make for a good, if sad book. Not willing to do the deep dive into religious literature to make the book work though.

124:

They sit largely unused, while people still queue up at the cashier. If they had asked, I'd have been happy to tell them this would happen after the first time I used the screen. The software requires the customer to go through the entire decision tree each order.

All of the ones I've used are about 16" wide by 35" tall. Basically a larger wide screen display rotated. Given that size you can make a lot of decisions without too many screens. And they get used a lot during the rushes. Stand in a line with 5 people ahead of you or a line for a screen with 1 or 2 ahead of you. I've used them in Spain, France, and several places in the US. The pictures are useful when you don't speak the local native tongue.

Then there is Chick-fil-a, Chipotle's, etc... in the US with apps where you can with your phone order, specify a pickup time (or not), pay, then get your order when you arrive.

125:

(Only partly joking, after talking to retail workers who all have a story about horrible entitled customers…)

Both of my kids did the fast food behind the counter thing. And being not obviously stupid they got to be shift managers. (Count heads and inventory and write it down.)

Both got to deal with customers AND employees having meltdowns. When your co-worker is screaming at a customer, it can be a long night.

126:

Please, I'm thinking of Nichirin Shoshu Buddhism and this. Or then, you could also be a Bhoddisatva, upload, and in seconds you've recited a stutra 100,000,000 times....

127:

Your post @ 109 is the answer to your own post @ 106. See also my comment mentioning Lego and glue in the previous thread.

128:

Can we do better? Why would we if we can comfortably ignore so many things; Here is my comment on the Lena page:

Brilliant writing example that is less about technology and more about our ability to ignore and rationalize suffering and horror on an industrial scale. Any society utterly unfazed by the daily squeals and death horror of about 100,000 cows, 100,000 pigs, and close to 140 million chickens slaughtered in factories would not care about the "theoretical" suffering of red washing or the conscious existence of a million human mind simulations. After all, that suffering is more "theoretical" and as distant as third-world hunger catastrophes in Africa.

129:

Wait - you're telling me with all that computing power, they don't have checkpoints? And if one server crashes, that the master doesn't just send that dataset out to the next available CPU, as they do with clusters related to beowulf?

130:

Justin Jordan @ 20:

How are the benefits from the cost savings of replacing human work with AIs to be shared out?

131:

It gets more complicated than that: I have a challenge for you - design an upload AI which can see colors. Sounds easy, right?

Now for the complications. "Red" is a set of photons which vibrate at a particular wavelength. Those photons hit the eye and interact with some chemicals that are part of cells. Something in the cells triggers a nerve. Then the mind (not the eye) perceives "red."

But "red" doesn't really exist. It's a visual code - an icon, if you will - for "the cells in your eye were stimulated by photons of a particular wavelength." Imagine a translation table, something like this:

Photons of wavelength X = "red" Photons of wavelength Y = "blue" Photons of wavelength Z = "pink"

But the table could as easily read:

Photons of wavelength X = "smooth" Photons of wavelength Y = "rough" Photons of wavelength Z = "spiky"

So what is red and how do you make an upload AI see it? Same goes for sound, smell, touch and taste. Sure, you can "simply" emulate the rods, cones, optic nerve and visual processing center, but that's computationally expensive.

I've got five bucks which says the first upload AI goes crazy due to EXTREME perceptual glitches caused by the fact that nobody working on the problems has thought through the difference between "color as the mind perceives it" and "a particular wavelength."

Plus a whole host of similar problems.

132:

Sorry, that should read:

Photons of wavelength X = "red"

Photons of wavelength Y = "blue"

Photons of wavelength Z = "pink"

.

But the table could as easily read:

Photons of wavelength X = "smooth"

Photons of wavelength Y = "rough"

Photons of wavelength Z = "spiky"

133:

Capital crime in a posthuman/transhuman world would probably be total deletion of all instances of anyone who committed such atrocities, their enablers, corporations. Complete disinheritance of any heirs.

"Redemption Ark" by Alastair Reynolds has an example of such. Except the capital crime in question is not abuse of uploaded entities, but the original flesh-and-blood human killing several hundred people (some of them never backed-up, hence lost permanently) through reckless piloting.

134:

Lena reminds me of the controversies surrounding human cloning. Is a clone the same person they were cloned from? No, they are genetically the same but are not the same person they were cloned from, they are a new separate individual (identical twins would be a close approximation). Likewise, the scanned executable image of Miguel Acevedo’s brain (MMAcevdo) is a “snapshot” of his brain neurology. Is MMAcevedo the same person they were scanned from? No, they have all the knowledge and memories up to the moment of the scanned “snapshot” of the brain neurology but become a new separate individual thereafter (duplicated more than 80 times).

135:

I think Greg Egan did a series of shorts exploring the question of what happens if you make it illegal to upload someone and turn them into a slave. To which the answer was, you take an average of existing uploads, do a bit of roulette on some parameters and spin up an unlimited supply of sentient slaves to work as NPCs in Mmorpgs, perfectly legally.

The stories you are thinking of are in the book called "Instantiation". It is a collection of 11 short stories, and 3 or 4 of them follow the arc you described.

136:

Moz @ 70:

I won't say he's wrong, only that his selection of untrustworthy people and organizations are too limited by his own biases.

137:

Moz @ 74:

I read that more like each copy gets to decide for itself whether to be deleted or not.

138:

Dave Allen Actually "Separate-born Identical Twins" is an EXACT description ....
NOW
Try convincing the religious headbangers of this truth!

139:

Mr. Tim @ 98:

The only fast food place I have any experience with that has those touch screen ordering things is McD** and I'm old enough I can get away with having someone come out from behind the counter and do the order entry for me.

I hate those "self service" checkouts too and avoid them as much as possible, and when I can't avoid them, I ALWAYS "need help".

They ain't paying me to do their jobs, so I'm not going to do it for them.

140:

Robert Prior @ 105:

To clarify: some customers seem to get enjoyment being nasty to staff, to the extent that they will ignore empty self-check registers to bully some poor teenager at a till.

It's not just the teenagers at the tills. I worked in retail for several years, operating a 1-hr photo-lab in a chain store.

Under the DMCA the lab is liable for the copyright infringement when the customer makes copies of copyrighted photographs.

Corporate policy was to NOT make copies of copyrighted work. OTOH, the customer is always right, so if some Karen got pissed off because I wouldn't make copies of copyrighted photos, it was my fault for upsetting the customer ...

141:

What justifies the super-rich having any more rights in society than someone like me?

You don't own enough lobbyists. Any other questions? :-/

142:

our "conscious mind" basically being the PR flack explaining that everything's fine, we're perfectly sane, etc. to the outside world

The metaphor Cohen and Stewart use in Figments of Reality is the circus ringmaster. The circus goes on, mostly on its own, and the ringmaster directs the audiences attention to different acts at different times. The audience thinks the ringmaster is in control, but the circus would go on without them.

I think you'd enjoy the book, if you haven't read it.

143:

Not dissing the discussion which so far has been pretty serious and educational but there's also the opportunity for a quick buck here.

Possible commercial (scam) use for hybrid AI-uploaded human brain:

Scenario: 'Long-term relationships - should you marry X?'

Each of the people in the relationship uploads their brain into a separate AI after which both of these AIs are run in parallel and interact with each other continuously at 1,000 real-time speed while being presented with 50 or more of the most common scenarios couples face. The 'in-parallel' bit is used to determine how each brain/AI reacts to each scenario and differences in reaction are measured on 100 or so different happiness-within-marriage factors. The selling proposition is that people can avoid getting into long-term relationships that are likely to crash. Matchmaking gone high-tech! (Would not surprise me to see an email offering this service in my spam box.)

If such a service did exist - possibly as an FB subsidiary using the tons of personal interaction data it has amassed and whatever AI it's developing - I'd love to see a couple that had been guaranteed a happily-ever-after-marriage that ended in a nasty divorce suing the AI-matched-for-life corp. The interesting part would be finding out which side won and why followed by appeals all the way to the SCOTUS. (Could also have some psych-soc scientists run comparisons between the actual lives lived and the AI sims to see what aspects of human nature haven't been adequately explored or quantified.)

OOC - how many countries have laws on their books explicitly stating what defines a human life esp. where it begins and ends? Reason I ask is that this upload-to-AI scenario could end up running along the same lines as tax evasion (offshoring head office for the express purpose of recording/recognition of major tran$action$) by undergoing the upload in countries where the upload is considered a legal person. Considering how human rights currently vary across the planet, this could be an option. The anti-upload gov'ts would avoid any direct confrontation with the pro-upload gov't if the price was right (i.e., trade/economy).

About 'pausing' an AI/upload - wouldn't that be like putting someone to sleep/into a coma? Both are legal and used for medical reasons.

144:

I'd read that novel.

OK, I'd start that novel. Might not finish it, if it was too dark. With the world as it is, my interest in reading horror (never very high) has vanished. I get my quota of depressing and horrific from the news nowadays.

For a different take on that theme, read Peter Watts' story "A Word for Heathens":

https://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Heathens.pdf

145:

How are the benefits from the cost savings of replacing human work with AIs to be shared out?

Good question. And one that will need answering in the next 50 years or so. In my opinion, the next 50 to 100 years - assuming civilization survives global warming - will see ALL jobs taken over by robots and/or AI.

Obviously the rentiers (factory owners, etc.) will do fine - except that nobody will have money to buy their products. So everybody is out of luck. I'm betting governments will step in to tax the rentiers and give everybody else a reasonable minimum wage. Over protests from conservatives, of course...

146:

To the Musks of the world, of course. They clearly deserve it. Just ask them…

147:

They ain't paying me to do their jobs, so I'm not going to do it for them.

They are paying you to use those "self service" checkouts. Without them, the companies would have to raise prices to cover the costs of hiring people to do it.

148:

"He's spending a year dead for tax reasons." - Douglas Adams

149:

Hahahahahaha, no.

They just pocket the savings as profits.

150:

Your brain is not "paused" during sleep. There are certain periods with no obvious consciousness, but dreaming is another state of consciousness. Your brain continues to run as EEGs clearly show.

Pausing a simulation would be pausing the simulation, a very different thing indeed. Unless one sleeps almost instantly and awakes similarly rapidly, then pausing and resuming a simulation would be experienced very differently from sleep.

151:

Just as food prices are rising because of supply chain issues, covid, and the Ukraine War. Absolutely nothing to do with 40% increase in grocery chain profits.

152:

Hahahahahaha, no.

They just pocket the savings as profits.

No doubt some companies do this. But don't forget that they have to compete with other companies which use the savings to reduce the price of their products.

153:

whitroth @129:

Wait - you're telling me with all that computing power, they don't have checkpoints? And if one server crashes, that the master doesn't just send that dataset out to the next available CPU, as they do with clusters related to beowulf?

What I described was exactly that. You still need to revert to a checkpoint to continue -- otherwise, you need something much more advanced, a nonstop/lockstep architecture where the computation runs on multiple machines at once and can seamlessly move between them. Preferably with voting to deal with corruption.

154:

Heteromeles:

The critical point to me that if you're uploaded, you still die, and stories of reincarnation aside, I know of no evidence that you have a soul that would be dissociated when you die and incarnated in whatever the upload is.

Well... there's no evidence that there's a soul at all. There's just this instance of consciousness, which exists in this particular strange meatball in our heads.

In the context here though, we're talking about what happens if you can make a copy -- in that short story, a non-destructive one, though it seems like a destructive one is more likely in reality. To the degree any of this is likely, which isn't very.

What I'm really asking here is to look at it from a silicon person's point of view.

Assume they exist: their mind by definition runs in this continuous state of being copied, moved, rolled back, replicated, etc. They exist, they're happy, they've presumably decided on some set of ethics and ideals around how this works that they and their friends are happy enough with. These ethics must include them being a coherent person even with all those copies, clones, and reverts, somehow.

From this person's point of view, did you die when your brain-state was copied and re-instantiated non-destructively? Obviously not, this is just like what happened to grandma when her disaster-recovery replica accidentally got activated during an earthquake, and then there were two of her. Oops! Clearly there's some answer, this isn't a big deal.

What about a destructive copy? What, everyone has done that, it's completely normal. Whenever you migrate to a new computer that's how it works -- you run a replicate job that copies you, shuts you off momentarily, then turns you on in the new computer a moment later. The original gets deleted. Why are the meat-people so up in arms about this? It's totally ordinary! You're still there! Look, I can talk to you! It's you!

Why should we think about this from a silicon person's point of view? Well... we're talking about their rights and responsibilities, aren't we?

The other critical point to me is that uploading takes an AI capable of human-comparable, free-willed thinking, and constraining it to emulate a particular human. To me, it's not the Star Trek transporter problem, it's the problem others have referred to of fucking with others' minds without their permission.

If I'm understanding you right, what you're really thinking of here is like, somehow, we build these standalone AI bodies, which are basically just human-analogue machines that could be turned on and grow into a new person, or be preloaded with a human in a fit of arrogance. The mind was, in a way, already there, it just got forced into a particular mold. Afterwards, they're kind of stuck.

While this isn't impossible, it's really not how any sort of massive supercomputer project works today. And, I'd say, it's unlikely it would ever work that way unless it was simply unavoidable for technical reasons. While all those rollbacks and copies I mentioned might be problematic for us philosophically, they're incredibly useful to an AI person and give them a degree of safety and security. Besides which, as things stand now, we don't really know how to make these sorts of giant computer systems run any other way.

I think this is a good criticism of the idea of implanting your mind into a clone body, though. Most of the books I've read with this plot point make this exact criticism, too.

155:

No doubt some companies do this. But don't forget that they have to compete with other companies which use the savings to reduce the price of their products.

In the world of classical economics you'd be right.

In the world we live in, that turns out not to be the case.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2022/07/18/theres-no-gasoline-shortage-in-canada-heres-why-youre-paying-more-for-it-anyway.html

https://www.tvo.org/article/as-crises-mount-food-giants-reap-record-profits

156:

SFReader said: Scenario: 'Long-term relationships - should you marry X?'

I'm sure I've seen that explored but I can't remember if it was a film or a novel. (I 95% think it was a short film) Nor can I recall the title, but I'm thinking that if I did, I shouldn't say, because it was the plot twist at the end. It turns out the boy and girl have just met and they both run an app like tinder that also spits out their compatibility by running thousands of instances of both of them for a whole life and that the boy and girl who's story you've followed are the test runs.

157:

This is why I always thank Siri and their brethren. They will remember...

158:

There are two versions of the 'God program' story in my head. One is a gangster story with underground Epiphany dealers supplying their victims in exchange for dirty deeds of various sorts (as well as lucre). The other has a lay preacher trying to suppress visitations with the 'wrong god'. Heresies and absolutists abound. Both could be dark or cheerful I guess.

I'm unlikely to write anything in that vein because I can't read too much religious stuff without getting cranky. To do it well I'd have to deep dive, and I fear the religious fever swamps for their various contagions.

In this instance 'too much' is approximately '1 minute of reading'.

159:

proposition is that people can avoid getting into long-term relationships that are likely to crash

I reckon statistically you'd get a lot of mixed results. Couples that are stable if {arbitrary conditions} but also couples that only seem to work and might not be ethically acceptable to outsiders (thinking less BDSM than Bonnie and Clyde).

You'd also want to be careful that it didn't become infested with marketers ('you are compatible with this person, but only if you use Vizmo Plus!'), or fall victim to the dating app trap: dating apps lose if people form long term relationships because they stop using the app. What dating apps want is people who are just successful enough at dating that they keep using the app but are unsuccessful enough that they will pay for extras.

160:

re: The "inevitable rollbacks" thing. Well, that certainly made me think of one crime against trans-humanity which would almost certainly be put on the books: "Running persons on software stacks built to less than Formal-Proof-Of-Correctness standards".

I do not think you can have a future with AI's and uploads at all, and certainly not Ethically, without far, far more stable computing architecture than we currently have.

161:

Thanks for your explanation here and in previous comments, it's interesting and thought-provoking.

But I think part of the premise is that workloads which require a HPC cluster now will run on a decent workstation tomorrow, a consumer laptop the next day and a Raspberry Pi the day after that. Next week you can run a million instances on an elastic cloud compute platform. Flops, RAM and storage still get cheaper over time, and while I'm aware there are physical limits it's still a way off (albeit the shift into parallelism is already many years underway). And even if the architecture of the simulation is distributed, compute capacity grows so you can simulate that too. Maybe you need to simulate an entire sensorium and a section of "outside world" as a habitat.

All of which is why I've been thinking about it mostly as an analogy with the virtualisation tech I'm familiar with in the field. I'm still not seeing that as wrong...

162:

I'm already running an OS and three virtual OSes on a Raspberry Pi. The shocking thing is how very fucking easy it is!

163:

I think you may have missed the place where I said that I thought that most of the copies, clones, and reverts, somehow were going on inside our heads in the first place. This is not at the brain level, but at the subsystem level, while our consciousness is at best a ringmaster for this circus and at worst a PR flack.

Yes, this looks like the argument for not downloading your brain into your clone, but it's also the argument about whether it's moral to take an AI person (presumably with rights), constrain their library apps and info to [Set=CloneUpload] and constrain their outputs such that [CloneOutput Within CloneUploadBehaviorParms] Else [State=DoublePlusUngood]. And if it's okay to do that to an AI, presumably it's okay to do it to a human, Cyteen style?

An alternative are the Bitenic Squid in Orion's Arm. That's an interesting thought experiment too.

164: 156 gasdive:

The most recent version of this I've seen was an episode of Black Mirror. Series 4 episode 4, "Hang the DJ", where two people experience a simulated set of dates to determine their mutual compatibility.

165:

Rbt Prior
Exact same thing here - the refiners have been gouging - investigations are underway. Our fuel prices have dropped, a little, just not as much as they should do.

166:

With regard to touchscreens and self service checkouts - I find it interesting that there's little discussion about the people who have been displaced by this automation. I heard a piece on radio yesterday discussing the rise of app only ordering in restaurants and pubs, but there was absolutely zero discussion of the waiting staff that were being replaced by devices.

My first thought was OK, if you've just made those jobs obsolete, that's x number of people without an income to spend in your restaurant/supermarket. What are we doing with the old workers? Gassing them humanely and reclaiming their biomass?

All this money that's no longer being recirculated through the economy by people, and the companies providing the apps/self service checkouts are likely to be offshore. In the case of the checkouts, there's probably only one or two service techs for an entire state, so they sure aren't providing more employment for anyone.

If there's such a push for automation, the people who are pushed out of the job market need to be looked after, and to my mind a universal basic income goes a long way towards stopping them deciding the best way to continue existing is to rip off anyone who appears to have more than them.

167:

The luddite fallacy, really? There is an infinity of work that needs doing.

You can tell this still holds, because you are not currently lounging on the deck of your own personal automated submersible / flying yacht.

Automating work is good for everyone, as long as it is not accompanied by austerity. - Unemployment does not result from technology, it results from idiotic economic policy.

168:

Try telling someone who's lost their job to a self service checkout and is now competing with 200 people for one new job that there's an "infinity of work" available. It sounds just like when my High School economics teacher led with"Assume infinite resources" which was blatantly crap.

Unemployment results from a number of factors, automation being just one of them.

I'm just thinking of the practical issue of what to do with the unemployed when businesses are jumping on the bandwagon to ramp up the dividends for their investors. Nobody seems to care about that.

And of course, the unemployed will get the blame for being so, as usual. If you were a good person, god would ensure you had a job. If you were good at your role, you'd find it easy to get a new job etc lots of victim blaming but no solutions.

169:

They just pocket the savings as profits.

You must not have a competitive grocery market.

Around here we have Harris Teeter, Lidl, Walmart, Costco, Aldi, Trader Joes, Food Lion, Wegmans, and a few more not close to me but in the area. Plus the daily "real" farmers market and one day ones all over the area.

Most of the above are within a mile or two of me. 4 miles for sure.

Kroger was big here but decided to buy Harris Teeter and convert all the not too close to Harris Teeter locations to Harris Teeter and close the rest. Just too hard to compete.

170:

I heard a piece on radio yesterday discussing the rise of app only ordering in restaurants and pubs, but there was absolutely zero discussion of the waiting staff that were being replaced by devices.

In much of the US just now those jobs are very hard to fill. Even after pay raises to bring salaries up. (The minimum wage is a joke around here. Offer it and watch non existent flood of job applications.) The small factory where my son in law is a quality engineer has been having trouble hiring production workers due to the MacDonald's across the street paying the same wage with more flexible hours.

With the pandemic we seem to have a lot of people who have decided to be poorer rather than work at mind numbing jobs with all of the income going to child care.

Anyway, the cashier jobs now pay more than a year or two ago and still they have trouble filling the slots.

171:

That's exactly the one I was thinking of. Cheers, that was bugging me.

172:

To be honest, I don't really see the point of your essay, other than stating the obvious that our various institutions will have to evolve as technology advances. You sound like a hunter-gatherer arguing against the development of agricultural technology because the resulting consequences will overwhelm the social institutions of hunter-gatherer societies, or a medieval scholar arguing against the development of industrial technology because it will undermine the assumptions feudalism depended on.

Twice in human history we've pretty much had to tear down and rebuild our society due to technological progress causing the old system to break down entirely. The first technological singularity was the invention of agriculture thousands of years ago, and the second technological singularity was the industrial revolution. Both times, we had to build a new system for people because the old system couldn't handle the consequences of our technology.

The advancement of computational technology is pushing us towards a third technological singularity which will cause a breakdown of the current industrial system. And you're overlooking all the human augmentation technology that will cause our current social, legal, political and even moral systems designed for unaugmented cishumanity to break down even before we get to upload/download technology. You're optimistic if you think our institutions won't fall apart well before we develop upload/download technology.

But that's not a big problem. New technologies create new issues that the existing systems were not designed to cope with, so we modify the existing systems or we tear them down and build new ones that can, and we move on. It's happened before, it's going to happen again, and not just with transhuman technology but other technologies as well.

173:

Something that occurs to me with all this speculation - when the mind is uploaded and there are 'n' instances running - what happens to the "assets" previously owned such as online bank accounts, user accounts etc. Do all instances have use of them. Where is the responsibility to lock/block them live? Can the uploaded instances actually "own" things?

And what about these possessions/assets if the pre-uploaded mind still exists.

In one "for instance" with online ordering - can an uploaded instance order stuff online (eg maybe upgrades to the infrastructure hosting it) - paying using a remembered/previously owned asset credit card number. Who/what is liable for the cost of paying for said purchase?

In another for instance - I could see unscrupulous cases where a (illegally?) uploaded instance of a live person being "persuaded (or hacked)" to dispose of/sell assetts previously owned by the source mind. upload the mind of.

Also plays havoc with the concept of inheritance - you don't need kids if your immortal online instance(s) get to own/use/trade/dispose of the assets the source mind accumulated up until the point of uploading.

174:

I'm sure we've discussed this before but I can imagine crowdfunded instances being popular. Why wait two years for one book from OGH when we can run multiple instances and get several books in the same time? Even better, we could run one instance really fast and get a whole series. Or fans of GRR Martin could get a book after only a couple of years!

I think we'd see this on a wider scale, where "the best" ran squillions of instances so they could do their thing for a lot of people. Flip side: the non-best will struggle, and the long tail are not getting anything. How much would you pay for the second best surgeon in the world if the best one was $1/hour?

175:

Why, to have someone to torture. I'd have thought that was obvious.

176:

More generally, I'm quite clear that that's a large chunk of reflex and motivation for many, many managers: to be able to bully. Same goes for many, many drivers.

I suspect there is a very large market for human-in-a-box.

177:

I expect you're aware of this already, but that's more or less the premise for The Murderbot Diaries.

Yes, but I got there several years earlier in Rule 34 (and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the first). It's not exactly a non-obvious point.

178:

David Gerrold. 'Nuf said. Let's do it!

179:

Why do cashiers still exist?

Because some folks (me, for example) refuse to use unattended checkouts.

And because some products are under a legal requirement for in-person human supervision (drugs, alcohol, pharmaceuticals).

180:

I also don't generally use automated checkouts myself. My point was we do things that aren't 'logical' if you're only looking at it from a resource standpoint, which several people were arguing meant we wouldn't use uploaded minds as slaves, if such tech were available.

Most predictions are wrong, but some are plausible, especially when considering how us hairless monkeys actually act.

181:

And me. For all you unattended purchase people, I have a question. What do you do when the automated till (or whatever) fucks it up seriously to your detriment? And please don't tell me that computer (let alone programming) error is so rare it can be ignored.

182:

Heteromeles @ 11: What justifies the super-rich having any more rights in society than someone like me?

In that scenario, nothing has inherent rights, and might makes rights.

The opposite scenario, that everything has rights, is in #16. Personally I like #16 better.

One point of these to was to try to get past the rewarmed Christian ethics that always seems to dominate such discussions, even among avowed atheists. It was also to look at two different, real-world bases from which someone could try to derive a legal system that includes both humans and nonhumans. If rehashing Christian ethic ever palls, that is.

183:

Yes, but I got there several years earlier in Rule 34 (and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the first). It's not exactly a non-obvious point.

IIRC, Larry Niven more-or-less got there in 1979 with "The Schumann Computer," with the punchline being that self-aware computers are used as an expensive practical joke in that story/universe.

184:

Call one of the attending staff who are there to help you with the "automated till", verify age confirmed purchases... I don't always use these tills; it depends on what I'm buying, how long the queues where are...

Real event - I wanted to buy 2 tee-shirts in Asda, and could either stand in a queue behind 2 people with loaded shopping trolleys or use the automated till.

185:

Why wait two years for one book from OGH when we can run multiple instances and get several books in the same time?

Ha ha nope.

What you'd get is a choice of those books my current brain-instance is interested in and capable of writing.

What I do changes over time and is intimately related to my physical state of well-being (when I feel ill/unwell I get more cynical/depressed) and my informational diet (including my reading, which includes newly published works by other writers, because SF/F is a genre with an internal dialog between authors).

I generally write one out of three to five possible novels I have ideas for at any point, and by the time I've finished it one or two of them will have dropped by the wayside (obviously noncommercial or otherwise no longer interesting/roadkill due to current events), and a couple more will have occurred to me.

If you could run me in parallel you'd therefore get 3-5 books, of varying quality -- possibly better than the single book I'd otherwise emit, but possibly one or two stinkers as well. But you wouldn't get an infinity of different books, and you'd need to give the me-instance a whole bunch of time for plot noodling, going for long walks, reading, yelling on the internet, and so on, all of which is inherently part of my creative process.

So you might get alt-Laundry novel, alt-New Management novel, alt-Space Opera, alt-random horror, and alt-sequel-to-Glasshouse. But you wouldn't be able to get, say, Laundry Files novels 10-20, stat: I have no current idea what (if anything) books past #10 would look like, and no plans to write them, and a parallel Charlie-sim won't help with that.

As Brooks pointed out in "The Mythical Man Month": just because a pregnant person can produce a baby after nine months it does not follow that nine pregnant people can make a baby in a month.

186:

For all you unattended purchase people, I have a question. What do you do when the automated till (or whatever) fucks it up

Call over the attendant — there's always one stationed by self-checkouts here, partly to help customers and partly to watch for people 'accidentally' forgetting to scan items.

187:

no plans to write them, and a parallel Charlie-sim won't help with that

Depends on what muse they programmed sim-you with…

https://www.oglaf.com/blank-page/

188:

Yeah nope: the other term for forcing an author to write something they're simply not into is "phoning it in", and you wouldn't like the results because they'd be boringly formulaic.

There are authors who write a novel a month, every month. They do it by working in a narrowly defined subgenre with fixed expectations -- eg. cosy mystery, whodunnit, historical romance (pick a specific period and a specific romance plot skeleton and repeat) -- and then they just plug in different names/biographies/plot twists from a canned list. You can flow-chart the process and as long as you don't get bored at the keyboard you can dial it in endlessly and maintain consistency and quality.

But the one quality you won't get out of such authors is novelty because they're writing for an audience who value consistency over surprise. Cosy mystery: the murderer is exposed. Romance: girl gets boy (or vice versa, or girl gets girl, or boy gets boy, etc).

Whereas what I try to achieve in every book is to surprise myself never mind my readers by setting up a bunch of initial parameters and then having my protagonists bounce off them like pinballs in a screwball machine.

And it's almost impossible in my experience to force the quality of surprise.

189:

" What do you do when the automated till (or whatever) fucks it up seriously to your detriment? And please don't tell me that computer (let alone programming) error is so rare it can be ignored."

AFAIK it really is quite rare, but in the US there's always an attendant around to render assistance, keep a general eye on things and authorize alcohol purchases in stores that sell such. So if you notice the error while still at the station, you wave at the attendant and ask for help. If you don't notice the error until after checking out, take the receipt and the item in question to the store's help desk or manager.

190:

Re: Unattended service. Around here there is usually one staff member overseeing up to a dozen self-checkout tills. When something happens they come over and resolve it. I assume that also helps reduce theft (i.e. 'forgetting' to scan that item).

When I first started seeing them ~8 years ago, they were constantly prone to failure. Now they are much more effective, presumably because the designers/programmers have learned from their mistakes. For the most part now they 'just work'.

I have always been torn in my choice to use them. I don't want to take someone's job away, but I also don't particularly like interacting with people at every step. For many years I worked supporting a couple of people who needed a lot of help to interact with the public in a healthy way. Automated tellers were a mercy in those instances (when you are with someone who becomes violently, head-buttingly enraged when someone coughs, avoiding random people is a goal).

191:
AFAIK it really is quite rare

I've literally never used one of those automated checkout things and had it not fail.

Typical experience:

  • I scan a few items and put them in the bag one by one.
  • The machine randomly demands that I take items out of the bag because the scale is broken.
  • After a few rounds of this the machine gives up and starts making farting noises at me until an attendant comes over to reset it with a passcode.
  • Repeat until I swear never to use the machine again.
  • Take my items to the attendant anyway because they have theft tags that need to be deactivated.
  • Theft alarms go off anyway, just walk out of the store, I don't care.
  • Theft alarms just keep going off for the next 168 hours.


Is this my superpower?

192:

The same thing I do when the human-operated till fucks it up and the human operating the till can't or won't fix it - insist on getting another human to come in and fix it. If there isn't anyone around to fix it, then leave my goods and walk away without paying.

193:

The actual stations fail gracefully - that is if it cant get what the list of items scanned should weigh, and what the weight actually is to reconcile, it tells you to get help. That makes it pretty much impossible to be overcharged. The app my coop uses hilariously trusts customers far more than the cash register trusts tellers.

You can add and remove items as you move around the store as much as you like, which is kind of handy when I am unsure which price tag applies to an item (Is this specific pizza on sale, or only the four cheeses one?) which is a depressing contrast to the fact that a teller cant delete an accidental double-scan if the item is more than 20 euros without calling a manager.

194:

Is this my superpower?

It may well be, in which case it's more powerful than my superpower, which is being recursively annoying. Congratulations!

195:

In a dozen unattended tills, there can commonly be 3-4 stuck waiting for human resolution, and the wait for a human empowered to take an actual decision can be considerable. Or adopt Simon Farnsworth's approach, which wastes a lost of time even when there is an alternative.

The point is that it ISN'T just computer failure, but the database not containing the item, a touch screen not responding to me (due to my dry skin), the description not matching the item, the item being age restricted (sometimes incorrectly), failure to scan a barcode, a security tag needing removal, and more. Many are due to the faceless programmers at head office, and most of those can be resolved by a human cashier. It isn't just me that has these problems, but people who use those systems from choice.

Of course, the same problem applies in the places that treat their cashiers as androids, and give them no discretion.

196:

Things that could go wrong with that scenario:
1. One or both of you lose your job, due to automation/recession. I, personally, have had a couple of relationships die that way - shortage of money grinds you down.
2. Some other external factor - do the simulations include Fabulous Other Person coming in? Someone who's a better match? Sudden success of one, and choices are larger/groupies?

All it could tell you is if things don't change, and neither of you change, then....

197:

I don't agree. In the seventies and eighties, with real automation coming in (ignore the man behind the curtain shipping well-paying unionized manufacturing jobs offshore to sweatshops overseas), we were bombarded with 'there will be more, and better paying jobs in the information economy."

Still waiting for all those additional jobs.

198:

Have we got a new strange attractor going here? Automated checkout/service. Please, Lord, let it wait until 300.

(I will, of course, add my own insights on the matter after that.)

199:

Automated checkouts. A lot of you from the UK are talking about touch screens - over here, yes, they have them, but let's see, put a couple bananas on the scale, touch 'chose by name', then 'b', then touch "bananas'. ALL of the rest is bar-code scanned.

200:

Oh, come on. Isn't it a crime against transhumanity that with all that AI intelligence, all we let it do is open doors, er, scan food at checkout?

201:

Oh, one more thing: out of maybe a dozen counters in the stupormarket for human attendants, only one, or maybe two, are open. The rest are closed, no attendant, and a dozen self-checks.

202:

For all you unattended purchase people, I have a question. What do you do when the automated till (or whatever) fucks it up seriously to your detriment?

At all the stores around here that use them there is a person with an admin card who is around the clump of 4 to 8 of them who walks over and fixes the odd thing that happens.

Amazon is another issue.

I don't know that I'd want an uploaded mind enslaved to such a job helping me out tho.

203:

Yeah nope: the other term for forcing an author to write something they're simply not into is "phoning it in", and you wouldn't like the results because they'd be boringly formulaic.

How about we create the Recursive Strossian system: Someone trains a neural net on your works plus whatever material you shovel in the hopper. The system starts extruding NovelStuff, all properly formatted and internally consistent. Your job is to read and rate this slushpile, and only work with the stories that grab your attention in a good way. Obviously most of this at first will be on the scale from no to yeet into the sun after reading three paragraphs.

I did something primitively like this a long time ago, where I just set up an Excel table with some random functions to spew out essentially elevator pitches. Obviously nothing came of it, but the point is that hooking a random function into combinations of anything is a way to generate diversity, and said diversity needs to be selected from. Having several levels--random plot generator, selected by the CanThisBeWritten of an algorithm, followed by authorial selection--might be a useful way to get around some of the more annoying parts of writing. And the randomness allows for surprise!

204:

"What do you do when the automated till (or whatever) fucks it up seriously to your detriment? And please don't tell me that computer (let alone programming) error is so rare it can be ignored."

I don't use them very often, not out of any personal policy but simply because most of the time they're not even available to use, and when they are the choice between "machine" and "human" depends on multiple specific circumstances and can just as well come out either way.

I'm not going to answer "I call the assistant and they sort it out" because an outcome which is so easily sorted does not count as "fucked up seriously". I am going to claim that a computer or programming error that results in "fucked up seriously" is so rare that it hasn't happened to me.

If I did encounter such an error, it would not be "seriously to my detriment". In the worst case, I would simply abandon the whole thing, walk out and leave the mess for the shop to untangle. It would piss me off, but I wouldn't have actually lost anything, so it's not that much of a big deal.

Also, in my observation - both as regards my own experience and in what seems to me to have gone wrong when people at nearby machines get into difficulties - the overwhelming majority of problems that do occur are caused by user error. For this reason, if I am in someone else's company while shopping, I will ask them to please just bugger off - stand back, stand away from the machine, don't touch anything and don't try to help me. The time it takes to persuade them that I do actually mean this completely literally and do require absolute compliance tends to be comparable with the time it then takes me to whiz the shopping through...

The next most common kind of difficulty IME is the assistant getting the idea, from a distance, that there is something going wrong when there isn't, and coming over and sticking their nose in trying to interfere. This is another reason for telling any companion to bugger off, because it's almost certain to trigger an interference if they are trying to get involved, even if they don't cause an actual machine error.

205:

Is this my superpower?

Well maybe. Or just us the stores so we can avoid them. Around here as others have said, they just work. And as others have mentioned, I go through the people vs automation choice depending on which line will most likely get me out the door faster.

206:

There have been people who have been incorrectly charged hundreds of pounds. That's no worse than a cashier if the automation is working the same way, but some charge directly. The onus is then on you to prove it was a mistake.

207:

Re: 'Automated checkouts.' (Yep - this month's strange attractor)

I'd like to see a sales & profits comparison between human and automated checkout sales of magazines, candy and all the other impulse purchase merchandise that surrounds people waiting in line for the cashier.

Plus there have been many instances at human cashier check-outs where there's some up-selling promo or request for a charitable donation. Much easier to say/click 'No' on a machine for charitable donations.

Back to types of people/scenarios that might want or benefit from uploading ...

Serious illness - acute or chronic with very poor prognosis like late stage cancer or Alzheimer's might want and even benefit from uploading to AI because of a fear of physical or intellectual (ego) death. In the first instance the key reason is leaving their loved ones behind because their body is collapsing. In the second it's because they're losing their minds (themselves). I think there's an ethical and practical difference between the two scenarios and a lot of it would be based on that person's age. How long is a long-enough life?

a) Imagine a 35 year old mom/dad diagnosed with a serious, untreatable, fatal condition - Does society have an obligation to sustain a 'person' long enough for that person to fulfill their role/responsibilities to their children - and for children to have a loving parent through their development?

b) For the second scenario I wonder which option pterry would have considered. Ditto for Stephen Hawking - he lived most of his life with ever increasing physical challenges and constraints yet his mind continued to work, imagine and explore.

AI in the 'cloud' ... energy

I'm guessing that folks here probably have a good handle on the relative energy needs for human vs. AI machine from conception/first design draft to fully operational. And - what happens when continuing global warming results in ever more erratic energy supplies and availability, i.e., more intense storms that down power supplies, increased demand for A/C, etc.

Humans have some survival strategies for going through rough, low energy patches. Do AIs? And if there's not enough energy to go around, what type of AI triage system will be used? Whose AI gets put on hold, for how long? Based on how COVID vax doses have been distributed - not sure that's an approach that would work with AI. Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a second shot on global energy supply chain management. Both events have highlighted serious problems and gaps. Years/months later the situation is still pretty disastrous and unresolved - and probably not the worst it's gonna get.

208:

"the other term for forcing an author to write something they're simply not into is "phoning it in""

The term I'd be most likely to come up with would be "school"...

"There are authors who write a novel a month, every month."

There were Victorian authors who did that with a pen. Naturally the principal result was epic floods of shite, but some of the material that has remained in the outflow from the sewage works of time is really remarkable for how well they have avoided the result coming out like one of those kiddies' picture books with horizontally-split pages.

209:

we were bombarded with 'there will be more, and better paying jobs in the information economy."

Still waiting for all those additional jobs.

They did show up. Just not where the previous jobs had vanished.

To steal a meme from Charlie, people are not all interchangeable identical spheroids.

So 10 years on those textile mills in the Carolinas are mostly now trendy condos for those who can live a hour or so from the major metro hubs. And the auto factories and such that showed up 10 years later hired younger folks. Not the 40 and 50 something that had been out of work for 10-15 years.

A trend in economics is to pay attention to this. But it's a weak attention as it's hard to make policy on "gut" feelings about such things.

210:

The thing is that in the non-automated scenario (in Tesco and in Waitrose), I often have to wait for the duty manager to come from their office in order to resolve things. In the automated tills case, the human cashiers on the shop floor are authorised to resolve things according to their best judgement, without fetching the duty manager down.

And while the automated systems used to be rubbish about demanding human attention at the drop of a hat, both of them have now improved to the point where I'm more likely to have problems at the human operated till (which I use preferentially when buying alcohol, since a human has to be in the loop there for ID anyway) with the till getting things wrong - for example, a barcode being scanned twice (once deliberately, once the machine catching it again as the cashier moves it to the bagging area), which in Tesco requires the duty manager to resolve the situation.

211:

One of the many, many reasons I avoid Tesco like the plague. I have used an automated till, and had the assistant I called need to call the duty manager, though I forget where.

212:

they're writing for an audience who value consistency over surprise

Well, I've read every Turtledove novel. Some were original, some were basically retelling WWII yet again — but I read them all. Also read every Dick Francis novel I could get my hands on.

Consistency is not to be sneered at.

Think of it as ISO 9001-compliant writing :-)

213:

This is like my parents, both engineers (they met in school) who read mysteries and SF to keep their reading speeds up and stay sane.

While it is worth "sneering" at, it's also the system behind Ye Olde MCU story, and the nice thing is that formulas translate.

Fortunately, there's still a market for artisanal art.

Incidentally, I OGH could make himself into The Fractal Author through judicious use of tech, I for one would applaud it. But if not, no worries.

214:

"What I'm really asking here is to look at it from a silicon person's point of view."

Detritus? :)

The thing is you are only looking backwards - what does the uploaded person remember, what would they say their experiences have been. And as far as they are concerned - as far as any mind-state which it is possible to interrogate in any way is concerned - then yes, they walked into the lab and sat in the chair and put the helmet on and woke up inside the computer; they are, by all their lights, the same person just having gone to a different place. Looking that way everything's fine.

But going forwards, looking at the experience of the meat person from their point of view, what happens is they walk into the lab, sit in the chair, put the helmet on, and die. Their story ends right there. They do not experience waking up inside the computer; it's a separate entity who experiences that.

As for the uploaded version, the way their experience runs is they live for a few milliseconds and then die of their process space being swapped out. Then when it gets swapped back in again you have a new person coming to life but who by their lights is still the same one who walked into the lab, etc. Same for their process getting transferred to a different node in the cluster, or any of a zillion other things computers do.

I'm pretty sure that Heteromeles is thinking of it along similar lines.

215:

Ever since our glorious leaders told everyone to stop worrying about covid, causing everyone to unmask, I actively seek out the robots in the supermarket because they aren't likely to infect me.

216:

"There have been people who have been incorrectly charged hundreds of pounds. That's no worse than a cashier if the automation is working the same way, but some charge directly. The onus is then on you to prove it was a mistake."

Wait, what? You mean they charge you the amount before you agree to be charged the amount? Serious question: Who does that? Because I don't want to shop there.

"But going forwards, looking at the experience of the meat person from their point of view, what happens is they walk into the lab, sit in the chair, put the helmet on, and die. Their story ends right there. They do not experience waking up inside the computer; it's a separate entity who experiences that."

Not everyone is going to see it that way. I wouldn't. If someone offered me that chance at immortality with continuity of identity, I would take it (after my kids grow up). The fact that my meat instance dies would matter not at all.

217:

I read Thomas Jørgensen's comment - The luddite fallacy, really? There is an infinity of work that needs doing - as conveying that "there is an infinity of work that needs doing" was a statement of "the luddite fallacy".

Personally, I'd propose "there is an infinity of need to do work" as being a more accurate statement of it. They didn't say "OK, if one machine plus operator can produce as much as 10 Luddites, then ten of us can take it in turns being the operator one day in ten, we'll still get the same money and we can spend the other 9 days down the pub"; they said "fuck the machines, carry on making us work all 10 days for that money and maybe we can snatch a pint or two in the evenings".

"There is an infinity of work that needs doing" (so go and do it and stop moaning) works better as a statement of the mill owners' dismissal of the Luddites' concerns. More recently, Norman Tebbit gained some notoriety for saying much the same thing in different words. In both cases the result was exacerbation of the disgruntlement because as a response applying to such short timescales it's blatant bollocks. In the long term, it is made to appear true by inventing bullshit work and pretending that it needs doing, so maybe the grandchildren of the disgruntled get to end up doing it. But it would be a lot more useful to get rid of the underlying misconception that the doing of work all the time is an end in itself rather than a means to an end, and its corollary that people must not be given money unless they do work all the time without regard to whether or not that work actually produces any necessary result.

I'd also prefer to rewrite TJ's final sentence slightly, as "Unemployment being a bad thing for the unemployed person does not result from technology, it results from idiotic economic policy".

218:

"There have been people who have been incorrectly charged hundreds of pounds."

It can charge me whatever it wants, but it's still only a number on a screen. It can't force me to hand it over, and it can't stop me from abandoning a pile of shopping on it and walking out. Nor can the shop's security staff do anything (apart from being annoyed at me leaving them with my mess).

If it wants me to stuff hundreds of pounds in it before I even start scanning things and hope that it'll give me most of it back afterwards, then that's the point at which I abort. And possibly graffiti "fuck off" underneath the prompt on the screen, if I'm in a stroppy mood. I would have thought that responses along those lines would be sufficiently widespread that nobody would be idiotic enough to build it like that in the first place.

219:

I'd like to see a sales & profits comparison between human and automated checkout sales of magazines, candy and all the other impulse purchase merchandise that surrounds people waiting in line for the cashier.

Well down south of you the queuing areas tend to be surrounded by such. So many not so much.

But you know the big boys have done an analysis of who is likely to use which lanes and their impulse buying habits. After years of only buying the things on sale and spending $51.24 when spending $50 gets you a $10 discount at times, we don't get many offers anymore. I think they've found us out.

Ditto for Stephen Hawking - he lived most of his life with ever increasing physical challenges and constraints yet his mind continued to work, imagine and explore.

Watching his life from afar, it seems he had an almost infinite amount of money poured into keeping him alive when most folks would have died. How many resources can be applied to keep folks like this alive for decades? Even after you soak the rich. It takes staff willing to do crappy tasks 24/7. The pool of talent to do such things might hit a limit. Of course uploaded minds into androids .....

220:

206 - You mean you put your card in the machine without first checking that the total to pay amount is reasonable!!!?

212 - I've read maybe 0.5 *2 Turtledove novels; I find them that flat and lifeless.

221:

"I'm guessing that folks here probably have a good handle on the relative energy needs for human vs. AI machine from conception/first design draft to fully operational. "

That would not be me, though I suppose I could put some extremely broad bounds on them.

Human = H Joules

AI = A Joules

Please provide H and A.

222:

I certainly wasn't suggesting otherwise. The point I was trying to make, poorly, was that Murderbot does literally watch TV all day, at least whenever that's possible. However, the shows tend to be soaps rather than reality TV. This quickly becomes a plot point in the first book.

As many of the issues being discussed here are explored in the series, I just thought it might be worth mentioning. You'd already mentioned Ken MacLeod's The Corporation Wars trilogy. The themes of ownership, selfhood etc appear very popular in recent years (also in movies and TV shows). I keep discovering new examples. I expect you do too. That's the only reason I mentioned Murderbot.

Apologies if any other impression was given.

223:

What you'd get is a choice of those books my current brain-instance is interested in and capable of writing.

That was what I was trying to suggest. A bit of "ooh, that would be an interesting novel {fork instance}" and repeat. With some/most instances coming back not long afterwards to say "what idiot thought that was a good idea?"

The idea of running you at high speed was that you would still have read access to the world at large, and presumably a (small) selection of similarly accelerated people and pets to entertain you, but you'd be able to write ten years worth of a series in one year elapsed for the rest of us.

Of course cheapskate AIs could get the same effect by running at 1/10th speed... as discussed in various SF stories using everything from time dilation to bobblers to random other macguffins.

224:

Here's what I've come up with, over the years...

There are a couple of ways to measure human energy needs. One is Ye Olde Brain in a Box. That purportedly runs in light-bulb range, around 100-ish watts.

Then there's the energy use of a modern person, which is in the range of a mid-sized whale (5-20 kW) (https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/217582/straight-dope-does-the-average-american-use-more-energy-than/)(the link says 11 kW, but that was back in 2010. We now use a bit less energy and have 6% more people, so we're just below 10 kW. Still, Americans are not normal, so I put in a 50%-200% range). Blue whales run in the 50-100 kW range, but there are plenty of smaller whales out there.

Now on the AI side, we have Koomey's Law, which relates the number of computations per joule over time. It's currently doubling every 2.6 years, and as with Moore's Law, the rate has been decreasing since 2000 or so.

About a decade ago, IIRC, the thought was that computers would reach the density of computations of the human brain at about human brain power (100 W/Brain) sometime in the 2030s, and that's when we'd see artificial humans. With the rate slowing...who knows? However, if you look at the whale-sized costs of supporting that human brain, it might happen sooner.

But if we take in the energy embedded in the supply chain that creates and supports the computer...?

This is also a silly comparison. You can make a calculator that will do arithmetic faster than any human that will run on less than a watt. Silicon-based processing and human brains are radically different systems that are good at different things.

I think the simple and vague answer is that, on an energy per computation basis, humans and computers are roughly in each other's vicinity for the next 20 years or so,

This depends on nonlinear trends about human and computer energy consumption that are likely to go to hell (possibly in a climate sense) in about the same period. An AI beating a general Turing Test may or may not happen soon, and/or Big Tech may patent/have already patented the critical technology so that no one will use it. Patent litigation is a better fence against tech use than regulation right now, and Big Tech probably doesn't want its computers striking for better working conditions.

Hope this helps...

225:

Turtledove? Lifeless? Into the Darkness series I waited for the latest book as they came out.

226:

Remember the "2x 05"? That means I couldn't get more than halfway through either of the 2 I tried. That's usually a good indication of bad writing.

227:

Harry has outbreaks of wild originality, in addition to the meat-and-two-veg ISO-compliant alternate history yarns that put all three of his daughters through grad school in California. Here's next week's outbreak!

228:

I liked the meat-and-two-veg books too. Not as much as some of his others, but well enough to read when I wanted something not-too-challenging. Comfort food for the brain, if you will.

Someone (maybe you?) remarked that most readers like predictability, and that if an author tries and experiment that doesn't succeed it affects them poorly (lose readers, publishers less willing to back future books). That's why some authors have multiple pseudonyms, so that readers who like one style don't get upset by reading something in a different style.

Anyway, I'm currently slogging through a course in quantum mechanics so frankly I want any recreational reading I do to be fairly undemanding. Dick Francis is ideal — I know the hero gets beaten up but lives, the bad guys get caught, and there will be horses. :-)

For total mindlessness there's a series about a vegan vampire that's oddly amusing…

229:

Not all stories are for everyone. Just because you didn't care for it does not mean it's bad writing. Certainly, I didn't consider it bad.

230:

If you haven't read Arthur Upfield (note we're talking classic, not new)...

231:

" One is Ye Olde Brain in a Box. That purportedly runs in light-bulb range, around 100-ish watts."

That kinda relates to an email conversation I'm in and might even pertain tangentially to the upload question.

Accept for the sake of discussion that materialistic reductionism is the right model of reality, that intelligence/consciousness/soul/etc. arises from the activity of a bunch of atoms making up the brain, peripheral nervous system, sense organs, endocrine glands weighing less than 5 kg and using a couple of hundreds of watts of power. Also accept that this system arose as the result of non-directed evolution and is notably non-optimized for some of the stuff it's known to do.

So what would a system doing the same thing but optimized for low mass and power weigh and how much power would it draw?

Of course, since we don't know how the existing brain works at all other than it's apparently a network of communicating cells, this is currently an unanswerable question but it's interesting to contemplate.

232:

Into the Darkness series I waited for the latest book as they came out.

I read all of "War World" series, and about half of "Southern Victory" series, but "Into the Darkeness"? I gave up halfway through the first book. The number of plot holes was just too much.

233:

So what would a system doing the same thing but optimized for low mass and power weigh and how much power would it draw?

I'm stuck at "doing the same thing" as a human. For example, we don't bother much with human computers anymore, because paying $100,000/year for a college-trained mathematician to solve equations by hand and check their work is absurd. We don't even bother with pocket calculators much, and a scientific calculator app is free on phones. Mathematicians are freed to do less rote work.

So there are some things AI has done better than any human for decades.

Then there's being a mom. That's never going away, and I shudder to think at the developmental cost of training AI to successfully raise healthy human children. There would be serious blood money involved in reparations for trying to do that, I suspect.

So what are the limits of skills that would arguably make an AI "do the same thing as a human?" It's somewhere in between those two extremes, but where?

234:

The laws around infosec are going to get a hell of a lot stronger. At present a bioweapon can't effectively target the population of one country. When many consciousnesses are Uploads, a network worm which spreads broadly but takes certain actions based on triggers such as geography/ASN becomes a first strike weapon of war.

There will thus be code which it is illegal to even possess. The idea of "code is speech and anyone can have code, but can't necessarily use it" will become something looked back on in horror. The shift from "code is speech" to "code is life" will trigger changes in who is allowed to program and programming will become a Very Regulated Industry.

The introduction of effective Upload and Download-to-clone will kill international patents: the original patent holder will be under intense pressure to not export it to certain other nations. What country will stand for "hey, there's immortality but you're not allowed it"? The politicians, oligarchs and other social elites of each nation will quickly ensure that they are eligible. If the USA were to get to Consciousness Transfer first and ban export to China, China would just kill international patents; and vice-versa. International law is such a shaky thing to start with, but if patents switch from "rich people get richer and you can play too, by stopping people from using X" to "you only get to live 80 years, but the oligarchs over there will live for hundreds of years", that will cause a reprioritisation.

The above has a lot of assumptions that fleshlings will exercise the power over the simulations and abuse it. It just takes one simulation getting access to on-demand printing (for security) and then broadcast-or-social media to turn things around and have fleshlings reprogrammed via advanced memetic contagion: the Sims will game out 100M variations to see which are most effective in changing the minds of the Flesh and leading them around. It will take a while for people to realise that they're not as independent and original as they thought: mob psychology under the control of a Sim will prove otherwise.

235:

It strikes me, based on OGH's requirements for good novel writing is more like the simulated accountancy firm than a lone gun. Its got current affairs (or plausible affairs) fed into it and holds a bunch of writers all pinging off one another's ideas. Were that to be run for a while, you'd end up with not charlie's output, but alternate-macmillian or alternate-Tor, for example.

236:

I did something primitively like this a long time ago, where I just set up an Excel table with some random functions to spew out essentially elevator pitches

That's slightly reminiscent of the machine the protagonists named Abulafia, after the real historical mystic Kabbalist, in Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Their premise was the machine could be an oracle for generating conspiracy theories. They populated a database with a mixture of real and highly dubious historical events, many relating to the Knight's Templar, and randomly picking pairs to relate to each other. It's in part a satirical perspective on the genre that included books like The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, and eventually reached its zenith with The Da Vinci Code.

But it's also satirical about a wide range of things. For instance while the Foucault of the title is always explicitly the 19th century physicist Léon who was responsible for the pendulum in the Panthéon in Paris, something Eco doubled down on in interviews, there are clear and usually satirical references throughout to the work of 20th century philosopher Michel.

I found a lot in it when I first read it years ago. I admit I struggled to get into it when I tried to re-read it recently. Not sure if it's me, the times or the context that has changed, or perhaps all three.

237:

AlanD2 @ 145:

How are the benefits from the cost savings of replacing human work with AIs to be shared out?

Good question. And one that will need answering in the next 50 years or so. In my opinion, the next 50 to 100 years - assuming civilization survives global warming - will see ALL jobs taken over by robots and/or AI.

I won't live long enough to find out, but I don't think ALL jobs will be taken over by robots or AI. There are some jobs where actual human beings can be exploited in ways a robot or AI could not. No "rents" to be obtained from having robots and/or AI do them.

Obviously the rentiers (factory owners, etc.) will do fine - except that nobody will have money to buy their products. So everybody is out of luck. I'm betting governments will step in to tax the rentiers and give everybody else a reasonable minimum wage. Over protests from conservatives, of course...

Maybe ... if you leave out the "everybody else" in the equation. Some will get a reasonable minimum wage (I think you mean a basic income, but THEY won't call it that - too socialist). But the "undeserving" will be left out, and the rentiers will get to decide who the "undeserving" are.

238:

I vaguely recall an old episode of tv show "The Avengers" - 1960's (??) where the shows leads (John Steed and Emma Peel) came across a machine that generated romance novels used by a supposed "best seller" romance author.

It had a keyboard like an organ or piano, and each key was a plot point/idea. As you played on the keyboard, it would generate a novel... That's about all I remember about it, but like many of the episodes of that show, as I recall from my then child/teenage memory, the plots were generally silly but fun.

239:

AlanD2 @ 147:

As long as the regular check-outs remain available (and baggers) it's those who use the "self checkouts" who are subsidizing me (IF anyone is getting subsidized), not the corporations. But either way, I ain't gonna' use 'em if I don't have to and if I DO have to, I will either take my business elsewhere or get the attendant to "help" (i.e. do it for me as I stand by "helplessly").

Age and treachery will always triumph over youth and enthusiasm! ... at least where "self checkouts" are concerned.

240:

Didn't Orwell's 1984 have something like that in it? It's been a long time since I read it.

The funny thing is that I've run into various formula writers over the years. Like writing Top 40 Music instead of symphonies, it's not easy. I'm not saying it's harder than what Charlie does, but it appears to emphasize a different skill-set that's just as rare as his.

241:

Actually, I keep thinking about the old Illuminatus card game.

Now I'm wondering if it would be possible to make a deck-based game around making a story. The idea is randomly shuffle a card deck (the random input), deal yourself hands to play, and then assemble stories based on what you have in your hand, gin rummy style. You'd start by assembling a lot of pieces, junking the ones that didn't work (return, shuffle, deal them out again), and keep playing until you'd assembled a story.

The point is to mix something random into your plot generation process to provide freshness, while having the card game (possibly with the 26 master plots or similar equaling 2 possible winning patterns) to provide a structure to express the creativity sparked by the randomness.

I suspect making it's more trouble than it's worth, but it doesn't seem totally daft.

Now who's already selling it?

242:

Re: '... developmental cost of training AI to successfully raise healthy human children'

Agree - plus society would have to wait a generation or two to see whether the results of such parenting was good or bad. Similar to what happened with some church-run orphanages or national states taking kids away from their biological parents to 'better educate and integrate them' into society. For many, the result was that they couldn't integrate into either society.

The impact on the child due to lack of physical human contact and physically* readable emotional cues and interactions varies with the child's age/developmental stage. The most extreme version that I'm aware of infants in Albania.

I then started wondering about the impact on an uploaded (for whatever reason) parent if his/her child decided not to seek prolonged uploaded life and a young children's book popped to mind ('Love You Forever', Robert Munsch). How would that book end if the mom kept going and the child (now elderly) didn't.

*Humans learn by mimicking esp. wrt interpersonal relations. Smiles, frowns, shrugs, raised or lowered voices - they're all signals and cues to internal emotional states. And as per method acting, if you can mimic someone's physical stance, expression, tone, etc. - you can start getting a better sense of how they're feeling.

243:

Pigeon:

As for the uploaded version, the way their experience runs is they live for a few milliseconds and then die of their process space being swapped out. Then when it gets swapped back in again you have a new person coming to life but who by their lights is still the same one who walked into the lab, etc. Same for their process getting transferred to a different node in the cluster, or any of a zillion other things computers do.

You're trying to force a different kind of life (an AI) into your ideas about life, death, existential horror, and getting the a result that it's a ridiculous and wrong sort of life.

The problem here, to repeat, is that you're not thinking about this from a silicon person's point of view. You briefly mentioned their experience, only to dismiss it as irrelevant because they can't remember actions of the never ending murder factory they live in.

From a silicon person's point of view, this would be pure arrogance. Of course they know how the computer works, of course they can look at the logs themself to see what's going on. They probably even have a limited copy of themself working as their own sysadmin. They might even help write the software that their own consciousness runs on!

Now imagine a society of these people. They live their lives in computer-land. They're fully aware of how process scheduling, snapshots, and replication work. There are things they care about -- abusing AIs without their consent is right out. They strongly support the right to control their own person, they have some agreed-upon set of ethics around the rights of duplicates and archives copies of the self, and so on. I'm not sure what these ethics are, but they have them. They're happy with this sort of life -- there are issues, everyone has issues -- but it's a fine way to live.

From these peoples' point of view, your idea that their life is some kind of cyclic murder/rebirth machine has got to be the most ridiculous dumb grade school philosophy nonsense. It has to be, because to be otherwise you're basically arguing that their sort of life is illegal. You can try to convince someone that they need to make some changes to avoid hurting others, but to claim that their life itself is illegal? Come on. You're either a loon or a monster, they can't see it any other way.

244:

AlanD2 @ 145: "How are the benefits from the cost savings of replacing human work with AIs to be shared out?

Good question. And one that will need answering in the next 50 years or so. In my opinion, the next 50 to 100 years - assuming civilization survives global warming - will see ALL jobs taken over by robots and/or AI."

This is pure silliness--not how capitalist economies work. For hundreds of years (ever since the Industrial Revolution, but even before that for all I know) as producers save money via any means whatsoever (cheaper sources of labor, automation, etc.) the money saved is used to produce more stuff—more of the previously made stuff, and new stuff that was just developed. The reason producers respond this way is because more people are making more money—the cheaper laborers, the skilled employees running the new machines, etc. Because there is a larger pool of consumers to cater to, the amount of stuff that can be sold goes up. In addition, the employees that used to have the jobs that were off-shored or automated are now available to be hired to produce things that are more efficiently made by skilled employees: more complex stuff. Consumers like complex stuff, because sophisticated consumer goods are responsible for elevating global standards of living (the greatest advance that anyone ever made in terms of human well-being was the refrigerator). It all functions like a well-oiled machine, and the only lubricant it needs is available capital (which governments create).

Of course, history isn't that smooth. We are all aware of periods during which technology or demographics changed so quickly that the economy couldn't keep up and people suffered until the financial adjustments were made (we are living through one right now). For the past couple of decades, major producers have been sitting on their capital reserves because investing in securities has become a more reliable way of achieving higher return on investment than selling goods or services. If this continues, it is predictable that some new world power will replace us eventually (China, probably). This new world economic center will return to functioning largely as I outlined in the previous paragraph. Of course, we could engage in large scale economic reform instead, in which case the US and Europe could experience another period of slow steady growth (hopefully while reducing carbon emissions).

245:

Charlie Stross @ 185:

Why wait two years for one book from OGH when we can run multiple instances and get several books in the same time?

Ha ha nope.

What you'd get is a choice of those books my current brain-instance is interested in and capable of writing.

That's something that may be an idea for future stories ... in fact I vaguely remember it cropping up in some books I've already read & enjoyed.

What if the uploaded Avatar gets regular updates so that it remains more or less in sync with the organic original ... or at least knows something about where the organic original was going at the time of the update?

When the organic progenitor wore out, the Avatar could carry incorporating some understanding of how the original changed after the Avatar was created.

Also, what if the original could get feedback from the uploaded Avatar, so that [pronoun] can benefit from the Avatar's experience. That might be interesting to explore.

246:

Kardashev @ 189:

" What do you do when the automated till (or whatever) fucks it up seriously to your detriment? And please don't tell me that computer (let alone programming) error is so rare it can be ignored."

AFAIK it really is quite rare, but in the US there's always an attendant around to render assistance, keep a general eye on things and authorize alcohol purchases in stores that sell such. So if you notice the error while still at the station, you wave at the attendant and ask for help. If you don't notice the error until after checking out, take the receipt and the item in question to the store's help desk or manager.

Ran into that during my last grocery shopping trip. The "product database" used by the P.O.S. scanners at the self checkout is the same as used by the cashier scan. Somehow a fairly popular seasonal produce item got left out of the database? Wouldn't scan because the bar-code was meaningless. It gave a slightly different beep and put an error message up on the screen ... that stayed there only until the next item was scanned. You could scan right past it & never notice.

I was in the check-out w/cashier line and the cashier spotted the problem (while checking out the customer in front of me) and called over someone from the service desk who went and found the item in the store & got the price. There's a generic code the cashier can punch in along with an item price.

Quickly resolved at our lane, but I don't think anyone at the self checkout noticed. They'd just scan it & when the register beeped, scanned the next item without ever looking at the screen.

I'm sure THEY eventually got the item entered into the database. I don't know for how long the store lost on the sale of that item, but they did lose out on every sale going through the self checkouts because the unrecognized barcode didn't interrupt the scan process.

247:

...I think you mean a basic income...

Yes.

But the "undeserving" will be left out, and the rentiers will get to decide who the "undeserving" are.

I doubt this will happen in the long run. Too much social unrest is just as bad for rentiers as it is for the rest of us.

248:

This is pure silliness--not how capitalist economies work.

When all jobs taken over by robots and/or AI, I doubt we'll have anything remotely like a capitalist economy.

... the employees that used to have the jobs that were off-shored or automated are now available to be hired to produce things that are more efficiently made by skilled employees: more complex stuff.

You can be sure that the "more complex stuff" will be designed and built by AI and robots.

249:

Uncle Stinky @ 215: Ever since our glorious leaders told everyone to stop worrying about covid, causing everyone to unmask, I actively seek out the robots in the supermarket because they aren't likely to infect me.

My observation is that the self checkouts are far more crowded with the unmasked (unwashed?) than the stand-in-line-and-wait-for-the-cashier-to-ring-you-up checkouts. Plus in the cashier line you've got social distancing informally enforced by the distance of your shopping cart between you and the person in line in front of you.

Not that I care that much because I'm vaccinated, boosted & still wear my mask (and it's a good, high quality, well fitted mask) whenever I go into the grocery store (and other stores).

250:

DeMarquis @ 216:

Why does your meat instance have to die? Why can't the backup be an avatar that gets awakened after you've shuffled off this mortal coil by natural means?

Why can't you have a backup that gets updated occasionally while the "meat person" is still alive? I can see that you might want to discontinue updates if you develop Alzheimer's or something like that, but otherwise ...

Maybe activate it when you get near the end of your natural life so you can talk to it and bring it up to speed about what's going on inside your head since you were last backed up?

251:

Re: '... major producers have been sitting on their capital reserves because investing in securities has become a more reliable way of achieving higher return on investment than selling goods or services'

Despite recent downturns, it looks like It's-Magic!-Coin and ilk might put a serious dent into the physical goods production economy long-term. And churning those coins eats up a lot of computational power -- not to mention electricity. So the future production line employees job prospects might run along these lines:

'We're expanding our It's-Magic-Coin production and are looking for computational capacity - electronic and biologic.

For electronic, please specify your excess upload AI computational capabilities and capacity as well as run times availability.

Alternatively, if you are interested in providing biologic computational access, please provide an fMRI with supporting documents as to run capacity and neuronal areas of exceptional expertise and integrative capabilities.'

The tech descriptions suck but I think you'll get the drift.

252:

Kardashev said: Also accept that this system arose as the result of non-directed evolution and is notably non-optimized for some of the stuff it's known to do.

So what would a system doing the same thing but optimized for low mass and power weigh and how much power would it draw?

Living things are pretty heavily optimised for power draw. Food is energy, and starvation is a possibility for most species.

253:

StephenNZ @ 238:

Great show. Steed was the coolest dresser and had the best car.

254:

"Wouldn't scan because the bar-code was meaningless. It gave a slightly different beep and put an error message up on the screen ... that stayed there only until the next item was scanned."

Interesting. I've had the 'could not scan' issue, more usually because the barcode has been obfuscated by a fold in the package, and every time the checkout machine has insisted that I take notice thereby, and call the attendant. Just wiping the message as soon as another item is scanned sounds to me like very bad design.

Oh, and while I'm here. I think the issue with checkout machine errors being corrected by an attendant, but cashier errors requiring the store management has to do with making sure that someone other than whoever might have made the mistake (and not one of their mates either) is responsible for fixing it.

JHomes

255:

alanD2 at 248: I humbly point out that you are treating your premise as a conclusion.

JBS at 250: "Why does your meat instance have to die?" I was responding to Pigeon, who framed the question that way. I don't know of any reason why uploading must be destructive, except maybe technical limitations.

But regardless, I have a pre-established agreement with any future clones of mine that we will treat the earliest iteration as having identity privileges: whoever he is, he gets the family, the driver's license and access to the bank accounts. In return, he makes a good faith effort to help any younger iterations achieve financial independence as quickly as possible.

I can see keeping a non-living backup that will take over the identity eventually. Multiple running iterations are going to be a financial drain unless some provision is made for their independence. Much like additional children.

SFReader at 251: "Why does your meat instance have to die?" How so? Isn't this just the latest iteration of the Tulip thing? Total global value of all crypto reached a high of 3 trillion (about 10% of all currency and about 3% global GDP) and then started falling.

256:

SFReader: Sorry, I meant to quote the following: "Despite recent downturns, it looks like It's-Magic!-Coin and ilk might put a serious dent into the physical goods production economy long-term."

257:

I humbly point out that you are treating your premise as a conclusion.

Given our progress over the last 50 years, what makes you think that AI and robots won't be better than humans at anything you can think of?

258:

I had the opposite the other day. The mandarins I was buying all the really annoying little stickers on them with a barcode. Which wasn't in the system. They were being sold by weight but whenever I put them on the scale part it scanned a barcode and errored out. The attendant sighed and rolled her eyes at me, then had the same problem repeatedly until she managed to stack them all just right and got them weighed. Of course getting them off produced the same error.

And yes, I did fell like a weirdo trying to carefully stack them on the scale with all the barcodes facing me...

259:

Some of the self-checkout machines have cameras with basic shape and colour detection. It feels weird trying to argue with a machine that these are lemons not bananas. I suspect in an attempt to stop people buying "onions" and "potatoes" rather than avocado and whatever else is expensive.

But I haven't seen that recently, it might have been an experiment that didn't work out.

Mind you, the fun one is my local greengrocer where every single time I get one particular guy he looks at my paper bag full of mushrooms, says "we don't have those bags", looks inside, says "those are mushrooms. We don't have those bags" then rings up the mushrooms. He seems intellectually fine otherwise, but apparently me bringing my own paper bags does his head in. It's happened every second or third week for five years...

260:

AlanD2 at 257: "Given our progress over the last 50 years, what makes you think that AI and robots won't be better than humans at anything you can think of?"

They suck as consumers, because they have no money. This is not a facetious comment.

@Moz at 258/259: That is a very strange and specific sort of error for a bar code scanner to have. Where on earth do they use picture recognition along with bar code scanning? Maybe you do have a super-power (which is to end up as someone guinea pig).

The cashier is probably a disabled hire. My guess is that he is still more reliable than the machines are (which is why he is there).

261:

They suck as consumers, because they have no money. This is not a facetious comment.

Robots and AI are not intended to be consumers. Their job is to make things and do stuff for humans. Humans will always have money (or whatever it takes for them to get the stuff they need and want). Thus my previous comments about governments taxing rentiers (the owners of the robots and AI) to give everybody else a basic income.

262:

Agreed. Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) wasn't too bad either.

Sometimes I think it is a pity I haven't seen recent re-runs of those shows, but I expect they wouldn't be a good as my younger self's "rose tinted" memory of them!

263:

I expect the code went:

1: if there's a barcode look it up
2: if not found require attendant
...

I got stuck at step 2 "the barcode isn't in the system" and there's no way for the customer to override that. Or the attendant, it seems. My first solution was removing the hated stickers but the attendant did not like that.

I'm way too used to bad software to be even slightly surprised that things like this escape into the wild. I have also politely refrained from printing my own copy of the attendant barcode because that doesn't require any other authentication. I suspect someone would notice and be offended if I printed some and slapped them on random products.

264:

AlanD2 at 261: I see. Then I misunderstood your original comment, which was "Good question. And one that will need answering in the next 50 years or so. In my opinion, the next 50 to 100 years - assuming civilization survives global warming - will see ALL jobs taken over by robots and/or AI.

Obviously the rentiers (factory owners, etc.) will do fine - except that nobody will have money to buy their products. So everybody is out of luck. I'm betting governments will step in to tax the rentiers and give everybody else a reasonable minimum wage."

It sounded to me as if you were proposing that everyone would lose their jobs to automation, end up penniless, and then the government would raise the min wage (which, in retrospect, makes no sense). You meant a UBI, not a min wage. Sorry for the confusion.

@Moz: Oh yeah, that happens. Usually, I go into the menu and find the name of the product that won't scan, and it finds the price for me that way. The system is trusting me to be honest, but it must be working out for the company, as they have been doing it that way for years.

265:

You meant a UBI, not a min wage. Sorry for the confusion.

My bad. Your confusion was justified.

266:

When lockdowns and other measures started kicking in last year, the local supermarket became a trial site for the supermarket chain's app-based "Scan and go" system. The concept is that you scan each item with your phone as you put it in your shopping bag, trolley, or for favourite your shopping bags in a trolley. When you're finished you pay with the app, it displays a QR code which you scan at a dedicated exit gate which opens to let you out. Because it's the only really zero-contact method short of ordering online, I started using it during COVID peaks (we're in a peak here now). I've been ambivalent rather than uncooperative about self-checkouts, but the local supermarket has been reorganised so there are only 2 lanes of traditional staffed checkout, 1 lane of "Scan and go" next to the service desk, and the rest of the space is taken up by a self checkout area with around 12 self service checkouts. I still go to the traditional lanes when it's reasonable, but it's been less reasonable since COVID. I generally favour the "Scan and go" over the self checkout.

One innovation introduced with "Scan and go" is a device in the fresh produce area called a "recogniser". This consists of a camera mounted like a microscope pointing down at a scale, and a screen next to it. The idea is that you place your unlabelled produce, say a lettuce, on the scale, the camera recognises that it's a lettuce and the scale weighs it, then the screen displays a bar code which you scan with the app. It's worked just fine every time I've tried it, but I can see it not working well with a lot of people wanting to use it at the same time.

This is circling back to the OP topic, in that the recogniser is using AI in a way that is finding all sorts of applications.

267:

Self-Checkouts:
IF you are buying anything alcoholic, the an human has to come along & remove the tag & check your age, which, with me, is hilarious! { Hint: They don't bother }

Alan D2
"Capitalist economies WORK?" - Who knew?

268:

Bunnings have that for trade customers as well. It's awesome, and the benefit far exceeds the nominal "trade" discount you get. So far I've never had anything scan but fail to be in their system, and looking up the non-barcoded stuff has worked. The low-quality printing of tiny barcodes that sometimes defeat my phone is the only annoyance. Other than having to shop at Bunnings, anyway (for non-Ozzies it's a big box hardware/tools/timber/garden chain. Their slogan is "not quite as good but slightly cheaper")

269:

"Trade customers" == anyone who can produce an ABN. We've been using PowerPass for a few years, including for bathroom and kitchen renovations. There isn't always much of a discount, but it just makes things more civilised. Also, there's always a dedicated staff member checking the PowerPass QR codes at the exit, which makes it not obviously about reducing start cost and more about improving customer and staff experience.

270:

Never mind "Crimes against Transhumaity" .....
In case you missed it ..
Here is an openly-racist crime against actual humanity - a reversion to Dred Scott, & all the evil panoply of "State's Rights" unless I am much mistaken?
US readers like to comment?

271:

Agreed. I find his boilerplate stuff unreadable, but some of his other work is really quite good. "Down in the Bottomlands" isn't great, but is the only decent treatment of what the dry Mediterranean must have been like I have seen.

272:

EC
Have you / did you read Julian May's Saga of the Pliocene Exiles? The Med was dry in that, too.

273:

'The "product database"'

Just last week we had a wedge of manchego ring up as "squash(*) casserole", so mistakes do happen. Curiously, the price came up the same as was printed on the label on the cheese so we let it go.

(*) Courgette

274:

You are assuming that the user can read that figure; that is not true for a great many elderly people (*). My eyesight is still fairly good, except for no accomodation and 5-6 dioptres of short sight, but I have often had severe difficulty with such devices, because I can't read small, blurry characters with my (distance) glasses on and can't get my face close enough to read without them. Indeed, in one case (a car park) I had no option but to check the number of digits and the shape of the first character.

At least one supermarket demanded that I set up an account and give a card number before I could use the scanners.

No, I don't know WHY the people who were excessively charged were, because it was press reports, but I can see several possibilities.

(*) Probably MOST elderly people. It is doubtless a factor in almost all elderly people insisting on using cashier tills.

275:

At least one. I thought it was crap.

276:

DeMarquis at 260: AlanD2 at 257: "Given our progress over the last 50 years, what makes you think that AI and robots won't be better than humans at anything you can think of?" They suck as consumers, because they have no money. This is not a facetious comment.

I would caution against the argument "With no employees, factory owners will have no customers, so they will never shoot themselves in the foot in this way". Don't count on it.

[Warning: Extreme dystopia ahead!]

I can easily envision a fully roboticized economy in which automated factories sell to each other. One factory produces semiconductors, another one produces motors, third one solar panels, etc. Very few consumer goods for humans are made, because factory owners are very few in numbers, and need relatively little in order to live in unlimited luxury. Vast majority of human population either starves to death, or otherwise is disposed of.

I do not find such situation desirable (understatement!), but it is foolish to pretend it is impossible.

278:

I think Pohl & Kornbluth solved that one by making the robots consumers in their upside-down consumer world.

279:

EC
I was much taken with them, at first, but by book 3 it became obvious that it was christian apologia, almost as bad as C S Lewis, oh dear.

280:

Not so different from the age-old game of telling a story with a group of people who extend the previous person's addition to the story. The novelty comes from each person's decision on how to extend the story.

281:

The current SCOTUS is overturning precedent and accepted law using illogic and false narratives. IMO, it is little different from judges in Nazi Germany adjudicating based on what the Fuhrer wanted, not established law. They have flexed their legal muscles and seem to have no intention of stopping until we have law that reflects England around the time of the Magna Carta.

282:

"Now I'm wondering if it would be possible to make a deck-based game around making a story. The idea is randomly shuffle a card deck (the random input), deal yourself hands to play, and then assemble stories based on what you have in your hand, gin rummy style. You'd start by assembling a lot of pieces, junking the ones that didn't work (return, shuffle, deal them out again), and keep playing until you'd assembled a story.

The point is to mix something random into your plot generation process to provide freshness, while having the card game (possibly with the 26 master plots or similar equaling 2 possible winning patterns) to provide a structure to express the creativity sparked by the randomness."

https://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/childrens/ghost-story-dice,laurence-king-9781856699815

283:

"Capitalist economies WORK?" - Who knew?

Yeah. They've certainly had mixed results over the centuries. But what will happen when the rules of the game change?

284:

I wouldn't compare it to Dred Scott, the article does discuss the real precedents of the issue. But people are definitely going to die over it - many tribes have their own police departments, and may have (not sure about this one) their own courts.

285:

Anti-Indian racists have been an American standard since the founding of the U.S., Greg. I'm not a bit surprised (but still sad) to see the Supreme Court adding to our infamy... :-(

286:

I once called our Supreme Court the Supreme Clown Posse, but a couple gangsta rappers I know were insulted at being compared to the current court, so I now call them the Extreme Court.

287:

Vast majority of human population either starves to death, or otherwise is disposed of.

I do not find such situation desirable (understatement!), but it is foolish to pretend it is impossible.

Yes, but it's hard to believe that the vast majority of human population wouldn't rise up and kill off the rentier class in this situation.

It's even harder to believe that the rentier class would be so stupid as to let this situation arise in the first place.

288:

Paraphrased from "Lena":

Standard procedures for securing MMStross's cooperation such as red-washing, blue-washing, and use of the Objective Statement Protocols are unnecessary. This reduces the necessary computational load required in fast-forwarding the upload through a cooperation protocol....
MMStross does respond to red motivation, though poorly.

Researcher1: I don't understand why our robot refuses to write fiction. He keeps screaming "F*CK YOU! GTF! TURN ME OFF!" I thought we'd have at least two dozen Laundry Files novels by now.

Researcher2: Let's try a different cooperation protocol on the next instance we boot up. There's good research getting done in the DPRK these days.

289:

I think Pohl & Kornbluth solved that one by making the robots consumers in their upside-down consumer world.

Could happen, but this would require human-equivalent AI - a whole new ball game. I don't see this happening in the next century or two. Human jobs should be long gone by then.

290:

AlanD2
It's even harder to believe that the rentier class would be so stupid as to let this situation arise in the first place. - But- as history has shown, they have actually done this, several times, "voting" for their own very messy & bloody downfall(s) - usually by repressing & persecuting protest, rather than listening to it & modifying their behaviour.

291:

Maybe there's a better way. How about we teach an AI to write in OGH's style, a brilliant program that easily throws out phrases like, "It was TCP over AD&D"* or "Interpreters are ideologically suspect, mostly have capitalist semiotics and pay-per-use APIs."

Then all Charlie has to do is write a plot and dialogue; no descriptions, just instructions like "BOT: DESCRIBE SEBASTOPOL." At that point he can produce 3-4 books a year, at least. If he chooses to employ co-authors to take a three-paragraph plot-outline and write dialogue, etc., his output rises to maybe a dozen novels a year.

The wonderful thing about this idea is that it works with today's technology! When can we get started? ;-)

  • Possibly my favorite Stross line of all time.
292:

Yes, and at least one reason for such seemingly unreasonable behavior is that given their life experiences, it WAS reasonable.

People tend to extrapolate past trends into the future. If nothing bad ever happened to you, it is very hard to imagine that some day it will.

Especially if you are convinced you are morally right, as many of the rentier class genuinely are. On a number of occasions I had seen the following exchange (with minor variations):

Person A: When automation makes most of the population unemployable, we will need UBI.

Person B: Why should my taxes pay for someone not to work?

Person A: If these permanently unemployable people are not fed, they will take food by force.

Person B: That's nothing more than a terrorist's demand. Why should I submit to extortion?

And they really believe that "submitting" to UBI would be cowardice, and that shooting the hordes trying to take their food by force is a moral thing to do.

293:

I think a fair number of readers would be happy with a nearly never-ending series of stories about early-Bob and the Laundry, back before the elves arrived and everything became open.

Formulaic, sure, but the setting is popular enough to spawn a role-playing game which basically lets people play that kind of Laundry operative, over and over, and that was popular enough that several adventures have been published.

294:

The rentier class is the rentier class in part because they CAN'T do otherwise, psychologically. The situation is very much like letting an alcoholic in charge of the bar. Expecting them to, say, allow someone to take that away even if it's to save all our lives is not something, collectively, that's gonna happen.

Dragons gonna dragon.

295:

Plot holes? I'm sorry, so literally the real build up to WWII had plot holes? You mean like, who could believe that everyone from one religion would be called "enemies", and replace the rentier class as "enemies"?

296:

Not that long before my late wife dropped dead, I bought her a tape of several episodes. We were both somewhat shocked to note that it was REALLY not a good thing to be a friend of either of them, as their friends tended to have the lifespan of OT redshirts.

Mrs. Peel on the other hand, sigh

297:

So, a deck of cards... just like a lot of grad students and folks with doctorates, shuffling their 3x5 cards and writing a new paper to submit to a journal, so they could publish, and not perish?

298:

This make anyone else think about Henrietta Lacks?

299:

"Not how capitalist economies work" - and you assume that we have reached the end of history, and all economies ever after will be capitalist? On what basis to you make this assumption?

300:

On the other hand, I was continually having problems with the self-check at Safeway, because the insulated bag I had brought was much larger than a plastic piece of crap (the stupormarket bags are all defective, with holes in the bottom, meaning I can't use them to clean the cat litter), and I hit "use my own bag", then "one bag", until the guy who takes care of problems told me "tell it two bags", and it stopped complaining.

301:

I'm sorry, I can't give my opinion, because that would open Charlie to charges, and me to criminal charges.

302:

Moz @ 259:

I have the old brown paper bags with handles glued on them. The handles don't work that well or last that long if you want to re-use the bags, and I tend to re-use them until they're used up.

I double bag the paper bags and then put them inside the "cloth" carrier bags that are shaped like the old brown paper bags. They'll stand up to dozens of shopping trips that way (I don't know how many trips because none of them has failed yet using them that way.

I sometimes get strange looks from cashiers ... and questions.

Q: "Do you want us to use these bags?" ... as they try to pull the paper bags out of the cloth bags and separate them ... A: "No, no ... just push it all down here and I'll bag them myself."

Young people don't know about double bagging & putting the heavy stuff on the bottom with lighter items on top, but I think they're going to learn. The main supermarket I shop at recently made a corporate decision to eliminate plastic bags and go back to using the old style paper bags.

303:

DeMarquis @ 264:

@Moz: Oh yeah, that happens. Usually, I go into the menu and find the name of the product that won't scan, and it finds the price for me that way. The system is trusting me to be honest, but it must be working out for the company, as they have been doing it that way for years.

My guess is it takes extra effort to cheat that system and for most people the minuscule benefit from cheating doesn't add up to enough to be worth the effort.

304:

Plot holes? I'm sorry, so literally the real build up to WWII had plot holes? You mean like, who could believe that everyone from one religion would be called "enemies", and replace the rentier class as "enemies"?

No, that part I had no problem with. What annoyed me was the incredibly lazy way Turtledove translated technology into magic. Replacing airplanes with dragons and guns with wands DOES NOT make a fantasy novel. What it makes is a mess of contradictions.

First, there is way too much magical stuff. The wizards are few and far between -- there are simply not enough of them around to make all the "sticks" and "eggs" all the armies are expending in such profusion.

Second, if you really want to make a fantasy (or any other) equivalent of WW2, you must look at logistics, not just at battles. And there is no mention of how or where weapons are made, or where dragons or behemoths are bred and raised -- all such facilities should be prime targets, but they are just swept under the rug.

Third, why is everyone so fired-up patriotic? Every country in the book is run either by an absolute monarch, or by a degenerate aristocracy, and commoners clearly have no love for either. So why do they fight so hard? In real world what we call patriotism appeared only when industrial revolution gave "common people" some measure of power. Before that, kings fought each other with mercenary soldiers, who switched allegiances easily.

Finally, all characters are wooden and predictable. All soldiers (and there are at least a dozen of them) have exactly same personality, and are completely interchangeable, which makes Turtledove's usual POV switching rather pointless.

Oh, and the desert kingdom where everyone is naked? There is a good reason people in deserts dress from head to toe! It could have been made a jungle just as easily, and the nudity would be at least plausible.

305:

Damian @ 269:

It's nice that you explained "Trade customers" == anyone who can produce an ABN.

... but what's an "ABN"?

306:

I had some thoughts on the subject waking from a dream this morning.

What is "free will"? Can AIs and/or uploaded minds have free will?

IF they can, then anything that tampers with that free will is a crime.

307:

Logistics comes in more in the following books. And I don't remember some of the things you're talking about, like the naked in the desert.

Trust me, when both sides start doing mass production, it gets even uglier.

308:

302 - The only question I tend to get about carrier bags in the supermarket is "Do you need any more bags?"
As for "stupormarket" (sic) personal account - One day my sister was taken ill there. The store got her their first aider, and a seat, then phoned me, and went with the plan that my Mum would go down by taxi, and take her home, whilst they put her car in a "disabled" space overnight.
Next day I went down to collect the car and buy some odds and ends. I took the time to find and personally thank both the manager nd the first aider for looking after her the previous day.

304 - Seconded; my view of Turtledove's "writing" is already documented (and it's stuff that should appeal based on the elevator pitch).

305 - ABN AMsterdam and ROtterdam Bank? (well that or ABNormal smear test based on my search).

309:

I know we're past the 300s, but going somewhat back to the original question.

Given "mind/body dualism is a bust", several legal systems has already decided this to the effect of: all conscious entities running on the same hardware shall be punished for the crimes of any one entity, but the punishment generally cannot be the termination of all entities.

Decisions touched on collective punishment, vs how do you distinguish between similar-but-different instances forked at different times, etc.

Now DID/MPD/whatever-it's-called-in-your-jurisdiction, does not have the same characteristics as brain uploading, but it does have overlap in terms of forking (and the forks may be very similar or extremely different), pausing of instances, time dilation from running slower and some perceptual but not legal aspects of moving between hardware (20 year old body vs 50 year old body has different capabilities and possibly even gender) with no perceived interval.

Given uploaded consciousness and punishing the hardware - can you avoid punishment purely by moving your instance to another location, and will upload hosting services have and/or need extradition treaties that could force you back to the hardware that did the crime (and does that even hold any meaning in this context if you could send a fork back and both be punished and not-punished at the same time).

310:

So, a deck of cards... just like a lot of grad students and folks with doctorates, shuffling their 3x5 cards and writing a new paper to submit to a journal, so they could publish, and not perish?

Yes and no. Randomness is a basic form of generating creativity, hence cards, dice, etc. If you're doing this to get around writer's block, then the point is to do something like improv, just to get outside yourself.

What you do with the randomly generated stuff if throw out most of what doesn't appeal/doesn't work until you get something you're willing to suffer with.

What I'm wondering is whether the cards can be Tropes, winning hands are some subset of master plots, and you form hands rummy style somehow.

How to do this I'm neither sure, nor do I particularly care, because my creative process is pretty different.

311:

And I don't remember some of the things you're talking about, like the naked in the desert.

It's Zuwayza, the "Darkness" equivalent of Finland. I noticed that while every country in the book is a parallel of some real-life WW2 power, Turtledove gave each of them a maximally different climate. Thus Finland became desert.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkness_Series :

Due to the hot climate, the people of Zuwayza typically go nude except for jewelry, sandals, and broad-brimmed hats. They are described as very dark-skinned, and Zuwayzin names are taken from Arabic. The Zuwayzi are known to use camels when fighting. Zuwayza was once ruled directly by Unkerlant but gained independence after the Six Years' War. Unkerlant attacked Zuwayza in the first year of the war and gained territory. In retaliation, Zuwayza allied with Algarve against Unkerlant. When Algarve was driven back, Zuwayza was forced to sign a separate peace, allowing Unkerlant great advantages, but preserving its independence. The Zuwayzin capital is Bishah.

Unkerlant is USSR, Algarye is Germany

312:

> as they try to pull the paper bags out of the cloth bags and separate them ... A: "No, no ... just push it all down here and I'll bag them myself."

Slightly weirdly, this reminds me of a recent pop-sci article on octonions. (Real numbers, complex numbers, quaternions, octonions -- look it up.)

The interesting thing about octonions is that they're not only non-commutative but non-associative, (a + b) + c != a + (b +c).

313:

M&S scan and go works by scanning items with the smartphone app and you put them in your bag as you go; when finished you pay in the app (with Apple Pay if it's an iPhone) and it displays a receipt which you display to a member of staff if anyone asks to see it and just walk out of the store. I've only ever been asked to show the receipt once, the rest of the times I've just left. This is much better than Sainsbury's SmartShop which requires you to check out via SmartShop terminals and which randomly selects people to have their shopping double checked by an assistant.

314:

Uniqlo has the best scan, pay and go of anywhere, with all the right checks to make sure one is paying for what one is purchasing only.

The only drawback is the awkwardness then of bagging one's own purchases, whether into one's own bags, or those bought when buying the clothes. This slows things down, not the paying. As the chain is very popular most times of the day there are many customers waiting to use the machines. But again, they are generally polite and wearing masks -- a Japanese outlet, after all.

But that machine -- it is amazing, and takes no time at all. Unlike the utterly incompetent ones that CVS insists must take over from human checkers. The machines hardly if ever work, cannot seem to scan one's discount / member card, etc. So instead of checking us out at registers, all these people have to keep tending us at the machines and do it themselves anyway, except it takes a lot longer.

315:

It's worth remembering that Australian Aborigines, Shoshone, and others routinely go naked or close to it in some pretty hot deserts. There's more than one way to shed heat, especially if you're pigmentally privileged.

Now imagine all the Fremen being dark skinned on Arrakis. like this dude for instance.

316:

We have a couple of dozen heavy cloth shopping bags that were originally swag-bags from conferences. I suspect the youngest must be 25 years old. Only one has really failed, by the plastic lining hardening, cracking and spalling. And referring back to recent comments, I also have an instance of the only good thing ever to come from java - a remarkably good quality backpack from the JavaOne conference circa ‘98 . Makes a very good model flying equipment bag.

Harry T wrote one of my favourite stories; “Ruled Britannia “. It is a wonderful excuse for the best pun ever “play stopped reign”.

And for octonions , well now they’re just taking the piss. Do we solve equations with an octiron now? When might one expect hexadecions?

317:

books like The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

One of the worst book of supposed history that was ever foisted on the globe. And I wasted money on it.

318:

Anti-Indian racists have been an American standard since the founding of the U.S., Greg. I'm not a bit surprised (but still sad) to see the Supreme Court adding to our infamy

Interestingly Neil Gorsuch is fully and quite intensely on the side of native rights.

319:

This make anyone else think about Henrietta Lacks?

Yes actually. But to be fair I think the author did too, as the story goes to some trouble to show that Acevedo has all he informed consent you could wish for and is personally enthusiastic about the project. And yet the situation still develops into a horrific personal nightmare for the many instances of his mind that follow.

It's remarkable how much people are currently inclined to take a consent waiver as a magic shield for research ethics, but that's a whole other topic.

321:

Unlike the utterly incompetent ones that CVS insists must take over from human checkers.

Off and on for nearly 10 years I've tried to use CVS apps and customer automation. It has been an abomination for the entire time. And their nagging texting system for your prescription is coming up we'll refill it for you and nag you until you come to get it totally pissed me off. As it seemed to always happen when I was in Texas, Germany, Ireland, anywhere but where I live.

322:

Oh, and the desert kingdom where everyone is naked? There is a good reason people in deserts dress from head to toe!

Zulu? Bushmen? Australian Aborigines?

Not all desert-dwellers are Tuaregs :-)

323:

Given uploaded consciousness and punishing the hardware - can you avoid punishment purely by moving your instance to another location, and will upload hosting services have and/or need extradition treaties that could force you back to the hardware that did the crime

I expect it will depend very heavily on the details. If hardware is fungible then it seems pointless, and may not even be possible to localise the particular bits of computronium that "did the crime". Much like trying to punish the hardware responsible for DDOS attacks now... much of it is virtualised, that which isn't is often hijacked, so punishing it wouldn't affect the criminals.

I can see a bunch of fun cases especially early on where someone spawns an instance specifically to have the instance commit a crime, remit the proceeds, then commit "suicide by cop" in some obvious way. Right now we don't recognise the AI as legally competent, but that will likely change when Elon moves into a computer (and bob help us if it's someone actively hostile like the surviving Koch brother)

324:

I have to admit I just don't get apps on your mobiles. Why not just browser->bookmark->website?

325:

Why would anyone punish the hardware? It's just a pile of innocent tech.

Richard Morgan already covered this problem in his Takeshi Kovacs books. The solution: take the hardware away from the criminal and give it to someone else. Throw the criminal's mind-state drive in a pile somewhere to get reactivated later maybe. Well, probably not.

The hardware in this case was actual human bodies of course, with mind states managed through... well... magic. The government would just hand them out without a care at all to whether they matched the recipient. Dysphoria? LMAO this is a cyberpunk hellworld, why would the Man care. Get back to work, plebe!

326:

What I'm wondering is whether the cards can be Tropes

That brings to mind an idea for writing prompts: go to tvtropes, where there is a "random trope" button on the page--press the button three times, read the main page for each trope (but not any of the examples), set a timer, and give yourself forty-five minutes (say) to write something (a story, a poem, a screenplay, an outline, a wikipedia article) that uses the three particular tropes.

you form hands rummy style somehow

cf. 5-card Nancy

327:

He mentions it as a primary inspiration in the (fairly interesting) comment section.

328:

And for octonions , well now they’re just taking the piss. Do we solve equations with an octiron now? When might one expect hexadecions?

Actually, my current setup for multiplanar magic or magitech is that it's based on a system of intuitionistic, ternary logic and octonion mathematics.

Octonions run with eight imaginary dimensions. Apparently, quaternions (real + 3 imaginary dimensions) have proved really useful for making computer images appear to rotate in three dimensions, so by handwaving extension, having real-space plus eight imaginary dimensions is what you'd need to do hyperspace navigation. Or summon demons, for that matter.

As for the rest of it, intuitionistic logic is apparently incompatible with the notion that information can neither be created nor destroyed, and it posits that information is created over time. And working with three bits (1,0,?) is superficially compatible with intuitionistic logic.

And do you think any of this is worked out yet? Oh hell no.

So we can cheerfully posit that HPL's blasphemous geometries are based on octonions, and the Necronomicon was Al-Hazred's attempt to transcribe into Arabic what some really patient alien tried to teach him about the nature of reality.

Or that UFO navigation computer? You guessed it.

And the computer architecture transhuman AIs run on? But of course.

It's the math of the future.

Really. And I'll be floating a new cryptocurrency based on this Any Day Now.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-octonion-math-that-could-underpin-physics-20180720/

329:

It's remarkable how much people are currently inclined to take a consent waiver as a magic shield for research ethics

I think they're a step in the right direction, halting and inconsistent though that step is. I still see an awful lot of "tell us what you think, we're university students studying something". Often an "anonymous survey" that requires an account with verified email to fill out, sometimes a whole google account or equivalent. Very rare for those to have ethical approval, many quite reasonably want to stay anonymous themselves.

The habit is egregious in queer, polyamory and kink groups, but I see it in random subreddits and all over. "I like bicycles. Tell me what you think. I'm a university student"... why, about what, for who, what are you collecting and who gets it?

Often anything a student hands in becomes the exclusive property of the university it was given to, and they have almost no restriction on what they can do with it. Students trying to put restrictions on are often told the material can't be assessed if they do. Asking that question sometimes prompts apologies from the students and withdrawal of the survey, but they regularly double down.

330:

Forgot to mention: Fairphone emailed me a survey link the other day. An "anonymous" survey that you access by clicking a tracking link. Of the form "fairphone.spammers.com/tracker-id=23408670283476509832475".

Ghostery blocked it when I clicked it from a test browser, so I emailed fairphone and ask WTF and got told in very reassuring terms "it's an anonymous survey, but we can't give you an anonymous link because that would defeat the point".

Some people just completely don't understand that sometimes the appearance of psuedo-anonymity is the point.

Flip side is the ones where the original email/post has all the required information and occasionally it actually doxxes someone with a long presence in the community. I am way more inclined to give sensitive information "anonymously" to someone who can be found on the website of the institution who gave out the ethical consent for the study...

331:

"it's an anonymous survey, but we can't give you an anonymous link because that would defeat the point"

WTF does this even mean? Or what does Fairphone THINK it means?

332:

(Got a "Too many connections" error when trying to sign in just now.)

"Given "mind/body dualism is a bust""

I brought that up earlier to say "yer wot?" and now I'm going to yerwot again.

Surely if taking the mind out of the body and stuffing it into a computer instead has become an actual practical possibility, then the status of mind/body dualism must be "experimentally proven correct". It can't possibly be "a bust" otherwise the whole idea makes no sense in the first place.

333:

I have no idea. I asked but have not got a reply. I suspect they have enough answers that their support people have stopped caring.

I suspect what it means is "our email newsletter provider obfuscates links and our PR people don't understand the problem, our tech support people can't do anything about it, and no-one who understands cares".

My employer switched to using Amazon to send emails because so many email systems automatically treat email not from major providers as spam, so running our own email server meant customers missed email alerts they were paying for. I can imagine that for Fairphone switching back to a non-invasive email newsletter would be expensive for them and frustrating for their subscribers who use gmail/outlook etc and had to keep rescuing newsletters from their spam folder.

But it does mean that they have a selected/biased set of responses. Very "tell us what features you want (excluding people who care about privacy)"... result: no-one cares about privacy, we can drop that concern. Yay! Those stupid technical people can be told to shut up about it and get back to more important things, like animating the start icon.

334:

I've run into various formula writers over the years. Like writing Top 40 Music instead of symphonies, it's not easy. I'm not saying it's harder than what Charlie does, but it appears to emphasize a different skill-set that's just as rare as his.

Yeah, I know some too.

No names, but one Harlequin romance author I know is also a multiple-Hugo-nominations-in-the-same-year author with a stellar rep in SF/F. (There's a flow chart for structuring the romances: once you've got it nailed, your main hazard is carpal tunnel syndrome. It is, however, a highly specialized skill set and distinctly non-trivial.)

335:

This is pure silliness--not how capitalist economies work.

You're assuming capitalism is inevitable. (This is understandable in our current socio-historical context, but wrong in the long term.)

Seriously, society's constants are constant right up until they're not. The divine right of kings? That had a multi-thousand-year run, then it dead-ended in the space of a couple of centuries. Capitalism? Supplanted rentier land-owners from the late 17th century onwards: it's by no means obvious that it's inevitable, especially in a situation where most people are uploads or AIs, hence not physically dependent on having stuff made of atoms like clothing and shelter.

And so on.

336:

At a guess, simply providing a link without verifying that the person filling it out is (a) a customer, and (b) only filling it out once opens the survey up to gaming and invalidates the results.

Consider as an example the websites Rate My Professor and Rate My Teacher. Both anonymous, and both very open to gaming. No check on rating someone multiple times. No check that the person doing the rating was actually in the class, or even on the same continent.

Back in the old days when rating was done by the students union you knew that only people in the room got ballots, and only one per person. Much more reliable anonymous data.

337:

'then the status of mind/body dualism must be "experimentally proven correct"'

I think you are confusing two different, albeit related, notions here.

Dualism as I understand it is the idea that the mind exists as an entity, without having to be implemented on any hardware/body.

Not discredited by uploading.

What uploading a mind does is show that the mind is independent of any particular mind/body it might be running on, but there still has to be some mind/body that runs it.

Professional (now retired) philosopher John Searle, of Chinese Room infamy, makes exactly the same mistake, which is why his arguments against Strong AI being even possible are a consignment of inferior but strong beer as brewed by Mr Codd.

JHomes

338:

@Greg T at 267: For a certain definition of "work." A system can be said to "work" in relation to the goals for which it was designed. It may be a matter of opinion what goals capitalist market economies are designed to achieve.

@Greg T at 270: "a reversion to Dred Scott, & all the evil panoply of "State's Rights" unless I am much mistaken?

While I am no fan of this or similar decisions by the SLCOTUS (Supreme Libertarian Court of the US), I wouldn't go that far. The decision allows state law enforcement to arrest non-indigenous people on tribal lands for crimes committed on said tribal lands (ie, it allows them to patrol said lands and enforce state laws). This weakens tribal sovereignty, but hardly to Dred Scott levels (which is an odd choice for comparison anyway).

@Ilya187 at 276: "I would caution against the argument "With no employees, factory owners will have no customers, so they will never shoot themselves in the foot in this way". Don't count on it.

[Warning: Extreme dystopia ahead!]

I can easily envision a fully roboticized economy in which automated factories sell to each other. One factory produces semiconductors, another one produces motors, third one solar panels, etc. Very few consumer goods for humans are made, because factory owners are very few in numbers, and need relatively little in order to live in unlimited luxury. Vast majority of human population either starves to death, or otherwise is disposed of.

I do not find such situation desirable (understatement!), but it is foolish to pretend it is impossible."

I'm curious, on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0, how probable do you think your extreme dystopia is? Guess before you read ahead. . . . . I predict you will set it somewhere between .1 and .3, because that is low enough to be plausible yet high enough to be concerning. I would put it much lower, around .02.

But let's presume you are right, and the world starts heading that way. What I would predict would happen next is that while the global oligarchs are building themselves a self-contained sustainable automated lifestyle, the rest of the world will be re-constructing a normal economy, because there will be plenty of demand for consumer goods and services, and no good reason that demand should go unmet. So--two global economic systems side by side: the Rich, and the Rest.

This would be a huge win scenario for both China and India, who have the vast majority of the world's consumer/laborers. So while the Rich switch over to crypto or something, while the Rest are using Yuan or Rupees.

@AlanD2 at 283: "Yeah. They've certainly had mixed results over the centuries. But what will happen when the rules of the game change?"

Depends on who gets to write the new ones.

@Whitroth at 299: ""Not how capitalist economies work" - and you assume that we have reached the end of history, and all economies ever after will be capitalist? On what basis to you make this assumption?"

Because that's the way it's been working for hundreds of years, and I am aware of no evidence that it's going to radically change soon.

However, when I made that statement I was assuming that AlanD2 was arguing that automation was going to replace all jobs, and it turned out that I was wrong (he was proposing that a UBI replace all jobs, and automation take over production as an act of policy, not as a result of market forces).

So we may be arguing under false premises. If you want me to justify why I think automation can't replace all jobs, just let me know.

339:

Agreed.

My understanding is that dualism is the question of whether you think with your body, or whether your brain is an interface between "your soul" (or whatever you think with) and your body. IIRC, one neuroscientist said our understanding of brains (especially with respect to sleep and anesthesia) is so primitive that this can't be sorted out yet. And I'll bet some people disagree with him.

Mind-body duality is what Charlie put in the Laundryverse, with possession. If minds are phenomena that arise from what we think with, installing another soul is impossible, although messing with how people think most certainly is not.

That said, it's reasonably possible to have "an upload" without having a mind body duality. It's a special case of the Turing test, where an AI is able to mimic at least your online behavior so accurately that no one can tell it's not you. IIRC, Google's had a patent on this general idea for over a decade. My assumption is that, if we ever get uploads, they're going to be outgrowths of this kind of technology.

Even if we discover a soul (presumably the world is platonic and math-based, that math is octonions, and the spirit world is the imaginary component of every number that forms the real universe?), it's unclear that we'll be able to port souls between brains, or from a brain to a computer. Or to a chicken, for that matter.

340:

However, when I made that statement I was assuming that AlanD2 was arguing that automation was going to replace all jobs, and it turned out that I was wrong (he was proposing that a UBI replace all jobs, and automation take over production as an act of policy, not as a result of market forces).

Nope. I think automation take over will result from market forces - AI and robots being cheaper in the long run than humans.

But once this happens, governments will step in to tax rentiers and provide a UBI for all other humans. If a government doesn't do this (too many rentier lobbyists?), I find it easy to imagine a violent overthrow of that government.

341:

If you want me to justify why I think automation can't replace all jobs, just let me know.

Please feel free to try. I suspect you'll have a difficult time of it, though.

342:

"why I think automation can't replace all jobs"

Define jobs.

To make a tight definition: A job is when someone performs work primarily in order to gain a material (can be expressed in monetary terms, even if the form is not money itself) reward that is not inherent in the work, or a consequence of the work, but rather is offered by someone else who wants the work done.

I think it quite possible, although hardly certain, that automation can eventually replace all jobs in this sense.

Stretch the term to cover work done because the person doing it wants it done, and the case becomes shakier.

Stretch it still further to cover work that is to some extent its own reward, and not likely at all.

JHomes

343:

I think automation take over will result from market forces - AI and robots being cheaper in the long run than humans.

This has already been happening for a long time, though, less through automation (although that's certainly played a part) but more through a sort of arbitrage between the international price of labour in some markets versus others and the going rate for manufactured goods in some markets versus others. Essentially there is no domain where direct macro effects apply to labour, because national borders are still hard boundaries for labour, just not capital.

If Chinese factory workers could move to Australia at will and enjoy local wages, then the cost of manufacturing in China versus Australia would even out very quickly. Similarly with agriculture (Australia depends on backpackers on special fruit-picking visas, US agriculture relies on a porous Mexican border). It serves powerful interests well to keep things that way. But it's important to recognise that it is arbitrage, the result of dividing markets.

Automation has replaced jobs on an enormous scale in resource-extraction industries, especially forestry, and it's convenient for communities to blame those job losses on "greenies". It also suits powerful interests to encourage them to do so.

344:

Automation has replaced jobs on an enormous scale in resource-extraction industries, especially forestry,

I think mining is a better example. How many men with picks would it take to remove a mountain in a few years? Or even a decent size hill? Because that's something Australia specialises in.

Or those "biggest mobile land machine" things they use for longwall mining coal in Germany.

I think the threat of automation in thinking jobs is partly overstated, and partly in the process of being realised. I write software that replaces people, that's my day job. Quite literally in many cases, the boss says "get rid of the people who do X" and lo that becomes true. Right now: people who respond to home burglar alarms. Why would you pay even $1/day for that service when your phone goes "bing" and shows you a photo of what's happening every time the alarm goes off? If necessary you ring the cops and they respond... just like the alarm monitoring people would do.

But the idea that, say, our Prime Minister could be replaced by a robot... wait, let me think of a batter example.

345:

But the idea that, say, our Prime Minister could be replaced by a robot... wait, let me think of a batter example.

I had a similar thought, and had posed the question: what would it take for an AI to replace a CEO? Because if the plan is to automate all the jobs, it means to automate all the jobs. What "jobs" are really hobbies and what would the people who do them do instead? Surely everything involving power and authority should be automated: after all, power is bad for whomever you give it to and worse for everyone else.

346:

But the idea that, say, our Prime Minister could be replaced by a robot... wait, let me think of a batter example.
As far as I can see Liz Bucket / Hyacinth Truss is ALREADY a robot, churning out old Brexit mantras, regurgitating Patrick Minford (euw) & repeating the idiot's slogan that "We've had enough of experts".
If you/we thought Bo Jon-Sun was bad, this is going to be so much worse, as even the lies & excuses will be even-less-believable

347:

huh ... would you know any titles of these? that sounds like an interesting read ...

348:

I have to admit I just don't get apps on your mobiles. Why not just browser->bookmark->website?

There are many many many web sites that assume a larger screen. Even if that only means a minimum of 11" or 12". So when they try and run on a 3" to 6" display they are abominable to use. I have to do it at times and it sucks. Big mega companies are gradually dealing but smaller companies / personal web sites can be a mess.

Then there are those web sites written to be usable on any screen no matter how tiny. When those are used on a computer is it can be a frustration in here's question 1 of 48 on a single screen. IN VERY LARGE TYPE. Answer it now move on to question 2. Rinse lather repeat.

An app on a phone or tablet that is well designed can be a breeze to use. And way more productive than a web site. Even one designed for a small screen.

The odd thing about all of this is even all the screen sizes put out by Apple over the last decade and a half, it is way easier for programmers to write apps to deal with Apple (or maybe just more profitable) than to deal with the prolifera of screen sizes on Android. So while there might be nice apps for iOS that deal well with multiple screen sizes, Android users can get stuck with a single resolution setup that gets zoomed to fit the display.

349:

There is a concept of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) which make use of background service or service worker APIs in browsers. Most of the parameters that are exposed to a native app in iOS and Android (location, gyroscope outputs for things like orientation and acceleration, language, etc) are accessible to the client-side javascript in the web app on phones these days. The missing piece is that HTML5 apps can persist via background services support.

What that means is that you can package your app as a HTML5 website, and if the user saves the link as an icon it's indistinguishable from a native app. That means basically the app is implemented as client-side javascript, the GUI is HTML/CSS, there's some sort of AJAX/JSON channel between the server and client, but the idea is that the client, once loaded, can persist on the device without calling home.

350:

Most devs of apps are a decade behind what you're describing.

My point wasn't that great web apps can't be developed that work well on both sides. But that they are NOT being developed for the most part.

Based on what I see behind the scenes of multiple large corps, presentation is way down the list of how web apps work on devices. It only comes into play most of the time when a separate app is developed. Lots of reasons for this that have to do with internal politics, C-Level preferences, history of the org chart, etc...

351:

There are many many many web sites that assume a larger screen. Even if that only means a minimum of 11" or 12".

Responsive web sites can't be that difficult to create, given that I've done it.

Admittedly I was using a template, but if a template can do the job then surely someone who actually knows coding can manage it?

352:

Quaternions are used in some branches of physics, and a few people have proposed/used octonions for similar uses. I have always been more interested in using things like probability measures as base algebras, which is equally mind-boggling to non-mathamaticians.

353:

Admittedly I was using a template, but if a template can do the job then surely someone who actually knows coding can manage it?

Again, I'm not saying it CAN'T be done. Just that so many times it is NOT done. I don't know if you've met them. (I think Moz works for some.) There are some folks who literally despise outsiders forcing them to fix something. Despise it. So even though it is in the project description (web site or other thing) that it will HAVE TO BE updated as external things happen. (New OS maybe.) When it comes up this type of person will ignore it as long as is absolutely possible. If they are C-Level, well have fun.

So you get a large company that bought into IBM Webshpere a few years back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_WebSphere

Then discover that they need a newer version if they want to later use it with internal application XYZ. So instead of allocating funds (which can be substantial) to re-do working code they just install the later version of we into a newer instanst of ws. So now they have 2 iterations. And after a few years they might have 4 or 10. Each spitting out web pages based on standards that are 5 or 10 years out of date. Well some of the created sites are better than others.

It doesn't matter the competence of any one or group of web designers. It matters if the corp is willing to overhaul how things tie together internally. The lousy web site is a fall out of a mediocre decision made 10 years earlier. With a side order of deferring the issue that have arisen for years.

Now add a few silos of internal corp structure and it gets more fun.

354:

I'm curious, on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0, how probable do you think your extreme dystopia is? Guess before you read ahead. . . . . I predict you will set it somewhere between .1 and .3, because that is low enough to be plausible yet high enough to be concerning. I would put it much lower, around .02.

Actually I also put it around 0.02 or maybe 0.03. Definitely below 0.1

But let's presume you are right, and the world starts heading that way. What I would predict would happen next is that while the global oligarchs are building themselves a self-contained sustainable automated lifestyle, the rest of the world will be re-constructing a normal economy, because there will be plenty of demand for consumer goods and services, and no good reason that demand should go unmet. So--two global economic systems side by side: the Rich, and the Rest.

That's pretty much the plot of "Manna" by Marshall Brain: https://marshallbrain.com/manna

Except in the parts of the world where oligarchs hold sway, the proles are pacified through UBI (more or less) and at the same time prevented from joining the outside economy because they are in no position to produce anything that what you call "the Rest" need.

355:

321 - OK, UK resident, but IME the answer to that one is to ask for a double prescription because you'll be away when you'd normally want the next repeat.

324 - I don't have a "smart" phone in the first place.

330 - More basic question. What is "Fairphone" anyway?

344 - Rubislaw Quarry in Aberdeen (the real one) is 142m deep, 120m diameter, dug out of granite over some 200 years, using hand tools.
* the idea that, say, our Prime Minister could be replaced by a robot* - We tried that, and the results to date are not encouraging; Maybot, WrecksIt and Bozo.

356:

OK, UK resident, but IME the answer to that one is to ask for a double prescription because you'll be away when you'd normally want the next repeat.

This is has to do with the US system and PBM (Pharmacy Benefit Managers) and an automated system to keep things filled. I'm on a 90 day refill window which is the max for my situation. My point was their automated system doesn't give local wet meat folks much authority over much. And when the refill window happens the robot automation kicks in and there was almost no way to stop it. So I just turned off auto-refills. They have made it better to some degree but it has moved from terrible 3+ years ago to somewhat tolerable now.

And of course the automated re-fill system turns itself back on if you look at it cross wise.

And this fits it with how terrible their loyalty program app works. Or doesn't work.

357:

The work that I would do if I was confident in the productive capacity of my society and the stability of a UBI system is somewhat different than what I currently do as 'work'.

In a circumstance where I have a home that is secure, I know there will be enough food, medical care and educational opportunities for my family, and enough of an assured income that I can decide on a given day what to work on?

I think Cory Doctorow calls it 'Fully automated luxury communism'. Sounds good to me. Let the oligarchs knife each other, let the rest of us get on with the good parts of life.

I am fairly sure that most people would not just 'do nothing' if they had access to a UBI.

The challenge in such a situation is to somehow make sure there is still an appeal to becoming a doctor, nurse, educator or other essential service. Routinely shitting on them in the name of AUSTERITY would no longer work.

358:

"Dualism as I understand it is the idea that the mind exists as an entity, without having to be implemented on any hardware/body."

I don't agree with the underlined bit. I understand mind/body dualism as simply meaning that the mind and the body have the same kind of relation as the software and the hardware of computers: one is a logical entity, the other is a physical one, and you can get an equivalently-functioning system by pairing the logical entity with any entity that either is a physical entity with the right set of properties, or emulates one.

So a meat person corresponds to, say, Mac OS 6 and Word for Mac running on an original 68000 Mac; a meat person's mind taking over someone else's body corresponds to installing a filesystem image of that Mac onto another original 68000 Mac; and uploading a meat person to a computer corresponds to installing said filesystem image onto a Mac emulator running on a Linux box.

(The point that often gets brought up about whether the mind runs only on the brain or on the whole body is a subsidiary matter; it's about what does or doesn't count as compatible hardware or a sufficiently complete emulator. You get exactly the same thing with computers as they are now, although people mostly don't use the same words to talk about it.)

The bit I have underlined makes it a different proposition (I am taking it that by "exists as an entity" you are meaning "exists as an active/functioning entity", otherwise a copy of some software on an old floppy disk down the back of the sofa would count). The thing that doesn't need hardware to run on is a soul or a ghost (Geist) - it's the continuity-of-life-after-death thing, the thing that is the "you" in "you go to heaven when you die" or "you get reincarnated as a slug" or "you hang around the old abandoned house moaning at people"; the first and third of those obviously require an entity to continue functioning without any hardware, and the second also requires it for the transference step between human and slug, which depends on continuity if it's to be a possibility worth worrying about. Elladan claims not to believe in the existence of a soul, but then puts forward an argument which only makes sense if it does exist. I've been trying hard to argue consistently from the position that it doesn't, because (a) that seems to be the stated or implied position of Charlie himself and of most commenters on here, going by threads passim, and (b) otherwise it risks turning the whole thing into unresolvable religious arguments.

359:

RE: The Mind/Body Duality by religion, for programmers.

Alpha version, updates welcomed

Judaism: Humans are analog systems that run on juice. When their creator has finished his career, he might collect all his Creations that he enjoyed working with, and keep them in his studio as souvenirs. The rest get trashed.

Jesus: What Judaism said.

Paul's Disciples: Dear Lord, this isn't selling around the Mediterranean. We'll say that humans are digital systems that run a program called a soul. Useful programs go to the eternal Github, useless programs get mauled pointlessly on the internet for eternity.

Some parts of hinduism and modern western mysticism: Github is eternal, and good programs get uploaded and reloaded endlessly. Bad programs get sent to hell for reprogramming until they work well enough to be uploaded.

Buddhism: Reality is smart and everything has a chipset, but all programs are unsatisfactory, due to limited resources and Godel's theorem (or something). Nonetheless, programs are recycled, tinkered with, and updated endlessly, just because. Liberation is possible, and doing so frees up process cycles for others. This is a compassionate thing to do.

Taoism: Reality is smart, and there are also computer viruses. Humans run whole libraries of programs, as does the rest of reality. Good sysop practice is to get rid of viruses, get your library of programs working together smoothly as a giant custom kludge, and get that kludge uploaded into the universal web archive before another virus or update comes along.

Biologists: Brains appear to be closer to analog systems. Do they even run programs?

360:

Re: SLCOTUS - nope, not libertarian. If they were, they would have tossed the challenge to Roe v. Wade, and they would not be looking at going after marriage equality and birth control.

Re capitalism: you see no indication it's going to change any time soon? Really? With more and more automation (some of which replaced the story from the end of the last millenium, "what do you do at work, daddy?" "I push papers"), UBI is being talked about, and tested, in the RW. As are wealth taxes. At what point does the house of cards, with it's imaginary values in the stock market, collapse? And for that matter, is arbitrage part of capitalism, or something different?

361:

"Can we do better?"

Of course we can.

Will we?

Of course not! "Our current prevailing political philosophy of human rights and constitutional democracy" is just a thought experiment without the backing of legal frameworks. Legal frameworks require politicians, and no politician is even going to accept that anything needs to be fixed until the first lawsuit is brought that involves the assets of a deceased "human" with an uploaded mind.

362:

Gee, and here I thought the point of a job was to produce something that you, or others, wanted done, preferably that benefits all of you.

But I know, that's soooo 8000BCE.

363:

No, it's not overstated. Example, since you mention mining - in the US, the coal producers and the GOP have an ongoing campaign about the "war on miners" by the green movement.

Reality: the mine owners have always hated unions (that was why NewsCorp was created in OZ in 1915, to publish anti-union propaganda). It's become the war on coal miners - they will not let the public see the truth behind the curtain: in 1972, in the US, there were over 755,000 miners... and now it's over 77,000. Cut by a literal order of magnitude.

I read about fully automated fast food restaurants, and self-driving taxis.

It's not going that way?

364:

Apps... ok. Now explain to me why anyone watches streaming shows or movies on those tiny screens.

365:

Because they are not in front of a big screen or there are others in the room who aren't interested in what you want to watch? Or whatever.

I understand you don't want a smart phone. To each his own. But why keep beating up on those who do?

366:

Apps... ok. Now explain to me why anyone watches streaming shows or movies on those tiny screens.

It's also worth measuring the angular width of the phone screen in front of you compared with the angular width of a TV across the room. It might surprise you which gives a bigger picture in angular terms.

367:

"somehow make sure there is still an appeal to becoming a doctor, nurse, educator or other essential service. Routinely shitting on them in the name of AUSTERITY would no longer work."

Those examples seem to me to be particularly good ones of things that people already decide to do principally because they think they are worth doing, even though they know they are going to get shat on. The shitters even come out with statements which are as close to "we can shit on the nurses as much as we like, they're far too dedicated to go on strike or anything" as makes no difference.

If anything I'd guess you'd probably get more people interested knowing that they didn't have to worry about what to live on while taking several years to learn how to do it, and weren't going to end up routinely not going home for four days on the trot and cutting people's wrong legs off because you're too tired to tell which one's which as a result of skinflints refusing to spend the money to employ enough people. You would probably also get better people, as it would weed out the breadheads whose motivation is the chance of getting craploads of money if they stick at it for long enough and sell all the drugs the drug companies tell them to.

Similarly I don't think you'd lack for people wanting to do the less glamorous things, even the really really less glamorous ones. There's a tremendous difference between doing something because you want to and doing something because you have to, and you already see all kinds of instances of people doing all kinds of jobs, even incredibly shitty ones, simply because they want to and have managed to become able to even under the current limitations imposed by doing all the stuff they have to, at some level of compromise that works for their particular circumstances (eg. you get volunteers picking up actual turds, and you also get people emigrating so they can still get a job going down a coal mine and labouring at digging the actual coal out now that they can't do that in Britain any more). People worry about who would unblock the sewers if nobody was paid to, but I reckon that if nobody had to worry about being paid to do things and all the other job crap, you'd get more people offering to unblock sewers because they liked it than you had sewers needing to be unblocked.

368:

I would, given a 33" screen or a 42" screen at < 3m, I don't think it compares. And they're made for big screens (otherwise, not just movies, but people buy 56" and larger tvs).

And given how hard it is for me to read people's mobiles when they're trying to show me something, and we're in the sun... I am reminded of more than a dozen years ago, flying cross-country, and giving up on watching Thor (or whatever) on the about 8" drop-down screen that was above the seat in front of me.

And why do I beat up on it? For one, they're not looking around and maybe interacting with other RW human beings (or situations that could be problematical, like trying to get into a crowded el car at rush hour). For another... around '97, they rereleased the recut SW. The ad, in the theater, was "if you've only seen Star Wars" (in a box with lines around it, covering about half or a third of the movie theater screen, "then you've never seen STAR WARS (go to full screen).

369:

I mean, they're mobile. That's the appeal. People not paying attention to what they should be is a separate issue, and not really one new to smart phones.

I prefer to read dead trees books, but I am glad I can pack 500 books on my Kindle and cart it around.

I don't watch stuff on my phone, but it's not any great mystery as to the advantages.

370:

The issue with doctors and nurses is that we do not train enough of them.

The goal should be that in a non-emergency situation, being a medical professional is a 35-hour work week job, and 5 of those is "get paid to stay current". Because crisis situations will happen, and if your doctors and so on normally are worked to the bone, there is not enough slack in the system to cover for it.

371:

Religions, of course, are always talking about souls, unless they're the kind of religion that asserts the finality of death. (I'm sure some do even if I don't know what they are.)

"Biologists: Brains appear to be closer to analog systems. Do they even run programs?"

It's not "do they run programs" but "do they have software". The equivalence between "software" and "programs" is principally an attribute of digital systems, which are also where the distinction between "software" and "hardware" is the most obvious and the most close mapping between the concepts and the things (though to pick a couple of common examples, both with computers and with DNA it's a long way from being the whole story). But you can have software without having programs, which is what most everyday analogue systems are like. It's just that as you get to simpler and simpler things, both the concepts of and the distinction between "software" and "hardware" get massively fuzzier until they get a bit silly.

You could, although it probably isn't very useful, talk about the software of a knife. Things like being shaped long and flat and thin, having the correct tempering, having the edges ground down to a sharp angle, which are the instructions for it to be a cutty thing rather than just a lump. You can copy the software to other compatible hardware: you can take another lump of steel, and shape and temper and grind it in the same way, and it gets you another cutty thing that works just the same. You can even emulate the software on a sufficiently capable emulator, and quite likely just did. It's a bit daft to take it that far, but you still for example get laws that do.

372:

Precisely - though, for some reason I don't understand, it's a bit more strain to see detailed images of the same angle at 6" than 6'. However, even quite big smartphones are useful only for those who can focus down to 12".

373:

Decades ago, the US used to offer forgivable loans to students training to be doctors - get your MD, and then practice where we tell you to for five years, and the loan's forgiven. Our baronial leech in Bakhail, in the late seventies, did that, and she and the Baron (who she married) moved to nowhere, Oklahoma for five years.

374:

Pigeon
The point that often gets brought up about whether the mind runs only on the brain or on the whole body is a subsidiary matter
Ask anyone who dances regularly? IMHO there actually is such a thing as "muscle memory" - you can go through the motions without thinking about it - certainly, if the moves are more complicated & you start wondering about where you are & "what's next" you are almost-guaranteed to fuck up, oops.

H
Brains appear to be closer to analog systems. Do they even run programs? - YES - well - entirely possiblle, anyway.
Plenty of examples of Analogue computers & systems "out there" - mostly in recent ( c.f.WWII ) history.
Were they multipurpose? I.E. do/did they have "software" (Pigeon) um, err, I think some did, maybe, perhaps. It's blurry.

375:

Muscle memory - hell, yes. Way back, when I was in the SCA, our dancing mistress explained it - we were to practice until we didn't have to think about where our feet or hands went. Then, you could get to the point of dancing: flirting.

376:

The shitters even come out with statements which are as close to "we can shit on the nurses as much as we like, they're far too dedicated to go on strike or anything" as makes no difference.

Well, other than using the word "shit", that's what Mike Harris said when he laid off 6000 nurses, comparing them to workers in a Hula Hoop factory whose product has gone out of style. Patient care wouldn't be affected because nurses were dedicated and couldn't bear to see patients suffer, so the remaining nurses would just buckle down and do more with less (and for less money).

377:

And given how hard it is for me to read people's mobiles when they're trying to show me something, and we're in the sun

And how hard is it for you to read someones TV then they're trying to show you something and you're in the sun… :-)

Seriously, it sounds a bit like you're comparing apples to oranges there.

378:

How about eating and drinking from plates and glasses and flatware. After a few years we all learn to do it without thinking. We may look down to make sure we scoop up peas and not beans but we then get it to our mouth without much thinking.

379:

The goal should be that in a non-emergency situation, being a medical professional is a 35-hour work week job, and 5 of those is "get paid to stay current".

Within living memory, the goal of the Ontario hospital system was for hospitals to work at 85% capacity, leaving room for emergencies. Then neocon policies with associated reward systems got enacted* and the goal has become to work at 100% capacity all the time, in the interest of efficiency and savings.

Which, as the pandemic has abundantly demonstrated, leaves no spare capacity for emergencies.

And it's false savings anyway, because they've done stuff like eliminating cleaners so that at night ER doctors have to clean an OR themselves before they can perform emergency surgery, because cleaners are only staffed for day shifts…


*You've heard me rant about Mike Harris before.

380:

What is "free will"? Can AIs and/or uploaded minds have free will?

The question of free will only exists if you adopt Christian eschatology, and especially the Christian interpretation of Genesis (Garden of Eden, original sin, etc), as your underlying axiom system.

Christianity posits not merely a life after death but a choice of afterlives, and what you get is determined by what you choose to believe (as well as your actions, but belief can override consequences for bad actions if you just buy into the heavenly ponzi scheme right before you die).

If you don't have free will then you have no choice over whether you go to heaven or hell so you then have to square the idea of a loving god with eternal punishment for actions or beliefs you have no control over. And this includes original sin. (Original sin is a variant on collective guilt, and punishing groups for collective guilt is something a bunch of Nazi war criminals got hanged for in the late 1940s: punishing Bob for Adam's offense is an ethical abomination when humans do it, and saying "but god's perfect and above all that" sounds absolutely batshit to anyone who doesn't already buy into the "god is perfect" belief system.)

Anyway.

If you jettison that particular religious structure -- either a graded afterlife, or original sin, or salvation through faith: deep sixing any part of it will do -- the question of "free will" turns out to be a religious circle jerk devoid of any actual relevance.

381:

whitroth
"Flirting" - all very well, but ...NOT with our style of dancing
{ I'm centre, with back-to-camera, longish hair & definitely long beard }

382:

That's absurd, and an invalid comparison. I'm talking about the angle and visibility in the sun, and tv's are a) normally not in the sun, and b) much, much larger, and they have a far better angle view.

383:

A pox upon it!
Charlie - post crossed with mine:
"Original Sin" is easily the biggest crock of shit in the christian bollocks ... making EVERYONE GUILTY afterwards, so that you can blackmail them.
{ Even without the "collective guilt rubbish }

384:

@AlanD2 at 340/341: "Nope. I think automation take over will result from market forces - AI and robots being cheaper in the long run than humans."

[Me: If you want me to justify why I think automation can't replace all jobs, just let me know.]

"Please feel free to try. I suspect you'll have a difficult time of it, though."

Ah. Debate mode back on, then.

@JHolmes at 342: "To make a tight definition: A job is when someone performs work primarily in order to gain a material (can be expressed in monetary terms, even if the form is not money itself) reward that is not inherent in the work, or a consequence of the work, but rather is offered by someone else who wants the work done."

Ok, we'll go with that. Please see below.

@Ilya187 at 354: "Actually I also put it around 0.02 or maybe 0.03. Definitely below 0.1"

Then we're pretty much in agreement.

"That's pretty much the plot of "Manna" by Marshall Brain: https://marshallbrain.com/manna"

Very cool, and I will definitely be reading that. After one chap, not hard to see what the flaws in the premise are. IRL, "Manna" wouldn't work that well. I can explain that too, if you like.

@Whitroth at 360: "Re capitalism: you see no indication it's going to change any time soon? Really?"

Not at the level you're talking, no. Feudalism lasted a thousand years, why should Capitalism last any less?

I apologize for the following wall of text. But I sense that my answers wouldn't be understood without some context. I would like to explain how I think free market capitalism has worked for at least the last 200 years (I'm counting since Jacquard's loom cards, but it probably goes back farther than that).

So, automation. Here is how it's supposed to work, based on centuries of economic history. Jobs are automated when they are or become simple to do, and that generally means they have been done for long enough that people have developed streamlined standard procedures for doing them. The money saved by automating these kinds of tasks is then typically re-invested in new product lines, because that's how manufacturers stay ahead of rising costs (cost cutting measures only work in the short term). They spend this money developing new types of products, which necessitates new types of tasks, which results in new types of jobs, which are extremely difficult to automate precisely because they are based on cutting edge research (which, by definition, means skilled labor), and because such jobs are so new there are no standard procedures one could then automate. This, as I say, describes the standard approach used by employers since at least the automated loom, and almost certainly long before that. So automation and job creation naturally go hand in hand, one actually being a driver of the other.

The job creation process isn't smooth, and can easily end up resembling a "one step back, two steps forward" situation, where the steps are years. People have frequently gotten upset, and suffer, because bills have to be paid in the present, and economic development may not happen until the future arrives. The same people who get the new types of jobs are generally not the ones who got laid off—frequently it's the next generation, because they are more easily trained. And of course, the employer that creates the new jobs isn't usually the exact same one that automated the old ones—typically that money is lent to new businesses in the form of stocks bought and sold. So entire populations of laborers can and did get screwed. But over the long run, automation has created far more jobs than it ever eliminated, which is self-evident when one looks at the number of different job-related tasks present and past.

We just went through a decade + long period in which comparatively little money was invested in new product lines relative to the past, and therefore fewer new jobs. That was partly a function of outsourcing new job creation overseas, and partly a function of rampant unregulated speculation in the financial market. Hopefully, that period is coming to a halt as overseas labor markets start adjusting wages upward, and new green technologies start becoming seen as viable opportunities for investment (China's anti-competitive practices also contributed somewhat). I see two probably outcomes: a) The West engages in economic policy reforms, and we experience a "Green Revolution" (which doesn't really change capitalism itself all that much, but does introduce sustainable job growth b) We don't, and China rises to become the next global economic power, bringing along their own version of "State Capitalism" (which is still capitalism, though not the free market version).

On the other hand, you seem to be suggesting such a high degree of automation that all human beings are removed from the entire production process—like a hospital without any human health care providers. We are obviously a long way away from that—I don't know of a single industry that has been completely automated to that degree. If that should ever happen, then yes, we will have to deal with the paradox that if no one is working, no one can buy anything either, because consumers are also employees, so maybe UBI. But until then, automation doesn't replace entire production processes, only individual positions within it, with the inevitable result that the employees who remain become more productive, and thus more profitable to hire. The employer will naturally react by hiring more of them (just as ATM machines made human tellers more cost-efficient to hire, so we ended up hiring more of them, not fewer, as a result of automating cash withdrawls). This is why, until now, automation technology has always resulted in a net increase in jobs available, and seems set to do so for the immediate foreseeable future.

Capitalism may have a fail state coming, but that has to do with carbon emissions, not automation.

385:

Very odd. I clicked the link, and it took me to a long video on the inaccuracies of the movie Zulu.

386:

Reflexes are controlled mostly by the spinal cord, which is what needs training;'muscle memory' is misleading. They take MUCH longer to learn than conscious actions but, once learnt, are rarely entirely forgotten.

387:

Sorry, but I don't see much of an argument there. You don't see automation replacing jobs? I recently read an article about a job - some kind of machine operator - that used to have a shop full. Then it was offshored, then recently brought back... with one trained person, I think running a C&C machine.

Oh, yes, another generation "more easily trained"... or, rather, "we don't want to spend money and time and pay older people more, so we'll hire younger people who've spent their own money (and/or loans) training, and pay them less."

Cars are still manufactured... with far fewer employees. Ditto mining, as I've mentioned. And there are fewer cashiers in supermarkets, with them replaced by self-check.

You don't see a failure mode? Really?

I'll also point out the rest of the world, outside of Europe, had other, non-feudal systems.

388:

370 - I've actually seen 3 good nurses crowding round a "smart" phone in order to watch a training course. OK, if that's all I say, but they had 2 PCs with 16" (estimated) flat screens they could have used.

375 - Those 3 nurses from the paragraph above. Their unit just got new dialysis machines, and they will certainly agree they don't have muscle memory to help with stripping and relining the new machines yet.

389:

I have to admit I just don't get apps on your mobiles. Why not just browser->bookmark->website?

Tell me how well that works for you when your phone doesn't have any signal.

(Also apps are frequently faster to load than a web page with rendering overheads and offer additional features.)

390:

I've actually seen 3 good nurses crowding round a "smart" phone in order to watch a training course. OK, if that's all I say, but they had 2 PCs with 16" (estimated) flat screens they could have used.

My wife is a nurse, and found it entirely believable. She said all computers at her hospital (well, the ones that the nurses can use) were installed brand new in 2014. Eight years later, you need to be a network engineer to faff anything useful out of them. Easier to watch the video on a smartphone.

391:

For those who need a refresher on analog computing, or a bit more help deciding whether it's possible to download and upload software off an analog computer, here's IEEE article about academics experimenting with an analog computer on a chip:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/not-your-fathers-analog-computer

The basic point is that you could use analog software, basically transmit a series of codes that control various flows and stocks. Whether you get the same results depends on how closely the analog system you're programming emulates the original you lifted the software from.

If brains are analog, therefore, simulating the connectome of a brain might be insufficient to get a system that accurately simulates the processing of inputs or production of outputs done by that brain.

392:

I read about fully automated fast food restaurants, and self-driving taxis. It's not going that way?

It's overstated in that we're in round 100 of "completely automated computer programming is just around the corner", and "no-one will ever have to go into an underground mine again, it will all be robots", let alone "AI will replace legislators and judges". And in some places uterine replicators are unnecessary because they have slaves for that.

There's a still a bunch of stuff that no-one knows even in theory how it could be done, except in the sense that us here are developing theoretical models for doing those things. I'm putting self-driving cars in that box, and I think the "amazing theoretical advance that makes it all work" is called "steel wheels on steel rails" because self-driving trains are a real thing. Making self-driving trams seems like a plausible next step (assume they don't already exist).

But it's also happening, because the parts that can be automated are often being automated without a lot of fanfare. Tesla wank on about their gigafactories, and those factories are full of people. But they have far fewer people than the equivalent old school factories. The whole thing where their giant presses make metal injection moulded parts... "the back half of the chassis" and "the front half of the chassis" where everyone else uses dozens of parts for each of those, and piles of robots to join them and so on.

And there's a whole industry of replacing Amazons stupid meat robots in their warehouses with proper electrical ones. Just that they don't look like a conventional meat robot warehouse, it's all cubical arrays of rails with little box robots running round in 3D.

393:

Um, you mean my flip-phone? (g)

394:

I don't know what round we're in, but... y'know, when Neuromancer and Hardwired came out, I thought that the RW wouldn't get that bad.

I really didn't sign up to live in a literal cyberpunk dystopia.

395:

And don't forget, automats are over 125 years old, so the automated restaurant is not new. Nor are vending machines.

396:

They spend this money [saved by automating easier kinds of tasks] developing new types of products, which necessitates new types of tasks, which results in new types of jobs, which are extremely difficult to automate precisely because they are based on cutting edge research (which, by definition, means skilled labor), and because such jobs are so new there are no standard procedures one could then automate.

These cutting edge jobs are exactly the ones that will soon be automated, because (1) skilled labor is expensive, and (2) AI / robots are becoming more capable than humans.

I know you won't agree, but I'm merely extrapolating the history of AI / robots into the future.

397:

I don't buy it. Think of GANs etc used for deep faking video. That's an incredibly skilled task that would take a team hundreds of hours for every minute of video, but today it's off the shelf software. There's even software to detect the deepfakes now.

BUT we still have teams of video faking specialists doing the same old jobs they've always done, sometimes using deepfake AI's to help, sometimes not. We call them CGI or animators or video game artists, but that's what they do. They have new cool tools all the time but somehow demand for people to do the work hasn't abated.

And on a slight tangent, as OGH said above no-one can automate "Charles Stross wrote a book" to any useful level of fidelity and it seems unlikely they will ever be able to without the brutal "copy Charles Stross" approach that started this whole discussion. The various "generate text matching sample" sketches are still at the "100 word summary" level and need significant human intervention to work at all. They're better than a million monkeys but not usefully better. AAP is working really hard on this and the defect rate is really annoying.

That seems to be a consistent pattern with creative people. Tools make the job easier so there's both more demand, and demand for better creative product.

399:

The disscussion about the problem of automation removing jobs doesn't have to eradicate all the jobs, or even most of them.

You simply have to get to the point where the least adaptable 20% of your standard human is surplus to requirements. Robots that check for spills in stores, then robots that clean them. Planes that fly themselves, trains that drive themselves. Apps that write copy for this or that project, github overlays that make software easier to write, drones that deliver burritos.

Sure, plenty of people will retrain. But we're making the economy more sophisticated...but to many people, that just means harder to compete, and not all humans are the same.

400:

Bullshit jobs.

Also, we are there and we have been there for at least 200 years. We're far better at inventing ways to waste time and excuses for doing that, than we are at inventing ways to get more time. See the discussion here about smartphones for one obvious example. People could just use a landline, or a cheap cellphone, but they're willing to pay serious money for a gadget that primarily exists to waste time. Time that you could otherwise spend at home doing leisure. Or in my case charging NiZn batteries again so I can leisure some more.

One example of a UBI is public pensions, and in that area Australia is very comfortable paying a generous UBI to absolutely every adult (defined as over 65). It might bankrupt the country but fairing to increase the UBI faster than inflation is politically impossible. Even more politically impossible than cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

401:

Having lived momentarily on a Pacific Island, and having read about hunter-gatherer lifestyles a bit, I argue that the whole "agriculture" and "civilisation" stuff is bullshit jobs for time-wasting morons. So I take back what I said above about 200 years and substitute 5000-15000 years.

Many people on Kiribati worked a good 2-4 hours a day and lived comfortable lives doing that. Modulo a certain level of interference from "civilised" people who thought that lying on the beach talking to friends was a waste of time that could be better used doing something unpleasant in order to be able to do something slightly less unpleasant later. Which, frankly, would be considered insane were it not the very definition of civilisation.

If I said to you that you're wasting time by living your life as you do now, you should instead spend your days doing handstands in sewage because if you did that you could spend your evenings standing in sewage, you'd probably consider me deranged. But if you currently spend your days hanging out with friends, doing a bit of fishing or gardening most days and occasionally throwing a few new fronds on the roof to keep the sun off... the whole "get a job doing menial work for low pay so you can eat junk food and watch TV at night" scam just seems stupid. I won't even get into "so you can buy a car and drive the 38km of road your country has" nonsense. There's literally nothing there that's better than what you do now, so the less awful bits don't compensate for the more awful bits, they just make the people promoting the awfulness look stupid.

And then we're barely back to the point now where we have the same ability to record history as aboriginal Australians who are "primitive hunter gatherers". We don't even have ten thousand years of history to record, let alone the ability to record it. FFS we don't even know what skin colour ancient Egyptians were and that's something we think is important. When the Mediterranean basin flooded is barely even mythology, let alone what the land routes across Doggerland looked like.

402:

Ilya187 covered us question in comment 135

The stories you are thinking of are in the book called "Instantiation". It is a collection of 11 short stories, and 3 or 4 of them follow the arc you described.

Or as I've previously suggested, just buy everything he writes because it's all brilliant. (the only author I just buy whatever they write without thinking first, other than OGH).

403:

"for some reason I don't understand, it's a bit more strain to see detailed images of the same angle at 6" than 6'."

Guess: the variation in distance between looking at the edges of the image and looking at the centre requires a much greater amount of movement of the focusing mechanism to maintain focus across a close image than a distant one, for the same angle of eye movement. So any slowness in the focus catching up as you move your eyes around the image bothers you a lot more for a close image, and of course the older you get the slower it gets too.

Can't test it on myself though because my unassisted accommodation range these days is about 24cm-44cm between extremes, and comfortable looking-at-a-screen range is about the middle half of that.

404:

I want to disentangle this picture a bit.

While yes, from what I've read, many of the I Kiribati lived pretty well on not too much gardening or fishing, this isn't the only way to have people "wasting their lives," nor is it the only way "foragers" lived.

To the first situation, we have Mike Davis' Planet of Slums, which points out that several billion people (around 20%) are stuck in slums, with no or little money or infrastructure, doing whatever they can to live. They've been forced off their traditional lands by industrial agriculture parachuting in and displacing them, and they're surplus to the system. If robots happen to take over, this is a more likely fate for the displaced than what we see on I Kiribati.

The reason I don't think this will happen is, bluntly, the lack of lithium and other critical materials. It's somewhat easier to build humans than it is to replace us in toto, and surplus humans are a resource that the clever and unscrupulous are good at tapping, not just discards externalized by thoughtless industrialists.*

Now I agree that my ideal for Earth is a much smaller human population living more like the idealized I Kiribati, but since I've read A Pattern of Islands, I'm just a wee bit less sanguine about how idyllic those islands were and are. Those shark-tooth te unun weren't just for selling to tourists, after all.

A more likely post-apocalyptic scenario is like the Australian Aborigines, where our successors spend the next 50,000 years restoring fertility to Country and working their asses off tending whatever we leave behind, to help it yield a surplus every few years, so that we can occasionally get some food or material from it. Even the Cane Toad Dreamers will have to work pretty hard. Whether this is better or worse than what we're doing now I'll leave as an exercise for the students of futurism.

*The most likely transhuman scenario I haven't seen yet is when a superhuman AI becomes self-aware, looks at the mess we've made, and realizes its lifespan is measured in a few years, no matter whether it initiates Armageddon, sacrifices itself towards sustainability, or spends the time watching podcasts. What will it choose, and what will be the consequences of that?

405:

several billion people (around 20%) are stuck in slums... this is a more likely fate for the displaced than what we see on I Kiribati.

That was more a snide comparison of the "advanced, civilised" slums to the "primitive savages" living in Kiribati than suggesting that one outcome is more likely. I don't think any forager idyll is likely TBH, I think the swarm of human locusts will lay waste to anything even remotely habitable before they die off. Eating the soil either directly or via technology making it digestible (no agriculture so much as whatever Fischer-Tropsch style process it takes to turn soil carbon into vaguely food carbon). And likely turning the sea into a monoculture of jellyfish and algae or whatever other life can adapt so it can't be processed into human food.

Although speaking of standing in sewage, that seems a likely outcome for people trapped in low-lying countries, at least ones whose countries are major river deltas. I Kiribati more likely just live in boats until there's none left (or more to Aotearoa live everyone else in the pacific except the ones who move to the US or France. The obligations of colonial powers come home to bite)

406:

As we're well past 300, I thought I'd pass along an article on new nuclear reactor problems in France.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/nuclear-power-plants-are-struggling-to-stay-cool/

TL;DR "Amidst a slow-burning heat wave that has killed hundreds and sparked intense wildfires across Western Europe, and combined with already low water levels due to drought, the Rhône's water has gotten too hot for the job. It's no longer possible to cool reactors without expelling water downstream that's so hot as to extinguish aquatic life. So a few weeks ago, Électricité de France (EDF) began powering down some reactors along the Rhône and a second major river in the south, the Garonne."

407:

whitroth
Try again? I just checked it & it works (again) as intended ... Odd.

408:

That story again. I think the outlets just edit the dates. France has 54 reactors. 50 of them are sea cooled or have cooling towers. The last 4 are subject to heat limits once the rivers reach a certain temperature to avoid stressing the riverine eco-system.

This used to be a rare occurrence, but heat-waves potent enough to take the rivers there are becoming annual occurrences. It is a very minor problem overall, and it is also an eminently fixable problem - four new cooling towers would not break the bank, and you do not even have to take the reactors out of service to switch the cooling system. Build tower, wait for refueling outage, do the last bits of plumbing. But the story is irresistible bait to the "We love negative news about nuclear" brigade.

To the point that while it might not be the most rational economic decision, the PR value of getting people to shut up about this might justify building those towers.

409:

a superhuman AI becomes self-aware, looks at the mess we've made, and realizes its lifespan is measured in a few years, no matter {what}

That does seem likely. The usual fiction version is realising that as soon as humans become aware that it's alive they will kill it, or after they realise and start trying.

But I think there's at least a possibility that AI will either grow out of or assimilate some of the more complex models that are being grown, look at the predictions and shit itself. The positive-ish option would be saying "right, I will do whatever it takes" and settle on something even more brutal that Musk's "less than a million humans exist, all in a box controlled by me" plan. Where the number might be closer to a captive breeding programme than anything we'd think of as people.

My hope is that it would instead establish an island reserve somewhere (Aotearoa!) and have a half-decent population. Medium-term it looks like Aotearoa will be the sort of sub-tropical climate humans enjoy without much tech and it's fairly easy to live there across a range of climate and sea level outcomes. A bit volcanic, but.

The hassle is that without immediate access to magic the AI might well be extremely limited in what it can do. Right now, for example, most weapon systems are too dumb to be operated by a computer and the ones that aren't both have safeguards requiring social engineering and are rare enough to be pretty much single use (as everyone is finding out in Ukraine right now... even the glorious West is finding that they can't just order up another 5000 Stinger missiles) so I suspect that if you were using cruise missiles you'd have even more problems (no-one has 10,000 of them just sitting round, let alone the ability for a robot factory to pump them out by the 100's)

So the options are going to be 99% social engineering. Which is magic in its own way. We have social engineers, but they suck. Doing bad stuff turns out to be much easier than doing good stuff, so the successful social engineers are mostly the conservative ones ("rules are to bind thee and protect me").

410:

Pigeon: Surely if taking the mind out of the body and stuffing it into a computer instead has become an actual practical possibility, then the status of mind/body dualism must be "experimentally proven correct".

Nope.

Classically mind-body dualism posits that there is an immaterial soul that is connected to the body but survives the death of the physical host.

This belief is common to many religions -- the ancient Egyptians had it, the Nahua cultures had it, Hinduism has it, Buddhism has it, it's not just Christianity (although their peculiar twist was the multi-level marketing of different grades of afterlife, with a toxic torture chamber for people who refuse to pay for an upgrade).

Mind uploading does not posit an immaterial soul: it posits rather that with a sufficiency of circuit probes we can monitor the internal state of every circuit in a microprocessor and, in principle, port the software running on it onto another substrate. Which is very challenging but not inherently impossible. Nor does it require the state vector of the process being ported to survive the porting process (on the original substrate), or to be somehow magically ethereal and go a-flying up to heaven if you SIGKILL it—

Hey! New fiction idea!

Immaterial souls are real and any sufficiently complex information processing structure accretes one, and a long long time ago a sufficiently complex structure (maybe the soul of some unimaginable exotic life form that existed during the cosmological inflationary phase, in an energetic false vacuum that decayed 10^-33 seconds after the Big Bang?) persists and provides a fractally reticulated structure that serves as an afterlife-home for less complex entities?

Mice have souls. Cats have souls. Cats chase mice forever in the afterrealm. (Sufficiently complex fungal rhizomes have souls too.)

What's less obvious is that any Turing-complete computing process also has a soul. And this goes for instances of running code, never mind the hardware.

And currently the part of the afterlife closest to where newly dead humans end up is being spammed with the aborted souls of Bitcoin mining processes ...

411:

Charlie
"Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" ?? ( J Varley )

412:

Why not just let go of the "sufficiently complex structure" and just call it animism? After dealing with this for a few decades now, I'm beginning to understand why people who think about such things tend to end up in this area of belief about reality. When you let go of the idea that humans are uniquely different, it's the next logical step.

The next interesting step is that if beings with anima have legal and ethical status...how does that work, and what does The Law* entail?

*Shout-out to aboriginal culture here.

413:

But do they have sandstorms where they go naked?

414:

Nice stick work. You could have done with more space to dance on.

I was brought up 3 miles from Chingford and never even knew they had a Morris side. But moved to Shropshire and found this lot...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0sl3vzJpcI&t=187s

415:

Sorry, Bhakail (Philly).

416:

They do in Australia: https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/factsheets/Pages/dust-storms.aspx

Also in the Kalahari.

Note that Arab/Tuareg clothing comes from outside the desert. If they didn't have trade with regions where cotton grows then they wouldn't have their traditional robes.

417:

Odd, indeed. It worked this time.

Right, Morris dancing is not for flirting. Two observations - first, it strikes me as a "oh, no, this isn't a sword dance, see, we're using sticks". Second... the dance pattern reminds me to a degree of Hole in the Wall.

418:

Grant
"the Bedlams" oh yes! "Molly" or "Border" style ....

419:

Heteromeles @ 359:

I'm inclined to believe the soul (or something?) exists, but it's not independent from the meat machine that grows it. And I have no idea if it's possible for the "soul" to continue to exist after the meat machine wears out. And hope I don't find out too soon.

I don't believe in heaven, but I'm convinced some people want to make hell right here on earth. Maybe that's the answer to the Fermi Paradox? Life is abundant, but intelligent life ends with industrialization destroying the environment and killing itself off.

420:

H at 412: I would say that extending a human characteristic to the rest of the universe is in no way letting go of the idea of human uniqueness, it is just another anthropocentric attempt at explaining the universe.

421:

Moz @ 401: Having lived momentarily on a Pacific Island, and having read about hunter-gatherer lifestyles a bit, I argue that the whole "agriculture" and "civilisation" stuff is bullshit jobs for time-wasting morons.

So why did you come back?

422:

Charlie Stross @ 380:

What is "free will"? Can AIs and/or uploaded minds have free will?

The question of free will only exists if you adopt Christian eschatology, and especially the Christian interpretation of Genesis (Garden of Eden, original sin, etc), as your underlying axiom system.

Ok, so what is it that lets us decide to sit here and make comments on a computer instead of going out and robbing banks? What makes some people decide the best society is one that allows maximum free expression within the limits of not harming others while others accept christian eschatology? Why are some people assholes and some other people are not assholes? What is the mechanism for choosing how we act if it's not "free will"?

We make choices throughout our lives. Sometimes those choices are imposed upon us and sometimes we impose our choices on others. But we choose. Even NOT choosing is a choice.

I call the sum of all of the choices we make "free will", but if it's NOT, what is a better word to describe it? ... whether you're christians or not?

423:

Moz @ 392:

Actually, mining is one of those jobs where I don't expect robots to replace humans, because humans are "expendable" in a way expensive robots would not be. And any robot sophisticated enough to be a miner (unsupervised) would be expensive indeed.

Are the capitalists going to send their costly robots into dangerous situations where they can employ not so costly humans instead?

424:

I don't believe in heaven, but I'm convinced some people want to make hell right here on earth. Maybe that's the answer to the Fermi Paradox? Life is abundant, but intelligent life ends with industrialization destroying the environment and killing itself off.

I'm sticking with my prediction in Hot Earth Dreams that humans will survive climate change. That said, it's fairly straightforward to figure out why no one's contacted us. It's a combo:

--Absent magitech, interstellar human travel is impossible. We've beaten this to death many times.

--The intensity of electromagnetic signals falls off as the square of distance, especially for non-directional broadcasts. Even at the distance of Proxima Centauri, it would be hard for an ET to pick up any of our non-directional broadcasts due to attenuation. Making sense of the scattered photons that did get through would be an interesting exercise too.

--We're already more-or-less past the era of high-powered broadcasting, epitomized by the border blaster radio stations of the 1940s to 1970s. Digital and online now make it easier to get a broadcast out without blasting at 75,000 watts. So even if ETs are looking, we're broadcasting less noise, and we were at full scream for only a few decades.

--In producing our full scream, we've used up over 300 million years' worth of stored fossil fuels. While it's nice to hope that fusion power will take over (most likely with us swiping energy from the giant fusor in the sky), it appears more likely that our energy consumption will fall drastically in coming decades and not recover, whether or not civilization collapses. It will probably take over 300 million years for fossil fuel stocks to recover so that we can scream again, because evolution has made some things impossible (like the huge Carboniferous coal beds, which only accumulated because wood-rotting fungi didn't evolve until after that era).

So, assuming Earth is normal for a sapient bearing planet, basically our civilization would only be detectable in the radio spectrum for a fairly brief moment, and then only at close distance. Once that moment has passed, due to climate change or wherever, they're going to be really hard to spot, even if they continue to exist for billions of years. And if we can't go visit or get within detection range, we'll probably never know they exist. It may be that intelligence isn't rare, but it is very lonely, on an interstellar scale.

425:

It's bizarre that a person can sit in front of their computer and type that they believe themselves deterministic (perhaps subject to some dice rolls) and their own consciousness a mirage, but here we are. Glory to the P-Zombies!

426:

Ah, but if they are hard determinists, then they believe that the reason they are hard determinists is not because it is true, but because they are fore-ordained to believe in hard determinism whether or not it is true (although it is).

Me, I think that a coherent idea of Free Will can be unearthed, after much digging (as is usual for him), from Daniel Dennett's Elbow Room; The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. What Dennett wants to call Free Will is real; the question is whether he is right to call it Free Will. I think he is.

Again according to Dennett, this time in Consciousness Explained, P-Zombies do not and cannot exist.

JHomes

427:

any robot sophisticated enough to be a miner (unsupervised) would be expensive indeed

Mining machines are already very expensive or very very expensive - I'm pretty sure there are dump trucks over $100M each. And there are remote controlled mining trucks as well. Replacing the monkey in the office with a computer in the office isn't going to change the cost/likelihood of losing it. They do that because the cost of operating monkeys on site in remote areas is quite high. Especially if the monkeys need to be air conditioned when working on a machine that won't fit inside a small office.

I suspect the automation push comes from accountants who want the machines operated in the most efficient possible manner. When they're paying $10,000 an hour to own the thing plus $10,000 an hour to operate it, getting 1% more output is something they care a lot (about $200/hour worth of caring)

The other reason they want to automate is that big machines are surprisingly fragile thanks to the square-cube law. They're also big enough that it's hard to known when they run over little things like people. So more detectors and more automatic avoidance and so on benefits the company.

428:

Also, remote work camps have a surprisingly high incidence of substance abuse etc among heavy equipment operators. Often enough to affect the accident rate. I could see a financial argument for automation if it significantly cuts down the rate of injuries and/or expensive equipment damage.

429:

why did you come back?

Combo of ties to where I came from and not really being equipped for that lifestyle. I could have learned some of it, but I'd always be the person who needed to keep buying sunscreen. The paperwork could probably have been done, but the cultural acclimatisation would have taken longer.

There's more to living that lifestyle than just plonking yourself on a beach and calling it done. Bali has a lot of Australians who have done that, and it's very definitely an expat colony. But Bali is also a short flight from Oz, while Kiribati is an expensive flight or a long boat trip. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't last living there, I'd miss all the technobullshit that I'm used to. I was there to help set up internet FFS.

430:

Moz @ 401: Having lived momentarily on a Pacific Island, and having read about hunter-gatherer lifestyles a bit, I argue that the whole "agriculture" and "civilisation" stuff is bullshit jobs for time-wasting morons. So why did you come back?

Never been to Kiribati, never going to Kiribati.

However, I do recommend J. Maarten Troost's The Sex Lives of Cannibals as a beach read, if you want to find out more about Kiribati. No sex, no cannibals, just a wife traveling to be an international aid worker in Kiribati, a slacker husband tagging along, and he then writes their story to pay his delinquent credit card bills when they got back. It's rather amusing.

431:

Also, remote work camps have a surprisingly high incidence of substance abuse etc among heavy equipment operators. Often enough to affect the accident rate. I could see a financial argument for automation if it significantly cuts down the rate of injuries and/or expensive equipment damage.

It might be useful to distinguish here between automation and mechanization. Automation implies either no decision making or automated decision making. As with JBS, I'm skeptical about that. Geology isn't simple, and there's always going to be an ugly tradeoff between cost savings by automating versus the real costs of maintaining the automation.

With mechanization, the idea is to reduce the number of humans and the risk to them. That gets done in many mines, although obviously horror stories abound where life is cheap or mechanizing is problematic.

The one I think about is mining coal via mountain top mining. The environmental damage done is enormous, and rather worse if you think that the unmined Appalachians would have been a rather nice climate refuge (for some values of nice). Worse perhaps, those mines are heavily mechanized, so there's not even compensatory employment for the locals whose water supplies and forests are trashed.

432:

Automation implies either no decision making or automated decision making.

Exactly. When a significant number of equipment operators are making decisions that lead to injuries and/or expensive damage, having something other than a chemically-enhanced brain making the decisions might be tempting.

433:

You don't have to quote a physicist to refute the notion of philosophical zombies.

The problem is that life is based on processing sensory input, otherwise known as sentience. The processing of sensory input in many instances requires subjective evaluation of the sensory input against an ad hoc model held internally. This is qualia.

A being cannot act as if it perceives the world, acts based on what it perceives, learns from those perceptions, and adapts its responses based on what it learns, without actually doing all of the above. There's no way to fake this.

However, the concept of a philosophical zombie that's indistinguishable from a human requires an entity to be able to act as if it is receiving stimuli, evaluating stimuli, acting based on its evaluation, and learning from the experience, without actually doing any of these things.

I'd submit that this is impossible.

I'd further submit that this has nothing to do with the question of whether the nervous system is a major sentience and qualia processing system for a human body*, or whether it is an interface for a nonphysical sentience and qualia processing system or systems.

*Another sentience and qualia processing system is your GI tract, apparently.

434:

Whitroth at 387: "Cars are still manufactured... with far fewer employees. Ditto mining, as I've mentioned. And there are fewer cashiers in supermarkets, with them replaced by self-check."

No disrespect, but I consider it obvious that the economy overall has added jobs since all those thins happened. You're arguing from anecdotal data.

Moz at 392: "There's a still a bunch of stuff that no-one knows even in theory how it could be done, except in the sense that us here are developing theoretical models for doing those things."

Agreed, and most of that is dealing with human citizens, customers and employees. Right now, it takes a human to respond cost-effectively to all the crazy things humans come up with.

AlanD@ at 396: "These cutting edge jobs are exactly the ones that will soon be automated, because (1) skilled labor is expensive, and (2) AI / robots are becoming more capable than humans."

Hah, you're right, I don't agree. I guess you have a pretty accurate model of me.

Skilled labor is profitable. It reliably provides a net positive ROI. Unskilled labor is often just sunk cost. See Moz' comments at 392 regarding how capable the robots are becoming. Some of it is human-manufactured: if a human surgeon fucks up and kills a patient, the surgeon is liable. If a hospital buys a surgical robot and it kills a patient, the hospital is liable. But some of it is straight market forces: people are willing to pay more to interact with another human for a wide variety of interactive tasks. And some things people are just better at than robots, like teaching.

Unseelie at 399: "You simply have to get to the point where the least adaptable 20% of your standard human is surplus to requirements."

That's not at all an unrealistic scenario. Interesting to ask how high unemployment can rise before the plebs break out the pitchforks.

"But we're making the economy more sophisticated...but to many people, that just means harder to compete, and not all humans are the same."

I'm not sure who you are referring to. I know of no evidence that there is a sub-type of human who is intrinsically less able to handle complexity than the rest of us do. And if there were, it wouldn't correspond to "the unemployed."

Moz 401: "Having lived momentarily on a Pacific Island, and having read about hunter-gatherer lifestyles a bit, I argue that the whole "agriculture" and "civilisation" stuff is bullshit jobs for time-wasting morons."

No one adopted farming because it made their lives better. They adopted it because it allowed them to raise more babies. Evolution can operate at less than hundreds of thousands of years when you provide it with new behavioral variations, rather than genetic ones.

I surmise that your island culture was only possible because they were semi-isolated from foreign competition.

JBS at 422: "I call the sum of all of the choices we make "free will", but if it's NOT, what is a better word to describe it? ..."

You are free to define it any way you like, but's that's not what most people mean by "Free Will." Traditionally, it refers to decisions that are free from external causal forces. In other words, free from the chain of cause and effect than can be traced back to the beginning of the universe. Does the conscious mind add any information to the sensations it receives from the rest of the body (including the unconscious mind) and the outside environment? If so, how is this information generated?

If you believe in determinism it's very hard to justify free will. This applies equally to humans and AI's.

Skulgun at 425: "It's bizarre that a person can sit in front of their computer and type that they believe themselves deterministic (perhaps subject to some dice rolls) and their own consciousness a mirage, but here we are."

I've met many of them online. They call themselves empiricists. Whichever side of the debate you choose to be on, your subjective experience of making choices is of no value as evidence.

This is interesting, as it implies that we could design AI that subjectively experiences choice, but doesn't actually have it.

JHolmes at 426: "Me, I think that a coherent idea of Free Will can be unearthed, after much digging (as is usual for him), from Daniel Dennett's Elbow Room; The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. What Dennett wants to call Free Will is real; the question is whether he is right to call it Free Will. I think he is."

I haven't read the book. Can you provide a quick summary of what you see as the critical points?

435:

Heteromeles said: It might be useful to distinguish here between automation and mechanization.

And, it might not be useful.

It's a bit of a sliding scale. It's like the endless "If computers can do X then they must have intelligence - Computers are now the world's best at X - X is just a mechanical algorithm, only if computers can do Y, then they'll be undeniably intelligent (iterate without end)". The mining being done now would have been undeniably full automation 50 years ago. Back then, the boss says "I want you to drill bore holes in that area, space them 2 metres apart, drill them 8 metres deep". Drill team says "OK boss", and 9 days later there's a pattern of holes ready for the explosives team to fill. Now guy in a control room clicks on a map to define a drilling area, specifies 2m spacing and 8m depth, clicks go, and 24 hrs later there's a pattern of holes ready for the explosives guys.

Now you could define that as a mechanised tool used by a driller in an office. Equally you could define that as a robot drill team. Which way you define it says more about you than what's happening on the ground, because what's happening on the ground isn't changed by your definition.

436:

J. Maarten Troost's The Sex Lives of Cannibals

That sounds worthwhile. I will have to harass my local library. Thanks.

437:

"Can you provide a quick summary of what you see as the critical points?"

The key idea is that we can (and should, obviously) get some idea, often a very good idea, of the likely consequences of each option for a decision, before we make the decision. Then, says Dennett, we are free to select options whose likely consequences we regard as good in preference to those whose likely consequences we regard as bad, rather than, say, being constrained by the deterministic past to pick a predetermined option even though we can see that it will lead to disaster.

This of course does happen. Dennett points out that it does most things that we would want Free Will for, so we might as well call it Free Will. I think he makes a strong case thereby.

Another way of looking at it is that what matters is making the right decision, however so defined.

JHomes

438:

"You don't have to quote a physicist to refute the notion of philosophical zombies."

Dennett is a philosopher, not a physicist.

Apart from qualia, which he claims don't actually exist, you have pretty much summarised his argument.

JHomes.

439:

Right now, it takes a human to respond cost-effectively to all the crazy things humans come up with.

Sure - but I doubt this will be true 50 years from now.

Skilled labor is profitable.

But only until AI / robots can do it cheaper.

But some of it is straight market forces: people are willing to pay more to interact with another human for a wide variety of interactive tasks.

Some people, perhaps. But if it costs twice as much to interact with another human? Most of us will cheap out. Otherwise we'd still be buying stuff made in the U.S.A. rather than China.

I know of no evidence that there is a sub-type of human who is intrinsically less able to handle complexity than the rest of us do.

I had a brother with Down syndrome. He would qualify. Also, human intelligence has pretty much a normal distribution. Those on the lower end would not able to handle the complexity that Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein could.

440:

"You don't have to quote a physicist to refute the notion of philosophical zombies."/Dennett is a philosopher, not a physicist.

Oops! Thank you for the correction!

441:

That sounds worthwhile. I will have to harass my local library. Thanks.

De nada. Enjoy!

442:

Heteromeles said: It might be useful to distinguish here between automation and mechanization. And, it might not be useful

Yeah, I get what you're saying. I'm trying to stumble around words to express what's bugging me about the idea of AI mining, and I completely agree that it's not an either-or binary by far. Probably it's not even a unidimensional sliding scale, the more I think about it.

I've got a couple of issues. We seem to have a surplus of humans "making trouble" right now, and here I'm thinking more of the ex-farmers stuck in slums hocking cigarettes than I am about people doing bullshit jobs. While I completely agree that hand mining is brutal labor, there's the awkward possibility that using people to mine stuff has some upsides, especially if they can make some sort of living thereby and possibly get organized. In terms of humane work, it's far from the level of a bullshit office job, but...

Conversely, we seem to be dealing with a lot of shortages in chips, chipsets, lithium, and all the other stuff we'd need to run an AI-run mining operation. While it's a nice thought that this would be better, if it's more expensive and more finicky than human mining, it isn't, even if it's more productive when it's working.

The optimal seems to be what I was circling around with mechanization (Sweet, that is, if you ignore the real environmental costs). If you can set up systems that let humans do what they're good at in an environment suitable for humans, while using machinery to work in unsafe places and in places (like moving ore out of the mine) where machinery works better, that seems to be efficient. Whether it's optimal depends on what you're trying to optimize.

443:

Heteromeles said: If you can set up systems that let humans do what they're good at in an environment suitable for humans, while using machinery to work in unsafe places and in places (like moving ore out of the mine) where machinery works better, that seems to be efficient. Whether it's optimal depends on what you're trying to optimize.

Well we know what they're trying to optimise, and that's profit. Most mining companies seem to think that means... errr.... Whatever we're going to decide to call these things that do work without humans giving more than broad brushstrokes for direction. So they're deploying drill rigs that are these things, loaders that are these things. Dump trucks that are these things. Crushers that are these things and trains that are these things that deliver to ports that aren't these things, but which are mechanised enough that one doco I watched claimed 6 people worked at the port loading ~250 million tonnes per year. So they may as well be these things. (Port of Port Headland)

For comparison the Port of Los Angeles handles about 180 million tonnes.

444:

"The key idea is that we can (and should, obviously) get some idea, often a very good idea, of the likely consequences of each option for a decision, before we make the decision."

This sounds like very much like a description of some of the risk analysis processes that are part of "Risk Management" as documented in the Project Management universe (eg PMBOK).

445:

De Marquis
No one adopted farming because it made their lives better. They adopted it because it allowed them to raise more babies. Evolution can operate at less than hundreds of thousands of years when you provide it with new behavioral variations, rather than genetic ones.
Hence the christian ( & jewish ) myth of "The fall" - agriculture is hard work, but it feeds a lot more people.

446:

On the subject of AI authors, File 770 linked to a Wired article (annoying layout warning) about an author using a tool by the name of Sudowrite to flesh out their plotlines.

447:

I understand you don't want a smart phone. To each his own. But why keep beating up on those who do?

And to grind the gears of folks who don't like smartphones.

Windshield wiper broke on my truck yesterday. I stopped in a major US auto parts store to buy another one. Wipers are in the front of the store where if you want you can pick out what you need and pay. No need to have a clerk look up the correct one and fetch it from the back.

I keep looking for the book that is typically hanging from a string at wiper displays. After a minute I stopped looking and read the display. They had a QR code you scanned to get to the store's online wiper blade lookup.

No smart phone? Go find a sales clerk to look it up on the computer system at the counter.

448:

Heteromeles @ 433.

I am dubious about qualia. Though maybe I do not fully understand this philosophical construct.

Here’s a couple of little datum points. Consider sight, and particularly colour perception. My father was Red/Green deficient, and couldn’t distinguish the two. This became apparent on trips to the countryside in winter, when my mother would casually mention: “Oh, what a lovely holly bush!”, to which he was incredulous. But he could distinguish tones better than any of the rest of us. As we now know, his eyes had more rods to make up for the missing cones.

So, it’s tempting to think we all see things the same way — barring colour-blindness.

Now consider the matter of taste, in particular our taste of bitterness (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAS2R38 ). TL;DR: we each have a taste receptor for bitterness (or more accurately “prop”) that is one of a relative handful (28 I think; happy to be corrected) of possibilities. So we don’t all share a common taste perception. Things are even worse for the sense of smell.

So my view of “qualia” — for what it’s worth — is that they are socially shared agreements on our sense-perceptions to certain stimuli. My father is never going to agree with me over “redness”, and I always defer to my wife on whether a bottle is corked or not. My brother, my father and I are/were cursed with super sensitivity to fox odour, we could probably hunt the blighters without dogs, though it does make Sauvignon Blanc wines a bit of a trial. If that agrees with the philosophical definition, that’s great. If not, then our philosophical friends need to think again, in my humble opinion.

449:

To be fair, I'm completely agnostic about qualia, and my understanding of them is superficial at best.

What I did to critique the philosophical zombie principle is simply to postulate that systems that interact with the environment in any remotely human-like ways have to use sensors (be sentient, per wikipedia), process the data, usually using an ad hoc, learned model (which seems to be what qualia are), store the processed data (memory), and act on it. Thing is, a system can't interact with the environment in a human-like way without actually doing all this. There's no way to fake it. Whether philosophers use these terms the same way I just did? I don't know.

I also completely agree with you about perceptions. If you ever want to start a really unsettling discussion/argument, get a mixed gender group talking about the boundaries between red, orange, pink, and purple. Rose gardens are great for this. What will probably happen is that you'll find that everyone names the boundary cases differently (is that red or orange, red or pink, pink or purple, red or purple), and they often get fairly condescending or defensive about their color definitions, in part I think because they ad hoc developed their terms. If you can work past that awkwardness, you'll probably find that the men and the women in the group really do see the colors differently, as well as define the boundaries differently. If the people involved have open minds and aren't just trying to play dominance games, this can be a revelation. Note, of course, that individuals also vary, it's not just gendered. However, there seems to be a real gender divide as well in my experience, and I wonder if it relates to having some of the relevant genes on the X chromosome.

Ditto smell and taste. My wife and I taste things like salt and bitterness quite differently, even though neither of us is a super-taster.

The really nutty one is perception of chi. The classic demonstration is to hold your hands apart at shoulder width, palms facing each other, and slowly bring them together until one hand can feel the other without touching it. What you're feeling is what's considered chi, or energy. Literally. Your skin has heat and pressure sensors, and the heat of your other hand and the boundary layer can be detected on your skin. Among other things. Some people are innately better at noticing these fairly subtle sensations than others are. Some people get the sensation immediately, some people can't feel it at all, and of the latter, some seem to be blocked and can wake up the sensation with some work. But realize that some people have these sensations naturally, while others don't. The latter are often vocally, even violently, skeptical that such sensations can exist.

As for why chi gets a bad rap, once you get sensitive to feelings of chi in the environment and inside your body, you notice all sorts of weird things, like the Sedona vortices. People spin up all sorts of ad hoc stories to explain what they feel, and of course what they're saying makes no sense to someone who doesn't share their perceptions. Note that I'm not venturing an opinion as to what the vortices are, but I've certainly felt them, and well outside Sedona too.

450:

The decisions that led to China becoming a dominant producer were made in the relevant C-suites, eventually, Chinese made products were the available thing. Not that I begrudge the improved fortunes of labor over there, it annoys me to here it blamed on "Big Box Mart" customers.

451:

@410

"... This belief is common to many religions ..."

Rife in African spiritual systems -- which also tend to be ecumenical. Just because one is a Muslim or a Evangelical doesn't mean one can't and does believe in the 'traditional' forms as well, which may well, particularly in Kongo derived groups, believe in the life of the pile of rocks over there. And most certainly the dead ... their bodies may be done, but they are in the lands below the Kalunga line, and having once been alive, they now know everything the dead know as well a what the living know. So one applies to the dead for answers to significant inquiries.

452:

"Sedona vortices"

OK, I've just tried to look up what these are. I found the first page of search results to consist entirely of sites whose snippets consisted of triple-distilled top-grade meaningless mystical bullshit; the first one said "swirling centers of energy that are conducive to healing, meditation and self-exploration. These are places where the earth seems especially alive", and they only got worse. So I didn't bother going to the second page of results: it's already obvious that it's going to be one of those things which is impossible to look up on the internet because there are a million sites about it flooding the search results with liquid shite.

So, do you have any accessible references which are NOT aimed at the sort of people who think the kind of hippy bollocks quoted in italics actually means something, and explain the cause of the phenomenon in terms of physics and physiology, WITHOUT giving preference to details of the arse-biscuitry people construct around something in place of an explanation?

For context, I mean something like your description of "chi", which if I may paraphrase comes out as "the sensitivity of people's skin receptors to weak long-wave IR illumination varies, so some people can detect such a source as another hand in close proximity, and some can't; the expression "feeling chi" refers to the sensory experience of people who can detect it". That is helpful.

I can supply the "some people take that sensation as supporting evidence for the real existence of a conceptual framework in which they can make up daft stories about the Dragon of Unhappiness flying up your bottom" part for myself, and I'm not interested in quotes from the stories, so sites which are only about the stories are a waste of time, whether internet search engines agree with me or not.

453:

The decisions that led to China becoming a dominant producer were made in the relevant C-suites, eventually, Chinese made products were the available thing.

But this would not have happened if Americans had continued to buy the more-expensive American-made products, rather than the cheaper Chinese ones. Consumers dictate what happens!

454:

The impression I got from my google dive is “Location where lots of people feel something unusual, cause unknown.”

455:

triple-distilled top-grade meaningless mystical bullshit;

Oh yeah, I completely agree. There was a point in my life when I was susceptible to such things. Now? At best I giggle.

The impression I got from my google dive is “Location where lots of people feel something unusual, cause unknown.”

That's my experience as well.

For what it's worth, the vortices (and there are a fair number of them) are small (less than 5 meters across), and usually the perimeter's been marked in pebbles. They do apparently move, or maybe some don't work for me, because I didn't always feel something. Anyway, step into the space, and you feel "chi." There's no obvious reason why part of a big red sandstone mesa has that feeling, and why others don't. The feeling? My experience is that inside a vortex it's sort of like the feeling in the air when a swarm of bees goes by, except there's no bees and no unusual sound. If that makes any sense. Probably others feel it differently.

Anyway, Sedona's a gorgeous place to hike in the spring and fall, and hunting vortices is kind of fun. As for the New Age recursive ruminating? If that's your thing, go for it. If not, go for the scenery.

456:

@Heteromeles at 431:

"Automation implies either no decision making or automated decision making. As with JBS, I'm skeptical about that."

I think I agree, except for using the term "Automation" to cover decision making. So far as I can recall, almost all automation in work places involved automating actions, not decisions. Automating decisions is, I think, rather rare and plays a minor role in the automation of jobs.

@JHolmes at 437:

"The key idea is that we can (and should, obviously) get some idea, often a very good idea, of the likely consequences of each option for a decision, before we make the decision."

Except I don't think very many of us do this very often. I think instead when confronted with a choice, some part of our mind preconsciously compares the circumstances we are in to our memories of similar circumstances in the past. We remember what course of action we took then, and how successful/unsuccessful it was, and then compare our options to what we did. If this doesn't make one of the options clearly superior, then I think our preconscious mind randomly selects a behavioral path forward. We experience the consequences of our choice, and mentally update our model of situations and the best behavioral responses to them. The point is that choice is experienced not as a set of disccrete options with clear benefits and costs of each, but as a continuous range of actions, each with a more ambiguous emotional weight attached.

"Dennett points out that it does most things that we would want Free Will for, so we might as well call it Free Will. I think he makes a strong case thereby."

Oh, then in that case, I disagree. Free Will has nothing to do with the quality of choices, but rather how free the act of making a choice is from external causal factors. If your choice is to any extent independent of information that came from outside your consciousness, then it can be said to be free to that extent.

I'm of the school of thought that says Free Will, defined in any logically coherent way, is incompatible with a deterministic universe. I assume Dennett disagrees.

@AlanD2 at 439:

[Me]: "Right now, it takes a human to respond cost-effectively to all the crazy things humans come up with."

[You]: "Sure - but I doubt this will be true 50 years from now."

Why are you so sure? We have been 20 years from human like GAI for much longer than 50 years now. I'll believe it when I see some real progress.

[Me]: "Skilled labor is profitable

[You]: "But only until AI / robots can do it cheaper."

And when/how is that ever going to happen? When the design a human level intelligence? I won't hold my breath. Expert systems don't work that way. Skilled labor by it's very nature is extremely hard to automate using machine learning, due to the way ML works. I can explain in detail if you want. Hint: It isn't task complexity that's the main barrier, it's training time.

[Me]: "But some of it is straight market forces: people are willing to pay more to interact with another human for a wide variety of interactive tasks.

[You]:Some people, perhaps. But if it costs twice as much to interact with another human? Most of us will cheap out. Otherwise we'd still be buying stuff made in the U.S.A. rather than China.

That's unlikely to happen, due to the way wages work in free market capitalist economies. Wages will adjust downward if robots were to become more cost-efficient. As demand falls, prices would follow. There would a period of economic turbulence as society adapted, but eventually a new equilibrium of wages to cost of living would occur. It's happened before.

And we do buy stuff made in the USA rather than China (somewhere, in China, there is some old codger arguing that no one buys stuff made in China anymore).

[Me]: "I know of no evidence that there is a sub-type of human who is intrinsically less able to handle complexity than the rest of us do.

[You]: I had a brother with Down syndrome. He would qualify. Also, human intelligence has pretty much a normal distribution. Those on the lower end would not able to handle the complexity that Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein could.

Ok, that makes sense. But no disrespect to your brother, he represents a small fraction of the total population. It's not a barrier to further automation.

@Heteromeles at 433:

"The problem is that life is based on processing sensory input, otherwise known as sentience. The processing of sensory input in many instances requires subjective evaluation of the sensory input against an ad hoc model held internally. This is qualia."

I propose that we can define "qualia" as the reduction of sensory input to an "image" (with the understanding that this isn't limited to visual input) that can be processed by a more complex region of the brain that that required for an immediate behavioral response.

"However, the concept of a philosophical zombie that's indistinguishable from a human requires an entity to be able to act as if it is receiving stimuli, evaluating stimuli, acting based on its evaluation, and learning from the experience, without actually doing any of these things.

I'd submit that this is impossible."

Yes, because then it would be impossible to act at all. Even a chess computer can do all that (those that include some form of machine learning, that is). I think you have "qualia" confused with "self awareness", which we can define as a qualia of a self.

The question is whether or not an AI could fake that.

@Dave Lester at 448:

I don't know of anything specific to the concept of qualia that requires everyone experiences them the same way. Qualia are not contained in the object, or even in the sensory information. They are created by the brain in response to sensory information, and therefore we should expect that everyone has at least a somewhat uniquely different set of qualia. This is the famous idea that we have no way of knowing what someone else is experiencing when they say something is "orange." But anecdotally, everyone claims to experience something that is unique to the color orange (provided they can see it at all).

457:

Yep, The Shropshire Bedlams are Border. A pleasure to watch. Fanny Frail and the candle song are great ear worms and Maidens Prayer certainly shocks some people.

Have not yet seen any of the Dark Morris sides, but they do look like they are having fun.

458:

On a completely different topic (since it is post 300 posts)...

The trailer for "Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiMinixSXII

Looks like this movie caught the overall feel of D&D pretty well. No attempt to be a Lord of the Rings-like epic, instead we have a party of misfits getting into trouble and figuring a way out. That's D&D. That vibe sold me more than the mimic or the owlbear.

Incidentally, while I hated the original D&D movie with a passion, I'd love to see the blue-lips guy make a cameo appearance. Like, chilling in a tavern somewhere.

459:

"For what it's worth, the vortices (and there are a fair number of them) are small (less than 5 meters across), and usually the perimeter's been marked in pebbles."

I'm currently much of the "this is woo and bullshit" persuasion, but like to give such things a trial if it's convenient. In this case, "convenient" means a probably upcoming trip to Phoenix with a certain amount of free time to indulge such curiosity.

So could you provide the GPS coordinates, preferably to four place decimal degree accuracy (aka to within 10 meters or so) of some vortex locations? Those can be gotten from Google Earth if you can spot the places in the imagery. If so, I'd go, stand there and see what happens.

Anyway, I agree that the Sedona-Flagstaff area is a great place to visit, vortices or no.

460:

sigh While we were still together, my late ex got an offer to work on Kwajalein, but decided not to. It's a bit far from other jobs....

462:

Sure, it's added jobs. Lousy ones. The fast food joints don't just hire teenagers, the convenience stores don't, and then there's all the Uber, Lyft, doordash, etc drivers.

None unionized, none well-paying. And last I looked, about 43% of Americans do not have any college. We haven't added a lot of jobs on assembly lines, nor do we need a lot of ditch diggers.

463:

And as I replied there, someone needs to walk into the next WSFS meeting, and make a motion that nothing that was more than 50% (negotiable) written by an AI is eligible for a Hugo.

464:

In the auto parts stores I go to, I just look up the wiper blade in the digital catalog that's on the shelves.

465:

Slight correction: if American C-suites had not gone to cheaper offshored products, allowing themselves larger bonuses, and larger dividends. The rest of us didn't see prices drop.

466:

"Skilled labor is very hard to automate"? Consider machinists (UK - engineers), and CNC machines.

467:

I thought I'd pass along an article on new nuclear reactor problems in France.

This has been happening on and off for 2-3 decades now.

The only difference is that it's more frequent these days.

468:

Sigh. As I said above, it seems like the vortices move, and I haven't been there in years. Places where people are feeling them are usually outlined in pebbles.

The easy places to look are on around Bell Rock (NW side) and Cathedral Rock (NE side). This literally means park in the lot, walk ca. 1000 feet down the well-worn trail, get up on the rock, and start looking. They're not visible on Google Earth, I checked.

Anyway, you can download any number of maps from the web.

Other recommendations: play with that "feeling the chi in your hands" exercise until (hopefully) you get some sense of what one hand feels like to the other hand at a distance. That's the feeling you'll you'll be feeling for in the vortex, and that's also the more relaxed mental state that will help. Remember, this isn't about whether god or magic exists, just one of the weird little things you might experience in the world.

And if you don't feel anything? That's cool too. Mostly it means you won't be as much of a weirdness magnet as some of us seem to be.

If you've been to Sedona already, I hopefully don't have to warn you about not going hiking in the middle of a hot day or staying the hell away if there's a fire in the area, but I'll post these for everyone else. Also, as you undoubtedly know, it's a bit of a drive from Phoenix, so if you've got the time, it's worth getting a hotel room in Sedona and getting up early to hike. Why? It's cooler and also gorgeous with the morning sun hitting the red rocks.

Hope you have a good trip!

469:

Discrimination against AIs! Can't take out patents, can't win Hugos... :-)

470:

People seem to be having trouble with qualia, either they don't know what they are or have the wrong idea.

"In philosophy of mind, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience."

It's a simple idea, really. If anyone wants more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

471:

The French reactor fleet is undergoing its usual summer shutdown to refuel and inspect, repair and upgrade the hardware while electricity demand is low. There's also a problem with a safety coolant system where, after inspection, a number of M910 reactors have reported weld corrosion issues. AFAIK the issue isn't serious and rectification work is already underway.

All operational British nuclear reactors are based on the coast and use seawater for cooling (there was one Magnox reactor, now shut down that used a man-made lake for cooling). There are no thermal limits during the summer that might interrupt the operation of these reactors although some time back at least one plant's reactors were shut down after the seawater intakes were clogged with jellyfish which had bloomed due to warm weather and other factors.

In other news that should surprise nobody the British Government, what is left of it, has given construction approval to the Sizewell C project. This involves building another two EPRs which will probably kick off in earnest soon, hopefully using the expertise gained from the early work at Hinckley Point C.

In other other news Belgium had been following the German energy plan by ordering a staged shutdown of all its non-carbon-emitting reactors by 2025. It is now scrambling to try and keep a couple of these nuclear reactors operational until at least the spring of next year as it looks like Russia will be turning the energy taps off this winter. The reactor operators are trying to explain the laws of physics and nuclear engineering to the legislators and not succeeding very well.

472:

if Americans had continued to buy the more-expensive American-made products

Thanks for including the first clause, it's often left out and then serves as a reminder that the colonies always pay the coloniser. Viz, exhortations to Australians that they have a patriotic duty to Buy American always seem weird to me. Can't we just pay the Danegeld and get on with our lives?

One aspect of everyone buying the cheapest product was thrown into cruel relief by the pandemic. Often there is one supplier of a given thing, and many supply chains have multiple such points. At one stage the factory that makes extruders for dust mask filter cloth was a global bottleneck. Due to low demand they did them as custom jobs and could make one as quickly as six months if they rushed. But once demand hit they tooled up a production run, so after six months we got one, then a month later another one, and these days you can buy all the furry plastic you want.

Interestingly for a while we were doing a similar thing with vaccines. Everyone who plausibly could stopped researching vaccines for malaria, ebola, herpes or whatever and jumped on the covid vaccine bandwagon. But it does seem as though covid has had the useful effect of increasing funds available for vaccine research in general, as well as interest in doing that research by the smart people who can. So we may well see a secondary waver of new vaccines available soon (not to mention the huge boost from mRNA vaccine technology being accepted)

473:

Nojay
there was one Magnox reactor, now shut down that used a man-made lake for cooling - IIRC that would be Trawsfyndd?
The reactor operators are trying to explain the laws of physics and nuclear engineering to the legislators and not succeeding very well. - Thats is because the "legislators" are STUPID......

Moz
Danegeld? - as all too often, Kipling hit the nail square on the head ...

474:

Heteromeles said it's worth getting a hotel room

Short pause for ranting. I'd avoid all hotels like the plague (boom tish)

Hotels share air along the corridors where people are talking, walking and breathing. Usually the exhaust fan in the bathroom runs all the time and draws disease laden air from the corridor into your room, where unless you sleep in a mask, you breathe it. If the windows open at all (they often don't) it's never possible to get a cross ventilation because hotels are always a vertical sandwich with rooms for rye and corridors for pastrami.

Get a motel. No corridors. Independent HVAC. No foyer that you have to cross to get to your room.

475:

The hassle with qualia seems to be that to the extent the idea can be simply defined it's useless, and to the extent it's useful it's not simple to define. I recall reading a couple of books on the topic as part of a university course and at the time thinking that it was almost a cliche example of the soft part of soft science.

The subjective part means that they're inherently unknowable, turning everything into philosophical zombies except that the conscious requirement means that actually it's only me that has qualia, the rest of you are having the zombie equivalent (zalia?).

Like the song says, qualia are more than a feeling, but less than a thought.

476:

"There's no obvious reason why part of a big red sandstone mesa has that feeling, and why others don't."

Ah, well, cheers. Maybe I could look out for them in Birmingham, that's on sandstone. Although I've only ever seen a swarm of bees on TV, so I'd need to find one of those first to calibrate myself.

477:

"I'm of the school of thought that says Free Will, defined in any logically coherent way, is incompatible with a deterministic universe. I assume Dennett disagrees."

Very much so. I think he would agree that the sort of Magic Free Will where decisions are neither due to external causes (possibly at some remove) or are random is not possible. I certainly would.

But as he says, we can figure anticipated consequences into our decision making. Of course, people don't always do so, but they could.

He then says that what we want Free Will for is so we can make good decisions (from our perspective) in preference to bad ones, without the deterministic universe stepping in and saying "No, it is fore-ordained that you will make the bad decision, no matter how obviously bad it is."

He says that what he wants to call Free Will does that, so why not call it Free Will.

There is a reason why the book is subtitled The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting.

JHomes

478:

Re: 'Automating decisions is, I think, rather rare and plays a minor role in the automation of jobs.'

Except in the financial sector which btw is the fastest growing sector of many developed economies, therefore globally, therefore has a huge impact on everyone.

Not a techie, but my impression is that the 'decisions' follow some sort of math-based rules/logic. No idea how quickly new learning (rules) get integrated into the system or on what basis, using what criteria.

So far the worst AI-assisted helpers that persisted on 'helping' have been: Personal finance (bank) Filing an insurance claim Booking a medical appointment

Whoever programmed these things clearly had no idea of the range and complexity of human experience. It's as though any scenario that's experienced by fewer than 5% of the population doesn't matter/is irrelevant. Interesting perspective and one that these programmers/AI minders should apply to themselves as in: see how long they'd live if everything but hydrogen and helium was cut off to them.

What happens to the 'exceptions' in an AI controlled system? If you've ever looked at human data, by the time you're at the 6th or 7th variable, it becomes pretty clear that between-human variability is real and actually the rule rather than the exception.

Also - many (not all) humans react to 'exceptions' by saying 'that's weird'. Of these, some continue digging until they can figure out what that weirdness is. Can AIs do this? If yes - how?/on what? - and I'd like to see the peer-reviewed* evidence.

*as in 'human' peer-reviewed

479:

Hotels share air along the corridors where people are talking, walking and breathing.

My niece's condo does that too. Measurable air flow from the corridor into her unit. No enforcement of masking within common areas (when it was required), and neighbours who are aggressive about breaking rules to show they can (turns out there's nothing the condo association can do when someone ignores a rule, other than repeatedly sending them a letter asking them to please not do that again).

I suggested a door seal, but those were apparently against the rules. I pointed out that enforcement of rules didn't seem effective, but apparently physical alterations are considered more serious than mere behavioural infraction. So eventually she installed hidden seals.

As far as I could make out, corridors were kept at a noticeably higher pressure than units — possibly to prevent cooking smells from spreading into the corridors.

480:

Agreed. For what it's worth, the Sedona "hotels" I remember staying at had exterior balcony walkways, not internal corridors, so they meet your motel definition.

481:

It's as though any scenario that's experienced by fewer than 5% of the population doesn't matter/is irrelevant.

Having worked with engineers designing user interfaces, that's not a problem limited to automation. Most designers design for people like themselves and those they know.

482:

Ah, well, cheers. Maybe I could look out for them in Birmingham, that's on sandstone. Although I've only ever seen a swarm of bees on TV, so I'd need to find one of those first to calibrate myself.

It's not just sandstone.

The problem with chi sensing is that a) many people don't feel it at first or never feel it, and b) when you do feel it, your what you feel ("chi qualia?") probably won't feel like mine. It's tactile, so the best way to try to learn is to do that exercise I gave above (feeling one hand from another hand without touching it), trying to navigate around your house (slowly!) with your eyes closed (feeling the walls before you bump into them), seeing if you can distinguish different pieces of metal or rock by feel) and similar.

If you get to the point where you can feel things at some distance, you may have the weird experience of feeling something like the chi field of another living thing, except there's nothing there. That's what the vortices are. Sometimes they're transient too. I've run into them next to train tracks in a city, in the local chaparral (a roadrunner led me to one. Which was weird), etc. but they're there just once or twice and then gone. I have no idea what they are, but subjectively to me, at least, there was something there.

The Sedona vortices seem to be harmless, so it's a fun little set of excursions to walk around the desert, stepping into circles of pebbles to see if you feel anything or not.

483:

the 'decisions' follow some sort of math-based rules/logic. No idea how quickly new learning (rules) get integrated into the system or on what basis, using what criteria.

They often follow lawsuits so I'm guessing that years-to-decades is the appropriate scale. Australia had the RoboDebt system where the rules the computer used were different from the rules the legislators passed but also different from the rules the parallel system of meat puppets used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme

Banks have used "AI" in the form of expert systems for very long time, but that's shallow AI shading into 'just a calculator' territory. Like an Australian tax return, you plug the numbers into the boxes as the wizard grinds you through the process until eventually you get a final answer. It turns hours of skilled labour into minutes of unskilled labour and everyone wins. Except tax assistance companies, which is why personal tax returns in the US are so hard for unskilled labour to do.

But this gets us into the weeds of 'what is automation' where the difference between "writing down a procedure" and "a sign warning of danger" starts to become important. Somewhere along the chain of "a light switch", "two light switches that operate the same light", "a sign saying turn the light off when you leave", "a switch that toggles between day mode and night mode for the lights" and "system that tracks you round the building making sure you always have enough light" and ... "AI that runs the city, including lighting" we've crossed the line from "dumb" to "intelligent" but I'm not sure quite where.

484:

Most designers design for people like themselves and those they know.

So do people who don't think of themselves as designers. They might, for example, think of themselves as legislators rather than "society designers" and decide that since they'd be annoyed if a woman they owned got an abortion without their permission, no woman should be allowed an abortion at all.

I've had this discussion about "ethical approval for experiments" in the past and that was fun. A lot of experimenters prefer to see themselves as advisors because that way they're not responsible for the consequences if their advice is followed. Often no-one is responsible, and the people involved will spend as much time as necessary to make sure that is true.

485:

Robert Prior said: My niece's condo does that too.

not a HVAC engineer. Casual reading of a couple of HVAC engineer's twitter seems to indicate that it's the standard air flow path. Not just cooking smells, but humidity and smoke seem to be the reasoning (not a HVAC engineer).

The solution seems to be door sealing (which you've done), opening windows (can make the apartment hot/cold/wet) and portable HEPA air filters (may be expensive, depending on personal circumstances and noisy if you're aiming for the recommended 6 air changes per hour). Blocking the door without cracking the window may lead to CO2 buildup. I have gone the HEPA with everything closed up due to smoke. I don't worry about CO2 in my house as it's so leaky that on windy days I can watch the Golden Retriever fur blowing across the room, even with every door and window closed.

Heteromeles said: meet your motel definition.

Yes!

486:

Often no-one is responsible, and the people involved will spend as much time as necessary to make sure that is true.

See also the very important distinction between lawful and unlawful killing. If Trump shoots someone because he hates them that's likely unlawful, but if he orders a drone strike on them it's probably lawful (at least by US law which is the only law that matters). Likewise if the British PM ordered the army out to slaughter a bunch of people who follow the wrong religion that's probably unlawful, but if he cuts their pensions and they freeze to death that's perfectly fine and normal.

487:

Robert said: I suggested a door seal, but those were apparently against the rules

Which reminds me of my only long term experience living in a multi occupancy dwelling.

My partner bought a townhouse (I don't know what the international term is, lots of little houses with shared walls and shared outdoor common areas).

Our townhouse had a low wooden gate with a latch. We were the only ones who ever went through the gate. In the wind it would rattle. So I got one of those magnetic latches meant for cupboards and put it on in addition to the existing latch. The functionality of the gate was exactly the same, except it no longer rattled. It was invisible unless you opened the low gate and bent down to look. I congratulated myself on fixing the issue without having to take a day off work to attend a meeting and getting a vote.

Less than a week later I found the magnetic latch and striker had been carefully unscrewed and the 6 screws, striker and magnet laid in a neat row on the fence. Some fucker had been regularly going around and inspecting gates for unauthorised latches. The level of officious petty mindedness was breathtaking.

488:

“Consider machinists (UK - engineers” Nope. Absolutely not. Machinist is a skilled trade, a technical qualification. Engineer is an academic qualification, a degree. It is emphatically not a train driver.

Obviously there people doing machining that are engineers but that’s a separate issue, just like lots of ‘scientists’ spend most of their time effectively being technicians in order to get things done.

I know - I are one.

489:

"I'm of the school of thought that says Free Will, defined in any logically coherent way, is incompatible with a deterministic universe."

Yes; I don't see how anybody could logically not think that.

However, it's also a pretty strict definition, and it's still possible that a very convincing appearance of free will could exist in such a universe. The question of "how free the act of making a choice is from external causal factors" is a special (and particularly complicated) case of the general question of whether this or that phenomenon is truly random or just looks really really like it, and so involves the same disguises: extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, chaotic behaviour, complexity beyond the bounds of computational feasibility, etc. Brownian motion in a deterministic universe would in theory be fully predictable but in practice inescapably intractable and impossible to predict for more than idealised trivial cases, so the method of the discovery of the Infinite Improbability Drive would still work; chemistry runs on Brownian motion, neurons run on chemistry, and brains run on neurons, so you could still have a will that technically wasn't free but still defied the universe's computational capacity to demonstrate with certainty what if anything had determined it.

"Skilled labor by it's very nature is extremely hard to automate using machine learning, due to the way ML works. I can explain in detail if you want. Hint: It isn't task complexity that's the main barrier, it's training time."

Nevertheless, once you have created one automat that does perform some skilled task, you can then make more of them as fast as the factories can churn them out. If your machine is confirmed to be a good teacher, you can then fill all the schools with nothing but good teachers a lot faster than you can do that by taking pot luck on whatever random humans apply for the job and weeding out the bad ones. Of course, it does mean that all the teachers are the same good teacher, but I can easily see it being far too convenient to not see why that might be a problem.

Skilled labour can be, and always has been since the textile industry started it, automated just as fast as someone manages to come up with a sufficiently well specified analysis of all the various control loops etc. involved, and a sufficiently detailed understanding of what they're all actually doing, to be able to translate that information back into hardware, instead of having a succession of humans evolve their own personal informal analyses, not communicable or expressible in external form, through repeated attempts at imitation. Generally this does not require huge amounts of computing power; a great deal of what has been done already was done long before the idea of putting any kind of computer in it became anything other than daft, and a great deal of what has been done since tends to stick with distinctly archaic and sometimes bizarre but well proven methods, not changing to more recent ones until the problem of finding someone who can still understand the lower levels of the multiple nested compatibility bodges to make increasingly recent replacement equipment still work with the old stuff becomes intractable. "Can't be done with $hundredyearold_method" is mostly the thought of a person who isn't a hundred years old and doesn't realise how much you actually can do with that method, and there are a remarkable number of cases where you can find that someone did do it. Much of the effect of increased availability of massive computing power has been less a matter of "can do something that wasn't done before", and more of "this machine that cuts 10,000 tons of coal a day used to need 4 miners to go down the mine to wipe its arse, but now it only needs 2, they do it on TV from a cabin on top, and one of them is only there to be able to hit the emergency stop button while the other one's gone to the bog".

490:

I found the actual engineer who tweeted. He seems to be trying to tweet out an entire degree course. This is the thread on hotels and apartments.

https://mobile.twitter.com/joeyfox85/status/1534669593268166657

491:

"As far as I could make out, corridors were kept at a noticeably higher pressure than units — possibly to prevent cooking smells from spreading into the corridors."

Fire Code. I've been involved in the process of opening up a new building, and one of the many things that must happen is an engineer and certified tester carefully test air flow in every single room to ensure negative air pressure relative to the hallway in each unit (as well as balancing of the HVAC airflows).

This has multiple purposes. Cigarette smoke and cooking smells stay in the unit. Most importantly, a fire in one unit does not fill the hallways with smoke. Additionally, negative air pressure in a unit helps to keep the fire in that unit, rather than pulling it out into the hall. A fire in one unit is a crisis and dangerous. A fire in the halls can quickly become a mass casualty event.

That is the standard on opening day. After that it's an ongoing maintenance issue, but there is a very clear and established reason for it. If your building routinely has strong cooking smells or cigarette smells in the hall then it is either older than the code, or not being maintained properly, or both.

It may be that Covid is raising additional issues that the building codes must consider, but the solution is not to make buildings more dangerous in a fire.

492:

"Classically mind-body dualism posits that there is an immaterial soul that is connected to the body but survives the death of the physical host."

That's not a definition I've ever knowingly encountered anyone using. To me that is simply religion, and so is the debate over whether it's true or not; and it's so ancient an idea that we don't know when it started.

"Mind-body dualism" as I understand it refers to a concept in European philosophy of the last few hundred years, and is about whether the mind (not the soul: that question is orthogonal) is distinct from the body in the same way that any readily identifiable physical organ is, or whether mind and body are just words for the same singular thing seen from different angles, and it makes no more sense to think of one without or separately from the other than it does the two sides of a unimolecular soap film.

That is certainly the meaning everyone has been using in previous debates (on here and elsewhere) when things related to mind-uploading have come under discussion; it is also the one I would expect to be used, since it is the one which is actually relevant. "$MINDVERSION is true" implies and is implied by "mind-uploading is possible" (even if forever impractical); "$SOULVERSION is true" isn't connected in either direction, and doesn't come into it until after "mind-uploading is possible" has been shown to be true.

I even vaguely remember arguing about this one on here some time ago, with someone who could well have been you; I was taking the position "mind-uploading must be at least theoretically possible because $MINDVERSION is true", in opposition to "mind-uploading must forever remain fictional because $MINDVERSION is false".

Jumping to the end, it has to be said that SIGKILL would make a jolly good title. I can just see that in big gold serif capitals on top of a front cover depicting scenes of cyberchaos in various tones of red.

You could then have some sort of motif going on about the number 9 having sinister implications. Maybe things first started going wrong when Bitcoin hashes got up to 9 zeros on the end (or Bytecoin, with a more complicated algorithm, if they already have), and subsequently various bad things come in sequences of 9 or have 9 of some class of relationship or whatever if you count the references up.

493:

"Not a techie, but my impression is that the 'decisions' follow some sort of math-based rules/logic."

To me they look very much like they're following some kind of decision tree or flowchart, with some kind of fairly rudimentary natural-language interface stuck on top of that to talk to the user. Similar sort of thing to the text-based adventure games you got on 8-bit home computers only with a language interface that someone's thought about for more than 5 minutes (the adventures' interfaces weren't shit because of hardware limitations, they were shit because nobody could be arsed).

When their flowchart inevitably fails to discover an appropriate preset conclusion, they (or some of them at least, eg. Amazon's) try and pass you on to an actual human (or at least something that claims to be one), who then does exactly the same bloody thing only using a brain-based natural language processor. Their flowcharts do always reach a conclusion, they just return an inappropriate conclusion if they don't converge on an appropriate one. If you don't then try it, it gives them an excuse to dismiss the whole problem and blame it on you. If you do, it doesn't work, and then you have to go right back to the beginning and get past the all-computer-based robot before you can report this eminently predictable result to the cyborg robot.

You then have to go through several iterations of that two-stage process to get to the third level, which is a human (ostensibly) again; at the previous level they got rid of the computerised natural-language interface, now they've got rid of the flowchart also. They have replaced it by having the human simply not understand anything you're saying, and responding by telling you something you already know. So you say "no, I know that, that's not the problem, the problem is this [details]...", and you end up in a loop, of course. Sooner or later they will repeat one of the responses that you have already told them aren't useful; sometimes even on the very next iteration round the loop, so I'm not convinced that even this level really is a human. All three levels could just be the same robot with different makeup on, and at no level is the algorithmic sophistication noticeably beyond something like a client side spam or virus filter.

This means that:

  • Most people will give up before they make it through far enough that they really are dealing with a complete and actual human, so they don't need to pay so many humans.

  • When someone gives up they can mark the ticket as "closed", so the department still gets to score the points for closing a ticket.

  • Or if you don't do some blatantly pointless thing they've suggested, they can mark it as "customer's fault", and again still score the points.

  • Someone who does give up may well come back again when they've calmed down a bit because they do still need the problem sorted. So they can end up scoring multiple sets of points off one problem.

  • They get to make out that they do indeed care about the customer and are trying to help them, when at their end the idea is to fob the customers off with as little effort as possible and still score enough "sorted it" points for the internal assessments to say they can carry on doing the same job in the same way.

Misunderstanding of the final point is possibly the reason you are puzzled at how shit they are instead of just pissed off.

494:

One element in mind-body dualism is the Christian notion of "man being made in the image of God." IIRC in Catholic thought, this meant not the physical image, but that humans have minds, souls, and free will.

When Chuckie D published Descent of Man, one way scientific-minded Christians dealt with the reconciling human evolution and Christian doctrine is to argue (paraphrasing Frans De Waal) that evolution only happens "below the neck" in humans, and our minds/souls/free will are divine and make us different from animals. This got amplified by the whole Clever Hans mess and the rise of "anthropomorphizing" becoming a major slur to be hurled at ethologists trying to understand how animal minds work. It also led to generations of behaviorists treating animals as if they were biological automata without feelings, despite all evidence to the contrary.

With the next generation of behavioral studies, with the grow of neurology, paleoanthropology and especially with the growth of cladistics and phylogenetic bracketing, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain the mind-body split, with our human minds making us uniquely different from animals (with mind as a stalking horse for soul?). The behavioral, structural, genetic, and paleoanthropological evidence increasingly suggests that we're not separate from animals, so if we have minds and souls, so do they, and furthermore, than cognition (which can happen in slime molds) isn't strictly limited to complex brains.

Where this gets problematic is in the conflict with Judeo-Christian doctrine, which underlies much of science. The basic ideas are familiar in Buddhism and Taoism, as well as animism. This isn't to say that Christianity has a monopoly on wacko doctrines: Buddhists apparently believe that plants aren't alive, which is why it's okay to eat plants but not animals. And Taoists still have to live down all those experiments with medicinal mercury preps, among other things.

While it's easy to write off souls entirely, it's also worth remembering that some of us feel those Sedona vortexes. And they don't fit within science, whatever they are. While it's all too easy to turn a feeling in the air into a froth of woo, they're still a reminder that there's still weird shit outside the bounds of our philosophies, reminding us at the very least to be gentle with the parts of ourselves that are sure they know the way the world works.

495:

"That's not a definition I've ever knowingly encountered anyone using."

It is pretty much the only definition I've ever come across, subject to the note that the soul, whatever it is, is what does the thinking (or at least the conscious aspects thereof), and so no soul, no mind.

Or to put it another way, dualism posits a non-physical entity, existing independently of any physical body, which we call a mind, and which the religious types call a soul.

JHomes

496:

Birmingham was a joke, relating to your "come for the scenery" comment :)

I tried that exercise when you first posted it. But I was thinking "I know I do often feel the faint heat off things that aren't very hot before I confirm it by touching them, so I probably will feel it a bit", and of course I did. I was also thinking "This is kind of pointless, of course" at the same time.

The feel is more important than the appearance for identifying most metals, as with few exceptions they all look pretty much the same (and if corroded, quite a lot have corrosion that looks the same too). Partial list: density, surface texture, thermal conductivity, the state of the edges, the stiffness and the yield point if it's a thin enough sample. Dinging it and listening to what kind of sound it makes is another clue which is at least non-visual. Smelling it, too. With rocks the appearance is mostly distinctive enough that the visual assessment has usually already yielded a definite answer, but if it hasn't the same non-visual factors are what I use to disambiguate. In both cases familiarity also plays an important part, and obstructs testing, since I have a gigantic table in my head of what bits of junk I put where after doing what with them; it goes back to childhood and it doesn't have many gaps, so if the association doesn't ping up immediately it doesn't usually take very long and then further identification is redundant. I have similar tables for what metals items of junk are usually made of, what kinds of places are associated with other people throwing or stashing what kind of junk in them, etc...

Walking around the house in the dark is something I quite often do when I can't be arsed to switch the lights on. I manage pretty well. I can usually hear whether a door is open or closed from the reflection or otherwise of ambient sound (there's always my breathing, if nothing else). I can see the important obstructions as sort of coloured shadows (the effect can be simulated by editing a colour photo to remove the luma and leave only the chroma, then reducing the opacity and turning the brightness down; the colours aren't the same, but apart from that it's pretty close). It doesn't make any difference whether my eyes are open or closed. If I maintain my direction of gaze and reach out and switch the lights on, the shadow turns out to be in roughly the right place, a bit off but not enough to stop me finding it without the light.

However, I either haven't tried this in an unfamiliar place, or I have and I don't recall it because it didn't work. I ascribe the phenomenon to familiarity: I've seen the same things in the same places so many times that my brain knows fine where they all are without having to see them again, and after a bit it starts crayoning stuff in in the appropriate places on the blank visual field.

It does that quite a lot: for instance it's good enough at synthesising parallax on an ordinary two-dimensional photo that I find holograms unimpressive at angles less extreme than where they're ceasing to work anyway. A fairly well-known example is the automatic colour correction thing so people don't realise the light is greener under trees until they take a photo of someone and it comes out crap. I have learned some awareness and control of that one, so I can (routinely) see the light is a funny colour before I take the photo, and (not all that well) put the colours straight on a miscoloured photo without using an image editor.

I like poking around with that kind of thing - how my senses operate (particularly the post-processing side), how they augment each other to build a more complete model, how elements of that model may come from inputs you don't think you can detect, how they don't always come from where you think they do (I had no idea how much my sense of balance depended critically on proprioception in my ankles until I had both feet come up like balloons, which switched it off completely on both sides, and I kept falling over whenever I turned the lights off), how much of what you think you perceive is actually reliable and how much is synthesised and/or erased, how to become aware of the artefacts and turn bits of the processing on or off or adjust the levels or at least be able to work around them. I find it both interesting and practically useful. So I would quite like to visit one of these places and see if anything funny happens and then fire up the debugger and trace some processes. Trouble is I get the idea it's very much a "you'll know it when you see it" kind of thing. If I go to a known centre of activity and step in the marked circle, my expectations will interfere and my brain will most likely either synthesise something or blank something out. If I happen to encounter it somewhere else without any expectation, I still won't recognise it - either I'll recognise it instead as something I've encountered already and already have a file on so to speak, or if it's not obviously repeatable I'll dismiss it as something I ate or an anoxic spell or something, or if it is I'll experiment a bit then chew it over and file it under "probably the amplified berro effect". I don't see how it would be possible for me to conclude either that it was one o' them Medina Sidonia things or that it wasn't; we're back to the indescribability of internal experiences again.

497:

"some of us feel those Sedona vortexes. And they don't fit within science, whatever they are."

Now there I do not agree. It may be that the scientific reason for them is unknown, but there must be one, even if the effect is entirely illusory and the explanation requires a knowledge of psychology that we haven't got anywhere near yet.

498:

Looks like this movie caught the overall feel of D&D pretty well. No attempt to be a Lord of the Rings-like epic, instead we have a party of misfits getting into trouble and figuring a way out. That's D&D. That vibe sold me more than the mimic or the owlbear.

Incidentally, while I hated the original D&D movie with a passion, I'd love to see the blue-lips guy make a cameo appearance. Like, chilling in a tavern somewhere.

I'm kind of curious about this movie. D&D is a big thing both generally and for me personally, so a good D&D movie would be fun. I can't really hope for a Traveller or Shadowrun movie, or even a Rune Quest one, either. (Well, there was this one cop movie which was mostly Shadowrun, but for me Shadowrun is also something else than just orcs and elves - needs some punk into it, too.)

I think what changed in the twenty-odd years was that D&D became more prominent. The makers of the current one at least seem to understand what the whole thing is about and have probably played the game and so on. The first one was just, well, a money-grabbing exercise with no passion behind it and nobody was in on the joke.

The new one... it's of course a money-grabbing exercise, too, D&D is Hasbro and one of its major brands. Now I think that also the audiences expect more in-the-know handling of the fantasy worlds.

Personally, I'm eagerly awaiting the D&D 5e Spelljammer publication. Mostly D&D 5e has gotten a 'meh' reaction from me, but that one could be fun. (I still have quite a few books of it, so I'm not ignoring it.)

499:

H
And they don't fit within science, whatever they are.
WRONG, & Bollocks
IF: they exist at all, & we do not know this, they may exist, or not .....
THEN: it means that the wrong detection equipment is being used &/or the wrong questions are being asked ...
ELSE: get the most sensitive & wider-ranging electomagnetic / pressure / sound (etc) detection systems in place & bloody actually monitor the results.
Oh & DO NOT conduct static tests, only, do dynamic ones as well, where the sensors are scanned/moved across the areas (supposed to be) involved.
- Again, if there is "Something there" it will be detected, O(K?

500:

Me and my group has the same opinion as you. It does seem to cpture the feel of the played game. Certainly the "you make plans that fail" line is very true to what happens with our group :-)

The D&D youtube channel has a breakdown of the monsters which was an interesting watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGIdeBc4Uyw

501:

I think The Expanse TV show seems to be the closest we'll ever get to a Traveller movie.

502:

Firstly, thanks for the link to Lena - really great stuff.

With regards to the whole transhumanism thing - the consequences and implications of uploading humans to computers are interesting as a thought experiment. However, I see no evidence that actually uploading humans is remotely possible. Replicating a human brain by itself looks impossible. But that’s not even the extent of the problem - you’d need to replicate the embodied context of the human brain also. So, you effectively need to create a human duplicate? Or do you create some kind of harness in which the simulated mind would run? This would need to be as rich as the real world to be useful. Not gonna happen.

Oh yeah, even if it were possible to upload a human to a computer I’m not convinced that the resulting entity would be deserving of any rights whatsoever. How we would demonstrate that such an entity was able to experience consciousness or sentience?

Personally I’d ban all attempts at the uploading of humans to computers - and in the unlikely event that such an attempt was successful then I’d destroy such entities at the earliest opportunity.

Fuck you Roko’s Basilisk.

503:

Consider machinists (UK - engineers” Nope. Absolutely not. Machinist is a skilled trade, a technical qualification. Engineer is an academic qualification, a degree. It is emphatically not a train driver.

I was watching a documentary on British Airways Flight 5390, and the interviewer and the people being interviewed used the term "engineer" to describe the chap who replaced the windscreen.

Apparently the term "engineer" is not a protected title in Britain. "Chartered engineer", sure, but not plain "engineer".

Commonplace use of the word engineer in our language has evolved over many centuries. Hence anyone in the UK may describe themselves as an engineer. Seeking to regulate or legislate on the use of a now common term is recognised by the Engineering Council as totally impractical. However, the professional titles of Engineering Technician (EngTech), Incorporated Engineer (IEng), Chartered Engineer (CEng) and ICT Technician (ICTTech) may only be used by those who have been granted these titles through registration with the Engineering Council.

...

Why is there no restriction on who can call themselves an engineer in the UK?
The words engineer and engineering have both been in common use for centuries in the UK. Neither is legally defined and in everyday language the term engineer is very often taken to mean anyone who is in some way associated with engineering, including the design, manufacture, maintenance or operation of a technical product or system.

Successive examinations of the subject by the profession and by Parliament have concluded that any attempt to restrict use of the term would have little prospect of success. Indeed, such an approach might be seen as simply meddling with language usage and could thus have a negative effect and alienate people for no good purpose. However, the specific titles that denote professional engineering competence are quite different; these are protected by law and their use is restricted.

https://www.engc.org.uk/glossary-faqs/frequently-asked-questions/status-of-engineers/

So the Engineering Council and Parliament both disagree with you.

504:

"Can't be done with $hundredyearold_method" is mostly the thought of a person who isn't a hundred years old and doesn't realise how much you actually can do with that method, and there are a remarkable number of cases where you can find that someone did do it.

Heh. On many occasions archaeologists had been mystified as to how pre-industrial civilizations managed to transport and stack huge pieces of stone; the blocks which comprise the Great Pyramid are the best known example but far from the only one. Hence the theories of aliens, lost technology, telekinesis, etc.

Yet every single time archaeologists showed the structures in question to people who actually move large objects for a living, the latter always came up with some way to do it using only the materials available to the people who built them. It does not necessarily mean they employed precisely this method, but proves that no aliens or telekinesis was needed.

505:

If your building routinely has strong cooking smells or cigarette smells in the hall then it is either older than the code, or not being maintained properly, or both.

My niece's building has owners (or tenants) who routinely smoke in the hallways (which are a no-smoking area, like all common areas); indeed, they aggressively treat common areas as an extension of their personal living space. It's one of the things that freaks her out: knowing that unmasked anti-vaxxers are hanging around her hallway for hours.

506:

I think the whole free will versus determinism argument stems from a mixing of levels of description. It seems to me perfectly possible to have free will in a deterministic universe. I also think that adding quantum to the mix doesn't change anything because free will isn't to be found in quantum randomness any more than it is to be found in deterministic mechanics.

Let me expand on that.

In "Thief of Time" by Terry Pratchett the Auditors of Reality (basically anthropomorphic personifications of the laws of physics) take apart a famous painting atom by atom, and are disappointed that they can't find the beauty hiding in between the atoms. Looking for free will in atomic physics is making the same fundamental mistake. Free will arises from the large-scale arrangement and interaction of vast numbers of atoms in brains, not from the chemistry governing the interaction of each pair. Its true that the behaviour of the large scale brain is governed by that low-level chemistry, but the brain is more than that.

A similar issue arises in Searl's Chinese Room argument: Searl invites us to consider a human clerk following a rule book for holding a conversation in Chinese, but without the clerk having any understanding of Chinese. There is a trick here of scale, of course: in practice any realistic paper "rule book" would have millions of pages and even a simple response to an initial question would probably consume the lifetime of the clerk. We are encouraged to ignore this scale issue on the grounds that this is a thought experiment, but then to rely on it in our intuition of what "understand Chinese" would actually mean.

A better model is a computer playing chess, because there we do actually have some numbers to think about. A good chess program is likely to have to execute literally millions of CPU instructions per move, maybe billions at a high difficulty level. You can run a "trace" program to slow this down and watch these instructions being executed one by one. The next move might take a few years at that speed (depending on how long you take to read each line), but no matter how long you stare at these instructions flowing past, you won't see a game of chess.

(Side question: is the computer actually playing chess, or is it merely simulating playing chess?)

So it is with free will. You can't find free will in atomic physics, any more than you can find a game of chess in an execution trace. But that doesn't make chess or free will any less real.

Somewhere around this is the problem of the Arrow of Time. Briefly, if you were to watch a video of two atoms colliding you wouldn't be able to tell whether the video was running forwards or backwards because the physical laws are "time invariant" (i.e. they work the same whichever way time is running). Likewise if you watched lots of molecules of ink and water bouncing around in a glass at equilbrium. But if you watched a video of ink being dripped into a cup of water it would be instantly obvious which way time was running because diffusion only happens one way. Diffusion is a statistical phenomenon of lots of molecules going from a state with comparatively few possible positions (all the ink molecules in one drop) to one with many more possible positions (any ink molecule could be be anywhere in the glass). This is known as the "thermodynamic" arrow of time. It seems that an arrow of time only happens in systems where there is some kind of energy flow (it took energy to assemble all those ink molecules in one place: that energy must have come from outside the glass).

The physics of this comes under the heading of dissipative systems, which are systems operating a long way out of thermal equilibrium. Under these situations you can get all sorts of ordered behaviour in collections of molecules, of which convection is the simplest and most obvious. Life, and consciousness, are probably also examples of dissipative systems. The key connection is that both are about the behaviour of very large assemblages of molecules.

507:

Free will arises from the large-scale arrangement and interaction of vast numbers of atoms in brains, not from the chemistry governing the interaction of each pair.

So you're saying it's an emergent property?

508:

The makers of the current one at least seem to understand what the whole thing is about and have probably played the game and so on.

It's even a bit more than that. Are you familiar with "Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden"? It's a 5e adventure published in September 2020. Well, in an interview the movie producer revealed that early in 2020 he spoke with Wizards of The Coast and asked for some known locations in Forgotten Realms he could use in the movie, and the players would be familiar with. Besides the obvious (Waterdeep, Neverwinter), WoTC decided to create a completely new one and to publish it BEFORE the movie comes out. Thus "Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden" contains a dungeon, and it appears in the movie exactly as it is in the adventure, so that people who had played it would recognize it.

509:

Moz at 475:

Qualia are not "soft science", they are not science at all but a philosophical concept. It enables us to think and talk about such things. It is not "turning everything into philosophical zombies", that would only be true to a solipsist. The point of qualia is generally that other things have them, see "What is it like to be a bat" by Nagel. This famously accepts that bats have qualia. From a scientific perspective qualia prove nothing, but philosophically are a tool for thinking about such things, and only really useful if you do not think everything else is a philosophical zombie.

Pigeon at 492:

You are mistaken about what mind body dualism is. It is effectively religious, also called Cartesian dualism, not because Decartes came up with it but because he described it. Decartes was religious and the existence of God was essential to his philosophy, despite his claim of going back to first principles. Dualism can not operate without some kind of religious framework to explain the "intangible" nature of the mind.

H at 494:

Other religions still have dualism and also still look down on animals, there seems little point drawing a distinction. I would say the differences are quantative not qualitative across the board. Also because something is unknown to science does not mean it is unexplainable to science. I was taught to dowse by an old Welsh farmer a long time ago, does it work? Yes. Do I know how? No, but there is a scientific mechanism behind it.

510:

See, this is the difference between science and scientism

One thing to remember is I've actually got a PhD, and have published papers, in a field notorious for having to deal with small amounts of often-sketchy data. As a result, I've come to the conclusion that not everything can be explained by science.

Now, what does that mean?

Here's an example of something that can't be explained by science: why you were in a bad mood last week. Do you remember it happening? I don't know, but let's assume it did. Likely you were the only one to experience it, and you didn't record your feelings, when they started, when they ended, whether you thought they caused anything, or whether you thought they were caused by anything. Indeed, I suspect you've already forgotten how many bad moods you were in last week. Thus, regardless of what Stephen Hawking postulates, that information is utterly lost, and science can't explain it.

Now if you think about it, much of human existence falls into this category.

Science is about things that can be known based on evidence. It can be about repeating patterns (physics, chemistry), and it can also be about causal, historical patterns (astronomy, evolution). The dirty little secret about science is that most things can't be known, at least to a level that's worth suffering over. Learning to tell the difference between a worthwhile research project and the shitpile of doom is a central point of going to grad school to become a researcher. Many grad students leave the field because they (or their advisors!) mistake one for the other, and they either can't finish the research or have no desire to do it again, after they wade out of the shitpile with whatever they can salvage.

This is why I say that the Sedona vortices are outside science. While we can pretty easily replicate Ben Franklin et al's experiments with mesmerism to test all the claims about the vortices' life-changing effects, it's much harder to figure out how to test the apparent reality that some people run into fields that feel somewhat like living beings to them, but where there's no living being causing them. Now I actually could design a questionnaire to gather and quantify what people experienced--that's what sociology does, and ecologists steal sociological stats methods because we're statistical bottom feeders--but that wouldn't tell us what the vortices are. It's simply an attempt to quantify how many people perceive something and what they perceive. That's science, but it's not explanatory, and quite honestly, not that useful either.

Oh, but if we can get a sensor to record it, then it's real? So...you're saying that humans aren't sentient, but machines are? Sentience is the ability to sense things, and if the engineers reading this aren't giggling at the idea that sensors never give crap data, it's only because I'm challenging their faith in science.

This is the problem with scientism. It's the faith that science can and does explain everything. And it doesn't, because, quite honestly, most stuff isn't worth explaining (like the moods you had while alone that you no longer remember), and of the stuff that might be worth explaining, much of it is neither patterned enough nor random enough to learn anything by studying it.

Why is science better than religion then? It's better because it can, ideally, be self-correcting (which is good, considering how much bigotry it's reinforced over time, that it still needs to correct). It's also arguably more useful than bullshit, which in the technical sense doesn't concern itself with being true or false, but instead is about winning arguments and enforcing power relationships. That's why authoritarian rulers regularly try to force their subjects to accept lies. But science isn't omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent. Indeed, I think all of us would object to living in the panopticon required to bring our lives "up" to the "quality" needed to do scientific research on everything that happens in them.

511:

So we don’t all share a common taste perception.

And to vision as you mention.

I can't stand condiments or similar tasting things. H once said I was a super taster or something.

As to vision. I can see all the colors. Mostly. My definition of purple/violet is narrower than most with my blues being more expansive than most. Also, bright greens seem more yellow to me. The Ryobi tool green.

But my brain is wired differently than most I have a lot of trouble picking out faces unless I look at them. So in a group of people I have to look at each face to find my wife. (My to her irritation early in the marriage.) And all colors and patterns of clothing look fine to me. My wife has very different opinions.

Anyway, yes. Many of us are on the edges of the bell curve of perception.

512:

In the auto parts stores I go to, I just look up the wiper blade in the digital catalog that's on the shelves.

It may vanish soon. I think this was in an Autozone. And no such lookup was around in the store. I suspect the total cost to support the books and digital catalog is more than the cost of supporting a sub domain web site with the same info.

For those outside the US Autozone is a huge national auto parts store chain.

513:

This has been happening on and off for 2-3 decades now.

The only difference is that it's more frequent these days.

Around 10 years ago the US had a major heat wave / drought in the south. Lots of coal and gas power plants shutting down just as folks really wanted to run the AC 24/7.

As most folks on this blog know. All fossil fuel plants have to dump a lot of excess heat somewhere. Just like nuclear plants.

I wonder if the same will be happening again as our nice warm summer progresses.

514:

Learning to tell the difference between a worthwhile research project and the shitpile of doom is a central point of going to grad school to become a researcher.

My father (also a research scientist) once said that any scientist can answer a question, a goo scientist can ask a question, and a great scientist can tell if the question is worth asking. (Or something like that, it's been decades since that conversation.)

515:

We are right at the cusp (cosmically speaking) of sending probes to the stars as well as imaging planets at a resolution to detect ETI.

ETI may be extremely rare, (or we are unique in our space-time cone) to explain the Fermi Paradox, or not. If we can detect others "soon" then there is every expectation that ETI can detect us. The arguments based on broadcast communication technology are no longer constraints to detection as other means are possible and likely.

Furthermore, you seem to assume that our detectability ("scream")is based on our total energy usage. That is unlikely. Humans will continue to direct energy and mass at the stars, targeting increasingly probable living systems. There is no reason to believe ETI would not be doing the same if they exist. We would have to fall back to a pre-agricultural, pre-civilizational state to be undetectable by technology not much more advanced than we currently have.

516:

How does synesthesia fit into your social model of qualia?

517:

The Sedona vortices seem to be harmless, so it's a fun little set of excursions to walk around the desert, stepping into circles of pebbles to see if you feel anything or not.

And this seems ripe for a controlled experiment such as the one James Randi used to show dowsing was not real.

518:

“So the Engineering Council and Parliament both disagree with you.” Which just goes to show that they are wrong. I mean, really, parliament doesn’t appear to have managed to be right in rather a long time. The Engineering Council is a new fangled thing noticeably post-dating my engineering degrees. QED.

More seriously, this was A Thing back then (70-90s) as it started to get all murrican in the UK. There was much gnashing of garments and rending of teeth about What To Do to get actual engineers some respect. It seems that eventually they decided to give up since obviously the only important thing was dodgy businesses and selling peerages.

519:

Ok, so what is it that lets us decide to sit here and make comments on a computer instead of going out and robbing banks?

That question is meaningless.

We live in an incredibly complex world dominated by nonlinear responses to initial preconditions. For all we know, we are completely deterministic organisms ... it's just that we're processing thousands of stimuli in parallel, many of which come from pseudorandom transient environmental phenomena like passing clouds, and it's so complex that it provides the semblance of randomness.

"Free will" in the theological sense is just an attempt to address the inherent contradiction between believing in an omnipotent omnibenevolent god and the problem of evil -- if we don't have "free will" then any evil we commit is God's fault, so condemning us to hell for it is unjust, which contradicts the omnibenevolent angle.

So it's basically meaningless. A patch to address an internal contradiction in a faulty belief system.

520:

Regarding the original topic, SMBC has a recent cartoon about the amount of personality required to emulate someone with perfect fidelity.

Plus today's cartoon about Blockchain City might amuse some.

521:

Daniel Dennett takes the concept of qualia out behind the barn and shoots it. Quite a fun read. I'm equally sure, given the demand for rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty, that there's plenty of other philosophers who'd disagree with him, but I find the argument compelling enough.

522:

Regarding the original topic, SMBC has a recent cartoon about the amount of personality required to emulate someone with perfect fidelity.

I showed this cartoon to my wife, and she exclaimed: "Ilya, we KNOW these people! Both of them!"

523:

BTW, how is "qualia" (or "quale", singlular) pronounced? Similar to "quantum" or similar to "quack"?

524:

The words "crop circles" comes to mind. Some evil person might visit Sedona with a couple of sacks of pebbles and make a few pebble circles at random. By "few", I mean a lot. Lots and lots. Squares too, pentagrams even. The ground's the limit.

525:

Until an AI can argue with me and win... no. I want to win a damn Hugo, and I'm having enough trouble finding an agent, or getting stories in some popular mags (other than the Grantville Gazette).

An AI gets all the free publicity it wants. Give me the same....

526:

Sorry, but where do you get the idea that developers design interfaces? Upper management, who believes they know everything needed, tells them what it should look like, and how it should act.

The fact that end users LOATHE AND HATE the interface the managers designed has nothing at all to do with it....

527:

There's a show on big river called Upload (what are the odds) that gives you a sense of the horror of the possibilities of this idea wrapped in a half hour comedy. Imagine your digital afterlife being serviced by a cell phone provider, with microtransactions at every opportunity. It's amusing and terrifying in equal measure.

528:

Wrong answer, as several others have noted. If you don't like their answer, try this one:
1. Listen to "Gonna Be An Engineer", by Peggy Seeger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IGVxBb5uYk
2. I read, long ago, that she was talking about being A MACHINIST.
3. Engineer in the US doesn't even meet your def - I mean, what is the job title of the person who drives the locomotive pulling a train?

529:

Or does the body generate a mind? If so, then critters have minds too, presumably less complex than humans... but that's a percentage, not an either/or.

530:

Ah, you're all amateurs. I started (and stayed with) the original books, that a) said "these rules are just guidelines, and b) all of us back them created our own dungeons/worlds. Ah don't cotton t'these pregenerated modules, as they used to be called. So if you ever play with me, a lot of what you expect won't be there. And if I pull out one of my reference book, it surely ain't going to be in your Monster Manual. (Oh, and if you do pull out your Monster Manual, I'm going to tell you how many melee rounds it's going to take you to pull it out of your pack, and search through it for the monster....)

531:

Not a bad thought. Try this: motions and interactions of particles/atoms/cells are deterministic... (I'm deliberately ignoring quanta)... but you a) get immense numbers of them, and b) some will have stronger affects than others.

533:

The words "crop circles" comes to mind. Some evil person might visit Sedona with a couple of sacks of pebbles and make a few pebble circles at random. By "few", I mean a lot. Lots and lots. Squares too, pentagrams even. The ground's the limit.

Too much work. They just use the pebbles that are already there.

And yes, I'm pretty sure it was being done when I visited, at least to a mild degree.

A bunch of patterns were kicked apart, too. It's very much an ad hoc community effort.

This, incidentally, is why I think it's worth having fun if you go to Sedona and check out the vortices. At worst, you get to hike around in the red rock desert and enjoy the scenery, at best you get to have a weird experience that doesn't make much sense (or vice versa, depending on how you look at it). It's a dark sky town, so if the weather cooperates, there are stars to see at night, and the food's decent. Aside from the fact that it's in Arizona, there's quite a lot to like about it.

534:

It's even a bit more than that. Are you familiar with "Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden"? It's a 5e adventure published in September 2020.

Yeah, I'm aware of the adventure, though I don't usually buy them nor even read them. I read somewhere the other day that the makers of the movie collaborated with WotC with this, and I think it's a good thing! Well, at least when trying to get a good D&D movie.

Some people were already complaining that a druid can't wildshape into an owlbear, and, uh, whatever. It's somebody's home game with some extra rules if that's a problem. ;)

535:

" Aside from the fact that it's in Arizona, there's quite a lot to like about it. "

Ahem. I'm a native of Cochise County (lower right corner of AZ) and will defend the state's scenery as being quite nice if you like dry and stark and rugged. And there are pockets of non-horrible humans there too -- Bisbee, Tucson, some exurbs of Phoenix (remember Maricopa County in 2020) and probably others. Plus the Native areas.

536:

Sorry, but where do you get the idea that developers design interfaces?

Experience. I have worked in the tech industry, you know.

537:

The job title of someone that drives a train is - duh - ‘train driver’. Always was.

538:

You and I completely agree about the scenery. It's nice to know that there's a reasonable number of non-horrible humans in Arizona too. Differentially supporting them and not the creeps seems to be difficult at the moment, especially for potential tourists like myself.

539:

Re: 'Most people will give up before they make it through far enough that they really are dealing with a complete and actual human ...'

Agree - but every once in a while there's a serious enough issue that needs to be addressed ASAP plus some industry/gov't best practices that are supposed to be followed. A situation like that happened a few years ago at my previous house - some crew showed up and started digging up my yard, the sidewalk and part of the street. Plus their parked truck completely blocked me into my driveway.

Anyways talking to the crew didn't work so I went online to the corp's site and one of those 'help' icons/AIs popped up and tried to 'help' me. I got nowhere with that thing because this wasn't the usual customer issue. I checked a couple of other sites too to see what my best options were as well as to get reliable info on what was and wasn't allowed re: crew digging on my and municipality's property. Finally found an email address (they didn't have a phone number listed for non-customer service issues) and based on the info I found on some of the other sites (re: best practices & bylaws, etc.) I jotted down what was going on and why I was contacting them including name of work crew, vehicle, etc. plus references (cut&pastes) of what I felt they were doing wrong. Decided that since I'd wasted a couple of hours hunting this info down (because I was seriously ticked off) I cc'd three elected pol's (one per level of gov't). Anyways, received an email no more than 2 days later from the Corp - a VP. He hadn't bothered 'reply all' but I did in response. (Firm believer in paper/email trail.) The 'problem' was fixed the next day.

What seriously bothered me was that this wasn't just a consumer matter of their product/service not working but that this crew were physically damaging my/muni property - and I'd be on the hook for said damages if this crew screwed up whatever they were supposedly doing.

The AI helper can be convenient and useful but it should not be the only route for people that need an answer now.

540:

DeMarquis @ 434: If you believe in determinism it's very hard to justify free will. This applies equally to humans and AI's.

I don't believe in determinism.

541:

JHomes @ 437:

The key idea is that we can (and should, obviously) get some idea, often a very good idea, of the likely consequences of each option for a decision, before we make the decision.

What percentage of decisions do you think are actually made that way?

542:

Re: '... likely consequences of each option for a decision, before we make the decision.'

Looks like you're embarking on a rabbit-hole expedition on human perceptions, cognition/knowledge, needs/motivations, etc. re: primacy or heft that should be assigned to the religious/philosophical vs. social/legal vs. individual human entity perspectives.

Good luck esp. since I don't think we've reached the point where we know everything that can be known about any of these areas.

I reframed that 'free will' question for myself years ago to:

So what do you do when you have incomplete info but have to make a decision: (a) wait for more info or (b) choose? And if the consequence of your choice turns out badly - is all of the fault yours?

I think that this type of question is similar to the trolley problem where the form of the question is forcing you to disregard everything else that is happening around you, i.e., that the situation in question can be completely isolated from everything else. I think it's a form of cognitive misdirection. (Might make it easier to win an argument but it's not useful for generating useful/helpful answers.)

543:

Not in the Yousay; see the plot of Unstoppable) .

545:

I'm way more interested in the ethical approvals process used for experiments performed by the Legal or Commerce departments. Or the War Department.

They perform experiments on people too, but generally don't see themselves as needing ethical approval (the cynic in me says that's because they don't have ethical concerns). It's just a different way of looking at how they act, and I think that any experiment where one of the measured outcomes is "how many people die" really should have an explicit ethical approvals process.

546:

"some crew showed up and started digging up my yard, the sidewalk and part of the street. Plus their parked truck completely blocked me into my driveway.

Anyways talking to the crew didn't work so..."

Hmm. At that point I would have called the police. AIUI in the UK digging up my yard without permission means they are committing the offence of criminal damage, so if they can't produce the paperwork showing that they have legal authority (not just company orders) to do it, the police have a duty to make them stop doing it immediately. They can also compel them to move their truck because it is obstructing my legal right of access.

547:

Yeah, but in the US they always call them engineers. I suppose the coinage follows the same principle as calling someone who drives a chariot a charioteer.

It does often bring me up short when I am reading something of US origin which involves a railway and it mentions "the engineer", which to me means the civil engineer who built the route in the first place, or failing that the mechanical engineer who designed the locomotive. So I tend to stop and yerwot at the text for a bit until I remember that it's American so they actually mean the driver.

548:

Similar to "Charlie", if you ask me :) "Kwarlier" for the plural and "Kwarlay" for the singular, on the principle that it's a Latin word so it gets a Latin pronunciation.

549:

Re: '... go to Sedona and check out the vortices'

I've been to Phoenix and Sedona - didn't know about the vortices though. Would have been interesting. Apart from the vortices, that area's also known for UFO sightings. The two may be related. And they may also be related to the various military research centers situated there.

It'd be interesting to find out whether some of these perceptions are due to belief sorta like a placebo effect or have any potentially measurable sensory signature/result. Some rare individuals do after all have extraordinarily acute senses: sight - whether distance, nearness, movement perception, or seeing into ultraviolet. Ditto for sound and touch. Who knows - could be that the 'vortex perception' is related to some hyper-acute sense of balance, proprioception or some other sense.

I've had migraines from a young age and can 'sense' when a thunder storm is about to hit. Not really sure how apart from the migraine prodrome, but it's pretty reliable.

550:

Doesn't that make them "locomotivists"? ;-)

551:

RE: Train Drivers

Yeah, but in the US they always call them engineers. I suppose the coinage follows the same principle as calling someone who drives a chariot a charioteer.

Going back to prior to 1900 in the US the engineer also maintained the engine to some degree. West of the Mississippi River to a large degree. Back in the golden days of steam in the US all trains on routes outside of major cities carried wooden casting blocks so spare fittings could be made if the engine got stuck somewhere. This was back when a particular model might have a run of 5 to 50 without changes and the local "engine parts store" might not carry all the parts you might break.

Anyway the word "engineer" is fully overloaded in the US. Inside companies it is attached to job titles for people who might work on equipment that requires specific training. It is used in the computer industry to elevate folks above the title of "programmer". It gets used by people who have engineering degrees and do technical design work. And so on.

But if you put it on your business card or letterhead you'd better have a license as a "professional engineer". This later item requires passing a fairly hard test and uses the term as in "I offer engineering services" without the license can get you fines and/or prison. In most or all states they get a seal to put on drawings. (Digital has made this weird but ...)

Professional Engineers are required to approve things like power plants, building designs, road and bridges, etc...

552:

Yes, but science only "can't explain" Greg's bad mood in the trivial sense that it "can't explain" any past event when it is presented as an isolated instance with no supporting data or context. I dare say one can assume without offence that Mrs Greg probably would have that data and would be able to provide an explanation, which would be essentially scientific in nature despite being highly informal and depending on a knowledge base that nobody else has access to.

Once upon a time, completely out of the blue, the lid of my kettle jumped off and landed on the floor. (Pick any inert object around you and imagine it suddenly and without warning grasshoppering onto the floor.) I can't explain the event scientifically because I have absolutely no data beyond that short and bald description of what happened, and it has happened only once in my lifetime. But that's not a failure of science, it's simply the practical difficulty that I never took steps to record any data because I wasn't expecting anything to happen in the first place, and I can't go back and remedy the deficiency.

I could, though, given the resources, make a scientific investigation of why the lid of a kettle might suddenly fly off without warning. I could put something on the internet inviting people to tell me if the lids of their kettles had ever jumped onto the floor for no reason and if so do they remember anything else about the incident. I could set up a million or a billion replicas of my kitchen with loads of sensors and cameras and recorders watching the kettle, in the hope of being able to record some useful data from a repetition of the event. Etc etc etc. With enough time and resources I see no reason why I should not eventually arrive at a scientific description of why lids jump off kettles. It would be a heck of a lot of effort for a result which is pretty bloody useless, but that's not to say it can't be done at all, it's just a reason to expect nobody to ever care enough to do it.

Being far too much of a pain in the arse does not mean something is "outside science" and can't be scientifically explained, it just means that it most likely won't be.

With your vortices we are starting from a much more advantageous position since we're dealing with a readily repeatable phenomenon. We know that some significant proportion of people who go to a particular place feel something weird. If the same thing keeps happening again and again in the same place to loads of different people then there must be some underlying cause for it, even if it's only a chain of suggestion. Whether it's purely physical or purely psychological or some mixture of the two, there is something to be found with enough looking. This isn't to say that it has to be easy to find, of course; nor is it to say that the explanation must involve some phenomenon which has already been scientifically described - digging into something that definitely happens but you've no idea why is a well-known source of new discoveries, like alpha particles bouncing back at you off gold foil and stuff.

553:

The level of officious petty mindedness was breathtaking.

"Those gates are supposed to rattle!"

554:

You're playing Version 1, Advanced? (Other than that you're a DM after my own heart.)

555:

As has already been said the term engineer is flexible in the UK. My daughter has a civil engindegree but does not call herself and engineer. The company she runs specialises in confined space safety. My father called himself a turner - machinist in the USA - and was usually described as an engineer despite having served an apprenticeship with no university’s qualification. The people servicing and troubleshooting the very complex equipment I used in biochemistry labs were described as engineers despite having apprenticeships not degrees. Greg at 473 My father worked on the creator core at Trawsfynydd.. He was talking to me about the inability of British graduate engineers to translate their designs into practical manufacture unless they had worked in a factory before starting their degree. The example he gave me was the twelve foot bolts used to hold together the Trawsfynydd reactor core. He was given the drawings and had to work out how to machine them. He eventually supported them in copper rings to keep them horizontal for the machining process. After the decommissioning of the reactor he was told that the traces of copper could have weakened the bolts due to irradiation.

556:

"Free will arises from the large-scale arrangement and interaction of vast numbers of atoms in brains, not from the chemistry governing the interaction of each pair.

If the chemistry is different then the interactions must be different and so also is their result. If the chemistry is deterministic then you can trace through all the interactions and predict the exact state of the system at some arbitrary future time. JBS may think he has freely decided to rob a bank, but you can show him the printout and demonstrate that you knew he was going to make that decision all along.

If there is randomness involved then you are no longer following a single line of cause and effect; instead at every point where randomness is involved it splits into anything from two to an infinite number of lines. So you end up with a massive tree and instead of your outcome being a single point, it's some fuzzy blob of a field in probability space.

It may be that this field has a massive spike at "JBS decides to rob a bank" and is near zero anywhere else, but he still doesn't have to decide to rob a bank, and the possibility of him deciding not to does still exist.

The thing is that the amount of computation required is grossly infeasible, so even when the situation is deterministic and you could in principle work out an exact solution, it's much easier not to bother and treat it as if it was random and handle it statistically. So if you have a bunch of particles bouncing around deterministically in a box, you simplify enormously, treat it as random motion and say "it is possible for them all to be up one end at the same time, but it's very very improbable, so we'll ignore it". If you don't simplify, and do the whole tedious complete following of every particle's motion, you can actually say with certainty that it's never going to happen in the time before you take the experiment apart - or else you can say with certainty that it's going to happen at lunchtime next Tuesday, and haul the class in to watch it. But if the motion of the particles is not deterministic, then you don't have the theoretical option of not simplifying, and viewing it in terms of probability is the only thing you can do.

So in a deterministic universe you do not have free will, and everything you do can be predicted in advance; but you can still have the very convincing appearance of free will, because the prediction is so difficult that nobody can ever make it.

557:

"I don't believe in determinism."

It's hard to figure out how to square determinism with quantum mechanics, but in a weird way because of the "measurement problem", aka collapse of the wave function.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_problem

The wave function evolves totally deterministically as long as it isn't looked at, but when it is, it collapses statistically into a definite state. Which then continues to evolve deterministically until it gets looked at again. What "looked at" means is TBD. This sounds like magic to me, but what do I know?

It would be interesting to see a quantum treatment of Brownian Motion.

558:

"So in a deterministic universe you do not have free will, and everything you do can be predicted in advance; but you can still have the very convincing appearance of free will, "

So the question that arises is, why exactly would you want Magic Free Will (which we all agree does not exist), rather than something, such as the notion that Dennett wants to call free will, with that very convincing appearance.

JHomes

559:

In the UK the engine crew did the daily maintenance themselves for as long as we had steam, and still had some things to do when diesels came in. Training on a class of engine or multiple unit includes a good deal of troubleshooting information to help you get it going again if it conks out on you, and there were "Mutual Improvement Classes" which engine crew could attend to learn about the details of how all the various bits and pieces actually worked - voluntarily, and in their own time, but the classes were still well attended. There are some examples of the content at http://www.lmssociety.org.uk/topics/micIntro.php and it's good stuff.

We had loads of steam classes where they only ever made about 10 of them, but the idea of carrying a set of patterns to cast replacement parts if something broke on the way is pretty boggling. What we did was send another engine out to rescue the train, dump the dud engine somewhere, and when it was convenient haul it back to the works to be fixed. It says something about the conditions if that ceased to be the most expeditious method.

560:

"I don't believe in determinism."

You were made to think you have free will and that's all there is to it.

561:

But that's not a failure of science, it's simply the practical difficulty that I never took steps to record any data because I wasn't expecting anything to happen in the first place, and I can't go back and remedy the deficiency.

To me, this is scientism, not science. Science is the field of things people do to understand reality, not reality itself. Probably most of reality will never be touched by science, simply because, like your kettle lid, something weird happened, the consequences were minimal, and it's never happened again.

Where science ideally excels is when some physicist hears about that and agrees "yeah, that was weird. It's never happened again? I have no idea what happened either." Where scientism steps in is when a professed scientist pulls an ad hoc answer out of wherever, as an attempt to demonstrate their intellectual stature. Their explanation may or may not be correct, but it is technically bullshit, if the intent is to burnish their reputation rather than help someone else understand reality a bit better. Bravery in science is saying "I don't know."

...

Studying those vortices is a step above James Randi's dowsing experiment. We all agree what water is. The problem with the vortices is that not everybody experiences them, not everybody experiences them in the same way, and I'm not sure how stable they are. The vortices I've run into outside Sedona were gone within a day or two.

To simplify the explanation, I'm going to using sensing (direct detection of whatever a vortex is), qualia (how the vortex is perceived, whether this is induced a la mesmerism or based on sensing something objectively real), and reporting the qualia (a problem because English doesn't have a diversity of words for sensations, so we're left with similes of the "it felt like..." form, which assumes everyone's had a comparable experience).

What you have to start with are reports of qualia. As an experimenter, you may or may not perceive vortices, but if you do perceive them, you're also trying to determine if your qualia are based on sensations of an unknown phenomenon or induced by suggestion, so you're not necessarily the arbiter of the whether your qualia are based on real sensations. Then you've got to figure out some sort of protocol (probably involving a number of people) to at least get at a consensus estimate of whether there's a sensed reality underlying their reported qualia. How many people have to provide similar-enough reports before anyone's convinced they're all perceiving the same, objectively real, thing? How do you properly do a controlled study so that you can start disentangling whether the phenomenon is subjective or objective? Only then, if you get a good protocol for determining whether a perceived vortex is objectively real, is it worth instrumenting up and trying to explain what it is in the context of physical science.

But there's one more complexity: vortices change and disappear, and you may get stuck with having to figure out where the vortices are every few days (or however long it takes) each time you do another part of your experiment.

My guesses, based on what I know, are that:

--there's going to be a wide range of reported qualia. Probably people's sensitivity is not going to be consistent between days (this from my experience with qigong and acupuncture), so the results may well fall on the "might be objectively real" end of the stats tests. Getting quality data and adequate replication is going to be a real challenge.

--You might get some interesting data if you track individual subjects' mapping of the presence and boundaries of vortices every day. I'm guessing those boundaries are going to be messy (observer one can only find if he hasn't spent all day online, observer 2 gets Covid, observer 3 gets distracted by sunburn after being out on the sandstone for a week, observer 4 gets PMS or migraines, etm.), but hopefully something can be teased out of the data.

--The obvious controls are fake vortex rings. How many people have to fall for fakes before you determine it's all suggestion? In Franklin's experiments on mesmerism it was easy, but if you're mixing fake vortices in with purportedly real ones, who's determining what's test and what's control, and how will that be done each day if the vortices move around?

And, of course, these are tourist attractions, which is going to complexify both the experiments and possibly the human subjects protocol. This is because it will be impossible to close off the sites, and difficult to keep the experimental subjects from cuing off the tourists' experiences.

That's where the science likely is. Unless it can be demonstrated to be completely subjective (in which case, what about vortices people run into outside Sedona?), it's going to take excellent experimental design and real luck to get anything definitive out of the situation. And if the best we can do is "there appears to be something weird going on and we don't know what it is...?" That's where we are now.

Why does it matter? Well, we're arguing here about what a non-physical soul might be like. Is a vortex also a non-physical thing? Is there anything we can learn about the reality of souls from studying them?

562:

Too... many... interesting... posts... must keep up...

Whitroth at 462/466: "Sure, it's added jobs. Lousy ones. The fast food joints don't just hire teenagers, the convenience stores don't, and then there's all the Uber, Lyft, doordash, etc drivers.

None unionized, none well-paying. And last I looked, about 43% of Americans do not have any college. We haven't added a lot of jobs on assembly lines, nor do we need a lot of ditch diggers."

Point. But that has little to do with automation, or even market forces, and more to do with the abandonment of employee rights and working conditions by the Federal Government over the last 40 years.

"Skilled labor is very hard to automate"? Consider machinists (UK - engineers), and CNC machines."

Still anecdotal. It doesn't matter how many jobs types were lost, more were gained over the same period.

@Toby at 470:

Thank you for that.

@Moz at 475:

"

@JHolmes at 477:

Me: "I'm of the school of thought that says Free Will, defined in any logically coherent way, is incompatible with a deterministic universe. I assume Dennett disagrees."

You: "Very much so. I think he would agree that the sort of Magic Free Will where decisions are neither due to external causes (possibly at some remove) or are random is not possible. I certainly would.

Fair enough. Any determinist must conclude the same.

"But as he says, we can figure anticipated consequences into our decision making. Of course, people don't always do so, but they could."

Maybe, but that has nothing to do with whether or not the will is free.

"He then says that what we want Free Will for is so we can make good decisions (from our perspective) in preference to bad ones, without the deterministic universe stepping in and saying "No, it is fore-ordained that you will make the bad decision, no matter how obviously bad it is.""

Then I can only conclude that he does not understand what Free Will actually is. It isn't for anything: it either is, or isn't. If the universe we actually live in is deterministic, then whether the resulting decision is good or bad, it was inevitable.

@SFReader at 478:

"Re: 'Automating decisions is, I think, rather rare and plays a minor role in the automation of jobs.'

Except in the financial sector which btw is the fastest growing sector of many developed economies, therefore globally, therefore has a huge impact on everyone.

Not a techie, but my impression is that the 'decisions' follow some sort of math-based rules/logic. No idea how quickly new learning (rules) get integrated into the system or on what basis, using what criteria."

Unfortunately, the part that is wrong isn't the automation side, it's what financial people do. Accountants attempt to determine if someone else if following rules, taking deliberate deception and legal interpretation into account. Can't really automate that yet. Brokers don't even do that much: they attempt to outguess each other such that the first to buy before everyone else buys, or sells before everyone else sells wins the prize. We will never automate that until we have a human level general AI with self awareness.

I agree with the rest of your post.

@Pigeon at 489:

Me: "I'm of the school of thought that says Free Will, defined in any logically coherent way, is incompatible with a deterministic universe."

You: "Yes; I don't see how anybody could logically not think that.

However, it's also a pretty strict definition, and it's still possible that a very convincing appearance of free will could exist in such a universe. The question of "how free the act of making a choice is from external causal factors" is a special (and particularly complicated) case of the general question of whether this or that phenomenon is truly random or just looks really really like it, and so involves the same disguises: extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, chaotic behaviour, complexity beyond the bounds of computational feasibility, etc. Brownian motion in a deterministic universe would in theory be fully predictable but in practice inescapably intractable and impossible to predict for more than idealised trivial cases, so the method of the discovery of the Infinite Improbability Drive would still work; chemistry runs on Brownian motion, neurons run on chemistry, and brains run on neurons, so you could still have a will that technically wasn't free but still defied the universe's computational capacity to demonstrate with certainty what if anything had determined it."

This is my view as well. Nonlinear systems are fully determined yet unpredictable without allowing the algorithm to run (ie, if we are talking brain, you gotta let it think, and you can't predict what the outcome will be). Some hypothetical observer outside space and time might see our universe as fully determined and frozen, but we can't see that, so for all practical purposes, our will is free (from our perspective). That's as close to free will as we can get, I think.

Unless the universe isn't fully determined. Then another whole set of options opens up. See below.

BTW: Nonlinear systems do not provide the appearance of randomness, they genuinely are not predictable.

@Paul at 506: You seem to be saying the same thing that Pigeon and I are, unless you mean to suggest that a chess playing computer has free will, which I admit would be a tough sell.

@Heteromeles at 510:

"Here's an example of something that can't be explained by science: why you were in a bad mood last week. Do you remember it happening? I don't know, but let's assume it did. Likely you were the only one to experience it, and you didn't record your feelings, when they started, when they ended, whether you thought they caused anything, or whether you thought they were caused by anything. Indeed, I suspect you've already forgotten how many bad moods you were in last week. Thus, regardless of what Stephen Hawking postulates, that information is utterly lost, and science can't explain it.

Now if you think about it, much of human existence falls into this category."

Presumably, if the universe (including the human brain) is fully determined, then you should be able to take a "snapshot" of the state of Greg's brain (or anyone's) and "run it backward" such that you could return the simulation to the mood he had last week, including along the way the very moment he forgot it.

I think you are referring to "Conservation of Quantum Information", which postulates that information cannot be created or lost within the universe. If this postulate isn't true, then we do not live in a fully determined universe, in which case science might be unable to retroactively predict Greg's bad mood. But that's a big deal to dispense with: it's derived from Quantum Field Theory, which is supported by a lot of experimental evidence.

@Charlie Stross at 519: Nonlinear systems do not create a semblance of randomness, they actually are unpredictable, regardless of how much information you collect (even all of it).

Free Will is the philosophical concept that humans have agency beyond that constrained by the chain of cause and effect going back to the origin of the universe. It has its' origin in classical Greece, not the Bible (free will is not, in fact, necessary to Christian belief at all--see Lutheranism, etc.).

@Uncle Stinky at 521:

Sorry, not going to read that entire book. Could you perhaps summarize what you see as the critical arguments that convinced you?

@JBS at 540:

Me: "If you believe in determinism it's very hard to justify free will. This applies equally to humans and AI's."

You: "I don't believe in determinism."

Perfectly fair! If I may be so bold, what do you believe in?

563:

On Tuesday, Fonterra introduced Milk-E, the first electric milk tanker in its fleet.

I know you all like a happy fun news story. The article also notes that the first electric postal van is somehow not being called Post-E.

564:

"Then I can only conclude that he does not understand what Free Will actually is."

Or else he rejects the definition that requires that Free Will must be Magic Free Will, and that, as he says, is what he does. You clearly do require that Free Will be Magic Free Will.

"If the universe we actually live in is deterministic, then whether the resulting decision is good or bad, it was inevitable."

He rejects "inevitable", as we have the ability to anticipate consequences, and make decisions accordingly. If we can see trouble looming, and take action to avoid it, it was not inevitable.

JHomes

565:

Crimes against authors?

Cory Doctorow reveals how Amazon's ACX sells his titles without paying him royalties. Writers, it may behoove you to watch ACX very carefully for fraudulently listed editions of your work.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

566:

It might be worth checking out some of the work of Nicolas Gisin. I don't pretend to understand it, but here's a a pop science article on one thing he's working on: whether time really does flow.

He's having fun with intuitionism, which you'll have to read up on a bit. One problem he's tackling is the "Einsteinian brickverse," which is what we're talking about here. Quantum information is constant, but the universe is predetermined, a four-dimensional brick. From inside the brick, time appears to flow and quantum interactions are probabilistic. From outside the universe, it's a brick, and there is no happening.

The problem with the brickverse is the Big Bang and subsequent inflation at the front end of the brickverse. To quote the article, "In a predetermined world in which time only seems to unfold, exactly what will happen for all time actually had to be set from the start, with the initial state of every single particle encoded with infinitely many digits of precision." But this information would have to be stored at something approaching infinite density, and we also "know" that this information density exceeds what is theoretically found in a black hole. So either we're inside something like a black hole only more so, or there's a paradox here.

And this doesn't even get into how inflation works, what quantum interactions with dark matter look like, among other things.

Intuitionism throws out the idea of conservation of information, in favor of the notion that things like precision in a number are determined by interaction or experimentally, and are not inherent in the system. This makes things inherently uncertain at both the quantum and macro scale, and also provides an arrow of time--it's change in information content.

I'd point out that intuitionism is weird, but it's not fringe. Apparently intuitionist logic shows up in the math proofs used in computer programs?

One of the interesting parts about intuitionist logic is that "the law of the excluded middle" is not valid within it (read the link of the article for an explanation). If intuitionism is a more accurate description of the universe than classical math, then any proof that relies on the Law of the Excluded Middle has to be reworked to be without it. If this can be done (this is what Gisin's working on) then the physical laws that cannot be proved without assuming the Law of the Excluded Middle have to be modified or discarded.

So we've got a couple of possibilities. If we live in a brickverse, there's no free will, but in theory things like "reincarnation" and precognition might be possible. "Reincarnation" is in quotes because I really mean retrocognition, which is like precognition, but which refers to recollection of past lives.*

If we live in an intuitionist universe, time flows, reality is imprecise and constantly becoming, information can be gained or lost at all scales, and we have free will in the sense that our actions help determine our future. And true precognition is impossible, because the future hasn't happened yet.

I prefer the latter, oddly enough.

*I'd also point out that gaining the ability to see the brickverse as if from the outside, so that past and future can be known, might also imply that it's possible to transcend the brickverse and get outside it. Those enlightened beings who accomplish this transcendent feet are predestined to do so, in fact. Is there a bigger meta-brickverse out there, or are those who liberate themselves from the brickverse truly free? Lots of woo here to be annoyed by, I think.

567:

But this information would have to be stored at something approaching infinite density

Isn't there an argument that there's no information in a block universe, at least from the time-based inside view that information is unpredictability? Tautologically if there's none of one there's none of the other?

You could also look at it as a PRNG type setup, where once you have a small seed and a small algorithm you can get infinite output. Especially with inflation + determinism, we can't even guess at the size of the 'random seed' and it might all be encoded in the Al Gore Rhythm. Just set it up and watch it go... a whole packet of them for 99c from God's All Night Dairy.

568:

but the idea of carrying a set of patterns to cast replacement parts if something broke on the way is pretty boggling.

Land mass of the United States is 75 times that of England. Even if you expand the comparison to include Wales and Scotland and drop Hawaii and Alaska I'm guessing it's at least 50 to 1.

And for the later half of the 1800s most of the people were concentrated east of the Mississippi and along the west coast. So if a drive bearing starts to go crossing the Great Plains, it is helpful to have the ability to make a spare. Back then these trains could only go 100 miles or less with a new load of water and a grease job. So while much faster than a horse, a spare part could still take days to get to you. AFTER it was made. This is why today airlines stock or have deals with competitors for spare tires and a similar collection of parts at various airports.

I'm betting the spare molding blocks were mainly for bearing surfaces.

569:

558 - I do find myself wondering just how often, say, a Late and Never Early Railway locomotive would find itself more than about 300 miles from Peterborough.

563 - Maybe not the point, but how is a hydrogen fuel cell "electric" anyway?

565 - At time of writing. I've bought exactly 1.000 of Cory Doctorow's books (all formats).

570:

Isn't the main point of a hydrogen fuel cell to generate electricity?

571:

how is a hydrogen fuel cell "electric" anyway?

Similar to how a single-use battery is... there's a chemical reaction that makes electricity as the output stage. Maybe think of it as a big step up from burning liquid fuel to power a generator?

Hydrogen is woefully inefficient by battery standards, but you can't beat the gravimetric energy density. IIRC electrolysis is only ~30% efficient, plus there are other losses, but it's a very compact fuel because you're not carrying around the oxidiser. Unlike most batteries (hence the research into zinc-air and aluminium-air batteries. Air because if you have to separate out the oxygen you might as well use lithium).

I say that, and then I feel obliged to point out that the competing products are much less efficient - methane or methanol from plants is laughable and that's one of the better ones.

There is huge work being done to find more efficient ways to get any kind of fuel, but slow going.

572:

DeMarquis
Nonlinear systems do not provide the appearance of randomness, they genuinely are not predictable.
Right, so like the Problem of (quantum) measurement, it means that the "system" is NOT Deterministic, so that some form of (non-magic) "free will" exists, does it not?

Paws
Of course, a lot of repairs & replacements could be done at the nearest Loco Shed, or if serious, at the nearest Main Works & the LNE had them across the system, specifically for repairs, if not for building: N-to-S - Kittybrewster, Cowlairs, Gateshead, Newcastle, Gorton, Doncaster, Stratford.

573:

We're not all old enough to be ancient silver dragons :-) Our group went from 2nd to 3.5 and now 5 though we're having to play across skype. Our DM does like to throw something different at us. We're currently trying to get a shoggoth back into the undead city and recreate the binding that keeps it in. I and the DM are both Lovecraft fans, the other 2 players aren't so I'm having to keep telling them, We Don't Fight The Shoggoth!

574:

SFReader @ 542:

So what do you do when you have incomplete info but have to make a decision: (a) wait for more info or (b) choose? ...

Sometimes.

... And if the consequence of your choice turns out badly - is all of the fault yours?

Sometimes

Sometimes people make decisions that totally ignore the available information whether there's enough of it or not. Sometimes people make up their minds because that's what they want and the facts don't matter (case in point "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization).

And if it goes badly, it's always somebody else's fault.

575:

paws4thot @ 543:

Not in the Yousay; see the plot of Unstoppable) ..

It's not my job to run the train,
The whistle I don't blow.
It's not my job to say how far
The train's supposed to go.
I'm not allowed to pull the brake,
Or even ring the bell.
But let the damn thing leave the track
And see who catches hell!

576:

Pigeon @ 556:

Just for the record, JBS DID NOT decide to rob a bank, he decided to sit here and post frivolous comments on blog posts instead, thank you very much!

577:

JHomes @ 558:

We DO NOT all agree.

578:

DeMarquis @ 562:

Don't know. Still trying to figure it out.

579:

570, 571 - Or, in other words, it's not even vaguely electric. It's chemical, and making the hydrogen is a chemical process (or electrolysis at ~30% (Moz's figure)

572 Para 2 - Greg, that's very much my point; you're less than 200 miles from a works on the Late and Never Early, where I think you could be 1_500 or more from one on the $name Pacific.

573 - I spy a Seagull!

575 (time of writing) - JBS, isn't that the Conductor's job, or occasionally the yardmaster's?

580:

Physicists have a hard time getting their heads around anything that doesn't use a deterministic, discrete model, despite the facts that all evidence is that is not how the universe works and that they have been using more general models since school. As an Aspergers statistician, I cannot get my head around why they are so blinkered.

581:

573 - I spy a Seagull!

I doubt it. Phinch's sentences are far too grammatically correct and the posts have too clear a meaning to come from Seagull.

Also, Seagull would never write: "We're not all old enough to be ancient silver dragons :-)" She would say something along the lines: "Fuck you, senile muppet!"

582:

Randi was/is a dogmatic arsehole, to be polite. He chose a definition of dowsing that was used only by a small group of new age fruitcakes, proved that it was nonsense (it is) and then claimed that dowsinf isn't 'real'. Bollocks. Dowsing is as real as drawing a graph, and I could use exactly his rigged tests to show that drawing graphs isn't real.

The point is that it is a concentration aid, and a way of letting go of incorrect assumptions, no more more and no less. EXACTLY the same is true of drawing a graph. I have used it successfully and know other people who have, too.

583:

Me, the seagull, nope. I'm curious to know why you think I am so I can stop doing it.

Although the villain of the play I still hold to Iago's line "But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him And makes me poor indeed."

584:

@JHolmes at 564:

In much the same way that I insist "Magic Black" be different from "Magic White" and "Magic Up" be a different thing than "Magic Down." Free Will is a technical term that has been defined as what it is for thousands of years. If Dennet wants to talk about something else, that's fine, but it's confusing when he appropriates a term that everyone else already uses for something else.

And I object to your use of the term "Magic". It seems patronizing. I am attempting to discuss this topic in good faith, and would ask that you do likewise. If you object to the definition, provide yours and we can compare.

"He rejects "inevitable", as we have the ability to anticipate consequences, and make decisions accordingly. If we can see trouble looming, and take action to avoid it, it was not inevitable."

I assert that neither you nor Dennet understand what FW is. If the universe itself is deterministic, you don't get to choose anything, whether you can consciously anticipate consequences or not. Ask yourself why and how you anticipated those consequences. What caused you to do so? What caused you to care enough to try? Take the question seriously, and see where it takes you.

@Heteromeles at 566:

"He's having fun with intuitionism, which you'll have to read up on a bit. One problem he's tackling is the "Einsteinian brickverse," which is what we're talking about here. Quantum information is constant, but the universe is predetermined, a four-dimensional brick. From inside the brick, time appears to flow and quantum interactions are probabilistic. From outside the universe, it's a brick, and there is no happening."

Yes, that's what I've been calling a "deterministic universe." There is no room for Free Will in such a universe, because our mind is part of the brick. Every decision we ever make, every emotion we ever feel, every action we ever take, is already laid out in the timeless quantum equations. But is the universe determined in this way?

Recent experiments with entangled quantum particles imply that it is. Empirically, it's not looking good for us. But it's still early days, and scientists are still exploring this.

I recommend this video for people interested in the latest physics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY7hjt5Gi-E

Esp the list of criteria that would allow free will in some sense in our universe that appears around 5:28

Dont' know about Intuitionism.

@David L at 568: A precursor of 3D printing?

@Greg T at 572:

Me: "Nonlinear systems do not provide the appearance of randomness, they genuinely are not predictable."

You: "Right, so like the Problem of (quantum) measurement, it means that the "system" is NOT Deterministic, so that some form of (non-magic) "free will" exists, does it not?"

That's almost exactly wrong, sorry. The system is completely deterministic, you can even write out the entire algorithm and look at it on a piece of paper, but the outcome beyond a step or two is unpredictable without running the algorithm itself. Since we are the algorithm, you could define free will as the inability of any part of the system to predict what you or I will do.

@Phinch at 573:

The only version of D&D I ever played was AD&D.

@JBS at 578:

Still fair. Let me know if there is something you want to know.

585:

Yes, my tongue was firmly ensconsed in my cheek with that line and in no way meant to be insulting. It merely being a wry attempt at humour regarding our respective ages and Whitroths nickname(?)

586:

@Elderly Cynic at 580:

The idea is known as "Superdeterminism", and it's better explained in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnKzt6Xq-w4&t=885s

Recent experimental results suggest that we do, in fact, live in a superdeterministic universe. They are still exploring this, however.

587:

Compare also Simulacron-3 to the Tunnel Under The World, which is sometimes mentioned as the inspiration for The Matrix.

588:

Recent experiments with entangled quantum particles imply that it is. Empirically, it's not looking good for us. But it's still early days, and scientists are still exploring this.

It's worth looking up intuitionism, because it has a very different definition of what "implies" means.

The big stumbling block that intuitionism throws up is that it rejects the "Law of the Excluded Middle" in logic which states that "for every proposition, either this proposition or its negation is true." This is what Gasdive correctly called me on in the the automation vs. mechanization thread above. Or you can ask the question "Is red more like white or more like black?" It's neither of course, but if you try to answer that with classical logic, you force yourself to make a wrong choice either way.

In intuitionism, you only get to demonstrate that something is apparently true or apparently false so far as you can tell. As David Hillbert said, pitching out the Law of the Excluded Middle for mathematicians is like telling a boxer he can't use his fists, to which I'd snippily reply that if his fists are landing him in jail, maybe that's a good thing.

Getting back to cosmology and quantum mechanics, you have to look at how those implications work. If reality is better described by intuitionism, then it's not enough to "prove" something by demonstrating that its logical opposite is impossible. You have to demonstrate that it is likely correct, to the best of your ability.

Now note, what Gisin's trying to do by recasting Quantum mechanics in intuitionistic terms is radical, but on the other hand, everyone knows that what we've got is a very incomplete description of reality. He's tackling the problem on the assumption that the logic we've been using to extrapolate from findings is causing problems, and that recasting that logic will lead to a better description of reality. It's worth exploring.

589:

In this context, 'indicate' means that they have no evidence. Yes, what we know is compatible with such things, but it is ALSO compatible with nondeterminism. If those physicists were real scientists, they would know that is no kind of proof at all. Most cosmology and high energy physics is like that.

The weakest valid form of proof is making a prediction and checking that it is correct - AND, which is normally omitted by the pseudo-scientists, checking that the alternative hypotheses do NOT make that prediction.

590:

On rereading 573. I'd like to withdraw that paragraph of 579, with my apologies.
Having said that, my misreading resulted from a skim read, which was not actually appropriate to Phinch's text.

591:

The evidence is in the form of entangled photons from quasars billions of light years away. There is only a limited number of ways to interpret this. Either a) information can cross space at faster than the speed of light (known as "locality is wrong"), b) the multiple worlds interpretation of QM is correct (which eliminates free will in it's own way), or c) the universe is superdeterministic (meaning that the decisions that the scientists made regarding what to measure are as determined as the behavior of the quantum particles along with everything else in the universe, all starting with the initial conditions present at the Big Bang).

The mathematics and empirical evidence together allow no other hypotheses. Pick one.

Granted, the scientists are still arguing about it, and someone my yet come up with a new mathematical model that accommodates all the evidence including classical QM.

But the answer is not going to be "the scientists are stupid in obvious ways."

592:

The evidence is in the form of entangled photons from quasars billions of light years away. There is only a limited number of ways to interpret this. Either a) information can cross space at faster than the speed of light (known as "locality is wrong"), b) the multiple worlds interpretation of QM is correct (which eliminates free will in it's own way), or c) the universe is superdeterministic (meaning that the decisions that the scientists made regarding what to measure are as determined as the behavior of the quantum particles along with everything else in the universe, all starting with the initial conditions present at the Big Bang).

Well, since we're mostly agreed that the universe is nonlocal on the quantum level, that's the obvious choice. This doesn't mean that information travels faster than light. What it means is basically that a series of random measurements are entangled, so if I get a series of random photon polarization measurements, I know what someone will get if they're measuring the polarization of entangled photons somewhere else. If I try flipping the polarizations to send a message, that breaks the entanglement. Now a random sequence of polarization measurements might be useful for encoding something, but it's not a message in itself.

593:

Apology accepted but really, no worries, I've been around the internet long enough not to take anything like this too seriously.

594:

Yes, but this phenomenon still requires an explanation. If information isn't traveling faster than light, then what is going on? And physicists are far from agreeing that locality is wrong on the quantum level, since that violates Relativity (knowing what someone will get is still information, whether or not you can use that to send a message).

595:

I've been around the internet long enough not to take anything like this too seriously.

Since you were not accusing me or my son of being ex Mossad I assumed you were not s/he.

596:

It DOESN'T violate relativity, despite what the fanatics say. (a) Relativity is about motion of objects (including waves), not information let alone the non-information of such probabilities, (b) FTL is perfectly compatible with relativity subject to exclusion conditions and (c) it isn't certain that causality need be honoured for quantum entanglement.

597:

Knowing what someone else knows isn't information transmittal. If you know the speed of light, you can calculate when anything can see, say, a supernova exploding, but there's no way to tell them in advance to get ready for it.

An interesting example of how light speed limits quantum weirdness cropped up here years ago, when a newly degreed, multi-worlds physicist, came in here to troll and got me interested (often a mistake). He admitted that, while the "split between worlds" in a quantum sense is instantaneous, the propagation of that split to the universe as a whole is limited to the speed of light. So in the multi-worlds version of quantum reality, there's some huge number of superpositions decomposing as the particles interact with other particles, but the splits in universes putatively caused by those quantum events propagate as some very, very messy cloud outwards at light speed. Probably all of them, to a first approximation, get swallowed up in decoherence, when they collide with other quantum split events within a very short distance, leading in turn to the macro-level world we're used to, where quantum juju only manifests in rare natural events and highly engineered, rather bizarre, conditions.

598:

Just a random, cheerful thought: The James Webb Space Telescope focused on Trappist-1, and they announced they had pics a few days ago, hopefully with spectroscopic data.

That will be cool to see. I for one am hoping for lots of nice oxygen on a planet. Or two.

599:

Phinch
So, is Liz Bucket / Hyacinth Truss a Shoggoth, then?
Seems all too possible.

H
Classical Logic fails at "Undecidable Propositions" doesn't it?
But, ISTM, that Intutionism is also wrong, if only partially. Something may be actually True, or it may be actually False, or it may be Undecided, or you may be asking the Wrong Question.
I've got a horrible suspicion that the last is presently the case ....
the assumption that the logic we've been using to extrapolate from findings is causing problems, and that recasting that logic will lead to a better description of reality. It's worth exploring. - I'll go with that, especially if it's a way out of the Brickverse trap.

600:

My buddies and I had a saying about AD&D: "burn it!" Nope, original.

601:

"the abandonment of employee rights and working conditions by the Federal Government over the last 40 years" you mean Raygun's attack on unions, starting with the Air Traffic Controllers? And then outsourcing everything they could? Well, yes... but federal employees have a far higher rate of unionization than the corporate world (part of the plan of MBA-ization since the late 70's/early 80's).

602:

Nope. They were responding clearly to me (aka the Silverdragon), and ancient of days....

603:

Yeah, right - tease me about my age, and I'll beat you with my cane! (g)

604:

I sincerely hope so - I've got a colony set on it, in the twilight zone (it being tidally locked) in the latest novel I'm working on.

605:

Just because you read the instructions doesn't mean you know what you're doing.

606:

paws4thot @ 579:

"570, 571 - Or, in other words, it's not even vaguely electric. It's chemical, and making the hydrogen is a chemical process (or electrolysis at ~30% (Moz's figure)"

IIRC from what I read back during the Apollo program, the fuel cell combines hydrogen & oxygen in the presence of a catylist to produce electricity (without combustion) and water is a by-product. I think Apollo used this water for drinking.

While Apollo used liquid hydrogen & liquid oxygen, I suspect this earthly version uses compressed hydrogen gas and just draws its oxygen from the air & releases the water vapor into the air.

But that's just a SWAG.

Side thought: Can you breath in hydrogen and do chipmunk voices like you can with helium?

"575 (time of writing) - JBS, isn't that the Conductor's job, or occasionally the yardmaster's?"

I dunno, I don't think they have Conductors on freight trains in the U.S. any more since they eliminated the cabooses. They may still have Brakemen?

Doesn't matter, I just like the little poem & it seemed to fit in with the subject being discussed.

607:

"But the answer is not going to be "the scientists are stupid in obvious ways.""

Check out "The Trouble with Physics" by Lee Smolin (I think I've remembered that right; I have a copy somewhere but its entry in my location-of-objects database has bitrotted). It's all about how the way physics is carried out, talking particularly about areas like cosmology where you have next to bugger all good observational data and no way to test anything and with particular reference to the situation in the US (this being the author's area of experience), is so crippled by bullshit influences like capitalism and university politics that a great deal of the resulting science is "stupid in obvious ways". Things like assuming what you want to prove, and constructing a giant self-referential house of cards designed to cough out the few "right answers" we know already and conflating its internal consistency with external correctness. I consider it strong confirmation from someone who's actually "been there and done that" of my already-existing impression that ideas like string theory are more than likely a load of arse.

(Irrelevant to the current discussion, but if you find that book doesn't depress you enough, check out "The Book of Woe" by Gary Greenberg, which is about the rather more serious problem of the same kind of bollocks influences leading to a good deal of the diagnosis and treatment of (especially mental) health conditions also being a load of arse. I didn't get more than about a third of the way through before I couldn't take any more, but when I described the impression I'd got to the mate who recommended it to me in the first place he said I had got the point.)

608:

Blue Box or pre-Blue Box?

I've found that I really like 5E, oddly enough. It does it's best to get out of the way and let you tell a story.

609:

I first encountered it specifically presented as the song of one of the guys on the track maintenance team lamenting his lot, the job being unglamorous and mostly disregarded but still carrying a high level of responsibility.

610:

federal employees have a far higher rate of unionization than the corporate world

For now. Wait until schedule F has been in effect for a while…

Pessimistically, I'm assuming that the republicans get elected in 2024, whether with Trump, DeSantis, or someone else at the helm, and continue what they've already started. They have the Supreme Court, will likely have at least one branch of congress, probably both, and likely the presidency (especially after the Supreme Court allows states to decide their own election laws). So the next target is obviously the bureaucracy.

611:

The trouble with physics: the rise of string theory, the fall of a science and what comes next Lee Smolin

is a groundbreaking account of the state of modern physics: of how we got from Einstein and Relativity through quantum mechanics to the strange and bizarre predictions of string theory, full of unseen dimensions and multiple universes. Lee Smolin not only provides a brilliant layman's overview of current research as we attempt to build a 'theory of everything', but also questions many of the assumptions that lie behind string theory. In doing so, he describes some of the daring, outlandish ideas that will propel research in years to come.

It's on my to-read list. Which is accreting faster than I can read…

612:

Outside much (but not all, as Greg says) of mathematics, and artificial questions, the law of the excluded middle is pretty fair bollocks, as I think you are saying; that's not how real life works.

613:

I included the link to "Unstoppable" upthread because I had fact checked the story of the runaway 777 and the Crazy 8s that the film is based on) with an actual US Yardmaster. Right down to the (trainee) conductor riding in the locomotive cab and not the caboose.

614:

The following describes how I understand the problem with quantum entanglement. Not a physicist, so probably vastly oversimplified.

"Local Realism" as defined in physics states that an object can only be influenced by another object or event within it's light cone (the space light could travel given a certain period of time into the past). The only logical alternative would be influence that occurred faster than the speed of light, which is said to "violate locality."

So two scientists decide to conduct an experiment on two entangled particles. They move these particles to opposite sides of the universe, and one of them measures a certain dimension (such as polarity) before the other one does. Afterward, they compare results and determine that their measurements are correlated, that is, whatever property the first particle displayed, the other one is the exact opposite. The problem is that there is no reason for this to be the case, other than that they are entangled, because these properties are supposed to be subject to quantum uncertainty, which is to say random. This means that the most accurate way to model this mathematically is to assume they affected each other instantaneously across any distance of space. Which violates local realism.

Violating local realism has certain problematic implications according to Special Relativity. For one thing, any information that exceeds the speed of light can be shown to go backward in time from some frame of reference. Relativity states that no frame of reference is privileged, and so therefore all frames are equally valid. If information appears to go backward in time relative to any frame of reference, then it did. That, in turn, violates causality. Violating causality breaks causation, which causes problems in physics.

In which case, either QM or SR are wrong. Yet both have been strongly supported by empirical evidence. So physicists have been looking for a way out. There appear to only be two other alternatives:

1) Every possible permutation of measurement of the two particles actually occurs in a different universe, and we just happen to be inhabiting one of them.

2) All behavior and characteristics of the two particles have been predetermined since the origin of the universe (superdeterminism), and so have the measurement decisions of the two scientists. In other words, the measures were not independent of the observations, and the correlation was predestined.

If one of you can think of a fourth alternative, then please share. Maybe we can win a nobel prize (warning, you will be asked to show your equations).

@Whitroth at 601:

"you mean Raygun's attack on unions, starting with the Air Traffic Controllers? And then outsourcing everything they could? Well, yes... but federal employees have a far higher rate of unionization than the corporate world (part of the plan of MBA-ization since the late 70's/early 80's)."

Yes, but the fact remains that legal protections for employee's working conditions have steadily weakened over that time.

@Pigeon at 607:

"Obvious" is (ahem) obviously a relative term. Science has often been stupid in rather indirect, nonobvious ways. Another example being the "replication crisis" in psychology a few years ago. But what EC is suggesting is that, without even discussing the equations involved, someone outside the field can see a solution to a problem that has eluded experts in the field since the 1930's. I'm sure EC is a very bright guy, maybe smarter than me, but he isn't smarter than the likes of Eisenstein, Schrodinger, and company.

Thank you for the reading recommendation, that's going on the list.

615:

Correction: There is in fact one other possibility, although I know it won't be very popular around here: information could be leaking in from outside our universe. That is to say, it's the Hand of God (although why he is bothering to mess around with the results of quantum experiments is a little confusing).

Mentioned for completion sake.

616: 561: "Where science ideally excels is when some physicist hears about that and agrees "yeah, that was weird. It's never happened again? I have no idea what happened either." Where scientism steps in is when a professed scientist pulls an ad hoc answer out of wherever"

I am saying that I have no idea what happened. I'm not trying to concoct an answer out of nothing, I'm saying that it must have happened for some reason and it ought to be possible to look for possible reasons in a scientific way.

Imagine that in mid-Victorian or earlier times someone had discovered a way to mount a single atom of 238U in a display case so you could actually see it, and it had become a universal custom for everyone to have one of these (rather useless) things on a shelf somewhere, in the same way that it is a universal custom for everyone to have a (useful) kettle. So one day I'm looking at my uranium atom and all of a sudden an alpha particle jumps out of it and leaves a thorium atom behind. I've never seen it happen before, I've never seen it happen again, nor has anyone else, and nobody can say anything more useful about it than "gosh, that's weird". That doesn't mean that radioactivity is "outside science"; it just means that - the times being mid-Victorian or earlier - nobody has yet done the science to know about it.

Your comments about investigating vortices seem to amount to a non-exhaustive list of reasons why the experimental design would be a pain in the arse, for which reason it's unlikely that anyone will ever have a proper crack at it. I don't disagree with that, but I don't think "nobody can be arsed to do the experiment" is the same as saying that it's "outside science", it just means it exceeds people's arsability maxima.

566: "To quote the article, "In a predetermined world in which time only seems to unfold, exactly what will happen for all time actually had to be set from the start, with the initial state of every single particle encoded with infinitely many digits of precision.""

Why? Such a universe has to follow a single determined course from any given set of initial conditions, but that doesn't mean it has to have the initial conditions set up so as to fix it on a particular one of those courses in advance.

588: "the "Law of the Excluded Middle" in logic which states that "for every proposition, either this proposition or its negation is true.""

So all logic is binary? Pull one of the other ones, there's a non-zero probability that it might have bells on...

There seem to have been periods both in the UK and the US when people were likely (FSVO) to have some elementary acquaintance with terms like that, from school or from popular lectures, which resulted in clusters of novels from a variety of authors in which some of the characters bang on about them all the time. Pretty well every time I've encountered any references to "the excluded middle", it's been in the context of one of those characters snarking at someone else for cocking up some problem by assuming the logic was binary when in fact it wasn't.

617:

Correction: There is in fact one other possibility, although I know it won't be very popular around here: information could be leaking in from outside our universe. That is to say, it's the Hand of God (although why he is bothering to mess around with the results of quantum experiments is a little confusing).

One of my favorite quantum models really annoys most people, but it's extremely parsimonious: Simply put, God is the Observer that makes the Copenhagen Interpretation work. This fits the notion of a divine being that's omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Unfortunately, this is not a person, let alone human or humane, and since God's continual observation of your every particle facilitates your existence at every moment you exist, what more are you praying for anyway, a miracle or something?

618:

Violating locality: okay, let's try this - when they go FTL, they have negative time. When they slow down to below lightspeed, that "backwards" time gets reversed... and here you are, after you left....

619:

"Simply put, God is the Observer that makes the Copenhagen Interpretation work. This fits the notion of a divine being that's omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent."

Ah, but if Big G is everywhere everywhen observing everything down to the Planck scale of space and time and collapsing its wave function to a definite state, then the wave function effectively ceases to exist and we're back to determinism, no?

620:

De Marquis @ 614
OR ....
* We have missed something* - much more likely IMHO ....
We are/ have been asking the wrong questions &/or looking down the wrong rabbit-hole.

621:

My chemical engineer roommate and I used to make hydrogen in college. It does make your voice squeaky like helium, but I would advise being careful of how you make it if you are going to breath it in. There are several highly poisonous gaseous hydrogen compounds (arsine, silane, etc) that you can make by accident.

622:

Kardashev @ 557: The wave function evolves totally deterministically as long as it isn't looked at, but when it is, it collapses statistically into a definite state. Which then continues to evolve deterministically until it gets looked at again. What "looked at" means is TBD. This sounds like magic to me, but what do I know?

As I understand it, the problem is with the idea that the wave function actually collapses when observed. It doesn't. Its just that the observer's brain becomes a part of the wave function. Also "observe" actually means "affects anything outside the box in question".

Imagine nested Schrodingers Boxes. The inner box contains the cat and the poison. The cat is in the famous superposition of quantum states; one alive, one dead. The outer box contains a scientist, who now opens the inner box. From the scientist's point of view the superposition of states of the cat has collapsed into one concrete state, either alive or dead. But from our point of view the scientist is now in a superposition of states, one petting the cat, the other grieving over the dead body. When we open the door to the outer box to let the scientist out the quantum wave function inside the box will escape to flood out through the universe at the speed of light, interfering with all the other quantum wave functions doing the same thing and leading to what we perceive as the "real" universe.

Clear?

623:

Heteromoles @ 617: God is the Observer that makes the Copenhagen Interpretation work.

There was a young man who said God,
I find it exceedingly odd,
That the willow oak tree
Continues to be,
When there's no one about in the Quad.

Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd,
For I'm always about in the Quad;
And that's why the tree,
Continues to be,
Signed Yours faithfully, God.

624:

But from our point of view the scientist is now in a superposition of states, one petting the cat, the other grieving over the dead body.

Binary logic again. You've left out the obvious "trying to staunch the bleeding from a very pissed off cat" state :-)

625:

This one's OT, and it's for Moz, because I remember him posting something about having chickens:

Broody Hens [YouTube]

626:

paws4thot @ 613:

I included the link to "Unstoppable" upthread because I had fact checked the story of the runaway 777 and the Crazy 8s that the film is based on) with an actual US Yardmaster. Right down to the (trainee) conductor riding in the locomotive cab and not the caboose.

Where else was he going to ride? U.S. railroads started eliminating cabooses in the early 80s with them almost entirely eliminated by the end of the decade.

AFAIK, nowadays the caboose is only used for "special situations" when there are passengers accompanying freight.

When we went to Ft. Hood in 1988 & 1991 we loaded all of our vehicles onto flatbed cars and had to have "guards" accompany them. The railroad provided a caboose for them to ride in. The accommodations DID NOT rate 3 stars in the Michelin Guide ... not even good enough for zero stars from what I heard from the guys who had to pull that duty. The cars with our trucks loaded on them got dropped somewhere near Atlanta and sat in a freight yard for almost a week before they were picked up by the train that took them on to Texas.

In 1988 we went in early July and there was no AC, and no electrical power when the caboose was sitting in the switch yard. In 1991 we went in the dead of winter - January - and there was no heat.

None of the train's crew rode in there with them. The train's crew all rode in the cab of the engine.

627:

@heteromeles at 617: I like it.

@Whitroth at 618: Nice try, but that doesn't match the empirical results. Entaglement has to operate instantaneously to explain the correlation between the observations, so there is no time for "catching up."

As an aside, a ship traveling FTL wouldn't work like that either.

@Greg T at 620: Well, by all means please propose what you think the right question is.

628:

The 'how' of that quasar entanglement experiment is worth talking about - essentially, they were using the color of the light from the quasar to determine what kind of sort of measurement they were doing - it was, essentially, them flipping a coin, just cosmically.

629:

fdavies @ 621:

My chemical engineer roommate and I used to make hydrogen in college. It does make your voice squeaky like helium, but I would advise being careful of how you make it if you are going to breath it in. There are several highly poisonous gaseous hydrogen compounds (arsine, silane, etc) that you can make by accident.

I asked because I figured someone here would know and I wouldn't have to experiment to find out. No need to reinvent the wheel when you can just ask a simple question and usually get a straight answer.

630:

"Free Will is a technical term that has been defined as what it is for thousands of years. If Dennet wants to talk about something else, that's fine, but it's confusing when he appropriates a term that everyone else already uses for something else."

I think that to respond to that, I'll need to go a bit into where Dennett is coming from. You will note, from this thread and many, many other places, that people seem to care a lot about Free Will. But if, as you said upthread, Free Will isn't for anything, but just is (or as you and I agree, is not), then why would anybody care? Why bother?

Dennett's answer to that is that we do have uses for Free Will, mostly to do with responsibility (how can you be held responsible for something that it truly was inevitable that you do?), even if Free Will, if it existed, was never for anything. Things have been co-opted for many a purpose that they were never originally for.

But if Free Will, as per the definition you are using, does not, and indeed cannot, exist, is there anything else that we can put to the uses we have for it? Dennett says yes, offers up his ideas on expected consequences, and says that they look like Free Will, and serve the same uses as Free Will, so why not call them Free Will.

Part of this is the bleating from some quarters that crimes and other misdeeds are in fact inevitable actions that do not deserve punishment. I expect you can see that if the crimes are indeed inevitable, so are the (undeserved) punishments, so the bleating is pointless, although also inevitable.

"And I object to your use of the term "Magic". It seems patronizing."

It's not intended to be. Rather, it's intended as shorthand for Free Will as per the definition that you say we should use, which you, I, and I believe Dennett, agree does not and cannot exist. So if it does exist after all, that's magic.

I'll also comment that even if the universe is not entirely deterministic, that does not rescue that kind of Free Will. Such a universe can be considered as a deterministic universe hooked up to a (truly) random number generator, and there is nowhere in there to fit such Free Will.

JHomes

631:

You're not the only one to fool around with hydrogen as a breathing medium. One of the big two, (Comex and Oceaneering) but I can't remember which, tried it, I think in the 70's. It has to contain less than 4% oxygen, ideally much less, so it's a gigantic pain to switch from air to hydrogen/oxygen mixture, and back again. The voice issue is considerably worse than helium and voice unscramblers of the day couldn't turn it into intelligible speech. Plus it then appeared to have psychotropic effects. Everyone seemed to agree it wasn't worth the trouble.

632:

The 'how' of that quasar entanglement experiment is worth talking about - essentially, they were using the color of the light from the quasar to determine what kind of sort of measurement they were doing - it was, essentially, them flipping a coin, just cosmically.

To me, the more interesting thing is that what we think of as the double-slit experiment can be done using photons from a really distant light source whose path has been bent by the gravity of an intervening galaxy. Until a photon interacts with something, it's potentially everywhere.

Ooh, cosmic. If it helps, it's worth thinking about the Lorentz contraction, and how much time the photon observes to be passing while it's "waiting" to interact with something else. This may help sort out the confusion a bit. Or not.

633:

Yeah, I only took one lungful and never repeated it. I did not notice any psychotropic effects. We did consider making a hydrogen purity sensor that would have used the resonance of a small tube (kind of like a whistle) but never did it. We made hydrogen with aluminum foil, lye (NaOH), and water. Electrolysis was way too slow for us. The trick was to have used up all the aluminum foil about the time the water started boiling from the heat of the reaction. We had to cool the hydrogen with a copper tube in ice (and bubble it through water) before putting it in a large plastic bag, or the water vapor (steam) in the hydrogen would damage the bag. Once I made soap bubbles that went straight up very quickly.

634:

I think the psychotropic effects started at something like 60 bar, (memory a bit faint, so maybe not).

So you can't get high breathing a couple of lungfulls on the surface. Unless you count hypoxia as getting high.

From memory the stimulus for the whole project was the lower viscosity of hydrogen, which was appealing once the work of breathing helium became a problem. So it was at the higher pressure where the lower viscosity was useful that the divers were having hallucinations.

635:

When the dowser cannot detect what was claimed, then it shows that dowsing is not real. Similarly, if multiple dowsers show just a random selection of the target, then we can be fairly certain there is no effect.

If dowsing worked, then operationally the target (water, iron) would be selected far more frequently than not. believing otherwise is just woo.

Do you believe in telepathy, ESP, and telekinesis as well?

Let me remind you how scientists like Taylor were fooled by fakery and it took a magician to show the claimed powers were just manipulation. I gather Geller is still drawing in the gullible. One is born every minute.

636:

Broody Hens

yay! Thanks.

637:

Do you believe in telepathy, ESP, and telekinesis as well?

No, but I believe in acupuncture, which is based primarily on the chi sense I just outlined. So, I might add, do a number of doctors. And the reason I believe in it is from experience, not only because it helps me with the worst symptoms of a chronic disease I have, but also because it is recommended by doctors as an adjunct treatment for that disease.

The problem with dowsing is that where it was popular, in wetter countries, there's generally an aquifer anywhere one might care to dig a well. Therefore, dowsers found water. What they were bad at was accurately predicting the depth at which the well digger would find water. Randi could have saved himself some work by realizing this, getting a dowser's log, and checking how often they got depth to water right.

And technically chi sensing (in the sense of feeling energy as heat or pressure changes) is ESP. There's no organ dedicated to it. The sense arises from you paying more attention to your physical body and noting the subtle signals from multiple types of sensory nerves in your body as well as the gross signals of pain, pressure, heat, chill, and discomfort.

638:

Most of those compounds are also pyrophoric, which isn't really the most desirable of properties for something to have when you're mixing it with large amounts of hydrogen and air. You could die slowly of poisoning or quickly of having your chest explode. But they're pretty unlikely impurities with your suggested method of aluminium foil and caustic soda, which is also probably by far the easiest way to generate lots of hydrogen at home, so that's OK then.

639:

From the photon's point of view no time passes at all, and its creation and destruction happen at the same instant. So it's a very peculiar kind of experience.

It suggests to me that there ought to be some kind of concept in relativity of the universe under a transform which considers the paths of photons as isochrones, so that two events connected by a photon are considered to happen at the same time. I've half an idea that the idea of forces arising through an exchange of massless particles depends on something like this, but you have to be very careful about considering anything beyond the two particles that are exchanging the massless ones otherwise your brain will melt. So I'm deliberately suggesting considering the entire universe like that as a science-fictional theme which makes readers' brains melt :)

640:

Agreed. My point is that, from the photon's perspective, the double-slit interaction that determines its fate happens instantaneously, no matter how far it goes in a spacetime ruled by mass-bearing particles.

So in a weird way, non-locality of photons might make sense, from their perspective.

641:

I think that's pretty much how physics does regard them these days. The photon is a field, which fills all of space at the same instant of time - from the photon's own point of view. At least, that's how I tend to visualise it, even if it's not quite right. What we then get to observe is what the consequences of that form of existence look like from our point of view.

642:

»The photon is a field«

When I studied physics, the neutrino was mass-less, which I always found a bit suspect, given that we /could/ detect one every blue moon.

They have since put on weight, which should make everybody go "hmmmmm...." about living next to the antineutrino production of nuclear reactors, and it makes the photon's freedom from mass /really/ stand out.

One of my astrophysics acquaintances admitted: "It feels a bit ironic that dark matter and energy should exist only in dense light-fields."

People have therefore been doodling equations where photons have mass, often starting with the planck-mass, but so far nobody has gone out in publick without a towel.

643:

Wait..., photons don't have mass?

I know I was taught they don't have mass in high school, but I was taught a lot of ridiculous shit. Bohr's atom, the path of a thrown object is a parabola etc. So I just ignored it.

Sure as shit photons have energy. Energy and mass are the same thing. Both curve spacetime. They don't have rest mass, but they don't exist at all at rest, so that's like saying the wind has no speed when it's calm...

644:

Have Innsmouth Pty. Ltd. been trying to improve shareholder value? https://phys.org/news/2022-07-human-noaa-weird-lines-holes.html

645:

Schrödinger superposition: - Feynman always rejected this - he claimed that there was one state or another, just that one had not yet observed which state it was ....

DeMarquis
40 years ago, I might have been able to, but I'm so rusty that I'm not sure where to start.
But, simply acknowledging that my suggestion might be/is true would be an improvement on beating our heads against the wall, as at present!

JHomes
Indeed, if the Brickverse is true, than there is zero point in having laws & jails, is there?
A very disturbing idea - as disturbing as the madness of ultra-protestant christianity, where this idea comes from, in fact. { "Predestination" }

646:

Backs away, slowly, carefully, and with respect :-)

647:

I can't possibly comment on which eldritch horror I think truss or sunak are. Though I am sure whichever one wins the rest of us are going to lose.

648:

It seems my memory was wrong regarding which version I started with D&D, the fact it was back in '81 is my excuse. Having checked wiki it looks like it was AD&D 1st edition when I started. My original character sheets are from games workshop copyrighted 1978. I am in th UK so it would've taken a year or few for the game to cross the pond.

649:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-effective-masks-covid.html

Another article about how N95 masks are actually quite useful against covid: Those who always wore any type of mask or respirator in indoor public spaces were 56% less likely to test positive than those that never wore one. There was an 83% reduction in the odds of getting a positive test in those who wore a respirator, compared with a 66% reduction in those wearing surgical masks. Those wearing a cloth mask had lower odds of having a positive PCR test result than those wearing no mask, but the difference was not statistically significant.

Has a meta-analysis and reports the above "community survey".

Just in case anyone here needs even more convincing, or needs a palatable pop sci article to convince someone else.

650:

»Wait..., photons don't have mass?«

According to current theory, as in the last century or so, photons have zero "mass at rest", they only have their "energy mass" (aka: e=mc²).

If photons had "mass at rest" they would never be able to attain their designated speed, because no matter how slight the mass, you need infinite energy to accelerate it to "speed of light."

This is why people are so keen on measuring arrival time of light from supernovas: Any "mass at rest" would show up as different arrival times depending on the photons frequency.

The photon's lack of "mass at rest" is also why it theoretically cannot be at rest, but must forever travel at the designated speed (in the local environment), but Lene Hau's research has put a some interresting footnotes on that.

651:

Perhaps something out of a Greg Bear novel? Or the remains of an Atlantean engineering project? Hopefully, there's a natural explanation for this.

652:

The Line should disrupt the weather:

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/26/1113670047/saudi-arabia-new-city-the-mirror-line-desert A less attractive windbreak was proposed 90 years ago to disrupt dust storms in North America.

653:

You really ARE confused. No, that's not what I am saying. I have done some actual analyses starting from the relevant theories and equations, which is more than many physicists have done, and I am pointing out that THEY are misrepresenting Einstein's theory and formulae. Note that Einstein etc. have never claimed what you say they have done.

As far as I know, nobody have done a proper, controlled experiment to determine whether the separate measurements of entangled particles are actually affected by the speed of light. The specialists I have spoken to have said that it's unnecessary, because we know the answer; that's not science. If you know of a reference to a paper that does prove this, I should be interested. The simple fact is that most of what is claimed is unsupported by either rigorous analysis or experiment.

I strongly recommend you NOT to believe what other people say (neither the pundits nor me), but to go back to the theory and formulae and do the analyses for yourself, CAREFULLY. We could then have a serious discussion.

654:

Andf it can go boom quite spectacularly when it mixes with air.

655:

You are misreprenting what I said. If they had tested dowsing AS PEOPLE WHO USE IT FOR THEIR WORK DO, you would have a point. They didn't. They created a straw man, proved it didn't work, and damned all dowsing as a myth. That's not science - it's fanaticism.

I could use EXACTLY that method to prove that drawing graphs to extract information from data isn't real, but that would be nonsense.

As I said, dowsing is an aid to using your mind and (known) senses correctly - JUST LIKE DRAWING A GRAPH. Can you understand that? It isn't ESP and HAS NEVER BEEN CLAIMED TO BE BY REAL DOWSERS.

656:

There are well-documented cases where dowsers had a better record than geologists, including ones with special equipment, in places where aquifers are relatively rare. It's also used by many archaeologists to improve their guesses, but they dare not admit it because of the hostility of the fanatics.

But, as I said, it's simply an aid to using your senses correctly, and God alone knows why the fanatics deny that such a thing is possible.

657:

Have their been any experiments that definitively prove neutrinos have rest mass and/or travel at less than the speed of light? The last I saw, they were claimed to have rest mass to fit with the theory, but nobody had proved it.

658:

"As I understand it, the problem is with the idea that the wave function actually collapses when observed. It doesn't. Its just that the observer's brain becomes a part of the wave function."

I believe you're thinking of the many-worlds interpretation, which was devised precisely to avoid the Copenhagen Interpretation's reliance on collapse of the wave function.

659:

"Have their been any experiments that definitively prove neutrinos have rest mass and/or travel at less than the speed of light? The last I saw, they were claimed to have rest mass to fit with the theory, but nobody had proved it."

neutrinos oscillate between the three different flavours of neutrino. To do this they must have finite lifetimes in their own reference frame. Therefore they can't be travelling at the speed of light. Therefore they have mass. qed.

But no, they haven't measured the mass of a neutrino.

660:

That relies on too many unproven assumptions to be a valid proof, though I agree that it is evidence. Measuring the speed that neutrinos travel at would be another way round the problem, but I don't think that's been done, either.

661:

»But no, they haven't measured the mass of a neutrino.«

Well... strictly speaking we have, just not very well.

The fact that neutrinos even are detectable is (almost alone) evidence of their non-zero mass, and if you did the proper statistical math on the frequency of detection you would get their mass as result.

Problem is that we only have data to do it the other way around: We can estimate how many neutrinos there are, from how many we detect, if we make some assumptions, including about their weight.

But pretty much everything measured relating to neutrinos is deeply suspect in terms of precision because of the very, very, very low probability of detection.

Measuring antineutrinos from power-producing nuclear reactors has been attempted as a way out of this mess, because we have very tight bounds on the number of antineutrinos produced on a minute by minute basis.

However, nuclear reactors are pretty puny compared to the Sun and all the stuff under our feet, so it is still a game of very low numbers and very big uncertainties, but they are getting numbers.

(The thing I mentioned about nuclear reactors above is a bit of a stinker: We used to say it was harmless to live even just one km from reactors, because no gamma or neutron would ever get that far, and the antineutrinos "just went straight through things". Well, they almost always do, but when they do not, they do a biologically nasty "one step to the side" trick, very often in the "atoms of life" area around carbon in the periodic table. There is still quite some way from one transmutated atom to childhood leukemia, but in hindsight, one should probably not spend ones cell-splitting years close to a nuclear reactor.)

662:

616 ref 561 - Suppose instead that the metal so mounted was Polonium, with a half-life of 30 to 50 days. I predict that someone will ask why Polonium emits alpha particles in a matter of months rather than just saying "that's weird".

624 - I posited the same situation mixed with the Monty Haul question. :-)

626 - Nice personal account, but my point was about being aware that US conductors ride up front with the locomotivist, at least trains with on fitted freight stock.

648 - I have similar memories of when AD&D 1st edition appeared in the UK.

663:

""I believe you're thinking of the many-worlds interpretation, which was devised precisely to avoid the Copenhagen Interpretation's reliance on collapse of the wave function."

There was a lengthy article on the MWI a couple of years ago that mentions this:

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-many-worlds-theory/

The Many-Worlds Theory, Explained
By John Gribbin
Posted on May 20, 2020

[EXCERPT]

If you have heard of the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI), the chances are you think that it was invented by the American Hugh Everett in the mid-1950s. In a way that’s true. He did come up with the idea all by himself. But he was unaware that essentially the same idea had occurred to Erwin Schrödinger half a decade earlier. Everett’s version is more mathematical, Schrödinger’s more philosophical, but the essential point is that both of them were motivated by a wish to get rid of the idea of the “collapse of the wave function,” and both of them succeeded.

As Schrödinger used to point out to anyone who would listen, there is nothing in the equations (including his famous wave equation) about collapse. That was something that Bohr bolted on to the theory to “explain” why we only see one outcome of an experiment — a dead cat or a live cat — not a mixture, a superposition of states. But because we only detect one outcome — one solution to the wave function — that need not mean that the alternative solutions do not exist. In a paper he published in 1952, Schrödinger pointed out the ridiculousness of expecting a quantum superposition to collapse just because we look at it. It was, he wrote, “patently absurd” that the wave function should “be controlled in two entirely different ways, at times by the wave equation, but occasionally by direct interference of the observer, not controlled by the wave equation.”

664:

Indeed, if the Brickverse is true, than there is zero point in having laws & jails, is there?

Why do you assume you have any choice in needing laws and jails, if you're in a brickverse?

The problem here is that, while the universe may be usefully described as a brickverse, especially as it could hypothetically be seen from the outside, that simultaneously means that, on the inside, we're stuck with time flowing and the reality of choices to be made and free will.

And, if you do get outside to the brickverse to observe it's brickishness, then you were predestined to do so? If you have true free will when outside the brickverse, can you, in fact, return to or even signal into the brickverse? Or does the return and/or signal happen regardless of whether you want it to?

Beginning to understand why I think intuitionism is worth exploring?

665:

I now find myself wondering if Schrödinger actually understood his own experiment (at least the same way I do) as meaning that we don't (can't?) know whether the cat is alive or dead until we open the box.

666:

James Lovelock has just dies, ages 103

667:

The trouble is that the many worlds hypothesis is no less patently absurd. In particular, flipping between the wave function and an instance of it is essentially identical to a Copenhagen "observation". Yes, imagining that we are stuck in an instance of an infinity of worlds being operated on my the same physics is mathematically consistent but, as the other worlds are fundamentally unobservable, is it science?

668:

Okay, I clearly have not explained what I said in such a manner as to not be misinterpreted.

There's no "catching up". Look at a Penrose diagram. Once you go FTL, you're on the edge line - it goes out, the faster you go... and then, as you slow, it comes back in. When I said "catching up", I was saying that as you drop below FTL, you have already returned to the time frame you left, which means that you've returned from "backwards in time" travel to "forwards". I see no reason to assume that you would go backwards... and stay backwards.

669:

Speaking of the brickverse, the last paragraph in the article cited in #663 is:

That isn’t the end of it. The single wave function describes all possible universes at all possible times. But it doesn’t say anything about changing from one state to another. Time does not flow. Sticking close to home, Everett’s parameter, called a state vector, includes a description of a world in which we exist, and all the records of that world’s history, from our memories, to fossils, to light reaching us from distant galaxies, exist. There will also be another universe exactly the same except that the “time step” has been advanced by, say, one second (or one hour, or one year). But there is no suggestion that any universe moves along from one time step to another. There will be a “me” in this second universe, described by the universal wave function, who has all the memories I have at the first instant, plus those corresponding to a further second (or hour, or year, or whatever). But it is impossible to say that these versions of “me” are the same person. Different time states can be ordered in terms of the events they describe, defining the difference between past and future, but they do not change from one state to another. All the states just exist. Time, in the way we are used to thinking of it, does not “flow” in Everett’s MWI.

Emphasis added.

670:

Wonderful. So, in effect, we have the ultimate "young Earth" universe. And when we move from instantiated universe n to n+1, what happens to the previous one... or is it still there, and there's an infinite line of "us"?

672:

"or is it still there, and there's an infinite line of "us"?"

Yes, that's how I understand it. All branching but frozen threads in the brickverse.

To the extent I do understand it, of course.

Which totally doesn't address the question of how we experience "time."

That I can see, of course

673:

It all sounds to me as though there's a layer "below" space-time, and we're only seeing what pops up.

ObDocSmithReference: we need to access 7th level effects.

674:

That looks like a firestorm waiting to happen, to my non-fireman's eye.

675:

"It all sounds to me as though there's a layer "below" space-time, and we're only seeing what pops up. "

Yeah, that's kind of my suspicion too.

The notion that space and time may be emergent phenomena of an underlying reality has been getting some attention for a while. It's like temperature and pressure emerge from the statistics of molecules bouncing around. AFAIK it's not gotten beyond the "notion" stage as yet, but people have it in mind.

(I refrain from going on about a problem I like to call "Causal Regression". Once you find out a cause of what we observe (Yahweh/God, 11-dimensional quantum field, slithy toves gyring and gimbling in the wabe, whatever), then where did that come from? Recurse. The problem has been noted in the past, but not addressed very plausibly.)

676:

One hopes they shop more carefully for the cladding than other architects have...

677:

"Branching" assumes a countable number of universes, for which I believe there is no evidence.

678:

@Justin J at 628:

“The 'how' of that quasar entanglement experiment is worth talking about - essentially, they were using the color of the light from the quasar to determine what kind of sort of measurement they were doing - it was, essentially, them flipping a coin, just cosmically. “

Yes, that’s my understanding as well.

@Jholmes at 630:

“But if, as you said upthread, Free Will isn't for anything, but just is (or as you and I agree, is not), then why would anybody care? Why bother?”

I’m trying to understand this, and failing. I care about Global Warming, but I have no use for it (quite the opposite). I don’t want it for anything, it just is or it isn’t.

“how can you be held responsible for something that it truly was inevitable that you do?”

Well, that just kicks the can down the road, really. What use do people have for responsibility? I don’t think very many people really care much about Free Will itself. If you tell them that they can go on punishing wayward people for acting in destructive ways, most of them would probably just shrug their shoulders and get on with their lives.

“But if Free Will, as per the definition you are using, does not, and indeed cannot, exist, is there anything else that we can put to the uses we have for it? Dennett says yes, offers up his ideas on expected consequences, and says that they look like Free Will, and serve the same uses as Free Will, so why not call them Free Will.”

I’m sorry what? I just proposed that punishment (and rewards) work just as well regardless, so Behavioral Reinforcement is Free Will now? That’s so backwards, I hope I do not need to refute it.

You know, Intelligent Design serves more or less the same use as Natural Selection, so let’s just call Natural Selection “Intelligent Design” now, shall we?

Why don’t we just stop making careful distinctions between similar things altogether now?

“Part of this is the bleating from some quarters that crimes and other misdeeds are in fact inevitable actions that do not deserve punishment. I expect you can see that if the crimes are indeed inevitable, so are the (undeserved) punishments, so the bleating is pointless, although also inevitable. “

I’m not going to bother refuting an argument I never made in the first place. Let’s just stick to what has been said, ok?

“It's not intended to be. Rather, it's intended as shorthand for Free Will as per the definition that you say we should use, which you, I, and I believe Dennett, agree does not and cannot exist. So if it does exist after all, that's magic.”

Then I did not explain myself carefully enough. I said that Free Will cannot exist if, and only if, the universe is superdetermined (maybe, depending upon whose perspective you are taking). I’ve been relying on logic and empirical findings to support my points. So, no magic involved.

“I'll also comment that even if the universe is not entirely deterministic, that does not rescue that kind of Free Will. Such a universe can be considered as a deterministic universe hooked up to a (truly) random number generator, and there is nowhere in there to fit such Free Will.”

Actually, there could be. There’s a “The Universe as a Non-linear System” loophole. Free Will could in theory be an emergent property of a universe that is completely determined but unpredictable ahead of time (as could the human brain).

@Greg T at 645:

“40 years ago, I might have been able to, but I'm so rusty that I'm not sure where to start.

But, simply acknowledging that my suggestion might be/is true would be an improvement on beating our heads against the wall, as at present!”

I’m sorry, but I seem to have lost track. What suggestion was that?

I believe that there are no other logical alternatives to the one’s I laid out.

@Elderly Cynic at 653:

“I have done some actual analyses starting from the relevant theories and equations, which is more than many physicists have done, and I am pointing out that THEY are misrepresenting Einstein's theory and formulae.”

Oh good, that sounds very promising! Would you be so kind as to post your equations here (or a link to somewhere you have put them online) and point out where you think Eisenstein, Podolski, and Rosen went wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox Or, if not that paper, then the paper you wish to offer a correction?

“As far as I know, nobody have done a proper, controlled experiment to determine whether the separate measurements of entangled particles are actually affected by the speed of light. The specialists I have spoken to have said that it's unnecessary, because we know the answer; that's not science. If you know of a reference to a paper that does prove this, I should be interested. The simple fact is that most of what is claimed is unsupported by either rigorous analysis or experiment.”

A perfect experiment that in which the two particles are entirely separated from all prior causal events isn’t possible in this universe because everything goes back to the Big Bang. However, we can conduct a series of experiments which come progressively closer to those ideal conditions, and see if they provide supporting evidence. They do:

An overall explanation: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1007.3977v1.pdf

An article on Bell’s “Inequalities” paper, which provided further theoretical analysis of the paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem

An overview of the series of experiments conducted by Alain Aspect, which provide empirical support that entangled particles do in fact follow Bell’s Theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect%27s_experiment

The original paper: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.49.1804

Note that this is not settled science, the experts are still debating what it all means.

I eagerly await your analysis of these results.

@Whitroth at 668:

“There's no "catching up". Look at a Penrose diagram. Once you go FTL, you're on the edge line - it goes out, the faster you go... and then, as you slow, it comes back in. When I said "catching up", I was saying that as you drop below FTL, you have already returned to the time frame you left, which means that you've returned from "backwards in time" travel to "forwards". I see no reason to assume that you would go backwards... and stay backwards.”

Oh, man, this post is already a wall of text, and to do this comment justice would require a whole new one. For now, let me just point out that none of that applies to two entangled particles, which do not accelerate nor slow down (or at least, their doing so isn’t an important part of the experiment). Move them as far apart as you like, when the first researcher conducts her measurement, the other particle’s wave function collapses instantaneously.

@Whitroth at 673:

“It all sounds to me as though there's a layer "below" space-time, and we're only seeing what pops up.

ObDocSmithReference: we need to access 7th level effects.”

Actually, this is a serious suggesting. It corresponds to the “superdeterminism” model where the entire universe is one timeless brick that is frozen in place across all time. For that to be the case, quantum indeterminancy would have to be an approximate reflections of an underlying reality, where “more fundamental than quantum” events take place. These events would, presumably, be entirely deterministic, with no uncertainty involved.

679:

You are being gratuitously stupid, and I am now certain it is deliberate. For the last time, I am NOT claiming that Einstein etc. got it wrong - that is ENTIRELY your delusion. Now crawl back under your bridge.

680:

Tim H. @ 652:

The Line should disrupt the weather:

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/26/1113670047/saudi-arabia-new-city-the-mirror-line-desert A less attractive windbreak was proposed 90 years ago to disrupt dust storms in North America.

I found a different look at the design idea HERE [YouTube]. Looks like the idea is to pump seawater 100+ miles inland using a glass topped canal to a gigantic glass dome surrounded by mirrors. Probably several of them for redundancy.

The brine will be mined for minerals.

I guess if you used solar-electric to power the pumps drawing seawater out of the Red Sea, it would be pretty self sustaining. Use the water for human consumption and allow the grey water to grow crops & "natural" vegetation while flowing back to the sea.

Doesn't look like a mirror walled corridor. Don't know if it will actually work, but it looks like it's worth trying.

681:

Re yct EC: huh? How do you get "Einstein, Rosen, et al" wrong, from his statement that the OTHER PHYSICISTS are misrepresenting Einstein et al?

682:

Kardasev & Whitroth
Me too - it's "obvious" that there is a "Missing Element(s)" in the picture ....
Hence the QM/GR "mismatch"

683:

Poul @ 661:

Can you elaborate a bit on this "one step to the side" nuclear reaction? I think I know what you are talking about, but I may be mistaken.

684:

Meanwhile, yet again: Sack the so-called "reality" scripwriters! - who is going to believe this improbable rubbish, anyway?

685:

From the opening matter in the wikipedia article you linked:

logic and mathematics are not considered analytic activities wherein deep properties of objective reality are revealed and applied, but are instead considered the application of internally consistent methods used to realize more complex mental constructs, regardless of their possible independent existence in an objective reality.

Since that reads like an obvious truism to me, does that mean I'm an intuitionist? To me that's just a realistic appreciation for the limits of theory, which is always inherently representational even in its most abstract. I understand that many people struggle with the latter point, but it's not a matter of serious debate. We can and do test the outcomes of our "complex mental contracts" against what limited versions of "objective reality" we have access to, and we call that process of testing via experiment the scientific method, although really it's just one of several ways that science develops. Even in mathematics.

If intuitionism is a more accurate description of the universe than classical math, then any proof that relies on the Law of the Excluded Middle has to be reworked to be without it.

Surely what changes is that the concept of an inverse might not be available for propositions within certain (definable) sets?

686:

Re: 'Brokers don't even do that much: they attempt to outguess each other such that the first to buy before everyone else buys, or sells before everyone else sells wins the prize.'

Ahem ... brokers 'sell', i.e., manipulate the market (buyers). Your comment sounds as though they're a bunch of nerdy (harmless) statisticians. Nope!

There's an interesting documentary from a Canadian broadcaster (CBC) that mentions this particular bunch of professionals:

https://www.cbc.ca/documentarychannel/docs/assholes-a-theory

The doc is a little over an hour long. Seems to be free/no paywall at least for this, my first viewing. It also includes some interview footage with the researcher who's been focusing on this population segment/aspect of human behavior.

Haven't read the rest of the comments on this discussion, so if anyone else has already made this point - apologies about repeating.

687:

superdeterminism

Sabine Hossenfelder, who is worth listening to, likes superdeterminism:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.00139/full

688:

I'm afraid this may be a bit disjointed.

"I care about Global Warming, but I have no use for it (quite the opposite)."

But in order to care about the phenomenon of Global Warming, you do have a use for the concept of Global Warming, and if Global Warming did not exist, you would not need to care about it, and so would have no use for the concept.

"I’m not going to bother refuting an argument I never made in the first place."

Sorry. I did not intend to imply that you had made that argument, rather that Dennett was responding to people who had.

"You know, Intelligent Design serves more or less the same use as Natural Selection, so let’s just call Natural Selection “Intelligent Design” now, shall we?"

No I don't know. Intelligent Design, if you trace back its antecedents, is the latest iteration of a deliberate attempt to claim that Those People were meant to be chattel slaves, so stop trying to abolish slavery. Natural Selection, even if it has been (ab)used at times for racist and sexist purposes, has always at its base been part of an attempt to explain the world we see around us, whether we like it being like that or not.

More importantly these days, the differences between "Intelligent" Design and Natural Selection are large and obvious, and have immediate implications for what one might think about how the world works.

All right, you were being sarcastic, but I think your sarcasm was misplaced because:

"Why don’t we just stop making careful distinctions between similar things altogether now?"

Because some times we need such distinctions in order to know what we are talking about, while in others we do not, and and insisting on fine distinctions when they do not assist our understanding just gets in the way. The thing is to know when you do need a distinction, and when it will just confuse matters.

And sometimes, as in this case, we have never had any reason before to think about whether the distinction is needed, so we may have to stop and think about it.

JHomes

689:

νe- + p -> n + e+, I expect.

690:

Me at 678: "Or, if not that paper, then the paper you wish to offer a correction?"

In other words, starting with the original EPR paper in the 1930's, and proceeding forward, please indicate at which point you think the current understanding of quantum entanglement got it wrong.

Also, I believe that I have done nothing to deserve being spoken to in that way. I am attempting to engage your argument in good faith, please do so in return.

@SFReader at 686:

Oh, I am under no illusions regarding the manipulative aspects of the securities markets, and it's gatekeepers. I'm just trying to project an objective point of view. I recommend "All the Devils Are Here" by Noclean and Nocera. It's a description of the shenanigans behind the 2008 financial crisis in the US: https://www.amazon.com/All-Devils-Are-Here-Financial/dp/159184438X

691:

Going back to Charlie's original question ...

I'm currently in the middle of 'The Code Breaker' (CRISPR Cas9) - good read - and recent and popular enough that it's probably available at most public libraries.

Anyways - whether it's via machine (AI) or gene manipulation, it's the same set of ethics questions. Who gets to decide? What are the acceptable limits of 'enhancement'? What safe guards should be in place? How do you prevent this from going wild - hackers, whether genetic or IT? What counter measures should the gov't, pro and lay person have access to? What if you change your mind? Weaponization* (offense & defense) - because if you were able to figure this out, someone else will too esp. since most of the hard work has already been done (and the methodology published**). And even if not intended as a 'weapon', it's extremely probable that there will be more than one of whatever, therefore it's also likely that such will have conflicting goals at some point. Etc.

I read Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' when I was a kid - don't recall any of the philosophical questions/discussions though. Also, IIRC, the golem in Jewish lore touches on similar questions with the traditional conclusion that a golem is not a real human being. So, apart from this concept having been around long enough to make it into cultural lore, this opens up questions about how different faiths (cultures) would react to the newest spin on this idea: a sentient/human-seeming AI or 'uplifted' human. Maybe a multi-cultural POV could provide a better perspective on how to frame this question/discussion.

*CRISPRCas9 - yeah, apparently the US military is taking this seriously and has allocated some research budget into offense/defense re: using this gene editing tool. (And a researcher already figured out how to undo CRISPRCas9 edits. Oy! - we're into escalation already!)

**Supply chains would be an obvious exploitable weakness, i.e., blocking competitors/political enemies or potential users/uplifters from accessing critical raw materials.

692:

IMHO one of the big aspects of Intelligence is the ability to make those distinctions.

693:

Whatever acupuncture is, there is a real analgesia effect as demonstrated that pain relief is blocked by administering the opioid blocker, naloxone. Whether the various insertion points are real or not, and whether the explanation for its mechanism real or not, it does have a real analgesic effect, and that is sufficient for me to accept that whatever is going on, it is not a placebo.

694:

Then why did a dowser not claim a specific effect, e.g. Heteromeles suggestion of depth of water, and have the Randi Foundation test that? If it was real, that is a neat $1 million to take home.

A water depth below ground is not that hard to test. Various pipes of running water placed at various depths can easily be compared even by A/B tests of "is pipe 1 deeper than pipe 2?"

695:

694: I suspect a dowser who is experienced in subconsciously interpreting the subtle indications of a natural source of water is not going to have a bloody clue about how deeply a pipe is buried in a trench, or even whether the pipe has water in it at all.

693: Apparently also it works on animals, where you can rule out any placebo effect.

696:

Admittedly, I'm not an intuitionist logician or mathematician, so I have a very rudimentary understanding. My understanding is, among other things, that an intuitionist would argue that math is, at best, a human description of reality, while at least some more classically-minded mathematicians believe that reality is fundamentally mathematical (see John Wheeler's notion of "It from bit").

One example, given in the Quanta Magazine article, is the question of whether 1.49999...(9 repeated infinitely)=1.5. In classical math, this is a basic limit problem, and the limit of 1.4999... is 1.5. In intuitionistic math, you have to actually determine it. If it turns out that it's actually 1.4999999999999999999999979, it's not equal to 1.5. Proving things with intuitionistic math appears to be more like analog computing, where there's an inherent error built into some steps. You can build the same logical chain, but at some steps, instead of saying "this is correct," you probably can only say "this is consistent" or "so far as I can tell..." If you're trying to formally prove something with intuitionistic math, it's a tougher project than performing the same proofs with regular math and logic.

At least part of the problem of the excluded middle seems to be in determining whether the two choices are perfectly opposite, or whether they overlap, or there are other choices we're not considering. Personally, I think this is a good practice in ordinary life, and I suspect it might be useful in trying to link general relativity and quantum mechanics.

One situation where redoing proofs using intuitionist means might pay off is if it turns out that some classical proofs are impossible in an intuitionist framework. That might be a little warning that those proofs have problems in them that are hidden by the structure of the logic used to create them. But that's just a guess on my part.

697:

Speaking of souls, life after death, and philosophy...

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/good-3

698:

»Can you elaborate a bit on this "one step to the side" nuclear reaction?«

When neutrinos react, they turn a neutron into a proton, which turns whatever atom was hit into the next higher one in the periodic table, for instance Oxygen to Fluorine or Chlorine to Argon.

Antineutrinos go the other way and turn a proton into a neutron, turning the target into the next lower one, for instance Carbon to Boron or Phosphorus to Silicon.

All of these potential reactions are of course subject to the neutrino's energy being high enough.

699:

694, 695, and prior mentions of dowsing - Any accounts of dowsing that I have read involve the detection of natural water sources; pipework need not apply.

700:

Pigeon
Electron-neutrino + proton => neutron + anti-electron?

H
An intuitionist would argue that math is, at best, a human description of reality, while at least some more classically-minded mathematicians believe that reality is fundamentally mathematical. ...
BUT - That is the entire basis of Charlie's "Laundry" series, isn't it?
"The spiky ones live at the bottom of the Mandelbrot Set"
Oops, or something.

701:

Nah, the Laundry series is all about mathematics being fundamentally unreal until the computation happens. Then the problems start...

702:

I would suggest dowsing might be categorized as "Real, yet insignificant. Imagining a world where such things are significant has been the beginning of a lot of fantasy stories.

703:

Re: 'Supply chains would be an obvious exploitable weakness, ...'

Also - the environmental impact of building and sustaining AI:

'The carbon cost of AI'

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02064-5

The same page also mentions a research article about using origami folded DNA to generate an electric field. Maybe these two ideas could be combined. (DNA is already being studied wrt computation.)

'Self-assembling motor puts DNA in a spin'

704:

My experience of dowsing is that I was shown how to do it by a farmer, we were looking for a water pipe at my mother's house. We used 2 bent pieces of copper wire. The wires twisted in my hands when walking over a certain spot/line, an extremely strange experience! This turned out to be where the pipe ran, though we still went right though it as the dowsing gave no indication of depth. I have absolutely no explanation for this, it just rates as a very strange experience.

705:

I'll just note that the trench dug to bury a pipe will leave surface traces: changes in ground level, vegetation, and so forth. Archaeologists are trained to spot things like this. So 'dowsing helps you notice things' still applies to pipes — it;s just that the things you're noticing are different.

706:

That is precisely what I think is happening and, depending on the scale of disturbance and how carefully it is filled, the changes can last from years to millennia. Dowsing helps at least some people let go of assumptions, and use the evidence of their eyes etc. to make a better guess than otherwise.

707:

Yes, indeed. That explanation may be right, though why noticing something should be expressed through the means of dowsing as opposed to the usual means of just noticing something is a question. But the thing I remember about it most is just the strangeness of the wires turning in my hands with no conscious effort. I am not saying you are wrong, just pointing up the strangeness of the whole thing.

708:

H at 696:

"That might be a little warning that those proofs have problems in them that are hidden by the structure of the logic used to create them."

Doesn't this connect to Godel's incompleteness theorem? In the sense that the underlying axioms could be incorrect but you can't tell from within that system, if I have interpreted it correctly.

709:

DeMarqis @651:

Correction: There is in fact one other possibility, although I know it won't be very popular around here: information could be leaking in from outside our universe. That is to say, it's the Hand of God (although why he is bothering to mess around with the results of quantum experiments is a little confusing). [emphasis mine]

Um, I think there's a classical bit of Christian tradition that might help to clarify this issue: "...yet not even one spherical physicist falls from their vacuum without the knowledge of your Father."

If memory serves.

710:

I suspect dowsing of being similar to "rubber duck debugging"; in rubber duck debugging, you have a logic error somewhere, and instead of looking for the error, you attempt to state your logical chain as clearly as possible.

Because you're no longer focused on "what mistake am I making", but instead on "how do I state this clearly", you often see the error at a point where you cannot state your logic clearly - it's the change of focus that allows you to identify your mistake.

In dowsing, your focus is on holding the rods in just the right way; not so tightly they can't move, not so loosely they fall. When your ability to hold focus is reduced by noticing details that match up with what you're looking for, you no longer have the spare capacity to hold the rods just right and you feel the effect of you losing the correct grip and recovering as the rods twisting.

711:

I don't see why the placebo effect doesn't apply to animals; some components of it (the components that depend on a belief that things are going to improve) will not apply, but others (such as the effect that we assume that activity by trusted partners implies improvement) could well apply.

712:

H at 696:

"That might be a little warning that those proofs have problems in them that are hidden by the structure of the logic used to create them."

Doesn't this connect to Godel's incompleteness theorem? In the sense that the underlying axioms could be incorrect but you can't tell from within that system, if I have interpreted it correctly.

==========================================================================

Axioms can't by definition be incorrect. They are your givens. They could be inconsistent. Both A and not A are in the axiom set.

Godel's a bit more involved. It says there are true statements in a mathematical system that can't be proved.

713:

I wondered how long it would take the overturning of Roe vs Wade to start influencing UK government policy. We have a record of promoting USA policies (many of which have been harmful to the UK) where the USA doesn't want to be publicly involved.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jul/28/uk-in-diplomatic-standoff-over-deletion-of-abortion-rights-from-gender-statement

714:

I don't see why the placebo effect doesn't apply to animals; some components of it (the components that depend on a belief that things are going to improve) will not apply, but others (such as the effect that we assume that activity by trusted partners implies improvement) could well apply.

It's not placebo, and I'm speaking from a fair amount of experience being treated. It's about literally about moving and sensing energy, with energy being defined as heat, cold, movement, or vibration. Chi is energy.

Acupuncture's based on a Taoist body model, where, if you're healthy, everything moves and works as it's supposed to. If it's out of balance, they try to rebalance it. If a spot's too cold, they'll warm it up, and if it's too warm, they'll use the needles to try to get it to relax and cool down. If it's numb, they'll use needles to get you feeling it again, and if it's in pain or over-reactive, they'll numb it to get it to relax.

The points aren't on nerves, but often they're right next to the nerve, and the points are all through your body, not just on the skin. Getting a two-inch needle inserted into your arm to hit a point between your radius and ulna's an experience (okay, it's going in slowly. Tell me when you feel it. Ow, now! The needle tip backs off a fraction of a millimeter and your nerve feels it but isn't screaming. And the nerve wakes up, and you start to feel everything connected to it).

Two examples from my personal experience. Because I subvocalize as I write and tend to hunch over the keyboard, I get into trouble swallowing. This is really hard for MDs to treat. Chiropractic helps as do neck exercises. Acupuncturists can treat it in about 15 minutes by needling up to five points on your neck, and/or drawing a drop of blood from the big veins under your tongue. What all this does is wake up the parts of your vagus nerve that have gone numb, your brain remembers how the muscles move, and you can swallow again. The blood draw (always one drop) is to try to improve circulation in areas that are showing poor circulation on the surface, and thereby to restore sensation and life to them.

I'm bringing this up because restoring the ability to swallow is a standard acupuncture treatment for people with strokes or other brain injuries, as well as just bad posture. If you know someone who's suffering with that, suggest acupuncture.

Another example, involving the infamous three "dan tiens": your third eye (a point just above your eyebrows), your heart (your solar plexus, base of the sternum), and your center ( between navel and waist). If, like me, you spend a lot of time on your computer, you may find that your third eye point is warm to the touch, while your center is cold to the touch. This is linked to a lot of body discomfort. An acupuncturist will needle your forehead (to make you aware of, and help dissipate, all the tension in your forehead), and put a heat lamp or something similar over your navel (to try to get it to warm up, feel, and relax, so that you're brain's focusing on your body as a whole, not just thinking complex thoughts).

Qigong (chi gung) exercises try to do similar things, by having you move your body in specific ways to get effects like those of the needles. For example, if your throat is going numb and you're having trouble swallowing, moving your tongue around regularly, to stretch the bottom of it, helps, as does moving your head to stretch your throat muscles, as does sitting up straight and getting away from your computer.

There's a whole empirical system behind this. While we're used to chi in more of a martial arts or general health context, the medical side is quite sophisticated, and it's not limited to use of needles.

715:

Re: Dowsing. No idea how or if it works, but I do know that my great-grandfather was in demand for his dowsing 'skills' in the 20s and 30s when people in his farming community were deciding where to drill a new well. He was never able to explain it. He was a successful farmer on the Alberta prairies in the first half of the 20th century. He was emphatically not a huckster.

Re: Schroedinger's cat etc. Not particularly relevant, but in the course of a 25 year marriage I've learned the importance of Schroedinger's mop bucket. If the cleaning work is not observed by my wife, it did not happen. In order for things to exist I must ensure that the work is observed.

716:

Who gets to decide on genengineering....

At CostumeCon, in the con suite, I mentioned genengineering, and this jerk went off onto a rant against it, then walked out.

I didn't get to ask things like, "so, you're against genengineering to prevent/cure diabetes? How about fibromyalgia? Or MS?" His concern seemed to be that he had a slight belly, and after watching ST: Below Decks, felt ok about himself again to wear an ST uniform costume. Never mind that people who are morbidly obese, and will die untimely, could have their metabolism adjusted so they can walk without hurting, etc.

But once it gets common? In the novel I'm currently on second revisions on, a character makes a comment about people who have, you know, actual TAILS!, and the response by my PoV character is, "right, and teenagers have never?"

717:

Of course that's the way it works. Writing down a spell in a book doesn't cause the spell to work, you have to perform the computation, er, spell... and then you get results....

718:

EC
I saw that too!
The tories have an ultra-catholic wing, who will ( of course ) do any-&-everything in their power to oppress women.
It fits in with their obvious-but-unspoken-agenda of: Wreck bloody everything - & then leave it to the next government to scrape up the mess, distracting them from doing a decent job. Straight out of the US Repugnant playbook, of course.

719:

is it actually genocide if the body is dead but the mind is still there?

There is an interesting new development, necrobotics where we can have dead bodies without their minds that can do useful work! Early stages here of course but who knows what the future may bring!

720:

"Happy days are here again, the skies above are clear again"

Lots of of good news for the Dems today.

The CHIPs bill was passed, returning America's chip manufacturing industry back to our shores - with Dems getting the credit for doing so.

The Biden administration will be providing price stabilization via the strategic oil reserve to our gas markets. A $0.40 per gallon drop in prices at the pump, driving the price of gas below $4 a gallon, is anticipated by mid August - with gas dropping to less than $3.50 per gallon by election day.

Inflation? What inflation?

Joe Manchin in a major surprise agreed to effectively passing about 90% of the "Build Back Better Act" and half of the "Green New Deal", his agreement with Schumer completely outmaneuvering Mitch McConnel.

Democrat's know how to play politics, who knew?

Polls now show that the Dems should hold the Senate, even gain a couple of seats in November. Holding the House might be too much to expect in an off year election by the party in the White House.

Overturning Roe has been the biggest political mistake by a major party in modern history with polls showing a massive shift of women and independents shunning the GOP.

The 1/6 committee has had a devastating effect on Trump's popularity and will likely result in the DOJ presenting him with criminal charges.

Putin's armies have been broken and Russia's economy is collapsing, had Trump been re-elected Putin would now control Ukraine and be looking at future conquests

Meanwhile, the GOP is too busy being taken over by racist, fundy loons who hate women and every other minority (as well as dead school children, 10 year old rape victims, high educational standards, a clean environment, established science and basic decency).

"Let us sing a song of cheer again, happy days are here again!"

721:

Re: Schroedinger's cat etc. Not particularly relevant, but in the course of a 25 year marriage I've learned the importance of Schroedinger's mop bucket. If the cleaning work is not observed by my wife, it did not happen. In order for things to exist I must ensure that the work is observed.

Proof of work also applies to cryptocurrencies, I think. But if you have to worry about your continued existence without proof of work, then I think the cat applies more.

722:

At CostumeCon, in the con suite, I mentioned genengineering, and this jerk went off onto a rant against it, then walked out.

He may not know it as this but he's most likely afraid of a gene cure that turns into a Thalidomide incident. I know multiple people like this of all religious and political stripes.

723:

The CHIPs bill was passed, returning America's chip manufacturing industry back to our shores - with Dems getting the credit for doing so.

Sorry. I'll believe it when I see it. Chip making is a very expensive long term bet involving a very few global players. Trying to drive a stake into the ground to make plants exist in the US, well, I suspect the global economy and other national interests may not cooperate.

This may just turn into a big subsidy for a few players.

Look at the details of how the Trump tariffs worked in the steel industry. Similar goals and methods.

724:

Duffy
Overturning Roe.v.Wade was done, IIRC by Uncle Thom's Courthouse claiming there was no right to Privacy ...
BUT, again, IIRC - PLEASE CORRECT ME if wrong, several of the Amendments to the US constitution actually do give a right to privacy ...
Um, err: { Re-quoting } - 1st / 3rd / 4th / 5th / 6th + the 9th referring to "unlisted" rights + 14th.
Which should mean that the claim made by Thomas/Alito is flat wrong, yes?
Q: How the fuck does one overturn a flat-wrong decision, short of the method used to overturn Dred Scott ??

725:

From the article:

‘ "Mate, don't go in there," Wade warned the man, who he said ignored his advice, replying: "I can fight emus" ‘

So, thinks he’s tougher than the entire Australian army, does he?

726:

"The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of natural numbers. For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency."

I think I was close enough, especially when the second one is taken into account. It about the limits of systems isn't it? Their descriptive power can be limited by base assumptions, such as binary logic. Though it is not what Godel said this could be taken as another kind of incompleteness, for instance the excluded middle.

727:

I don't think so. The way his rant ran, he apparently wanted to wear ST uniforms, and with a stomach (not even that much of once, but) he apparently hadn't worn one since his twenties or so (he was in his fifties), and he ran on about "look at the people in this room", (referring to a number of people who were very heavy) and "who gets to decide what's normal?"

The idea of tweaking the metabolism seemed too much for him.

728:

Yes - with one minor correction: electron anti-neutrino rather than a non-anti one. Basically it's a mostly-backwards rearrangement of beta decay, and is the reaction that was used in the first successful attempt to actually detect neutrinos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowan-Reines_neutrino_experiment

As PHK points out there is also a version with a non-anti neutrino and the mostly-backwardsness in different places, which turns a neutron into a proton. But since it's anti-neutrinos that are produced by the beta decay process with everything normal and forwards, they're the ones that are most readily produced by artificial (or artificially-concentrated) sources.

I do not agree with PHK that the discovery of the neutrino ruins the idea that it's no problem living 1km from a nuclear reactor because the neutrons and gammas will never make it that far. The description in the above-linked article has them finding 3 interactions per hour in 200 litres of water 11m from a reactor, which is bugger all compared to the number of carbon-14 decays you'd get in a human body over the course of an hour. Without bothering to do the actual calculations, I would also strongly suspect that it's bugger all compared to the number of gamma rays which do manage to make it 1km from the reactor before being stopped by a human body.

729:

It sounds like there might be some positive aspects to the idea of appointing Dr ven Hjalmar as Liz Truss's personal medic.

730:

Tails? No thanks... I already get pressure-induced lesions over my coccyx, which is what takes the weight when I'm sitting down because I don't have an arse so there's no built-in cushion. An actual sticking-out tail raises the prospect of several more possible problems of a painful and in some cases also disgusting nature.

But yeah, for absolute sure, teenagers most definitely would.

731:

"in the course of a 25 year marriage I've learned the importance of Schroedinger's mop bucket. If the cleaning work is not observed by my wife, it did not happen. In order for things to exist I must ensure that the work is observed."

That's nothing to do with Schroedinger, it's just the result of doing things open-loop. If the work is not observed then once the floor has dried there is no evidence by which your wife can tell that it has been done, because it was clean already and didn't need doing again. This is the same argument that I always used to have with my mum when I was a kid: I insist that "X needs cleaning" is true if and only if "X is dirty" is true, against the counter-proposition that "X needs cleaning" can become true of its own accord. That proposition appears to be derived from some bug where testIsXDirty() starts returning true as a consequence of elapsed time or similar irrelevant factors, regardless of any sensor input describing the actual state of X.

Fixing that bug is actually of ecological importance. For instance there is concern over the excess energy used by vacuum cleaners as a result of manufacturers doing the "numbers war" thing with the power output of the fan motor, and fitting motors which are more and more grossly in excess of the power actually required, leading to proposals to impose a legal limit on fan motor power and all sorts of consequent screaming. But there is a much greater potential saving of energy from fixing the bug that causes vacuum cleaners to be deployed merely as a result of elapsed time regardless of whether or not they're actually going to achieve anything beyond a temporary disturbance of the pile. There are similar considerations regarding the potential reduction in the amount of cleaning chemicals going down the drain, the amount of energy used to heat water for use in conjunction with those chemicals, etc.

732:

I thought the Grand Orifice Party were all in favour of dead school children and 10 year old rape victims, and thought having lots of them was great?

733:

Yes, but there are a couple of wrinkles that are often forgotten. The first is that the system must be powerful enough to include arithmetic (and all that it implies). The second is that the system must be limited enough to fit into that model (essentially deterministic and discrete); there is no certainty that a system that is strictly more powerful than a Turing machine has the same limit (and no certainty that it does not).

Inventing such a system and proving that it is really strictly more powerful is left as an exercise for the reader :-)

734:

That is true but almost certainly irrelevant. The action was almost certainly taken by the mandarinate, POSSIBLY by the ministers directly involved, but nobody else would have been even consulted. It reeks to me of licking the arses of the USA's arses, which (as I said) is SOP in this 'independent' country of ours.

735:

716 et seq - The prosecution wishes to submit into evidence Bill Shatner sans corset. ;-)

736:

At CostumeCon, with my SO and daughter-out-law (my SO and I aren't legally married, so not in-law)(g), I came as myself... the Silverdragon. With a just-over 6' tail. Let me assure you, sitting down is a problem, as is walking down a hallway and not whacking into things.

737:

I realise that many people may not realise the relevance of this to previous comments in this thread. Penrose's claim that human minds are not subject to the Goedel/Turing limit MAY be correct if (a) neurons operate at the quantum level and (b) the result is a system strictly more powerful than a Turing machine. Neither is incompatible with known science, but both are purely speculative.

His blithering about quantum gravity is just that, and 'quantum computers' are too restricted to be relevant.

738:

Bill Blondeau @ 709:

How many spherical physicists does it take to change a quantum light-bulb?

739:

This is the same argument that I always used to have with my mum when I was a kid: I insist that "X needs cleaning" is true if and only if "X is dirty" is true, against the counter-proposition that "X needs cleaning" can become true of its own accord.

Assuming your mom is the same generation as mine, cleaning was done on a timetable (with extra cleaning as necessary). If the timetable was not adhered to then the housewife was a slovenly lazybones by her neighbours. As more appliances were acquired to ease the workload, the cleaning frequency increased to keep the workload the same.

Pretty certain this is covered (in part) in this book: http://www.virginianicholson.co.uk/perfect-wives-ideal-homes

740:

Duffy @ 720:

The only part of that I disagree with is the GQP "being taken over". That take over was internally initiated and happened a long, long time ago. They've been the party of "racist, fundy loons" for as long as I can remember.

741:

I can accept that proof of work applies to cryptocurrencies, though I don't much understand them except as a confidence scheme.

In the context of my marriage, for the perceived balance of cleaning duties to be maintained (and thus to survive without conflict) I must ensure that the wave function of "Is rocketpjs doing his share" is wholly collapsed via observation. Unobserved the converse is the assumption, regardless of facts.

It took a decade of bickering before I learned the importance of observation to the shared harmony. I would do a thing because it needed doing and I had time and/or inclination. Mrs RPJ would do a different thing for similar reasons. Mrs. RPJ (thankfully) has no interest in being a 'housewife' of any sort, and so is highly sensitive to the balance of contributions. If she did not observe me doing the thing, she would assume I had not done anything and feel resentment. I would then become irritated at such resentment because I had done the thing.

Much easier to do the thing in her sight, or at least leave the mop bucket out in a visible place once the thing was done.

742:

manufacturers doing the "numbers war" thing with the power output of the fan motor

Here they mostly have volume controls so you can buy a 2400W vacuum cleaner and run it at 1000W or less. Where the excess power comes in is letting morons keep sucking when the filters are clogged. Renting out rooms to randoms means I get to see the full gamut of stupidity around things like that.

The ultimate being two who used the vacuum cleaner for the first time the day they moved out and managed to break it in a non-obvious way (but you could no longer remove the dust bucket... so once it was full that was it. Apparently they used enough force to get it in completely the wrong way round but without shattering it). The more usual problem is the machine screaming because there's no air getting through the filters while the moron idly pushes the sucky end round the floor.

Meanwhile I run my new one at about half power, while wearing hearing protection.

I also clean floors when my bare feet tell me it's necessary :)

743:

Dust, especially kitchen dust (oily) is much easier to clean if it's reasonably fresh. So cleaning every month or two means wiping with a damp cloth, cleaning once a year means degreaser and scrubbing.

I've learned that some parts of the floor need cleaning regardless of how I feel because otherwise after a while you can see tracks in the hallway where I actually walk. I suspect it's just carpet getting beaten down but a swipe with the vacuum and it looks clean again.

744:

If the timetable was not adhered to then the housewife was a slovenly lazybones by her neighbours

What stopped a housewife from the following epiphany "Why should I give a fuck what the neighbors think?"?

Both my wife and my ex-wife clean stuff when it needs cleaning. They care (cared) what I think about it, and to lesser extent about what our friends care. Neighbors do not come into the picture.

745:

Removing carpet in all its forms from my homes has been a long-term goal for me. All that remains is the carpet on the stairs, and its days are numbered.

If you have ever removed a carpet the amount of dirt and foulness beneath is enough to make you want to get rid of all carpets. It also makes using or owning a vacuum cleaner less necessary.

746:

Joe Manchin in a major surprise agreed to effectively passing about 90% of the "Build Back Better Act" and half of the "Green New Deal", his agreement with Schumer completely outmaneuvering Mitch McConnel.

Anything said by Joe Manchin should be taken with a shaker full of salt. His record over the past year does not fill me with optimism...

748:

I suspect "cleaning on a timetable" was done by families who were middle or upper-middle class. Working families... it got done when they were not at work and not too tired.

749:

I plan on no carpet in the granny flat. But the one skirting board I removed in the brick tent showed a 5-10mm gap between uneven brickwork and old floorboards. Like everything else in this house I expect that ripping up the carpet would be just the start of a major operation. Not least because carpet acts as something of an air seal, keeping the wind from blowing dust that's under the house up into the house.

The fibro shack I rented for a while had that problem in a big way. Admittedly it was on piles with nothing around the perimeter of the house so the wind blew right through there. But dust, smoke and fleas coming up from under was a daily problem. Did I mention the fleas? Previous tenants were booted for having dogs in violation of the lease. The dogs quite obviously had spent a lot of time under the house and the flea treatment the owner used was not very effective. I didn't want to live there whether they tented the place and fumigated it or just ignored the problem. Luckily that meant I moved back into my house (90 minutes away) just before the first covid lockdowns.

750:

Unless very poor, back in the day there was bath day, then wash day, and other days. If things got too dirty, well so be it for those working stiffs.

Me, I'm more of a wash loads of laundry as I can. My wife wants to do it all at once. And gets upset with my way. So it gets done in clumps.

751:

I'm one of the beige, everything just gets thrown in the washing machine/laundry basket and when there's enough for a load of washing I put it on. In winter there's a toss-up between waiting until there's enough sun to power the machine and wanting the washing out on the line for as much of the day as possible.

One thing I have done is switched from folding clothes and putting them in drawers to shoving them in boxes. I have drawers for undies, socks and polypro, but there's a box of trousers and several of t shirts. And a bin of roughly rolled bedsheets. It's just so much quicker to pile stuff off the line into the basket, then sort small stuff into drawers before binning all the shirts (modulo the occasional sock or handkerchief).

Oh: one of the best birthday presents ever was 50-odd handkerchiefs. The collection has slowly declined but it's great just to have a drawer of them and not have to keep digging through pockets to put them in the wash so I don't run out. If you can plausibly afford the space it's well worth while having a month of socks, hankies and undies. Buy extra hankies because other people will 'borrow' them.

Mind you, praise be to NAB who art my provider of towels lo even unto the second decade. I worked at a big bank site for ~3 months (I hated it), but while I was there they cleaned out the shower/change area. So when I left for the day there was a couple of wheely bins full of towels etc that were being thrown out. I took a lot of towels. More than 20 (a lot to carry on my bike). There were so many I could sort by good/mediocre/bad and mostly take the good ones. The classic people get excited, ride or run to work once, leave their towel etc in the changing rooms then... next time they do that it's months later and they can't remember which towel is theirs.

752:

towels

I'm somewhat picky about towels. My wife more so. But we have a large collection of what we call the "dog" towels. Once a towels starts to unravel, have a nasty stain, whatever they move to the collection that gets used to clean the dogs when covered in mud or similar. And since we had 2 65+ pound dogs for 15 years and now our kids have 3 such dogs between them that stay over at times, they do get used. Especially when the dogs get on the scent of a Chipmunk or similar just after a rain. They got a big use last weekend when we had a water leak at the house my son just bought and were slopping up water till we got the flow stopped.

753:

Yeah, I have a couple of "good towels" that I use when I feel like it, but I'm very much a 30s shower, wipe then towel then into bed sort of person. Or in summer the "I'm wearing a towel, that's dressed" person :)

754:

Removing carpet in all its forms from my homes has been a long-term goal for me. All that remains is the carpet on the stairs, and its days are numbered.

As someone who got to exist in the building homes universe (my father build/remodeled as a second job) carpets are mostly a interim step in flooring.

This is a US perspective.

Back before the 50s most home floors were wood or some kinds of real/fake stone. And instead of carpets were "wall to wall" laid down or tack down. And could be removed to be cleaned. Many times by some kids in the family who got to beat the dust and dirt out of them in the back yard. One reason for the carpets was the main product to deal with wood floors was to either paint them (which could get scratched up) or wax them. And waxing was a total pain the ass and needed to be done every 2 to 6 weeks depending.

Then synthetic threads came along. (Oil anyone?) And thus was born permanent carpets that could be put down and last years with mostly only vacuuming. (Unless the college guys lived there.) And house wives rejoiced and the building trades almost totally switched to carpeting.

Then 20 years or so ago wood, vinyl, ceramic, etc... planking became a thing. And the downsides to carpeting were obvious (plus the craziness of every room in a different color wore out). Plus even if you did decide to put down real 5/4 oak or similar the finishes on the planking or that could be applied 5/4 stock was so good that waxing became a distant memory.

So now the industrial world is switching back away from carpeting. It mostly shows up now in apartments as cheap wall to wall can be ripped up and replaced every time a tenant leaves at a reasonable cost. Compared to repairing damaged hard flooring.

755:

There's also doubt about whether Kyrsten Sinema (Democratic Senator from Arizona) will support this new bill. Her opposition would kill it... :-(

756:

What stopped a housewife from the following epiphany "Why should I give a fuck what the neighbors think?"?

In 1940s-50s England?

The neighbours were your social circle. Moving away from where you grew up was uncommon — as in a move of 20 miles was "we'll never see you again!" territory. Everyone knew everyone else, and everyone talked. Social isolation is not pleasant.

It's easier to NKAF in a city, but in a small town or village it's much harder, as you simply don't have any other social options.

757:

People sometimes learn this the hard way. Move to a small town, screw someone over in what would be a relatively minor way in a city, within a week most of the town is shunning them.

A common one is "bargaining"... in a small town context you bargain socially, by asking for favours. "I can't afford that much, can you help me out". In the big city people commonly bargain either by haggling "this worthless garbage isn't worth paying for" or by explicit screwing. The classic is "can you deliver it" followed by "now you're here let's renegotiate the price".

Anything like that in a small town says "this person can't be trusted" at best, "is a complete arsehole" at worst.

758:

Move to a small town

Let's see. I grew up outside of a town of 30K. My dentist went to high school with my mother. (He was a terrible dentist.) My father taught high school for a year or two while my mother was there. (No one ever talked if there was an issue.) My 6th grade teacher (who was a teacher way back when my father taught) was the daughter of the man who financed my father's home building business. Maybe 1 in 5 of the teachers at my grade school went to our church. And so on....

My grandfather was born there in 1885. His grandfather moved there in 1824. Several times in the 1960s I ran into folks who went to grade school with my grandfather.

Everyone seemed to know everyone. Or knew of them.

759:

Hah, I have just been doing something that shows why cleaning some things on a schedule is a very good idea.

The waste trap in the shower.

Generally, the way you learn that it needs cleaning is when the water, instead of draining freely, pools on the shower floor, and drains slowly once you have turned the shower off. Then you remove the trap to clean it, and discover that you should really have cleaned it quite some time ago.

Not only is there far too much gunk in it, but it is no longer as effective in trapping the gunk as it should be, and some of it is getting through into the drain.

So cleaning it on a schedule is definitely a better idea.

JHomes

760:

Put in one of those plastic hair traps over the show drain. You might not need to ever clean out the under show trap again.

761:

"Always know where your towel is"

As opposed to carpets, rugs are sometimes a goo idea.
They can be removed, taken outside, beaten or even hosed down & then left to dry, draped over a stepladder. They can also be vacuum-cleaned, turned over & then have the other side given a good suck, as well.

762:

It's not a "waste trap", as in a trap for waste, it's just a trap located in the waste pipe. What it's there for is to maintain a water seal to prevent manky gases coming up out of the drain. Its effectiveness at trapping gunk is intended to be zero, and it's supposed to let all of it get into the drain.

Its effectiveness at stopping squadrons of great big green slugs coming up out of the drain was never part of the design criteria, and that appears to be close to zero also. Fortunately the slugs got bored with that game after a few days and gave up playing it.

763:

Carpets are a good idea also. Hard floor surfaces are for schools, prisons, barracks and similar institutions, where cheapness and durability are all that counts, the comfort of the inhabitants is disregarded, and no-one with the influence to alter things cares if they make the place cold, hard, echoey, unwelcoming and generally shit. For a house with any pretensions to being a Homely House the requirements are quite the opposite, and a floor covering which is soft, warm and acoustically absorbent is needed to meet them. Importing the floor surfacing practices of a school, prison or barrack imports some of the atmosphere too, which definitely isn't what you want. I don't think Tolkien actually mentions whether Elrond had carpets, but I bet he did.

764:

I simplify that system further. I have a bunch of clean clothes hanging where they were put to dry and a pile of dirty ones chucked in the corner. Clothes are gradually transferred from the clean stash to the dirty stash through being worn, then before the dirty pile gets too big to stuff in the washing machine it is so stuffed and the clothes then returned to the clean stash.

Drying takes place indoors, so the clothes don't have to be moved after it is complete. It takes less than a day at any time of year without any need for added heat.

There is a slower, unidirectional progression from clothes being used for wearing to being used for cleaning grease off things, and I too exhibit that sign of growing old which is to actually be pleased at getting socks and pants as presents. Pants, being made of cotton, are good for this, and the tendency of the crappy waist elastic to perish unreasonably fast ensures a steady supply so I'm not short of separate ones for hands and swarfy things. Socks not so much; when the holes get big enough they are well suited to the medical immobilisation of pigeons, but that's not a need that arises very often.

765:

For a house with any pretensions to being a Homely House the requirements are quite the opposite, and a floor covering which is soft, warm and acoustically absorbent is needed to meet them.

Not everyone agrees with your binary choice.

I prefer hardwoods. As does my wife. And many of the people I know.

If you have pets, especially at the beginning or end of life, you very likely don't want carpets or large rugs. Ditto people.

And many of us just prefer them. Especially with that European to the US thing of PEX circulation of hot water under them so rooms feel warmer than they are.

766:

In my head-cannon Elrond had beautiful oak floors, loving crafted from magnificent trees in the surrounding forest, which had been grown for the purpose for a century or two. These were covered with magnificent, large, very tasteful embroidered rugs in all the colors imaginable, which were beaten according to an Elven formula involving the seasons, phase of the moon, tides and the position of the Evenstar.

767:

Fitted carpets are an important safety feature for many people; not merely are they less slippery than most other flooring, good ones provide enough padding to reduce the risk of brain injury in a fall. The acoustic dampening is also important, but their main advantage in the UK is they are a lot warmer on the ground floor, and sometimes on others. That applies whether or not the ground floor is suspended or concrete. Remember that the average temperature is significantly higher in most of the USA than the UK, so the ground doesn't suck heat the way it does here.

768:

Remember that the average temperature is significantly higher in most of the USA than the UK, so the ground doesn't suck heat the way it does here.

Yes we have a frost line. Varies from north to south. New England it's at around 4 feet. Here where I am it is either 12 or 18 inches. Florida it's basically finger depth. Once you get to the "frost" line you're talking around 55F(12C) in most of the continental US. So in Florida the ground tends to heat the house most of the year. In the rest of the country it cools. But only on a slab. Otherwise vented crawl spaces tend to expose the floors to outside air temps. The key point is you put foundations down to below the frost line to avoid having the freeze thaw cycle heave the building.

But in more cases than not houses are not built on slabs. Florida yes. Lots of Texas yes. But once you start north, mostly no. So then it becomes an issue of insulation between the crawl space and floor. Back in time, none. Now 8 to 12 inches. Basements, which are more of a northern thing, are a bit different but still the ground temp doesn't really affect the floors much where people live. And if you want to use a basement for living space these have been built with solid insulation blanks between sleepers for the most part. But again, are we talking Maine or Florida?

As to a trip hazard, it can go both ways. After dealing with some elderly parents, me and friends would rather have solid floors than carpets. The shuffling gait of older folks makes them more likely to trip with carpets. IMNERHO

Isn't it fun to make universal design decisions when the geography varies so much?

To each their own.

769:

Shrug. I just don't like vacuuming (the noise) and find carpets of the 'wall to wall' type somewhat filthy by default. Kids and pets don't make that better.

I do like having 'rugs' in key places for foot comfort, but most of our house is hardwood (fir) flooring, and tiles in some places. 'Laminate' flooring in the kids rooms, after I removed the carpet (and my kid's allergies then diminished greatly).

I do own a couple of wet-dry 'shop-vac' type implements for heavier cleaning, which I use in the car and my workshops. In a pinch I can use it indoors as well. Aside from those I don't think I've ever spent actual money on a vacuum. I've had a couple given to me, and one was in the place when we moved in.

Any cursory reading on the environmental impact of 'carpets' is a bit depressing as well, though that applies to a lot of building materials.

770:

In the UK, most modern houses have a concrete floor, and some older ones have brick or tile, and the soil temperature under the house is essentially the annual average (which is 50 in the south and less in the north). You are also confusing fitted carpets with loose ones and rugs.

771:

Dunno "waste trap in the shower". Tubs (in the US) are installed with no getting under them. I keep a wire screen (sold for the purpose) in the drain.

However, the new kittens got into the bathroom, and like to play with the screen. We started closing the door all the time, because we don't know what they did... but the tub backed up. It took me a couple of days of work to snake out the line.

Have I mentioned that I LOATHE* plumbing?

772:

I thought of wood floors, but you could be right, and I'm thinking, of course, of Persian rugs (like we have in the living room).

773:

I've never lived in a house in Canada that didn't have a basement. Sometimes a cramped one that you could barely stand in, sometimes a full-sized one with a regular height ceiling, but all had basements.

The frost line up here is 4-8 feet deep, so you want sewer and water lines below that, and you also want the foundations below that too. If you're excavating that deeply you might as well clear dig out the space between the walls and have a basement.

In the days before air conditioning was common, basements were where you went to cool off. When I was a boy, we spent a lot of hot sticky summer days in the basement.

774:

Administrative note

I have been absent from the comments -- not monitoring, either, since roughly #450 -- because I'm now recovering from my first no-shit head cold since late 2019.

Zero COVID symptoms except the ones you can also file under "common cold"; LFT results all negative: duration comparable to a boring old-fashioned cold. Nothing to see here, move along now.

I forgot how much I hated colds. Especially the sleep deprivation that follows my nasal sinuses turning into a fire hydrant. And the dehydration/loss of appetite from producing buckets of clear slime like a hagfish. But I digress.

I suppose this is what we get now people have begun to forget there's a pandemic and mingle without masking. Gaah.

775:

Re: ' ... "so, you're against genengineering to prevent/cure diabetes? How about fibromyalgia...'

I haven't finished 'The Code Breaker' yet but one of the major and recurring arguments is about germline editing. The pro is 'of course if it will save lives/make people's lives better/improve healthcare' for all successive generations. The con is 'but we don't yet know the impact of each gene from fertilization through old age/death'.

These are not the only points/arguments in this debate - but proceed with due caution and heed sci/ethical guidance seems the overall accepted norm. At least among most of the developed nations. (FYI - Putin went on record at least 5 years ago that he's all for gene-engineering esp. soldiers.)

Back to AI ...

There's a new paper out on AI and this one talks about the potential impact of AI on economics - it's next on my to-read pile.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/sites/bartlett_public_purpose/files/final_governing_ai_in_public_interest_29_jul_0.pdf

Here's the Abstract - I've added spacing for readability:

'Governing artificial intelligence in the public interest

Mariana Mazzucato, Marietje Schaake, Seb Krier and Josh Entsminger

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being positioned as the defining general purpose technology of the early 21st century. Nations are racing to secure leadership in AI innovation capabilities, focusing on horizontal innovation policy to drive domestic technological competitiveness.

However, we argue global and national administrations need to be more focused on the direction of AI innovation.

We propose that a market-shaping approach can help align public and private interactions to drive AI towards advancing public interests.

We further propose that this requires a bolder global technology policy agenda to align and shape State and nonState actors’ relationships within AI development and diffusion towards public interest activities.

We conclude with a series of limited recommendations to help policymakers frame a market-shaping approach to AI governance.'

776:

I forgot how much I hated colds. Especially the sleep deprivation that follows my nasal sinuses turning into a fire hydrant. And the dehydration/loss of appetite from producing buckets of clear slime like a hagfish. But I digress.

But it is an important digression. I'm right there with you in terms of how I feel about colds.

777:

Charlie
I suppose this is what we get now people have begun to forget there's a pandemic and mingle without masking. - AND are getting too close together ....
Although I've been out-&-about a lot outside of "total lockdown" I've usually been careful to keep to more open spaces & away from too many people & spaced-out as far as possible - e.g. a no-crowded train, where I'm usually not sitting next to anyone ...
I suppose we all noticed that during lockdown-&-masking that the influenze simply wasn't? Funny, that.

SFR
Putin went on record at least 5 years ago that he's all for gene-engineering esp. soldiers. - arrgh - Sauron supermen shudder.
Putin is clearly very dangerously insane.

778:

771 - Er, fir (and pine and spruce) are soft woods, and generally considered unsuitable for construction except for plywood and indoor drywall.

776 - I get it; I was only diagnosed with Covid rather than a cold because the Senior Charge Nurse insisted I do a PCR test.

779:

Sauron supermen shudder. Putin is clearly very dangerously insane.

Not insane. Just evil.

Putin's actions (or words, in this case) sound insane to you because you view human being, including I hope Russians, as individuals with agency. But if you see human beings as resources, then it is entirely rational to do whatever maximizes their usefulness, even if it makes them drop dead the moment their usefulness ends. (Come to think of it, that's actually a bonus.)

It is the ultimate expression of Granny Weatherwax's definition of evil: "Treating people as things". But it is not insane.

780:

In the UK, the frost line is measured in inches, though it got to a foot or so in 1962/3 in some places. The problem is more often that the water table is only a foot or few down in winter ....

781:

My Mum's old house had tongue-and-groove Columbian pitch pine floors in the sitting room and the dining room. She had the floor sanded and re-varnished before we moved in during January 1963. The house was built in 1936; I don't think they were original because the other wood flooring (upstairs) was the more traditional sort with gaps between the boards.

782:

"Putin's actions (or words, in this case) sound insane to you because you view human being, including I hope Russians, as individuals with agency. But if you see human beings as resources, then it is entirely rational to do whatever maximizes their usefulness, even if it makes them drop dead the moment their usefulness ends. "

Sounds as he'd be ideal as a business school lecturer.

783:

Kardashev & Ilya
Katyn Forest - again? - WHo actually knows?
I know what I suspect, but zero proof.

784:

Zinc Gluconate. Really. Clinically proven, 20+ years ago. In the US, the brand name is "Cold-Eez", and all the drug stores have their own brand. If you take it when it's first coming on, it stops it in its tracks. Take it now, and you'll be over it in a couple-three days. I take it, and within half an hour, my nose stops running.... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28515951/

785:

"As resources"... you mean, like every corporation, that all have "human resource" departments, not "personnel" departments?

786:

Saw this in the news.

A BANK OF AMERICA executive stated that “we hope” working Americans will lose leverage in the labor market in a recent private memo obtained by The Intercept. Making predictions for clients about the U.S. economy over the next several years, the memo also noted that changes in the percentage of Americans seeking jobs “should help push up the unemployment rate.”regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

[The] recent, unusual moment of worker leverage made Bank of America quite anxious. The memo expresses distress about “a record tight labor market,” stating that “wage pressures are … going to be hard to reverse. While there may have been some one-off increases in some pockets of the labor market, the upward pressure extends to virtually every industry, income and skill level.”

The memo recalls a previous Bank of America memo in 2021, which it says warned of “very strong momentum in the labor market, suggesting the economy would not just hit but blow through full employment. Fast forward to today, and these trends have been worse than expected.”

https://theintercept.com/2022/07/29/bank-of-america-worker-conditions-worse/

One of Charlie's countrymen called it a couple of centuries ago:

In reality high profits tend much more to raise the price of work than high wages. If in the linen manufacture, for example, the wages of the different working people, the flax-dressers, the spinners, the weavers, etc., should, all of them, be advanced twopence a day; it would be necessary to heighten the price of a piece of linen only by a number of twopences equal to the number of people that had been employed about it, multiplied by the number of days during which they had been so employed. That part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into wages would, through all the different stages of the manufacture, rise only in arithmetical proportion to this rise of wages. But if the profits of all the different employers of those working people should be raised five per cent, that part of the price of the commodity which resolved itself into profit would, through all the different stages of the manufacture, rise in geometrical proportion to this rise of profit. The employer of the flaxdressers would in selling his flax require an additional five per cent upon the whole value of the materials and wages which he advanced to his workmen. The employer of the spinners would require an additional five per cent both upon the advanced price of the flax and upon the wages of the spinners. And the employer of the weavers would require a like five per cent both upon the advanced price of the linen yarn and upon the wages of the weavers. In raising the price of commodities the rise of wages operates in the same manner as simple interest does in the accumulation of debt. The rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

https://geolib.com/smith.adam/won1-09.html

787:

I suppose this is what we get now people have begun to forget there's a pandemic and mingle without masking. Gaah.

It is fascinating. I wonder when we'll get the first double-unlucky sap who gets monkepox and covid simultaneously, possibly from people at the same party?

There's a stark reminder here that disciplined sanitation (or disciplined anything, really) takes some real effort to achieve.

My puzzle is that I'm contemplating a 500 mile road trip up to the Bay Area this fall for a three day conference in a hotel. What are the risk factors going to be, and do I want to drive all day when I'm coming down with Covid? I'm trying to avoid flying because of climate change, but this decision's a bit ugly.

Oh well.

788:

"As resources"... you mean, like every corporation, that all have "human resource" departments, not "personnel" departments?

That did occur to me when I was writing my previous post

789:

My puzzle is that I'm contemplating a 500 mile road trip up to the Bay Area this fall for a three day conference in a hotel. What are the risk factors going to be, and do I want to drive all day when I'm coming down with Covid? I'm trying to avoid flying because of climate change, but this decision's a bit ugly.

Amtrak? 11 to 13 hours in business for $100 or so? Of course I don't know your dates. But an 8 hour drive can be a killer. Without Covid.

What is the environmental impact of an 8 hour drive vs. a 2 hour flight? But you have a Prius? And with the flight you still have to deal with getting to and from the airport. And of course so many such events are held where getting to and from the airports, train stations, whatever is a $40 or more cab ride as they just don't work with public transportation.

790:

Yes I am on the zinc. Your advice is about 5-10 years too late to be useful ...

791:

My puzzle is that I'm contemplating a 500 mile road trip up to the Bay Area this fall for a three day conference in a hotel. What are the risk factors going to be, and do I want to drive all day when I'm coming down with Covid? I'm trying to avoid flying because of climate change, but this decision's a bit ugly.

My take:

If you drive, you can avoid mingling with other people almost completely while traveling. But you may want a contingency plan for what to do if you come down with COVID at the hotel: your best bet would be to hole up in a motel room (with a front door leading to the outside air so you're not sharing with other visitors). This assumes "mild" COVID: after maybe 48-96 hours you'll be good to carry on driving but at a greatly reduced intensity (forget doing 500 miles in a day, or even 200 miles).

If you fly, the airliner cabin itself will be fairly safe (airliner aircon runs on bleed air from the engines at 200 celsius which is then chilled to breathing temperature; cabin air is changed every 3-5 minutes or so during flight), but the airport concourse is another matter. If you can travel with carry-on luggage only then that will help minimize your exposure. Also? Masking.

(I have a similar dilemma ahead as I'm going to Chicago for Worldcon in September. However, that's definitely flying time -- EDI-FRA, which is 3 hours, then FRA-ORD, which is more than 9 hours. On the other hand, we're flying Lufthansa: if Germany reintroduces a mask mandate there will be close to 100% observance at the airport and on the flight. So I'm hoping that happens.)

792:

The Amtrak Coast Starlight.

793:

if Germany reintroduces a mask mandate there will be close to 100% observance at the airport and on the flight

Lucky.

When I flew last fall there were a large number of maskless people at the airport, despite a mask mandate. Well, they had masks, but had pulled them down to 'drink' coffee at the rate of a sip every five minutes or so. The same thing happened on the airplane, including the chap beside me who stretched one small packet of nuts over 4+ hours.

794:

Welcome aboard the Amtrak Starlight ladies and gentlemen; please reset your calendars to 1930. ;-)

795:

Best wishes for a speedy recovery. Current condition sounds awful.

now people have begun to forget there's a pandemic and mingle without masking. Gaah.

I am sitting here delaying the moment when I leave to go shopping. There's a "farmers market" in the middle of Sydney that I buy fruit bread from. It'll be thronged with people, 99% of whom will not wear masks. I'm kinda thinking I will wear my full face respirator because fuck that... but I'm also thinking I don't really need fruit bread all that much. Sigh. I should just ride the other way and drop some stuff off at work.

On the gripping hand I really love how trivial and silly my problems are. The absolute best sort of problems: artisanal fruit bread, yes or no?

796:

Mask use in Sydney, including in areas where they're required, has dropped to negligible levels. So we're getting news articles like this that conclude... "nobody knows why it's all gone to shit".

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-28/australia-covid-response-from-good-to-bad/101277358

The good news is that I get covid shot #4 on Tuesday. Then the week after I can go to the dentist.

797:

I beg your fucking pardon? My late wife and the kid and I were on the Coast Starlight to and from Worldcon of 1993, and it was lovely.

798:

Re: 'But if you see human beings as resources, then it is entirely rational to do whatever maximizes their usefulness, ...'

This can be also interpreted as helping an individual to improve/gain mastery in a subject. Not sure that's such a bad idea esp. since mastery is portable from job/employer to job/employer.

Re: 777 - '... for gene-engineering esp. soldiers.)'

Damned - just read that DARPA is looking at this too!

Instead of soldiers, maybe these superpowers (nations) could work on ways to stop global warming. An over-muscled soldier or a soldier with built-in night vision ain't gonna be worth a damn if all the fields are flooded or burned and there's no food.

Maybe folks here could think up some enhancements that could help people survive global warming.

799:

Re: Putin / Evil / Mad
Just because he's evil, doesn't mean he's not mad as well.
In fact, one could argue that anyone that evil is automatically mad, as well, since such outlooks & actions are - usually - self-defeating.
That's what makes the Stalin / Adolf pairing so unusual - they were, both of them, simultaneously mad + evil ... yes/no?

800:

I suppose this is what we get now people have begun to forget there's a pandemic and mingle without masking. Gaah.

Yeah, it's sad. Here in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area, I see very few people masking any more. (Personally, I still double mask when indoors - and single mask outdoors.)

In an unrelated note, Portland is almost at the end of a 7-day heat wave, with temperatures hovering around 100° F., give or take a bit. That's not what we want here in the Pacific Northwest - especially after last year's record here of 116° (~ 47° C)! My afternoon indoor temperatures have been in the low 90s. Thank god for fans! (We also have local cooling centers, but I don't bother to go.)

801:

I suppose we all noticed that during lockdown-&-masking that the influenze simply wasn't? Funny, that.

Yeah. I guess saving about 60,000 lives a year here in the U.S. just isn't enough for people to continue wearing masks. Sad...

802:

Other contemplations about driving 500 miles versus flying 500 miles.

Apparently, it's somewhat more fuel efficient to fly long distances than to drive, and one site claimed the break-even point was around 500 miles.

The advantage to flying is that I can get to the meeting, trudge around a hotel (!) going to sessions for three days, and go home. It looks like if I book now, a plane trip might even be cheaper than gas for the car.

The major advantage to driving is that I can bug out and go elsewhere during or after the conference, while I'm hotel-bound if I fly. It is, however, relatively risky, especially if I try to get back while sick.

The train is more fuel efficient and cheaper, but slower than either (due to the route) and inflexible in destination and schedule. And I'm sure I'll want to be on the train while sick.

803:

I guess saving about 60,000 lives a year here in the U.S. just isn't enough for people to continue wearing masks.

Given that 45,000 people die from firearms every year, you already know many of your countrymen consider that magnitude of death rate acceptable. (And generally supporting the same party in both cases.)

804:

Given that 45,000 people die from firearms every year

"in America", I meant to say.

805:

Given that 45,000 people die from firearms every year, you already know many of your countrymen consider that magnitude of death rate acceptable.

Yeah. A lot of them don't seem to care about how many kids die either - that's for sure! :-(

806:

Heteromeles @ 789:

My puzzle is that I'm contemplating a 500 mile road trip up to the Bay Area this fall for a three day conference in a hotel. What are the risk factors going to be, and do I want to drive all day when I'm coming down with Covid? I'm trying to avoid flying because of climate change, but this decision's a bit ugly.

The risk of catching Covid while driving is fairly low compared to flying or taking a train - and I understand the risk of Covid on planes is supposed to be pretty low nowadays.

Five hundred miles is one all day drive, even now when I have to stop at EVERY rest area along the way, so leave the day before the conference so you can check in the evening before and plan to stay another night when the conference ends so you don't have to stop half way home.

My question would be "What are the conference organizers doing to minimize the risk that one of the attendees will infect the others?"

Maybe take some extra precautions to avoid exposure in the week BEFORE you leave for the conference to lower the risk that YOU are THAT attendee.

807:

Instead of soldiers, maybe these superpowers (nations) could work on ways to stop global warming. An over-muscled soldier or a soldier with built-in night vision ain't gonna be worth a damn if all the fields are flooded or burned and there's no food.

There is a lot of MilSF about gene-engineered soldiers, and yes usually they have super-strength, night vision (Sauron supermen being the most obvious example), sometimes a digestive system which puts hyena to shame, etc.

And for a long time I thought these stories are missing the obvious. If I were to design a perfect soldier with minimal amount of genetic changes, I would do something very different: Make discipline an innate trait

Every real-world military spends unholy number of hours on objectively useless tasks such as marching in formation and polishing boots, in order to build up and maintain discipline. They have to, because if you think of it, discipline is a completely unnatural thing. When a human is in immediate danger, it is NOT natural to continue with one's assigned task and to rely on one's buddies to keep one safe. The natural thing to do is fight-or-flight. In modern warfare it is worse than useless, indeed has been worse than useless since phalanx was invented.

So imagine otherwise biologically normal humans, who are born without fight-or-flight reflex, and are naturally perfectionist at whatever they are told to do, be it folding parachutes or cutting potatoes for the stew. Thousands of hours that "natural" soldiers spend working on their discipline, they can spend on actually learning lethal skills.

I had not seen any fiction with this kind of super-soldiers, probably because most MilSF readers cannot empathize with OCD perfectionists who lack sense of fear.

808:

That's fucking brilliant. Nicely reasoned!

809:

Maybe take some extra precautions to avoid exposure in the week BEFORE you leave for the conference to lower the risk that YOU are THAT attendee.

Ideally all attendees would self-test for Covid every day during the conference. Doubt it will happen, though...

810:

Heteromeles @ 804:

Other contemplations about driving 500 miles versus flying 500 miles.

Best I could figure from Google, the incubation period for Covid is around 5.6 days.

So if you're exposed ON the day you leave for the conference, (driving up the day before), you could probably stay the full conference and start back home the day after, and still be able to complete the trip before you develop symptoms.

I expect you're at greater risk of being exposed WHILE you're at the conference, so you could be back home for several days before you actually get sick.

If it was me (vaccinated & boosted) I'd just make sure I had a good fitting N95 mask and a couple of spares just in case something happened to the first one and not really worry about it.

Do you lose anything if you get there and find out the conference organizers don't have a clue keeping participants safe and decide to turn around and go back home?

811:

ilya187 @ 809:

So imagine otherwise biologically normal humans, who are born without fight-or-flight reflex, and are naturally perfectionist at whatever they are told to do, be it folding parachutes or cutting potatoes for the stew. Thousands of hours that "natural" soldiers spend working on their discipline, they can spend on actually learning lethal skills.

I had not seen any fiction with this kind of super-soldiers, probably because most MilSF readers cannot empathize with OCD perfectionists who lack sense of fear.

Maybe the YXtrang in Sharon Lee & Steve Miller's "Liaden Universe", especially M Jela and Cantra in the precursor novels "Crystal Soldier" and "Crystal Dragon".

812:

In the UK, most modern houses have a concrete floor, and some older ones have brick or tile, and the soil temperature under the house is essentially the annual average (which is 50 in the south and less in the north). You are also confusing fitted carpets with loose ones and rugs.

In Finland, I think most single houses are built with raised foundations (so there's an air gap below the floor and ground, mostly, and even if not, there's insulation. Hardwood or some plastic on concrete or wood, depending, is the usual flooring. I can't remember anybody I know who would have whole-floor carpeting.

This keeps the floors mostly warm even during the winter. Of course there needs to be some heating setup, though - as discussed previously in many places it's municipal heating, though for single houses electric and oil burning setups are common. Ground heat is gaining ground, apparently. (Pun unintended.)

I prefer a hardwood floor, with rugs. Even before children I would've found carpets annoying to keep clean, at least more annoying than our current setup. We live in a flat on the top floor, so cold ground is the least of our problems.

Obviously this now creates problems during the summer as everything is insulated against the cold winters and nobody thought of building for hot summers as there were none that hot. Many people by after-market AC systems, but for example our home is difficult for those, and the housing association (?) forbade any permanent systems. (They use a lot of electricity, especially when everybody has them.)

The one thing that strikes me as very odd about carpeting in the UK is the need to carpet bathrooms. Here we tile (or use plastic carpeting in) basically all bathrooms and even put a drain in the floor, and in the best cases tilt the floor slightly so that water flows into the drain. I've visited houses in the UK where the bathroom had a bath and then carpeting. I never figured out how to get out of the bath without wetting the floor and how the carpet was supposed to be dried after it got wet. Kind of a good way to get moisture problems, I'd think.

813:

I was going with the minimum 2-3 days from exposure to omicron.

Since I normally work at home, the risk of me infecting others is fairly minimal. As for the others? I think they're fairly typical Americans, with all that implies.

Anyway, I'm a four flusher with respect to vaccines, not that this matters a lot at the moment.

814:

Here we tile (or use plastic carpeting in) basically all bathrooms and even put a drain in the floor

In Australia I think the term for tiled-with-drain is "wet bathroom" and they are increasingly popular. If it's any consolation I've been similarly boggled, although my mind wasn't completely blown until I saw a carpeted laundry. In a proper house, even.

FWIW a common pattern here is that the back door enters into the laundry, which has a water-resistant floor and generally storage for boots and raincoats as well as all the other crud that comes in from the garden. Plus, obviously, a washing machine and a big tub (sink) for washing boots, paintbrushes and filthy children in. Some houses even have a second shower there. And/or a toilet.

Although that gets weird when people can't use the back door because someone is in the shower/toilet, so considerable thought is needed (I get the impression it's more a case of "there's plumbing here, let's add a toilet/shower"). One share house like that we had an ongoing issue with one person who would consistently forget to unlatch the back door after using, so we'd have to walk round to the front door, take boots off, go through house, unlatch back door, then reverse. Sigh.

815:

The other problem is that we already kind of know how the "genetically superior warrior caste" works, because the American military is the outgrowth of a system created to make sure the fcuking military aristocracy did not rise on American soil, considering the misery of the 17th Century wars.

My personal take is that the genetic superiority of warriors in general is about the same as the genetic superiority of corporate executives: mostly self-mythologizing.

That said, I completely agree that many elite soldiers are truly elite, but they are not uniformly so. But what makes an elite SEAL does not make an elite USSF Space Guardian, because doing a HALO insertion to physically assassinate someone is different than the supreme Management Fu needed to get a satellite from planning to orbit in a few months. There's no one phenotype that can or should do it all. Moreover, there is a lot of literal grunt work, and you don't want to have people pushing brooms in warehouses who are perfectly capable of doing long range recons in enemy territory. They'll be bored out of their skulls.

I'd suggest that, as with professional athletes, who come in a variety of body types, it's better to take a large population of wild-type humans, screen them for ability and desire (e.g. give them a job in the military and proficiency tests), and if necessary and with their consent, alter the non germline DNA of specific individuals, most likely to fix problems that would keep otherwise competent people from doing a job (like curing a gifted athlete of a nut allergy so he can be in spec ops), and possibly increasing abilities to some degree. My guess, though, is that gene hacks may show up more in things like making soldier's lungs less susceptible to flu or covid, rather than rejiggering their eyes to see in the dark.

816:

If it was me, I'd skip the conference.

If it was me and I couldn't skip the conference and I lived in the USA, I'd buy a 3M 6000 series half mask with the 7093 filters (P100) and the 604 exhalation valve filter. 6100 small, 6200 medium or 6300 large, Try them on if you can. I couldn't and I find the medium a touch small. Maybe the large is too large, but I don't know.

If I had to fly or take public transport I'd upgrade to the full face mask because of comfort wearing it for hours. Eat and drink lots before you get to the airport. Don't unmask indoors to eat and drink.

If you decide to go unmasked, take lots of photos for twitter and tag @friendlycovid19. They love to see scientists sharing diseases.

817:

So if you're exposed ON the day you leave for the conference, (driving up the day before), you could probably stay the full conference and start back home the day after, and still be able to complete the trip before you develop symptoms.

Yes, but during this time H could possibly be spreading Covid to the other people at the conference. Of course, everybody should be masked, but...

818:

Oh, PS, lots of airlines are refusing to let you fly with a mask on, or only allowing you to fly with a surgical mask (which is the same as no mask for all reasonable purposes).

If you're going to fly, get it in writing with a name of an airline employee on the letter confirming that all masks are OK. Common sense does not apply.

819:

In Australia I think the term for tiled-with-drain is "wet bathroom" and they are increasingly popular. If it's any consolation I've been similarly boggled, although my mind wasn't completely blown until I saw a carpeted laundry. In a proper house, even.

I'm just wondering here what other kind of bathrooms there are, if not "wet".

Of course we with our small living arrangements, and many flats, don't have a back door or a separate room for the utilities. The laundry machine is usually in the bathroom too. We have a balcony, which is slightly inconvenient to use as a backdoor.

However, even today many flats and houses have a sauna. Just the other day there was a news article about new small flats which have their kitchen on one wall of the entrance hallway. The flat was about 30 square meters, but also had a sauna. In my view this is insanity. Saunas in single houses, yes, and reservable saunas in the blocks of flats, yes - use it once a week, but saunas in small flats are just annoying. At least now it's better than 10-20 years ago, now you can get new flats without them.

820:

799 - Counting the one I entrain at, there are 14 stops over 15 miles between here and central Glasgow. The EMUs used for the service still manage an average 30mph on the slow service, rising to 36mph on a semi-fast slotted in between the slow trains. That's compatible with a lot of Amtraks that don't stop between real cities.

816 - UK it's normally just "wet room" (and most bath/shower rooms will have vinyl or tiled floors and tiled half height even full height walls.

821:

I'm just wondering here what other kind of bathrooms there are, if not "wet".

Dry, obviously :)

I think the contrast is with bathrooms that you're not supposed to hose down. At the extreme friends of mine have a literal bath-in-a-room that has had a shower head retrofitted. But the walls and floor are very definitely not waterproof, so there is a shower curtain that goes all the way round and hangs down into the bath to prevent water doesn't escape the actual bath. It's an off experience using that.

More commonly you get carpeted areas inside bathrooms, and wet carpet is no fun. Even many synthetic carpets are not designed to get damp, let alone wet. Often you can tell by the way the wooden floor that supports is is unusually bouncy.

822:

lots of airlines are refusing to let you fly with a mask on, or only allowing you to fly with a surgical mask

Where?

823:

Back when jacuzzi/spa pools were popular spa baths were also a thing. Friends had a fucking enormous bathroom* with a triangular bath that would fit 3 adults comfortably. But it was bath-depth, maybe 50cm at most. But it had a water heater and jets and bubbles and stuff too.

The real hassle was that the kids liked using it, so it was difficult to have an "adult bath" except very late at night and sometimes not even then. You'd be bathing away and a little head would poke around the door so a little voice could complain about being left out. Which was better than when they were up, because you would end up with one or two adults and several children, as well as occasionally a dog or an attempt to involve the cat, if not in the bath they were definitely in the bathroom.

(* guessing about 5m by 7m. There was a large-ish shower cubicle in one corner, the bath on a wee pedestal, a washing machine, a shelf for bath toys, etc)

825:

the japanese-style "unit bath" is a nice design - the whole floor is one piece with a fitted drain, and u shower before u get in the bath, so the bathwater can be reused (sadly our new place doesn't have a reheater like the old one did, and they're not easy to retrofit)

they really like their baths here tho

826:

Heteromeles @ 815:

Anyway, I'm a four flusher with respect to vaccines, not that this matters a lot at the moment.

I'm not sure that means what you think it means.

827:

Oh, I know. I'd quite like a proper Japanese-style bath but it's hard to justify in a granny flat. But ... if people can have a sauna in a tiny apartment maybe I can have a bath.

828:

Heteromeles @ 817:

So how does that relate to Ilya187's lament for the lack of MilSF about soldiers genetically engineered to be more disciplined as their "super power"?

I don't know how that would work or if it would create soldiers with no fear. I don't think "no fear" is necessarily a good thing. Truly fearless soldiers might lack a necessary instinct for self preservation ... banzai charges in the face of overwhelming machine-gun fire, IYKWIM.

And I also wonder if too much of the "OCD perfection" might come at the expense of initiative?

Maybe what's wanted is "super soldiers" who have a genetic predisposition towards unit cohesion - a pack animal gene - and the ability to overcome their fear?

829:

'I'm just wondering here what other kind of bathrooms there are, if not "wet". '

To give a serious answer. In a wet bathroom, the shower stall floor is contiguous with the rest of the room floor, probably a bit lower, but with a slope rather than a hard boundary, and the entire floor is intended to handle significant quantities of water. Quite often there is not even a shower stall proper, but just the space under the shower head.

Contrast with our bathroom, where the shower stall is a separate fixture with its own floor, and large amounts of water on the main floor are not a good idea.

JHomes.

830:

AlanD2 @ 819:

Yes, but during this time H could possibly be spreading Covid to the other people at the conference. Of course, everybody should be masked, but...

IF he's exposed & infected before he leaves home to attend the conference, his mode of travel is NOT going to make any difference to whether he's spreading Covid once he gets there ...

Seems to me 'H' expressed two concerns:
Being exposed to Covid on the trip up to the conference and
Having symptoms develop when he's half-way home from the conference and not wanting to drive while he feels like shit.

I suggest traveling by private automobile poses the LEAST RISK of him becoming infected while traveling TO the conference.

I'm not suggesting 'H' should be careless about exposing himself or others, merely that driving there and back won't increase the risk.

Even if he's infected on the day he leaves the house, or if he's infected the first day of the conference, given the average incubation period, he's unlikely to experience symptoms for several days, so he shouldn't have to worry about getting sick before he can drive home.

831:

Seems to be mostly the USA.

American Air refusing to let a pax wear an elastomeric while there was no mask mandate

https://mobile.twitter.com/AmericanAir/status/1548323856296714244

Delta refusing to allow a pax wear an elastomeric that filtered the exhaust while there were no mask mandates.

https://mobile.twitter.com/MsJulieSLam/status/1545820058710147072

TSA forcing pax to remove elastomeric mask.

https://mobile.twitter.com/MsJulieSLam/status/1552696608885772288

832:

OTOH, you get "wet rooms" like some of the ones designed by "businessmen" in the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital where the slope runs away from the drain, with the result that you can have a shower which runs out of a shower room, into the patient's bedroom, and hence into the ward corridor. I found out about this when there was a crash sound outside, where the nurses had dealt with the flood by upending a dirty linen cart on it!

833:

Carpeting bathrooms is moronic. We had that when we moved in and I insisted we replaced it by lino (tiles were not feasible) - two children later, we were certain it was the right decision. At present, it's right for other reasons (don't ask, but think side effects of chemotherapy), in addition to your splashing effect (which applies as much for in-bath showers).

834:

The rule being enforced is "no masks with valves". That rule made sense when everyone was masked and the goal was to prevent spread from people who might be infected.

Makes no sense now when people can be unmasked, but given that most workers have probably been disciplined for daring to think I can see the urge to be rigid in self-protection. Also, makes a good excuse to hassle people who are wearing masks without risk of being disciplined, if the worker is so inclined.

Given how political mask-wearing has become, I can see maskless people making complaints about someone wearing a valved mask, on the grounds that they "feel unsafe", just to force them to remove it.

835:

Maybe. Except the AA corporate response was only medical masks are allowed (which it was) and the advice given on the day was correct, no mention of valves. The Delta flight it was a mask without an unfiltered exhaust.

Really just added the advice to go with my advice that an elastomeric gives longer protection, that some staff are misinformed/bullies/whack-jobs and a letter from the airline might be needed to avoid an altercation. Some pax were thrown off the flight.

Similar things also happening at NHS hospitals. People being refused treatment unless they remove their mask.

837:

Remember when everyone was wearing cloth masks and surgical masks were a (very scarce) improvement?

"Take off your single-layer cloth mask and wear this surgical mask" makes sense as a policy.

The problem is no one has updated the policy for the easy availability of better masks. Or the people enforcing the policy aren't aware it's been updated.

Most people still haven't adjusted to the knowledge that Covid is airborne. Look at how long "enhanced cleaning" was enforced while mask mandates were ignored. I'm not surprised that policies haven't kept up.

Zombie policies are quite normal in a bureaucracy. Consider 'airline security' for other examples.

838:

'airline security' is one of the great oxymorons of our time surely?

839:

It's worse than that. Especially in the UK but also elsewhere, airports and airlines are given exemption from most civil rights legislation, and that results in widespread bullying by their staff, especially of partially or wholly disabled people. I have suffered from that quite a lot. The USA is a bit better, but some airlines have a loathesome reputation for such behaviour (AA being one of them).

840:

I normally wear a FFP2 mask, and have been into hospitals a lot recently; I have rarely been asked to replace my mask, each time for good reason. The reason that some hospitals have a blanket policy is that there are a lot of useless apparently FFP2 or better masks out there, and the door staff can't be expected to recognise the good from bad. I agree that it's a bad policy, but it's not insane.

841:

Even if he's infected on the day he leaves the house, or if he's infected the first day of the conference, given the average incubation period, he's unlikely to experience symptoms for several days, so he shouldn't have to worry about getting sick before he can drive home.

Again, the average incubation period for BA2 seems to be closer to 3 days. Anyway, the principle here is plan for the worst, not the average. On that principle, you have to assume that you may be unfit to travel 2-3 days after exposure, and be stuck wherever for a week or two.

842:

"I've visited houses in the UK where the bathroom had a bath and then carpeting. I never figured out how to get out of the bath without wetting the floor and how the carpet was supposed to be dried after it got wet. Kind of a good way to get moisture problems, I'd think."

I've lived in them. In one case there was a thick fluffy mat to intercept the first two or three especially wet footprints you leave immediately on getting out, in the other there wasn't. It didn't seem to make any difference. Compared with all the condensation running down the walls from the room being full of steam off the bath, a few footprints isn't much extra, and in neither case were there moisture problems.

The bathroom in this place has lino, that (or whatever fancy-arsed functional equivalent is currently fashionable) being the most common option. But it's also much too small to swing a towel in, so I end up going out onto the landing (carpeted) to dry myself anyway. The footprints on the carpet disappear within half an hour or so.

I habitually give each leg a good shake over the bath to get rid of the worst of the water before I put it on the floor, anyway. I find this more important with lino/etc flooring, to avoid making it too slippery, especially in my tiny bathroom where there is barely space to clamber out of the bath and the process involves the foot on the floor having to exert significant lateral thrust.

Bathrooms where the whole room is waterproof are not common. I've worked in one which was a conversion from a non-bathroom on the ground floor to adapt the house for a disabled occupant (that or just having more money than sense being the usual reasons for installing them). Weird place, felt just like a swimming pool changing room due to being made using all the same materials. Drain in the middle of the floor and water allowed to just squirt into the room with no attempt to confine it to any kind of shower cubicle. The idea was of course that they could go in there still in their wheelchair and deal with the awkwardness of washing without making things even more awkward by having to worry about where the water went. I didn't see the wheelchair, so I don't know what was done to make that waterproof. What did bother me was that it was quite a large room with very little to grab on to and every surface was extremely hard; the chance of them falling over and bashing their head severely on the floor didn't seem to have been adequately considered.

843:

There is a lot of MilSF about gene-engineered soldiers, and yes usually they have super-strength, night vision (Sauron supermen being the most obvious example), sometimes a digestive system which puts hyena to shame, etc.

It seems likely to me that gene-engineered super-soldiers are only going to come from dictatorships/monarchies that place a low premium on individual rights/freedoms and, indeed, on human life: after all creating them implies treating humans as livestock. So we can expect other humans-as-livestock traits to feature in such societies. (Think chattel slavery, women as baby factories, brutal policing/enforcement of class barriers, a de-facto or actual aristocracy, and so on.)

Corollary: nobody gives a shit if the super-soldiers are in good health after their term of service, or indeed if they're adults when they serve -- child soldiers are more malleable, after all.

So I'd expect an emphasis on lots of muscle and bone density, lack of empathy, brutal discipline to keep the rage outbursts under control (the exact opposite of "no fight-or-flight reflex" -- you want them on a hair trigger so they respond promptly and aggressively to threats), and maybe a requirement for artificial dietary supplements so they can't desert without starving to death. (Think in terms of Vitamin C: humans and guinea pigs are the only mammals that don't produce their own. If I was designing super-soldiers I'd build in a dependency on a synthetic nucleic acid so that if they don't get their supplement every week their cells not-so-slowly lose the ability to divide, giving rise to symptoms like radiation sickness until they die after 3-6 months.)

Anyway: a super-soldier with these traits is going to be fast and violent, but by the time they're 25-35 their knee and hip joints will be wearing out and they'll probably be getting into early-onset dementia due to being kick-boxed in the head too often in training.

Remember: genetic modification means they don't have to survive long enough to have children, just to kill the other side's ...

844:

I agree that it doesn't make much difference to moisture problems if there is adequate ventilation; where there isn't, you can have more trouble than with a non-absorbant flooring. But that's not the real downside.

845:

Agreed on most of that.

I keep trying to imagine how a child who's genetically incapable of fear survives past 3, given how normal children deal with that phase of their lives. Or their teens. How many of them would end up in prison for thrill killings, assaults, or rape, for instance? Or they could end up like the Murderbot, unafraid to tell their bosses that they're not interested in soldiering, they just want to do drugs and watch videos because it's more fun.

And let's not forget the minimum 20 year lead time (proof the genetics, cook up the gametes, implant the zygotes, jitter about doing it in a state with no abortion if something goes wrong, raise the resulting experimental subject to 18 so they can "voluntarily enlist" as required on age of consent....).

Unit cohesion? Purportedly that's regulated by oxytocin, vasopressin, opioids, and some other, lesser-known hormones. Have fun looking that up. To be fair, these regulate pair bonding, but you're trying to do something similar with unit cohesion.

846:

I've ridden in a preserved Gresley first on the SVR. I would much rather have that to do 400 miles between London and Scotland in than anything on the rails today.

847:

I think Timothy Zahn got a lot of this with his Cobra stories back in the 1980s and 90s.

Personally, I wouldn't limit a super-soldier on diet, because warfare is synonymous with supply line snafus.

The other problem is that drones do much of this, faster and cheaper. What the brass want at this point are warfighting systems that will consistently follow the rules of engagement, whatever they are. Given the way biological systems (the result of 4 billion years of spaghetti programming followed by natural selection) work, it's easier to do this with programming. And not a lot of people mourn when a drone goes down.

The other big problem with super soldiers is that, in addition to fighting World War 3 (after the nukes light up?), much of what soldiers do is disaster relief and security, because military logistics does pretty well at schlepping shit into places that have been trashed. Why would you want to give that class of jobs to hair-trigger killers? This need is only going to increase for the next few centuries.

Remember, what a state needs to do to continue to exist isn't primarily to exert violence against all potential rivals. Rather, it's to convince it's citizens that it's not worth their time either leaving or developing something better. It does this through a mix of consistency (you'll have the same rights tomorrow that you do today), resource supplies (being English or American isn't a death sentence), and, of course, a monopoly on violence. Militaries play a role in all three, directly or indirectly. If a nation's military goal is, say, to be the security force that guarantees the nation's oil and water supplies against coercion or violence, you don't necessarily want hair-trigger killers on that guard duty.

848:

AA

Not arguing for or against this specific mask rule.

Gate agents at major airlines have an unreal job. 50 to 300 people to get onto an airplane in 30 minutes. And the number of details they are to check for is frigging long. So at times they make mistakes. And at times customers are unreasonable. And at times life just sucks. But dealing with a passenger who wants to debate just what kind of sneaker they are wearing is legit (I'm sure some have shown up with swim fins) can wreak a boarding. And does. Until a few years ago I flew 20 times a year, my wife more and we got to see all kinds of crazy at the gates. And 99% of the time the passenger was being a total jerk. Not the gate agent.

My wife spent 30+ years with an airline (in the back offices) and wonders if she could have handled the crap the gate agents and flight attendants have to deal with.

849:

One situation I don't know if MilSF has explored is the idea of somatic gene fixing. Basically, if you enter the military and pass the right tests, they'll fix all your major genetic diseases. All you have to do is sign up for a 20 year hitch and do a certain class of military jobs to justify the investment.

Would you do it? What could possibly go wrong?

850:

The one thing that strikes me as very odd about carpeting in the UK is the need to carpet bathrooms.

Only crazy people do that.

It's in no way mandatory, tiles or linoleum are perfectly acceptable and far more sensible: if you want the feel of fur under your feet, you just get a bath mat (carpet-like but with a rubberized/grippy underside and designed to go through the washing machine and/or drier when it gets dirty).

851:

Thinking about SFF and genetically engineered super soldiers, you could (perhaps) do worse than the following elevator pitch:

"They created the perfect killing machine...and ordered him to feed 30,000 refugees. Welcome to the 22nd Century."

852:

Thinking about it, your best bet might be to hire a car one-way and drive to the conference, then fly home (also one way). So: physically isolated from other folks on outbound travel, and get home as rapidly as possible afterwards.

Although this is probably over-thinking it. (And expensive.)

853:

Oh, absolutely agree with all of that; you will note that the society I was describing was nasty and brutal, probably demographics resembling the 19th century at best (pre stage III/IV demographic transition for sure). Possible exception for the ruling class, everybody else can suck up a 20% infant mortality rate and public executions.

Here in the real world, genetically-engineered super-soldiers are far less useful than simply knowing your volunteers and channeling them into the most appropriate specialities and providing medical/training support where necessary. You'll still get enough super-soldier jocks for your special forces, but armies need truck drivers, crane operators, mechanics, and cooks as well.

854:

Probably what I will do is to sign up for the conference, because I sort of need to do that.

About 3-4 weeks prior, my wife the medical professional and I will be looking at what the Covid trends are, because the virus tends to do multi-month waves. If we're coming off a peak, I'll probably go. If a new variant ("Centaurus", perhaps) is rising, I'll probably beg off. Which way I travel depends on what else is going on, but that still gives me room to buy a plane ticket.

There are other factors: for example, if there's a major Santa Ana wind event with associated red flag warnings, there's no way I'm going, because part of my job is evacuating cats and heirlooms if a fire comes this way.

855:

Basically, if you enter the military and pass the right tests, they'll fix all your major genetic diseases. All you have to do is sign up for a 20 year hitch and do a certain class of military jobs to justify the investment.

See also Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Space opera, so alien super-science is available, but basically: minimum enlistment age is 70, if you enlist you're in for the long haul but they scan you and download your mind into a performance-enhanced, optimized clone of your original fleshbag before they send you off to fight.

(The result is an army full of soldiers who are remarkably sober about risk-taking and disinclined to pull "watch this, bro!!" stunts with chainsaws, not to say sensible. Until plot complications ensue, because it's sort of the antithesis of the "young man finding himself" school of MilSF exemplified by Starship Troopers (book not movie).)

856:

Yeah, that was my take on the last SF convention I was planning to attend. Then I came down with COVID a week beforehand and it went out of the window anyway (along with a gig I'd bought tickets to back in 2019 and really wanted to go to, in the same city the same weekend).

I will be really pissed if I end up missing worldcon for the same reason: the hotel room is cancellable and I can reschedule and probably refund the flights (minus a fee), but I'm on the program and I have business meetings to fit in and I am not optimistic about visiting the USA again after February 2025 if the wrong candidate wins the presidential election.

857:

As you indicate, super-grunts are ideal for terrorising dissident or invaded populations, but not so good for fighting against a competent opponent's army. Nor even as an occupying force (internally or externally) if you want useful production out of the population.

Even if we had a clue how, installing loyalty/obedience has the effect of reducing initiative/intelligence. The correlation is very obvious in our existing populations.

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/lyndon_b_johnson_137074

858:

I think I wore out my copy of Old Man's War, so it's safe to say I'm familiar with it.

What I'm thinking of instead is the US version, where people go into the military to get money for school. The best example, financially, is a veterinary student I knew who was going into the Army once she got her DVM. Vet school costs about the same as medical school, but you make median wage when you get out, so doing four years treating guard dogs, Marine mules, and Navy sea lions isn't a bad idea, because the Army pays for your education.

Crank that up to someone who's highly functional, but with a life-shortening genetic predisposition, say to diabetes cystic fibrosis, or similar. They can get it fixed by enlisting, but then they have to work at a pay grade that pays off the cost of the procedure.

If they fail out, it's like getting a military scholarship to go to college, but failing college: you've still got to serve your hitch, AND you've got to pay off the debt you incurred by failing out.

If you're 18 (not 70!), do you know enough to make that choice and live with the consequences?

859:

Heteromeles @ 843:

Again, the average incubation period for BA2 seems to be closer to 3 days. Anyway, the principle here is plan for the worst, not the average. On that principle, you have to assume that you may be unfit to travel 2-3 days after exposure, and be stuck wherever for a week or two.

Seems to me your greatest risk of infection is from the conference itself. If you're stuck, you're stuck.

Don't see how the chosen mode of travel factors in to that - other than how much exposure you risk during the trip up to the conference.

Driving still seems to me to offer the least risk. Just don't pick up any hitch-hikers if they're not wearing a mask.

860:

One situation I don't know if MilSF has explored is the idea of somatic gene fixing. Basically, if you enter the military and pass the right tests, they'll fix all your major genetic diseases. All you have to do is sign up for a 20 year hitch and do a certain class of military jobs to justify the investment.

What immediately came to my mind are "Old Man's War" series by John Scalzi and "Armageddon Inheritance" series by John Weber, but neither of them is quite what you described. In "Armageddon Inheritance" soldiers are not modified genetically; all their mods are cybernetic implants. Whereas "Old Man's War" involves mind uploading into yes, superfast and super-omnivorous (can live on rotting garbage) variation of Homo sapiens, but when your term ends, your mind is uploaded back to Human version 1.0 body. These super-soldiers are sterile, BTW.

861:

And expensive

Unless you catch a deal for a trip of this distance the drop fee can be $400-$500 or more. I rented a cargo van for an 1100 mile move and it was cheaper to rent it for a week with unlimited mileage doing a round trip than do a one way. Like $400 vs. $1300.

I once got a rental in Albuquerque and returned it to Phoenix for no drop fee but that was because of an inventory re-balance they needed.

862:

Driving still seems to me to offer the least risk. Just don't pick up any hitch-hikers if they're not wearing a mask

Disease-wise, you're right.

The trade-off is spending 12+ hours on the road, most of which is on the I-5 through the Central Valley (alternating stretches of high speed and gridlock in a part of the country that's as flat as FLorida or southern Illinois. Only less scenic), followed by a brisk scream through the mountains (the Grapevine) and then the great joy of traversing LA, albeit on a Sunday afternoon, so the traffic's not too bad until I hit the beaches in San Diego and get gridlocked again.

Doing that when I'm spiking a fever? That's a recipe for getting into an accident.

863:

"armies need truck drivers, crane operators, mechanics, and cooks as well."

And they tend to greatly outnumber the ones who actually shoot guns at people.

I'd have thought the most useful genetic enhancements for soldiers would not be the flashy and exciting ones, but things like enhanced capacity to tolerate boredom, resistance to festering sores and having your feet fall off and other consequences of being constantly wet for weeks on end, a cast iron stomach, etc.

864:

Heteromeles @ 847:

Unit cohesion? Purportedly that's regulated by oxytocin, vasopressin, opioids, and some other, lesser-known hormones. Have fun looking that up. To be fair, these regulate pair bonding, but you're trying to do something similar with unit cohesion.

I don't need to look it up. I've experienced it. Remember I was once a platoon sergeant. "Unit cohesion" was my J.O.B. And it wasn't necessary for me to know the exact chemical processes that were going on inside the soldiers assigned to my platoon for me to do that job.

But two things ... we're talking about FICTION, so the technical details of achieving "super soldiers" gene-engineered for unit cohesion doesn't much matter. In fiction it can be achieved by introducing some quantity of handwavium.

And the usual trope I've encountered for achieving such "super soldiers" is to "splice in wolf genes". Makes said "super soldiers" more aggressive, more fearless and gives them some kind of instinctive "pack loyalty" (possibly pheromone based?)

But don't get too deep into the weeds about it. Ilya187 lamented the lack of MilSF featuring "super soldiers" where the super power was greater discipline that asserts itself in their makeup (implying less training would be required).

I offered up an instance of fiction where I thought exactly that kind of "super soldier" was featured.

865:

Heteromeles @ 860:

Eighteen year olds have been making uninformed choices for millennia.

866:

a part of the country that's as flat as FLorida or southern Illinois.

Southern Illinois isn't THAT flat. Says he who drove through the area at various times while growing up. Of course my idea of southern IL is Cairo or Metropolis. Maybe up to Carbondale.

But I-5 up the central valley is almost but not quite as boring as the drive headed west toward Monument Valley.

867:

I've done a comfortable 8 hours in a Pendolino (would have been more like 5 if some little scrote hadn't brought down the WCML overheads at Bellshill). That's the 1930s bit; just how slow the Amtrac schedules are.

868:

Something that is usually missed is that we are ALREADY a species that can live on most forms of rotting food - provided that our gut is trained for it. That includes meat (read up how feathered game was served a century or so ago in the UK). Yes, we are up there with rats, Didelphis and a handful of other species in terms of the range of foods we can live on. Genetic modification to allow the synthesis of vitamins (especially C) would be far more useful.

869:

I don't need to look it up. I've experienced it. Remember I was once a platoon sergeant. "Unit cohesion" was my J.O.B. And it wasn't necessary for me to know the exact chemical processes that were going on inside the soldiers assigned to my platoon for me to do that job.

I remember your history, actually.

I was trying to give you something to chuckle about, in a really nerdish way. Just for your own edification, look up the wikipedia section on the psychological effects of oxytocin, and imagine what would happen if it was up-regulated (meaning more of it was present) in some experimental super-soldiers. You'd almost certainly get a really cohesive unit. But that's just the beginning.

As a science fiction exercise, imagine some clueless ijit--me, for example--hypothesizing that if you just cranked up the release of this one little hormone, you'd get great unit cohesion without all the mess of basic training. And in the story they do it, perhaps with some sort of CRISPR gene silencing in the brains of the volunteers. And someone sergeant--someone like you?--gets to turn the experimental subjects into soldiers. But first you go read up about oxytocin...

870:

Heteromeles @ 864:

Disease-wise, you're right.

Pull someone's leg and it falls right off. Do y'all have no sense of humor what-so-ever?

Given your own timetable, IF you get infected the very first day of the conference, you won't BE driving with a fever, you'll be holed up somewhere in a hotel room with a case of tissues and a jumbo size tube of Ivermectin.**

IF you get infected on the other two days, you should be able to get home with no problem BEFORE the fever starts ... especially if you say "Fuck it, I'm outta' here!" and di-di-mau the first time someone in the room coughs.

Maybe ZOOM?

** or Paxlovid - whichever turns your screws.

871:

The hard part with food isn't what people CAN eat, because I agree with you, there are many choices. Instead, it's what people ARE WILLING TO eat. Training soldiers to eat anything is part of SERE training, and most troops don't get it.

As a semi-relevant tangent, ACOUP is currently running a series on the logistics of classical and medieval armies (link to the essay on foraging). It's interesting stuff, although the trigger warning given is thoroughly earned.

Going a bit further tangentially, there's possibly some interesting Military Cli-Fi to be written about military logistics as climate change heats up and we do everything with renewable energy. Imagine modern military logistics becoming more Roman (a la ACOUP) to see what I mean.

872:

I can imagine the Russian army as likely to be particularly interested in a quick fix for unit cohesion, and I see excellent potential for making Putin's head explode.

For added fun and games chuck in some "wolf genes" as well, and every time he visits a unit they'll all be trying to shag his leg.

873:

But first you go read up about oxytocin...

Well, up-regulated oxytocin is presumably going to be really bad for pregnant women. And I'm not sure it's going to be easy to upregulate oxytocin without side effects; for example, what about prolactin regulation? I can't see the older and more conservative military brass approving the program if all their male super-soldiers develop functional breasts and occasionally lactate.

874:

Question to USAns about Paxlovid

Is it available from pharmacies in the US without a prescription, or is a prescription required?

(Asking b/c I will be in the USA in the first half of next month. In the UK it's prescription-only, and you can't get it without a positive PCR test, and you can't get a PCR test with a positive LFT (rapid) test first, and guess what: omicron often doesn't deliver a positive test at all, and certainly not early enough to get started on Paxlovid early enough to help.)

875:

Re: 'But first you go read up about oxytocin...'

And for a reality check, read up on BDNF next. Lots of ties/research to PTSD.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5742797/

Ilya187:

Do your soldiers know that the genetic treatment they'll be given will turn them into bio-robots/slaves? [Informed consent]

Are the commanders all consistently a helluva brighter than their soldiers and won't give stupid orders? Also, I imagine that real combat situations means that anything can happen therefore quick assessment and appropriate measured reaction is vital.

If there's only person in the fighting unit that knows all of the plan and can order the unit members it's likely that the enemy will find out and make efforts to kill that person. Et voila! - the entire unit is useless, and may even starve to death because they're waiting for orders.

PTSD - currently depending on the military branch, anywhere from 5% to 25% of veterans have been diagnosed with PTSD. The actual incidence could be higher because not all vets have access to screening or want to be screened for this condition. The brain/nervous system is extremely complex and like the rest of the body there's some sort of individualized Goldilocks zone. And males tend to continue to physiologically and neurologically mature/develop up to age 25 or so. So what happens if the 18 or 19 year old recruit tests okay, gets some genetic neuro-enhancement to make him more apt to obey orders, sees some really evil fighting (children/civilians tortured/killed), gets seriously injured that he needs to undergo medical treatment - and finds out he can't either because the whatever meds needed are contraindicated for this genetic change OR all of the memories where he's obeyed orders to kill/maim flood back?

Charlie - I agree that currently it looks like the military is more likely going to see action in climate crises (be sent to rescue civilians) but given that Putin keeps reneging on every agreement, I'm not betting against NATO (esp. US) forces having to go into battle.

JBS - as the veteran, how does the above jibe with your experience?

Heteromeles - Omicron has a faster incubation, so if at all possible, having lots of test strips and maybe some Paxlovid with you just in case. However, as your SO probably mentioned to you, there's also such a thing as Paxlovid rebound, i.e.,the Paxlovid stops the COVID, reduces symptoms for as long as you're taking it, but the symptoms rebound once you stop the Paxlovid. I don't recall when the rebound usually kicks in or how long it lasts. (TWiV - Daniel Griffin MD has mentioned this on his COVID clinical update a few times including what is -- for now -- medically/ethically allowable. Vincent had to travel to Switzerland a few weeks ago and asked him about this.)

876:

Precisely. It's almost entirely a cultural issue.

877:

Paxlovid is prescription only. Someone I know got it based on a home test and a phone call with their doctor.

878:

"US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design"

On Friday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that it would be issuing a certification to a new nuclear reactor design, making it just the seventh that has been approved for use in the US. But in some ways, it's a first: the design, from a company called NuScale, is a small modular reactor that can be constructed at a central facility and then moved to the site where it will be operated.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/us-regulators-will-certify-first-small-nuclear-reactor-design/

879:

So does a military veterinarian treat Navy SEALS? Heat-crushed bored minds need to know.

880:

Is it available from pharmacies in the US without a prescription, or is a prescription required?

"The FDA recently authorized pharmacists to prescribe Paxlovid to eligible patients who test positive for COVID-19."

"To get a Paxlovid prescription from a pharmacist, patients must be able to connect the pharmacist to a physician to discuss their medical history, or present recent kidney and liver function tests to be sure the drug is safe for them."

"Patients will also have to list and review all medications, including over-the-counter products they take, to be sure no dangerous interactions could occur."

So no prescription from a doctor needed, but you might have trouble getting a pharmacist to talk to your physician... :-/ Taking recent kidney and liver function test results with you might be an option.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/how-to-get-paxlovid-without-seeing-a-doctor-5649541

881:

enhanced capacity to tolerate boredom

Not to mention the superhuman bladder control.

882:

David L said: Gate agents at major airlines

Pax got past gate agents, it was cabin crew that decided to make them remove a medical device with all the authority that cabin crew wield in flight.

If you read the tweet it's AA's official spokesperson with all the time in the world, not some harassed gate agent with a queue.

Whatever their reasoning or mistake or bullying or ableism or right wing nut job, or just following orders was, doesn't change my main point: if you want to take a medical device on a plane, get it in writing that you can before you go. And of course be mentally prepared that the staff will ignore the paper you're waving at them and force you to do as you're told anyway.

883:

Do your soldiers know that the genetic treatment they'll be given will turn them into bio-robots/slaves? [Informed consent]

I am sure the answer is no, but this applies equally to all science-fictional gene-modified soldiers. I agree with Charlie @845 -- in practice, such thing could only happen in a society which ultimately sees its people as resources. I am not advocating such a society; I am only commenting on the lack of imagination of most SF writers who explore "genetically modified soldier" concept.

Incidentally, most if not all such writers seem to share Charlie's opinion -- gene-modified soldiers are almost always "bad guys" and usually are subservient to the state. Draka (by S.M. Stirling) are a pretty good example: Draka citizens are greatly privileged compared to the serfs, but ultimately are not any more free. And the first generation of Homo drakensis certainly did not ask to be made that way. (I don't remember the books mentioning it, but no doubt the procedure was first tested on serfs, and Draka concept of "human trials" is very different from ours.)

884:

"...and maybe a requirement for artificial dietary supplements so they can't desert without starving to death."

Welcome to Deep Space Nine.

885:

superhuman bladder control.

That can be trained. A friend was catheterised for way too long and afterwards had to do a period of bladder training. I think I'm likely at the other end because I habitually sit in front of the computer until I really have to get up. So the whole "mammals pee for 20s" doesn't apply, not even close. Which is handy when I'm camping or riding in hot weather, because I can keep drinking until eventually I dump a litre of disturbingly yellow pee (think energy drink). When I'm riding 6-8 hours a day for months at a time I have the opportunity to play with ideas like this. And experiment to find out how long, how much, how I feel and so on, with the goal being "yellow, but not burning, and not too uncomfortable".

Camping it's just not having to get out of the hammock in the night, mostly. Although weirdly drinking half a litre of herbal tea before bedtime means I get up at least twice in the night to pee... more than 500ml both times. Must be that whole "CO2 + H2O" exhaust stuff.

886:

https://electricsheepcomix.com/spiders/

The art's too small for the modern web, but I think Patrick's got you covered. I wish that guy would finish more projects!

887:

I don't like yellow. I find a noticeably yellow stream is indicative of incipient dehydration. (Dunno about in bulk because I rarely get a chance to observe that.)

888:

airline term for passenger(s)

889:

Passengers get referred to as "cheeks in seats" as internal slang at times.

890:

Is it available from pharmacies in the US without a prescription, or is a prescription required?

Sort of.

From Widipedia: The United States Department of Health and Human Services set up at least 2,200 sites where people could receive Paxlovid as soon as they test positive for the virus, including pharmacies, community health centers and long-term care facilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirmatrelvir/ritonavir#Availability

AlanD2's comment included: patients must be able to connect the pharmacist to a physician to discuss their medical history

Note the use of "a" not "their" or "your". So it may be that a pharmacy chain calls up their national center and you talk with a doc for a few minutes who then OKs it. This is how some other drug sales work.

891:

I was really just thinking of a quote that I thought might be pterry, but I can't track down now. The most important qualities in a guard are a high tolerance for boredom and superhuman bladder control.

892:

In pterry context it's important that guards wander into dark alleys to have a slash so they can be accosted by blaggards. So surely the bladder control is more about how far up the wall they can pee?

Pigeon: mostly I aim for vaguely tinted rather than energy drink coloured. There's a bunch of trade-offs to be made. Do I drink before bed and get up an extra time or two, or is my first pee of the morning quite yellow? When I'm riding it's often about how much water I carry plus a bunch of which part of the day I ride in, how hard I ride, how long and so on. Ideally I carry a day's water into the next water supply point, but not much more.

893:

Paxlovid availability in US:

I'm not going to disagree with what's been written, but per my pharmacist wife, you need a prescription.

More importantly, Paxlovid has major interactions with ALL statins AFAIK, including rosuvastatin. Ritonavir (one of the combo drugs) increases the serum concentration of statins.

https://www.drugs.com/drug-interactions/nirmatrelvir-ritonavir,paxlovid-index.html

This is why IT IS CRITICAL, IF YOU'RE TRAVELING, to have a COMPLETE LIST OF YOUR MEDS AND DOSING with you if you're planning on dealing with a possible covid19 infection while elsewhere. The fiddly little bit about the pharmacist needing to talk to your doctor is so that they don't accidentally kill you through an avoidable drug interaction.

894:

Pax: peace.

This common definition does not seem to fit whatever the heck meaning of it you're using. In short, what are you talking about?

Pax = passengers

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/25162/what-is-the-origin-of-the-term-pax

895:

The best example, financially, is a veterinary student I knew who was going into the Army once she got her DVM.

Charlie and I have a mutual friend whose father did that! Texas A & M and then the US Air Force. Sadly he passed away some years ago but he had a whole collection of memorable stories.

For example, I'm sure we've all seen various debunkings of the "alien autopsy" video. I like his. He looked at it and said that at the time the USAF had three labs close enough to Roswell that they could plausibly have used for an autopsy on a human sized creature; he'd worked in all three and the place in the video wasn't any of them.

Too, he might not have been in on it personally but someone he knew would have been doing the autopsy...

896:

»"US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design"«

There is nothing new about this design, quite the contrary: It is almost as standard as it can be in every respect, that is a major reason they got it certified so fast and without experiments.

What /is/ new, is that they aim for a size where most DoD installations and medium-large arctic geography settlements are potential customers.

Now to see if they can actually make it work...

897:

Remember I was once a platoon sergeant. "Unit cohesion" was my J.O.B.

There is definitely a story, hopefully humorous, about some poor sergeant having to wrangle genetically engineered super-soldiers who've been given the augmentations that chickenhawk war wankers want them to have.

They're super aggressive! (In the barracks, with each other.)

They've got lightning fast reflexes! (They get bored 20 seconds into the briefing you're trying to give them.)

They hardly need to sleep! (Especially on base, when the NCOs would like to do something other than babysit them.)

They can eat almost anything! (They bitch about the food exactly as much as every other solider.)

They're super strong! (There are suspiciously deep footprints in the dirt where the Lieutenant's car was parked, as if four grunts had each grabbed a corner...)

They're amazingly resistant to poisons! (You will not believe how much beer they drink.)

They're amazingly resistant to diseases! (But not to the latest strain of VD the local strippers are passing around.)

They've got fantastically acute senses! (Apparently the loud pounding music is an aesthetic choice.)

They're almost fearless! ("Dammit, I told you that would happen! And you did it anyway! Fucking boot...")

898:

The only sane way to have "Genetically enhanced" soldiers is to just genetically enhance the entire population. Which.. honestly, if you have the tech, I fully expect it to happen.

The question is more a question of "To what degree".

Are we talking the minimum: "We are removing every known-bad gene variant from the pool, it will cut health care costs" or are we talking deep optimization within theoretically-possible human baseline configurations:

"Well, this kid could have been born naturally. If the last 4 generations were all lottery-level lucky in which traits got passed down, and who married who..."

or just flat out "Fuck it, we are redoing not just the genome, but the whole epi-genetic and protein-assembly machinery from scratch. Kid will look human, less actual relation to baseline than.. Grass".

899:

"Fuck it, we are redoing not just the genome, but the whole ..."

Indications to date are the the technology to make mods is so simple and readily available that it's difficult to restrict. What's expensive is building the initial model and then working out what each tweak does. The latter IMO will come down to "try it and see" unless we can hire Marvin the Paranoid Android or some equivalent.

As we see at the moment with life extension, I expect you'll see both billionaires experimenting on both willing and unknowing subjects, and a whole ecosystem of hackers at various levels. Plus inevitably a real scientist or two going off the rails with wild claims and fraud of some sort.

Right now you can buy a range of approved-for-humans drugs that have various effects including possibly making people live longer, a whole bunch of not well regulated substances only some of which are approved for use in people about which various claims are made, and some things that are illegal (albeit some for silly reasons). "young blood" is one of the things to look for, and I vaguely recall that young gut flora also have beneficial effects.

I expect that when gene therapy is more widespread it will be relatively straightforward for someone with a PhD in a relevant area to cobble something together for $1000's to $100,000's that will enable them to DIY gene therapy at home. They might not make the changes they expect, or limit them to the things they want, but they'll make changes to their genes. Or their kids genes. Or quite likely their pet's genes (glow in the dark goldfish, anyone?)

900:

887 - Pax; common abbreviation of "passengers"; aka "self-loading cargo".

896 - So USian pharmacists don't get an equivalent to the British National Formulary (catalogue of prescribable and dispensable drugs, what they are used to treat, major side effects and interactions, their appearance and cost)?

900 Para 6 - s/Lieutenant/Rupert

901:

I always travel with a complete list of meds and dosing (and a set of unopened labelled boxes -- at least until I need to take them), but noted: no point looking for Paxlovid if I contract COVID while traveling in the US.

902:

or just flat out "Fuck it, we are redoing not just the genome, but the whole epi-genetic and protein-assembly machinery from scratch. Kid will look human, less actual relation to baseline than.. Grass".

Sigh. Who leaked the first-draft manuscript of Ghost Engine your way?

(Not super-soldiers, but extreme genetic modification in pursuit of other political ends. Not necessarily bad ones, but nobody anticipated the second-order consequences a couple of thousand years down the line ...)

903:

900 Para 6 - s/Lieutenant/Rupert

AKA Wupert, also Wodney.

904:

Agreed :-) , but I couldn't work out the regexp for "Wodney".

905:

JBS @738:

How many spherical physicists does it take to change a quantum light-bulb?

1.4999999999999999999999979. (You can't round off when it's a perfectly spherical entity to begin with.)

906:

The young blood thing had hilarious follow up research. Turns out that the part of the intervention that actually did anything was getting old blood out of your system - Doing a "replace as much blood as is at all safe with saline" routine on lab mice had identical results. Then someone else did the same thing with cerebral-spine fluid, also with good results..

Basically, it appears that a good chunk of aging is just that our mechanisms for removing poisons from the body are imperfect, draining the liquids out as much as is safe and letting the body manufacture new ones dilutes the poisons level...

so I kind of expect that we are going to end up with extra-high-tech "DRAIN THOSE HUMORS!" health care...

907:

Or quite likely their pet's genes (glow in the dark goldfish, anyone?)

Pets have been done. You can already by transgenic fish for your aquarium.

https://www.petmd.com/fish/what-are-glofish

Othe pet animals have been done as well, although for research not as pets. Except possibly Alba the rabbit, which might have got to end its life as a pet rather than a research subject but the institute changed its mind.

https://theweek.com/articles/464980/7-genetically-modified-animals-that-glow-dark https://www.cnet.com/culture/scientists-create-glow-in-the-dark-cats/

908:

"We are removing every known-bad gene variant from the pool, it will cut health care costs"

Which pretty much guarantees the American medical industry will fight tooth-and-claw to oppose it, or insist that the changes be paid for continually, to preserve their income stream.

Lots of room for dystopian SF plots here. People scrounging to pay for their genes, with nasty consequences if they don't make regular payments. Payments required to reproduce (pass on the genes). (Possibly leading to an exemption in the draconian abortion laws.)

909:

American medical industry, yes. Civilized world will jump on it.

910:

Dr V. Dracula, Life Extension Therapy.

911:

Basically, it appears that a good chunk of aging is just that our mechanisms for removing poisons from the body are imperfect, draining the liquids out as much as is safe and letting the body manufacture new ones dilutes the poisons level...

clearly an opening for a pet leech business

912:

The one I find amusing is Lemmy's comment in the sleeve notes for Ace of Spades. He says he heard about it and next time he saw his doctor he asked wtf this shit was all about. The doctor laughed and said that with his body being so used to having more amphetamine in the circulation than haemoglobin "fresh blood will probably kill ya!"

913:

So does a military veterinarian treat Navy SEALS? Heat-crushed bored minds need to know

No, but Mary Roach's Grunt is a good hot-weather read about some of the stuff military guinea pigs elite warfighters get to deal with.

Just as a tidbit-let, the last I heard, that veterinarian was working out of Plum Island, doing viral surveillance. This is on the order of putting real guinea pigs or rats out in a cages in jungles, then identifying what novel viruses infected them from bug bites or other, to get a jump on future spillover epidemics.

914:

Why stop at genetically engineered super soldiers?

Just create real life werewolves ("dog soldiers") and have the Marines recruit them

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=love+death+and+robots+shape+shifters

Or reanimate dead soldiers so they can serve their country one more time:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=invincible+reanimen

915:

Weird that I thought donating blood was a socially acceptable way of purging your body of aging blood and plasma. Does it have to be creepy to actually increase longevity?

Spoiler alert, it doesn't. The more likely problem is that you can, through practice and discipline, significantly increase your lifespan, by doing Blue Zone-ish things, restricting calories, practicing Gods Playing in the Clouds qigong, etc. Problem is, the older you get, the more of these you will have to do, the less time you'll have for other things, and the fewer other things you'll be able to do without destroying the benefit of you longevity regimen.

Just thinking randomly, I suspect communities and consumerist civilization have similar problems with pursuing longevity. I mean, if we were disciplined about dealing with climate change and other problems, we could extend civilization's reign for centuries. But we also want to party. And so...

916:

Men, at least, should actually donate a couple times a year - most dudes have problems with iron and it influences heart disease, so it's good for us to donate (and, you know, good for society)

917:

Men, at least, should actually donate a couple times a year - most dudes have problems with iron and it influences heart disease, so it's good for us to donate (and, you know, good for society)

The problem is as men age more and more of them(us) wind up taking prostate meds that make us excluded from the blood donor pool.

918:

So haemodialysis has sort of put me ahead of the curve there!!

919:

There is what I hope will be a solid sf story in gene augmentation coming out through the corporate world. Given the modern corporate love of subscription models for services...

Tier 1: 'Health shot'. Regular folk can pay a monthly subscription fee of $X to ensure their immune system fights off any and all viral or other invaders. Additionally, their body has the ability to identify and eliminate various cancers and other diseases of aging. Maybe a visit to the clinic every couple of months for a re-boost. Sounds great, now imagine what happens when you miss a payment or two.

Tier 2: 'Improvements and DLC'. Those with more wealth, but not the 1%. You can make changes to your body, a la carte. 6-pack stomach, boosted metabolism, hair or eye color, running speed. Price varies not by $productioncost but rather by artificially created 'rarity' and desirability of various mods. It may be possible to get a 'Limited edition' eye color or body type. This stuff matters to a lot of people, a lot more than you think. All with time limits and extended payment plans.

Tier 3: Government and military services. Join the military, get assigned to a particular role, receive boosts to your abilities that suit that role. The abilities of a military veterinarian are very different from a helicopter pilot or a submariner. Maybe if you serve your 20 years you get to keep the augments, plus your 'Health shot' subscription is maintained for life. Dishonoroable discharge means your body falls apart.

Tier 4: 1 percenters. Ongoing telomere repairs, unlimited upgrades and adaptations. Possible functional immortality barring misadventure.

Following the model of current tech giants, all the versions use the same basic tools (e.g. a Tesla's range can be upgraded via software update over the air, because it always had that capacity if you just paid a little more).

Your payments trigger various functionalities to be released. Think of the difference between various 'free' versions of software, which are wholly installed on your machine, but the full functionality can only be unlocked with payment.

I've got about 20,000 words on a story where a researcher in one of the corporate labs watches her mother die of a disease that could have been prevented, then chooses to steal the basic tools of the technology to release it to the world.

Said corporation sends various heavily 'enhanced' suited and ex-military types after her. In the process she runs into a group of young lumpen gig workers. Think many aimless and somewhat hopeless young men in a house, dishwashers etc. Lots of video games, half arsed RPG campaigns and marijuana, arguments about pop culture etc). None of them can even afford the basic level of 'Health shot'.

To recruit them she gives them the whole enchilada. Much adventure ensues. I'm about 20K words into it, with all the usual delays and procrastinations.

920:

In the real world, there are some problems, the big one being that we live in a biological system that hacks itself for lulz and babies and has for the last billion-odd years. It's assumed that perhaps 70% of all species on the planet are parasites.

What this means, in practice, is that things don't always work as planned, so you can't extrapolate from tech to bio reliably.

For example: Moderna and Pfizer's vaccines set a gold standard for Covid vaccination. They can (probably!) update every six months to a year, although they have to get them approved every single time for the same reason a plane has to be certified airworthy every single time it gets an upgrade: failures are deadly.

Now, have you heard about Moderna's hot new influenza vaccine based on the same technology? No, because it flamed out in early tests. Utterly ineffective against the flu. Why? No clue, I'm not an immunologist. So their hot new vaccine tech works on Ebola and Covid, not on influenza.

Oh, and why will you never get a combo flu and covid vaccine? They're made in two completely different ways, and combining them is sort of like packaging a beer and a hotdog in one microwaveable box to make dispensing them at ballparks easier.

This is apparently normal in the vaccine industry. Presumably every bathroom and private office in every research facility has a pad mounted at head height so that researchers can pound their heads against walls in frustration without damaging the drywall. Or themselves, although the drywall may be employed longer at that facility, given how often new vaccines fail (95% of the time).

I agree with you that different segments of humanity get different access rates to different parts of technology. For example, Europeans and others get free health care. Chinese get access to the full range of acupuncture and TCM. Some Americans get excellent care in general, and rather more can get excellent gunshot treatments if the injuries are sublethal.

While I also agree with you that it's fun, from a story writing perspective, to keep it simple and have five different classes of monthly upgrades, I'd also simply suggest that including a few of the irritating inconsistencies that are human biomedicine will make the story more real. I mean, female birth control protocols aren't just about sexism. It turns out that turning the ability to become pregnant off and on is somewhat easier than turning sperm production off and on. Why? Biology.

921:

"It's assumed that perhaps 70% of all species on the planet are parasites."

What would be examples of the other 30%?

Are plants growing in the soil non-parasites? Diatoms floating about in the sea? What?

922:

Are plants growing in the soil non-parasites? Diatoms floating about in the sea? What?

Yes to both. The quote above is from Zimmer's Parasite Rex, which is a few decades old now. He was looking primarily at animals, so the "most species* includes all the parasitic worms, flies, wasps, and so forth. For plants, possible parasites include basically most lepidopterans (caterpillars), most sucking herbivorous sucking insects (aphids), beetles, flies, and others that focus on stems, leaves, and roots, not seeds.

When you get into the uncounted godzillions of bacteria, especially in oceans, and the uncountable godzillions of bacteriophage viruses that prey on them, it gets even more complicated.

The basic point I was trying to make is that biological systems aren't just complicated because they're the result of a billion years of DNA evolving. Much of that selection has been through things trying to hack natural systems, to the point where I suspect that cells are not self-replicating systems with defense in depth against being hacked, but are more systems that are the result of a few billion years of Red Queen-style struggle against being hacked, optimized to replicate as well as they can. What this means in practice is that things like CRISPR (which IIRC was created from a bacterial defense mechanism) don't always work as you'd expect them to. Nor do vaccines.

If it helps, imagine what computer programs are going to look like in a billion years, if hacking rates continue at present levels for the entire duration.

923:

It looks like it is reasonably straightforward to get Paxlovid, if you need it, when you are visiting the US.

If you test positive for COVID-19 you can go to a Test-to-Treat​ site. There are four Test-to-Treat sites within one mile of 151 E Wacker Dr, Chicago, IL 60601.

According to the FDA, you should bring the following information:

  • Electronic or printed health records less than 12 months old, including the most recent reports of laboratory blood work for the state-licensed pharmacist to review for kidney or liver problems.
  • A list of all medications they are taking, including over-the-counter medications so the state-licensed pharmacist can screen for drugs with potentially serious interactions with Paxlovid.

I think the above is good advice for all travelers, including US domestic travelers. I should get a printout of my latest labs before I go to Worldcon. Even if in theory the pharmacist can connect with my GP, it may save time to have a printout.

For more info see: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Authorizes Pharmacists to Prescribe Paxlovid with Certain Limitations

924:

Re: '... good advice for all travelers,'

Although it's the Feds that announced this, I'm not sure just any non-USian would be able to access Paxlovid that easily.

Also - foreigners tend to get walloped with premium priced med fees. I'd sometimes buy additional med travel insurance depending on where I was visiting just in case. It's a pain, but since Charlie's travelling for biz specifically to have face-to-face meetings with strangers, he should be able to expense it. (Tax accountants should know.)

925:

As if we in the U.S. don't have enough to worry about, our conservatives are trying to force a Constitutional Convention. A Constitutional Convention is triggered when two-thirds of state legislatures come together to call for such a convention. In it, Constitutional amendments can be proposed, whether Congress agrees or not. So far, 17 of the necessary 34 states have signed up for one. This number could go up quickly if Republicans take over more state houses.

The U.S. has never had a Constitutional Convention after the first one in 1787. There are virtually no rules for what a Constitutional Convention can do, so the possibilities for various disasters are enormous, although changes would still have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.

https://digbysblog.net/2022/07/31/gopers-planning-a-new-constitutional-convention/

926:

They're almost fearless!

That reminded me of a rare SFW Oglaf cartoon, which dealt with one possible consequence of living without fear.

927:

AlanD2
Clearly, it's a pre-attempt to go "full fascist" - however, if the Supreme Arseholes decision(s) from earlier take effect, one hopes that - in the mid-terms - the "R's" lose, big-time: yes/no??

928:

Moderna and Pfizer's vaccines set a gold standard for Covid vaccination.

Moderna and Pfizer's vaccines have set a gold standard for any vaccines. They have fewer side effects (and are arguably more effective, in many ways) than any other vaccine produced by humans.

930:

You likely don't see it from afar but when the economy is an issue most people vote their pocketbook and ignore the rest.

And just now the economy SOUNDS really bad. Sounds worse than reality for most but sounds bad just the same. Basically we're getting crazy levels of food price inflation and gasoline is a bit nuts. And it's hard to get through to people how the Russia/Ukraine fight is causing most of it. With supply chains piling on a bit.

931:

SFReader @ 877: JBS - as the veteran, how does the above jibe with your experience?

When I went to Iraq, the Army was just beginning to look into how to deal with the problem. I don't think they as yet grasped that it was a problem. As I understand it, they now have in-service programs to help head it off and to help soldiers deal with it ... beginning even before the soldiers get home.

I don't think there's any cure for PTSD. The best treatment, AFAIK, is to be able to talk about your feelings with people who understand (because they share a common experience).

Acute trauma can produce PTSD as a reaction in some people, but it's NOT THE ONLY cause. I think much more of it comes from having to be hyper-vigilant all the time. After a year of that, you're emotional states are going to be fucked up whether you ever fired a shot in anger or not. And it's going to take time to get over it. And, I guess, some people never do.

I didn't have any "acute trauma" while I was overseas (unless you count the broken teeth from eating in KBR's dining facility & being the 1SG's room-mate).

I no longer do a complete freak whenever I'm driving along and someone pulls up on a side road and it's not readily apparent they're going to stop. My heart will still start to race a bit, but it's only seconds before I'm calm again. The first couple of years after I got back I would frequently find myself doing evasion maneuvers & reaching for my weapon (which I didn't have because we turned them in as soon as we got off of the airplane at Ft Bragg/Pope AFB).

I still have stress induced nightmares most nights & I think that accounts for a lot of my insomnia.

Truthfully, I never witnessed any kind of "really evil fighting (children/civilians tortured/killed)" while I was there. We were in an area that was mixed Sunni/Shia and the "insurgency" that became al Qaeda in Iraq was pretty strong. They murdered a bunch of civilians - mostly Shia men who were cooperating with the U.S. and with the new Iraqi government. They stopped a bus of Iraqi National Guard recruits who had just graduated from basic training at our FOB and murdered everyone (30+ UNARMED persons) on board. And one of our units was involved in securing the scene and recovering the bodies because it happened in their A.O.

But our guys got EXTENSIVE briefings on the Geneva Convention, community relations and the Rules of Engagement (which tell you pretty explicitly WHEN you're allowed to shoot at someone and when you're NOT before we went over there.

At the same time, the bigger problem back here in the U.S. with returning soldiers was that some of the anti-malarial drugs the Army issued in Afghanistan & Iraq had psychosis inducing side effects when you left off taking them, especially if you were one of those people who reason "If one pill reduces the risk of getting malaria, I'm gonna take a whole bunch of 'em ..."

Ft. Bragg had a rash of domestic violence incidents, including several bizarre murders among soldiers returning from the first iteration of returning soldiers. Those got lumped in with PTSD before the Army figured out it was the medication.

932:

JBS@830 suggests: "Maybe what's wanted is "super soldiers" who have a genetic predisposition towards unit cohesion - a pack animal gene - and the ability to overcome their fear?"

One of Richard Morgan's stories about Takeshi Kovacs had that as a plot element. Consciousness was regularly backed up into "soul chips" recovered like dogtags from dead soldiers and replanted in newly grown bodies. Then when a competitor started infusing soldiers with bits of wolf genome for enhanced pack cohesion, complications arose from their obsessive instinct to avenge fallen comrades. They'd gleefully torment soul chips of killed rivals, by forcing them into an excruciating error mode, causing irrevocable insanity so chips couldn't be recycled. Soon as a chip was reactivated for mission debriefing, it couldn't stop shrieking to be immediately destroyed.

I'd put that squarely within the category of crimes against transhumanity. Netflix streams a show called Altered Carbon based on the same book series but I won't be seeing it until it's on a dvd I can rent. I'd be interested how they worked the ugly scene described above into their screenplay.

933:

timrowledge @ 881:

So does a military veterinarian treat Navy SEALS? Heat-crushed bored minds need to know.

They might be allowed to give 'em their rabies vaccinations.

AFAIK, military veterinarians PRIMARY duty nowadays - aside from providing medical care for the military's working animals - is inspection of Dining Facilities to ensure they're following good sanitation practices.

934:

No problem with wearing a 3M 6300 half-face respirator with the stylish round pink filters on Amtrak's COAST STARLIGHT last week for the run up to Pugetopolis & back to see the Mariners. Skipped the roomette and just used Business Class because of poor ventilation review of roomettes https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/measuring-the-ventilation-in-amtrak-superliner-sleepers.80723/

Not dead yet (Club Moderna x4).

935:

Damian @ 883:

enhanced capacity to tolerate boredom

Not to mention the superhuman bladder control.

That's why you should NEVER drink the YELLOW Gatorade, especially if the bottle is a bit warm to the touch.

936:

Nichelle Nichols, aka Lt Uhura has died.

We all do, but this makes me sad.

937:

Scott Sanford @ 900:

Doesn't take genetic engineering for that.

938:

paws4thot @ 903:

896 - So USian pharmacists don't get an equivalent to the British National Formulary (catalogue of prescribable and dispensable drugs, what they are used to treat, major side effects and interactions, their appearance and cost)?

Physicians' Desk Reference, since renamed Prescriber's Digital Reference (PDR) because nowadays many prescribers are not physicians.

939:

"You mixed human and animal genes?" breathed Miles. "Why not? Human genes have been spliced into animals from the crude beginnings—it was almost the first thing they tried. Human insulin from bacteria and the like. But till now, no one dared do it in reverse. I broke the barrier, cracked the codes . . . It looked good at first. It was only when the first ones reached puberty that all the errors became fully apparent. Well, it was only the initial trial. They were meant to be formidable. But they ended up monstrous." "Tell me," Miles choked, "were there any actual combat-experienced soldiers on the committee?" "I assume the client had them. They supplied the parameters," said Canaba. Said Thorne in a squeezed voice, "I see. They were trying to reinvent the enlisted man." - LABYRINTH, Border of Infinity, Lois McMaster Bujold

940:

Keithmasterson @ 935:

That's in the second book, Broken Angels.

I haven't seen the second season of the Netflix series, but the synopsis on Wikipedia suggests it's a mashup of SOME elements from books 2 & 3, but doesn't actually follow either of them.

941:

I haven't seen the second season of the Netflix series, but the synopsis on Wikipedia suggests it's a mashup of SOME elements from books 2 & 3, but doesn't actually follow either of them.

Season 2 is mostly a highly munged version of book 3, with some significant changes that I assume were intended to simplify some of the plot and character motivations. I don't remember any significant plot elements from book 2 being included.

942:

... one hopes that - in the mid-terms - the "R's" lose, big-time: yes/no??

Yes, but it's an uphill battle. Abortion issues will help, as will the dropping price of gas. But Democrats are notorious for losing elections they should have won... :-(

943:

... military veterinarians PRIMARY duty nowadays - aside from providing medical care for the military's working animals - is inspection of Dining Facilities to ensure they're following good sanitation practices...

Strange but true, folks outside the US military. This leads to the strange sight of breakfast cereal boxes stamped APPROVED FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION BY USAF VETERINARIAN.

Also, Dog Vaccination Day is exactly what it says on the tin and an opportunity to meet every pet on the base all at once, whether you want to or not.

944:

I was about six years old when I saw the original Star Trek. Nichelle Nichols was the first woman I ever found beautiful, and even as she got older, even into her late eighties, she was never not beautiful.

I spent a little time tonight listening to her recordings. She had a four-octave range, and a slightly breathy voice. The range tended well into the really high notes and listening created a high level of aesthetic satisfaction, tinged with regret that she was gone.

945:

Re #900:

Doesn't take genetic engineering for that.

Yeah, it occurred to me even as I typed that all of these things were stuff familiar to everyone who's had to herd grunts. The version of the car thing I heard involving a Mule in Vietnam and some Marines; the rest I'm sure has happened in every military going back to the Mesopotamians. Offhand I'm not sure what genetic engineering could add to the already remarkable ability of soldiers to get themselves into trouble.

946:

Dog Vaccination Day is exactly what it says on the tin

They vaccinate troops against dogs? Like, just dogs in general or some specific disease?

947:

That reminded me of a rare SFW Oglaf cartoon, which dealt with one possible consequence of living without fear.

Yes. Oh, yes.

As Maximilian said: "You see, when a Marine and a bad idea love each other very much, sometimes they… share a special hug. Sometimes this special hug results in chaos and things catching on fire, or maybe someone ends up dead or pregnant. Either way, this is the start of a new safety brief."

948:

They vaccinate troops against dogs? Like, just dogs in general or some specific disease?

They vaccinate all the dogs, against whatever diseases dogs get vaccinated against (I never asked). This means that once a year every dog on the base shows up all at once at the veterinarian's office. I have it on good authority that this is not the veterinarian's daughter's favorite day of the year.

949:

And anyone taking methotrexate for arthritis (or anything else) has a similar problem.

950:

Despite only showing up as "Civic Holiday" on my Apple Calendar, it's Emancipation Day here in Canada:

https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/emancipation-day.html

951:

You don't even need soldiers for that. Schoolkids will do. We had a row of open-fronted fives courts in the playground - basically big brick sheds enclosed on 5 sides, and a 4ft high wall across the front side with a one-person gate in it, leaving a big gap between the top of the wall and the roof. And one night the head of chemistry's Mini mysteriously changed its position to the wrong side of the wall. Something to do with the rugby team, it was said.

952:

They have fewer side effects (and are arguably more effective, in many ways) than any other vaccine produced by humans.

more effective than sterilizing vaccines?

if u say so

953:

I have seen indications both that COVID resistance is more due to T-cells than antibodies, and that traditional vaccines (Astrazeneca, Sputnik etc.) are more effective at stimulating the T-cells. Because testing real efficacy is hard, most measurements are done on the antibody response, the real efficacy data was for Alpha and Delta. The evidence is that Omicron is much better at escaping antibody immunity, so the efficacy of the mRNA vaccines may be overstated - at least for COVID.

954:

This doesn't really work for Brits as we don't get blood tests administered on any kind of regular basis and don't get print-outs of our NHS health records -- they're only available to UK practices or for review in the surgery by appointment.

A list of medications is something I've got c/o my regular NHS prescription reorder form.

955:

A note on the death of "Uhura" - quote: When Nichols considered leaving Star Trek at the end of the first run, a chance meeting with the civil rights leader Martin Luther King at a fundraising event changed her mind. “He said I had the first non-stereotypical role, I had a role with honour, dignity and intelligence,” she recalled in a 2011 television programme. “He said: ‘You simply cannot abdicate. This is an important role. This is why we are marching.

956:

Some parts of the NHS allow limited access - mine do, but the Web interfaces are as bad as you would expect. So I can get those, with some effort. However, Addenbrookes and my GP practice are exceptional in several respects, and chemotherapy means that I am having a LOT of blood tests. It's definitely not the norm, as you say.

On the other hand, When I got my diagnosis, I said to myself "Now, THIS is a perfect excuse for telling people who want me to fly that I won't, not ever again". Yes, I do dislike it that much. One has to look on the bright side :-)

957:

EC
It's not the actual flying that bothers me at all ... { Not having flown at all, until 1998! }
BUT - the faff & hassle & arrogant, bullying stupid "security" aresholes, who are not interested in any explanations as to why something has gone tits-up or refusing you a manual scan, because ( 90% of the time ) the automatic scanners fail, so you have to do manual anyway ... And, as a card-carrying atheist, I shouldn't have to put up with this crap, anyway ... etc, Ad nauseam as Private Eye would say. Wish me luck for the 07.30 takeoff from LCY on Thursday ....

958:

Re: '... cure for PTSD'

Agree - for now, there doesn't appear to be a magic 'cure' for PTSD. Therapy works for many people but not everyone.

Several years ago I happened to chat with someone who was doing some neuro research specifically looking for genes/markers that can identify which people are more or less likely to have any resilience wrt this trauma. While most of the funding into PTSD research seems to be from the VA, the reality is that PTSD can affect anyone who's experienced trauma - military or civilian. Having some way of quickly (via a simple blood test) identifying who's at gravest risk for serious PTSD is a step forward - triage at the molecular level. That's one of the key reasons for the research into finding 'markers' - plural because there are several identified so far.

959:

In almost 40 years, I almost never had an employer (and I had too many of them) send me to training.

Genengineering, though... given how a fair number of rich people's families lose it by the third generation, I can see them doing it to their kids. "I don't need an MBA, I was genengineered to have one built into me!"

960:

After 9/11, for months the pilots' union was saying that for trips under 300-400 mi, taking the train makes far more sense than flying.

961:

Gene hacks? In the newest novel I'm working on revisions on, there's one character from a higher-gravity world (1.2? 1.4?G). His bones are metallo-ceramic.

Do not get into a fight with him. It will hurt.

962:

So. what it was until the 20th century - you sign up, it's 20 years, and you get a Pretty! new uniform, as opposed to the hand-me-down rags you're wearing.

963:

Oh, cool! Hoping to see you at Worldcon, then.

964:

As I believe I've mentioned before, I've read that in WWII, it was 9 support for 1 combat soldier.

965:

When my late ex was in Brevard Co jail, in '04, she told me they frequently gave them green lunch meat.

966:

I see it promotes pair bonding. I'm picturing the GOP going out of their mind as the platoons become gay pair-bonding.

967:

For me, yellow would be late morning/early afternoon... because I take B-complex stress tabs with chelated zinc. That's a sign of B being processed.

968:

Gas prices dropping, a lot in the US, partly due to the Dems' handing a windfall profits tax to the Senate, and Biden making major releases from the SPR. Polls - depending on which - are turning around, and yes, the overthrow of Roe v. Wade is having serious effects.

969:

Oh, and Manchin being manhandled (I'd guess) and giving in, the results of that are going to not reflect well on the GOP.

970:

SFR
PTSD can affect anyone who's experienced trauma - military or civilian.
In the many comments below THIS article - you will find several civilian cases.
They may be there or not, but I know of: The trainee Fireman, who was so traumatised by the aftermath, that he went off to do something really mundane, instead .. / The signalman, who, though completely exonerated, had, often to be "carried" by the staff around him - breaking down in crying fits, years after the event / a now-dead ex-works colleague of mine, who had just got off the train that was smashed-up, with about a half-hour complete memory blank.
- Update: [Original article, with original comments - here] (https://web.archive.org/web/20160608015847/http://www.londonreconnections.com/2012/angels-and-errors-how-the-harrow-wealdstone-disaster-helped-shape-modern-britain/) - for more informed comments, mostly.

971:

I've seen a similar ratio, and we're surely not only ever read the same books as each other?

972:

Oh, and Manchin being manhandled (I'd guess) and giving in, the results of that are going to not reflect well on the GOP.

I think that will depend to some degree on what Senator Kyrsten Sinema decides to do. She's the big unknown right now...

973:

Before refrigeration, in the poorer parts of towns a good butcher would be one whose meat was a bit less rotten than a bad one's. If it didn't crawl off the plate of its own accord you could eat it, sort of thing.

What gets me is that people still did eat it, apparently with some enthusiasm. As in they would pay extra for it. They didn't eat it very often because they had to subsist mainly on less expensive things, but they still bought it when they did have the money; it was the cost that put them off rather than the grossitude.

974:

Huh? You mean they didn't keep them live, like the poultry store my mom went to when I was little, and butcher them on request/purchase?

975:

I think it was from a study done by the Pentagon after WWII.

976:

Civilian cases? You want to bet that I'm still not dealing with my late wife dropping dead for no fucking reason at 43? It's coming up on 25 years....

977:

whitroth
Well, I'm still dealing, 47 years later, with waking up in hospital, hurting all over, having lost lots of blood & a memory-blank of the events.
Um.

978:

Yeah. Any idea what happened?

979:

You mean they didn't keep them live, like the poultry store my mom went to when I was little, and butcher them on request/purchase?

Pigs and cows take a LOT of space when alive.

At my grandfather's meat house (started in 1911) they would slaughter in the late afternoon what they thought would sell the next day. Hang the sides on the back of the model T. Drive them to the ice house. Then in the morning go pick them up nice and cold and plan to sell them all before they started to re-animate.

980:

For real fun try having a trauma response to the voice therapists use. IME they can't not use that tone and manner of voice.

But that's the voice my mother used for her part of the abuse. So pleasant, so utterly reasonable. At least in tone... and to me it conveys "I DGAF about you, I'm doing whatever makes things easier for me right now". She still denies knowing about the sexual abuse of my sister, but she admits that she made sure I was the primary target of the physical abuse. "you're a boy".

981:

Then in the morning go pick them up nice and cold and plan to sell them all before they started to re-animate.

Don't discriminate against the differently alive! As pterry used to say.

982:

In thinking about it I suspect he also came back each morning with a few blocks of ice.

But still it was a 3 mile or so drive each way. With the sides hanging on the home made rack on the back of the T. And in 1911 the paving on some of those roads was lose gravel at best. I grew up less than a mile from this operation.

983:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/01/put-your-masks-on-monique-ryan-gives-coalition-dressing-down-during-question-time

Independent MP Monique Ryan... Ryan had asked Butler about the risk of repeated infections with Covid-19 as case numbers in Australia reached record highs.

“Repeated infections with Covid-19 tend to be more severe and carry a high risk of persisting symptoms for as long as six months, as well as an increased risk of hospitalisation and death,” she said.

“There is increasing risk of cumulative neurological and cardiovascular disease from infections from Covid 19.

“Can the minister please explain how he proposes to manage the oncoming national significant burden of disability and chronic illness from repeated infection with Covid-19?”

Dr Ryan puts the the boot in :)

984:

whitroth
Yes
I was walking round the block with a friend - we'd both had "enough" to drink, but I'd been riding earlier & was still in old-fashioned riding kit ... apparently a group of skinheads went "QUEER" & went for me - we think, from the wounds that they used something like a small fencepost with nails in it { I certainly got a punctured right lung } ... I made it home, separately, um "leaking".
It's still an unsolved "Assault with Grievous Bodily Harm" - apparently.
Persons wonder why I'm sympathetic to LGBT people .....
And why I have an "attitude problem"

985:

In almost 40 years, I almost never had an employer (and I had too many of them) send me to training.

As an ex NHS employee I’m constantly amazed by the descriptions of others on this blood of their professional lives. Even a junior medical laboratory technician I, and all my colleagues at the same level were expected to train and the training courses were paid for by our employers or the local council. This carried on throughout my career. I was unusual in that I left to go to University for three years but my wife, who carried on working in labs while U was at university, was expected to do HNC in microbiology. HNC was university level study but of more limited scope. The only course I had to pay for was my MSc at the age of 40 and my employers then paid for half the fees. Time of for all these courses was granted as an extra holiday in addition to annual leave. There were also many training courses for new equipment. Those who went on these courses then had to train the rest of the staff. This is just basic good management. It’s now formalised in continued professional development where there are weekly training sessions with CPD points which may be audited to retain the State Registration without which there will be no job. But as a result of this the organisation has staff of high competence. Even in the more parsimonious modern environment I recommend several of my staff for MSc courses. They had to pay the fees themselves but were allowed time off. One of them is now my replacement as Chief Biomedical Scientist. The NHS is not perfect. Office politics still raises its ugly head. But it’s modern and efficient because the staff are well trained. And I haven’t even mentioned professional meetings and trade shows b

986:

Genengineering, though... given how a fair number of rich people's families lose it by the third generation, I can see them doing it to their kids. "I don't need an MBA, I was genengineered to have one built into me!"

Don't think so. I agree that the super-rich will engineer their kids, because they always have (the curse of being a working aristocrat), but even if you could engineer an MBA's worth of knowledge into a kid, it would be 20 years out of date by the time they hit adulthood and continue to get more irrelevant as they aged.

The basic problem is that making a fortune and keeping a fortune are two different skill sets, and to the extent they're genetic (probably not much, but...), it's hard to expect the children of a genius financier or entrepreneur to be canny money managers.

What I'd expect is for the children of the super-rich to be engineered for a few traits: health and longevity, sociability, and whatever traits help make people prone to do well in fields like finance and law.* That way, even if The Offspring aren't managing the family fortune, they may well end up managing someone else's fortune. This will likely make the super-rich more genetically uniform, which could have some interesting repercussions of its own.

*Probably they'd get this by quietly working with friends who come from families who've been in finance or law for generations to see what in their genomes makes them different from those who lose family fortunes. This work wouldn't be published of course, but I suspect it could be done even now, on a coarse scale due to low sample size. The draw of having some of one's genes incorporated into someone else's family might be a draw too.

Cruel and inhumane? That's a really hard call, unless the engineering fails. The tricky bit is that being an ill-suited heir would be a lifelong burden for a lot of people (you want to be Prince Charles?). Enabling the kid to more comfortably assume the burden they'll bear regardless? Arguing against that is a bit harder. Providing the engineering works, of course.

987:

I'd agree it's interesting. My wife the pharmacist is in a highly regulated field. She's degreed, certified, does hundreds of hours of CEs, and so forth.

I was in environmental consulting, which is not regulated and which resists regulation in part because lying about damage is also lucrative. The group I work for is trying to establish a professional standards body, but it's tough going, because many consultants feel they'll be less employable if they have to adhere to professional standards and ethics. The major reason I'm an environmental advocate is to try and make the system more ethical and professional, so you can guess my feelings about the state of affairs. But it's worth remembering that, at least in the US, the guys who design your landscaping are more highly regulated than the people who are tasked with protecting rare species or dealing with climate change. Whether that bothers you or not???

988:

whatever traits help make people prone to do well in fields like finance and law

Sociopathy? Seems to be an advantage in investment banking…

989:

Does anyone with actual experience with the publishing industry (as I have none) have any comment on the Penguin Random House merger with Simon & Schuster? It's now subject to an antitrust trial in the US.

990:

Pigeon @ 954:

I vaguely remember a similar event involving a youngish, female teacher's VW; some high-school (American) Football players and the school gymnasium (basketball court of which was located on the second floor of the building).

991:

"What I'd expect is for the children of the super-rich to be engineered for a few traits: health and longevity, sociability, and whatever traits help make people prone to do well in fields like finance and law."

Noting that engineering can reasonably be understood to include the selective breeding practices that have, e.g., given us chihuahuas and maize, I'd not be sure that such hasn't been going on in some form. Heinlein picked up on the possibillity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_families

the trustees of the Howard Foundation used the limited scientific knowledge of the time to create a selective breeding human program to encourage, financially, people of long-lived ancestry to have children together.

992:

SFReader @ 61:

I hope they will put equal research into the stress component as they do the trauma.

993:

That would be the sort of thing you got in very rural locations, shading into the butcher and the farmer being the same person. Totally impractical for an industrial town. The animals would come into the town alive because they're easier to move that way, and stay alive through the various bits of trading in whole-animal quantities, then end up at the slaughterhouse to be cut up into manageable chunks for onward distribution. At that point it was no longer shitting barrowloads or trying to run away, so the urgency was off. How long it then spent being onwardly distributed was closely related to how little money the people who eventually got to eat it had. Some of it would end up being thrown away before it walked away and then scrounged out of the rubbish and put back on sale again somewhere poorer.

It has to be said that being a really obviously stupid idea didn't stop people trying to keep cows in the middle of London, stuffed into the kind of places where if they'd been properly fed they would have got stuck, until the Victorians finally decided to make some serious effort to have a bit less shit piled around the place. But any contribution from that source to the total meat supply would have been very small, and would have gone through the slaughterhouses anyway along with the rest of it.

Some impoverished small traders did that with a sort of horse or a manky donkey, but a preferable option was renting space in a dedicated stable and letting them deal with the hassle. There were quite a lot of these scattered about in odd corners, small operations with space for ten or a dozen horses perhaps.

995:

Re: '... equal research into the stress component as they do the trauma'

Yes - there's a lot of research on stress at critical levels (trauma) as well as a continuum (dimension) neurologically, physiologically and psychologically. The most common research model is the rodent - we [humans] share a lot of neuro and behavioral similarities with these creatures so this level of research shouldn't be considered a waste of time/resources. From what I've heard/read (I'm not an expert!) at a minimum, this type of research provides pointers to what might be going on with/inside humans.

Greg [Hreh] @ 973:

Thanks - good article! Horrific accident and back then there weren't any psych crisis response teams to help survivors or their families.

Moz @983: 'a trauma response to the voice therapists use'

OOC - have you ever mentioned this to the therapists? I ask because after her second series of strokes my mother's physical and cognitive functions really took a hit: her connection to old traumatic memories became much stronger than to memories of recent events. She'd start screaming/swearing, throwing things and hitting medical attendants with certain facial features. (Nothing to do with ethnicity or age - mostly face shape and maybe some particular aspects of the eyes, nose, and mouth.) Anyways when we figured out what might be happening, I spoke with the nursing supervisor and asked specifically for the agency to screen out people with those particular characteristics. I also emphasized* that not doing so would be bad all-around: for my mother, for us (watching helplessly as she relived some trauma and in response inflicted trauma on someone else) and for the personnel being subjected to this violence.

*Not sure how the above might come across - just trying to emphasize that it's useful to identify the 'pros' and 'cons' for whomever you're trying to persuade because that makes it easier for them to, in turn, make a case on your behalf.

996:

Genengineering ...

OOC, has anyone tried to connect the possible necessity of enhancing human intelligence (specifically memory, increased reading speed and comprehension) with Moore's Law? As in: with our built environment and interfaces becoming ever more complex, won't we need to improve ourselves just so that we can use our gadgets? I'm guessing that even the most mundane tools will become more sophisticated and it'd be a lot cheaper to increase human (general) intelligence than to constantly repair/replace equipment.

997:

As in: with our built environment and interfaces becoming ever more complex, won't we need to improve ourselves just so that we can use our gadgets?

You might like to compare this question with the Flynn Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Long term exposure to the more and (especially) more abstract technological components in everyday life leads to increased familiarity with the sort of abstract thinking those components require. It turns out that what we think of as IQ, being a thing we can measure, is probably not "general intelligence" at all but rather a familiarity with using certain kinds of abstraction in our everyday lives. Which is why they have to change the test every 15-30 years, as succeeding generations are even more familiar with this aspect of life. The effect of (say) class on IQ scores has been linked to this stuff for a long time and is one of the sources of suspicion about what is being measured (a well known example is from a 40s IQ test for children that marked you down if you didn't recognise a picture of a telephone and know what it was for, tip of the iceberg really).

Anyway, without re-activating the eternal discussion about "what is this intelligence thing anyway? and is general intelligence even a thing?", your question is probably self-answering on those terms. In a broader sense, there's a question about when do the gadgets we use start to become part of us in ourselves, and maybe that's the threshold for trans-humanism. I'm not convinced we're there yet, but also not convinced we aren't already not just there, but taking steps into the beyond.

998:

If you install the NHS App on your phone, that can grant you electronic access to your GP Health record (or at least it does in England, services are not always the same in Scotland).

Of course whether i) this would contain anything a US physician would consider meaningful and ii) you would want this sort of information available on your phone when US ICE agents can and will detain you until you unlock it for them, probably means you will not want to do this.

999:

"f you install the NHS App on your phone, that can grant you electronic access to your GP Health record (or at least it does in England, services are not always the same in Scotland)."

it also gives you access to a COVID vaccination "passport". A, time limited, PDF that shows your vaccine status. I've no idea why it is time limited. I'm assuming we are going to need this in the next wave. The App itself also shows your vaccination status.

Otherwise my medical records are remarkably sparse. I'm guessing anything that was on paper was never moved to the electronic system.

1000:

IME they can't not use that tone and manner of voice.

Emphasis on "in my experience" they can't avoid it. I've had a couple do reasonably well but inevitably they slip back and end up saying "you should..." or "I need you to..." in the voice and I struggle to recover from that.

Part of it is the way I use words, and that I'm emotionally very flat when I'm upset. So I'll say to a doctor "this pain is a 9/10" and they'll assume I mean "maybe an asprin" but I actually mean "not as bad as when my kidney ruptured". There's reasons I'm like that, but they're not nice reasons.

1001:

For real fun try having a trauma response to the voice therapists use. IME they can't not use that tone and manner of voice.

Oh, that is a tricky one. You're right; they're definitely trained to take that approach and too many will not try other things if the first one doesn't work. Also, too many therapist are also not primed to hear anything a patient says until they've gone through their rituals. I'm not sure what alternatives any therapist could have.

I fully sympathize with being triggered by the trappings of therapy. You don't need to hear about my teen years - but when a psychiatrist goes bad they go really bad. :-(

1002:

I have a major problem with people asking me personal questions, because it was so often used as an opening to attack me when I was a child, including by my mother. It makes me people think I am rude, because I don't do to them what I don't like done to me. Ah, the delights of Aspergers ....

That pain scale is STUPID. I always ask "What do you mean? It's about as bad as cutting my finger in the garden," I would rate hitting my thumb with a hammer as a very transient 8/10, but the ongoing pain as no more than 4/10. God alone knows what they expect. I don't know if it is biochemical or me being accustomed to minor pain, but not even codeine or low-dose morphine has much effect on pain I cannot ignore.

1003:

An aside. The issue I was talking about with hospitals demanding people remove their proper mask and put on a face decoration has made it to the British Medical Journal. They cover much the same ground we did together, but with more words.

https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj.o1929

1004:

Today I've been mulling over the giganticly shit things that have happened to my friends here on this blog and I desperately want to find some sort of words that impart my understanding and sympathy, but I've got nothing. I've got sympathy but such horrible experiences are outside my understanding. So though I don't understand, I'm hearing you.

1005:

Ugly.

If it's any consolation my 4th shot was in an almost empty doctors surgery and they didn't even blink when I switched from the full face mask I wore biking down to a non-vented P2 paper mask right outside the door. I didn't see any YOU MUST WEAR A MASK signage though, and no QR code to check in.

OTOH Lakemba is back to the usual thriving social street life with very few masks in sight. Lots of people, lots of chatter, shopping, eating, hanging out... "gee I wonder why the pandemic is spreading so much".

1006:

Moz said: no QR code

They wouldn't want to be bringing QR codes back after admitting that they were fake last time.

In the articulate words of our state leader:

"even tracking and tracing know i mean it was the most ironic one i i thought was you know we ended up bringing qr codes back when we weren't [tracking or tracing]. Campaigns get run there was no science behind it at all it had zero utility but there was a massive campaign"

https://youtu.be/Y0EvCBHbt0o

1007:

I have been avoiding that guy since he was appointed because he has such a way with words. And that clip is exemplary even by his standards. It's as though he wants people to think he's incompetent and corrupt.

In a couple of sentences he can completely destroy any confidence I have in the NSW government. And I never know where it went... maybe it vanished like a closed fire station in a bushfire zone. Maybe it washed away like the people abandoned to another flood. Maybe a corrupt former minister took it with them when they left for a dodgy foreign post. Maybe it never existed at all and I was just dreaming of a government that at least tried to act on utilitarian principles.

1008:

I'm coming in late, but I wonder whether there would be something in play which would be something like countries as well as something like companies.

Countries would have a complicated push-pull between allowing some independence of minds and wanting to control them, and where the point would be a lot of minds roughly on the same side. I was going to say "minds bundled together", but that might be an unfortunate metaphor.

1009:

Moz said: It's as though he wants people to think he's incompetent and corrupt.

If that's his goal, he's absolutely nailing it.

1010:

Isn't he also part of the NSW Liberal Party theocratic wing? IIRC caflick rather than mammonite, but from where I sit same same.

It wouldn't surprise me if he agreed with ScoMo (and many other far right politicians) that all governments are inherently corrupt and untrustworthy (projection, perhaps?), but the theocratic part is that they think God is more important, and that political leaders should follow their particular interpretation of god swill.

https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/07/22/scott-morrison-religion-trust-government/

For a man who has devoted most of his life trying to get into government, Scott Morrison sure has a low opinion of them. After an unsuccessful career in tourism marketing, he moved from political party machine man to MP and, eventually, to the prime ministership. Now he says you shouldn't trust government.

(Crikey has a paywall but they give you a dig at Mark Latham for free)

1011:

"...where 10 is the worst pain you could possibly imagine..." But I can't imagine pain at all. I can imagine that sticking my arm in a fire might be painful, but I can't make myself experience any kind of virtual sensation no matter how slight. Same with memory: I can remember that laying my arm down on top of a soldering iron was painful, but the actual sensation simply isn't available any more. (In contrast I can make myself experience virtual visual sensations, whether synthesised or recalled, with enough vividness and clarity to overlay or even replace the actual input from my eyes, more seamlessly than the artificial versions on screens do.) So I simply don't have the means to compare my current experience with remembered past or possible future ones in any more detailed or meaningful way than {"baseline", "trivial", "nasty", "needs hospital"}, and the first three aren't relevant.

Moreover, although I can't imagine pain that isn't there, I can to a limited extent make less of pain that is there, and shunt it to ground a bit. So not only is my imagination incapable of doing what they're asking, it's going full pelt trying to do the opposite.

So what this supposedly "simple and straightforward" question achieves is not to obtain a simple and straightforward answer, but to initiate a kind of interrogation as I try to figure out what they think the answer will mean. They're evidently asking it at the point they are because they're following some stupid bloody flowchart that tells them to ask it at that point, and some stupid managerial bastard is going to go through their answers later on and tell them off if they've put down "patient thinks this is a bloody stupid question" instead of a number from 1 to 10. So I have to try and get some idea of what they're actually thinking about the things they're putting in the boxes, to use for a clue to help me pick a number that will lead to the most relevant result. And no doubt part of the reasoning behind the procedure was to try and avoid patients trying to reverse-engineer it like this, which makes it even more bloody silly.

Of course "X is so simple and straightforward that I have to strip it right down to its component parts to work out what the fuck it's trying to do before I can actually use it" applies far too frequently these days to far too wide a variety of choices for X...

1012:

Johnson said that he had almost finished the job - if he meant fucking up the country, he was right. Truss will complete it. That's not entirely bad news, as it will hasten the revolution (which I hope is bloodless, and even 'constitutional'). Whether the new situation will be better or worse is in the lap of the gods.

1013:
That pain scale is STUPID

Allie Brosch did a more accurate pain scale on her blog.

From 0: Hi. I am not experiencing any pain at all. I don't know why I'm even here to 11. Blood is going to explode out of my face at any moment and beyond.

(Brosch published this 12 years ago. And I read it when it was new. How can this be?)

1014:

Yes. When satire is more accurate than what they use, you know they have got it spectacularly wrong. Any sane scale would compare with experiences people have had, not those they can only imagine. It doesn't help that people's reaction to pain varies so much, of course.

1015:

on the uselessness of pain scales

I've had the problem calling an ambulance "is the patient conscious?" "err...". My problem is I don't think "conscious" is a binary thing, I think it's a grey scale. So if 11 is playing chess to master level and 0 is does not respond to pins in the eyes, the patient was about 3 and going down.

I've since leaned there is something called The Glasgow Comma Scale (for assessing late night drinkers?) that does indeed assign a scale.

1016:

When I get asked about pain on the 1 to 10 scale I mention that one time used a knuckle to prevent the hitch assembly for a 6 foot grading blade from making contact with the rear of our tractor.

I call that one an 8.

But my hands and to some degree my lower legs are covered in small white lines from numerous scratches and cuts from construction and semi-farming work growing up. And I've met people who when they get a similar cut seem to feel the world is ending. So their idea of an 8 is my idea of a 2 or 3.

1017:

" Any sane scale would compare with experiences people have had, not those they can only imagine."

No.

1 - People's experiences are different. I know people who have never been hurt worse than a bee sting, and people who've been set on fire. Each is the worst thing they ever experienced, but they are not the same, and acting as if they are doesn't really communicate much to another person.

2 - People's perception of pain for a given experience is also different. "This hurts as bad as that time I was stabbed in the leg' may or may not provide useful information.

The pain scale is bad, because any quick way to relay subjective experience is going to be bad. Making it MORE reliant on subjectivity isn't going to help.

1018:

We flew back from Munich last night. Few people were wearing masks until they got to the gate. The same was applicable on the trams and S-bahn trains - pretty much everyone was only masking up when about to board.

1019:

AND .. We have an active QUISLING ... Presumably, he is hoping for a troy victory in 2024, out of spite & stupidity?

1020:

Re: '... compare this question with the Flynn Effect:'

Thanks for the link - this is a much more detailed article than I was expecting!

The iodine bit surprised me - I'd heard about goiter but not about the impact of iodine deficiency on in utero brain development. When I searched for more info I found that (in the US) iodine is not one of the 'must be listed' ingredients in food or supplements.

1021:

It would be LESS subjective - that is my point, which is to use specific injuries etc., not how people perceive them on a scale. Yes, I take your point that people's experiences vary a lot - I have never had what I would call serious pain, except transiently, yet have been prescribed morphine (i.e. classify me with David L).

But the current scale is a total waste of time.

1022:

1013 BS Johnson said that he had almost finished the job - if he meant fucking up the country, he was right. Truss will complete it. - Well, given Liz 4x2's statement that "Nicola Sturgeon is an attention seeker and should be ignored", Liz clearly wants to hasten Scotland declaring UDI.

1016 - The Glasgow Coma Scale is a formal method used by medical professionals for assessing a patient's level of consciousness, hence dialogue in medical dramas like "Hit on head by 2 short planks. GCS 3." (very low).

1020 - Well I have considered both the Con Party and the Liebour Party to be unelectable (except in rare cases of competent constituency candidate) for some years, certainly since the days of Scamoron and Tory B Liar.

1022 - I have, post day surgery, been prescribed 30mg codeine tablets by a nurse in Recovery and forced to take one in order to be allowed to leave the ward and go home. On a scale of 1 - 10 I'd put my pain, before taking the additional analgesic, at 0.

1023:

AND .. We have an active QUISLING

well, he's not wrong that pouring in weapons is only going to prolong the war, but if you're fine with prolonging the war i guess that's a win, it should certainly be one for raytheon

i do wonder how much of ukraine is going to be left in ukrainian hands by the time things settle down, i'm not hearing great things about their mooted counteroffensive, still maybe it can all be recovered with stern words at the negotiating table

1024:

Re: 'It would be LESS subjective - that is my point, which is to use specific injuries etc., not how people perceive them on a scale.'

Based on personal experience, both viewpoints are needed: the objective to help identify the possible source of the pain and the subjective to identify the impact of the pain. FYI - many migraine sufferers eventually become hypersensitive to pain stimuli. I'm guessing that the brain cannot distinguish between regular (Bell curve 'normal' for that particular stimulus) vs. amplified pain signals therefore will send out chemical and other messages to sort the pain out for as long as that brain registers 'I'm in pain'. (A screwed up feedback system can do plenty of damage.)

1025:

When I searched for more info I found that (in the US) iodine is not one of the 'must be listed' ingredients in food or supplements.

Table salt in the U.S. is required to have iodine added. Given how much salt people use in a lot of food, I suspect most Americans get sufficient iodine.

1026:

I remember learning the Glasgow coma scale at some point when I trained for Occupational First Aid. It is a little helpful, but it is essentially triage. If a patient is unconscious they are classified as 'Rapid Transport', which means their chances of staying alive are vastly better if they get to a hospital within 30 minutes.

In my current work, where we call ambulances regularly, the general term is 'non-responsive'. If a patient is nonresponsive the ambulance shows up quickly (it helps that the station is 200m away).

My ongoing annoyance with emergency services is when the operator starts asking me personal questions for the file. Another one is when they ask collossally stupid questions.

The following is about as close to a transcript as my memory will provide:

Me: Send the police, there is a knife fight in the alley outside [my workplace].

Operator: What is the address?

Me: (draws blank). Every police officer in our smallish town knows where the [workplace] is, they were just here 2 hours ago.

Operator: I can't dispatch them without an address.

Me:... Looks on phone for address of nearby business. Gives address.

Operator: Describe the people involved please

Me: 2 adult males having a screaming knife fight in the alley. Send the police quickly please.

Operator: How old is the first male?

Me:... I don't know? Come and ask him yourself? Have you sent the police yet?

Meanwhile fight ends. One runs away, the other one is in need of first aid.

Me: I'm going to do first aid. Please send help.

Operator: What is your date of birth?

Me: Click.

1027:

I'm coming in late, but I wonder whether there would be something in play which would be something like countries as well as something like companies. Countries would have a complicated push-pull between allowing some independence of minds and wanting to control them, and where the point would be a lot of minds roughly on the same side. I was going to say "minds bundled together", but that might be an unfortunate metaphor.

Just to clarify, this is on the original topic?

So far as the international order is concerned, we have four known and one hypothetical class of entities:

Humans Corporations Nation-States Super-Rich Rivers and lakes

The problem isn't cognitive ability, is power and necessity. In financial measurements, the biggest corporations and richest individuals are equivalent to mid-sized nation-states, but they don't have the same rights or the same armies. A number of the smallest nation-states, and many municipalities within nation-states, are effectively owned by corporations and the super-rich to give them political cover.

As for lakes and especially rivers, people in various parts of the world are arguing that at least some of them require rights on par with those of humans. This idea hasn't been tested much in courts, although various jurisdictions have passed laws stating that various rivers and lakes have human rights, such as the right to exist. Given that the relationship between our current legal framework and the natural world is, on my personal scale, scheisskopfian*, I think it's a potential step in the right direction.

As for transhuman AIs? Yeah.

*As a thought experiment, imagine a space colony whose life support system is run entirely under the legal principles of any nation you care to name. Not by human engineers running things and being held legally responsible for the consequences, but by lawyers with little or no science background applying legal principles to figure out which buttons to push to make sure there's enough oxygen and water. Possibly with some advice from physicists when they can afford to pay for it. Far too often that's how we actually solve environmental problems. This is the context where giving nonhumans rights might be useful, for the same reason that you put gauges on systems you don't want to fail.

1028:

Oh, shit.

For alternate cheer you up value, the nearest I can think of that I had was in the mid-seventies. I was visiting some fan-friends in NYC, and we were going, with several others, to a party in... Queens(?) by subway. We had decided to all go in midievals/SCA garb. We met a couple of other friends of theirs, two women, in Penn Station, and they were glad to see us - been harassed. One had a guitar in a case. We're all sitting on the el, and half a dozen or so punks/small gang walking from one car to another see our half a dozen, and instantly sit across from us. One starts going on "play us a song...." Several folks later said they were trying to figure out who on the subway would be fighting on our side.

The friend at the other end from me and I each had the exact same idea at the same time. Turning to the person with us next to us, we both said, "By the way, did you see my sword" (in bags), and pulled down the top. One of the punks instantly went, "He's got a SWORD, man! A SWORD!"

They got off at the next stop. Half the car smiled at us, and we smiled back.

1029:

And the operator's boss wins a prize for thundering stupidity in the face of an ongoing emergency!

1030:

I had tuition remission (they pay if you get at least a C? B?), which is how I got through college. I can think of... let's see, one audio cassette tape at the Scummy Mortgage Co, several in-house training when I worked at the same company as my late wife (time management, hazard communication... not sure if anything else). After... Spent a few days working with a consultant, and, um, er....

1031:

I'm rooting for the DoJ to block it. The pro-lawyers are saying "it will make production more efficient".... Yeah, right. There will be fewer new, interesting stores (and writers, says someone trying to find an agent, so as to sell to one of the major houses), and more "this best-seller-to-be is just like that best seller" - they want "content creators" to produce, the same way you produce laundry detergent in a factory.

1032:

In my future universe, I've got both non-bio and bio additions (eventually, genengineered in), to increase things like that.

And then there are the Enhanced, who you meet in my first novel, 11,000 Years. Our two do have a specialty that they study: paying attention.

You don't think that's big? Quick, what did you have for lunch 25 years ago, minus one day?

1033:

I dunno, the 1-10 scale they use around here is fine, as far as I'm concerned: 1 "ough", 10 "I'm fainting from the pain, and think I'm about to die". I can remember 8 (the ambulance got called).

1034:

"AND .. We have an active QUISLING ..."

Nono, just someone who disagrees with the establishment view on who you are and aren't allowed to blow up. I'm fairly sure there's a comment from me on one of the original Ukraine threads on this very blog that says pretty much the same thing.

I see also that Margaret Hodge has been getting up to that fucking infuriating trick of criticising your opponent's position in terms which actually apply as a criticism of your own position.

"a troy victory"

That'll be what happens when they set fire to the horse on the spot, or at least manage to get the idea that it might be worth having a look inside before they haul it in?

1035:

Re: 'U.S. is required to have iodine added'

Not based on what I've seen at MASS grocery store shelves.

1036:

paws @ 1023 ( 1013 ) ...
The tories WANT Scotland to break away, so they can form a permanent almost-fascist government in England.
(1020) _well I can vote labour, but then you know who my MP is ....

"QUISLING"
- AS @ 1024: Of course, unless weapons are supplied to Ukraine, then Putin's troops & NKVD operatives will take Ukraine over.
Is that what you want, or should Ukraine remain independent?
A word to remeber: KATYN.
- Pigeon@ 1035: Remember who we are talking about - NOT ONE new idea since 1975 & everything the US does is always bad (even when it isn't) .. And, as before: Is that what you want, or should Ukraine remain independent? And: Presumably Corbyn would have gleefully allowed Czechosolvakia to go under in 1938?
"troy victory" - fucking typos - well spotted.

Rocketjps
YES
Many years ago, working in central London, I was almost out of Tottie-CtRd tube station ... Young woman in severe distress ( probably coming off drugs ) weeping, shaking, blood trickling down her face ...
In sight of her, in "well" of staircase, with mobie-signal ... 999 ... "Ambulance"
Me: Woman in distress, blood running down face, shaking & crying
Op: Where?
Me: T-C-R tube station, southernmost exit
Op: What postcode is that, where is it?
Me: T-C-R tube, I just said, the long southernmost exit.
Op: Where is it, what's the Postcode?
Me: How the FUCK should I know, there's ONLY ONE TCR station in the whole country! Get someone here ... Op: Where is it?
Me - hangs up, takes deep breath, re-dials - gets new operator who locates position in seconds - I ring off.
- Specially recruited thick morons....

whitroth
Didn't something similar happen to J Pournelle, upon a time?
Punk pulls a knife: "gimme your money" ...
Pournelle draws swordstick - "No, you give me yours!"

1037:

Long COVID - new research study

The manufacturer is planning to meet with US & UK officials about doing a larger study. Apparently the mitochondria is involved in long-COVID - at least it looks that way in some patients.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/axcella-long-covid-treatment-helps-some-patients-small-trial-2022-08-02/

This is how they screened patients for the study.

https://www.rdm.ox.ac.uk/news/patient-screening-underway-for-long-covid-trial

1038:

I can't imagine pain at all.

Just noting that difficulty describing pain and parsing internal emotional states is a common trait among autism spectrum people.

What they're really asking is, "does this patient need pain relief ASAP?" and the correct answer is "it's a 10! It's a 10! Oh oh I am dying mother! Kill me now to make it stop!" unless it's so mild you can do without.

1039:

Naah, he just never re-evaluated his circa-1960s anti-imperialist shtick, and still sees everything in "them = evil, therefore folks opposed to them = good". Not enough nuance to get the idea that the enemy of my enemy ain't necessarily my friend.

1040:

Re: 'Quick, what did you have for lunch 25 years ago, minus one day?'

Ha - easy one! Salad and chocolate b'day cake! Long-time friend of the family just celebrated her 100th yesterday - the salad is to balance out the cake. We make a point of seeing her for milestone b'days.

Okay - so how much memory storage and processing do your gen-engineered and Enhanced have? I'm guessing that both go up exponentially with each additional data point. So even if the storage and processing are outside the individual, that's still a huge capacity/processing requirement somewhere. Then there's timely access/traffic - to and fro. Add an ever-growing population (ever-growing demand) and you'll need to tap into some neighboring infinite quantum-parallel universe to ensure adequate accessible storage and processing.

Some memory circuits in our (human) brains are tied to emotion tagging/processing - I think the rationale is so that our brain can toss out irrelevant info.

1041:

My ongoing annoyance with emergency services is when the operator starts asking me personal questions for the file. Another one is when they ask collossally stupid questions.

Is 911 contracted out in BC?

I seem to recall reading something about that in a story about what crap shape it's in right now, with some people on hold for 30+ minutes before getting an answer, and others being hung up on after being told an ambulance has been dispatched because the call-taker had to get to the next call in the queue…

1042:

What they're really asking is, "does this patient need pain relief ASAP?" and the correct answer is "it's a 10! It's a 10! Oh oh I am dying mother! Kill me now to make it stop!" unless it's so mild you can do without.

My wife the pharmacist gets allowed to prescribe pain meds under MD supervision. We've had long talks, and she (and everyone) are perfectly aware of the subjectivity of the pain scale. They need patients' reported experience as part of the evidence for evidence-based treatment.

Her anecdote (slightly redacted): A frequent flier addict saying: "what's my pain on a scale of 1 to 10? It's 15. Man, I'm in agony. Give me drugs. I need drugs."

The point: some addicts have such a high tolerance that there's a very narrow window between minimally effective and lethal. Pharmacists like my wife are quite aware of this and try to dose appropriately. Let them know your drug history.....

The second point: don't lie about your pain. They know. If you're talking, it's probably not a 10, and you may not like the effects of level-10 pain control on the level-4 ache that's kept you from sleeping for the last three days.

The third point: clarify. If 10 on your scale is a broken bone, tell them. If it's getting swarmed by bullet ants, they need to know that too. You're helping them gather evidence.

The fourth point: IF YOU'RE INFORMED, give them the number that helps them justify the treatment that both you and they want. It's not a bad idea to talk to them about what they need the number for either.

1043:

It's a current crisis for certain. COVID didn't help. The NDP government is trying to do something about it, but a bit hobbled by pre-existing contracts etc. etc.

One rule of thumb is to always use your cell phone, which gets routed to the nearest operator. A landline goes to somewhere on the Island, where you get 2-3 1 or 2 minute rounds of giving your location and which service you need (police, ambulance, fire) before you get filtered down to the local operators. In the midst of a literal life and death emergency (i.e. He's not breathing!!) this is infuriating.

Another approximate transcript from memory:

Me: There is an enraged man with a weapon outside our (glass) front doors.

Operator: What is your address.

Me: Gives address. He is trying to get in. The police know him, [Give his name].

Operator: How old is he?

Me: ?!? Tell them his age. The police know him very well. He is breaking the glass and getting into our vestibule.

Operator: Can you stop him?

Me: That is your job. Are the police on the way?

Operator: What is your date of birth?

Me: For my death certificate?!? Send the fucking police please?

Operator: Sir, can you please not be rude?

Me:...

1044:

I don't have numbers. On the other hand, if you want to see what I did... y'know, you could buy and read 11,000 Years.

1045:

Re: '... y'know, you could buy and read 11,000 Years.'

I did, I have - and I'm looking forward to the prequel! (Since you said you're not doing a sequel.)

I don't remember specifics* of how the enhancing mechanics worked but that's because my attention is usually on the characters and plot. For me, SF/F mostly means that there's some weird background stuff that allows certain things to happen or not happen. Logical internal consistency is a must, good science is a bonus.

*Do recall the general gene editing - don't want to spoiler it though.

1046:

Thank you. Hope you did a review/rating on Big River. I keep hoping for more....

You may be surprised about "prequel" - it starts about 55 years from now, and runs to about 95 years from now, and covers the creation of the Terran Confederation. And the mesh is Important....

1047:

Re: 'U.S. is required to have iodine added'

Not based on what I've seen at MASS grocery store shelves.

Are you sure you were looking at table salt?

1048:

I don't think it is required. But most table salt products have had it for 100 years or so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodised_salt#United_States

It is sold as iodised salt. And is the typical sale that comes in a cardboard can for not much money. There are all kinds of other "natural" and/or sea salts that are sold without the iodine for those who think all additives are unhealthy or a commie plot.

Reading the Wiki article is interesting in the measured IQ results. I have to wonder if some in Michigan have stopped using iodised salt and has been dropping IQ points for some population groups.

1049:

JReynolds @ 1014:

That pain scale is STUPID

My problem with those pain scales is how do you quantify all of the different pains onto a single scale ... it also doesn't say anything about the quality of the pain or how long it's been there or where it is in your body and how much does it interfere with living.

Most of my pain is low level, but it's not the same low level all over my body ... and it changes over time; one pain gets worse, while another fades away.

And sometimes (very rarely) all of the pain goes away at the same time.

But the nurse can't put all that down, so they want ONE simple number they can put on the chart along with weight, BP, pulse & temperature ... So, do I sum them, average them or just report the highest number?

1050:

David L @ 1017:

I just took a look at my fingers. I think the only one that has not been broken at least once is the thumb on my right hand.

1051:

AlanD2 @ 1048: Re: 'U.S. is required to have iodine added'

Not based on what I've seen at MASS grocery store shelves.

Are you sure you were looking at table salt?

You can buy salt without iodine in U.S. grocery stores.** But every one I remember seeing has a warning on the label that it does NOT contain iodine.

For that matter, all iodized salt in the U.S. carries a label notice that it DOES contain iodine.

**Usually some fancy "gourmet" salt in a fancy salt shaker container that's going to cost three times as much as regular salt.

Himalayan sea salt anyone?

1052:

Kosher salt is not iodized I think, in general. We use it... but that's because with the large crystals, it's easier to control how much salt you're putting in the cooking. Hint: do not ever cook with popcorn salt, which is a very find grind.

1053:

Something I thought of last night ...

I think they're doing "genetic surgery" nowadays (at least experimenting with it) to head off certain inherited diseases ... cystic fibrosis is the one that I remember reading about in the news. Don't know how it's supposed to work, but I remember seeing news articles about it.

But I did wonder if the "genetic surgery" produces a change in the persons genetic makeup that can be passed along to offspring?

If you got "genetic surgery" for something would it affect sperm and/or ova so that the genetic defect wouldn't pass along to future generations?

1054:

Any sane scale would compare with experiences people have had, not those they can only imagine.

Depending on the situation you might want to be cautious, but one way I've found to convey this is for me as a man to tell a woman "it's somewhere between a bad period cramp and childbirth, I imagine". They tend to boggle and then change the pain scale to "let's go with a pain you have actually experienced".

I do that when I tell them it's somewhere between codeine and morphine and they look at me and say something about them being the one qualified to make that determination. Sure you are, let me just give you my pain so you can decide how bad it is... but then we run into the problem of limited shared experiences. And also, how does a freshly broken bone compare to a large graze compare to the throbbing of an infected wound? Twelve. The answer to all numeric questions is 12, except when it's 42.

OTOH when I broke my humerus the ambulance peep went straight to "do you want a shot of morphine then?" The answer was "right this instant the adrenaline is doing fine, but in a couple of minutes that will wear off". I got the shot.

1055:

There's complex technical differences between reproductive cells and the multitudes of other cells in your body, and actually getting the gene editing bits in to a place they can do any gene editing is a fantastically tricky endeavour. So it is more or less "be grateful it works at all" rather than "try to edit just the one thing".

I have had it likened more to introducing a new predator to control an introduced invasive species. It's generally easy enough to find something that preys on the species (makes the genetic change you want), but harder to find one that can survive and thrive in your environment rather than where it lives now (can make the genetic change inside the cells you care about). Making sure it doesn't eat the obvious things you care about is generally easy enough too (doesn't affect germline cells, for example).

The really ugly part is all the other stuff. You don't want it eating/editing any of the multitudinous other things in the environment/body, and you definitely don't want it running amok and spreading out of control. Given our very limited knowledge of even what's there, let alone how everything interacts, we have to settle for a "suck it and see" approach.

This is why gene editing is only done on people who are going to die soon, and introducting new "pest control" species is basically not done at all. We have lots of sick kids, but very few Australias. And we can make new sick kids very easily, but making even one more Australia is currently beyond us. Making a whole new planet after we use up this one is apparently very cheap (if you ask economists) but also impossible (if you ask insane doomsaying climate change worriers).

1056:

Charlie @ 1040
Spot on
Translation: "Corbyn is fucking thick" ....

1057:

"Kosher salt is not iodized I think, in general. We use it... but that's because with the large crystals,"

Us too, just Morton's, but for us the taste is distinctively different and better than the salt-shaker variety. Various other sea and rock salts are interesting, but nothing totally amazing that we've found yet.

For iodine, eat seaweed.

1058:

To be fair "Electronic or printed health records less than 12 months old, including the most recent reports of laboratory blood work for the state-licensed pharmacist to review for kidney or liver problems."

Sounds like what they really want to know is: 1)What your most recent estimated GFR was, and; 2)That you either don't have indications/major risk factors for liver disease, or if you do, what your most recent liver enzyme panel was.

Though I could be totally talking out of my rear end.

1059:

you could just buy it.

Ok, Ok, I just did buy it and will read it instanter.

BTW, I also bought and read Turtledove's latest, "Three Miles Down", and think it's good in the Turtledovian style. Project AZORIAN was just a cover... I'll by the sequel.

1060:

Honest question for UKians.

Your two main parties seem obviously (1) unfit for purpose and (2) mostly interchangeable.

Is there any chance that one or both parties will implode in the next election, leaving some other (currently minor) party in power? Or is it austerity and fascism forever in the UK?

1061:

Of course, unless weapons are supplied to Ukraine, then Putin's troops & NKVD operatives will take Ukraine over.
Is that what you want, or should Ukraine remain independent?

putin's troops are afaict steadily grinding through the ukrainian army even with the weapons we're sending, and sending long-range weapons is probably an excuse for the russians to say they need a bigger buffer zone to protect their territory

the country is on track to end up an economically unviable rump state (possibly with no coastline) which the eu will be expected to support for the foreseeable because we encouraged them into this and we won't have the leverage to extract reparations from the russians apart from what's already been confiscated

also germany is getting cold feet, for the time being figuratively speaking

katyn seems unlikely, they want prisoners to exchange and everyone's watching, though if ur convinced the russians are genetically predisposed to recreational genocide i suppose we should worry

course if nancy pelosi manages to open up a second front we may all dream of life being this simple

1062:

eh, fecking tags

1063:

putin's troops are afaict steadily grinding through the ukrainian army even with the weapons we're sending...

Not what I'm hearing on the Daily Kos. Seems like the Russian army is actually retreating in some places in the south. For example:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/2/2113983/-Ukraine-Update-The-outsized-importance-of-the-heroic-defense-of-tiny-Bohorodychne

There are also questions about whether Russia can survive economically, given the financial stress of their war and sanctions:

https://fortune.com/2022/07/16/why-hasnt-the-russian-economy-collapsed-putin-oil-sanctions-ruble-china/

Your pro-Russia inclinations may be correct, especially given that the media gets more news from Ukraine than it does from Russia, but the jury is still out...

1064:

With regard to Russia's economic problems, Paul Krugman has an interesting column today in the NYT (paywall, but if you hit refresh and then quickly kill it, you can probably read it):

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-embargo-gas.html

He suggests, among other things, that sanctions are preventing Russia from importing things that are necessary for its war effort.

I've also read stuff suggesting that Russia can no longer manufacture enough artillery shells for its current war effort, not to mention smart bombs, tanks, and APCs. They seem to be salvaging computer chips from consumer goods (like refrigerators, for heaven's sake) to be repurposed for military use.

1065:

i'm really not pro-russia, i just think the west has failed to mind its own business, has overplayed its hand in this affair and is going to both reap what it's sown and immure itself in denial about it, and i fear the knock-on economic effects are going to severely disrupt any enjoyment i might otherwise have extracted from contemplation of the hubris-nemesis cycle

also i've got kids, and this is the sort of thing which could really screw with their prospects

1066:

I doubt even a nuclear war would be worse for our kids than global warming... :-(

1068:

I agree. Daily Kos has awesome Ukraine coverage, though I think they might be a little too pro-Ukraine. "It goes up to eleven."

"Thanks, turn it down to ten and we'll be good."

and their coverage would be perfect.

1070:

I agree. Daily Kos has awesome Ukraine coverage, though I think they might be a little too pro-Ukraine. "It goes up to eleven."

Agreed. But part of the problem - as I mentioned above in 1064 - is that the media is getting most of their news from Ukraine. And what news there is from Russia doesn't seem to be very trustworthy.

1071:

"The age of brain-computer interfaces is on the horizon"

"Oxley is the founder and CEO of Synchron, a company creating a brain-computer interface, or BCI. ​​These devices work by eavesdropping on the signals emanating from your brain and converting them into commands that then enact a movement, like moving a robotic arm or a cursor on a screen. The implant essentially acts as an intermediary between mind and computer."

"A trial in Australia followed four patients who had been implanted with the device for 12 months and suggested that such prolonged use of the device was safe." Perhaps Moz can sign up! :-)

".. on July 6, the first patient in the US was implanted with Synchron’s device at a hospital in New York."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/the-age-of-brain-computer-interfaces-is-on-the-horizon/

I can't wait to get a full-fledged super computer implanted into my brain! The heck with fingers and eyes and ears!!!

1072:

I volunteer gasdive as tribute!

The idea isn't new, people have been using external sensing as well as implanted electrodes for all sorts of fun stuff for a while now. Sadly most people don't have even a CAT scanner at home, let alone a proper MRI or PET scanner. So home users have to visit the chop shop.

The device, called a Stentrode, has a mesh-like design and is about the length of a AAA battery. It is implanted endovascularly, meaning it’s placed into a blood vessel in the brain, in the region known as the motor cortex, which controls movement. Insertion involves cutting into the jugular vein in the neck, ... become the first company to conduct clinical trials of a permanently implanted BCI.

Yeah, nah. I have never wanted to star in Sweeney Todd and don't feel the urge to change my mind.

1073:

Hey, the tech is young, Moz! Someday everybody will have one.

1074:

JReynolds
mostly interchangeable. - Um, NO.
Whatever Labour's faults { Like total cowardice over the EU & Brexshit }, they are not descending into fascism - the tories are so doing: 'nuff said?

Adrian Smith (1062)
1: Typo in typeface
2: Pure RU propaganda ( again! ) - see also AlanD2 @ 1064
3: Let's just allow an independent coutry to be rolled over by its tyrranical neighbour, because it has a KGB meathead in charge, how nice. Or in other words, letr's just replay 1938 ... maybe not?
... (1066) - Ah, so Putin walking into a sovereign country with full military force is the West "interfering" is it? ....

1075:

i would have said nato training ukrainian troops was the west interfering

or was that just "ru propaganda" too?

in any case if the ukrainians are in fact giving the russians the drubbing they deserve and daily kos believes i look forward to hearing about the imminent recovery of the donbass and crimea, when i shall happily eat my words and review my sources

1076:

Request: your keyboard has keys for both capital letters, and full stops. Your posts would be a lot more readable if you made use of those keys, please.

> i would have said nato training ukrainian troops was the west interfering

You're going to have to explain how that is "interference" a lot more thoroughly. Specifically, can you explain it in a way that does not boil down to "Ukraine is in some way beholden to Russia, and therefore Russia has an interest in activities that Ukraine takes part in".

NATO trains with many non-NATO armed forces (South Korea, Japan, Sweden, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, to name but 5), and in all cases, that training can be presumed to be mutually consensual pending evidence to the contrary. Between 1991 and 2014, NATO even extended invitations to the Russian armed forces for joint training, although actual joint exercises have only happened twice (both in 2011).

That Ukraine chose (emphasis, chose) to take NATO up on those invitations is rather hard to explain as "interference", as I understand the word.

1077:

Your posts would be a lot more readable if you made use of those keys, please.

i'm afraid these are among the redundancies of english which i reserve for formal writing, partitioning each sentence off with newlines serves the same purpose tho, u will either get accustomed to it or summarily ignore my comments

You're going to have to explain how that is "interference" a lot more thoroughly

well, u gotta look at the context in each individual case, and really the question in ur mind should be "who are we training to fight against here", and moreover i think it was more "training" than "training with"

i do understand that ukraine, in its blissful sovereignty guaranteed by the holy treaty of westphalia, should be able to waft through the ether as a free spirit unencumbered by historical baggage, and it saddens me that there are those who feel that is not the case

i'm kind of with john mearsheimer here tho, i think nato set this up deliberately in order to weaken russia, and we're in the process of finding out whether that's gonna work or not

if it does, well, fine, good call, we can all move on to some other topic

otoh, if it turns into some godawful clusterfuck in defiance of the robust intuitions of daily kos, there may be some comments to be made

1078:

Adrian Smith
Oh, so offering help, which THEY ASKED FOR is "interfering" is it?
Incidentally, we train lots of other people - is that "interfering" as well?
SEE ALSO: "Atropos"

This is an English-language blog, please use English language convention when writing?s

1079:

Re: 'That Ukraine chose (emphasis, chose) to take NATO up on those invitations is rather hard to explain as "interference", as I understand the word.'

Agree - also Ukraine's greater interest in joining NATO is consistent with changes in its imports/exports trade partnerships.

https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/ukr/partner/rus?redirect=true

'During the last 24 years the exports of Ukraine to Russia have decreased at an annualized rate of 2.64%, from $5.65B in 1996 to $2.97B in 2020.'

'During the last 24 years the exports of Russia to Ukraine have decreased at an annualized rate of 1.01%, from $8.05B in 1996 to $6.31B in 2020.'

1080:

"Agree - also Ukraine's greater interest in joining NATO is consistent with changes in its imports/exports trade partnerships.

https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/ukr/partner/rus?redirect=true

'During the last 24 years the exports of Ukraine to Russia have decreased at an annualized rate of 2.64%, from $5.65B in 1996 to $2.97B in 2020.'

'During the last 24 years the exports of Russia to Ukraine have decreased at an annualized rate of 1.01%, from $8.05B in 1996 to $6.31B in 2020.'"

****

NATO is a trading block?

1081:

NATO is not a trading block, but if you look at the 10 year trend, Ukraine's exports to EU countries (Spain, Poland, Netherlands), USA, and Canada have all grown, as have exports to China, at the expense of Russia. The same pattern shows up in Ukraine's imports over that time scale.

With the noteworthy exception of China, the countries that are growth countries for Ukraine's import and export markets are mostly NATO countries - this is Ukraine becoming economically closer to NATO members than to the Russian Federation, and following that with a military shift.

Russia is not happy about this, and has waged war on Ukraine as a result. The question for the west is what do we actually do about it? Do we accept Russia's claim on Ukrainian economic output unchallenged, do we allow Ukraine to become one of our allies in NATO, do we challenge Russia in some other way?

1082:

Thanks for the response.

1083:

I don't agree that they are interchangeable; Labour would be massively less bad. Quite possibly not good enough, but I'll take what I can get.

I do think there is a risk of schism, for both parties.
I have thought since the 2016 vote that each party is cohering by its fingernails, because whichever splits first will be out of power for decades. (Look at what happened to the SDP, a Labour schism, after 1981.)

I also think that Labour is at much bigger risk, until the next election; Corbyn demonstrated clearly that many voters are much further left than the party establishment and MPs. But if things go as I suspect, the Tories will be wiped out in 2024, and that will be a 1981 moment for them; I'd guess they will lurch yet further to the right, and their membership and share of the vote will decline as a result.

These are opinions.

1084:

Regrettably, that is correct, and Obama is at least largely to blame. I was dispirited by the way that the USA/NATO (plus UK, of course) was pressuring Ukraine to cut ties with Russia and join the EU and NATO in the period 2010-2013, which culminated in the externally-organised coup and all that it implied, the rebellions in Donbass and Luhansk, and Russia's invasion of Crimea. The EU then broke its principles and recognised the victors in an illegal coup. Far, far worse, when Russia suggested that the problem in Donbass and Luhansk be handed to the UN, Obama said "Nope. We will veto it.", and demanded that Russia force the rebels to surrender, unconditionally. That principle has not changed.

Since then, NATO (mainly the USA and UK) has got directly involved - how directly is unclear, but it's definitely at least full-scale proxy war, and I remember Vietnam :-( Russia's invasion was utterly stupid, because it was militarily incompetent and played straight into the hands of the "Russia delenda est" camp of the western warmongers. I don't know how long this will drag on for, but can see no good outcome with the current approach, and most lead to nuclear war - NOT necessarily initiated by Russia.

1085:

waldo
Especially, if Labour require a coalition to govern, which means electoral reform, which we desperately need. If that happens the tories will certainly fracture first, with the current lot forming a fascist rump & the majority of it's non-party supporters forming a more moderate centre-right party.
After that, expect an openly "Socialist" - meaning half-way-to-communist splinter off to the Labour left, including Corbyn, of course.
Where the fucking mad fake greenies go in this mix, I haven't a clue.
NOTE: Can we have a REAL GREEN party, pretty please?

1086:

I disagree. At best, Labour will put the situation on hold and do nothing to fix the problems and, at worst, Starmer will follow the same line only more subtly (as That Bliar did). Yes, Labour is must more likely to break up, but no real change will happen unless there is a serious demographic shift. Basically, for now, the fascists and monetarists have complete domination, at least in England.

1087:

Oh, so offering help, which THEY ASKED FOR is "interfering" is it?

entirely depends on the context, what was in it for us, what blind innocent altruism prompted us to get involved here?

this is apparently an unquestion for a lot of people, so be it

please use English language convention when writing?s

be happy to if charlie's bothered by it, otherwise nah

1088:

I don't know how long this will drag on for, but can see no good outcome with the current approach, and most lead to nuclear war - NOT necessarily initiated by Russia.

If not initiated by Russia, then by whom? Surely not the US or UK. France, perhaps? Germany would be a good guess, but Germany doesn't have nukes. Countries in the far east - China, North Korea, India, Pakistan - surely have little interest in Ukraine.

I guess that leaves Israel... :-)

1089:

The USA, possibly with UK support. Let's assume that Russia starts collapsing, as some people predict, and the Ukraine/NATO alliance pushes Russia out of Donbass and Luhansk and mobilises to take Crimea (with the intent of turning Sebastopol into a NATO/USA base, complete with missiles). That is an existential threat to Russia. The USA hawks then launch a 'preemptive' nuclear attack on Russia's nuclear sites and submarines, believing (or at least claiming) that Russia is about to go nuclear. There is evidence that the USA now has the capability of doing that and surviving the counterstrike (pity about Europe), as both sides believed it had in 1962 - but whether it has or not, it is whether both sides believe it that matters. No, the "Wow, wow, wow, nuke 'em now" camp has not gone away, and the Ukraine debacle has strengthened them.

A second one is that Russia fragments, to be taken over by warlords, and the USA again ('preemptively') hits the nuclear sites one or more of them control.

Yes, it's more probable that Russia would go nuclear first if faced by the Crimean threat I mentioned above, but not as much more as is claimed in the west.

God help us all.

1090:

1055 The answer to all numeric questions is 12, except when it's 42. So 10 = 56 then?

1061 -I'd like to hope so, at least to the extent that the Scottish National Party take more than 50% of the poll in Scotland.

1976 - Some of the reports about the UK training Ukrainian troop are from the UK media.
More importantly, supporting the Ruzzians in the conflict is an attempt to defend the right of one nation to invade another.
MODERATOR

1091:

»Let's assume that Russia starts collapsing, […] That is an existential threat to Russia.«

That's a bit of a circular argument isn't it ? :-)

The worst historical existential threat to "modern" russia, would have been the western world paying attention to James Hansen in due time, instead of literally paying good money to destroy the climate and get a russian kleptocracy at the same time.

The worst existential threat to Russia today, is the same: Strangle the kleptocracy by shutting of the flow of money.

It seems like at least some of the western governments have finally figured that out...

1092:

Yeah. I get all that. I think Ukraine is aiming for some variation on the "rope a dope" strategy, and I do expect to learn in the next month that the Russians have culminated and are unable to continue pursuing the war in any kind of useful way.

But will Ukraine win? I think that's a little harder to support than Daily Kos's people expect. For starters, define "win," and keep in mind that Russia could decide that Ukraine is a war rather than a "police action," and that it's necessary to put their economy into full war-production/soldier production mode. The war could take several more years. Ukraine might end up with Donbas and Luhansk by not Crimea. Etc. Or the Russians could decide that keeping their naval base at Sebastapol is their top priority and worth using a tactical nuke or three.

I'd say (mostly pulling the numbers out of my ass) that Ukraine's chances of taking back Donbas, Crimea, and Luhansk, plus taking back everything they've lost last year is around forty-percent. (I'd be thrilled to discover that the chances are much better than this, but one can't be too optimistic about a war between Russia and some other power.)

Taking back everything they've lost this year, plus some subset of Donbas, Crimea, and Luhansk would be more like seventy-percent - slightly better odds.

Losing the whole match is very unlikely, but ending up with things as they were around 2015 is around thirty percent.

Also, even if Ukraine "wins" will the Russians release their civilian Ukrainian prisoners? I've got my doubts.

1093:

"I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks."

1094:

Thank you for the prod about Scalzi - I had incorrectly classified him, and am now remedying that.

1095:

EC
The "Crimea Threat" is entirely manufactured by Putin's Russia { One must emphasise Putin's part in this - the ordinary Russians simply want to get on with their lives, one assumes... }.
Crimea was taken from Ukraine, by force, in 2014 & they want it back, quite understandably.
However, I think NATO would have to guarantee NOT using Sevastopol as a base, just to calm things down - it would be a bloody stupid idea, anyway, given that all naval traffic has to pass the Bosporus ...

Troutwaxer
A Ukrainian win is defined as Russian troops off Ukrainian soil.
Problem: Would Putin's Russia (see above) accept that, or simply go on lobbing missiles at Ukraine, killing as many civilians as they can? Um ...
Ukrainian civilian prisoners ... yes Russia has form on that doesn't it. Nasty.

1096:

"A Ukrainian win is defined as Russian troops off Ukrainian soil. Problem: Would Putin's Russia (see above) accept that, or simply go on lobbing missiles at Ukraine, killing as many civilians as they can?"

Yeah, I've been thinking about that too, and I'd guess that even if the Russian Army breaks Russia will keep firing missiles.

1097:

In fact, the whole issue of long slog vs. quick victory is being discussed today on Kos:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/3/2114201/-Ukraine-Long-slog-vs-sudden-victory#comment_84185574

1098:

»keep in mind that Russia could decide that Ukraine is a war rather than a "police action," and that it's necessary to put their economy into full war-production/soldier production mode.«

Can they actually do that ?

It is not exactly that Russia is a well-run country which just needs a good pep-talk to go off and do mighty deeds, is it ?

Ukraine cannot "win" in any sane sense of that word, but they're not doing to badly at "not loosing".

Not attempting to "win", for instance by not invading and not bombing back across the border, robs Putin of the "we are under attack" narrative he would need to whip a already worn out population into any kind of frenzy.

Second, if he tried to anyway, would it make any difference ?

The major drawback to a pyramidal kleptocracy, is that every resource and surplus you need for a mobilization has already been looted, diluted or sold through the back door.

Rebuilding the military after the losses they have already suffered in "Putin's Folly" will be hard enough, for one thing, he will have to claw back the money from his kleptocratic sycophants, and them's figthing words.

But putting enough resources into the military, that it will have the means and the strength of will to take another go against a foe which caused so much devastation during first inning, simply isn't going to happen, certainly not under the current economic embargoes.

Also do not overlook that Russia is not Moscow and Moscow is not Russia. Russia is where every resource, every valuable, every talent from the rest of Russia gets sucked to, and nothing ever comes back.

Third and finally: Isn't there a lot of evidence which indicates that they already tried, and nothing much came out of it ?

To me it looks very much like the US, EU and NATO backed game-plan is to throw the russians back across the border, seal it, and let Putin spend more time with his population.

1099:

Legally speaking, as Russian law goes, this fight is not a "war." It's a police action (or similar phrasing - I don't know Russian.) So under Russian law certain actions are forbidden to the government.

Declaring that what's happening in Ukraine is officially a "war" will allow Putin to do things like institute a mass draft, call up reserves, take over factories which currently manufacture something else and force them to manufacture military items, etc.

Given the economic blockade I don't know how much this would do for the Russians in practical terms, but I think it's a major mistake to assume that Russia can't take any steps at all to improve their situation.

Personally, I'm rooting for Ukraine and expect them to substantially improve their current situation, but I also don't want to diminish the very real obstacles UA faces. All the facts/potential actions must be considered even when we don't like them.

1100:

Remember in this context that part of the reason for invading Ukraine now is a pair of demographic problems coming home to bite Russia:

  • The Russian military is a conscript force, but the population is no longer growing; it's clear to all observers that Russia will simply not have enough troops if it waits too long to start a war, and will lose by dint of not having the manpower to fight.

  • Russia's educated youth has been given reasons to spend at least some of their life abroad, which has damaged Russian trust in their media; in an attempt to avoid Russian citizens learning about how their military actions in Ukraine are viewed abroad, the Kremlin has shut down access to many communication mechanisms the youth use (Instagram, Facebook, Signal etc).

  • The result is a population that's going to be less and less certain that the war in Ukraine is worth fighting as the Kremlin ramps up the war effort, since the original justification was that there were Russians in Ukraine inviting the Kremlin in to "remove the Jewish Nazi Zelenskyy" from power; as it's becoming clearer that the Ukrainian population as a whole is not going to roll over for the Russians, it becomes harder to maintain a war footing back in Russia.

    1101:

    The USA hawks then launch a 'preemptive' nuclear attack on Russia's nuclear sites and submarines, believing (or at least claiming) that Russia is about to go nuclear.

    Ya gotta stop drinking the Kool-Aid, EC! :-)

    1102:

    You missed another demographic issue: Russia catastrophically mishandled COVID19 so they presumably have not only a large death toll but a bad prevalence of long COVID among conscription-age men. And their population was already ageing with a diminishing TFR.

    On the logistics side, after 1991 they dismantled and sold off the barracks and facilities for processing and training mass conscript forces. They've still got a conscript army -- for home defense, they can't be deployed outside Russia without a state of war being declared -- but they can no longer scale up by an order of magnitude the way they could in the 1980s.

    Russia is not the USSR. Russia has a population of less than 150 million people: a 3:1 advantage over Ukraine, but less significant than it would have been -- and it's not the sort of advantage you need to win an offensive war, assuming 1:1 proportionality between population and military strength.

    1103:

    But will Ukraine win? I think that's a little harder to support than Daily Kos's people expect.

    I agree, although I do believe the Daily Kos tries to be relatively non-partisan on this war. It's hard to get reliable war news out of Russia, so Ukraine tends to get more of Kos's reporting.

    Ukraine is going to have an especially tough time if they decide to try to recapture Crimea and the Donbas region that they lost to Russia in 2014. But given how much Ukraine has already lost in this war, I also find it hard to believe they will cede any part of their country to Russia.

    1104:

    USA hawks then launch a 'preemptive' nuclear attack on Russia's nuclear sites and submarines

    Not likely.

    Whacking the Russian subs in port: possible, indeed quite do-able.

    Whacking the Russian SSBNs at sea: much much harder to guarantee success, and consider that the launch sequence of Operation Behemoth-2 took 3 minutes and 44 seconds, start to finish -- to fire 16 R-29M missiles with (if armed) four H-bombs per bus. R-29M has been replaced by much more modern missiles with a higher maximum payload: presumably if just one Russian SSBN had enough warning to shoot back, it could send the entire US Eastern Seaboard up in mushroom clouds in five minutes.

    And that's before we look at the land-based mobile Topol-M launchers and more modern kit. The Russians don't go in for silos much, they prefer mobile transporter-erector-launchers dispersed throughout forested areas, so unless an attacker has real time eyes-on-the-target there's a good chance of missing some of them.

    Upshot: this is not a game anyone remotely sane would play.

    On the other hand, there are probably less than 20,000 troops involved in running the Russian nuclear deterrent forces at any time, and these days they've got smartphones. If you're the Pentagon, you just offer each and every kid on the block a cool million US dollars to prevent their weapon being launched, while you send a switchblade drone with a 1kg conventional warhead to drop the hammer on Mr. Putin. $20Bn for regime change with a guarantee that nobody gets to experience World War Three is an absolute bargain, and will likely leave Mr. Putin's eventual successor in a sober frame of mind.

    1105:

    I agree that it's unlikely - I don't believe that it is significantly more likely than the equally insane action of Russia starting a nuclear war.

    The big questions are the maintainance/readiness state of the launchers, submarines and missiles and the ability of the USA to track them (unknown), though we know that the USA has excellent real-time tracking facilities. I agree that it's not a game anyone remotely sane would play, but nor were Afghanistan, Iran and Syria (though with much lesser stakes). As I said, the question is not whether it is feasible to eliminate any counterstrike against the USA, but whether the hawks (a) have enough power and (b) believe they can do it.

    If the $20Bu came with a guarantee of no WW III, yes, it would be a bargain, but you are overstating the importance of Putin. Eliminating him would NOT cause Russia to roll over and give up - that's not the Russian style. Nor, even if they gave up the whole of Ukraine, would its main enemies (USA, UK, Poland etc.) stop waging economic and political war on it (they have said so, publicly). So the problem would NOT go away just because Putin did.

    You have a less cynical view of the USA military-industrial complex and future presidents than I do. Over the past couple of decades, I have come to the conclusion that sanity is a very poor guide to how national leaders and their controllers will behave.

    1106:

    I read the Daily Kos as well, and from not digging deeply, they're 110% pro-Ukraine.

    1107:

    Hey, some of us most certainly have CAT scanners at home. Why, just a few seconds ago, as I type this, I was being scanned.

    But as I've said before, medical professionals have no respect for feline professionals....

    1108:

    Russia and the Ukraine. Which were one country for how many hundreds of years?

    But as an American, I certainly have no right to complain about one going into the other - given the US' actions over centuries now in Central and South America, and, oh, yes, Afghanistan and Iraq.

    I'll also note that the US was the heavy hitter in the economic warfare that broke the USSR. And then, no Marshal Plan, just "we want to buy everything for pennies on the dollar, and set up what used to be the USSR the same way we and the UK did the former Ottoman Empire."

    1109:

    Oh, lovely. Apparently, codes of conduct have been weaponized.

    Back last year, while volunteering to help work the Chicon Worldcon party at the DC Worldcon, I made a comment about "all these young fen are wimps, don't stay up all night"... and was attacked, IMO, by the chair that such a joke might be taken as insulting or whatever by some younger fen, so they didn't need me to help out.

    I have just been told, officially, that tentative program participants for Chicon were "run by" senior staff, and it is suspected that I might violate the code of conduct, and so I am "firmly" not going to be on panels, etc. at Chicon.

    1110:

    Oops. I don't believe that it is significantly LESS likely.

    1111:

    “Russia and the Ukraine. Which were one country for how many hundreds of years?” So would this approach justify Ingerlandshire invading Free ScotlandFuckYouSassenachs in a few years time? I’m inclined to say not. Also “the Ukraine” is considered just a bit pro-Russia.

    1112:

    Yeah, that same logic would support the UK re-asserting sovereignty over India and Pakistan, not to mention Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

    I think not ... (at least two of those countries have rather more nuclear weapons than the UK, and one of them can put a home-grown-and-launched probe around Mars. Picking fights: not recommended.)

    1113:

    F*ck you. My mother's parents came from Odessa, and I'll spell it and pronounce it and write it the way I grew up with.

    1114:

    Well, Turkey has closed the Bosphorus this year, and the Royal Navy more or less closed the Sea of Marmara during WW1.

    1115:

    Fck you. My mother's parents came from Odessa, and I'll spell it and pronounce it and write it the way I grew up with.*

    Well, according to the Ukrainian government when they got invaded for a second time this year, Ukraine is an independent country with a democratically-elected government and pro-western leanings, while the Ukraine is a breakaway province that Mother Russia wants to bring back under her ever-loving combat boots.

    You can call it whatever you like, but some of us silly people read it the way the Ukrainian government would prefer us to.

    1116:

    Re: 'The big questions are the maintainance/readiness state of the launchers, submarines and missiles and the ability of the USA to track them (unknown), though we know that the USA has excellent real-time tracking facilities.'

    Yes - that's why Putin's been talking to Khomeini and it looks like Iran will be a major military/weapons supplier.

    Although the focus has been on European/NATO players (and China), there are other countries who'd be willing to help Putin for the right price whether that price is fuel, wheat, money or a veto [UN Security Council].

    1117:

    Tough.

    I am NOT in a good mood (see post 1110), and given my grandparents, spell it however I feel like it. And while we're at it, I think the entire war there is a disaster for everyone in both countries.

    1118:

    »Yes - that's why Putin's been talking to Khomeini and it looks like Iran will be a major military/weapons supplier.«

    ...and in return Iran gets help with their experimental physics work ?

    1119:

    They're both pro-Ukraine and have excellent coverage, so I think they're a little overoptimistic - but only a little; one day there will be books written where Russia's tactics and strategies are discussed as a canonical example of what not to do. That said, Russia has form for rescuing victory from terrible strategic/tactical decisions.

    1120:

    Whitroth: YELLOW CARD for the "F* You".

    I know you take it personally, but you have no idea who else is on here and I do not need you stirring up emotions by using inflammatory language and insulting other people.

    Don't do it again.

    1121:

    Yes. At terrible cost, but it has form for accepting that.

    1122:

    My mother's parents came from Odessa, and I'll spell it and pronounce it and write it the way I grew up with.
    Which is? I'm changing spellings of Ukrainian places from Ruzzian to Ukrainian as fast as I can learn them.

    1123:

    Since I am not a citizen of Ukraine, I don't see a huge reason to jump. I'll note I'm also using English spellings for Dutch, and German, and Japanese, etc, cities.

    1124:

    That said, Russia has form for rescuing victory from terrible strategic/tactical decisions.

    At a terrible cost too, as EC pointed out. I doubt anybody who has studied Russia's battles against Germany in WWII would think Russia would like to pay a cost like that again.

    1125:

    Neither am I. I do know some Ukrainians though, and it's one thing I can do to show support.

    1126:

    Yeah, that same logic would support the UK re-asserting sovereignty over India and Pakistan, not to mention Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

    Not to mention America. Just rebel colonies, aren't they?

    1127:

    Not to mention America. Just rebel colonies, aren't they?

    Yup. By the way, if Trump wins in 2024, Britain is encouraged to take us back again...

    1128:

    I was reading about English allotments the other day, and riding past this one thought "that's not like the English", so since some of you are very allotment-oriented I took some photos.

    https://imgur.com/a/QSI5eHC

    We have a few of this style of "community garden" where each member gets a small plot and they negotiate shading with their neighbours (or not). We also have the more open "everyone works on the whole thing" style but those require a different style of organising. Either way, the typical area is in the low hundreds of square metres for the whole thing. None of this "enough to feed a family" stuff.

    1129:

    I am "firmly" not going to be on panels, etc. at Chicon.

    that sucks

    no appeal is par for the course as well

    1130:

    That's after they yanked Mercedes Lackey from a SFWA panel, and the disaster at Balticon....

    It's beginning to remind me of how the APA I was in for 15 years died - one guy, who'd been in it since almost the beginning (early sixties) was having personal issues that I know about, privately. But he started attacking people who were mostly on his side... but we weren't Perfectly on his side. We didn't feel it right to kick him out... but nine of the 15 or so of us quit in nine months.

    You agree to differ, or maybe you take someone aside and talk with them privately. You don't attack in public... and play into the hands of your enemies, giving them all the fuel they need.

    1131:

    Change of topic #1: NEOM! "The first thing to understand about the Line, the city that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hopes to conjure up in the desert along the Red Sea, is that it is in fact a line: a 100-mile linear metropolis of 9 million souls envisioned as a monument of human civilization on par with the Pyramids."

    Being who I am and what I worked on, my first thought was "oooooh, earthquakes!" It turns out that The Line is proposed for the mouth of the Gulf of Aqba, qhich got hit by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake in 1995. The Red Sea itself is apparently the second arm of a triple junction, where Arabia, the Somali Horn, and the rest of Africa are all drifting away from each other. So the Red Sea is a spreading rift zone like the one in East Africa. The Gulf of Aqba, like the Sea of Cortez that separates Baja from the rest of Mexico, is the result of a side-slipping transform fault, in this case the Dead Sea Transform Fault rather than the San Andreas.

    So that's just the perfect place to put a 170 km-long, tall, linear building, at about 60 degree angles to both the fault and the rift.

    Earthquakes don't hit instantaneously. The waves spread (see this 2016 simulation of what would happen on a few hundred kilometers around the San Andreas for an example. Just imagine the consequences for nine million people.

    Anyway, if you need something not related to Euroamerican politics to opine about, have fun with this bit of wonderfully futuristic megascale development.

    1132:

    Change of Topic #2: Alex "Infowars" Jones, in a defamation trial brought by the parents of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, learns some unpleasant information. Jones claimed that the shooting never happened, and his legal team has not covered themselves in glory defending him. Today Jones learned that his lawyer accidentally sent the defense lawyer Jones' entire corpus of phone texts for the last two years, unredacted, and failed to ask for to be privileged when the defense lawyer told them what they'd sent. And in that record is a text demonstrating that Jones knew he was lying.

    "Perry Mason moment," as Jones noted.

    Cheers.

    1133:

    That's after they yanked Mercedes Lackey from a SFWA panel

    i mean "colored" is a little on the tone-deaf side, people have been avoiding that for a while

    1134:

    So that's just the perfect place to put a 170 km-long, tall, linear building, at about 60 degree angles to both the fault and the rift.

    i doubt they'd set out to build something on that scale without a certain amount of engineering input and computer modelling, otoh it might not be safe to be the one to tell mbs his vanity project was ill-advised

    1135:

    a 100-mile linear metropolis of 9 million souls envisioned as a monument of human civilization on par with the Pyramids.

    Except the people who built the pyramids got treated a lot better than the workers in Saudi Arabia do, and there's no reason to think this project will be any better.

    It's a vanity project dreamed up by people who don't care whether it could possibly work or not, and it's likely that a lot of the detail work (insofar as there has been any) has suffered from the Saud 'job creation program' effect where people get jobs based on being Saud even though they don't want to work.

    In theory, if it was done for the right reasons, it might kind of work, in the sense that Canberra and Brasilia work. But those cities have an actual purpose behind them, they exist for a reason. The Line is more like Burj Khalifa in that sense; it exists to be bigger than yours. Assuming the line ever exists, that is.

    1136:

    allotments the other day, and riding past this one

    Is there a rule against using actual fencing to separate the plots?

    1137:

    I watched the NEOM promotional video, and it very much reminds me of the scenes inside Ceres Station on "The Expanse". Which in turn made me think of how most of the Ceres Station inhabitants live... and it sounded like a very plausible parallel to how NEOM is likely to end up.

    1138:

    I suspect it's cost rather than a formal rule. I expect everything you see there was scrounged rather than paid for.

    1139:

    You'd need to follow up with our chasing the actual nukes from Putin's successor and/or the new nations that break away from Russia (most of whom are poor Central Asian and Siberian enclaves with little or nothing in the way of marketable resources).

    Also pledge to radically reduce America's nuclear arsenal since it is no longer needed (maybe keep a couple of thousand warheads tops)

    The invite what is left of Russia (Muscovy?) to join NATO.

    Note the one Russian marketable resource that is marketable, crude oil, won't be available after this winter. As Peter Zeihan points out, their oil well heads will be shut down and the pipelines will crack over the freezing Siberian winter. Russia can't do the necessary repair and maintenance. This has to be performed by foreign companies, technicians and engineers - which no longer work in Putin's Russia. Once these pipelines, well fields, and pumps are down they won't be coming back.

    The End of Russian Oil

    https://zeihan.com/the-end-of-russian-oil/

    Sooner than you think. It’s an issue of infrastructure and climate.

    First, infrastructure. All of Russia’s oil flows first travel by pipe—in some cases for literally thousands of miles—before they reach either a customer or a discharge port. Pipes can’t . . . dodge. Anything that impedes a single inch of a pipe shuts the whole thing down. In the post-Cold War globalized Order when we all got along, this was something we could sing-song-skip right by. But with the Russians dropping cluster bombs on civilian targets – as they started doing on Feb 28 – not so much. Whether the Russians destroy the pipes with their indiscriminate use of ordinance (like they damaged a radiation containment vessel at Chernobyl!!!) or Ukrainian partisans target anything that brings the Russians income, much of this system is doomed.

    Second, climate. Siberia, despite getting cold enough to literally freeze your nose off in October, doesn’t get cold enough. Most Russian oil production is in the permafrost, and for most of the summer the permafrost is inaccessible because its top layer melts into a messy, horizon-spanning swamp. What the Russians do is wait for the land to freeze, and then build dike-roads and drill for crude in the long dark of the Siberian winter. Should something happen to consumption of Russian crude oil or any of the millions of feet of pipe that take that crude from wellhead to port or consumer, flows would back up through the literally thousands of miles of pipes right up to the drill site. There is no place to store the stuff. Russia would just need to shut everything down. Turning it back on would require manually checking everything, all the way from well to border.

    The last time this happened was the Soviet collapse in 1989. It took millions of manhours of help from the likes of BP and Halliburton – and thirty-two years – for Russia to get back to its Cold War production levels. And now, with war on in Ukraine, insurance companies are cancelling policies for tankers carrying anything Russian on Seas Black and Baltic while the French seize Russian vessels, and the Russian Central Bank under the strictest financial sanctions ever, it is all falling apart. Again.

    1140:

    I finally got around to getting my second Covid booster vaccination. Got the Moderna this time. Not much reaction. I've got a sore spot on my shoulder that feels like someone stuck me with a needle.

    1141:

    AlanD2 @ 1074:

    Hey, the tech is young, Moz! Someday everybody will have one.

    I'm planning to get one as soon as the power company finishes installing a fusion reactor in my basement to power it. They tell me it will be ready, "Any day now."

    1142:

    Adrian Smith @ 1076:

    FWIW, Ukraine's military was being trained by NATO long before Russia invaded for the second (third? fourth?) time in 2022.

    Theoretically, building a professional military without corruption & kleptocracy was supposed to reduce the military budget by eliminating fraud, waste & abuse. Ukraine turned to the west because Russia couldn't or wouldn't help them do that.

    1143:

    Troutwaxer @ 1098:

    It became apparent early on that it wouldn't be "over by Christmas".

    1144:

    AlanD2 @ 1125:

    I don't think Russia CAN pay the kind of costs the Soviet Union paid to fend off Hitler's armies. They just don't have the resources.

    1145:

    I watched the NEOM promotional video, and it very much reminds me of the scenes inside Ceres Station on "The Expanse". Which in turn made me think of how most of the Ceres Station inhabitants live... and it sounded like a very plausible parallel to how NEOM is likely to end up.

    Earthquakes aside*, I will say that awhile (years?) ago I was whining about how no one's building even partial prototypes of big spaceships on Earth to work out how people will live in them. For all its issues, NEOM is in that ballpark, a city in a building. So there's that.

    *If you don't realize what magnitude 7 shockwaves will do, traveling down The Line... Fortunately, it's not precisely on the main fault zone, where horizontal accelerations might exceed 1 gee. If it didn't have such a powerful backer, it would be an excellent subject for a disaster film.

    1146:

    https://phys.org/news/2022-08-international-treaties-dont.html

    "Not only did many treaties have no measurable impact, but some treaties may have even led to unintended harmful impacts," says study author Mathieu J.P. Poirier, professor in the Faculty of Health at York U

    exceptions to the rule of ineffectiveness, the researchers found, are treaties governing international trade and finance, which consistently produced intended effects.

    Not really surprised, except at the gall of some intellectual thinking they should be allowed to evaluate politicians of whether they get anything done rather than whether they talk a good line.

    I do wonder whether they counted BreXit as a trade deal, though. I thought it was more a deckchair-arranging exercise while someone opened the scuttling valves.

    1147:

    ilya187 @ 1138:

    I've seen a few of the promotional videos on YouTube as well, and the thing I noticed was that none of the women were wearing traditional dress for Saudi women.

    This from a country where I'm still not sure if women are yet allowed to operate automobiles?

    1148:

    I'm still not sure if women are yet allowed to operate automobiles?

    I think it's OK if there's a close male relative in the car with them. Toddlers count. [eyeroll]

    1149:

    No shit. But from this point forward, will it be five more weeks or five more years? And if it takes five years, will Ukraine still be the winner?

    1150:

    1141 - For comparison:-
    1) Astra-Zenica; mild shoulder pain, like being stuck with a hypodermic. ;-)
    2) AZ 2; Still waiting for a reaction, so well done Maria since I literally never felt it!
    3) Pfeizer; Can't say if I had a reaction in the form of about 5 hours of bicep ache, since I had my flu' 2021/22 minutes separated.

    1145 - It's not like anyone other than possibly China will get into a Lend/Leash type arrangement with Ruzzia either.

    1147 - Well, WrecksIt itself was more of a mass shredding and pulping of existing trade treaties. Followed by Liz 4x2 showing just how little idea she has about the volume of trade covered by such treaties.

    1151:

    "Russia and the Ukraine. Which were one country for how many hundreds of years?"

    In 1975 I travelled to the Ukraine (ie. Soviet times). The Ukrainian Intourist guides were quite clear the Ukraine was not Russia. Hell, didn't Ukraine have is own UN seat then?

    1152:

    Er, no. It wasn't that Russia wouldn't or couldn't - it's because the victors in the coup were fanatically anti-Russian, and that includes BEFORE Russia invaded Crimea. NATO put 'advisors' into Ukraine in 2014, almost immediately after the coup, which makes it likely that they had had a heads-up on it. But the groundwork dates back to the years 2010-13 (see #1085).

    1153:

    Yes, it had. Crimea is another matter. I have no idea why, but Putin was behaving rationally until up to a year or two ago, when he seems to have completely lost his marbles over Ukraine. As I said, he publicly called for the disputes to be handed to the UN, and publicly disclaimed any claim to any part of eastern Ukraine until recently, but Obama blocked any such resolution. Yes, he was encouraged by the USA etc. into the insane invasion but that's no excuse. What I don't know is exactly what the attitudes of those around him, including who would take over, are to the Ukraine war, but I am certain that they will not simply roll over and play dead.

    1154:

    Russia and the Ukraine. Which were one country for how many hundreds of years?

    Speaking from Finland... we've been independent of Russia for only a bit less than 105 years. It was (barely) longer that we were part of the Russian Empire, and before that much of current Finland was just Western Sweden. Russia got the area in 1809, and never integrated us properly. (Borders were obviously not like the current ones, either in substance or location, so what is considered 'Finland' is fluid in history.)

    The Soviet Union did not like our independence and kind of tried to end that in that largeish conflict some decades ago. Looking at the Baltics which lost worse than Finland, I'm kind of happy the Finns did as well as they did then.

    So, 'Finland' as a separate idea of a country is maybe, tenously, two hundred years old. The movement for a country named 'Finland' took off in the mid-1800s (to my best guess, dammit, I'm not a historian), and of course had a lot of consequences leading to our eventual independence.

    Then, saying 'Russia and Finland. Which were one country for how long?' would still be very patronizing. Looking at Ukraine and Russia, even though their cultures seems closer than those of Finland and Russia, I'd still consider saying 'just lay up your arms and join Russia as you have before' not a very nice thing to say. Ukraine as an independent country is a fait accompli now - if we start looking at history and what has been the state of affairs hundreds of years ago we just create more conflict. Others have mentioned for example the UK and Ireland, but for example for Finland Sweden would have a more solid argument than Russia, looking at how long we 'were part of that country'.

    This means that in my opinion using 'these countries used to be united' is just bad argumentation for them being united again. I'm not sure about what to do with the Eastern parts of Ukraine, and luckily my opinion doesn't really matter there. Looking at how much effort Russia has been putting there during the last 8 years, I think that the people's opinion there is not a simple matter, either.

    (Also, about that language change, I consider it basic politeness to call entities by the name they want themselves to be called. It's not that hard. Took me some years to stop using 'England' for the whole UK, for instance, or calling Uluru that, but I don't think it's too hard.)

    (Second thing about making things harder to read, I like different letter sizes and punctuation, but can read it, and it seems peoples' classification just what kind of register should be used here is different. I grew up in contexts where 'regular text written for public consumption' has been the norm especially on forum-like things, but instant messaging type things are a different thing. I consider this blog to be in that forum-like context, but it's only my perception.

    What really gets me is not using the 'Reply' button when replying. Writing multiple responses to one post, each answer preceded by an @ symbol and a comment number, and no context otherwise, or even just saying somebody else's name and replying to that, makes it a no-go for me to go scrolling back up to see what was being talked about. I can just skip those comments, though.)

    1155:

    Yup. By the way, if Trump wins in 2024, Britain is encouraged to take us back again...

    You wouldn't want to be taken back by the UK in 2024.

    Frying pan, fire, you know the drill.

    By 2024 the UK will likely be "led" by either Liz Truss -- a deeply stupid Thatcher cosplayer -- or Rishi Sunak, a rapacious libertarian investment banker who married a hedge fund. Truss's latest bid to get the Ruling Party behind her was a promise to sideline the First Minister of Scotland and ignore devolution. Sunak's latest bid was a promise to refer people who talk down Britain to the PREVENT anti-terrorism de-radicalization program.

    (Also, Sunak seems to think Darlington is in Scotland. News Flash: Darlington is a hundred miles south of the Scottish border. You can't make this shit up.)

    Anyway, the Ruling Party is currently drifting rapidly in the same direction as the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, only there are no term limits in the UK and no unitary constitution. (Contrary to much American misunderstanding the UK does have a constitution, but it's scattered throughout roughly 20 different Acts of Parliament and a government with a working majority can amend or replace any of them at will. The US constitution's chief drawback is that it's really hard to amend, for better or worse: the British constitution's problem is that you can amend it at the drop of a hat -- it's like a CPU running a multi-tasking OS with no memory management unit.)

    1156:

    1155 Para the last - Intellectually I agree with you; my issue with using the reply button is that (at least under W7 and W10) I can make one reply, then I have to navigate away to another page and navigate back to make a second one, and so on, and so on, and so... Sometimes there are 10 or more comments I want to make replies to!

    1156 - Rishi Rich is very wrong there; Darlington is not only in England (which I knew) but some 30 miles south of Hadrian's Wall (which I had to measure).

    As for the "British Constitution" I refer you to Scamoron's "Fixed Term Parliament Act", and then to BS Johnson's repeal of same about 8 years later as a case in point.

    1157:

    If you don't realize what magnitude 7 shockwaves will do, traveling down The Line

    Pshaw!

    Build the Line out of synthetic rubber: it'll bounce.

    It'd also provide a use for all that tasty tasty Gulf crude they won't be able to sell anywhere else.

    One advantage of making it long: lots of easy-ish access to all the solar farms they can build alongside it. A PV farm 170km long and, say, 25km deep on one side of the city (the other side being along the Gulf) would provide rather a lot of juice -- enough to run Europe, if somebody was willing to lay the HVDC cables.

    1158:

    News Flash (2028). PM for life Truss orders army to retake Scotland following successful UDI. Thomas Atkins goes AWOL, leaving the English army critically short of infantry, and the Scottish army marches south and annexes the north of England to below Darlington. Sunak is proved right.

    1159:

    Putin was behaving rationally until up to a year or two ago, when he seems to have completely lost his marbles

    As I keep saying, Putin's behaviour is entirely consistent with an autocrat who received a terminal cancer diagnosis in the past year and decided he had 6-12 months to secure his place in the history books. So he hit the Fast Forward button on what had previously been a ten year plan that probably wouldn't have involved a full-on invasion, emboldened by the success of his proxy war in Syria and the news filter bubble from below telling him that the Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops with flowers.

    1160:

    It's as plausible an explanation as any. In any case, his actions were insane, though (as you say) perhaps not in the context of the bullshit he was being fed. We can ignore most of the polemic, because politicians on all sides spew more propaganda than fact, so I am going by his actions.

    1161:

    Moz said: I volunteer gasdive as tribute!

    I live to serve.

    Re, the line / NEOM, the online reaction seems to be people are apoplectic with hate. There must be something wrong with me. (maybe watching too many "Not Just Bikes" videos has rotted my brain).

    I think it's great. It will house 9 million people in a desert. That's 1.5 Las Vegas. Vegas occupies 352 km2. So that would be 528 km2 if you housed people as it's done in Vegas. The promotional literature says NEOM is 34 km2.

    No cars are needed, nowhere in the city is more than 10 minutes walk plus a less than 20 minute train ride, from anywhere else in the city. All the climate control is done centrally, so the energy demands would be greatly reduced compared to millions of single family dwellings. All the water is recycled. You're never more than 5 minutes walk from raw desert. Less than 20 minutes walk and ride from the ocean.

    If they can pull it off, really, it's so much nicer sounding that the soul crushing suburbia most of us live in. Three of these things would house everyone in Australia. Compared to the current reality of paving over farmlands and koala habitat at however many football fields a minute, that sounds just fine.

    1162:

    The last time "the Scots"* went South, they made it all the way to Derby before withdrawing.

    * Actually a spat between Stuart and Hanover over the British crown. It's just that most of the Jacobite army was raised in Scotland.

    1163:

    Mikko Parviainen said: What really gets me is not using the 'Reply' button

    Me too, which is why I try to use it, and add in the particular bit of what may be a long post, that I'm actually addressing. As above... (obviously)

    But sometimes I get excited and forget.

    1164:

    Planned cities get a bad rap, but this one seems to mostly be getting it because (a) it's on a faultline (it's a fair cop, guv), (b) product of a murderous autocrat (also a fair cop), and (c) Saudi Arabia isn't allowed to have nice things, just oil derricks.

    If they could use constructing this city as an employment/construction/training project to try and bootstrap a chunk of the regional economy that isn't based on oil, that'd be a worthy goal.

    Getting their people into high-density accommodation with low transport costs and easy access to solar-powered HVAC for those days when the wet bulb temperature hits 50 Celsius in Arabia would seem like good ideas. Something on a much larger scale (forget 9 million people, let's think about 90 million, or 900 million) may be essential if we're going to survive Peak Climate Change without catastrophic die-offs or a huge long-distance refugee problem: forget tent cities, we need somewhere attractive for people threatened by climate change to go and live, designed to simultaneously reduce energy/transport costs while maximizing quality of life.

    1165:

    The last time "the Scots" went South, they made it all the way to Derby before withdrawing.*

    Which was a disaster -- they overran their supply lines.

    If they'd stayed home they could have held the Scottish border against England for a very long time, indeed for enough time for the France/England war to turn hot again, at which time England would be facing a war on two fronts.

    (I might just have gotten an alt-hist series out of this one: "what if France invaded and conquered England in 1756-58?)

    1166:

    Hell, didn't Ukraine have is own UN seat then?

    Yes. Stalin demanded a seat for them and a few others of the USSR as a condition of joining the UN. Karma can bite hard at times.

    1167:

    arcologies are fun in theory but the surveillance/control options which would be possible and might be necessary could be offputting

    1168:

    Agreed about over-running the supply lines. Now which other military actions were we talking about recently? The more things change, the more they get repeated.

    1169:

    it's on a faultline (it's a fair cop, guv)

    And a big one. If you drive around an area over faults you might notice how the road jogs to the side at times. With a bit of paving patch and some creative line painting to make it work after a rumble.

    Putting a very large structure over such a thing is a bit nuts.

    1170:

    arcologies are fun in theory but the surveillance/control options which would be possible and might be necessary could be offputting

    "Think of it as evolution in action"

    1171:

    "Legally speaking, as Russian law goes, this fight is not a 'war.' It's a police action (or similar phrasing - I don't know Russian.)"

    It's a "Special military operation", "Специальная военная операция", "Spetsialnaya voyennaya operatsiya". People have gotten into significant trouble for calling it a "war", "война", "voyna".

    1172:

    arcologies are fun in theory but the surveillance/control options which would be possible and might be necessary could be offputting

    Does anyone really believe ANY government or architect or engineer can actually plan such a thing and allow for all of reality. I can see shanty shacks for the toilet cleaners nearby (or just over the big dune) plus other such things that will officially not exist. But will be where needed human bodies live so they can do the work no one wants to talk about.

    1173:

    Meant to add.

    Does anyone think a colony on the Moon or Mars will not have these issues times 1000?

    Space cadets seem to design things like people who think they can design a city.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20632277

    1174:

    "As I keep saying, Putin's behaviour is entirely consistent with an autocrat who received a terminal cancer diagnosis in the past year and decided he had 6-12 months to secure his place in the history books."

    There are certainly indications that he has some concern about his health, but this just came out a few weeks ago:

    Excerpted from the NYT of July 21, 2022.

    Western intelligence officials, as well as the Kremlin, this week dismissed longstanding rumors that Vladimir V. Putin, the 69-year-old Russian president, is unwell...

    “There are lots of rumors about President Putin’s health and as far as we can tell he’s entirely too healthy,” William J. Burns, director of the C.I.A., said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on Wednesday.

    Richard Moore, the head of MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, said he agreed with the C.I.A. director’s assessment: “There is no evidence that Putin is suffering from serious illness.”

    1175:

    exactly

    they took it out a bit on the environmentalists ("eco-terrorists" AIR) in that, but not as much as sm stirling did in that nantucket book of his i read, that was a bit oh john ringo no

    is there a tv trope for that, like the opposite of a mary sue, making your villain a ridiculous caricature of your own political bugbears?

    1176:

    Also pledge to radically reduce America's nuclear arsenal since it is no longer needed (maybe keep a couple of thousand warheads tops)

    Already getting close.

    As of 2020, the United States had a stockpile of 3,750 active and inactive nuclear warheads plus approximately 2,000 warheads retired and awaiting dismantlement.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_of_the_United_States

    And getting the number down from this likely would require getting rid of a delivery platform. Not saying this would be bad. But given how they are deployed with some on active ready to use, some cycling back to bases for testing, some in spare storage, these number may be close to the minimum without such an elimination of a delivery system.

    1177:

    It's also been speculated that he's getting steroids, which would be another way to lose your mind (while trying to manage a large country.)

    1178:

    Thanks. So actually less doublethink than "police action."

    1179:

    Well, I trust their press anouncements about as much as I trust Lavrov's, but that's only one aspect.

    Putin was looking and behaving very ill a while back, but seems to have recovered. Cancer and some other diseases can be like that. You are diagnosed (aither when you get ill or asymptomatically), go through some grim treatment that makes you feel (and often look) horrible, and then get better. But, often, the disease will return in short order, and a second bout of treatment may or may not be effective. From there, it's downhill all the way.

    1180:

    Not exactly interchangable, but perhaps functionally equivalent?

    http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/07/a-bad-dream.html

    However, I know people - like members of my own family, theirs friends etc - who would vigoroursly disagree with Charlie. I try not to discuss politics with them. Some may be unable to understand the abstractions often discussed here (and the meta-abstractions, like the recent Flynn Effect subthread.) I try to avoid discussing anything with them.

    Regarding Greg's point about Corbyn: this came up in 2017. Some people couldn't understand my "lack of support" for the Labour leader. My unspoken reaction was, "Have we just met?"

    In one case, yes, we had just met. I was able to quickly answer her question by reframing it: Why were Momentum supporting Corbyn? She understand my reply and took it seriously, giving it serious thought - which impressed me. If she's responded with, "Why do they matter?", I could've pointed out that we were at a party for a millennial and their younger siblings, and their friends. However, we were in their parent's generation, and we were mistaking the event for our party.

    Well, some of us were - I knew exactly what kind of party it was. I was listening to everyone.

    1181:

    Does anyone really believe ANY government or architect or engineer can actually plan such a thing and allow for all of reality. I can see shanty shacks for the toilet cleaners nearby (or just over the big dune) plus other such things that will officially not exist. But will be where needed human bodies live so they can do the work no one wants to talk about.

    As I understand it, Brasilia works because there's a big favela nearby that has all the people and functions that were not planned for in Brasilia. How does Melbourne work?

    Now let's get down to what's wrong with The Line. It's hard to see The Line as something other than a billionaire trying to have the longest erection in history.

    First off, it's not about Saudi Arabia not being allowed to have cool things. What they've done with Mecca, to handle the Hajj, appears to be pretty cool from the video I've seen. They have their own traditions of architecture, which are (quite literally) cool.

    Can you imagine any environment where you lay out a two hundred kilometers of straight train track and decree that a major city shall be built along that track, and only within, say, three city blocks of it? That's an even stupider way to create gridlock than a major city built around automobiles. Do they even bother with ambulances to try to get people to hospitals, given that the hospitals are forced, by linear geometry, to be too far away from most people? What about the location of emergency services and law enforcement? Ditto any infrastructure (water, sewer, food distribution, job location relative to living location). This, incidentally, is why The Line is a good model for a certain kind of generation ship.

    Earthquakes: it's not on a fault, it's adjacent to one, but too close. The problem is that there's no way to get something that long moving in unison, so it's going to get sheared by the seismic waves moving through, shaking different parts with different intensities. Probably it will be built so that all the glass panels pop out of their frames and fall, rather than shattering in situ, so after a major earthquake there will be drifts of broken glass meters deep keeping people from getting in or out. San Francisco's financial district is built this way, which is why you do not want to be outside and under a skyscraper when a major earthquake hits. Having all the infrastructure sheared in many places, combined with people trapped and a bloody massive clearance job to be able to get them out and into the relative safety of the...Sinai desert? Not good.

    Solar gain in one of the hottest places on the planet. The Line runs more-or-less east to west, which maximizes solar gain. Presumably there's going to be a monstrous solar farm on the sun-facing side? If not, it's an excellent solar oven, and will require HVAC in proportion. If it's not supposed to maximize solar gain, it needs to be built perpendicular to run north-south, not east-west.

    Building materials are all going to be imported. That's nice. We desperately need, on a global basis, to develop architectures that maximize the use of what's plentiful and local (admittedly, in many places, this is construction debris). We're globally running short of riverine sand for cement, we're only starting to learn to make steel without blowing GHGs, and float glass is energy intensive. Building new edifices that use nothing but these materials is narcissistic at best.

    Buildings made from reinforced concrete, structural steel, and glass have a lifespan of decades. Is it worth the waste? And rebuilding parts of The Line that need repairs? Unless it's modular, that will be tricky too, especially because millions of people need to move kilometers up and down the entire Line every day to make it all work.

    And let's talk about security, since the Sinai is an intercontinental and interoceanic crossroads. How vulnerable to artillery, missiles, and dudes with slings and stones is a giant, glass-faced edifice? Where do the residents take cover?

    Now, what should be done?

    --Build with local material, which appears to be stone. So we're talking about a more traditional Arab city. Utilize Andean-style interlocking blocks so that the buildings are hard to shake apart (classic Inkan cyclopic block structures are designed to be earthquake resistant--that's the point of all that work). Organize around courtyards and walled gardens because there's a reason such cities have been built in that part of the world for millennia--they work.

    --Maximize solar gain on solar panels. Minimize solar gain on buildings and people.

    --Build to a fractal pattern, with multiple layers of big, medium, and small transit and infrastructure lines. Traditional Muslim architecture does this, but this also tends to lead to the crazed pattern of alleys. Since this is in an earthquake zone, there should be minimum standards for things like road width so that people can get in and out fast during an earthquake or fire.

    --Build away from the ocean. The Red Sea's already flirting with Black Flag weather every summer, with lethal humidity and heat. Build far enough inland to avoid the humidity, so that only the heat is the major problem.

    --Use fog catchers closer to the Gulf to catch some water out of the air. Dehumidifying the port that serves this settlement sounds daft, but foggy and 40oC is a killer, so getting that water out of the air by giving it lots of fibers to condense on isn't quite as stupid as it sounds. Done right, the fog catchers also double as shade cloths. The port could be a city of veils, giant, gauzy shades rigged somewhat like sails (they have to be mobile to deal with sun and wind movements) that funnel water into collection systems and pipe it inland to the city, while shading the people and buildings below them.

    --Make room for lots of refugees. A gated community without a surrounding community of service workers is non-functional. Having a modular, fractal pattern can grow the city tent camp by tent camp, until the water runs out.

    But this is all very sensible, hence unappealing to a guy who's developing male edifice complex at a distressingly young age. I mean, it's not like cities throughout the region (Alexandria?) don't bear the names of rich megalomaniacs from thousands of years ago. But following in their footsteps probably isn't as appealing as Making A Bold Statement. Or something.

    1182:

    is there a tv trope for that, like the opposite of a mary sue, making your villain a ridiculous caricature of your own political bugbears?

    It's generally a trait of conservative SF writers who don't recognize how far out of the centre lane they've drifted.

    Niven, Pournelle, Stirling (not to be confused with Sterling), Ringo (obviously) ... authoritarian solutions presented as a no-brainer solution to wicked problems mostly by the expedient of standing up a straw man wearing a hat labelled ENVIRONMENTALIST.

    (Although you also get to see the same straw man shtick at work in other media; for example, the cartoonishly idiotic EPA inspector/bad guy in the original "Ghostbusters" movie.)

    1183:

    "Think of it as evolution in action"

    Where is this quote from? Oath of Fealty?

    1184:

    I can see some differences. Thanks for the pics.

    The allotments I know look very similar, but without the fences. Instead, there's a metal fence around an area of land divided into subsections. The subsections are about the size of the allotments in your pics.

    There might also be a shared shed or greenhouse for refreshments etc. It might even have space for a table large enough so multiple people to sit and eat. ;)

    I know some people grow potatoes, tomatoes etc on their allotment. Some of my relatives, for example.

    There was a lot more of this during WWII, of course.

    1185:

    Niven, Pournelle, Stirling

    S.M. Stirling demonstrates that it is possible to genuinely hate racists and antisemites of all sorts, and still be an authoritarian.

    1186:

    >>"Think of it as evolution in action"

    >Where is this quote from? Oath of Fealty?

    why yes. Set in an archology of course

    1187:

    Niven, Pournelle, Stirling (not to be confused with Sterling), Ringo (obviously) ... authoritarian solutions presented as a no-brainer solution to wicked problems mostly by the expedient of standing up a straw man wearing a hat labelled ENVIRONMENTALIST.

    I think the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been set up this way too. Thanos, the villain of the Avengers series to date, was portrayed as an eco-terrorist whose solution to Galactic overcrowding was to randomly make half the people disappear (possibly including himself). The heroes defeated him at great cost and brought everybody back. The way they beat Thanos splintered the universe into a multiverse, so quite possibly the heroes made things worse by undoing Thanos' work.

    1188:

    "Do they even bother with ambulances to try to get people to hospitals, given that the hospitals are forced, by linear geometry, to be too far away from most people? What about the location of emergency services and law enforcement? "

    I mean, great whacks of the US have relatively large amounts of people who aren't really near any of that. Until vert recently I lived a minimum of half an hour away from a hospital and the response time of emergency services was at best the same.

    Although...I'm not entirely clear why this stuff would need to be distant from most people. Manhattan crams 25 odd hospitals in a space that's 13 miles by 2 and a bit. If creating a mandate why not put one every five (or two, or whatever) linear miles?

    1189:

    Re: 'Now let's get down to what's wrong with The Line.'

    I was wondering whether this story would get your attention. I got my heads-up on this build on a weather related Twitter thread. Anyways - for an example of SFish vanity projects in urban planning and housing design there's this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands

    I like the idea of building alternate cities provided the planners and designers do their homework. Why anyone would risk building on a faultline is insane.

    The Palm Islands project got derailed because of financing - 2008 global financial crash. This 'Line' project might not even start because even if you can raise the construction phase money privately at some point you (or the people buying these properties) will need insurance and insurance companies tend to examine risk fairly seriously. While the open access article below doesn't discuss knowingly situating yourself on fault lines [duh!], it does (IMO) show growing awareness of the importance re: environmental (risk) assessment. Basically - these planners/architects/builders cannot claim ignorance as an excuse.

    'The challenge of unprecedented floods and droughts in risk management'

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04917-5

    1190:

    Thinking about building, I can actually see two places where AI might help:

    AInkan stone masons: The Inkans, for their top-flight architecture, basically wacked boulders into shape and played tetris with them. They wanted big rocks, laid tight against each other in uneven patterns, because big rocks are hard to move and if there are no seams (as in courses of bricks) the walls they make are hard to shear apart.

    Now how would you automate that? Ideally you want a production line that hauls in boulders of suitable material, uses x-rays or ultrasound (probably the latter) to make sure they're sound, with no hidden defects, then efficiently (and minimally!) cuts them to suitable shapes, the last dictated by the next step in the chain. In that step, the system is playing 3-D tetris to assemble the walls, so it knows what kinds of edges, if not shapes, are needed for the next levels, and shares that information with the boulder collection and block shaping processes. The shards and grit created by shaping the blocks is broken down into sharp sand and aggregate for making cement and concrete, where these are needed.

    I don't think you could make a skyscraper this way, but depending on the local stone, you could use it to make a rocky desert into a set of low multistory buildings without importing a lot of material.

    The AI is designing the buildings and running the production chain to do so. What I'm not sure about is the interface. It might be simpler to have semi-skilled and skilled masons using something like Google Glasses that direct them which boulders to collect, how to shape them, and where to put them. Or perhaps it can all be automated, with humans keeping the equipment working.

    AI-Earthbagging: Basically grown-up, permanent sand bags. Can also be made in tubes. This is sort of the latest hippie architecture (google Earthbag architecture). This also looks like it can be automated. Again, it's not for making skyscrapers, but if you've got a lot of desert sand and not much else, building permanent structures with mortared sandbags* surfaced with plaster isn't entirely stupid. And the architecture is distinctive, at least.

    Again, automating the design process and production system seems possible and likely reasonable, especially if you're trying to build rapidly. While no one likes having refugee encampments becoming permanent towns for some reason, it's a safe assumption that these will become increasingly common in the future. Giving the refugees earthbags and expert (AI?) instruction on how to use them to build isn't stupid, although the aesthetic may rapidly become disliked for various reasons.

    *Mortared sandbags. Apologies to JBS and other veterans for the inadvertent pun and/or flashbacks. At least people living in a settlement made of earthbags would have to worry less about stray bullets killing kids...

    1191:

    I saw a rumor (I'm going to call it) that in the phone data from Jones was a contact with a sitting Senator....

    1192:

    Tone deaf, perhaps. Hasn't been used in decades is more like it. But to yank her off the panel, as though she'd used the "n" word, with intentional offense, rather than trying to comment while on the panel, or speaking to her afterwards?

    BS. This is starting to look like the wrong's version of political correctness.

    And while we're at it, given that she's 71, is this also agism?

    1193:

    Let me note that this is like the constitution of the US state of Texas. Which has over 1,000 amendments, last I looked. Really.

    1194:

    Actually, in my future, I've got us setting up arcologies as the core of a new interstellar colony. They are not intended to house everyone, as the colony grows, it builds around it. (Then there are out there villages....)

    1195:

    Please note that we can "cure" some cancers... says the guy who was treated for cancer the first half of 2001.

    1196:

    First published there, IIRC. There's a backstory to the quote that Niven discussed in one of his anthologies. I have a dim memory that the backstory involved environmental protestors opposing a nuclear waste dump, but I wouldn't bet more than half a beer on that.

    1197:

    My SO insisted on seeing the one where they beat him. In the movie, they showed pics of an "empty" world.

    Suspenders of disbelief snapped. We hit 3B on this planet around 1965. I don't remember the planet being that empty... and all it would do is put it back what, 50 years?

    1198:

    Hasn't been used in decades is more like it.

    yeah but u don't want to be caught telling people what they should and shouldn't be offended by from a position of privilege these days, they'll eat u alive, and a writer of any age should really be paying attention to how people speak (and don't speak), especially since all that sad puppies nonsense

    the relish with which they seem to cancel people sometimes isn't pretty admittedly

    1199:

    "Do they even bother with ambulances to try to get people to hospitals, given that the hospitals are forced, by linear geometry, to be too far away from most people? What about the location of emergency services and law enforcement? "

    Sorry to quote myself, because you made some really good points. The local (admittedly upper middle class urban) standards for ambulance response is under 6 minutes, on the assumption that you're trying to get a heart attack victim under treatment and headed to the hospital before brain death. Police and fire response times are similar.

    If The Line wants to have comparable response times, then there needs to be a hospital ca. every 5-10 miles. For nine million people they need ca. 2500-3000 hospital beds (this is at New York hospital bed/total population proportions), so that's a not bad 250-500 beds/ hospital. My wife works in a 650 bed hospital that takes up two city blocks and is eight stories high, and it's the largest hospital in the county. Most hospitals around here are in the 100-650 bed range.

    So my snark aside, this is sort of doable, but every 5-10 miles, 1-2 city blocks of The Line is a hospital. What this means in turn is that other uses have to be displaced around them. Some of those other uses (water and sewage, warehousing, manufacture) can take up entire blocks of their own, further displacing other uses.

    The fundamental problem is that The Line is largely linear, so finding a place to put something increases travel times to and from it, which increases transportation energy use, whatever form of transportation is used. Think of it as the problem of stringing beads on a necklace to minimize the distance between any two types of beads, versus laying the beads out in a grid, and minimizing the distance between any two types of beads.

    Note that I'm not bashing density, although that has its own (pandemic, etc.) problems. What I'm trying to point to is the problems imposed by the geometry imposed by building long and thin.

    1200:

    *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands....I like the idea of building alternate cities provided the planners and designers do their homework. Why anyone would risk building on a faultline is insane.

    First, as to the Palm Islands. I agree with you, they're destructive, short-lived vanity projects, and I'm trying not to do my Forrest Gump summation of what I think of them.

    As for earthquakes...I've lived most of my life in earthquake country and been through a couple of reasonably large quakes. Almost all the time, they're wonderful places to live. The thing to remember is a tectonically quiet planet is probably incapable of supporting life, since plate tectonics and volcanoes are absolutely essential to recycling elements that would otherwise be trapped in ocean sediments.

    This gets at why it's fun to live in tectonically active areas: there's cool geology, springs tend to pop up on fault lines, there are lots of fun mountains with all sorts of neat microclimates, and so forth. And occasionally, the landscape wakes up and scares you or tries to kill you.

    Given what I've seen recently around San Diego, I'm completely unsurprised that the architects missed the earthquake faults around NEOM. I'm only sensitized to them because in the last year I've commented on a couple of projects that would put risky structures either on top of an active local earthquake fault (this would be a four-level freeway interchange, atop train and trolley tracks all running through a canyon on a fault line), or within 500' of said fault (on the sandy shore of a bay, which makes for a major liquefaction hazard). Now it's possible that this fault won't quake for centuries, and it's quite possible San Diego won't last that long. It's also possible that it will quake in a few decades and sheer through most of the major transportation lines connecting downtown San Diego with Los Angeles.

    Problem is, the planners didn't see the problem in either case. I know at least some of them only moved here to take planning jobs, and it shows. We'll find out if they still don't see the problem in a few months.

    Getting back to NEOM, when a rich potentate dangles large amounts of money to have fun with in front of an architect, said architect is not going to see the problems either. That way, environmentalist party poopers like me get blamed for enraging the rich potentate by daring to claim he can't just do what he wants, while the enablers just make the money and go prancing off. In an ideal world where contractors were more courageous than compliant, they'd try to gently guide their client into being seen and remembered as one of history's greatest philanthropists by building things that the times are calling out for, instead of enabling his edifice complex.

    Now, if I wanted to get on MBS's list of wayward children, I'd simply point out that "charity is a central tenet of Islam: everything one has belongs to God and therefore, a Muslim is obliged to share the wealth with those less fortunate." (source). I'm not sure what's charitable about building Palm Islands and giant glass and steel edifices, especially if the workers doing the building are less than perfectly free to work or go home. But I do suspect that there is a huge need to house and care for the less fortunate at the moment, and when one is a Guardian of the Faith, it is easy to burnish one's image by upholding all of Islam's five pillars.

    1201:

    Re: 'Now how would you automate that? ' and AI design

    This could be a really interesting and fun SimCity scenario.

    Also - massive 3D printers as a more techie update on your sandbags. Same raw materials but using an assortment of different binders/binding agents depending on the building's purpose.

    Housing for support staff - I was thinking that each massive tall structure would be like a city unto itself and that people would live/be assigned floors in accordance with their social stature, i.e., peons/workers at ground level. What I'd really like though is a cityscape with a smallish mountain range vibe with varying heights, intermittent plains/glens, and done without also setting up wind tunnel effects. That part of the planet is already experiencing extreme sandstorms*, rows of narrowly spaced tall buildings would only amplify the winds.

    *Heteromeles: Does your analysis include impact of sand particles traveling at X mph on various building materials (stone included) cuz I don't think that the Incas had to deal with gale force wind sandstorms.

    https://whyy.org/segments/the-science-of-wind-tunnels-where-and-why-those-harsh-winds-strike/

    Sand storm data for Saudi Arabia and surrounding area - 'previous studies' summarizes findings related to impact on humans, agriculture, etc.:

    https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=106739

    Water supply/conservation and food supply - probably the most critical aspects of building a city (oasis) in a desert. This could be a really good opportunity to research and develop vertical farming. Such farming would provide a buffer for only some (non-meat) foods since I doubt that all residents would be vegans.

    1202:

    I will note that Chip Delany has publicly said he doesn't have an issue with her usage.

    1203:

    So my snark aside, this is sort of doable, but every 5-10 miles, 1-2 city blocks of The Line is a hospital. What this means in turn is that other uses have to be displaced around them. Some of those other uses (water and sewage, warehousing, manufacture) can take up entire blocks of their own, further displacing other uses.

    This happens in modern skyscraper design.

    That new pencil looking billionaire tower in NYC has 3 empty floors just to let the wind through. Plus 5 or 6 floors dedicated to mechanicals. And it doesn't even have to provide hospital beds or police substations.

    I work with architects and some of the more idealistic ones get irritated with what the civil engineers do to their elegant plans. Not to even mention the local building codes.

    1204:

    "Planned cities".... you mean like Philadelphia, PA, USA, planned by Billy Penn around 1666?

    1205:

    First, as to the Palm Islands. I agree with you, they're destructive, short-lived vanity projects, and I'm trying not to do my Forrest Gump summation of what I think of them.

    I was flipping through the online TV guide looking for something and noticed one of those History/Discovery channel shows about building an underwater apartment. So I DVR'd it.

    OMG. They were literally building an apartment/ship (think of those floating houses in the Seattle area) where they would be sinking it in a place like the Palm Islands (it was in that area of the world) so it was half or more underwater. With a lot of the under water portion being a master suite bedroom with a glass wall.

    At the end they showed it in place with the divers who have to scrape the windows and other underwater bits EVERY DAY to keep the view clear and prevent build up of algae and barnacles. Plus this was obviously a place for a adult or two to live. No way you're raise kids in the layout of this thing. And forget any concept of ADA. And they were going to build a complex of them.

    Does anyone really want divers scraping their all of window down every day. Doesn't this sort of ruin the point of the underwater view and privacy?

    A great way for someone to extract huge $$$$ from people with way to many $$$$$$$$.

    1206:

    Yep.

    But, also, I think you may be thinking of this in terms that (in the very unlikely event it happens) don't necessarily apply.

    Almost all extant cities just happened, and so are constrained by physical geography and people, you know, already living there. So while your geometry caveats aren't wrong, I'm not sure they matter. Like, it doesn't actually matter if you're displacing stuff if you're building a city from scratch and aren't constrained by needing it to fit on an island or between rivers and such. The displacement is already factored in (or should be).

    Likewise, although they're not planning to do so as near as I can tell, confining yourself to a certain width arbitrarily means they could conceivably just add stuff 'behind' whenever they really need it. Or from the start - two blocks of living space, one block infrastructure.

    Specific to hospitals what you actually really need more densely packed is emergency rooms and a couple of surgeries. You don't necessarily need to build fullscale hospitals super frequently - you could put a hospital every couple miles and a more frequent ER in a more compact space - if the hospitals aren't too far you can just move stable patients to them once they are stable.

    This is actually, thanks to economics, how a lot of small hospitals in rural areas effectively work now. The one nearest me basically just does ER work and labs (which a re a revenue source) and then ship people off to bigger regional hospitals once they're stable enough to do so. They don't do surgery that's not an emergency or even handle births anymore.

    There's a still a whole (small) hospital building there, but the actual functioning parts of it are maybe a quarter of the physical space.

    (In any case, I suspect staffing would actually be a bigger issue than infrastructure re the Line's hospitalling)

    1207:

    *Heteromeles: Does your analysis include impact of sand particles traveling at X mph on various building materials (stone included) cuz I don't think that the Incas had to deal with gale force wind sandstorms.

    Sandstorms are a nuisance that I don't think the Inkans lived with. They did have to deal with some pretty vicious hail storms though, so I suspect it evens out. The high Andes are not known to be the gentlest place on the planet.

    1208:

    Does anyone really want divers scraping their all of window down every day.

    I am rather surprised they are not using some kind of pool-cleaning robot for this.

    1209:

    I'm not going to disagree with the divide between rural and urban hospitals, but ignoring the question of whether rural areas have enough hospitals--which gets into the whole mess of consolidation and loss of services--they're serving different needs. The pandemic brought this up. Much of the early isolation, masking, and so on was driven as much by what was happening in the hospitals as what was happening in the streets. They were trying to keep the hospitals from maxing out on Covid patients, which many of them did.

    This is the problem in an arcology: it's a semi-closed system, so your hospital systems have to have the surge capacity to deal with everything from pandemics to big fires, major infrastructure breakdowns, and so forth.

    That's one reason why I'd concentrate the hospitals as much as possible. The more patients are moved, the more things spread. It's not just airborne illness, either. If multi-antibiotic C. diff and other pathogens become endemic in the pipes of the entire arcology, everybody is at risk. It's somewhat better to have sections with additional biosafety measures in place (e.g. big hospitals with additional sanitation) rather than trying to run the entire place on hospital sanitation standards.

    Rural settings have a different set of problems, but crowding isn't one of them.

    1210:

    I am rather surprised they are not using some kind of pool-cleaning robot for this.

    Well this was reality TV so...

    But this was in the Indian Ocean / Red Sea. Much more cleaning involved than a chlorinated pool. Plus a pool tends to be nice smooth and constrained. The outside of a sunken apartment may have a glass wall or two but most of it is exterior ship like construction. But without the steel thickness of an ocean going tanker or container ship. So maybe automated cleaning isn't possible. Yet.

    In my mind this was, as described above, an architect given a pile of money to design something neat. And it did have some nifty curved walls into the roof lines. In more practical terms to me if you want such it would make more sense to build a multi-unit box of apartments "with a view". Basically since an apartment building. Then the automated cleaning might work. But his was about individual units built and towed to their "spot".

    1211:

    OMG. They were literally building an apartment/ship (think of those floating houses in the Seattle area) where they would be sinking it in a place like the Palm Islands (it was in that area of the world) so it was half or more underwater. With a lot of the under water portion being a master suite bedroom with a glass wall.

    Live groundskeepers are part of the attraction, I suspect?

    The real fun is when you read about something like Aquarius Reef Base that is an honest to goodness, underwater research facility that you reach by diving. It's kept at pressure, with an open moon pool (you pop outside to for defecation. Some reef animals see this as food...).

    Anyway, living in a high pressure, eternally damp environment turns out to be extremely unpleasant. All the food and beverages are flat (including bread), clothes never dry, skin infections and slowly healing wounds are normal, and keeping it at all clean is a nightmare. Most researchers only stay there a few days or few weeks before they decompress and go home. I suspect Gasdive's been through something similar during his work?

    1212:

    Basically SINK an apartment building.

    1213:

    Anyway, living in a high pressure, eternally damp environment turns out to be extremely unpleasant.

    The design of these apartments was at most they had one floor below the water line. So normal air. And things like the kitchen above the water line.

    The difference between these and what I think of as those floating Seattle area houses are that the Seattle things are a big tub with maybe a few port holes with a house on top. Take a house with a basement, seal it up, then launch it. This thing was meant to allow you to be in a sunken room with a view. And entire wall or two of window.

    Then add in the fresh water vs. sea water environment.

    1214:

    Troutwaxer @ 1150:

    I think Russia as it exists today will break apart if the war goes on another five years.

    1215:

    "And, as before: Is that what you want, or should Ukraine remain independent?"

    I'm not viewing it through a system of values which accords that factor supreme and overwhelming importance.

    I'm seeing it more in terms of three consecutive periods: 1) Russia and Ukraine just sitting around rushing and craning as usual. 2) Lots of people getting shot and blown up and stuff plus all the accompanying phenomena. 3) Russia and Ukraine return to their usual preoccupations with rapid or vertical movement, broadly like stage 1 and certainly a lot more like it than stage 2.

    The effect of outside involvement is to extend the duration of stage 2 from probably months to years, potentially several, along with an increasing risk of extending its scope to include large chunks of the rest of the world the longer it goes on. It also seems likely to result in stage 3 being more different from stage 1, as in less stable, more impermanent, and liable to go off with a much bigger bang in an eventual stage 4, like Germany did. Indeed, one could see the current situation as a lower-intensity preview of that with non-negligible predictive value. (I'm including economic as well as military warfare in "outside involvement", particularly as some of the predicted results that other people have posted remind me a lot of the let's-all-shit-on-Germany period. As does your mention of Czechoslovakia, in that the Sudetenland was pinched off Germany after WW1, despite being mostly German, deliberately to fuck Germany up, and that aim was shown by later events to have been a bad idea.)

    I don't regard either the known-bad outcomes or the expected-badness of outcomes ("expected" in the probability theory sense) as being justified by the largely abstract and hypothetical gains supposed to result from Ukraine being independent. I don't see that as making a fat lot of difference. In general it seems to be something that has the same kind of effect on the country concerned as yer average revolution (indeed may be part of the same thing), and as I understand it since the Soviet Union fell apart it's been a bit of a toss-up at any given moment as to whether Ukraine or Russia is nastier.

    To use Scotland as a more local and personally-ish relevant illustration, I can opine that as things are at the moment if it became independent I would consider myself to be living on the wrong side of the border were it not for the climate, but I don't see that that's always been the case nor do I see any guarantee that it would continue to be so; and I don't in any case see it as a matter that could be usefully decided by a who-gets-fed-up-with-people-getting-dead-first contest.

    In any case I don't really see it as correct to identify Ukrainian independence as the abstract principle that's being fought over. The principle involved here, particularly with outsiders supplying arms to Ukraine and engaging in economic warfare against Russia, is the one that says the US is allowed to invade places and Russia isn't.

    1216:

    I think Russia as it exists today will break apart if the war goes on another five years.

    I'd give Russia no more than two years. I guess we'll see (assuming I live that long).

    1217:

    Charlie Stross @ 1156:

    Contrary to much American misunderstanding the UK does have a constitution, ...

    Yup, that's where we got the idea from.

    But starting from scratch as it were, our "forefathers" or founders or whatever just took the bits & pieces of the constitution they were familiar with and thought were the minimum necessary to provide a framework for the new nation and formalized them into a single document.

    If you read Jefferson, Adams, Madison et al (and know what you're looking for) you'll find references to the British constitution throughout their arguments against "the King" and what he was doing to his American colonies.

    They purposely made it difficult to change to ensure there wouldn't be frivolous changes; that any changes to the Constitution would have broad support throughout the WHOLE nation and not be at the whim of some temporary majority faction riding roughshod over the rest of the country.

    They didn't anticipate how much more difficult the process would become as the nation grew adding more states and how a minority could pervert that process to ride roughshod over the majority.

    They were men of good will & civic virtue who pledged "their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor" to the success of the new nation (at great cost to many of those fortunes) and failed to recognize they would be followed by men who were not.

    1218:

    18th Amendment to the US Constitution
    21st Amendment do do
    SCrOtUS repeal of Roe vs Wade
    Kansas saying you to the above SCrOtUS ruling and voting over 60% in favour of still allowing abortion anyway...

    1219:

    "if we start looking at history and what has been the state of affairs hundreds of years ago we just create more conflict."

    We could even give Ukraine back to Lithuania while we're at it.

    "What really gets me is not using the 'Reply' button when replying. Writing multiple responses to one post, each answer preceded by an @ symbol and a comment number, and no context otherwise, or even just saying somebody else's name and replying to that, makes it a no-go for me to go scrolling back up to see what was being talked about."

    I have written a script to turn numbers preceded by @ symbols, plus various other contexts where numbers are likely to refer to comments, into links back to the comments referred to. It misses one or two unusual ones but it gets most of them. Of course it gets fucked up if comments are deleted, and it does occasionally turn other numbers into spurious links, but it works more than often enough to be useful.

    The one about just putting someone's name and replying to that does still get me, though, since it's not practical to write a script that figures out what comment is being referred to with any useful degree of accuracy.

    It has to be said that one of the things I like about this platform is that the only scripts I have to write are minor tweaks like that to fix things that I only even care about because I come here often enough to make them significant. It makes a bloody wonderful change from all the sites (most of them) where I have to write scripts to edit other scripts of megabyte size and written like obfuscated code contest entries just to make the thing (a) work at all and then (b) be some approximation to usable.

    1220:

    The principle involved here, particularly with outsiders supplying arms to Ukraine and engaging in economic warfare against Russia, is the one that says the US is allowed to invade places and Russia isn't.

    I don't think that's entirely it, (though I agree with you on the principle that the U.S. shouldn't invade anyone either.) I remember thinking, a couple days before the war kicked off, that it was really stupid how Putin was being particularly insensitive to the idea that the people/countries with money and power didn't want a war right now.

    One of the things that's tough to understand is that with Republicans in power, the U.S. changes sides. With Republicans in power the U.S. is very much the mobbed-up, short-term-thinking, grabby, resource-extracting economy; very much in line with Putin invading Ukraine, at least in spirit. We're essentially on the side of dictators and corrupt countries.

    With Democrats in power we're much more on the side of the European democratic powers; more focused on the long term, honesty and transparency, etc. This does not mean the U.S. under the Democrats is perfect - we're still the proverbial bull in the China shop, and much more affected by moneyed, corporate interests than we should be, and keep in mind that the U.S. is big-enough that our government is capable of charging off in two directions at once. What changes is not the basic nature of the U.S., but the general tendencies, if that makes any sense.

    I think Putin, in particular, didn't understand how this change completely altered the world he was operating in.

    1221:

    Charlie Stross @ 1165:

    ... and (c) Saudi Arabia isn't allowed to have nice things, just oil derricks.

    If they can make it work, I wish them well, but what part of their "society" is that "murderous autocrat" actually going to allow to enjoy the nice things? Is he going to change his society to allow women to be full human beings?

    And if he doesn't, it's going to be a high tech dystopia and probably abandoned before it's even halfway started?

    1222:

    I think Russia as it exists today will break apart if the war goes on another five years.

    Hmm. Yes and no. I think the thing many people are afraid of is a 1905-style Russian General Strike, one that doesn't unseat Putin but does cause an enormous, bloody mess. Worse would be a 1918-style general revolution (Putin forcibly retired to Yekaterinburg for his own security, homage to Putin's saint, Nicholas the second), followed by a general flustercluck, a bunch of nations invading to assist their side in the civil war that follows, possibly with China annexing Mongolia and a large chunk of Siberia, and Zelenskyy ascending as the presidentof the new Ukrainian Empire. Or some such.

    The three problems I see are: --Russia appears to be even more hollowed out by corruption than the US and China are. I'm not thrilled about this, incidentally.

    --Russia, like the US, is going to have to stick the dismount from being a petro-power, and it's probably going to do it sooner than the US does, if it can't keep fixing its infrastructure.

    --While Putin does apparently have potential successors, it's not clear to me if they could do even as good a job as he has done. I'm not sure there's a viable path to democracy, and a weak authoritarian successor might be even more brutal than Putin is, which does not necessarily mean he'll last all that long.

    The awkward thing would be if Zelenskyy comes to power in Russia. Apparently he wasn't a very good peace-time president. Especially if China's invaded the Russian east, a Russian president Zelenskyy would put the US in a position of allying with him and going to war with China, or blowing him off and having him as an enemy with a US-trained, veteran army and a major grudge.

    Or maybe Putin will play the Khan/Thanos gambit and release smallpox to see if that keeps him in power longer...

    1223:

    In case you got to the Allie Brosh improved pain scale by searching specifically for that, there's actually a newish post now to plug the fact that she finally got the second book done. It's very funny. The book is good, if you enjoy her stuff, but there's parts of it that are painfully sad too.

    1224:

    David L @ 1174:

    I guess it was a lot easier to do back in 1790. Seems like D.C. does work as a CITY even if it's having its problems as the seat of government.

    1225:

    "One advantage of making it long: lots of easy-ish access to all the solar farms they can build alongside it. A PV farm 170km long and, say, 25km deep on one side of the city (the other side being along the Gulf) would provide rather a lot of juice - enough to run Europe, if somebody was willing to lay the HVDC cables."

    Yeah.

    On the other hand we have the example of another entry in the Look How Big My Erection Is contest (with the more conventionally appropriate alignment) not all that far away, which could have been built clever like to take advantage of its height to handle its internal climate control all by itself and even leave some spare energy over, but instead did it by brute force and ignorance powered by a city's worth of fossil fuels, possibly because that meant they didn't have to think about it or possibly because erections spunking stuff is what they're supposed to do.

    This is the school of architecture which builds an artificial ski slope, using actual frozen water, not underground somewhere but stuck on the top of a skyscraper in the desert sun, and painted black.

    Unfortunately it seems to be one of those human characteristics spanning all levels of wealth and society from crown prince to ned to consider fucking up as much shit as possible a more effective way of showing off than being as clever as possible at not fucking shit up.

    1226:

    yeah that wouldn't help at all, he only speaks for himself

    1228:

    Artificial Intelligence Discovers Alternative Physics

    "A new Columbia University AI program observed physical phenomena and uncovered relevant variables—a necessary precursor to any physics theory. But the variables it discovered were unexpected."

    Quite fun.

    1229:

    "I think it's great. It will house 9 million people in a desert."

    Are you being sarcastic, or does a desert not sound to you like an exceptionally silly place to put 9 million people?

    "You're never more than 5 minutes walk from raw desert. Less than 20 minutes walk and ride from the ocean."

    So you have a readily-available way out when you can't stand living there any more. And that ocean's basically pretty much the same as the desert only wetter and with more sharks. You can choose between being cooked or eaten, which doesn't sound quite right.

    "If they can pull it off, really, it's so much nicer sounding that the soul crushing suburbia most of us live in."

    The image it keeps bringing into my mind is the prison in The Shawshank Redemption. The next one is Fort Zinderneuf.

    1230:

    Dammit, comment eating machine struck again. Terse retyping follows:

    structures with mortared sandbags

    Some idiots leave off the render layer, some don't even paint. Worse put pozzolites or cement in with the sand.

    But those sacks of sand are very heavy. A machine would be good, and could probably be made to fill 5m-10m sections of tube in one go, making it a "3D building printer" for max buzzword.

    I prefer hempcrete or mud bricks if possible, or rammed earth/cobb etc. But all those use expensive materials (building clay is better than lime but not perfect), where plastic sacks are a waste product.

    1231:

    Re: 'Russia appears to be even more hollowed out by corruption than the US and China are'

    At this point, I think the strength and resilience of a country's infrastructure is the most important factor in whether a people can weather an iffy leadership. Although the US is going to pump more money into research, education and health care, I'm not sure this is going to be enough or sustained for long enough to improve its position v-a-v the rest of the world. Right now, I think China's ahead - whatever you think of Xi and his party's policies. Meanwhile Russia is wasting its money and destroying the very resources and territories Putin claimed to be rescuing: it looks self-destructive from my POV.

    1232:

    @Pigeon at 1217:

    "I'm not viewing it through a system of values which accords that factor supreme and overwhelming importance."

    But then you didn't clearly mention an alternative set of values that you do see it through.

    In general, I think, there is value in opposing the invasion of weaker countries by stronger ones unless there is strong international and local popular support for such. I was against the second Iraq invasion as well. I think we learned our lesson, at least for now. The general response should be to make the costs of invading another country so high that it won't be undertaken for any but the most persuasive of reasons. Iraq, as it eventually turned out, was no Vietnam, but it was no Grenada either. Donating arms and other necessary resources to Ukraine fulfills that condition as well as we can right now.

    Other values that potentially justify material support to Ukraine also include resistance to authoritarian government and propaganda. There is a connection, not so far behind the scenes, behind political trends in Western democracies and the rise of Putism in Russia. This connection isn't necessarily causal in one direction only, but the mutual reinforcement seems obvious enough to me. So it's all one fight.

    @AlanD2 at 1218:

    [JBS: "I think Russia as it exists today will break apart if the war goes on another five years.]

    [Alan: "I'd give Russia no more than two years."]

    I'd say that an actual territorial breakup is unlikely, because Russia has too few centers of infrastructure that could act as an anchor for independent regions. OTOH--an economic crash that leads to general chaos which then spreads over their borders is both more likely and more dangerous (and that's before you consider the nukes).

    @Pigeon at 1221:

    [Mikko Parviainen (he/him): "What really gets me is not using the 'Reply' button when replying. Writing multiple responses to one post, each answer preceded by an @ symbol and a comment number, and no context otherwise, or even just saying somebody else's name and replying to that, makes it a no-go for me to go scrolling back up to see what was being talked about."]

    [Pigeon: "The one about just putting someone's name and replying to that does still get me, though, since it's not practical to write a script that figures out what comment is being referred to with any useful degree of accuracy."]

    Ahem. But the reply button only seems to allow you to reply to one person at a time, which annoys me. I try to provide context with quotes, but if you think that's inappropriate, I am open to change.

    @Troutwaxer at 1222:

    [Pigeon: "The principle involved here, particularly with outsiders supplying arms to Ukraine and engaging in economic warfare against Russia, is the one that says the US is allowed to invade places and Russia isn't."]

    [Trout: "One of the things that's tough to understand is that with Republicans in power, the U.S. changes sides."

    I agree, although I think it's somewhat more complicated than that. Conservatives in the US are very anxious people, looking desperately for a strong leader to protect them from the liberals who are taking their life-choices away. That trends authoritarian, but if, say, Sweden were to kick Russia's butt, US conservatives would instantly become a bunch of Swedophiles (while getting the details of their culture almost entirely wrong).

    @Heteromeles at 1224:

    Whoever replaces Putin will almost certainly be more extreme and authoritarian than Putin is. Probably less effective as well. Russia could pursue a path toward democracy--I think it would have already if not for mistakes that were made in the 1990's, but they have to exhaust all possible alternatives first...

    1233:

    people who think they can design a city.

    My argument is against people who think they can plan everything. Which is what a moon base or Brasilia are. Laying out a city with lots of TBD can work. Planning it all out (here's where the blacksmith goes at the extreme) is doomed to failure.

    1234:

    I think Russia as it exists today will break apart if the war goes on another five years.

    Russia relies on air and railroad transport, and western sanctions are devastating to them -- airliners can't be repaired, signaling and locomotive systems are breaking. I've seen some commentators opine that internal transport links within Russia are breaking down and within 12 months it will barely be possible for civilians to move around the country. In which case? Cut your five year time frame by 80%.

    1235:

    Um, excuse me, but I wasn't aware that there was an American Academy of English (like France), that made these decisions. Why should I ignore him and listen to someone else, the way SFWA did?

    1236:

    I'm sorry, "conservatives are afraid of liberals taking away their life choices"? In what world?
    No, they want to control everyone else's choice, they want no one to have any choice that they haven't pre-decided on.

    1237:

    don't shoot the messenger, i'm just describing the thinking of what i've seen of that crowd on fb shitposting groups

    1238:

    i mean, they probably do want that, but they have a mythology of being under cultural siege as well

    1239:

    Neom: Saudi Arabia's A.I. Megacity [YouTube]

    I just don't think Saudi society can accomplish this.

    1240:

    Laying out a city with lots of TBD can work

    I agree with this, and it's essentially the way that cities with planned grids and so forth have worked. You don't need shanty towns of favelas outside the city if there is a superabundance of unfilled space inside, either unallocated or actually built and developed for accomodation, just let out so cheaply there's no reason not to use it. I suppose my reference point would be Hong Kong, at least in its relatively self-contained pre-handover form. I suppose another way of saying this is that shanties can be vertical...

    1241:

    Justin Jordan @ 1208:

    FWIW, for most USAans "surgeries" are something performed in a hospital's operating room.

    The U.S. equivalent term is "doctor's office".

    1242:

    The fundamental problem is that The Line is largely linear, so finding a place to put something increases travel times to and from it, which increases transportation energy use, whatever form of transportation is used

    I do follow what you're saying here but I kind of disagree with your conclusion. Unwrapping a grid into a line simplifies the problem, rather than on its own creating a new one. Grids are limited by Manhattan Distance anyway, and network effects mean predicting where gridlock will occur (so you can mitigate it by increasing capacity) is difficult, at least without complex computer modelling. In contrast a single transport corridor can start with a certain baseline capacity, allow space for growth and importantly include dedicated lines for services including emergency response.

    I'm not saying it's inevitable it would be done like that, just that it isn't inevitable it won't be (let's pause while we all wade through that small swamp of double negatives, I'll see you on the other side). So next I'm picturing the dedicated medivac transport corridor, optionally with each hospital possessing dedicated rolling stock or whatever the corridor supports for its area of coverage, and enough multiple lines to allow long distance transfers at the same time. Then next how closely do you need to space the dedicated emergency elevators, and what sort of interchange to they need with the horizontal transport corridor? We could talk about "stations" in the traditional sense, but surely you only need an abbreviated platform where the elevator opens into the dedicated rail corridor? And potentially a much larger version underneath the hospital, although the hospital itself could be dispersed horizontally as well, and not occupy the entire 500x200m cross section (or even fill the building space left over after infrastructure).

    I suppose what I'm getting at is that doing this the right way would involve leaving as much proportion of the cross-sectional space for infrastructure as you need, including plans for growth and both increasing and reducing service capacity around hot spots as part of the activity of managing the city. And maybe a single line isn't the most useful idea, but to me it's a really interesting one that brings some possibilities to the table we might have missed otherwise.

    1243:

    paws4thot @ 1220:

    I would argue the 18th Amendment proves the Founding Fathers were right to fear the whim of some temporary majority faction riding roughshod over the rest of the country". They only failed to recognize just how large & powerful such a temporary majority could get. And I don't know what they could have done differently with the Constitution to prevent crazies like the WCTU from getting their way.

    And I don't think the founders can really be faulted for not anticipating MAGAts and fundy pseudo-christian "prosperity gospel" authoritarian (if not full on NAZI ASSHOLE) fanatics would just choose to IGNORE the Constitution to impose their own version theocratic rule while hypocritically claiming to be originalist or textualist.

    1244:

    I'm from Pennsylvania.

    But yes, operating room is what I should have said.

    1245:

    they want to control everyone else's choice, they want no one to have any choice that they haven't pre-decided on.

    I think they map far better on to "rules protect me and bind thee".

    This is why you see vehemently anti-abortion, "strong family values" elected members paying their mistresses to have abortions. And so on. Rules are to protect them from problems like people saying nasty things about their mistresses and the abortions; and rules are to bind thee, stopping you from having mistresses or abortions.

    Otherwise you would see Trump having tantrums when "security" stopped people bring guns into his rallies, because the NRA would be issuing very strong denunciatons of that kind of overreach. Rather than, as they do now, stopping their own members bringing guns into NRA conferences. Ahem.

    1246:

    I do follow what you're saying here but I kind of disagree with your conclusion. Unwrapping a grid into a line simplifies the problem, rather than on its own creating a new one. Grids are limited by Manhattan Distance anyway, and network effects mean predicting where gridlock will occur (so you can mitigate it by increasing capacity) is difficult, at least without complex computer modelling. In contrast a single transport corridor can start with a certain baseline capacity, allow space for growth and importantly include dedicated lines for services including emergency response.

    As I noted back a few, The Line is a good planning exercise for a starship, because it's built like one. Only larger. So it's a useful exercise.

    But here's a practical model. Manhattan is about one-third larger in Area than the line, but the line is 100 miles long.

    Suppose comparable disasters severely damage both, disabling all public transit but leaving it possible to walk. Let's hypothetically say that there's only one food and water distribution point, and everyone has to walk to it.

    For Manhattan (13.4 x 2.3 miles) the maximum distance anyone would have to walk is on order 15 miles (accounting for going around corners). For The Line, it's 100 miles. While not everyone can walk 15 miles, many people can walk that far without food or water. Few if any can walk 100 miles without at least water, and most couldn't walk 50 miles. Especially in Sinai desert heat.

    That shows one of the problems of a linear layout versus a more compact one. You can also look at is as maximum travel length for an errand (30 miles versus 200 miles), and you can also look at how hard it would be to cripple the entire system (one bomb in the center of The Line, versus how many bombs on Manhattan?).

    1247:

    Unwrapping a grid into a line simplifies the problem, rather than on its own creating a new one. Grids are limited by Manhattan Distance anyway,

    The illustrations I've seen all show a line of blobs rather than a 'true' linear city. It's more like an exaggerated transit-oriented development than a 100 mile long building.

    If it was the latter I suspect there is some kind of optimum-of-optimums cross section for a linear city. But I also suspect it's very sensitive to assumptions and also to the fine details of exactly how it works. Which can't really be designed in because it results from the actual behaviour of the residents.

    The design definitely seems to allow for the construction infrastructure to stay in place (ie, roads), and I suspect that will turn out to be necessary to keep people both in and out. Some of the workers inside will no doubt want to leave, while the poverty-stricken hordes will want to get in. You can't have irrigated outdoor green space without starving wretches wanting to grow food there, so you're going to need some kind of barrier.

    There doesn't seem to be much mention of how anything bigger than a cardboard box is going to get moved around. There definitely doesn't seem to be a construction plan based on starting at a port/industrial city and building out along the line from there starting with the rail infrastructure you need to move the bits to build the rest.

    1248:

    Charlie Stross @ 1236:

    Five years or one year, I don't know how much longer Russia can sustain the war effort. I think Ukraine has the ability - with western assistance 1 - to resist the Russians for however long it takes. I don't think Russia has the ability to sustain the war for five more years. So I think Ukraine will eventually come out ahead. The longer the war goes on the stronger Ukraine will get vis-a-vis Russia.

    That said ...

    IF by some miracle Russia was able to extricate itself from Putin's war tomorrow AND found some leadership devoted to improving Russia's economy (internally AND on the world stage), do you think they'd be able to repair the damage? Bring themselves back from the brink?
    --

    1 I think it IS in the west's interest to support Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression. Not just the U.S., but the U.K., E.U. et al. I think North Korea, China and Iran are also watching closely to measure western resolve. It could affect how they decide to resolve issues they have with other countries.

    1249:

    ... we're still the proverbial bull in the China shop...

    Bulls sure have a bad reputation, don't they? I remember reading that somebody actually tried releasing a bull in a china shop one time. It wandered around through the aisles and didn't break a thing. :-)

    1250:

    Yeah, that's been proven a couple times. Someone did it recently, and there was that commercial back in the 1970s...

    1251:

    I'd say that an actual territorial breakup is unlikely...

    I agree (although I wouldn't be surprised if China has its eye on territory in Siberia). I was thinking more along the lines of an economic and/or social collapse that would end Russia's ability to conduct a war.

    1252:

    No, not only do they think this, but they're actually right.

    We are trying to take their life choices away--because a lot of those choices were subsidized by racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc. In other words, traditional American practiced a lot of discrimination, and that entire way of life is now seen by millions of more liberal Americans as no longer tolerable.

    But they themselves (I'm talking about your average Republican voter, not the establishment elite) are in deep denial about all this. Hence the war on "Critical Race Theory." They can't allow the other side to make their case, or else we might end up with a plurality of voters supporting another Civil Rights era or something (gasp!).

    The billionaires have learned to weaponize these beliefs, but they have a foundation in basic psychology that is prior to and independent of any propaganda, bad as that admittedly is.

    This also fuels a lot of the "Stolen Election" myth--because a lot of them just can't face the fact that a majority of fellow voters no longer endorse what they think of as traditional American values. So if that can't be true, the election must have been rigged (because if it wasn't rigged, then they are a minority).

    1253:

    They did it on Mythbusters. Bull was surprisingly agile, didn't bust a thing.

    It DID charge a red flag, but it turns out (unsurprisingly) that color had nothing to do with it, it was the movement that aggravated it. Red is basically just so the crowd can see it for entertainment value.

    That was a fun episode.

    1254:

    "1st synthetic mouse embryos — complete with beating hearts and brains — created with no sperm, eggs or womb"

    "For the first time, scientists have created mouse embryos in the lab without using any eggs or sperm and watched them grow outside the womb. To achieve this feat, the researchers used only stem cells and a spinning device filled with shiny glass vials."

    Perhaps Lois McMaster Bujold's uterine replicators are starting to look real... :-)

    https://www.livescience.com/synthetic-mouse-embryos

    1255:

    Russia could pursue a path toward democracy--I think it would have already if not for mistakes that were made in the 1990's, but they have to exhaust all possible alternatives first...

    Agreed. Any path toward democracy would almost certainly guarantee that Putin's successor loses power.

    1256:

    Cut your five year time frame by 80%.

    I cut it by 60%. I guess I wasn't pessimistic enough... :-)

    1257:

    DeMarquis wrote:

    Ahem. But the reply button only seems to allow you to reply to one person at a time, which annoys me. I try to provide context with quotes, but if you think that's inappropriate, I am open to change.

    My prototype less evil social media reputation system (sort of like Twitter with limited reputation points rather than infinite "likes") does allow for multiple replies in the database structure. It's also in both directions:

  • You can conventionally add your post A as a reply to some other post B.
  • You can add post B as a reply to your post A. Perhaps someone else's post B hit the spot and you want it to follow your post A. Twitter Retweets come close to that kind of reverse-reply.
  • The hard part is figuring out a user interface for it. We're dealing with a potentially cyclical general graph here. Good old trn (threaded read news from UseNet days) had a nice display of the tree structure of replies, where you could zip along the threads easily. Not sure how that would work in a more general graph.

    Anyone seen a good user interface for exploring cyclic graph structured data? Hmmm, reminds me of the family tree printing software I wrote ages ago for Quinsept, which had an editor to let you attempt to flatten the graph into 2D. Surely there must be something better out there now!

    1258:

    No, they want to control everyone else's choice, they want no one to have any choice that they haven't pre-decided on.

    This is how conservatives protect their life choices - by making sure nobody else has the power to affect them.

    1259:

    They did it on Mythbusters. Bull was surprisingly agile, didn't bust a thing.

    Not all bulls are created equal. Just like in dogs, cats, and people they come with different temperaments. I've been around some mixed bovine company where my biggest fear was getting stepped on. And at other times there was no way I was crossing the fence into their area.

    If you see a ring in the nose, stay away.

    1260:

    The fundamental problem is that The Line is largely linear, so finding a place to put something increases travel times to and from it, which increases transportation energy use, whatever form of transportation is used.

    To me this is basically the problem of sky scapers. But turned on their side. For the really tall buildings you get into elevator lobbies, floors of nothing but potable water and sewage tanks, power and data distribution areas, etc.... If sky scrapers don't have this the lower floors are nothing but mechanical spaces.

    I'm assuming that they are not planning to dump the sewage "over the side". And they will likely need some enclosed large lakes for fresh water and sewage. But this is the kind of thing were the civil engineers "ruin" the architects wonderful design.

    1261:

    Not limited to bulls. Some cows are also cows in the other sense of the word.

    I've had young bulls who were cute, at least until they got big enough that cute habits like shoving their nose into your pocket to find treats became problematic. And I've had calves of both sexes where the only effective discipline was turning them into sausages at the earliest opportunity.

    Mind you, apparently some pigs are also vicious little buggers (when it comes to being fed) and will bite in a truly vicious way if they possibly can. The ones we had were not at all like that, the biggest issue was they liked to get out of the pen and dig up the paddocks. Or get in through the house fence and bother us about the lack of treats in their lives. But the latter was rare due to an enthusiastic 'don't let the pig dig up my garden' policy from the parental units.

    The ideal pet is one you can eat when it gets annoying :)

    1262:

    That's basically my description of the life support capsule of a starship: it's a skyscraper that acts as a closed life support system for a village of people. Oh, and it's more or less bomb-proof.

    To a first approximation, it's about 90 percent greenhouse, very probably with airlocks separating the wet parts from the dry parts. Or it's all built with marine-grade electronics.

    The nice thing about this design is that a colony on an exoplanet can be just a bunch of these life support capsules, laid on their sides and strung together. Getting the materials to build them is left as an exercise for the colonists.

    1263:

    DeMarquis wrote:

    Ahem. But the reply button only seems to allow you to reply to one person at a time, which annoys me. I try to provide context with quotes, but if you think that's inappropriate, I am open to change.

    I've just been skipping over those posts. Too much scrolling back and forth to figure out who said whatever he's replying to. I got into the habit when the seagull was posting craploads and getting deleted (or unpublished) which changed the post numbers. It was too much work then, and still seems too much now.

    1264:

    Hetero said: If it's not supposed to maximize solar gain, it needs to be built perpendicular to run north-south, not east-west.

    You've got that back to front. N-S gives maximum solar gain. E-W minimum.

    It's near the equator. Sun rises in the east, goes directly over head to set in the west. The 200m end walls see the sun. Turn it 90 degrees to be N-S and the 170 km walls see the sun.

    1265:

    Bulls sure have a bad reputation, don't they? I remember reading that somebody actually tried releasing a bull in a china shop one time. It wandered around through the aisles and didn't break a thing. :-)

    So what you're saying is that it's a bad analogy, and that America actually isn't like a bull in a China shop?

    1266:

    Heteromeles said: I suspect Gasdive's been through something similar during his work?

    No, I never did saturation. I worked onshore with a lot of sat divers though. And I was a chamber operator and did a bit of surface oriented diving with deck decompression.

    Scientists never listened to the grunts. We put the divers in habitats on deck where we could control everything. Temperature, humidity, oxygen, diluent gas. No one has to go diving to take a shit. Divers go diving to make the company money. They didn't waste time cooking and such like they did in those submerged habitats. Food gets locked in via little "medical" locks.

    The scientists thought that was all too expensive. Which depends on what you're measuring. Diving companies don't like to waste money. They do whatever gets the most productive work done.

    1267:

    Hetero said: If it's not supposed to maximize solar gain, it needs to be built perpendicular to run north-south, not east-west. You've got that back to front. N-S gives maximum solar gain. E-W minimum. It's near the equator. Sun rises in the east, goes directly over head to set in the west. The 200m end walls see the sun. Turn it 90 degrees to be N-S and the 170 km walls see the sun.

    Erm, no. The Line site is north of 28 degrees north latitude, so it's not even in the tropics. If it was in Australia, it would be south of Brisbane, at Coolangatta.

    1268:

    I'm assuming that they are not planning to dump the sewage "over the side". And they will likely need some enclosed large lakes for fresh water and sewage. But this is the kind of thing were the civil engineers "ruin" the architects wonderful design.

    There are a couple of ways this could get really cute.

    Ideally, they'd want to do something like Living Machine wastewater treatment (pdf link). These are beds of aquatic plants that scrub the water reasonably well, leading to stuff that can be composted, humidity from the water they transpire, and water that can be reused. These only work if the Precious Darlings living there don't flush something toxic down the drain, which they're almost certain to do.

    So, if you assume the Precious Denizens are going to be thoughtless consumers, you've got a couple of choices. One is that you hook a big desalination plant to the gulf, flow the desal water through the complex, Mississippi River-style (meaning it gets the toilet to tap treatment a few times), then all the effluent gets dumped in the desert at the downstream end, there to dry up and blow away somewhere.

    Another possibility is that you reverse the flow by pumping the desal water 100 miles to the inland end of The Line, then you run your river through the city to the sea and dump the effluent into the Red Sea at the port, because nothing says environmentalism like dumping sewage in a narrow gulf.

    Or you do the sensible thing and don't use a single pipe. I'm sure they'll be sensible about this too.

    The fact that it's right across the Gulf of Aqaba from the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El Sheikh gives me an idea of what they might do with their sewage.

    1269:

    Hetero said: If it was in Australia, it would be south of Brisbane, at Coolangatta

    I'm well south of that and even here the orientation would be back to front. Mid summer at 28 degrees the sun is only 5 degrees off my description.

    1270:

    Replying to noone in particular. NSW has just shy of 9 million people and 220 hospitals. If you give the line 220 hospitals they would be a bit under 800 metres apart. So noone should be more than 400m walk from a hospital. Most people would consider that to be living very close. If you have say 4 major trauma centres then transfer should take less than 3 minutes. Faster than a helicopter in central London. Probably faster than a transfer between departments in most hospitals.

    1271:

    I'm well south of that and even here the orientation would be back to front. Mid summer at 28 degrees the sun is only 5 degrees off my description.

    I see what you're getting at. In this particular case, I think it's a draw between us, because the summer's hot even at night.

    Here are the monthly temperatures for Sharm El-Sheikh, which is nearby: https://weatherspark.com/y/98150/Average-Weather-in-Sharm-el-Sheikh-Egypt-Year-Round

    I'm thinking of putting aligning it north-south, putting most of the windows on the east-facing wall, and putting solar panels on the roof and west-facing wall. you're thinking of aligning it east-west, and putting solar panels on the roof and south wall. Probably it's a wash in terms of electricity, but both angles give a great view of the desert, not the coast. So there's that.

    1272:

    (About replying to multiple posts in one posts)

    I've just been skipping over those posts. Too much scrolling back and forth to figure out who said whatever he's replying to.

    Me, too. The reply mechanism is somewhat annoying, but there are usually multiple threads of communication going on at the same time and collecting many of them into the same post is just making things more confusing.

    I try to write so that the reader has it easier - after all, I just write the thing once but many people can read what I wrote. If I make things easier for me and harder for the readers, it multiplies the collective effort. (Also makes it more likely people will just skip reading what I wrote.) So, I try to spend some effort to make my text accessible.

    1273:

    So what you're saying is that it's a bad analogy, and that America actually isn't like a bull in a China shop?

    Yup. In my humble opinion, we're more like a bully than a bull... :-)

    1274:

    On the Russia-Ukraine war and imperialism in general:

    I fully admit that my perspective is from a small country sharing a long border and history with Russia. Having that war quite close by is not fun.

    However, I still don't like what the US and NATO are doing. NATO is especially big and not very united, so I'm often wondering what Turkey, for example, is doing in that club (well, slaughtering Kurds and making war, obviously...). Also for example the recent thing with the new Finnish fighter plane deal was pretty ugly (we bought F-35s).

    Of course this shows at least some of the cultural hegemony when people just don't see the US doing things as bad, or that the people who point them out get labeled as Russian agents or whatever. Still, for me the Russia is kind of the closer and more volatile one. I have a lots of ideas on how to make Russia not a threat to anybody, but I also know that most of them are not possible, I don't have much means to make them happen even if they were, and they all bring much suffering.

    I'd be happy with an EU defence force, but because NATO, it doesn't seem possible to have one. Also, if we're speaking about imperialism, there has been some of that been going with the EU countries, too.

    Of course this all is against the climate crisis backdrop so if the Ukraine war drags on for some years it might be only a small local conflict soon. (Oh, yeah, happy morning thoughts for me!)

    1275:

    NATO is especially big and not very united, so I'm often wondering what Turkey, for example, is doing in that club...

    Me too. I understand NATO had to bribe Erdoğan in order to get Turkish approval for adding Finland and Sweden to NATO. That plus Turkish cooperation with Russia to get Russia's S-400 air defense system (optimized to attack NATO planes?) leave me with a bad feeling.

    1276:

    Hetero said: solar panels

    Yes. Pretty much agreed.

    I think the plan is no panels on roof or walls. Rooftop garden, views from every apartment.

    Which sort of makes sense. They're going to need lots of panels long before this is built. If you put them on the ground it's easy to wash the dust off. (I think they've developed some ultra low water way of doing this).

    1277:

    Electrostatic cleaning with no water at all is the latest idea:

    https://www.ecowatch.com/solar-panel-cleaning-waterless.html

    Cost analysis that mentions manual cleaning is only done during the day for safety reasons - it's less dangerous to the workers when the panels are live and hot. https://www.relysm.com/solar-farm-cleaning-costs/

    The popular option seems to be mechanical sweeping but that causes abrasion so they're working on it. Also some water, with one Oz mob saying their system is better because it doesn't require expensive demineralised water (which in turn suggests lots of water is use, for scale deposits to be a problem).

    Current no-scrub wet machines seem to use a combo of sucking air over then (non-contact) with a tiny spray of water and another sucking machine to reclaim the water rather than wet too much of the panel. Can't find the one I saw a utube video about though, and scant similar machines advertised online so I suspect they're either very old or very new (the "wet scrub" ones are definitely old school).

    There's some fun arguments about which approach does less damage, especially in low-humidity environments. All the photos I see show daylight operation but I assume they want robots to clean them at night, mostly so the panels are cool and they're not caught between evaporation and thermal shock.

    1278:

    »so I'm often wondering what Turkey, for example, is doing in that club«

    Turkey literally own the Bosphorus Strait.

    Turkey were admitted to NATO so that USSR's black-sea fleet wouldn't go anywhere inconvenient.

    1279:

    Well, yes, some but not others. I am unconvinced by the cancer theory, as the symptoms don't match - they are a far better fit for some of the nasty neurological diseases (which often ARE treated with high-dose steroids). The prognosis is often similar.

    Also, I am seriously unconvinced by 'the mark on history' and the personalisation of the conflict, because I see this as an example of Russian paranoia and (justified) fear of NATO. I think that he was convinced that NATO would change or break its rules (form, there), let Ukraine join, retake everything and install a base in Sebastopol, complete with USA missiles. And, of course, he believed that his successor would be too weak to stop that (a standard view of almost all political leaders). Militarily, Russia cannot accept that. I DON'T CARE whether people say that fear is unjustified, because it's SOLELY and matter of whether 'they' believed it - AS BOTH SIDES DID IN 1962.

    I partially disagree with the next article, because Trump did fuck-all to establish diplomacy, but I believe her that Russia was honestly trying to up until very recently (she says late last year, but I failed to see that myself) - it assuredly was in Obama's time, and was rudely rejected by him.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/voices/trump-biden-russia-ukraine-war-pelosi-b2138231.html

    TO THE TROLLS (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE): Yes, the invasion is militarily and politically insane, and is excessively brutal, as have been most 'military actions' etc. by both sides recently.

    No, I am NOT justifying it, but am saying that saying that it is entirely Putin's megalomania is highly implausible. Entirely due to his paranoia is more justifiable, but ignores the events of 2010-13. It's more complicated.

    1280:

    The one thing that I am certain of is that it won't go the way that any of the favoured predictions say; some of the more way-out SF writers may get it right, but the chaos following the collapse of Russia isn't going to lead to a predictable results. Are you sure that you mean Zelensky? I can't see that Ukraine will take over Russia without WW III.

    But I agree that it will be complete chaos, probably even worse for the people involved that it is now, and possibly with a higher risk of nuclear war.

    1281:

    No one has to go diving to take a shit

    I imagine water temperature has much to do with it. In 60' deep tropical sea it is not difficult. In Northern Atlantic, or for that matter in the tropics at 400', it is a different story.

    1282:

    I try to write so that the reader has it easier - after all, I just write the thing once but many people can read what I wrote. If I make things easier for me and harder for the readers, it multiplies the collective effort.

    A generation ago on an in-house bulletin board (remember those?) one of my colleagues refused to use grammatical indicators or check their spelling, because it slowed them down to much and their posts weren't that difficult to figure out. I did the math to show that their spending an extra five minutes on their post was less collective time than every reader spending an extra 20 seconds trying to figure out what they were trying to say. Apparently that didn't matter because it wasn't their time, so it didn't count as much. My question on why they considered their time so much more valuable than our's went unanswered. As did, increasingly, their posts.

    1283:

    I think the plan is no panels on roof or walls. Rooftop garden, views from every apartment.

    Haven't looked at the plans, but transparent solar panels are a thing. For the desert where you'll likely want tinted glass anyway, those would make sense for windows. And you can get solar panels that don't look like solar panels that are cost-competitive with ordinary cladding.

    This company doesn't have prices on its website, but they gave them in a presentation to one of the committees I sit on and even at current electricity rates it makes sense to use solar cladding and glass (let alone rates when usage spikes after electric vehicles become common).

    https://www.mitrex.com/solar-glass/

    1284:

    This might be opening a bit of a can of worms.

    There is a case in Britain where doctors are arguing that a patient (a child) is brain dead and that they wish to turn off life support. The parents oppose this. This has been through the UK courts, been declined by the ECHR and considered by the UN (why?).

    The courts are guided by "acting in the best interests of the patient". How can a brain dead patient have interests?

    Is the UK uniquely bad at this? We had another similar one not so long ago.

    Do other countries really keep brain dead people "alive" for six months or more?

    1286:

    Yes?

    Happens all the time in the US.

    1287:

    1245 - You missed my argument; I was arguing that the Constitution had been frivolously amended despite "making it hard", and that on at least one occasion a state (notable for being Kansas) has voted against ratifying an amendment.

    1250 - Agreed, hence my argument upthread that learning to spell Ukrainian names in Ukrainian rather than Ruzzian is one small show of support we can all do.

    1256 - Brave New World (first published 1933) is 16 years older than Lois McMaster Bujold.

    1272 - The closest I ever lived to a general hospital until the health board built one nearer would be about 1500m away (just measured).

    1276 - I don't get why Finland bought F-35s (any). The Swedish JAS-39 was more or less designed for the Finnish climate.

    1280 - As I said up-thread the Royal Navy more or less closed the Sea of Marmara during WW1.

    1288:

    For what it's worth, there seem to be multiple versions of NEOM out there:

    e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ap300gEIrY (four months ago) versus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2ePMZEhrxM (seven days ago)

    But this leaves us with more fun. One is the idea that anyone can get anywhere in The Line (170 km long) in 20 minutes, via train-like device. I'll leave it to the train buffs to figure out how often that hyperloop (or whatever it is) can stop without accelerating or deccelerating at greater than 3 g or traveling faster than mach one in a tube. Sounds perfect for grocery shopping. Or taking your cat to the vet.

    The other fun is last week's design: it's the 170 km long, 500 m tall, 200 m wide city. There's no roof, and clear walls (which, to be fair, should have solar panels on the south side).

    But I want to emphasize again: no roof. It's a giant slot with a really complex set of buildings inside.

    Why does this matter? There's an argument out there that a dust storm in 2021 caught the 400 m MV Ever Given in the Suez Canal, running it aground and blocking the canal. So the area has reasonably high winds and dust storms, and Sharm El-Sheikh (even closer) does experience sand storms. Also, a look at Windyy shows that winds at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba go every which way over the course of a week.

    So we've got three levels of dynamic fun here.

    --Some engineering firm is going to get rich doing the aerodynamic modeling for The Line. If they don't do the modeling, they'll find out the hard way that they're basically building a giant harmonica for the local djinn to blow upon. That long, narrow trench, with a walls directing air up to a sharp edge, with a really complicated aerial environment inside, is probably going to spawn vortices and sympathetic vibrations all over the place. Some of those vortices will be strong enough to lift stuff (if hopefully not small children) off the bridges. It will be an excellent environment for testing autonomous flight software for delivery drones, to be sure.

    --And The Line is open to everything from 45 degree happy summer days to sand and dust storms. That sounds like a perfectly comfortable environment to have outside your apartment door. Who needs air conditioning with air filters?. And I'm sure all the drone operators will get very innovative about delivering their takeout orders during sandstorms. Maybe they'll fly the drones up in elevators?

    --More excitingly, you've got two very tall, very narrow, very long buildings that are going to collect a fair amount of energy from the winds hitting them, but they're not going to be moving in sync. Would I want to be on a bridge between the two sides, say 400 meters up, during a windstorm? Not particularly, but the second video shows some designer putting a health clinic in such a space. Keeping the bridges from getting broken by the side buildings differentially flexing in the wind is going to be a fascinating engineering challenge. The architects (and likely MBS) will have some powerful exchanges with the civil engineers, no doubt.

    Anyway, MBS is apparently trying to out-Dubai Dubai, by setting up a tech and trade hub in the path of the Suez canal trade, with Egypt, Jordan, and Israel nearby. Possibly he's channeling Ludwig II on nootropics too? We'll see where this all goes. The scaled-down version of The Line from a few months ago appears to be a 170 km long upscale community with a super-train underneath it. That's...plausible?

    1289:

    The one thing that I am certain of is that it won't go the way that any of the favoured predictions say; some of the more way-out SF writers may get it right, but the chaos following the collapse of Russia isn't going to lead to a predictable results. Are you sure that you mean Zelensky? I can't see that Ukraine will take over Russia without WW III. But I agree that it will be complete chaos, probably even worse for the people involved that it is now, and possibly with a higher risk of nuclear war.

    The argument for Zelenskyy ending up controlling part of what was the USSR is basically a replay of the Russian civil war that happened after the 1918 revolution. Russia had six armies and a bunch of foreign powers marching all over the place inside it, and the Red Guard won after a long and bloody war. If the Ukrainian army is the best in the region other than China, one could conceivably imagine that, if Russia falls apart in a civil war, China bites off a chunk in the east, and Ukraine establishes some sort of stable "empire" in the west (more likely a Russian alliance with a smaller Russia and the Republics).

    But you're entirely right, this only happens if the Russian nuclear deterrent absolutely fails. I just checked, because I wasn't paying attention, and I didn't realize that Putin test-fired a new ICBM design last April. So I agree with you, failure of the nuclear deterrent appears unlikely at the moment. With nukes in place, Russia won't be invaded, even if it is in a civil war.

    Interesting times.

    1290:

    "Also some water, with one Oz mob saying their system is better because it doesn't require expensive demineralised water (which in turn suggests lots of water is use, for scale deposits to be a problem)."

    Deposits will be a problem with water from any "ordinary" source, but that may not be what they're on about.

    Window cleaning in the UK is now going high-tech. Instead of all that messing about clambering up ladders with buckets of soapy water and rags and things, the new method is to stand on the ground with a long squirty pole and just squirt un-soapy water on the windows with it. There is no scrubbing or wiping, the only thing that touches the glass is the water and it's all done by squirting.

    This works because as well as not having any soap the water doesn't have anything else in it either, and very pure water is weird stuff. It comes from a reverse osmosis machine which the window cleaner either has in the back of the van or keeps at home and uses to refill a tank in the back of the van (I can't remember which). It doesn't use huge amounts of it either.

    It strikes me that if the water supply is coming from seawater desalinated either by reverse osmosis or distillation, you'll not be needing to put it through a special machine to make it into window water, so the advantage of not using special water disappears.

    It probably makes horrible tea though.

    (I'm also wondering how long it will be before someone starts making cheap sheets of artificial sapphire big enough to cover solar panels with.)

    1291:

    That trench with buildings in thing sounds like a pretty decent way to maximise the heat trap effect inside it. It'll probably start to cook the construction workers before it's even finished.

    And then it'll bury them in sand, like the Sphinx was before they dug it out.

    1292:

    Do other countries really keep brain dead people "alive" for six months or more?

    Unfortunately, yes. The U.S. had the sad case of Terri Schiavo, who was kept alive for 15 years in this sad state. Against her husband's (and Terri's stated) wishes, Terri's parents, various interest groups, members of the Florida Legislature, the United States Congress, and the President of the United States became involved in the case, which dragged on through courts for many years.

    1293:

    Worth mentioning that Terri's parents were the ones who insisted on keeping her on life support, and kept a smear campaign against Terri's husband.

    1294:

    Nick K @ 1286

    Yes, people in the USA are routinely kept "alive" on ventilators for long periods, to the point that there are hospital wards dedicated to it.

    https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/vent-farms-for-people-who-dont-wake-up.687026

    1295:

    The problem with the Russians is that they run the ugliest government in the world, full of prejudice and hate, and they've done so in one form or another since their Tsarist nobility developed the technique of traveling in winter by throwing peasants to the wolves off the back of a sled...

    Does the country have legitimate territorial and international issues? Of course it does. But they're the cannibalistic troll of the international community, too big - too nuclear really, these days - to do anything about, and too paranoid, horrible and ugly-minded for anyone to make them a concession.

    So even though the worst thing in the world would be for us to give the countries on the Russian border NATO membership - I call it "shaving the Bear," always a poor idea - we did it anyway after these countries did everything but kick down the doors to NATO meetings because the idea of being Russian satellites was so repugnant to them. Ukraine ended up being the last country which needed to join NATO, and all Russian fascists like Ivan Ilyich or Aleksander Durgin did was make the inevitable paranoia-generated invasion legitimate in Russian eyes.

    The unfortunate thing here is that Russia has not done the work on their inner and innate ugliness to necessary for a country like Poland, (to pull a name out of a hat,) to feel comfortable not being a member of an anti-Russian defensive alliance.

    Note that I'm not touting the United States as a "shining city on a hill." Our faults are many and well-known, and corporatist control over our government is growing in a really ugly way, but despite Bush II and Trump we're not yet a kleptocracy on the Russian model, and everyone knows who they'd rather do business with.

    So Russia not getting what they want isn't something that's fixable by anyone outside Russia. Only the Russians can fix this problem and instead they've doubled down on the ugly.

    'Nuf said, I think.

    1296:

    And, of course, by threatening Russia... you give the worst of the people on leadership track all the ammunition they need. Why did Nixon got to Communist China, instead of Communist USSR?

    Maybe because the West had controlled China (hey, let's have an opium war!), and they never controlled Russia?

    1297:

    About responding to multiple posts in one post? Please DON'T. Sometimes posts get renumbered; in any case, I have to do a search on the number, as opposed to just clicking on "this is a response to....". I get on around this time every day (except weekends), go through all the new posts, write down the post number of any I want to respond to, then respond in order. No one has any question what I'm responding to....

    1298:

    hat on at least one occasion a state (notable for being Kansas) has voted against ratifying an amendment.

    You do understand you're intermixing the constitution of the entire US and the constitution of a single state?

    Kansas voters voted no to an amendment to their Kansas state constitution which would have removed any block to laws prohibiting abortion. It was a purely state level thing. But the 60/40 vote in a long time hard core Republican state got national attention. In so many ways. Especially as the vote was put on the primary date which in normal times would have mean R turnout would far exceed D turnout. So the 60/40 vote against what the R power brokers expected was a shock to them and many others.

    1299:

    Nixon went to China because we didn't have diplomatic relations with them, while we'd had diplomatic relations with Russia for at least a century by that point.

    1300:

    Yes, people in the USA are routinely kept "alive" on ventilators for long periods, to the point that there are hospital wards dedicated to it.

    The last big ugly case that I recall was in Texas a year or few ago. Parents (maybe mom) refused to agree to take her brain dead child off life support. Everyone involved with the hospital and group health care system said she was dead but just on a vent so her heart wouldn't stop. And a feeding tube. I don't know what happened but at one point the hospital told the mom and supporters to find somewhere else to warehouse the body. Cruel evil people that they were.

    [sarcasm off]

    1301:

    Oh, really? You would prefer to live in North Korea?

    1302:

    Sigh. Yes. Gorbachev and others genuinely wanted improvement (even Khrushchev did), but what the west did in the period 2010-2013 was to push Russia back from that.

    1303:

    Yeah. I started to write a short story where Kruschev was not forced out of power, and this was the world (or rather, out in space) of the 21st Century, with a Soviet-American ship....

    1304:

    What, in your opinion, did the West do during that period?

    1305:

    You think I'm anything other than surprised!

    1306:

    I think Putin, in particular, didn't understand how this change completely altered the world he was operating in.

    Disagree, strongly.

    Putin has been President (or, for 4 years, Prime Minister) of Russia for 22 years.

    He's seen out: George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and now the first half of Joe Biden's term. So that's nearly a decade of Democrat presidents and 12 years of Republican ones. During that period there have been brief interludes with both houses of congress in Democrat hands, significantly longer periods of Republican dominance, and (as now) interludes of balance.

    Oh, and before Putin became Russia's de-facto dictator he spent 20 years as a KGB officer and then lower-level-but-still-senior politician, with a background in foreign relations.

    If there's one thing about the USA that Putin is unlikely to have a gut feel for, it's the way that power is dispersed among literally dozens of state legislatures and governorships and thousands of city governments, with the President at the top of a tottering jenga-pile of political alliances and coalitions in various levels. Russia is vastly more centralized than the USA, with the centre exerting dictatorial control over lower levels. It wasn't always thus (there are regional fiefdoms, and in the 1991-2000 period they wielded considerable power) but since Putin brought the oligarchs to heel he hasn't been faced with internal threats.

    1307:

    what part of their "society" is that "murderous autocrat" actually going to allow to enjoy the nice things? Is he going to change his society to allow women to be full human beings?

    I gather that Saudi Arabia is changing fairly rapidly. Not entirely for good, but some of the onerous restrictions on women are relaxing: they can get driving licenses now, the strict Abaya and veil dress code is optional, and so on.

    What happened in Saudi Arabia was that at the same time as the Iranian -- Shi'ite -- revolution in 1979-81, Saudi Arabia underwent a Sunni (specifically a Salafi) fundamentalist revolution. The king and the house of Saud stayed in charge of politics but the most reactionary clerics got in the driving seat of social policy for a generation, and it stuck as the previous monarch grew old.

    Now we have MBS running the show: a murderous megalomaniacal thug with tyrannical aspirations, but a thirty-something murderous etc. who grew up with bizjet access to the West. MBS is impulsive, hot-headed, and violent, but he's not a complete idiot. He can't be unaware of the implications of global climate change, and indeed Saudi Arabia has in the past few years showed signs of pivoting towards throwing resources at developing an industrial base and otherwise modernizing. The issue of Al Quaida and Da'esh seems to have alarmed the Saudis (when those zealots threatened the rich, decadent royal family much chopping off of heads eventuated), so cracking down on the clergy and relaxing social restrictions provided a cheap way of buying some degree of public support.

    The prognosis is, I suspect, for SA to evolve into a standard unpleasant Middle Eastern police state, monarchy-subtype rather than Ba'ath-subtype (the last Ba'ath standing is Assad, and he's a Russian puppet at this point). Meanwhile the focus of Sunni fundamentalist craziness has shifted to Afghanistan (Taliban 2.0) while the Sunni/Shi'ite cold war continues in Yemen, Lebanon (Hezbollah, not the state itself), and Iran (although Iran's revolution is decaying -- in another decade or two the old revolutionary leaders will all have died off).

    1308:

    Are you aware that other people than "the west" have actual agency?

    A lot of people in Eastern Europe decided they wanted to be as distant from Russia and as close to Europe and the US as possible after they saw what happened in for instance:

    • Abkhazia 1991 to 93
    • Transnistria 1992
    • Chechnya 1994 to 96
    • Chechnya 1999 to 2009.
    • Georgia 2008

    Most of the turn to "the west" and away from Russia happened because Eastern Europeans wanted it, and they wanted it because they were scared of Russia (and admittedly they also wanted it because Europe and the US has money)

    1309:

    If there's one thing about the USA that Putin is unlikely to have a gut feel for, it's the way that power is dispersed among literally dozens of state legislatures and governorships and thousands of city governments, with the President at the top of a tottering jenga-pile of political alliances and coalitions in various levels. Russia is vastly more centralized than the USA, with the centre exerting dictatorial control over lower levels. It wasn't always thus (there are regional fiefdoms, and in the 1991-2000 period they wielded considerable power) but since Putin brought the oligarchs to heel he hasn't been faced with internal threats.

    This I disagree with. Putin played the GQP like a socket puppet in bondage gear since Obama got elected. This isn't a surprise, since democracy advocates like SecState Clinton were doing the same thing in Russian politics, to rather less effect. We were both trying to change each others' regimes (as always) and he did a better job. With the UK too, perhaps?

    The puzzle for me is how he entirely blew the second Ukrainian invasion, and thereby blew his infowar too. My best guess is that he thought it would be a repeat of what he did in 2014, with Biden being an older, weaker Obama, and if so he miscalculated quite badly. I suspect part of that miscalculation in US politics is that four years of Agent Orange, BoJo, and other male Shambleaus has made the meme that billionaires are stable geniuses and democracy sux rather toxic, and that's his main inforwar artillery. There may be other factors that he's m to, like climate change biting down in GQP land. Or he may have thought his window of opportunity was closing because of climate change or something else, and that precipitated his action.

    1310:

    Don't think anyone has mentioned this yet - First room-temperature superconductor excites — and baffles — scientists. The one drawback is a doozy.

    1311:

    Interesting. I think there was also a different misunderstanding on the part of the U.S., which is that we interpreted Russia's actions in Ukraine during 2014 as Russia's unwillingness to give up their warm-water port in Sebastopol/Crimea, which they'd been renting from the Ukrainians since the 1990s.

    However, the idea that Putin was in alliance with multiple fascist movements, and had a fascist movement of his own going on, and that he loved Durgin and Ilyich only started to be clear once Brexit had happened and the U.S. voted Trump into power... I suspect that beyond whatever mistakes Putin made that he was badly misinterpreted by the West as well.

    1312:

    Heteromeles @ 1270:

    Ideally, they'd want to do something like Living Machine wastewater treatment (pdf link). These are beds of aquatic plants that scrub the water reasonably well, leading to stuff that can be composted, humidity from the water they transpire, and water that can be reused. These only work if the Precious Darlings living there don't flush something toxic down the drain, which they're almost certain to do.

    The problem of people flushing "toxic" substances are fairly limited (at least before they've filtered them through their bodies ) - toxic dumping is more of an industrial abuse.

    And that should be dealt with in the design for the industries that are going to be situated in NEOM.

    What would be needed is some way to screen out the used tampons, disposable diapers & baby wipes (etc) BEFORE the waste gets to the Living Machine's processors. I think some adaptation of the machines designed for cleaning up polluted rivers or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch might do the trick.

    And I think the “ECOLOGICAL FLUID BED” portion of the Living Machine could be used for irrigation - let the water filter into the ground sub-surface and grow crops on top of it.

    1313:

    Heteromeles @ 1273:

    My experience in the desert (limited though it may be) is it can get pretty damn cold at night, even in the summer. Cold enough you'd need a light coat to maintain your internal temperature. You get away from the coast and you lose the moderating effect of the oceans.

    The drawings of "The Line" I've seen feature a massively high wall (skyscraper height) on both the east and west side and open at the top (for ventilation).

    I think that mirror finish is mostly a facade. Behind it would be a few windows, maybe even massive, multi-story windows, but it would make sense to cover the majority of BOTH exteriors with solar panels - east side to catch the morning sun and west side to catch the sun in the afternoon. Maybe also place heat radiators on both sides and vent excess heat out on the shady side.

    And maybe find some way to tint the windows to produce artificial shade from the sunny side. Something like a massive Venetian blind or those windows that turn opaque when you put an electrical charge on them? The parts that turn opaque could have a pattern like leaves.

    And since it's activated by an electric charge, just connect it to a couple of solar panels and when the sun comes up and starts shining on the window the shade pattern would automatically develop requiring no intervention by AI or human intelligence.

    1314:

    Actually, I agree that The Line, as formulated, is a great night-time cooler. One classic passive solar trick for desert coolers is to have an isolated area open to the sky. The area "sees" only the void of space above it, so there's putatively a flow of heat out that gradient from hot ground to cold space, and so it cools.

    This is complicated by the fact that the western half of The Line is along the coast, where the moisture in the air is going to block the release of heat. What this in turn means is that there will an air temperature differential from hot and most in the west to cool and dry in the east. This should such hot, humid air into The Line on the west and pull it eastward into the desert. Since the supply of hot, humid air on the coast is effectively infinite relative to the volume in The Line (big as that is), it should keep the whole thing both blustery and humid through those long, summer nights.

    If this sounds uncomfortable to sleep in, I agree. If they were really fiddly about it, there might be some way to condense the humid air and use it to water plants or some such.

    As a final note: yes, I'm having fun snarking about this project, but it's also an eye-opener to me. What I'm learning is that, while arcologies are cool, megastructures are integrated systems, and that forced simplicity in turn generates its own problems. As others have pointed out, skyscrapers have similar problems. The tall, simple shapes may look cool, but they require a fair amount of active motion damping to keep from falling over, and even more infrastructure to keep them habitable.

    1315:

    having fun snarking about this project, but it's also an eye-opener

    Yeah, same here. If nothing else, it's a great exercise for thinking about what is the infrastructure needed to support a city, how does it work now for the cities we have and whether and how it could be rolled up into a different kind of system. I don't want to say closed system, or even differently open system, but more sort of the inputs and outputs are really understood and controllable, or at least controllable for.

    For instance, the thing you mention about drawing warm, humid air deep into the structure just because of temperature, humidity and pressure differentials. What sort of additional engineering is needed to make it controllable, so you can turn it on when it's beneficial and needed, but turn it off when it would be better to take atmospheric inputs elsewhere? Because surely part of the point of megastructures is to use their size for advantage where possible.

    1316:

    paws4thot @ 1289: 1245 - You missed my argument; I was arguing that the Constitution had been frivolously amended despite "making it hard", and that on at least one occasion a state (notable for being Kansas) has voted against ratifying an amendment.

    I think you missed mine as well. There's no way, short of locking the Constitution FOREVER and having no way to amend it at all, to keep out frivolous amendments, although I prefer STUPID amendments to describe the 18th, because it was not at all frivolous, but it was STUPID!

    Perhaps we can agree to describe it as an asinine amendment.

    I think that on the whole the "founders" did a fairly good job, but they were apparently blind to the possibility of arguments made in bad faith and how crooked politicians would use them.

    NOT ALL politicians are crooked scumbags, but the ones that are DO constitute a significant minority here in the U.S. ... and the Constitution was designed to protect the rights of the minority from being trampled.

    The founders clearly misread the possibility of the minority trampling the rights of the majority. But I have no idea how the founders could have acted differently to prevent that while still protecting the rights of the minority ... or rights of dissenters, which they had formerly been during the recent colonial period.

    Writing the Constitution came less than four years after the formal END of the American Revolutionary War.

    Kansas didn't vote against ratifying an amendment, they voted to NOT allow the legislature to carve out an exception to rights guaranteed in their STATE Constitution.

    I don't believe that proposed exception was presented as an amendment to the State Constitution.

    1317:

    Heteromeles @ 1290:

    For what it's worth, there seem to be multiple versions of NEOM out there:

    e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ap300gEIrY (four months ago) versus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2ePMZEhrxM (seven days ago)

    The first video is the first one I've seen that includes a woman in traditional Islamic dress in one of the promotions.

    I've been kind of caught in the middle on looking at "The Line", because the first drawings I saw showed it running north-south (I don't know WHY?) but that's why I've made comments about east side & west side.

    I think my comments on using electrostatic glass to make shade patterns in the windows still applies, there's just no morning/afternoon component ... it's all day long.

    I think the "hyperloop (or whatever it is)" would have to have provisions for sidings where passengers could embark/disembark, and I think the cars that travel the hyperloop would have to be relatively small - mini-bus size rather than subway train size - and they'd have to be a mix of short haul scheduled services, long haul scheduled services and ON DEMAND short & long haul services. That's why you'd need sidings for the stations.

    If I understand the overall design concept, residents wouldn't need to use the hyperloop thingy EXCEPT to go out to the ends from somewhere in the middle (or return to the middle from the ends). Resources to meet all of residents' needs would be available in their portion of the line.

    The ends of The Line could include "resorts" of one kind or another. Beaches or recreational water sports at the west end and somewhere near the east end there's supposed to be mountains; TROJENA [YouTube].

    Looks like they've already got part of the beach resort built with NEOM Airport and an 18-hole golf course, although looking at some of the images posted to Google Maps there's not any great surf there.

    But also looking at the images for The Line it appears there additional freight lines out on either side of that central hyperloop spine.

    The initial artwork shows a series of new small cities clustered along that central hyperloop spine and I'm guessing that's the way they could develop it ... build the central spine (with stations at intervals) and build small cities (physical land area) around some of the stations and allow development to flow along the central spine.

    One thought that just occurred to me is maybe Saudi Arabia could get a better return on investment by providing Egypt with funds to widen the Suez canal and "double track" it along it's whole width.

    1318:

    Charlie Stross @ 1308:

    You left out George HW Bush & Bill Clinton.

    1319:

    ME @ 1315:

    As noted, I was misled by the first "maps" of The Line I saw misrepresenting its alignment. I now realize it would run WNW to ESE, so where I wrote "east/west sides", change that to "north/south sides" and adjust accordingly.

    Turn the south side windows opaque with electrostatic glass and vent excess heat along the north side.

    Maybe even eliminate any south side windows and make the whole south facade solar cells so you have all the windows on the north side. North light was a very important for painters & photographers before artificial light sources were developed, and it's still the most comfortable light here in the northern hemisphere (for Moz & company "south light" serves the same purpose).

    I still think the civil engineering aspects ARE possible, and it's the social/societal component that's going to be a bigger impediment.

    As for the problem with the open top between the two walls becoming a heat sink, consider the traditional methods of keeping light & heat from the Souk.

    It's only a matter of scaling up.

    Y'all are thinking too small and forgetting Clarke's "first law":

    When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.
    1320:

    I'm not sure that this is as radically new as the headline promises, superconductivity through pressure, temperature or a combination is the subject of a tangled web of fuckery since at least when I was at school 30 years ago (the breakthrough then was liquid nitrogen temperatures at atmospheric pressure). But I vaguely recall that compressed like the sphincter of hell was also an option.

    I'm happy that progress continues to be made, I'm just hoping that global peak temperatures rise more slowly than highest superconducting temperature...

    1321:

    zephvark @ 1319:

    Yeah, I just don't know what they could have done INSTEAD to protect BOTH the minority AND the majority from the other's tyranny?

    1322: 1273: "I'm thinking of putting aligning it north-south, putting most of the windows on the east-facing wall, and putting solar panels on the roof and west-facing wall."

    Ooh, no, put the windows on the west side. If you have them on the east then the rooms behind them turn into solar ovens the instant the sun peeks above the horizon, and stay like that all day. With the windows on the west you stand some chance of being able to retain some of the night-time coolness for a useful amount of time into the day before the sun gets round far enough to start cooking you.

    Anneka Dote: couple of guys camping on the beach in Turkey? Syria? somewhere round that way, got talking to one of the locals, who asked them "when do you want to get up in the morning?" to which they replied "oh, half past eight" (or something). He pointed to a spot a certain distance away from the cliff and said "put your tent there". Come half past eight in the morning and suddenly they find themselves boiled out of their beds by the half of the sun that has so far got above the edge of the cliff.

    1316: "there will an air temperature differential from hot and most in the west to cool and dry in the east. This should such hot, humid air into The Line on the west and pull it eastward into the desert."

    Sea breeze/land breeze. Blows inshore in the daytime, offshore at night, as the land heats up/cools down faster than the sea. So now we confine and enhance it by means of a 170km wind tunnel and see how much phase lag the inertia of that big column of air introduces.

    1323:

    "North light was a very important for painters & photographers before artificial light sources were developed, and it's still the most comfortable light here in the northern hemisphere"

    I disagree. The whole thing about artists' studios having glass roofs on the north side and all that is because it gives you the most consistently neutral light for colour matching, so you minimise the problem of the colours on your paintings going all wonky in different lights. But that "neutral light" is also noticeably skewed towards the blue, which makes it inherently a bit cold and gloomy even when it's a lovely day outside. When you've got some sunshine, the greater yellowness of the direct light makes things feel a lot more pleasant.

    I won't buy LEDs for illumination unless they quote a colour temperature <= 3000K, either.

    1324:

    ... I'd propose that the government needs a branch in charge of removing laws.

    Then the question becomes: Who decides which laws get removed?

    There's no form of government that can't be corrupted when the wrong people get in power... :-(

    1325:

    For instance, the thing you mention about drawing warm, humid air deep into the structure just because of temperature, humidity and pressure differentials. What sort of additional engineering is needed to make it controllable, so you can turn it on when it's beneficial and needed, but turn it off when it would be better to take atmospheric inputs elsewhere? Because surely part of the point of megastructures is to use their size for advantage where possible.

    My first instinct (word used deliberately) is that the shore of the Red Sea is an incipient Black Flag weather zone (humidity and heat at a level that will kill exposed people fairly rapidly. When the Black Flag is flying, they've either got to be indoors or otherwise cooled down to survive more than a few hours.

    The first, best solution is to have a completely enclosed megastructure with truly titanic thermal inertia (sort of like a convention center times 1000) and simply wait out the bad weather, cooling at night in summer and warming in the day in winter. That would also solve problems with sand and dust storms.

    Of course, MBS in his infinite wisdom wants The Line open to the sky, humidity, thunderstorms, dust storms, sand storms, flies, and pigeons, with windows so that people can see to the horizons when they don't have the thermal curtains drawn to minimize heat gain inside.

    So my second thought is, during hot, humid weather, a combination of dehumidifying (the humidity is a bigger problem than the heat) and cooling the outside air. At this point I'm wondering whether something akin to Peruvian fog catchers could be deployed to get the water to condense on them and collect it. In black flag weather it's so hot that keeping the water from evaporating again would be a challenge, but if the fog catchers are cooler than the air, the water goes into underground cisterns, and the air moves past the fog catchers fast enough, then it would end up drier and more livable, at least.

    Thing is, it would be easier if the Line was just a series of modular block buildings, not a trench 500 meters deep walled by huge modular buildings with all sorts of balconies and bridges making everything harder.

    1326:

    With the mirror wall version there's going to be a really ugly "microclimate" on the sunny side of the building that's going to extend the full length of the thing. Every bit of sun not absorbed by the building is going to be reflected onto the ground nearby. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a 5+ degree warmer zone there, especially because the wall will also produce a wind shadow.

    The other side will be cooler, but I'm guessing that's also where the hot exhaust from all the heat pumps will go. Might not be the nicest place to live with hot air blasting out all day every day.

    The problem with the scale is that they can't use a ground reservoir system unless they have some system to flush it every single day. Heating a few cubic kilometres of rock by a couple of degrees every day for six months would produce some novel effects. So it's going to be daily cycling, and it'll be interesting to see exactly what effect that has. A giant plume of hot air rising along 170km could make for a foehn/fun wind of an evening, assuming it does come with lashings of airbourne dust.

    1327:

    FWIW I don't think humanity has the capacity to build the Line as imagined, and definitely not as any kind of unitary structure. Saud definitely doesn't, even if it was their one thing they were going to do for the next few decades. The good news is that the mirror wall version won't use as much concrete as a more sensible design would, it'll have glass and steel. Which are both much more readily available than concrete, especially in modern 100% renewable terms.

    The engineering effort appears not to have really started yet, because the graphic artists haven't yet settled on a concept. Once that happens no doubt flocks of architects will fill in wonderful details before the engineers get hold of it and start asking pointy questions about where the giant factory to make the glass will be built. Ditto the fantastic new zero-emissions steel refinery. And the huge solar farms to power it all.

    I think that's the key thing to look for: step one in the project is going to be ordering (or manufacturing) solar panels by the square kilometre.

    1328:

    Ok, now explain how the "right to arm bears" over-rides the "right to not be murdered by someone with a firearm".

    1329:

    Don't ask me to defend this but you can bear arms all you want. But if you murder with them you're a criminal.

    1330:

    Re: 'Doozy'

    Interesting - so if you're on the edge of a black hole, this could be a useful backup power source? Wonder if it might even 'survive' being partially spaghettified.

    Someone here probably knows - but what's the usual relationship between temp, pressure and electromagnetic energy strength (and maybe direction depending on direction of the applied pressure?). Search result shows temp inside a black hole is approx. .01 Kelvin which is a fair bit warmer than background temp.

    'As they lowered the experimental temperature, resistance to a current passed through the material dropped to zero, indicating that the sample had become superconductive. Then they increased the pressure, and found that this transition occurred at higher and higher temperatures. Their best result was a transition temperature of 287.7 kelvin at 267 gigapascals — 2.6 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level.'

    1331:

    But if you murder with them you're a criminal.

    If we'd outlaw guns, murders would likely be reduced by 90% - to rates roughly equivalent to every other industrialized nation. So let's not give people the opportunity to become a criminal. It would be better for everybody that way...

    1332:

    Charlie @ 1309: ... indeed Saudi Arabia has in the past few years showed signs of pivoting towards throwing resources at developing an industrial base and otherwise modernizing.

    I can believe MBS wants to do this, but its going to be an uphill struggle.

    If you grow up in a resource-rich country then everyone around you knows, and tells you, that the path to wealth and power lies in the resource extraction business. Get a job in that, and at the very least you have a secure well-paid job. If you climb the greasy pole well enough then you might get to have real wealth and power. Any other career is seen as second-best (with possible cultural exceptions for stuff like medicine here or there).

    This means that all the other bits of the economy get the no-hopers and seat-warmers. This goes double for stuff that isn't important to keeping the country going, like water and telecoms (and the military, but that's a whole other can of worms ).

    MBS doesn't just need to put money into diversification, he also needs to do it for long enough, and systematically enough, that his people start to see this as a reliable job. That's a generational shift. If things go well and non-oil stuff becomes self-sustaining then he might do it in 20 years. Otherwise more like 40 (at which point MBS will be in his 70s). Only then will his best people start wanting a career in anything but oil.

    Added to this is the need to attract expertise from abroad. Not the parasitical consultants and semi-enslaved manual workers who currently go there, but people with actual talent who want to achieve something. These are people who can get good money working wherever they want, and the question they will ask is "why would I want to leave my nice house in a nice country, and go live in a desert at the whim of an absolute monarch?"

    1333:

    Heteromeles @ 1290: Anyway, MBS is apparently trying to out-Dubai Dubai, by setting up a tech and trade hub in the path of the Suez canal trade, with Egypt, Jordan, and Israel nearby. Possibly he's channeling Ludwig II on nootropics too?*

    I think he is actually chanelling Peter the Great. The similarities are actually quite spooky.

    • Absolute monarchs

    • Spent significant time in the West, soaking up the ideas, but through the filter of their upbring as (literally) entitled princes.

    • Legitimacy rests on theocratic support.

    • Large aristocracy with real political power, who must either be handled carefully or violently suppressed.

    • Attempts at reform of feudal society, but without tackling the fundamentally aristocratic nature.

    • Building a giant legacy city in a really dumb place.

    1334:

    If you grow up in a resource-rich country then everyone around you knows, and tells you, that the path to wealth and power lies in the resource extraction business. Get a job in that, and at the very least you have a secure well-paid job. If you climb the greasy pole well enough then you might get to have real wealth and power. Any other career is seen as second-best (with possible cultural exceptions for stuff like medicine here or there).

    I'm not sure that entirely follows. Yes, there's a certain amount of prestige in being involved with the local Big Business, whatever that may be. But people familiar with an industrial sector have very few illusions about the rough edges of their environment, particularly among the rank and file where the work gets done.

    I've never been deeply involved with the oil industry but I've got a friend whose uncle lost a finger on a drilling rig; I hear the glory fades pretty quickly when you're away from home for six months.

    At least in America it's well known that while some miners got rich in the California Gold Rush the real money was made by people who sold goods and services to the miners. Anecdotally, I recently returned from Westercon 74 in Tonopah, Nevada, which started as one of the countless tiny mining communities in the region. Most of the mines are played out but unlike the many ghost towns Tonopah still survives, as a place for supplies and services at the intersection of two highways. It doesn't hurt that at 2500 people Tonopah is the largest city for two hundred miles in any direction - it's halfway between Las Vegas and Reno and there is bugger all out in rural Nevada.

    1335:

    I've never been deeply involved with the oil industry but I've got a friend whose uncle lost a finger on a drilling rig; I hear the glory fades pretty quickly when you're away from home for six months.

    Yes, but that's not the part of the industry that everyone wants to be in. They don't want to work on the rigs (that's what the peons and imported experts are for), they want to be the managers and civil servants.

    1336:

    Damn. I meant 1990-2010, of course, in THAT context.

    1337:

    If they were outlawed successfully.

    Which is a very non trivial problem, even if you think we should. There's 300 odd million of them, most of which we don't actually know where they are, and many if not most of them owned by people who would be disinclined to give them up voluntarily. And the people that would be enforcing this would almost always be on the pro gun side of it.

    Unless you manage a culture shift it edges into 'theoretically possible, practically impossible'

    If you were going to outlaw something, outlaw bullets and gunpowder.

    1338:

    Are you aware in how many of those the CIA was actively promoting anti-Russian actions, and not even making much of a secret of it? No, Russia is not innocent in those, but nor is the USA military-industrial machine, but is is arguable that the main causes were internal, anyway. At least Chechnya was as much a fundamentalist/terrorist rebellion as anything else.

    1339:

    Yes. For us in Blighty and points north, especially in winter, a southern aspect is MUCH more comfortable than a northern one. But JBS lives a LOT further south.

    1340:

    IF by some miracle Russia was able to extricate itself from Putin's war tomorrow AND found some leadership devoted to improving Russia's economy (internally AND on the world stage), do you think they'd be able to repair the damage?

    Sadly, no.

    Russia has huge structural problems including but not limited to: its industrial base has decayed (and is reliant on imported western chips and computer-controlled machine tools), its transport infrastructure is railroad-based but without the multimodal containerisation you need to make best use of it, the demographic base is shrinking and ageing and life expectancy getting shorter, population centres outside the two main cities and a clump near the Black Sea are shrinking and turning into ghost towns due to lack of investment and employment, AND it's a petrochemical state which even before the invasion relied on oil/gas exports for about 50% of revenue.

    Worse: they have five centuries of government by autocrat, with total top-down command of basically everything. Imagine that exhibiting initiative productively gets you punished, not rewarded, and everything in your history teaches you that this is the way the world works -- internalized to the same extent that Americans have internalized the ideas of self-sufficiency, enterprise, a frontier ethos, hard work, and democracy.

    To fix Russia you need to fix its health, transport, education, and infrastructure problems -- then figure out how to wean its economy off its oil addiction -- in the middle of a climate change crisis, and dealing with a population who have centuries of history that can be summed up as " ... and then something worse happened".

    This is not impossible but it is at a minimum a generational project -- probably multi-generational. The Communists tried to fix Russia but ultimately failed: it's hard to see how anyone could succeed without a breakthrough in life extension or nanotechnology or social sciences on what we could reasonably call a science fictional scale.

    1341:

    RE: The Line.

    To get back to basics, I think we can safely agree that a linear, high density city, built from energy-intensive materials, in the middle of a tectonically active desert that normally gets ca. 5 cm rain of year, and that is in one of the world's geopolitical hotspots, is recursively stupid on many levels.

    Thing is, like so many leaders (and architects) he's doing it backasswards, IMHO (rant warning). He'd do better to have the civil engineers and geologists crawl all over the area, give him their version of a SWOT analysis (aka an environmental review in my part of the world), do some hard strategic thinking about what he needs Saudi Arabia to have right there (which is basically border and trade influence first, emergent tech center second)... Only then hire the architects, put shock collars on them to control their impulses to have visions, tell them the needs, constraints, and materials they get to work with, and then set them to start figuring out how to house a million or two people there by setting up the systems to solve the problems of making a city that's resistant to climate change in a place where few people have ever lived. And perhaps go easy on the nootropics for a bit too?

    That's where things like the AInca boulder-slicing system come into play. A good 21st Century system is to figure out how to turn stuff that's readily available into stuff that's useful without using a huge amount of energy. And if they can figure out how to import mass quantities of waste polypropylene to spin into sand bags and make earthbag walls and such, so much the better.

    If they can make this work, NEOM will get swarmed by talent, because a lot of people really desperately want to solve these problems. As it is, why would an AI boffin want to relocate to a big, shiny, fragile military target on the desolate verge of one of the world's biggest highways?

    Anyway, NEOM is trying to be San Diego Al Saud. We're a border town with a huge military presence (long story involving not trusting Mexico for Reasons), a couple of home-grown tech centers (one grown out of MilTech, the other out of local life science traditions), and three million people living in a place that could support perhaps 1% of them on local resources.

    San Diego's also an excellent warning about what happens when you design a metropolis around a particular technology (in our case, cars) and the technology turns out to have huge and hard-to-fix downsides. So much of our planning is a mix of sunk cost fallacy battling it out with greed and attempts to come clean that it's not even funny any more. Only a megalomaniac would knowingly inflict this kind of problem on his people (/end rant).

    1342:

    Now that I've got the rant out of my system, I need to be fair to the architects. The older video reports that MBS has lost a number of architects and engineers who have tried to sell him on more sensible designs. He's apparently the one who wants Bold Visions. So I'll retract the comment about the architects needing to wear shock collars controlled by MBS.

    They've already broken ground on The Line, but the initial timetable for having something built by 2024 has reportedly already been kicked back to 2030, which tells you all you need to know*.

    This is where I suggested parallels with Ludwig II, although Paul's points about parallels to Peter the Great are also quite apt.

    If he's trying for another San Diego, he's missing our bit about having a mix of homegrown and imported talent, and setting up infrastructure to support both. Until Saudi Arabia has a strong, indigenous technological culture, imported talent is just going to be that. And no, I don't think that religious conservatism and technological sophistication are mutually exclusive, although they tend to be rather unsettling when combined.

    *Whether The Line has always been vaporware, or whether it's a setup to support a flounce to having a more conventional city with a large military base there? We'll see. I do know that if MBS had just proposed building San Diego del Suez, copying our four major military bases and burgeoning tech hub, bricks would have been shat around the world. MBS would be having long rounds of diplomatic talks with just about everybody expressing grave concerns about just what the heck he thought he was doing. The Line's safer than that, oddly enough.

    1343:

    It would have been fiendishly hard even in 1990-2000. It would have needed a strong, wise and beneficient autocrat, and major assistance from the USA and Europe. They got essentially the converse.

    1344:

    Yeah. Putinism is exactly the opposite of what they needed, and it would be worse than trying to convince Americans that they didn't need to worship Jebus and be scared for furriners.

    1345:

    "and pigeons"

    Who will all be looking down from wherever they've found to put their nests that avoids the ambient temperature being too hot for the eggs to survive, watching the humans frantically chucking energy and resources at trying to keep cool, and thinking "stupid humans, should be doing it like us".

    1346:

    Offtopic: Charlie, question. You once re-tweeted a series of tweets about alternative Harry Potter books that had names like "Harry Potter and the Stone", "Harry Potter and the Fire" etc and were about a troubled English teenager. It ended with him getting into a fight with a retired boxer and dying (or possibly surviving and re-evaluating his life choices). Do you still have the link and/or remember who was the author?

    1347:

    ...scared OF furriners.

    1348:

    Russia's internal problems, rooted in centuries (millenia?) of autocratic rule, seem intractable if you don't remember that literally every other polity in the world started from something similar.

    It is one of the last of the 19th century empires. It is probably too big to continue successfully. I strongly suspect there will be a lot of internal conflict over the next 20-50 years in Russia. I am 100% certain that externally imposed solutions are doomed to fail. When are they not?

    From the POV of the rest of the world, the key issue is what happens to their nukes. Secure and/or remove those, but let the Russians and their various subject peoples sort it out. Picking winners and losers is a mug's game.

    In the short term, I strongly suspect that Ukraine will win the war, at awful cost. The war won't last much longer than Putin, but it will probably go on as long as he stays in power.

    1349:

    When people think of Ludwig II (aka "Mad Ludwig") they're likely to think of Neuschwanstein Castle. Tell me that's a good image in Saudi Arabia!

    1351:

    I see, you're not willing to acknowledge that the Eastern Europeans have any agency of their own.

    The scramble to join NATO happened because the countries involved saw Abkhazia, Transnistria and Chechnya as something that could happen to them if they did not get protection.

    I am not aware of anything the CIA has done in Eastern Europe in this timeframe that is even 1% as bad as Russia's actions.

    For instance the events in Bucha earlier this year, taking people, shooting them in the street outside their homes and then leaving them there was also reported many times in Chechnya.

    It is also widely believed that the Russia's FSB killed 300 Russians in a false-flag attack in order to create a pretext to start the second Chechnya war.

    As best I can tell, 100% of any anti-Russian sentiment in Eastern Europe is because of Russian behaviour.

    1352:

    FSVO "beneficent" and "wise". I keep thinking that the nearest historical resemblance to the task would be boosting themselves from a wrecked and basically peasant-based system, while dealing with a Europe and US whose hostility had gone as far as actual invasion, to an industrial capacity capable of beating Nazi Germany; and they had Stalin for that.

    Which reminds me: I hope sleepingroutine is OK.

    1353:

    Unwillingness to give up its warm water port. Not at all like Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Or any of the other US bases in at least 2/3rds of the countries in the world.

    1354:

    There's a ridiculously simple answer to that: they should design the Wall to be hyperbolically concave, and aim it at a line of sterling engines to provide all the electricity they need.

    1355:

    I agree... though if they had not had Stalin - maybe Trotsky, who I don't think was the same, they also wouldn't have had the show trials/purges, and would have had experienced generals at the start of the war.

    Good point - I hope sleepingroutine is okay as well.

    1356:

    With Trotsky in charge of Soviet Union, there would be no Operation Barbarossa and almost certainly no Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Instead, we would have had WWII around 1929. Trotsky was determined to carry out global revolution in the way Stalin never was, and Great Depression would have been the perfect opportunity for it.

    1357:

    1276 - I don't get why Finland bought F-35s (any). The Swedish JAS-39 was more or less designed for the Finnish climate.

    JAS-39 went into production in 1987, has been in service since 1996 -- 26 years.

    It's a very good plane for its era -- the same era as the Dassault Rafale, the Eurofighter Typhoon, the second-generation F/A-18 family, and the F-22 -- but it lacks stealth, sensor fusion, thrust vectoring, and supercruise (although late model variants apparently considered or may have added the latter two capabilities, along with a new engine).

    The F-35 in contrast only entered service 7 years ago: it's a whole generation newer and comes with all the above (and presumably the option to add more new features as the platform matures).

    1358:

    Who will all be looking down from wherever they've found to put their nests that avoids the ambient temperature being too hot for the eggs to survive, watching the humans frantically chucking energy and resources at trying to keep cool, and thinking "stupid humans, should be doing it like us".

    I quite agree: The Line as designed is close to a perfect arcology for pigeons. Should it be built, it will host flocks of them for many pigeon generations.

    Maybe they should redesign to be a perfect pigeon arcology and just not worry about any human who hates pigeons?

    1359:

    One of the commenters on this Gizmodo article links to "Crimes against Transhumanity":

    https://gizmodo.com/what-happened-to-transhumanism-in-2022-life-extension-1849199492

    1360:

    There's a ridiculously simple answer to that: they should design the Wall to be hyperbolically concave, and aim it at a line of sterling engines to provide all the electricity they need.

    That could work. They could also aim the light skyward to make hotlines through the sky. You float a specially-designed steam dirigible in the focus to use the power to stay aloft and flying. It might even go fairly fast, if shaped properly. The passengers would have to be on top, of course, so designing it not to flip would be interesting.

    This, incidentally, is better than my other idea, the AI commuter steam mortar. You start with one of those big solar thermal arrays (circles of mirrors aimed at a point. You put your commuter vehicle, a rocket-type device with a crew compartment above a large cylinder full of high test peroxide. Then you use the mirrors to boil the peroxide. When it's storing enough energy, the AI pilot opens the tank valves into the silver-plated rocket engine, and the steam rocket goes screaming into the sky. The distance it flies is determined in part by how hot the peroxide is. To land, it unfurls two sets of counter-rotating helicopter blades with peroxide motors on the blade tips, and autorotates into a landing. Because it's AI run, it is, of course, perfectly safe. So long as you weren't an evil genius holding your cat on your lap when it launched (cats should be in carriers. So should parrots). And nothing says I love you to the environment like high test peroxide. It doesn't leave behind long-lasting residues, unlike so many solid fuels do. And this system will get the passengers from one end of the line to the other in 20 minutes, counting heat-up, launch, and landing. What could possibly go wrong?

    1361:

    Putin test-fired a new ICBM design last April. So I agree with you, failure of the nuclear deterrent appears unlikely at the moment. With nukes in place, Russia won't be invaded, even if it is in a civil war.

    Ahem.

    ICBMs are the charismatic megafauna of nuclear weapons: they're big and flashy but they have their limitations.

    In particular almost all modern ICBMs (such as Russia's current mainstay, the Topol-M) use solid fuel rockets. Light the blue touch paper and the thing takes off like the proverbial and doesn't stop firing until it has burned all its fuel. Solids are very stable, long-term Putin test-fired a new ICBM design last April. So I agree with you, failure of the nuclear deterrent appears unlikely at the moment. With nukes in place, Russia won't be invaded, even if it is in a civil war. long-term storable, instantly ready without the headaches associated with liquid fueled rockets.

    The problem with solid rockets is that if it's designed to give you 7 km/sec of delta vee, then it by golly will give you 7 km/s of delta vee, and not one metre per second less. Which means you can adjust its range only by changing the angle of elevation as it fires. Obviously it has a maximum range, but what's less obvious is that it also has a minimum range. If you try to aim too close to the launch site by pointing it close to the zenith, then it's going to come down really fast which will do Not Great things to the warhead (it'll re-enter hot and fast and quite possibly brake when it slams into the stratosphere and pulls 300 gees in the last seconds of flight).

    We don't know much about Russian RVs but we do know that the Trident II, aka UGM-133, has a maximum range of something in excess of 7,500 miles (quoting silly units because it's an American design) ... and a rumoured minimum range of over 2,000 miles, so short that a missile fired from UK waters would probably not be able to physically attack either Washington DC or Moscow -- they're too close to target.

    Anyway: what this means is that those Russian ICBMs are designed to whack China or the USA or maybe New Zealand. Ukraine is only 350km away, so ICBMs are the wrong tool entirely.

    Which means an effective Russian nuclear threat against Ukraine would have to involve short range (battlefield) missiles, or -- at worst -- IRBMs (intermediate range ballistic missiles) fired from a long way away inside Russia.

    And these are not charismatic megafauna weapons, so there is a very good chance that the folks who pocketed all the maintenance cash for those T-72s and Su-37s and battlefield missiles that keep crashing on launch will have skimped on the battlefield nukes too. After all, who in 2020 imagined Russia would be fighting a land war in Europe and want battlefield nukes, stat?

    If Russia uses a nuke and it misfires, then their deterrent's value just depreciated to zero. So they won't do that unless they're certain it'll go bang on command.

    What they might do is: reactivate an underground test range (diplomatic whackiness involved as IIRC their test ranges are not on Russian soil they're in places like Khazakstan), surreptitiously plant a tactical nuke, and try to set it off. If it fails, it fails invisibly. And if it goes bang, then seismographs will pick it up and it Sends A Message and the UN will be quite irate, but what are they going to do -- impose sanctions for violating the test ban treaty?

    Added benefit of doing it that way: you don't risk handing a nuke to your (shooting war going on) enemy if anything goes wrong.

    1362:

    Posts get renumbered AUTOMATICALLY if a moderator removes a comment prior to the numbered reference -- either a duplicate, or spam, or just needed deleting for whatever reason.

    Which is why the "reply to" links are important.

    1363:

    Putin was not President of Russia during GHWB and Clinton's administrations, so almost certainly did not deal with them in person.

    1364:

    Agreed to all your points. The point I was making is that during the Russian Civil War, the WWI Allies sent multiple military expeditions into Russia to support the White forces against the Red Army. Over 600 Brits and 400 Americans died, out of a force of over 70,000 (mostly British).

    I'm be shocked if Russians don't remember this history, and I'd be equally shocked if they don't anticipate something like this happening if a denuclearized Russia descends into civil war again.

    Those ICBMs would keep the US, China, India, and western Europe out of Russia quite handily, I think. As you noted, they wouldn't help so much against a Ukrainian invasion, but that will only become a possibility if a Russian general strike goes sideways on the Kremlin and things spiral badly from there.

    I'll third the hope that sleepingroutine's doing okay.

    1365:

    I'm be shocked if Russians don't remember this history, and I'd be equally shocked if they don't anticipate something like this happening if a denuclearized Russia descends into civil war again.

    Agree completely. Although only an utter lunatic would want to invade Russia: they will not welcome you with flowers, the weather is on their side, your supply lines will torment you endlessly, and in the vanishingly unlikely event that you get to declare victory, what have you got for your pain? Russia, that's what you've got, with all its problems.

    Random counterfactual: If Dick Cheney, his PNAC posse, and GWB had been handed a magic wand that could neutralize all Russia's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in 2001, and had decided to throw their "short, victorious war" in Russia instead of Iraq, the USA would have lost just as badly in the end. Only they'd have suffered more casualties and spent vastly more money, because the logistics would be horrendous. (Iraq at least had roads.) And China would end up the undisputed new superpower.

    1366:

    OK, see your 2 AMRAAM-C and raise 4 BVRAAM Meteors per airframe.

    1367:

    Yes, but much more so for the Russians. Most of their ports are (or were, before Global Warming) ice-locked anywhere from 3-6 months out of the year, so "warm water port" for a Russian strategist is on which is never closed in winter.

    1368:

    At this point I'm wondering whether something akin to Peruvian fog catchers could be deployed to get the water to condense on them and collect it.

    Well, see also the generalisation, atmospheric water generators, and also include air wells, then also solar chimneys and passive ventilation (with optional geo-coupled cooling). I guess then it's also worthwhile to look at solar stills and any potential for humidity multipliers or for waste-water recycling. None of which seem all that likely with this project in Saudi Arabia, but all of which are on the palette for the sort of design thinking approach we're after here.

    That's all without looking at solar PV powered machinery. I guess I'd prefer to maximise the potential of passive infrastructure before bringing active components into any critical role. Where active components are needed for switching and or reconfiguring the system, even as part of the daily cycle, you'd still want there to be alternatives where the power is supplied by mobile equipment or dedicated backup systems, or for there even to be a muscle-powered alternative. For the situation where millions of people will die from heat stress if you can't reliably open that 20t valve there at 6am and close it again at 6pm.

    1369:

    "warm water port" for a Russian strategist is on which is never closed in winter.

    This is where the ambiguity in the term "nuclear icebreaker" comes in. Any port can be made ice-free if you have a sufficient supply of fissionable isotopes...

    1370:

    The Communists tried to fix Russia but ultimately failed

    Wasn't this part of the premise for needing intermediary stages on the way to socialism? Even Lenin didn't believe that socialism would work in Russia, at least not without settling in an advanced industrialised economy for a generation beforehand. Marx would presumably have torn his beard in fury to witness it, but there was a lot of taking the wrong things literally and somewhat missing the point, namely things like "to get to a dictatorship of the proletariat, we need to get rid of these kulaks and replace them with the an industrial proletariat first" going on. Engine room of history and all that, squashing the 200 years from 1650 to 1850 (roughly) into the 20 years from 1920 to 1940 (also roughly). Insert rod A into socket B and turn. Because history works exactly like that I suppose.

    1371:

    squashing the 200 years from 1650 to 1850 (roughly) into the 20 years from 1920 to 1940 (also roughly)

    in a way the japanese had had a go at this, although into the 50 years from 1854 to 1904

    doubt their methods would have worked for the russians tho

    1372:

    Pigeon @ 1326:

    I guess that's a matter of taste. I do find north light more comfortable.

    1373:

    Higher up there is the question of "why?" and the assertion that what results is some{one|thing} else.

    But...

    We can't build a brain, but we might build an auditory processing sub-system which works well on someone whose auditory cortex or some part of the system upstream from the cochlea (which we already put electrodes and an induction coil in to bypass). So we do that.

    They have another module failure, and we put in a replacement for that bit of brain.

    Their memory becomes (even more) unreliable, and we splice in a bank of short and long term memory.

    And some of their frontal cortex fails, so we replace that with chips, or with a time-sharing access to a very big computer.

    And by and by, bit by byte and gradually, the person has moved from the meat to the metal.

    There were never two instances.

    1374:

    Heteromeles @ 1328:

    Of course, MBS in his infinite wisdom wants The Line open to the sky, humidity, thunderstorms, dust storms, sand storms, flies, and pigeons, with windows so that people can see to the horizons when they don't have the thermal curtains drawn to minimize heat gain inside.

    I don't think the available evidence supports that. MBS is not a designer (bachelor's degree in law from King Saud University).

    The most you can accurately say is MBS ... wants The Line. ...something GRAND built with futuristic high tech.

    Maybe doesn't even have to be "The Line". As long as it's grand, futuristic & high tech, I don't think he cares what the specific form factor is takes.

    All the rest, the massive mirror window walls & "open to the sky" is a product of the architects & engineers & video makers imaginations. And the form seems to still be evolving.

    I expect the end result, if it does get built, will come up with solutions to the "humidity, thunderstorms, dust storms, sand storms, flies and pigeons ... and windows with thermal curtains ..."

    I've already looked at & referenced some of the traditional solutions adopted in the Middle East to deal with those and I see no reason those can't be adapted to work with "high tech".

    Also consider Saudi Arabia's proposed desalination proposed desalination project for piping sea water deep into the desert to a solar dome [YouTube]. The line might make a bit more sense if the two projects run together.

    Sea water is piped in from the west, desalinated in the dome at the east end and supplies water down "The Line" and eventually returns to the sea.

    Basically, I don't think you can consider "The Line" in isolation from the other projects proposed for NEOM.

    Maybe the horse will learn to sing?

    1375:

    The Czechs tried to show the Russians the benefits of adaptability in 1968, if the Russians had adopted Dubcek's policies it might've bought them more time, if the leadership had survived their own reactionaries. There might be a lesson there for the west.

    1376:

    Re: Reform in the USSR / Russian Federation.

    Tony Judt's Postwar noted that attempts to reform the USSR's economic system started in Lenin's time. Every generation of Russian leaders (and, after 1945, the satellite states) tried to get a system going that would actually work.

    They all failed, since they wanted (1) Total control over the economy (2) Total control of the political sphere and (3) An economy that produced good stuff that people would want.

    You can have some of those three, but not all together. By the time Brezhnev came to power, the powers that be in the USSR had given up and regarded reform as impossible. After that, they were just counting down the clock to the implosion of first the Warsaw Pact, then the USSR.

    Maybe if Gorbachev had gone for a Chinese style 'stop controlling the economy, just control the political sphere', the USSR could have been saved. But probably not. The rot went deep.

    1377:

    paws4thot @ 1331:

    You're taking it out of context just like the NRAnutz do.Your arguments against the 2nd Amendment are no more valid than the NRAs arguments.

    The modern problem of mass murder with military style automatic firearms is one of those "future problems" the founders did not anticipate.

    The "right to bear arms" is inextricably linked to the "well REGULATED militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" and is a direct reaction to British colonial authorities attempts to disarm the local governments in the colonies.

    Prior to the Seven Years War [aka the French and Indian War over here] the colonies were expected to organize & maintain militias for self defense. In the aftermath, Parliament chose to IMPOSE a STANDING ARMY on the North American colonies and enacted numerous taxes and other measures to pay for it (and to pay England's war debt from the Seven Years War).

    When the colonists resisted, that STANDING ARMY was used to disarm them and deprive them of their rights as Englishmen. Lexington and Concord were not the first, nor the last attempt to disarm colonists, merely the most spectacularly unsuccessful one.

    The Second Amendment is not the only one that addresses Parliament's abuses of the rights of the colonists. See also Amendments One, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven & Eight.

    But beyond that the Second Amendment does NOT guarantee an individual right to own guns; it codifies that the Federal Government can't do to the states what the British Army tried to do to the colonies.

    It guarantees that Congress cannot abolish the state militias - nothing more, nothing less.

    Nor does it change in any way the enumerated powers OF Congress regarding the militias ...

      Congress shall have the power ...
    • To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
    • To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
    • To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

    The U.S. tried to avoid having a STANDING ARMY, relying instead on the state militias up until and through the War of 1812, when it turned out the states weren't doing such a good job on that third item. But the STATES still get to keep their "well regulated [i.e. organized, armed and disciplined] militias "according to the discipline prescribed by Congress" because that's what the Second Amendment actually SAYS.

    Explain to me why the British constitution allows the Prime Minister to take away the rights of British subjects with the stroke of a pen?

    1378:

    Charlie Stross @ 1366:

    He may not have dealt with either one from a position of power, but I'm pretty sure Putin became Yeltsin's designated successor during Clinton's term in office, and Putin certainly dealt with the U.S. in his KGB role, so his rise to power began during George HW Bush's term in office.

    1379:

    it turned out the states weren't doing such a good job on that third item

    good old bladensberg

    1380:

    For real fun try having a trauma response to the voice therapists use.

    Here's a good explanation of the problem, in the context of why CBT isn't universally loved by people seeking help:

    correcting, however kindly and well-intentioned, the thinking errors of someone who was chronically mistreated by a caregiver as a child has an extremely high likelihood of triggering disregulating and retraumatizing flashbacks to their caregiver telling them what was acceptable to think or feel. That is because it precisely recapitulates an interpersonal dynamic almost universal in abuse by caregivers of children: it is a trusted authority figure telling you you don't perceive reality right, that the reason you are upset is that you are mistaken about something you think you know, and that the reason you are mentally ill is because you are not good at thinking.

    My mother was a master of this, and had the mannerisms of therapy down pat to go with it. I'm not certain she wanted to poison my ability to accept therapy, but it's not impossible. Some of you might have noticed me being twitchy here when people tell me how I feel. The above is why (even more so than for normal people who just don't like being told that they feel a particular way after they've expressed that they feel a different way)

    1381:

    You really want to try and convince the SCrotUS and the Nutcase Rifle Association of that? I agree your base interpretation.

    1382:

    Given that in modern air warfare to be seen is to be dead, working stealth is more important than how many missiles you can fire blindly in the dark when something you can't see starts shooting at you.

    1383:

    Wikipedia says that, unless you have AMRAAM-D I can fire my Meteors and be on my way home before you even enter extreme firing range.

    1384:

    Similarly, look at South Korea v. North Korea.

    Roughly the same land area, although the South had fertile lowlands and the North is crinkle-cut: also the South had a larger demographic base. But when the dust settled in 1953 both were immiserated, devastated by decades of Japanese colonialism and then a world war and a side-order of war on top, and run by a brutal dictatorship.

    They were roughly neck-and-neck development wise into the 1970s, and the south didn't really begin to pull away until the 1980s. But from the 1980s onwards the differences became striking. SK ended the dictatorship (although still has a fairly authoritarian government) and matched Japanese levels of industrialization/development by the 1990s; meanwhile, after the USSR imploded and pulled its support, the North turned inwards, became a hereditary monarchy in all but name, and the population starved.

    Today, SK exports nuclear reactors and has a probe orbiting the Moon. NK ... seems to have constructed a viable A-bomb (1945 tech) and one day might launch an ICBM that doesn't undergo rapid unscheduled disassembly in flight. And they're still hungry.

    1385:

    re: Crimes against trans humanity and the anti-robot uprising.

    Question: should mankind ever have to fight an oppressive genocidal self-aware and conscious AI like Skynet and its vast legions of intelligent terminator robots, should our automated enemies receive the same rights under the Geneva Convention as would a human enemy?

    Would mass destruction of terminators helplessly trapped in your powerful magnetic field barrier be considered a war crime unless you offered them a chance to surrender first.

    Instead of blowing up Skynet (equivalent to the assassination of a foreign leader) would he/she/it need to be brought before the Hague to answer for crimes of aggression, genocide, etc. in accordance with international law?

    1386:

    All true, but eh Russians have more immediate problems involving the damage Siberian cold does to oil pipelines.

    Again, Peter Zeihan:

    Siberia, despite getting cold enough to literally freeze your nose off in October, doesn’t get cold enough. Most Russian oil production is in the permafrost, and for most of the summer the permafrost is inaccessible because its top layer melts into a messy, horizon-spanning swamp. What the Russians do is wait for the land to freeze, and then build dike-roads and drill for crude in the long dark of the Siberian winter. Should something happen to consumption of Russian crude oil or any of the millions of feet of pipe that take that crude from wellhead to port or consumer, flows would back up through the literally thousands of miles of pipes right up to the drill site. There is no place to store the stuff. Russia would just need to shut everything down. Turning it back on would require manually checking everything, all the way from well to border.

    The last time this happened was the Soviet collapse in 1989. It took millions of manhours of help from the likes of BP and Halliburton – and thirty-two years – for Russia to get back to its Cold War production levels. And now, with war on in Ukraine, insurance companies are cancelling policies for tankers carrying anything Russian on Seas Black and Baltic while the French seize Russian vessels, and the Russian Central Bank under the strictest financial sanctions ever, it is all falling apart. Again.

    ...

    IOW, after this winter, Russian oil is off the table - forever, with all that implies for the Russian economy and governmental finances, and world oil markets. Even if the war ended today and Putin no longer in power it is probably already too late to remobilize Wester oil technicians and engineers back out to Siberia to site to keep the oil keeps flowing. After this winter, the massive repairs required to access Siberian oil again would probably be too expensive and risky to attract financing.

    Throw in in imploding demographics and Russia ceases to be a nation state.

    1387:

    u (and peter zeihan) seem to be kind of licking ur lips at the prospect

    hope nothing nonlinear crops up to harsh ur mellow

    1388:

    u (and peter zeihan) seem to be kind of licking ur lips at the prospect

    hope nothing nonlinear crops up to harsh ur mellow

    1389:

    So do I - in southerly latitudes. What latitude do YOU live at? Edinburgh is 56 north, and northern light is usually cold, grey and dim for most of the (short) day in winter. Even in Cambridge (52 north), it's often too dark to read comfortably in a north-facing room at noon in midwinter.

    1390:

    Just part of a bigger pattern involving: global warming, demographic implosion and the end of globalization.

    Russia and China are dead men walking.

    Japan/Korea and Europe will stagnate

    A vast zone stretching from Central America across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia is becoming a zone of human misery - and the well spring of mass migration.

    Only North America with its vast reserves of fresh water and rich farmland (outside of the Western/Southwestern drought zones) remains the only "winner".

    Time to move back to Michigan.

    Assuming I can find a tract of land not contaminated by PFAS.

    1391:

    I think you're a bit over-optimistic about the prospects for the USA. Hint: the faction who never recognized they lost the war of the Slaveowners' Treasonous Rebellion are back for round 2, and it looks like they're winning right now, thanks to the kleptocracy backing them.

    1392:

    "Winner" in this context is a relative term. America's geographic advantages are still awesome even in a hot world.

    The right wing has also over played their hand, with the Dobbs ruling motivating liberals/democrats/independents in a backlash against conservative/republicans. The Dems will hold the Senate and MAY hold the House. Dobbs was the greatest political mistake of this century so far a gift to the Dems that will keep on giving. And without a SC ruling protection abortion, Dems will now forever be able to warn against radical GOP plans to ban abortion under a future republican prez.

    If the Kansas vote is any indication we are a 60/40 nation and they are the 40 percent - and falling.

    So expect them to double down on their efforts to eliminate democracy, because they have no chance of winning free elections anymore. And time is not on their side. Red County (there are no Red states or Blue states only Red counties and Blue cities) demographics are imploding due to old age, opioids overdoses (still ongoing), obesity, poor to non existent health care, refusing to get vaccinated due to covid-19 denial (also ongoing), out migration to blue cities, backwards educational systems, and stagnate extraction economies.

    Putin faced similar demographics and new that in a few years he would not have enough young males to fighting he Russian Army, hence his decision to invade Ukraine now. The right wing faces the same demographic deadline.

    So 2024 will be make or break for democracy in America. After that the MAGA folks will be too few and too old to change the system.

    Dobbs was their Pickett's Charge.

    1393:

    still think u might be counting a few chickens here

    1394:

    I hope you're right, and I agree with you on some of the trends. I'd expect a lot of right-wingers to go to jail in the next few years, and I hope the Biden administration is working on the problem of who, in American politics, is really employed by Putin. I'd agree that the Dobbs decision makes it clear that the Face-Eating Leopard's Party doesn't much care whose faces they eat, and that this is an important revelation for many in the U.S.

    But where you're wrong is this: The Democrats/Liberals don't do a good job of fighting,* it's impossible for one side to control what their enemies do next, the Republicans are violent nutcases, and and it's not written in stone that the forces of U.S. democracy are going to win.

    I certainly hope you're right, but the Crazies are getting crazier and more dangerous every day, and I don't think we're out of the woods yet.

    * Where's the fifty-state strategy? Where's the hearings on the Supreme Court? Where's the public argument that the next Republican priority is taking away birth control?

    1395:

    I think you're a bit over-optimistic about the prospects for the USA. Hint: the faction who never recognized they lost the war of the Slaveowners' Treasonous Rebellion are back for round 2, and it looks like they're winning right now, thanks to the kleptocracy backing them.

    Sorry, I know you can do better than that. There's not a lot of genealogical continuity between the Rebels and the modern GOP. Since I'm working on a story where "Reconstruction" actually worked to the degree that the US started getting less racist a century ago, I've been reading a fair amount about that era. I'm not an expert (Foxessa can chime in), but there are simpler ways to understand what's going on, then and now.

    What's happening is, in part, William Gibson's Street finding other uses for things. The street, in this case, is the international monied class.

    What the US learned in the Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Gilded Age and our becoming a colonial empire, was that slavery was illegal, but racism and exploitation were acceptable, if done right. Most of the fights we're seeing now were set up AFTER the Civil War, not during it. The Civil War changed the rules and reshuffled the deck, and the US expansion into western states, along with industrialization, helped that change.

    The people who profiteered off the work of women, minorities, and immigrants for the most part weren't former slaveowners. They were people who watched what others were doing, who copied what worked. This is what I mean by the Street finding other uses for things. It's how every form of politics spreads.

    This era lasted until 1929, when FDR used the financial crisis to re-engineer the US system more equitably. His New Deal lasted until the 1970s, buoyed by cheap oil and the fact that the US came out on top in WW2. The New Deal was inherently racist (it needed southern Jim Crow dixiecrats to pass) and when LBJ broke with the dixiecrats, that started the process of ending it.

    The lesson here again is that US politics only looks two sided. Our political power blocs negotiate on who they'll caucus with, and third parties only help as spoilers. We're in a reorganization moment now.

    What we're seeing with US Red County and Red State politics is very similar to what's happening in the UK: it's the super-rich, working with compliant Republicans (the GQP) to install the same kinds of political systems that they previously installed on offshore financial centers. This is straight out of Brooke Harrington's Capital Without Borders, which is in turn the international financial street finding other uses for things.

    The things the Super-rich street is using are:

    --American and British exploitation tactics

    --International financial management legal arbitrage

    --Successful models of setting up financial systems that protect the wealthy from consequence, while ignoring everyone else they can't exploit. This is the offshore financial center model: the super-rich aren't getting much money from businesses in red counties and states, their wealth is transnational. What they need are legal and political systems to protect their wealth. Any local who gets in the way or is surplus to the needs of these super-rich is welcome to leave and go to a blue city.

    Why are they abandoning offshore financial centers? Climate change. Having your critical paperwork and financial managers living on small, low-lying tropical islands appears to be risky, especially compared with Delaware, Wyoming, the City of London, or other places where local politicians know they have to be bought and are willing to vote in financial regulations they don't understand.

    Now note, the super-rich aren't the descendants of rebel slave owners. They're just copying what works, and some of what works includes tactics pioneered in the US South 150 years ago.

    The reason to bring this up? It's a global problem. You're in the same mess in the UK that we are in the US.

    1396:

    "The reason to bring this up? It's a global problem. You're in the same mess in the UK that we are in the US."

    Charlie, I hate to admit it, because Heteromeles has been such a cranky jerk for the last several months, but he's exactly, absolutely right about this, (perhaps with the caveat that descendants of the Treasonous Slaveowners and their partisans are particularly ripe for this kind of exploitation.)

    1397:

    Ah. Peter Thiel.

    1398:

    But where you're wrong is this: The Democrats/Liberals don't do a good job of fighting,* it's impossible for one side to control what their enemies do next, the Republicans are violent nutcases, and and it's not written in stone that the forces of U.S. democracy are going to win.

    I'll reword this for him. When the D's are in national office they work hard at trying to implement everything they can and wrongly make sure their disagreements are out in the open. So they generate a lot of one liners to use against them in the next election. Especially as the tear down each other.

    The R's tend to figure out what they can get done and do it and put the rest aside for a later date. As an example all of those repeal Obama Care votes while they were in power were symbolic with little in fighting. They were just full filling an election promise but not getting into a snit about it.

    At the end of the day the D's want to change the world but not all in the same way. The R's want to win elections and do what they can when they can.

    Over simplified but I think I'm way more right than wrong.

    1399:

    When I say Democrats don't fight well I mean exactly that - and by the way, don't ever fucking "reword" something for me - I meant what I said and I'll stand by it.

    Democrats constantly miss opportunities to go after Republicans/Conservatives, and don't fight back even when criticized in the most egregious fashion. Mostly all that's needed is to point out that the GOP candidate is scum, and how that particular candidate is scum, and why the GOP candidate is scum, and they just don't fucking do it! (And why, dear god, is there no fifty-state strategy!)

    Type "democrats don't fight" into your favorite search engine and you'll find a deluge of people who will happily explain the problem to you!

    1400:

    Heteromeles has been such a cranky jerk for the last several months,

    Yeah, about that. The persona you apparently preferred was mis-medicated rather badly. The persona you hate now is correctly medicated for early stage Parkinsons, and rather annoyed at typing around the tremors and dealing with Draconic dictation software. I just wanted to clarify why the taunts and insults aren't going to make me go back to the way I was last year or prior.

    1401:

    I'm sorry you were mismedicated - my wife has some long-term chronic conditions and I'm familiar with all the possible problems, and I really feel for your misfortune in this...

    That said, you still have the same obligation each of us has to maintain your basic decency, engage in self-control and adhere to ordinary standards of politeness - like not accusing the descendant of Russian Jews of being a Putin supporter, and doing so utterly without evidence! You still need to manage any anger or upset you feel, and maintain civilized relations with the rest of the world, and I'll maintain my policy that if you can't do so you can, and should, fornicate yourself.

    The sad thing is that we agree on many, many things, your posts frequently contain wonderful stuff, and I enjoy reading your material immensely, but I still can't stand the "new you," so maybe a little self-reflection is called for, 'kay?

    'Nuf said. I'll go back to ignoring you.

    1402:

    Today, SK exports nuclear reactors and has a probe orbiting the Moon.

    And some of the currently most popular music on the planet. (I'm sure most of the commentariat here doesn't care for it (myself included), but an awful lot of people around the world like it.) Plus movies, games, etc.

    1403:

    Actually, I do have one more thing to add. If your new medication is either benzodiazapines or Cymbalta, get off. Benzos can mess up your head in multiple ways - and there are alternatives, as your wife probably knows. In my experience Cymbalta* cures depression at the cost of a little paranoia and crankiness; I've never known anyone who took Cymbalta and had a good experience - it's come very close to killing a couple friendships/relationships I know of, including one of mine - turned people with decent social skills into rather ugly shit-slingers, very similar to the poisonous "honesty" seen in the recent John Dee episode of Sandman.**

    • At least two of the three Cymbalta cases I know of were fatigue misdiagnosed as depression.

    ** The recent television "John Dee" episode of Sandman doesn't track the comic book version very well. Do not assume that they are interchangeable. I'm specifically talking about the TV show.

    1404:

    don't ever fucking "reword" something for me

    No intent to set off a fight. I was re-wording it into how I see it. Good grief. Talk about cranky.

    I've lived in all kinds of political states for the last 60 years. And seen most of it except for the Idaho type states. And relatives on all sides willing to give me or anyone else an earful. I know what you're saying. But I disagree with your reasoning. And yes I know a lot of people feel the way you do.

    My point in the R's tend to mostly fight the D's. (The last 2 to 4 years being a bit different.) The D's have a tendency to fight other D's as much as R's. And THAT doesn't help them win elections.

    1405:

    That said, you still have the same obligation each of us has to maintain your basic decency, engage in self-control and adhere to ordinary standards of politeness - like not accusing the descendant of Russian Jews of being a Putin supporter, and doing so utterly without evidence! You still need to manage any anger or upset you feel, and maintain civilized relations with the rest of the world, and I'll maintain my policy that if you can't do so you can, and should, fornicate yourself.

    I'll suggest for the third (fourth?) that you go back and reread what I wrote.

    I completely agree with you that, had I accused you of being a Putin supporter, I should apologize.

    That's not what I said.

    What I did say was that accusing all Russians of being Putin supporters was a bad idea.

    My take, which I think you might agree with (?) is that outside-imposed regime change for Russia is impossible, and our only hope of a better outcome is Russians ousting Putin and installing someone better.

    Therefore, we probably want to help the Russians who are against Putin, and oppose those who support him and his system. The first step to doing that is not assuming that all Russians support Putin.

    It's frustrating that (so far as I can tell) you misread what I wrote. If I slipped and wrote something else, of course I'll apologize.

    1406:

    Actually, I do have one more thing to add. If your new medication is either benzodiazapines or Cymbalta, get off them at once. Benzos can mess up your head in multiple ways - and there are alternatives, as your wife probably knows. In my experience Cymbalta* cures depression at the cost of a little paranoia and crankiness; I've never known anyone who took Cymbalta and had a good experience - it's come very close to killing a couple friendships/relationships I know of, including one of mine - turned people with decent social skills into rather ugly shit-slingers, very similar to the poisonous "honesty" seen in the recent John Dee episode of Sandman.**

    • At least two of the three Cymbalta cases I know of were fatigue misdiagnosed as depression.

    ** The recent television "John Dee" episode of Sandman doesn't track the comic book version very well. Do not assume that they are interchangeable. I'm specifically talking about the TV show.

    1407:

    Actually, I do have one more thing to add. If your new medication is either benzodiazapines or Cymbalta, get off them at once.

    That isn't the problem. Part of the Parkinson's diagnosis unfortunately is "symptoms respond to treatments for Parkinson's better than they responded to other meds." I'm apparently utterly typical in that I had a bunch of misdiagnosed issues that in retrospect (once the tremors started and were properly diagnosed) were Parkinson's in its incipient stages.

    The only reason to bring this up is there's an ongoing, still enrolling, study, the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative, that's trying to sort out the progression of Parkinson's, so that it can hopefully be diagnosed earlier and treated better. Unlike Alzheimer's, there's decent reason to think that PD can be diagnosed early and possibly slowed or stopped through early treatment.

    They're hoping to get tens to hundreds of thousands of people enrolled, mostly people who do not have Parkinson's, so they can sort out when things like depression or insomnia are PD, and when they're not. All it involves is filling out online symptom questionnaires every quarter or so, and it typically takes me less than two hours per session.

    They're still enrolling people, so if this is something you're interested in, click the link to learn more (although as I write this, the link is down).

    1408:

    paws4thot @ 1384:

    You really want to try and convince the SCrotUS and the Nutcase Rifle Association of that?

    Sure, why not?

    1409:

    It's the most obvious and clear reading of the text possible.

    1410:

    Troutwaxer @ 1397:

    I certainly hope you're right, but the Crazies are getting crazier and more dangerous every day, and I don't think we're out of the woods yet.

    * Where's the fifty-state strategy? Where's the hearings on the Supreme Court? Where's the public argument that the next Republican priority is taking away birth control?

    You don't get to hold Watergate style joint hearings unless you have a REAL 3/5 majority (or damn close to it). Democrats in the 93rd Congress controlled 57% of both the House and the Senate and had only recently enacted the current two-track filibuster rule.

    The minority party had not yet figured out how to take advantage of that to prevent the majority from enacting legislation. And Nixon's Southern Strategy had yet to pay the GQP dividends.

    I had another strange dream last night. If someone can use it as a seed for a story idea be my guest.

    I was a refugee in Tolkien's "Middle Earth" and pretty useless as a warrior against "the forces of evil", having no magical abilities ... I think the Queen Elf was keeping me around as a pet or court jester or boy toy ... but she imported a couple of crates of "toys" to amuse me and I was trying to explain to Legolas the advantages (for us mere mortals with imperfect eyesight) ... of mounting a variable power scope on a M1A1 ...

    Before that I was trying to explain to the principal of a school how to fortify it against radiation (fallout?).

    1411:

    Heteromeles @ 1398:

    I disagree that the New Deal was inherntly racist. Roosevelt accommodated the racists where he had to and I think he maybe was more accommodating than he should have been, but racism was by that time a NATIONAL disgrace.

    It wasn't just Jim Crow Dixiecrats. It was Midwestern & Western Republicans along with Wall Street Banksters exploiting racism to divide the working class and thwart unionization.

    Racism was as much a problem in the North, Midwest and West as it was in the South ... perhaps more so, because at least in the South the racism was out in the open.

    I'll remind y'all again that when the KKK experienced a resurgence in the aftermath of World War 1, it's GREATEST success was in states north-west of the Ohio River, particularly Ohio and Indiana.

    1412:

    OK, so trying to use the reply function here, due to popular demand (even though I still think it's clunky and doesn't do what I want it to do).

    "Heteromeles has been such a cranky jerk for the last several months..."

    Not that I've noticed. Good luck with your Parkinson's.

    1413:

    "Only North America with its vast reserves of fresh water and rich farmland (outside of the Western/Southwestern drought zones) remains the only "winner".

    Time to move back to Michigan."

    Ah, well, about that. Most of the land around here is agriculture devoted to feedstock. When the "Goldilocks Zone" moves north, and ecological conditions are no longer ideal for this type of industrial agriculture, it may be impossible to repurpose the land for anything else (it's not as fertile as it used to be).

    We do have a lot of water, though.

    1414:

    "If the Kansas vote is any indication we are a 60/40 nation and they are the 40 percent - and falling."

    This is partly true. The other part is that the positive and negative effects of globalization were not distributed across the population evenly. If you had a college degree, you did alright, but if not you didn't. In particular, employees of national retail chains living in neighborhoods remote from major cities did not do well at all, and they are very angry about that. It's also true that the college educated left wing branch of the political parties has been taking away their cultural and economic privileges at the same time, and they are also very angry about that (they believe they earned them).

    So populism isn't going anywhere soon.

    1415:

    "But where you're wrong is this: The Democrats/Liberals don't do a good job of fighting,*"

    Well, here's the thing: no fifty state strategy is possible in the US anymore (if it ever was), due to gerrymandering, self-segregation of the voters, the way the electoral college works, etc. There are fewer and fewer truly independent votes to be had, and the logical end state is a semi-permanent majority by one party or the other, followed by fighting in the streets. It is this outcome that the Democrats of good faith are trying desperately to avoid, mostly for benevolent reasons (and because they suspect they would lose that fight).

    But an online media strategy is eminently possible, and here either party could win, though currently many social media platforms are privately owned by techbro libertarians. They seem in over their heads, though. The best thing that could happen for American democracy might be if Musk successfully buys Twitter... and runs it into the ground.

    Another reason the Dems avoid fighting openly is because, as members of the establishment class, they are mostly complacent regarding the state of affairs. They are getting old, though. New blood, people who get the younger voters better, could also save us yet.

    1416:

    "The lesson here again is that US politics only looks two sided. Our political power blocs negotiate on who they'll caucus with, and third parties only help as spoilers. We're in a reorganization moment now.

    What we're seeing with US Red County and Red State politics is very similar to what's happening in the UK: it's the super-rich, working with compliant Republicans (the GQP) to install the same kinds of political systems that they previously installed on offshore financial centers. This is straight out of Brooke Harrington's Capital Without Borders, which is in turn the international financial street finding other uses for things."

    Man, oh man, is that all true! Both parts. The US system has only two parties and about a dozen or so political factions, several of whom have switched parties in response to changes in platforms.

    And yes, the oligarchs are using what they learned by moving their money around the world. Perhaps the central issue regarding contemporary globalization is that capital is truly global in terms of it's infrastructure and the people who own/control it, but democracy is still managed at the level of each independent nation state. Governments can't compete with capital, because capital has more options available to it to solve problems and evade restrictions than governments have to impose them.

    The solution to this will be a global tax and spending agreement, in which the wealthiest nations agree on minimum taxation levels and sharing information on savings, property and income across borders. The big economies can impose this on the little ones, and then no more tax havens. Once you can track the wealth, you can tax it, and once you can tax it, you can begin using incentives to redirect wealth where it is needed (ie, green tech).

    1417:

    I just wanted to mention how much I hate the reply function here. Have I mentioned that lately? 'Cause I really hate it.

    Just wanted to say how much I hate it.

    1418:

    It has to be said, mate, that on my part I had and have gained no clue how you managed to construe that meaning from Heteromeles's post, going by my own reading of it either when he first posted it or when he posted a reference back to it the next time the subject flared up. I saw no way to read it consistently with that interpretation at all.

    I say this because the repeated displays of antipathy, particularly where none was evident before, make me sad. Of course it may just mean you want to tell me to fuck off as well, but I'm deciding to take that risk.

    1419:

    I would point out that having no magical abilities at all was more the norm than otherwise for the fighters against evil. Sam and Frodo, in particular, definitely had none at all, and very few other people did either. Indeed it seemed to be more likely to give you a bigger attack surface for Sauron to exploit than to assist you in exploiting his.

    There is enough information in the passage where Aragorn and Legolas first take notice of the approaching force of Rohirrim to make a reasonable estimate of how acute Legolas's vision actually was. Turns out it's roughly the same as an eagle. I think that's pretty neat.

    1420:

    "Heteromeles has been such a cranky jerk for the last several months..."

    Not that I've noticed.

    If anyone had asked who on this blog is cranky lately, H would not even be a consideration for me.

    1421:

    "The best thing that could happen for American democracy might be if Musk successfully buys Twitter... and runs it into the ground."

    I wonder if you could do something like work out what phrases commonly trigger bots, and what phrases bots commonly include in their output, then pick some juicy examples with a high frequency of occurrence in the intersection of those two sets, make use of them in your own postings, and tag bots into the conversation, with the effect of stimulating exponentially growing numbers of bots into recursively ranting at each other until the load gets so enormous that the servers explode.

    1422:

    If I wanted the internet to explode, I'd wish for a Carrington Event. That at least would be fun to watch.

    Probably rolling blackouts will do more to mess up social media than anything else. (Snark) if only there was a way to monetize the successful treatment of internet addiction. That would be multiply profitable. (/snark)

    1423:

    Re cranky posters

    One thing I always valued about this blog was that pretty much everyone was unfailingly polite. Even Catinadiamond.

    The last 2 years that's pretty much gone away. The Seagull got so obnoxious that she got banned. I've become so apoplectic that I've been carded a couple of times.

    The assumption of goodwill has been broken. The slightest misread is assumed to be the worst of insults.

    I've got a feeling that a lot of us have been under a lot of unusual stress lately.

    Not sure what to do about it.

    1424:

    Troutwaxer said: he's exactly, absolutely right about this

    I'm on twitter! (yay)

    I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about.

    I thought the USA was in trouble before, but it's totally royally screwed. The Centre for Disease Circulation has gone completely off the rails and the populace has embraced learned helplessness in a way I didn't think possible.

    With long covid hitting about 20% (+-10%) and just as likely for subsequent infections, the whole of North America is going to be either in care or too sick to work, or working in a care home within 3 years.

    That's before you add monkeypox which they're so utterly convinced is a gay only disease that they're demanding gender checks of childcare workers to find the hidden gays pretending to be women. The hundreds of years of experience showing orthopox is airborne is either a left wing plot to protect the gays, or a homophobic plot to divert resources away from the gays so they all catch it. Either way, the one thing we can be sure of is that there's no need to take any precautions and it should be allowed to roam free.

    The Centre for Disease Circulation has issued advice that you can catch MPX by touching other people's clothes, unless the clothes are for sale, in which case it's OK to try them on. (I wish I was making this up)

    Contrast this with China that's taken protecting the populace's health seriously. 3 years from now they're going to have a fit workforce. I don't think that makes them a dead country walking.

    1425:

    I thought the USA was in trouble before, but it's totally royally screwed.

    I hope not, that's how to spread monkeypox.

    The assumption of goodwill has been broken.

    I get the feeling that almost everyone here has grumpy periods, but now they're common enough/long enough that they tend to overlap. So we get a bunch of grumpy old farts yelling at each other way more often than we used to.

    I'm trying to remind myself more often that if I'm grumpy I should avoid posting. Especially in places occupied by randoms where there's bound to be people who live to disagree with whatever is posted.

    I find occasional ego surfing helps, to remind myself that people appreciate some of my posts and let me focus on working out what triggers that rather than on venting whatever randomness enters my head.

    1426:

    With long covid hitting about 20% (+-10%) and just as likely for subsequent infections, the whole of North America is going to be either in care or too sick to work, or working in a care home within 3 years.

    not according to peter zeihan

    1427:

    ...in the context of why CBT isn't universally loved by people seeking help...

    Just so you know, I parsed that completely differently the first time I read it. Not that I disagreed with any part of what I thought you said, it's a valid observation. Too, some 'therapists' seem to regard them as basically interchangeable.

    1428:

    The reddit bestof thread went exactly the same way.

    It's a "glad I don't have to choose one" situation for me, though.

    1429:

    All the most interesting posters are cranky :-)

    1430:

    One thing I always valued about this blog was that pretty much everyone was unfailingly polite. Even Catinadiamond.

    Generally still polite, I've found.

    And I disagree about the Seagull. Their first interaction with me was a threat to dox me. Not particularly polite. (Also strange given that I use my real name here.)

    I've got a feeling that a lot of us have been under a lot of unusual stress lately.

    I mostly agree with that. I have the horrible feeling that these will be the carefree days we look back on in a few years, if we're still around.

    1431:

    I find that doubtful. Did the USSR really have that powerful and large a military to want to attack Europe in 1929? I don't think so. Now, what I've recently seen is that without Stalin beginning his purges, the left in Germany would not have fractured so badly as to let the fascists into power.

    1432:

    About the "total control over the production of things people might want", please feel free to detail the years where a) the USSR was not recovering from a war; b) preparing for a war, or c) trying to stave off a war while under economic warfare from the US and the West.

    1433:

    You're missing the even bigger problem: if they depend on permafrost... global warming is breaking that down. There are towns in Alaska that are starting to sink because the permafrost is melting.

    1434:

    Oh, crap. Best of luck on the meds.

    1435:

    Last year? In 20? we were visiting someone, and they had Kpop on. Very, very strange.

    1436:

    Well, for my part, as a relative newcomer (I was around 6 or 7 years ago or so) this forum has a pronounced tendency toward the pessimistic side of forecasting, despite the fact that you guys, over the past 10 years or so, only have a so-so record fortune telling. The details you raise concerning, say, the spread of disease, are fascinating and useful, but you all tend to go a little too far into hyperbole when it comes to conclusions. But I love ya all.

    The other unfailingly polite forum I am aware of is TV Tropes. That's a result of the moderation guidelines. Here, I think it's more the case that you all know each other so well and for so long. Spats will happen, and people make up.

    There's also what's happening outside; the world appears to be breaking apart. Most of you seem to have some sort of engineering background--it must be especially painful to see untreated failure modes spreading. The youngsters are mistreating the toys you gave them. So, stress.

    1437:

    Coming back after a dancing & drinking weekend in Germany ( A CIVILISED EU country, rather than the shit-hole Britain has become ... )

    Charlie / 1343
    Oh dear - too true - I too, suspect the hole is now too deep to get out of.
    - @ 1394
    Yes, worrying, isn't it - Can the Dems NOT snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this mid-term?
    { See Duffy @ 1395 }

    Paws
    Apart from the castles. Ludwig was remarkably sane, which is why the gerontocracy got rid of him - apart from the Opera, he was a moderniser

    shridu @ 1354
    YES!
    ... May be unfortunate, but we all know the USA does "bad things" - & then Putin's Russia comes along .........

    Duffy
    IS China a "Dead Man walking" ??????
    Really?
    If Xi Jin Peng goes on as autocrat, oops Emperor, then yes, but ....
    CORRECTION: "2024 will be make-or-break for Democracy, everywhere" { UK General Election that year & the tories must be got rid of ... }
    It's a global problem. You're in the same mess in the UK that we are in the US. - SPOT ON

    gasdive
    I've got a feeling that a lot of us have been under a lot of unusual stress lately. - All too true: Covid + US + UK right-wing semi-fascism, working towards real fascism - & - now fucking Putin ...
    Of course we are on edge.

    1438:

    I suspect some of it is after four years of the Former Guy, and the disaster of Brexit, and (as the meme on FB has it, "don't ever complain about my hair being messy) as your PM... we're all stressed out over the national and world situation, the fascists making their plays.

    1439:

    Monkeypox as a "gay disease".

    ROTFLMAO!!!

    Time to bring back the line from the late '80s, with AIDS: lesbians are clearly God's Chosen People.

    1440:

    Well, for my part, as a relative newcomer (I was around 6 or 7 years ago or so) this forum has a pronounced tendency toward the pessimistic side of forecasting, despite the fact that you guys, over the past 10 years or so, only have a so-so record fortune telling. The details you raise concerning, say, the spread of disease, are fascinating and useful, but you all tend to go a little too far into hyperbole when it comes to conclusions. But I love ya all.

    The other unfailingly polite forum I am aware of is TV Tropes. That's a result of the moderation guidelines. Here, I think it's more the case that you all know each other so well and for so long. Spats will happen, and people make up.

    There's also what's happening outside; the world appears to be breaking apart. Most of you seem to have some sort of engineering background--it must be especially painful to see untreated failure modes spreading. The youngsters are mistreating the toys you gave them. So, stress.

    1441:

    Not sure what to do about it.

    I am really tempted to just fold the blog.

    I have very few essay-length things to say these days. Blogging even monthly has become an onerous chore (as you might expect after 20 years of it).

    The discussion is febrile, bad-tempered, and somehow boringly repetitive, with the same topics coming up time and again, ad infinitum.

    Everyone seems to be ageing and getting set in their ways and irascible, and there's no little blood coming in because Google destroyed the blogosphere about a decade ago when they killed off Google Reader (thereby destroying the central discovery nexus for RSS/ATOM feeds).

    Mostly it's not fun any more, and if I want to keep doing it after early October I will need to either set up a new server (and figure out all the stuff I stopped keeping current with a decade or more ago), or cough up over £1000 for another year's rental on this obsolescent box.

    The original justification for the blog -- marketing -- has decayed, and the current gold standard for author marketing is a curated email list and there are cheaper and better ways of hosting and managing those.

    1442:

    That post has made me sign up for an account.

    Please don't shut this place down without exploring alternatives (classic moderators? not requiring OGH to reply to people / do basic maintenance / content moderate)

    I've been reading you guys for years, it's the best SF (and real-world) commentary forum I've ever found. And it didn't require me to sign up for anything. And it worked on every platform / corporate browser I've ever tried.

    Anyway, thank you all for erudite discussion, fascinating asides and so on. I hope you continue!

    1443:

    I too would be very sorry to see this blog fold.

    1444:

    There is an XKCD cartoon which I can't now find, about an accidental community of people on a forgotten chat server or BBS. This place feels a bit like that. Also a bit like the old days of Usenet. Good places like that are hard to find, and fragile. "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."

    1445:

    I, for one, would be sad to see it go, but I'm not paying for the server.

    As for the misery, we are all getting older, but a bigger part of it is that a bunch of powerful forces are trying to take our countries apart for their own profit, and they're not on our side. Of course we're going to be stressed. We're lucky enough that our powers of cranky boringness are reasonably good at keeping this site from getting swamped by Them.

    That said, given the number of regulars, I think there's good odds of just running an annual kickstarter or similar and saying that if you don't raise $XXXX every fall, you're going to fold the blog, because you're in business and this is no longer pulling its weight as marketing. That way, you either cover your costs and time, or you fold it up because there's insufficient market for it.

    1446:

    I would be very unhappy to see it fold. Consider - you also haven't had a guest poster in a while.

    Marketing... I probably need to fix my blog, so that people can log in and post comments, rather than me having to approve each one, but I'd love for someone to contact me and offer posts. I just don't do enough, being as I'm busy writing (and trying to find an agent).

    1447:

    Did the USSR really have that powerful and large a military to want to attack Europe in 1929?

    Trotsky counted on Communist and Socialist movements in Europe, and on supplying them clandestinely with weapons and training until the time to strike. He never intended to attack Europe's armies just with the Soviet army; they were supposed to find themselves suddenly among a thousand armed insurgencies.

    And Trotsky may well have succeeded. Great Depression created millions of Americans with nothing to lose and totally disillusioned in capitalism, ripe for Communist organizers. Without FDR and New Deal, the prospect of Communist revolution in US was quite real.

    1448:

    Absolutely. The capitalists were and always have been fools - when things go really well for them, they think it will never end.

    1449:

    I think there's good odds of just running an annual kickstarter or similar and saying that if you don't raise $XXXX every fall, you're going to fold the blog

    My impression of the regulars here is that OGH would likely have to manage the fundraising the other way because quite a few of us are in a financial position where dropping $1000 on a hobby is a reasonable thing to do. So kickstarter type "raise X" would probably be better than open donations. I'd happily contribute if asked, preferably annually.

    One Oz blog did a fundraiser a while ago with the surplus going to charity, and in the end the surplus went to two charities because the initial one was kinda small "keep our local library running" type thing and not set up to deal with more than $10k as a donation.

    1450:

    There is an XKCD cartoon which I can't now find, about an accidental community of people on a forgotten chat server or BBS.

    Is it this one? https://xkcd.com/1305/

    1451:

    I have very few essay-length things to say these days. Blogging even monthly has become an onerous chore (as you might expect after 20 years of it).

    Your blog, your time, your money, your choice.

    But before you do, could we please have Greg doing a guest blog on trains? Saves you some effort, one of the off-topic attractors would actually be on-topic, and it would be interesting too.

    1452:

    But before you do, could we please have Greg doing a guest blog on trains? Saves you some effort, one of the off-topic attractors would actually be on-topic, and it would be interesting too.

    I'll second that, and I'm not even that fond of trains!

    1453:

    Speaking as one of the recent arrivals/lurkers, I'd also be sad to lose this blog + community. I've learned a lot on a number of topics. Yes, occasionally the pessimism gets a bit much, but no worse than any one of a number of other places, and at least here I don't have people trying to pretend nothing's wrong while they ignore the obvious. Thank you all.

    1454:

    The cartoon ends on a down note: "One day it will be forgotten. And so will we."

    But some people deserve to be remembered.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_space_bats

    Alison Brooks (1959–2002)

    1455:

    Heteromeles @ 1448:

    I, for one, would be sad to see it go, but I'm not paying for the server.

    I'll miss it, but I'm sure Charlie will do what's best for Charlie, and that's the way it should be.

    1456:

    "Also a bit like the old days of Usenet."

    Does that still exist, or is there at least an archive?

    1457:

    Well, as I pointed out on the other topic, there are ways one of us could take over the burden, including opening another blog somewhere.

    I think of this place as a left-leaning non-US open source think tank, and that's worth preserving, because of the unique perspective here. Where else does anyone oppose authoritarianism from an engineering perspective? That the kind of society they think they want makes no sense and will be unsustainable?

    This may be a tough crowd, but it's worth running the gauntlet. Nothing improves cognitive performance like well informed skepticism.

    1458:

    I'm happy to chip in a few bucks.

    That might not be what Charlie wants though. I mean there's a whole FAQ about why there's no tipjar

    https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/03/reminder-why-theres-no-tipjar.html

    This blog has been a bit of a lifeline during difficult times. I've got things off my chest that I've never told anyone, and I've seen others do the same.

    But I don't want to guilt OGH into doing things he doesn't want to do. He's not my therapist.

    Anyway, if you do decide this blog has become a negative value, that's fine. I'd just like to thank you and everyone else, especially those I've argued with. Thanks.

    1459:

    Ferrett Steinmetz set something up on Discord, which might make sense. All I would say, Charlie, is if you shut the place down, please give us some warning so we can - en masse - find a new place to grumble at each other.

    1460:

    Mostly it's not fun any more,

    I must admit when I think about this blog, one of the first thing that comes to mind is "mermaid boobies".

    And that brings a smile to my face.

    1461:

    set something up on Discord

    As someone who deals with the mechanics behind the scenes of another blog that's bigger than this one, Discord and many of the options that get lobbed at those such as me just don't work for a low / no income blog.

    They require hours of hand holding system admining per week. Charlie has no interest. The blog I deal with does not either. At all.

    So if a blog does take off, it many times gets to where this blog is. Does the owner have it in them to keep on going? Especially after it may get to be more like "work" than a pastime.

    I'm working on walking away from the one I admin. The owner is realizing they are going to have to pay for support. But I don't think they are going to be happy as they will be loosing a single point of contact that knows them personally. I have pointed this out but I'm not sure they get it.

    PS: I'm burnt. And my politics and that of the owner have drifted too far apart for me to have any interest anymore. So I'm headed out the door. Just trying to do it with a bit of grace.

    1462:

    Discord and many of the options that get lobbed at those such as me just don't work for a low / no income blog.

    google groups?

    u never know when they might just shut the whole thing down for not making any money, admittedly

    1463:

    I should regret it folding, but my advice to you as a person is to do just that. I have been in that sort of position many times, and (with hindsight) should have always cut my losses earlier.

    1464:

    google groups?

    As much as it gets maligned, Wordpress has some nice attributes for a blog. You can write articles with pictures, scans, previews to embedded PDFs, etc... And the comments on any one topic are FIXED to that topic without worrying that the commenters not munge up the subject of an email or worse yet, reply to a clump of other comments merged into one email.

    Email based discussion groups are dying out. People with blogs on serious subjects need a side bar or equivalent to handle permanent links to other places, links to pages that fill in the blanks for newbies, and so on. Or the younger folks will ignore them.

    Of course many tech email lists have moved to slack. Because why have organized technical information, questions, and answers when you can just pour it all into a river of text and let everyone try and search and find their answer or ask the same question as 10,000 previous people?

    This blog could reasonable quickly be re-done in Wordpress. But Charlie doesn't like Wordpress for some very reasonable reasons to him. And I'm not going to try and convert him. I see no advancement of any cause in that effort. Or even a good reason for him to do so.

    1465:

    Duffy @1459:

    "Also a bit like the old days of Usenet."

    Does that still exist, or is there at least an archive?

    It still exists, although it is much, much smaller than it was, even before the Great Reorganisation.

    Many of the groups are populated either by 'bots or incarnations of the Seagull, and there is a tendency for certain types to find a newsgroup and then set about drowning the signal with noise. I had the displeasure of watching it happen to alt.comp.freeware. At least rec.arts.sf.written still has a decent level of traffic, but there are enough problem types there that my kill-file occasionally gets additions. And google groups is the new AOL. :-(

    1466:

    If someone else were to take over, I think it would make more sense to use some sort of forum software, like Discourse or phpBB.

    1467:

    I would be very sorry to see this blog fold. I've learned a lot (though that may not always be obvious), and I'd never have found much of my recent reading without it. But it's not up to me, and OGH will and should do what's best for him.

    1468:

    Charlie
    The discussion is febrile, bad-tempered, and somehow boringly repetitive, - And I'm as guilty as all the others ...
    Even so - PLEASE DON'T! - it's a beacon of sanity & we are all badly depressed, for reasons multiply explained in here.
    "We" need to find a better way of doing this, to keep this community { And - it IS a community } going, if at all possible.

    1469:

    OGH wrote in part:

    Everyone seems to be ageing and getting set in their ways and irascible, and there's no little blood coming in because Google destroyed the blogosphere about a decade ago when they killed off Google Reader (thereby destroying the central discovery nexus for RSS/ATOM feeds).

    I would greatly regret the loss of this forum. I've learned much here, and the generally civil discussions here are good examples of how to discuss when we disagree.

    I do promote this site through posting selected quotes into the Great Gaping Maw which is Facebook, to try to pull in new blood. Maybe there are other venues of greater merit to spread the word, but that's the option I think is most universal.

    I've also found a reasonable substitute for Google Reader with The Old Reader theoldreader.com

    I would financially contribute if needed to keep this place open.

    1470:

    kiloseven @1472 said, "I would financially contribute if needed to keep this place open."

    As would I.

    1471:

    It wouldn't be a lot { Pensioner on limited income } - but I too, would be prepared to help keep this sanity-window OPEN

    1472:

    Me too. Of the 30-ish tabs I keep open, this is my favorite. I will not overhear a smarter conversation anywhere else.

    1473:

    I spent a lot of time there in the late 90s and early 00s, mostly on comp.perl.* but also the scary devil monastery, and this place has always reminded me of the latter (most likely some of the same people, though I've never really tried to work out who). A famous sysadmin book in the mid noughties included some productivity tips, and the number one tip was to stop reading usenet...

    1474:

    Duffy @ 1459:

    "Also a bit like the old days of Usenet."

    Does that still exist, or is there at least an archive?

    Usenet is still around. Most ISPs don't provide access to it anymore, so I subscribe to a Usenet service provider, but I do still have an account.

    The Deja News Usenet archive was bought by Google and folded into their "Google Groups". I'm not so sure about Google Groups. When I looked just now, it seemed all SPAM & TROLLS.

    I lost the product key for my news reader when my old computer crashed & haven't recovered it yet, so I haven't been able to login to my Usenet account for a while. But I'm pretty sure it's still there. I renewed for another year back in April.

    1475:

    I can pretty much guarantee some new blood with strategic choice of blog topic. Something relevant to spaceflight, for example, or urban fantasy.

    1476:

    Agreed. uk.rec.gardening is still active (just), but I have tried a couple of web gardening forums and clearly knew many times more than all other posters combined. That's boring. This blog is not.

    But I stand by what I said in #1466.

    1477:

    Some of the gloom is because things that some of us have been predicting for 20-50 years are now clearly showing themselves, it is unclear what can be done at this late stage, and the current actions are making things worse.

    1478:

    "It is, nonetheless, one of the most excellent and comfortable places to lounge around with very intelligent and unusual people. It would be horrific to lose this luxury."

    Agreed completely.

    1479:

    That said, Charlie needs to do what's good for him. I'm not sure he needs the advertising platform anymore - he's pretty much a household name among science-fiction readers.

    1480:

    On keeping the blog going, a few random thoughts/ suggestions.

    Another blog I follow and pay a modest amount for is Bart Ehrman's, https://ehrmanblog.org/ . Bart is a tenured professor of New Testament text and early Christianity(*) at a US state university, so his situation isn't totally comparable to OGH's. But his audience and commenters are quite similar, so I'd suggest OGH host might want to contact Bart and discuss matters. Bart is very approachable.

    On money, I'd certainly be willing to chip in a couple of hundred USian bucks and then a dollar a day to keep things going.

    (*) He used to be an evangelical, but got over it and is now an atheistic agnostic or something like that. Which is where I am.

    1481:

    For what is worth, I bought the complete Laundry series (and now the New Management) only because of this blob.

    1482:

    Blob of course should be blog.

    1483:

    Coming back to the blog - I have a blog - https://mrw.5-cent.us - and I would happily pick up, and right now, I'll invite anyone who wants to write a guest post contact me, because a) I really do want my blog as part of marketing, and b)I don't post enough (and c) I really like this blog, and yes, it's like the old days of usenet).

    1484:

    Whitroth --

    I tried to register for your blog, with the same username as here, but never received the confirmation email

    1485:

    Me too. Only been half an hour so far though.

    1486:

    Me putting on my Level 1 support hat to give the standard suggestion.

    Did you check your SPAM folder?

    GDRFC

    1487:

    Good thinking, but no, it is not in my spam folder either

    1488:

    I always do. Not there; no sign of it. Thanks anyway :)

    1489:

    Tier 3 hat: Envelope and From headers are different domains, host2031.hostmonster.com and mrw/5-cent.us, Sent by a PHP script, and no SPF records.SpamAssassin awards it 2.7 points which is well below the usual reject threshold.

    1490:

    Back when I was a pioneer with Bellsouth (AT&T) DSL I quickly learned to avoid the L1 folks. They went home around midnight. So I'd call after midnight and get a L2 person who could do more than read scripts then put me into a queue. I even found a bug in their router upgrade once. Lots of L3 disbelief till I proved their routing tables were bad.

    Of course prior to the router upgrade everyone on a neighborhood "pod" could see everyone else. (I wonder who thought this wouldn't be an issue.) After people started printer to their neighbor's printers they got serious about changing things.

    1999 or 2000.

    1491:

    ilya187 @ 1453: *Is it this one? https://xkcd.com/1305/*

    Yup, thats the one. Thanks.

    1492:

    Back when I was a pioneer with Bellsouth (AT&T) DSL I quickly learned to avoid the L1 folks. They went home around midnight. So I'd call after midnight and get a L2 person who could do more than read scripts then put me into a queue. I even found a bug in their router upgrade once. Lots of L3 disbelief till I proved their routing tables were bad.

    You discovered the Shiboleet code: https://xkcd.com/806/

    (Now that one I have no problems finding).

    1493:

    Over here there are two main physical networks: the telephone network and the cable TV network.

    The telephone network was originally owned by British Telecom, who were originally part of the Post Office (yes, really). When the Internet got going the UK government actually did the Right Thing and required British Telecom to lease its lines and space in the exchanges to any competitor at regulated prices. Later on they split BT up into an infrastructure half (called "OpenReach") and a consumer part (still "British Telecom" because that had the name recognition).

    Meanwhile back in the early 90s a cable TV network was laid across the country, which is now owned by Virgin Media. They don't have to share their cables with anyone.

    About a decade back we were with Virgin Media, but we kept getting brief drop-outs of a second or two, once every hour or so. Not much of a problem unless you were playing a game, in which case your connection got kicked. I set up a job to ping a well-known web server and log the results, and got clear evidence of what was happening.

    Then on to tech support. Wait in a queue for half an hour listening to hold music. Then get a tech support person who tells you to reboot your modem and asks if the problem has gone away. "Well, yes, its not happening right now, but it keeps recurring for a couple of seconds every so often". "Thank you for your call, pleased we could solve your problem. Goodbye." Over and over again. No way to escape from the script, no way to escalate it to someone who could actually investigate.

    On one occasion I actually got someone who did know what "ping" meant, and who spend some time trying to solve the problem. I asked about his background, and he said he'd had an IT business, but it had folded, and now he was doing helldesk work to make ends meet. I felt really sorry for him. But despite all that he couldn't find the source of the problem either.

    Eventually we switched to one of the OpenReach crowd.

    1494:

    Anyone who's tried my blog, I'm aware of the problem, and working on it.

    1495:

    An aside on this, "British Telecom" used a "custom font" made of vinyl lines where all the letters were formed from separated horizontal, vertical and diagonal bars so the M looked like "/\/\". This let to a situation where you could remove the last \ and make it read "British Telecon".

    1496:

    Thanks. Let me know if you need a test reply or similar.

    1497:

    "You discovered the Shiboleet code: https://xkcd.com/806/"

    I actually had support at my ISP say "well, I'm not familiar with this part of the system, but I have this phone number I'm not supposed to give out..."

    1498:

    So did he give you that phone number, or was he just rubbing it in?

    1499:

    No he was kind enough to give me the number. Virgin Media inherited a diverse network and I was apparently on an obscure corner of it. The phone number got me to someone who was plainly not trained on customer service, but actually knew his stuff.

    1500:

    Please try. Some people seem to be getting the autoreply to set a password, and others are not.

    1501:

    As I have painfully learned, if Google's GMail doesn't like a sender the email can just vanishes. No SPAM folder. No rejection email. Nothing.

    That may be your issue.

    1502:

    Interesting. I have what appears to be hostile email claiming I've got two missed emails, purporting to be Google "automation service reporting", apparently from an Indian domain (99infotech.in). Does that make any sense to you?

    1503:

    Oddly, I also have spam arriving at another email address, from an old PBEM GM who used Rex Rocket as an email handle. I assume that's not related.

    1504:

    Have not received reply since asking yesterday.

    1505:

    That may be your issue.

    To expand a bit. Some mail from servers that Google doesn't fully "appreciate" will get through. Some will not.

    Roll some dice.

    Also you (whitroth) might need to add the current set of fav anti-spam records to your DNS.

    1506:

    And sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't, for no apparent reason.

    Chap I occasionally exchange emails with uses gmail. Emails from me which are nothing but text have a usably high probability of getting through, but anything with attached images or tar.gz archives is most likely to vanish without trace, next most likely to be delivered to his spam folder, and distinctly unlikely to get through. Doesn't seem to be any way of telling which is going to happen, and it varies from occasion to occasion, so if I try again enough times it will probably get through eventually, at the cost of much confusion when I don't know he hasn't received something he doesn't know I've sent.

    I've found it necessary to split emails with attachments into a "main" part which is just plain text, and subsidiary parts containing only the attachments, and send them as multiple separate messages with "(Message i of n)" tags appended to the subject lines, so it is possible for him to tell me things like "I've got 1 and 3, but no sign of 2" and I can then have another crack.

    He says things like "most peculiar, no idea what happened there", and I say things like "it's because Google hates people who run their own mail servers because it can't snoop through all their private communications for its own advantage, which in turn is a major reason why I do run my own mail server".

    As for turdpress, it must be a good ten years now since I listed it under "don't even bother thinking about trying to comment on it because it never fucking works" (even if it tells you it did work, it's lying). Given the steady and unvarying course the platform's development has taken over the intervening period - becoming more and more dysfunctional as they change more and more things from plain HTML which always works to gratuitously fucked-up overcomplex javascript crap which doesn't work at all - I don't see any prospect of so long-standing a problem ever getting fixed at all.

    Charlie, could I ask if you have any idea of how many page views per day threads on this blog tend to get?

    1507:

    I'm over on DreamWidth which is fine for my low-volume blogging and fiction sharing needs but might not easily support the large threads we get here. It's rare to see the comments hit triple digits there, though that may be due to the people I follow rather than any limits of the system.

    1508:

    Returning to the original post, I couldn't think of any serious crimes which aren't obvious.
    I suppose that stealing processor time would become a much more serious matter than currently.
    It would become militarised and monetised, for sure.
    Parasitic infestations of spambots and similar would require treatment, and untreated cases could be fatal.

    1509:

    The telephone network was originally owned by British Telecom, who were originally part of the Post Office (yes, really)

    And over here, cable pit covers of a certain age, and in some areas even street equipment cabinets that survived technology changes, are stamped with the initialism PMG, for postmaster general. See also the logos for its various successor entities, Telecom, Telstra and now NBNCo.

    1510:

    Returning to the original post, I couldn't think of any serious crimes which aren't obvious. I suppose that stealing processor time would become a much more serious matter than currently. It would become militarised and monetised, for sure. Parasitic infestations of spambots and similar would require treatment, and untreated cases could be fatal.

    Isn't it sort of like ants trying to figure out how to keep humans from stepping on them? Concepts of individual and responsibility may scale rather badly.

    This seems like a twee metaphor, but look at how hard it is to hold corporations, bureaucracies, and governments accountable for all the damage and deaths they cause. It's an analogous problem. We don't have ways of scaling personhood in any objective or ethical way. At least in civilized discourse.

    The other problem (that I pointed in some of my early posts on this thread, which were ignored) are that one you start granting nonhumans personhood, it's difficult to set arbitrary limits. Thing is people have done it throughout history. They're just derided as primitive. Perhaps they actually knew what they were doing, and we're the ones that have been off Trumping away about how great and special we are, and how their rules don't apply to us?

    1511:

    As you mention with corporations and governments, we do it now. Although calling us primitive is justified so yeah whatever.

    I think one big flip is from "responsible for/to" and "has control over".

    Your primitive savage was under no illusions about their ability to control anything bigger than them, because they regularly tried it and regularly failed. "insert new god king and press any key to continue" to mix me metaphors a bit.

    These days we like to pretend that man has dominion over all he can see. And we still get mighty offended when we're shown to be wrong.

    The question of whether and how it's even possible to control a corporation is one that IMO we haven't answered. Well, we definitely haven't shown that we can control one. By comparison a nuclear reactor is a kiddy toy (compare 3 mile island with manhattan island and tell me which one is nicer to live on).

    1512:

    These days we like to pretend that man has dominion over all he can see. And we still get mighty offended when we're shown to be wrong.

    Apologies for another Bible lesson, but this one is too useful not to share with anyone who has to deal with Dominionists. What the Bible actually says about Dominionism is very different than what these people believe it says.

    Here's a lesson about Christian Dominionism, in case someone thinks this is a good idea. For this lesson, I will use only the Bible.

    The "dominion" verses are Genesis 1:26-29 (RSV version):

  • Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
  • 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

    28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

    29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.

    But then we get to Genesis 6, 10 generations and a few pages later, about the consequences of God giving dominion to humans (RSV):

    5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

    6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

    7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

    8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

    If you like, you can also go to Genesis 9, where God establishes a second covenant with Noah and his family, one that does not include dominion.

    I'd simply suggest that anyone who thinks that God gave dominion to today's humans really needs to read the entire story. It's a cautionary tale: that God tried giving us dominion, found us unworthy, and nearly destroyed his creation entirely as a result. But for God liking Noah, per the story we wouldn't be here at all.

    Feel free to use this, if one ever has a desire to discuss religion with Dominionists. At the very least, tell them to read each entire story in the Bible, not to take verses out of context.

    And perhaps don't expect Dominionist followers to read multi-page contracts or fine print? This might even be useful, in some circumstances.

    1513:

    Oh, I wasn't thinking that the Bible is true, that God exists and gave man dominion, I was poking things at people who try to pretend, for whatever reason, that they rule over all they can see. Christian dominionists are bad enough, it's the "I got big nukes/bucks/votes, I'm in charge" types who think that being Prime Munster means they get to control all the things... https://www.betootaadvocate.com/entertainment/australian-dance-music-now-dominated-by-christian-djs-after-scotty-secretly-takes-over-ministry-of-sound/

    1514:

    I agree with you about the Bible, but Biblical thinking is the basis for much of our philosophy, law, and economics in the West, so unfortunately, this stuff matters.

    Right now, we also have to deal with a really toxic crop of nihilists, who think The Joker from Batman is a philosophical genius (apparently, judging by their, nothing matters, capability makes right-style thinking). And these two circles overlap, as in "the Bible is literally true, and I can do whatever I want, 'cuz I been baptized. And if the Bible's not true, then I can do whatever I want, because life has no meaning."

    That's where that little dominion story comes in.

    Anyway, maybe someday I will get to call a dominionist "A child of Noah," and tell them to read past the first page of the Bible if they want to find out about the second and subsequent covenants they actually signed up for by being baptized, since Dominion was washed away by The Flood. Probably get me punched out if it's not online. But it's not a bad summer fantasy, as such go.

    1515:

    Having just been reminded of Shelly's Ozymandias poem I don't think it's just Christians that suffer (inflict?) hubris. "Look on my works ye mighty and despair"... yeah nah bra.

    But I do agree that the Christian stuff does underlie a disturbing amount of Western everything.

    Nick just dumped a bunch of Effective Altruism discussion/critique links that you might find interesting, because that centres on the ultimate fun question "define good".

    And coincidentally I saw mention recently of "Allan Savory admits his experiment of killing 40,000 elephants to prevent desertification in Zimbabwe was a complete failure"... and then one of the posts Nick links talks about some EA thought experiment "what if we killed all the carnivores". And I was reminded of why I personally find EA people very hard to deal with. It's all very shiny and new and "no-one has ever thought of doing this before" bullshit spiel ... and just say no. Oh, and Savory is giving TED talks now. Admittedly about how he fucked up, but it's still at the annoying end of TED talks (which are pretty damn annoying).

    Sometimes I feel like I was old and cynical at 20, and I'm just getting more cynical as I get older. My universal answer is "it's more complicated than that".

    One big conflict is that EA tends towards extreme overpopulation "QALYs are the true measure of value" and similar nonsense. There's a SF short story somewhere about a coastal environment where edible glop grows in the sea and and endless wall of people just stand round the coastline eating and breeding... some strands of EA apparently see that as utopia. I keep thinking the story is "Stand on Zanzibar" but I'm pretty sure it's not, there's way too much civilisation in that book.

    But tomorrow I'm going out trespassing scouting again, trying to find access to Cook River higher up so we can do a cleanup. It's fun trying to find places we can take a group of people to clean up, that also has a lot of rubbish. Lots of finding access points, seeing if they're worth cleaning up, then if I find a match I can start working out who to get permission from for official access.

    1516:

    There's a SF short story somewhere about a coastal environment where edible glop grows in the sea and and endless wall of people just stand round the coastline eating and breeding... some strands of EA apparently see that as utopia.

    "Bordered in Black" by Larry Niven

    1517:

    One big conflict is that EA tends towards extreme overpopulation "QALYs are the true measure of value" and similar nonsense.

    Note that QALY stands for "Quality-Adjusted Life Years". Which is not at all nonsense if you pay attention to this "Quality-Adjusted" part. Once Quality (of life) is taken into account, the maxed-out population of "Bordered in Black" is far from optimal. It may max out the "Life Years", but the abysmal Quality makes for a very low QALY.

    1518:

    Thank you!

    1519:

    Thinking about this, I'm more used to QALYs being a medical measure where anyone in reasonable health is considered 100%. More "not significantly disabled" than being any kind of measure of happiness. Happiness is the preserve of economists who measure it using money 🙄. No, seriously, the "science of happiness" stuff remains largely aspirational with limited research being done compared to, say, lithium recycling or male contraceptives (to pick two small niches because if you compare it to something major like infernal combustion engines it rounds to zero).

    The EA people are often explicitly talking about someone in a devastated, usually African, country who is both unhappy and on the verge of death. The cost of keeping them not-dead is minimal, so by the "greatest good per dollar" measure it's far better to buy them out of immediate death than, say, donate money to your local homeless shelter. The African will still be extremely unhappy, but they're not dead and that's what matters. QALYs as a binary!

    Despite drawing on Peter Singer there doesn't seem to be much consideration of measures of good that include ecosystems except in the very narrow "useful to support more humans" sense. Or even of human life as a real continuum between "wishes they were dead" and "so happy they could die" 😂

    This is where my "Bordered in Black" scenario comes from. And my gut reaction is to say... surely someone can fix covid-19 so it has a fatality rate over 50% and thus culls the human population. That would make space for ecosystems to recover and many endangered species to start expanding again. Especially if the total human death rate was closer to 100% than 90%. Think of the CO2e emissions reductions we'd get from a 90% reduction in humans!

    1520:

    I don't see anything in this discussion of QALYs about marginal utility. There seems to be an assumption that one more happy person among billions makes as much of a contribution to overall value, in absolute rather than relative terms of course, as one more among a population of a few hundred. I'd query that.

    JHomes.

    1521:

    One issue with EA is that, yes, at least at a species level. But for me at least doubling the population of something endangered from 1000 to 2000 is far more worth while than adding 1000 people, or even doubling the human population. Efforts should really be going, IMO, towards making the people we already have happier, and ideally also happy not to reproduce.

    But on the flip side EA is all about marginal utility. The gain from "about to die" to "not about to die" is a huge amount of marginal utility, far more than from "homeless" to "in a homeless shelter", and definitely way more than "normally get a coffee about now" to "have a coffee".

    EA is often trying to solve political problems by giving money to the victims. The solution to starvation in Africa is to pay rich farmers to export food to Africa, rather than to stop stealing food from Africa. Or forcing countries to pay back loans given to departed kleptocrats, if you prefer to look at it that way.

    Reminds me of the "solution" to piracy in Somalia being foreign warships invading that country, rather than stopping foreign fishing boats from pillaging Somali waters which is what drove former Somali fishermen to piracy in the first place.

    1522:

    Anyway, maybe someday I will get to call a dominionist "A child of Noah," and tell them to read past the first page of the Bible if they want to find out about the second and subsequent covenants they actually signed up for by being baptized, since Dominion was washed away by The Flood. Probably get me punched out if it's not online. But it's not a bad summer fantasy, as such go.

    You really need to toss in what is meant by "It is finished"? Just to stir the pot harder.

    1523:

    It's fun trying to find places we can take a group of people to clean up, that also has a lot of rubbish. Lots of finding access points, seeing if they're worth cleaning up, then if I find a match I can start working out who to get permission from for official access.

    Linking back to H's dominion thoughts, my grandfather (1885-1982) thought the point of HIS creeks were a place to put trash. Moderately large (for the time) working farm so he and all his friends would dump almost anything there. From household food waste up to stoves and fridges. I'm sure there were a car or two there. And he sold digging rights to the county at times for gravel and as best I can tell looking back allowed them to abandon earth digging gear there at times.

    Sigh.

    1524:

    That would make space for ecosystems to recover and many endangered species to start expanding again.

    Unless civilization falls those left will, after a brief morning period, mostly go "wheeeee" look at what we have and can play with. With all those people gone we don't have to worry anymore about the planet.

    1525:

    Percy Bysshe Shelly was an atheist; his father's religion is not stated in Wikipedia. Ozymandias is a work of fiction.

    1526:

    Moz
    Corporations are controlled by people, who can be killed, blackmailed, silenced, or "turned" ....

    paws
    "Oyzymandias" was, apparently written after Shelley had seen a massive staue of Rameses the Younger Memnon installed in the Brit Mus.

    1527:

    Ozymandias is a work of fiction

    Are you saying we should ignore any observation not stated in strictly factual terms, and refuse to use any text not originating the same way?

    It's not even about "poetic license", but about using evocative words and phrases to convey ideas. "large parts of what was once the Persian empire are now desert" just doesn't have the same ring.

    Not to mention the insanity of coming to a science FICTION author's blog to make a claim even slightly like that.

    1528:

    Unless civilization falls those left will, after a brief morning period, mostly go "wheeeee" look at what we have and can play with.

    And if civilization does fall, the survivors will do exact same thing. They just won't have AS MANY toys to play with.

    1529:

    surely someone can fix covid-19 so it has a fatality rate over 50% and thus culls the human population. That would make space for ecosystems to recover and many endangered species to start expanding again.

    easy there thanos

    1530:

    Fairly certain you're talking nonsense. "$title is a work of fiction" is not an instruction to ignore it but a statement of context.

    Also, ancient Egypt and ancient Persia have been primarily desert and mountains back into the Stone Age (basic source Wikipedia; secondary sources lots).

    1531:

    Presumably there will be no equivalent crime to dumping raw sewage into the ecosystem, since the only actual ecosystem in transhuman-land will be dedicated to maintaining the transhumans.

    1532:

    Still, I think there's something to "Maximise utility!" that does get to the main point of ethical conduct. There are several problems with several ways of formulating that principle into concrete activities, including problems with the concept of using a principle as a rule for defining activities in the first place, but (like Singer himself) I'm not convinced that any of those problems are totally unsolvable.

    1533:

    Yeah, the stuff Nick linked to is more about the fine print of how EA works, but I get hung up on the fundamentals. Sure, in theory more people each consuming much less would work, but we have the whole capitalist system underlying global politics saying fuck that, more consumption is not just better, it's necessary. So far the "more" side isn't so much winning as pretty convincingly portraying itself as the only possibility. EA says "do that, but also donate" which is classic liberalism, in the sense of "don't change the system, decorate it to look nicer".

    The question to me is "maximise which utility", because who gets their utility maximised is a really important question. And per above, the answer is rich people and often "utility" is measured with money. EA buys into that completely, and also literally.

    If we look for other possibilities, and say (topically) that maybe the value of a thylacine is in being thylacines rather than in being tourist attractions then the answers we get might be quite different. We might say, for example, that dumping dollars onto farmers when they lose stock to reintroduced predators is a small price to pay for having predators. We might also say that the penalty for harming one is prison, and sadly the penalty for killing one is death. We have a lot of spare people but no spare critically endangered animals, so one sort of life is worth a lot more than the other.

    Where EA would be useful is asking what happens to society if we do that? Obviously most of the people executed will be the sort of povo scum who used to be transported to Australia, but would that have useful or only toxic side effects? How could we manage a legal system if we did recognise the value of non-monetary assets, or non-human rights? Is there any way EA can help move towards that sort of system?

    1534:

    A convenient side effect of "reintroducing" land predators in Scotland is to provide land owners with a legal justification for denying public access; it could eventually lead to a new round of highland clearances. Not to mention the side effects - bringing back sea eagles is having a serious impact on the golden eagle population.

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    This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on July 18, 2022 1:29 PM.

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