Retiring

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• Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
  For a long time I have been convinced that if general AI is possible, which is a very big "if", it will have to involve a robotic body (more likely, multiple robotic bodies) and a prolonged interaction with the...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  you should be aware that "it's a moot point" means exactly the reverse in UK English to American English. Thanks!...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Who decides whether he participated in insurrection or not? A judge, who else? In this case District Judge Sarah B. Wallace. This has already been adjudicated. From the NPR story: "In her decision, Wallace said she found that Trump did...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Call it what you will, my point is he has NOT YET BEEN CONVICTED of any crimes relating to the Jan 6 autogolpe Does he have to be convicted of some crime? Section 3 of the 14th amendment doesn't mention...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  IANAL, but this is about freedom of speech as I understand it. There are all kinds of constraints on so-called free speech. The canonical example is that it's illegal to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Inciting riots, etc. whitroth@767:...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Yes, he'll try the "you can't incarcerate me, I'm the candidate" defense. I don't really understand this argument, though. His running for office is a voluntary activity, a hobby, like joining a bowling club. He doesn't have to do it....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  And since AI seems to be able to identify some potential solutions much faster than even ordinary supercomputers, then maybe it's whatever math it's using that's the real answer/secret sauce. If so, then human stats/maths folk might be able to...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/military-industrial-complex...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Smart people (define as you wish) tend to feel over time their opinions need to be treated as facts by others. Motivated by compassion, no doubt. They hate to see others making such grave mistakes, and intervene to help....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Perhaps the real problem with modern university educations is various attempts to teach STEM subjects that require painstaking mastery of oodles of precise details, at the undergraduate level. Medicine and law are taught as graduate disciplines, after all. An undergraduate...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  "ideas and their consequences" is just a story we tell. Nothing more. Everything else is, as well. Knowing the stories, and learning to tell your own, is the mark of a successful education, however obtained....
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  A proper humanities education is about ideas and their consequences. All the philosophy, literature, art, music, history, and even science are just carriers for those ideas. Any education that's just about techniques instead of ideas is broken, whether it be...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Here I thought the purpose of the European system was to stop the debilitating wars of conquest that swept across Europe continually. Seems to be working pretty well, so far. I also wonder how they defined "rich". Was it how...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  Invasive lizards? Congress must be in recess....
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  Wouldn't it be nice if the Fourth Estate did the job we're expecting them to do? Well, most thinking people don't really expect them to do the job they're always claiming they do. But they talk about it so much......
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  Not every state has a Mormon Home Storage Center. Amazing number in California, though. However, you can buy this stuff online. Might be palatable but an extremely limited selection....
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  I'm sure there are some wackos that want to burn buildings housing government operations. But that's not the same thing....
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  979: Apparently an American senator forgot he had a gun in his hand luggage and has been arrested in Hong Kong Love to know what TSA in Portland, OR, has to say for itself. Was he in one of those...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  The Stanley Steamer, in any case, ran on kerosene, from a twenty gallon tank in the rear. So still petroleum-driven....
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  Consider the Stanley Steamer. Why did it lose out to ICE cars? The 1924 Stanley Steamer cost more than 8 times as much as the 1924 Model T. The electric starter removed the fear of the dangerous crank starter from...
• Commented on Pushing it back
  Smartphones may only be functional for a few years, but their glass and aluminum and now titanium frames should be around for thousands of years....
• Commented on Do my Laundry
  Without going into the differential equations, we can describe predator-prey systems I assume you wrote that just so that someone else could point out the Lotka-Volterra equations, a nice example of (simplistic) modeling....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  It's not the distance, or the altitude, or the change in potential energy. It's the speed. I can get up and walk across a room using plain old muscle power, which is to be sure a jaunt, but is it...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Right. The bit-hacking possibilities, as well as the dice-controlling possibilities, are limited by other innate human shortcomings. Shortcomings which could be mitigated by technology, possibly implanted at great expense into teleport or telekinesis-capable agents. Basically government assassins. Or one might...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  C'mon, guys. Teleportation has the same problem as telekinesis -- the energy budget is all wrong. Unless there's extensive surgical implantation of machinery which draws on mysterious super energy sources to power the trip....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  I buy my weisswurst remotely from Usinger's in Milwaukee. They seem to also offer many beef sausages (and blood sausage)....
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  Maybe so. It's a very narrow ruling, and there aren't many precedents. I foresee cases for the next couple of decades before this is settled. See also this ruling on "Zarya of the Dawn." This makes me think of the...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  Not sure this actually means much. Thaler was trying to get his program, the "AI", listed as the sole creator of the artwork. The judge said, "that's ridiculous, a machine can't hold a copyright." If he'd applied for himself, and...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  https://film.britishcouncil.org/resources/film-archive/the-western-isles...