CharlesH

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• Commented on Place your bets
  What I was wondering was: For a single use barrel, would a plastic drainpipe embedded in cement suffice? It's not like you're rifling the barrel, think of this as an enlarged single-use blunderbuss....
• Commented on Place your bets
  Well, there was a time when a "sitting US Representative" was sitting in a jail cell for his entire term. It was around the time of the Civil War (afterwards I think, but can't remember for sure), and a Representative...
• Commented on Place your bets
  I believe that in a lot of states, if you are convicted of a felony (in that state?) you can't be on the ballot....
• Commented on Place your bets
  There can't be. Cynic was from the Greek, and intended to refer to a pack of dogs harrying game (i.e. the target of the cynicism) to death. It gotten to be LESS vicious over the centuries....
• Commented on Place your bets
  IIUC the NY AG is contemplating some financial fraud claims....
• Commented on Place your bets
  More to the point, the idea that it requires a state level actor is silly. It may require a corporate level actor, and acquiescence by some state. Or I could imagine a religious group thinking the oil compaies were sinning...
• Commented on Place your bets
  The idea that a computer couldn't handle a paradox never made much sense. Even in the 1950's it was rarely used, and often contradicted. I think of it as a late 40's meme, though it did frequently appear in the...
• Commented on Place your bets
  As to a computer more powerful than a Turing machine, you've got to remember that a Turing machine has an infinite tape. If you don't count the number of computational steps involved, then I don't think you can have a...
• Commented on Place your bets
  I don't know why you think that you must know what intelligence is to create an AGI. We do LOTS of things without understanding them. Ask any biochemist. Understanding makes the process a lot cheaper and more predictable, but it's...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Ah. So this is a new kind of "flash crowd". That means we get to expect many more....
• Commented on Place your bets
  There are those to whom "libertarian" means "the government can't stop you". It's a sort of kind of "liberty", but only for the powerful...
• Commented on Place your bets
  It's worse than "Mammoths are intelligent". The economics of mammoth burgers couldn't possibly be made to work. Look into the cost of feeding an elephant. Also they have a long lifespan before they reproduce, so you've got to feed them...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Well, the main thing wrong with trying to bring back the mammoth is that if you're successful, it won't have any place to live....
• Commented on Place your bets
  The cost of Lutetium is almost certainly due to there being no mass market for it. Now if it was Rhenium.... The thing is, most "rare earths" aren't rare at all. It's just that they're difficult to chemically separate from...
• Commented on Place your bets
  In the case of BARTD, it was designed to be driverless, with the train controlled by a remote computer. (Actually it pretty much IS [as of a couple of decades ago] controlled by a remote computer, even when there's a...
• Commented on Place your bets
  I don't KNOW, but I'm pretty sure that at that time BARTD didn't have a "dead man switch", it had a "time delay", and the operator had set a delay and got out onto the platform for ???, but overstayed...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Perhaps Docklands automation had high acceptance, but when the BARTD train took off on it's own there was an immediate cry (mainly from public officials) to fix the problem. OTOH, this may have been over liability or some such. I...
• Commented on Place your bets
  FWIW, there's decent evidence that multicellularity isn't that difficult to evolve. It looks as if there's another attempt happening on Earth at the present moment. Mixotricha paradoxa if I've got the name right. If not, see "The Ancestor's Tale" Dawkins....
• Commented on Place your bets
  Tunics and sandals are quite reasonable. They're basic, simple, and comfortable if you can control the climate. Trousers are really not reasonable unless you're riding horses or some such. Shoes are excessive if you have decent footing and reasonably controlled...
• Commented on Place your bets
  FWIW, robot train operators aren't the future, they're here. All that's needed is social acceptance. That said, it's not clear that there aren't parts of the job they can't do, but a BARTD train left its stop, moved onto the...
• Commented on Place your bets
  The point about "living in the world" being necessary for a true AI is that it give you a touchstone for truth. Without that everything's "he says vs. she says", and there's no valid way to resolve the argument. So...
• Commented on Place your bets
  That's not the right way to build an "simulated upload". What you need is an "automated conversational companion" that will monitor your transmissions and engage you in interesting conversations on a wide variety of topics, learning to predict how you'll...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Oat milk is a bad idea. I've checked the protein content, and calling that milk is misuse of language. But if they called it something else I'd be fine with it. OTOH, milk of magnesia doesn't have much protein content,...
• Commented on Place your bets
  The problem with "collective remembering of the lore" is that it tends to get truncated. There's a strong limit to how much lore can be passed from generation to generation, and it you want to do anything BUT remember the...
• Commented on Place your bets
  The reason more and worse diseases evolved in "the old world" than in "the new world" (i.e. connected continental land masses) is that EurAsia + Africa had a lot more people living in it, in a lot more environments, many...
• Commented on Place your bets
  The way to bet is that the current flu vaccine doesn't do anything WRT HSN1. That's an entirely different beast than the flus that have been showing up. OTOH, one should definitely hope that a vaccine is being worked on....
• Commented on Place your bets
  If that doesn't work, my wife used to claim she was a Buddhist, and that worked for her. Or you could try to convert them to Macrobiotics. "Your eyes! You are sanpaku!"....
• Commented on Place your bets
  Re: My understanding is that AIs have only one modality - numeric shaped data inputs. That's both true and as accurate as saying that humans only have one modality -- chemical interaction. The two statements are exactly as meaningful. And...
• Commented on Place your bets
  If people are going to build it or design it, then symbols are required. Symbols are how we share info. They aren't all verbal (and I don't mean sonic) though. But the verbal ones can be transmitted from individual to...
• Commented on Place your bets
  I think you misinterpret what Schmitz was saying. IIUC he was not saying that being sensitive to impurities in food either was caused by or even enabled strong central government. He was implying that the ability to eat nearly anything...