xkcd

commodorejohn

I don't think it would be unheard of for certain sections of the country to go full Fundamentalist Christian Theocracy, for instance. No, that wouldn't happen. Barring an actual successful insurrection by a religious organization, any government with its own bureacracy and power structures already ...

commodorejohn

Because people get mad when I urinate in public.

commodorejohn

doogly wrote:i'm reading it like a retrofuturism maybe?

That was my initial assumption upon seeing the title, until I read the word salad OP.

"Cosmic Grunt" would also be a good name for a band, or perhaps a thirty-minute freeform jazz odyssey.

commodorejohn

I love how every time advertising agencies try to be all "hip" and use random new-fangled Internet thing X , they always make the exact same mistakes over and over. Frankly, they're lucky that making their ad rely on a user-editable source of information only resulted in viewers getting an...

commodorejohn

Well there's something I never thought I'd read on this forum.

commodorejohn

Is there really anyone who thought: yes, that Trump guy is exactly the type to resist the lure of bombing? Surely you jest, but yes. This has been the first major departure with Trump's "America First" message, and the majority of the Trump supporters I have talked to are shocked that he ...

commodorejohn

But computers can do that; it's simple to write a program that defines its own goals. I can write a program that defines a goal as a random number; I can then have this program try to do a lot of different things to try and reach this random number. I can even have this program remember which metho...

commodorejohn

I don't know how you can get much more vague than that, though? Like, we agree that a brain is a thing in a human skull that lets us think, right? We don't need to have a full understanding of the brain to say that. Similarly, I don't think we need a full understanding of the brain to recognize tha...

commodorejohn

Isn't that effectively what the brain is ? -- an extremely complex, extremely interdependent tool that regulates internal functions while performing pattern-matching operations? That's part of what the brain is, certainly. Maybe it's all of what the brain is. Problem is, we don't have a full enough...

commodorejohn

Is "thinking" really any different? I posit that it is just a more involved version of the same thing. The more different things you apply pattern matching to, and the more different algorithms you try out (and winnow), the more what you're doing looks like thinking. I see no boundary. Th...

commodorejohn

What about neural nets that can produce music, or dynamically synthesize voices well enough to fool the human ear? Well, first off, we don't really have those. Algorithmic music comes in two flavors, too-abstract and too-formulaic, and neither would be mistaken for the genuine article (or at least ...

commodorejohn

CorruptUser wrote:A half a billion pounds for a design? I know Britain was dumb enough to spend half a million for the godawful 2012 Olympics logo that looks like Lisa Simpson going down on her headless brother, but wow, what's in the water over there?

And that's not even getting started on Britart...

commodorejohn

The reason people keep saying "AI IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER!" is because each time we reach that corner, we move the goal-post to the next corner. Only we've never actually reached that goalpost. We've created systems that can automate a lot of the boring grind, and that's great - but we'...

commodorejohn

I'll believe that when I see it, and not before. Nobody has ever yet (to my knowledge) created a system that did more than automate the grunt work of science and engineering, and I've yet to see any compelling reason to believe that that will change any time soon. People have insisted that the chang...

commodorejohn

Liri wrote:It's going to be a difficult road until/if traditional jobs become obsolete and unnecessary. [sing-song]This is why we need a robust safety net/welfare state.[/sing-song]

[sing-song]This is why we need a Butlerian jihad...[/sing-song]

commodorejohn

commodorejohn alleges that he was unemployed for 14 months and then further penalized by the ACA's individual mandate. However, the ACA was supposed to have given him a tax-credit to assist him in paying for insurance. Unfortunately I don't recall all the details as this was ~2-3 years ago (fortuna...

commodorejohn

The graciousness of my relatives was the only reason I wasn't out of house and home.

commodorejohn

As for the ACA fines, there either has to be a driving force to get healthy people to get insurance, or we move to single-payer. As someone who spent a total of about 14 months unemployed a few years back, scraping by on unemployment checks and goodwill from relatives while looking for work, then g...

commodorejohn

You have to admire Paul Ryan here. It's quite an achievement to spend seven years talking about doing something without ever coming up for a plan to do it, scramble at the last minute to get something together, manage to craft a bill that alienates half of the Republican party by slashing too much o...

commodorejohn

I dunno, but according to Kepler, the relative volumes of the five Platonic food groups are such that they can fit inside one another.

commodorejohn

Couldn't we just finally accept that no 2D rectangle will ever map to a spherical surface without bizarre distortions and, y'know, use a globe instead? I mean, what, we're supposed to be impressed that you switched from one wrong map to another wrong map?

commodorejohn

Just think of the achievements you could unlock!

commodorejohn

I didn't know there was such a thing, but now all I can picture is the inevitable awkward moment where you invite someone over and their phone auto-discovers it.

commodorejohn

Isn't the problem that the parties DON'T want the others to do their own thing? For example gay marriage, neither party accepts the states doing their own thing, both sides won't quit until it's legal/illegal everywhere. Not sure if that would change if the states broke into countries. Yes, that's ...

commodorejohn

gmalivuk wrote:Sorry, but your friend's right and free will isn't real.

We both know that you're only saying that because circumstances made it inevitable.

commodorejohn

...is there some alternate definition of "bidet" of which I'm not aware?

commodorejohn

Yeah, up here away from the major metropolitan centers of the state it's much more red-leaning.

commodorejohn

eSOANEM wrote:Turns out the gravity at my university is about 0.5% higher than the standard value.

It's that "freshman 15," y'know.

commodorejohn

The really funny part is that he should know that the person who stands to lose the most from any investigation of the circumstances surrounding his election is himself.

commodorejohn

Gosh, what a shocking twist that nobody saw coming. Not sure if you're being dismissive, but it is a pretty big deal that hard proof of him breaking the law has turned up. That was hardcore sarcasm. It is definitely a big deal, it's just amazing what a not-at-all-a-surprise it is when officials of ...

commodorejohn

That...makes a shocking amount of sense.

commodorejohn

Gosh, what a shocking twist that nobody saw coming.

commodorejohn

Frankly, I'm surprised it's that high.

commodorejohn

Hoo boy did this discussion just plunge down the rabbit-hole.

commodorejohn

I have definitely heard exactly that line of argument from various people I know who voted for him, for what that's worth.

Haven't heard it much since he started actually trying to do that shit, though.

commodorejohn

Why should Trump disavow David Duke's endorsement? It doesn't actually have anything to do with him. He can't help that David Duke likes him. Disavowing him is just a waste of time that gains him nothing, because his critics will just say "Oh well of course he WOULD say that wouldn't he"....

commodorejohn

Yeah, let's just take a moment here and remember what Nate Silver's prediction for the election was.

commodorejohn

And second... even if it makes sense to release selected SIGINT for the purposes of investigation, there are proper channels for doing that. Anonymous leaks to the f'king media by random people isn't anything close to the proper channels. Again, the entire problem is that the "proper channels&...

commodorejohn

The 4th Estate has so far been powerless to stop Trump's rise in any case. I'm not entirely sure what these leaks accomplish aside from proving to Trump supporters that the intelligence services are anti-Trump and are on the side of the liberal media. Well, they got Flynn ousted and lit a fire unde...

commodorejohn

Well, if it's whitetails, they absolutely will go out of their way to get hit, so I'd say it's a fair characterization.

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