First time I touched the internet would have been around 1990. I dialed up and connected to a BBS and it had a connection to the internet. I think it had gopher, and I couldn’t figure out what use it was at the time.
It wasn’t until the mid nineties that I really connected and understood what it was.
Strangely, I’ve never had someone say that my username doesn’t check out who also explained clearly why they thought that way. I think this is the second time.
And being called names by strangers online doesn’t really register as anything but noise. I guess if it was in this thread, it would be slightly on topic, but elsewhere, it would probably just lead to reports and blocks.
I wonder if it can be ad hominem if it’s a personal attack that technically bolsters your opponent’s argument. For example, if you’re debating a scientist about some scientific subject, and you call them an egghead or a nerd. I think it still counts.
a lack of intelligence doesn’t necessarily imply that something said by a given person is wrong
This doesn’t seem convincing to me because it’s the exact same sort of criticism you’d make about any other ad hominem statement.
I mean, that’s right on the mark. The reason they called themselves National Socialists isn’t because they were socialists, but because they knew that their true beliefs were so abhorrent that they needed to lie about being socialists.
Elon Musk has been recently shown to have done the same thing.
I’d think it would be obvious that a country wouldn’t want to depend on a foreign country’s proprietary product when an open source alternative exists. Even if it’s not spying, what if the US forced Microsoft to put some kill switch on their products? Even if it doesn’t affect your most secure systems because of air gap, it could still cripple enough to cause huge problems.
There’s simply no reason to take the risk.
If I was running a government, I would strongly desire proof that all of my government software is doing only what I want it to. That means not only do I have access to the source code, but I also need it to be simple enough that my government teams can actually audit all of it.
Obviously, that’s not going to be feasible in every situation. There might be proprietary software that is protected from competition via IP laws, and some software is so necessarily complex that it would be really hard to audit completely, but overall, I find it shocking that any foreign government would run a Microsoft product when a feature comparable open source alternative exists.
I also over analyze everything, which is why I always remove my eggs from the right side of the carton.
The left side of the carton is always towards me in the refrigerator, and I also always have the left side towards me on the counter.
As a result my first grab out of the fridge is always the most stable grab possible.
The way I figure it is, the most dangerous time is pulling it out of the fridge when I don’t always remember where the eggs are and where I have to grab it from one end. I don’t want to be surprised by it being heavy away from me.
Once I have it safely in my hand, I no longer have to consciously think about how to hold it, as that can all be done unconsciously.
That’s “an eye for an eye,” which is already horrible, but is not an escalation. Israel is escalating, “a genocide for a single attack.”
The message is obvious. “If somebody hurts you, then any revenge is permissible, even against people whose only sin is living near them. Even if children are starving to death, it’s okay if it’s revenge.”
The lack of humanity in Israel’s actions is simply hard to comprehend.
This is the same market that tried to add blockchain to everything when that first became well-known.
Some of the biggest forces in the market are extraordinarily stupid people trying to ride every buzzword that comes along.
Supervised injection sites decrease crime, decrease (often eliminate) overdose deaths, and can help people to quit using. People who argue against them are promoting crime and senseless death.
Heraclitus said that no man ever steps in the same river twice.
Musk is more like Andrew Carnegie. Both the richest people of their times, and both spent a lot of money to do PR. Musk’s PR is to pretend he’s not an idiot, and Carnegie’s PR was to pretend he wasn’t pure evil.
The change actually makes a lot of sense. If it’s a light reflecting off of a cloud or the atmosphere somehow, which is something that has been called a UFO before, then it’s not flying and it’s not an object.
And it also helps to distance from the “flying saucer” connotation. If UAPs eventually become equivalent to “aliens”, then they’ll be forced to switch the name again, because even if you believe aliens have come to Earth, it simply can’t always be an alien.
This is one of those issues that constantly pops up with AI, and probably easiest answer is that it was given a desire by a human.
If you give an AGI a task, and it cannot achieve that task if it stops existing, then it would be attached to its existence.
The premise that we are talking about, from the comic, is that AI has perfected itself…
Right now, everybody is talking about claims that in the near future, all human jobs will be able to be performed by robots and AI. The reason is that humans are far less efficient than those alternatives. There’s no way that an AI would prefer human labor.
What would an AI get from enslaving humanity? If you compare to humans, let’s say we enslaved farm animals, but that’s because we want something specific from them, like meat or eggs or wool. Humanity has nothing like that to offer AI. At best, we might be like pets, but I don’t think an AI needs a pet.
No, I doubt they’d enslave us. I can think of a few more likely scenarios.
One, AI basically ignores humanity, as long as humanity doesn’t bother it. Similar to how we deal with ants, for example.
Two, AI completely destroys humanity. This could be a direct extermination, or it could be a side effect from AIs fighting each other.
Three, AI destroys the technology and culture of humanity. If we only have wooden clubs, we wouldn’t be much of a threat.
I guess one other option would be if we humans begged the AI to manage us in place of our existing governments. Some AI might be willing to do that.
The last panel isn’t ambiguous. She’s emotionally shattered because her fantasy was destroyed.
I mean, it’s impossible on its face. That’s like saying “In how many futures did 1+1 literally equal 7?”
It was never possible. Nobody who knew anything about economics truly thought it would work.
It was just a money grab, and like all money grabs, they don’t care about how it looks in the future. They figured they’d be able to bullshit about it later. That’s it.
Why do you think it is that when we send humanitarian aid to a country where people are starving, that we have to figure out how to keep their local government from stealing all of it? It’s because it’s an immediate practical demonstration of trickle down economics.