king07828

Gender provides close to a 50-50 split, which is not provided by all demographics. But if you want to use height or any other demographic to analyze the proposal of two seats per political office, then please go ahead and analyze it that way instead of getting stuck on gender politics.

Alternatively, make each elected office require a man and a woman to be independently elected to that office. Have the decision making power split equally between the two 50-50 so that both must agree before taking action (e.g., signing or vetoing bills, or casting votes for bills). Each political party would provide both a male candidate and a female candidate for each office.

Could the Monero system be modified to create a voting system that maintains the secret ballot? From an engineering perspective, It seems like the currency and monetization aspects be pulled out/minimized and the untraceable transactions aspect used to record votes.

Could the Monero system be modified to create a voting system that maintains the secret ballot? I.e., pull out the currency aspect and use the untraceable transactions aspect to record votes.

As the Devil's Advocate, one can argue that the fraud was perpetrated at the peon level of the loan originators, who originated loans to people that could not afford the loans. The executives hands were washed clean by the ratings agencies that gave out AAA ratings. Those high ratings were "reasonable" because the loans were consolidated into CDOs and the top traunche(s) of the CDOs can handle a few missed payments from some of the debtors. In hindsight, many of those products probably should not have been AAA rated (especially ones that consolidated lower traunches of other CDOs). If there was a law that stated that ratings agency executives go to jail when AAA rated products fail (i.e., make them strictly liable for top rated products instead of relying on reputation alone), those executives would likely pay better attention to which products get AAA ratings. Looking back, there was no such law and the ratings agencies were free to give out improper ratings backed by their reputations.

Skipping back to private consumer data, a law that clearly states that executives go to jail when there is a breach of private consumer data would likely increase the chances that the executives will pay better attention to what data is collected, how data is stored, and how data is protected.

Tangential topic: an interesting regulatory idea would be to have mandatory jail time for all executives (and board members) of a company of a minimum size that is successfully sued in a class action for more than X dollars. Make it strictly liable so that no direct knowledge is required to convict so as to punish executives who allow their companies to harm the public. If an executive allows their company to harm the public, then that person is not fit to serve as an executive.

Frustration comes from laws and punishments that are optimized for less than 100% enforcement (i.e., harsh punishments for those who actually get caught) being enforced 100% of the time. Laws and punishments should be updated to account for the likelihood of enforcement.

An additional alternative to fellowships: 1) start a cryptocurrency that is tied to the Project 2) each project release pays N coins to developers/maintainers based on merit (e.g., lines of code) 3) third parties can purchase coins to place bounties on requested features and bug fixes, which are paid out upon release. The source code stays open and third parties have the option to accelerate improvements and bug fixes with financial incentives, which creates and economy to reward the developers and maintainers.

Imprisonment doesn't always rehabilitate and is perhaps linked to not properly weighting the reactions of others and long-term consequences that are in response to one's own actions. I wonder what the effects would be of requiring inmates to handwrite or type a 400 word essay (i.e., just over a page, written from scratch, no cut and paste, each inmate has to write their own) every day responding to the stimulus of "What did you do today to improve your life and the lives of those around you?". Any response is sufficient, even if it is off topic or similar to prior responses. I'd be curious to learn if the inmates would begin to more properly weight others' reactions and long term consequences.

Agreed that without any constraints, it could become a Sisyphean task.

The exercise then becomes one of finding the minimal constraints needed to achieve the desired results. Please correct if needed, but looking at the Dota 2 neural network [1], it boils down to generating an input State vector from the Dota 2 bot output interface, running the state Vector through an lstm (of sufficient length) to generate an output State vector, and generating the inputs for the Dota 2 bot input interface from the output State vector. Update this network (1) to have the input State Vector generated from a convolutional network that feeds a fully connected Network and uses the frame buffer as input and (2) to have the final outputs of the neural network be keyboard and mouse commands instead of dota 2 bot input interface commands, then let the network train itself. The number of elements in the state vector, the number of convolutional layers, the number of lstm layers, and the number of layers and elements in each fully connected hidden layer could each also be determined by a recurrent neural network.

[1] https://towardsdatascience.com/the-science-behind-openai-fiv... (see the image under "The Architecture")

[ random capitalization powered by Google speech dictation ]

Agreed.

One of the next significant moments could be taking the current Dota 2 algorithm and massaging it to use human style inputs and outputs. Please correct if needed, but the current Dota 2 algorithm boils down to (1) a fully connected network that generates an input state vector from the Dota 2 bot output interface, (2) an LSTM of sufficient length that generates an output state vector from the input state vector, and (3) another fully connected network that generates the Dota 2 bot interface inputs from the output state vector. This could be updated to have (1a) a convolutional network that feeds into a fully connected network, where the input to the convolutional network is the frame buffer (and perhaps the audio output) and the output of the fully connected network is the input state vector, (2) the same or similar LSTM network, and (3a) a fully connected network that outputs keyboard and mouse commands instead of DotA 2 bot interface inputs.

It is an open question as to whether current compute power is sufficient for this massage.

Agreed that the strategy is an interesting part.

Another interesting part will be creating an AI / neural network that can utilize inputs that are closer to human level inputs (e.g., using the frame buffer and audio out as input to the neural network and passing the outputs of the neural network to a keyboard and mouse driver). Just let the network train itself without having a human laboriously determine the topology of the neural network. Such a neural network can then be applied to several different types of games / problems much more quickly than at present where significant human labor is required to generate deeply customized neural networks for each game / problem.

> how it could possibly be useful

1 create a GPU friendly cryptocurrency where the payload includes a two dimensional data set (or image) that is processed with a standardized neural network model

2 let programmers pay a mining fee to expedite execution

3 instead of GPUs doing nothing but redundant calculations and getting replaced by ASICs, mining GPUs can dual purpose mine and execute arbitrary code

Will it be efficient, probably not. It does kill two birds with one stone

What is the problem? Patents allowed Google (page rank) to get a toehold in its respective market that was dominated by other players.

This is a 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater' issue. Change the patent system too much, and inventors will not be able use their ideas to compete against the big money of established players.

To those who voted this down simply because of the opinion that judges shouldn't make law, please read up on common law [1]. The US is a mix of common law (judge made law) and civil law (statute based law) [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_United_States

Agreed. Looking forward to when voice assistants can be taught new tricks by regular device users instead of having the new tricks be programmed by developers.

Why did the parent get downvoted?

Seems like getting a Linux kernel and a LAMP stack running on this would be a good first step. The technical challenge of doing it sounds fun and interesting. The real payoff may be when a billing and payment system is able to consolidate billing from processing clients and to distribute the payments to the owners of the processing clients based on the work performed

Cannot agree enough. Listen to your body and and make sure to pull back when it tells you to. I like to lift mild weights at night and do mild yoga in the morning (focussing on deep stretches). Helps to keep balance in mind and body.

Agreed that top-down solutions will likely be opposed by those who are already at the top.

And this is exactly the reason why the comment was posted. I.e., the debate about how to help laborers transition to different types of labor may not be the correct debate because it only pushes out the problem to the next technological revolution, which will likely come even faster. Improving technology reduces the need for labor while at the same time it increases opportunities for investment. Hence, perhaps the debate should focus on transitioning from a labor based society to an investor based society.

Instead, why not transition from a labor based system of resource acquisition for the masses to an investor based system of resource acquisition for the masses?

Assuming that the labor economy is dying, then all laborers (truck drivers and code writers) need to figure out how to transition from generating livable income with their labor to generating livable income from their investments.

Difficult? Yes. But is it any more difficult than attempting to acquire sufficient resources to live using obsolete labor skills?

Information asymmetry is a key concern that you have hit upon.

Will a manager release truthful aggregate information, such as averages and standard deviations so that individuals can see for themselves how they stack up against the group? Will this information also be correlated for height, weight, and other physiological parameters?

Or will a manager selectively hoard and release specific pieces of information to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the minds of the workers in an attempt to squeeze out more productivity?

Tariffs = bad, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot–Hawley_Tariff_Act

1 Business lobbies to get oppressive tariffs promising it will spur innovation

2 Tariff passes, business market value rises because of reduced competition

3 Business stops innovating because there is no foreign competition

4 Business shares stagnate without innovative product line because there is little need to innovate

5 Business lobbies for higher tariffs, repeat from step 2

It can be argued that tariffs are little more than Pyrrhic victories for the industries involved that hold back the nation as a whole and create a downward spiral

Cool, thanks for the heads up. After wiki-ing around, it looks like current whitespace technology is hobbled by forcing the broadcast device to get permission from an FCC database in order to transmit. With that constraint, I am not surprised it hasn't taken off.

The mirror image of your argument is just as applicable:

Law enforcement has already been seen to act adversarial to private interests, remotely logging out of computers is utilized to try and limit law enforcement's ability to obtain information beyond the scope of a warrant. There is little doubt that law enforcement would willingly take information beyond the scope of the warrant and later find a way to use it against them.

Another pie-in-the-sky option: pick a UHF television channel and de-license that portion of the spectrum. The IEEE would develop a standard (like what was done for Wi-Fi) that lets anyone be a local broadcaster or service provider

If the cycle is:

1 photographer uploads photo;

2 photo consumer (e.g., magazine) pays USD to Kodak for photo usage;

3 Kodak pays KodakCoin to photographer;

Then it looks like a cash grab and the chances of success may be limited because there is no demand driving the price of KodakCoin.

If the cycle is:

1 photographer uploads photo;

2a photo consumer buys KodakCoins from exchange;

2b photo consumer pays KodakCoins to Kodak for photo usage;

3 Kodak pays KodakCoin to photographer.

Then it may be viable because requiring the consumer to purchase coin creates demand for the coin.

A concern with people that write and prepare patents for inventors is that, in the desire to attack "patent trolls", the courts and laws have gone so far as to harm the basic rights of small inventors. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

If this harming of rights were true, then one could arguably expect funding for small startups to decline since those small startups would have less ability to protect their intellectual property and be more vulnerable to established competitors, which would result in the small startups having a lower likelihood of success.

As noted in the article, numbers for startups have declined, which lends credence to the idea that the courts and laws have gone too far. Furthermore, other jurisdictions (China) are picking up the slack and seeing increased startup activity.

>if the government tried to legislate this, it would screw it up

Agreed.

>Rather, [the government] should try to open the way for the private industry ...

Disagree, at least in part.

One source of personal frustration is the perception that rich techies who made their fortunes by writing programs without explicit government approval/legislation seem to spend a lot of time begging for government solutions (like UBI) or approvals for these problems without first attempting to use their money, brains, and tech with a little creativity to generate extra-governmental solutions.

My preference is for UBI to succeed so that I could spend 8 -10 hours a day pursuing personal projects and research instead spending 8-10 hours a day doing what someone else tells me to do in order to eat.

I am skeptical that UBI will work because paying people for nothing seems like it may be counterproductive by creating rampant inflation or by acting as a disincentive for most.

The rampant inflation argument, which most economists would use to argue against UBI, is interesting because most countries seem to be suffering from deflation. If deflation is a problem, then inflation created by UBI could be beneficial to an economy. But getting a government to start up a new UBI program to combat deflation does not seem like an efficient path for creating a solution because governments are slow, rarely do things correctly, and magnify their mistakes by taking years to correct initial imperfections.

Rather, focusing the brains, money, and technology of Silicon Valley on proving the idea with a cryptocurrency based UBI seems like a much more efficient approach to either 1) create a solution (the preferred option) or 2) settle the debate so that we can move on.

Update, actually there is some Crypto UBI work being done

[1] http://cryptoubi.org/

[2] https://www.mannabase.com/

[3] https://medium.com/@fcecin/the-basic-whitepaper-7e789f16abe

[4] http://www.greshm.org/files/greshm.pdf

[5] https://ourbasicincome.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/circles-univ...