nstents

Reading Damn Interesting every day, I had no idea. Someone used your insults on AOL, or something like that, repeatedly. Thank you for the laughs.

I can't continue the thread to answer your last, more definite, question.

I used an indefinite article on purpose in order to not go to a particular person. The topic I posed was on the relationship, not on persons. So any democratic socialist mayor for that matter.

If that's an important issue for you, could you use your collective resources more thoroughly in addressing it?

Is not a Democratic Scoialist also a Socialist these days?

What's that got to do with anything?

I love that question. It's a great question because it's designed to elicit avenues of attack.

I'd say that Democratic Socialism, today among the general population of the United States the term Socialism has no set definition, no real understanding of its roots, and no real concept of how it would be enacted politically in a Democratic society.

So I'm really not sure what you mean by Democratic Socialist. I think you mean as defined by Wikipedia.

If so, in short I see Marx as being a root among many to Socialism, and so on to Democratic Socialism. The dogma from Marx follows through to an application for people to obtain their "needs": "More of whatever, less expensive, and better evrything! And AI is actually Socialist, so let's do it and vote for me!!!" That kind of cynical approach.

It's definitely being redistributed through the market. Also, I believe there are efforts underway to create open source AI.

I'm not advocating a Marxist dogma, so I can't affirm "we should take and redistribute AI capacity in some way".

I'd "need" to know what you see my interpretation of needs as being before I could answer better. But I'll give it a try without a dictionary.

In its most fundamental sense, a need is a requirement for life to continue and reproduce. These requirements typically involve the abilities to compete, to obtain food, to have shelter, to mate and protect the young, etc.

Isn't AI to serve needs? For example, the need to find bugs in software so somebody can compete economically and employees can meet their needs as described above? To buy food, shelter, raise children?

Quite seriously, I think this is an important underpinning of why AI is advancing, and where it's taking us. The fact that it overlaps with Marx, at least to me, is a fascinating and incredible irony, because its success is an application of the very seductive message behind Marxism.

I appreciate everyone's time in challenging this.

I'm suggesting that AI fundamentally meets a tenet of Marxist dogma, and I'm surprised a Socialist mayor hasn't taken advantage of that fact.

Now that's interesting. One reason I fear AI is exactly because of the relationship you call a word game.

The actual quote seems to be “We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72290-we-ve-begun-to-raise-... among many other sources.

I'm not sure I see the rationale behind your response. Could you please let me know where I victim blamed, rather than endorsed personal responsibility for one's own wellbeing? Is there no case to be made against the well dressed, well adorned man, leaking money from his pockets going into a violent slum? Has he zero responsibility for not metaphorically fastening his seat belt against the bad drivers?

The context for my reasoned perspective is certainly there in my post. It's beyond the pale to suggest from it that I'm endorsing or otherwise promoting or supporting a rationale for police inaction and a low conviction rate for SA.

Look, there are reasons companies go through stringent interview processes and background checks for their new hires. There are reasons parents follow up on references for a baby sitter. There are reasons everywhere for people to make responsible efforts to limit potential hurts and damages from other people's purposeful bad actions.

The guy should do the same by not traipsing into a slum. It's a matter of personal responsibility because he personally suffers from the reasonable eventuality of doing so.

I have to take issue with your excising the context of my post, especially where the need for seatbelts is concerned: they're needed everywhere you drive. And even though steps are taken to assure we can drive the streets and roads without fear, yet I am personally to blame for not being cautious in protecting myself. Not because of the law, not because of a lack of societal effort to protect me, but because I ignored the need for personally limiting the consequences of bad actors acting badly. Please don't take this to a reductio ad absurdum argument.

Please also don't straw man me again by taking my point to a "massively different" scenario.

And lastly, thank you for silently accepting my point that there are cases, such as the man irresponsibly going into a violent slum, where a person should take special precautions. Perhaps if you can see the need for men to take special precautions then you can take sexism out of the equation and see the need for women doing the same.

From your perspective it may reflexively seem that women carry zero responsibility for other people's actions in the example you give. Yet at the same time a woman most certainly has a responsibility to herself, her future self who would have to live with the trauma...the many types of trauma...for knowingly going to an environment expected to harbor severe threats from other people.

As a counter to your position, imagine a well-dressed man with diamond and gold jewelry, a very expensive watch, and money spilling from his pockets, casually strolling into a slum known for its violence, and all the while thinking quite airily "It's not my fault if anything bad happens to me. No, not my fault at all."

I drive with my seatbelt on not because it's the law, and not because I'm afraid of my causing an accident. I drive with a seatbelt on because I have a duty to myself to take precautionary action against the inevitable irresponsible and potentially life threatening actions of others. Regardless of who's at fault, ignoring consequences does not diminish personal blame for suffering the outcome.

It will be interesting to see how much carbon dioxide is also created through this process.

Yes. Exactly.

No. As an educator (HS Maths) in order to effectively both educe and induce understanding it's never about feeling superior. That feeling is so very obstructive to a student's willingness to listen and perhaps more importantly to the deeper intrinsic satisfaction I get when a student says "OH! I get it!"

That's a really interesting question. I guess I can't judge myself without bias, and I've most often been told I'm too hard on myself. So again the answer would be no.

A sense of superiority due to status (including race, wealth, etc), and ability, is a stepping stone on the way to lessening the worth, and so humanity, of others.

Yes. https://finbold.com/norways-sovereign-wealth-fund-discloses-...

Some may not be aware that SpaceX is also an AI company.

In the 1980s, being not entirely adept at mathematics I recall scouring every library and bookstore I could find for any snippet that would explain a proof, or even a concept, so that I could understand it. Videotaped lectures by other professors were sometimes available on campus too.

On a daytime episode of David Letterman, Isaac Asimov predicted fiber optics would one day bring about television studios in people's homes: https://youtu.be/cIB1b_8hqB0?si=212sGzZ71VIZORML&t=696

All sources of understanding are so very much appreciated.

Other anecdotal accounts of very similar travels would offer a wider range of experiences, observations, and conclusions.

I think this is a distinction without a difference. Imagine an array of buttons. What do they do? The label is intrinsic to the button. I understand this is a perspective. But, taking this to another level, perhaps an absurd one,the button only sends messages and ideally reacts to show it's been activated.

I couldn't disagree more.

Every button has two jobs. One is to accurately convey what it will do. Two is to then do it.

Several of us can neither remember what your dynamic, curvy, arrowed, action lines do, nor can we extrapolate from them. They are an exercise in frustration. The nod to situational disability is appreciated, but most would have been useless without text descriptions.

I love a good tautology like Clarke's "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", but sometimes enough is enough!

"Accomodations are for people who need them not a shield for hyper-selfishness", namely people riding bicycles on sidewalks that are seen acting with an insane level entitlement while riding on dedicated walking lanes.

People act as people do regardless of their method of conveyance. A polite way of encountering a group walking where they should (and another should not ride) is to dismount the bicycle, say "excuse me" and walk through, then to remount and continue on the bike. In the case you mentioned, calling out in advance "excuse me, coming through" should just do it. If not, step up to bell ringing.

You should see what cyclists from Austin do on the Texas backroads, with their stopping in the middle of the lane at the top of a hill, doing the same on a tight curve, riding abreast... But again, people are people; they don't seem to realize road signs have a setback for a very good reason.

As seen in the 1969 film The Red Tent set in 1928, kites have also been used for lifting antennas into the air. https://youtu.be/b08-LFcZ98M?si=oAZF9203e6CGotYX&t=3327

As you point out, the difference between money and the tooth fairy is between their characteristics and rules. Economic theory then focuses on money, the economy, and their characteristics and rules to develop insights into patterns, behavior, and previously unseen characteristics inherent to economic theory. Anyone is free to create a theory of tooth fairies and attempt to find similar relevance.

It would be irresponsible in the extreme for the wealthy and powerful to not unite in common cause for extending sway into the future even while still competing with each other in the present. It's what social units from families to small businesses to trans-national businesses to countries do all the time. This is just another example, and since the tendency of co-operative behavior even among competing interests extends into the distant past of life's evolutionary history it's unlikely we'll see it go away.

Would this be another wrapper for what will eventually become another ad delivery platform?

Having lived in Italy for 7 years as a teen, the word is that construction of commercial, governmental, and private sites will be shut down for sometimes years so the Italian government and bureaucracy can have its go in deciding what action to take. A Roman era catacomb was found when my sister's school was being expanded, and the Nuns running the school managed to hush it up pretty well. I imagine they explained to the working crew their loss of a job if word got out..

It seems reasonable a similar thing happened here even as far back as the 1870s when the original construction was taking place.