Climate change could cause mass exodus by mid century

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 3:39:49 AM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2016 at 3:11:14 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jul 2016 13:47:15 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

So the driver/passenger doesn't get to decide?

Thankfully, no.

That's just plain silly, because automated systems will continue to be far more
limited than human beings. So it *will* be possible for criminals to commit
assassination by putting sufficiently realistic dummies... or fresh corpses...
in front of moving cars, if no possibility of an override exists.

Machines aren't at the point that they can "deserve" trust.

These mindless machines will have to be kept in carefully controlled, limited access environments, similar to railroad tracks or subway tunnels.

On Tuesday, 20 December 2016 09:39:49 UTC+1, Quadibloc wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2016 at 3:11:14 PM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jul 2016 13:47:15 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

So the driver/passenger doesn't get to decide?

Thankfully, no.

That's just plain silly, because automated systems will continue to be far more
limited than human beings. So it *will* be possible for criminals to commit
assassination by putting sufficiently realistic dummies... or fresh corpses...
in front of moving cars, if no possibility of an override exists.

Machines aren't at the point that they can "deserve" trust.

John Savard

Of course [being human] you are 457% correct.
[Congratulations! A prefect score!]
While human drivers remain 457% infallible we have absolutely no need of machines to do the driving.

Tiny Denmark, as one of the safest countries in the world in which to drive, managed to kill only 178 people with their absolutely perfect driving score.
Had machines been driving they would have struggled to reach one, one hundred and seventy eighth of that absolutely perfect, human score.
Moreover, journey times would have been unacceptable to humans who leave late for their commute every single day of their lives.

Danish buses were the only mode of transport with a terrifying score of 0 fatalities.
Suggesting that bus drivers are the worst example of humans being allowed to drive.
Let's make that the first place to install driving computers.
Since it can only improve on perfect human driver fatality score.

The USA had an even more perfect score of 35,097 road deaths.
Which, statistically speaking, makes North American drivers even more perfect than Danish drivers.

Global road deaths, thanks to perfect human drivers, were an absolutely insignificant 1.25 million.
Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that human beings are INFINITELY more qualified to drive than those murderous wannabe driving machines.

Have you heard the hilarious one liner about the robotic serial killer behind the wheel?
It deliberately "killed" one inattentive driver [so far] and made the international headlines?
Boom boom!
How's that for a case of mechanical, road rage mayhem, eh?

Keep death off the roads!
Let's keep the most intelligent "brain" on the planet behind every steering wheel.
How can you possibly improve on such perfection?

Do fighter pilots need computers to fly their planes?
No, of course not!
That would be just plain silly when humans can land completely unaided on the Moon.
And, do so while glaring at the back seat passenger, texting on two mobile phones and still eating chips while being drunk as a skunk.
Nah, machines don't even come close! ;-)

On Tue, 20 Dec 2016 03:05:24 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 3:27:53 AM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2016 at 6:06:05 AM UTC-6, wrote:
On Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at 6:36:01 PM UTC-4, Razzmatazz wrote:

Consumption tax is highly regressive

That is not necessarily true at all. In fact, the more you buy the more consumption tax you pay.

That makes it less regressive than a poll tax. But it is still worse than a
progressive income tax, which is presumably the standard of comparison being used.

One leading example of a proposed consumption tax is the Fair Tax, which does not tax purchases up to the poverty line. You only pay tax on purchases in excess of the poverty line and everyone pays the same rate. Hence the name, FAIR Tax.

Why is paying the same rate fair?

On Tue, 20 Dec 2016 00:34:48 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc
wrote:

However, the car will "make" the decision based on the criteria given to it by
the programmer.

That is not the way these systems work. In reality, the car will
almost certainly be making decisions based on deep learning methods,
meaning that there will be no easily identifiable criteria, and
certainly not any provided by programmers.

Although a machine could potentially have "better reflexes", there are good
reasons for society to be reluctant to allow self-driving cars even if doing so
would be a rational means of saving lives.

Even in their very limited current form, self-driving and
semi-autonomous vehicles are substantially safer than cars driven by
humans. And they're getting better faster. We're going to see injury
and death rates reduced by one or two orders of magnitude when most
vehicles are autonomous. That's going to be more than enough to not
just result in society allowing such vehicles, but mandating them in
many cases.

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 9:26:00 AM UTC-7, Chris.B wrote:

Do fighter pilots need computers to fly their planes?
No, of course not!

Trust the Force, Luke.

Couldn't resist, particularly as I just watched Rogue One the other day...

I'm not claiming that humans are infallible, but they can add some abilities
that machines lack; the two together can make a very powerful team.

John Savard

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 9:57:39 AM UTC-7, Chris L Peterson wrote:

Even in their very limited current form, self-driving and
semi-autonomous vehicles are substantially safer than cars driven by
humans. And they're getting better faster. We're going to see injury
and death rates reduced by one or two orders of magnitude when most
vehicles are autonomous. That's going to be more than enough to not
just result in society allowing such vehicles, but mandating them in
many cases.

ObSF: Sally, by Isaac Asimov.

John Savard

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 9:57:39 AM UTC-7, Chris L Peterson wrote:

That is not the way these systems work. In reality, the car will
almost certainly be making decisions based on deep learning methods,
meaning that there will be no easily identifiable criteria, and
certainly not any provided by programmers.

Deep learning techniques would indeed be used for the things we don't know how
to "program" - how to *recognize* a human being, how to control a moving
vehicle, and so on and so forth.

But it would still have to be possible to control such a vehicle - to impart to
it a request to go to a given destination. One still needs to tell it *what it
is supposed to do*. Crashing into a wall instead of squashing the jelly-like
objects in front of it... would be done in service of those fundamental goals
which would have to be set for the vehicle explicitly, even though the skills
it uses *to* do these things would be achieved by deep learning rather than
programming in large part.

John Savard

On Tue, 20 Dec 2016 10:18:16 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc
wrote:

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 9:57:39 AM UTC-7, Chris L Peterson wrote:

That is not the way these systems work. In reality, the car will
almost certainly be making decisions based on deep learning methods,
meaning that there will be no easily identifiable criteria, and
certainly not any provided by programmers.

Deep learning techniques would indeed be used for the things we don't know how
to "program" - how to *recognize* a human being, how to control a moving
vehicle, and so on and so forth.

But it would still have to be possible to control such a vehicle - to impart to
it a request to go to a given destination. One still needs to tell it *what it
is supposed to do*. Crashing into a wall instead of squashing the jelly-like
objects in front of it... would be done in service of those fundamental goals
which would have to be set for the vehicle explicitly, even though the skills
it uses *to* do these things would be achieved by deep learning rather than
programming in large part.

No, we don't tell it what to do (beyond the high level control of
providing a destination- no different than we do with a human driver).
We obviously provide rule classes, such as ethical guidelines, road
rules, etc. Again, no different from human drivers. But there still
isn't going to be a rule that requires a wall over a human, for
instance. The deep learning is going to result in complex and largely
unpredictable behaviors based on the actual experience of millions of
autonomous vehicles.

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 11:52:31 AM UTC-5, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Tue, 20 Dec 2016 03:05:24 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 3:27:53 AM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2016 at 6:06:05 AM UTC-6, wrote:
On Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at 6:36:01 PM UTC-4, Razzmatazz wrote:

Consumption tax is highly regressive

That is not necessarily true at all. In fact, the more you buy the more consumption tax you pay.

That makes it less regressive than a poll tax. But it is still worse than a
progressive income tax, which is presumably the standard of comparison being used.

One leading example of a proposed consumption tax is the Fair Tax, which does not tax purchases up to the poverty line. You only pay tax on purchases in excess of the poverty line and everyone pays the same rate. Hence the name, FAIR Tax.

Why is paying the same rate fair?

Idiot.

On Tue, 20 Dec 2016 16:00:27 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 11:52:31 AM UTC-5, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Tue, 20 Dec 2016 03:05:24 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Tuesday, December 20, 2016 at 3:27:53 AM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
On Thursday, July 14, 2016 at 6:06:05 AM UTC-6, wrote:
On Wednesday, July 13, 2016 at 6:36:01 PM UTC-4, Razzmatazz wrote:

Consumption tax is highly regressive

That is not necessarily true at all. In fact, the more you buy the more consumption tax you pay.

That makes it less regressive than a poll tax. But it is still worse than a
progressive income tax, which is presumably the standard of comparison being used.

One leading example of a proposed consumption tax is the Fair Tax, which does not tax purchases up to the poverty line. You only pay tax on purchases in excess of the poverty line and everyone pays the same rate. Hence the name, FAIR Tax.

Why is paying the same rate fair?

Idiot.

In other words, you can't defend your opinion.