Fun fact: Dick, for his part, thought Lem was the alias for a committee of Communists dedicated to destroying science fiction.
https://culture.pl/en/article/philip-k-dick-stanislaw-lem-is...
Readit Newsbbctol commented on Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans (1975) depauw.edu/sfs/backissues... · Posted by u/pmoriarty
bbctol commented on Why Silicon Valley Shouldn’t Work with the Pentagon nytimes.com/2018/04/19/op... · Posted by u/raleighm
> So the moral benefit you're proposing extends insofar as we prevent China from taking over the US. How much do you think Silicon Valley needs to cooperate with the military to prevent replacement by the Chinese?
A lot. Whether or not we like it, automation, AI and autonomous weapons are going to become a huge part of the modern battlefield. Silicon Valley needs to be a big part of that process. If you abdicate your role in technology like this, you don't just make it go away. All you do is cede control of it to someone who is willing to do it. Who doesn't share your sense of morality. How, exactly, is that better?
I see. Did you read the article?
bbctol commented on Why Silicon Valley Shouldn’t Work with the Pentagon nytimes.com/2018/04/19/op... · Posted by u/raleighm
There's no reason to make that calculation. The military does it for us, and then they offer to pay people to do the work they deem important. My point is that refusing to do that work out of some sense of principle is misguided, naive, and wrong.
Of course there's a need to make that calculation. The military's calculation is based on people's willingness and reluctance to work for them, and they offer to pay because they have to. The military would be happy to have you work for them for free, if you think what they do is so important.
Your point is that working with the military is good, because being ruled by China would be worse than the current situation. So the moral benefit you're proposing extends insofar as we prevent China from taking over the US. How much do you think Silicon Valley needs to cooperate with the military to prevent replacement by the Chinese?
bbctol commented on Why Silicon Valley Shouldn’t Work with the Pentagon nytimes.com/2018/04/19/op... · Posted by u/raleighm
How much collaboration from private tech does the US military need to maintain global dominance? Where does this line of reasoning end? How much of your day, specifically, should you instead be spending supporting the armed forces?
bbctol commented on The Quest for the Next Billion-Dollar Color bloomberg.com/features/20... · Posted by u/relham
One of the interesting ways I found out about this was in a history class that was talking about "royal" fabrics. These were fabrics that only royalty could own. And while there was the general "lets make a rule to distinguish us from the common people" there was also that challenge that some colors were so rare because the pigments were only available to make them in very small quantities. As a young man it amazed me that people had fights over what color clothes you could wear or that purple pants would be 10x the expense of white or grey pants.
It blew my mind when I first realized why pigments were so valuable in the ancient world: before modern mass-production of countless different mixable pigments (and now, digital displays that can render almost any color the eye can see) a person would literally not be able to see a certain shade their entire life except on a certain material. The distinct color of royal purple would have been an experience to see, in the same way we react to rare colors like Vantablack or International Klein Blue today.
bbctol commented on Decades-Old Graph Problem Yields to Amateur Mathematician quantamagazine.org/decade... · Posted by u/digital55
This is precisely what I mean by "beyond mere disagreement". It's not enough to disagree; his character must be attacked as well.
de Grey seems like a great guy; he's a fantastic speaker, I generally agree with his vision of humanity, and this proof is impressive. I haven't attacked his character, nor do I plan to.
With respect to his work on resisting human aging, he hasn't produced anything of value.
bbctol commented on Decades-Old Graph Problem Yields to Amateur Mathematician quantamagazine.org/decade... · Posted by u/digital55
Well, many of their ideas challenge the traditional mental model we have about humans and humanity. I think people feeling particularly offended or uncomfortable with that shouldn't surprise us.
There's also the tiny issue that he hasn't produced anything of value.
bbctol commented on The murder that shook Iceland theguardian.com/news/2018... · Posted by u/CraneWorm
No large cities?
bbctol commented on The Cold Case of the Max Headroom Signal Intrusion realclearlife.com/crime/f... · Posted by u/alex_young
This is a perennial story, but the best treatment of it, in my opinion, remains Chris Knittel's 2013 re-investigation of the case [1] for Vice Motherboard.
[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pgay3n/headroom-h...
Unrelated, but it's fascinating to see an article from 2013 reference Andrew Auernheimer as a benign hacker. That's turned into a hell of a story on its own, huh.
But that's only a retrospective justification and it doesn't really explain how Hamlet comes to be so fixed on revenge.
Also, speaking of predators and prey, I love the description of young Fortinabras early on:
That's why his last lines are all about his fear that everyone will misinterpret what has happened, and regret that he doesn't have enough time to tell Horatio the truth. "O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,/Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!" and "So tell him, with th' occurrents, more and less,/Which have solicited. The rest is silence." and so on. (or, for that matter, his whole speech about "I know not “seems.”")
So I think it's less that we're meant to doubt Hamlet's sanity, and more that Shakespeare deliberately set up a weird scenario so that only the audience can understand that Hamlet is sane.