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Comment Re:But, but, but..... (Score 1) 152

I was waiting for this one to come up, but yes, some things are absolutely worth eradicating. Nobody is petitioning to bring back polio or smallpox. Mosquito larvae compete for resources with other insect larvae, so fewer mosquitoes will mean more of whatever they're competing with for resources, which could replace them in the food chain.

Comment How would one measure this? (Score 4, Insightful) 53

How do they measure this? Did all the pirates magically agree to put Google Analytics on their web pages and share reporting with Muso? Or, in accordance with The Pirate Code (?!) do all pirate pages request the browser load http://muso.com/arr-trackme-1x... and (again, in accordance with The Pirate Code, I guess) the visitors configure their browsers to whitelist and load it? I am skeptical of any third parties who claim they "track" pirate site visits.

Comment Re:What is HUMAN intelligence? (Score 1) 199

The history of AI is all about modeling human intelligence, just like the models we have in natural sciences. If the model happens to be a very good match with reality, we may sometimes mistake one for the other. OTOH, they may be the same thing for all practical purposes.

I'm not sure if I have any deeper intelligence than a fancy language model. When we say that LLMs don't really understand things, then what exactly do we mean by understanding? In my personal definition, the meaning of something is simply the graph of its associated things. I consider something very meaningful if the graph has a lot of nodes and edges, and this also explains why simple things gain more meaning as we age.

Comment Re:Curious (Score 1) 336

So Who'll .. do the tough jobs

I think that for most use-UBI-to-deal-with-AI advocates, the premise is that robots will do that, and presumably would already be doing it by the time UBI is enacted.

If this is a problem (i.e. robots can't do it yet, or they can't do it as economically as humans), then you're not in a post-work situation yet, so you can't have a post-work utopia yet.

Keep improving those robots! You're not done until unemployment is over 90%, and ideally not until 100% though that may be asymptotic.

Comment Re:The question is... (Score 0) 336

What does *he* envision a hypothetical scenario where AI has taken over an extremely large amount of the labor?

Your question wouldn't make any sense to him or any other Trump supporter. Let me rephrase it so that it can be answered by MAGA.

What does he envision, in a scenario where the people Trump currently steals from, no longer have anything to steal? How does a thief find new victims once the old ones are used up?

I think the best MAGA answer to that, is that someone will own the AIs, and reap the "wages" that the AIs earn. Steal from them, because they'll have something to steal. AI will be no different than anything else which changes the distribution of prey: you just gotta keep up with who and where the prey are.

Comment Re:The way to fight this. (Score 1) 192

If people boycotted the expensive software options for one year and slammed the IRS with paper forms, this would be reversed post haste.

If we did that, do you know how much it would inconvenience every House member and Senator?

None at all. Their lives will be as damaged as a bulldozer that just ran over Arthur Dent.

Comment Re:just stop (Score 1) 192

Reforming the tax code will cause some people to pay less tax and some other people to pay more.

Whatever your approach, the people who would end up paying more, think your "reform" idea is stupid and evil. I don't remember all their detailed criticisms, but their overall tone was clearly unfavorable.

They hate it. They hate you. Why didn't you make someone else pay more instead?

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