Correct.

If you are not a tech person, right now from all the hype and news and bullshit, you would rightly assume that AI is an amazing revolution and you would barely have heard about its shortcomings.

Though that might've just been him thinking "stupid Europeans know only Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk. I'll just say Moscow, close enough."

This. I've had to descend a mountain as the sun was going down once (got stuck at the top due to weather for some time, and when it let up enough for a safe descent, it was late). It's absolutely not fun, even when there's still some light. Had it been dark, I think I would've taken my chances staying at the top rather than going down.

That said, anyone not a complete idiot checks things like "time of last cable car" a) in person, b) at the day, c) at the location. Because even there is an official website that is well-maintained (and that's already two big if's) things might change at the location due to weather, workers being ill, no tourists that day or whatever.

Also, checking in person means at least one other person knows that you're up there.

Stupid enough to breed, but not stupid enough to die before breeding.

I don't even order lettuce on a burger because it stinks when it wilts.

I deleted my Amazon account about a year ago. I now use Amazon as a catalog... I search for approximately what I want, and then when I find the exact brand and model number, I search for that and purchase it from a different online store that also delivers, or else I go to a physical store and get it.

It's a bit less convenient than Amazon, but not markedly so, and I'll be damned if I give that company another dime of my money.

All swimming pools in New York City are equivalent because they all use the same water.

People are bad at judge risk on their own. It's just not intuitive for us humans.

Eating vegetables exposes you to pathogen risks like Campylobacter, E. coli, Listeria, Salmonella. It would probably be best to cook your lettuce from now on, or not have it at all.

I connect it to the wifi so I get the updates overnight. If I'm not at home I can tether to my phone via wifi and get updates that way. Unlimited data on the phone is handy for that.

And, to complete that thought: (from Scrubs)

Yeah, their weird fixation with hydrogen isn't doing them any favours. It's a terrible fuel and the engines are complicated and underperforming.

I agree, they're not terrible—like, it's not a Cybertruck or Hummer EV—but they're not GOOD, either. You look at it and compare it to various other EVs and it's not as fast, doesn't go as far, isn't luxurious. It's just a Toyota and gives you no reason to buy it other than brand loyalty. The RAV4 is insanely popular despite also being (IMO) pretty mediocre. But it's a Toyota and it's reliable as hell and isn't more expensive than everything else in the same category.

Here is a web page with a summary of key points of Mind Children as well as of criticism of it:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikiversity.org%2Fwik...

Hans was working on this book when I was a visitor in his Mobile Robot Lab at CMU (1985-1986):
"Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence"
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMind-Ch...
      "Imagine attending a lecture at the turn of the twentieth century in which Orville Wright speculates about the future of transportation, or one in which Alexander Graham Bell envisages satellite communications and global data banks. Mind Children, written by an internationally renowned roboticist, offers a comparable experienceâa mind-boggling glimpse of a world we may soon share with our artificial progeny. Filled with fresh ideas and insights, this book is one of the most engaging and controversial visions of the future ever written by a serious scholar.
      Hans Moravec convincingly argues that we are approaching a watershed in the history of lifeâa time when the boundaries between biological and postbiological intelligence will begin to dissolve. Within forty years, Moravec believes, we will achieve human equivalence in our machines, not only in their capacity to reason but also in their ability to perceive, interact with, and change their complex environment. The critical factor is mobility. A computer rooted to one place is doomed to static iterations, whereas a machine on the prowl, like a mobile organism, must evolve a richer fund of knowledge about an ever-changing world upon which to base its actions.
      In order to achieve anything near human equivalence, robots will need, at the least, the capacity to perform ten trillion calculations per second. Given the trillion-fold increase in computational power since the end of the nineteenth century, and the promise of exotic technologies far surpassing the now-familiar lasers and even superconductors, Moravec concludes that our hardware will have no trouble meeting this forty-year timetable.
      But human equivalence is just the beginning, not an upper bound. Once the tireless thinking capacity of robots is directed to the problem of their own improvement and reproduction, even the sky will not limit their voracious exploration of the universe. In the concluding chapters Moravec challenges us to imagine with him the possibilities and pitfalls of such a scenario. Rather than warning us of takeover by robots, the author invites us, as we approach the end of this millennium, to speculate about a plausible, wonderful postbiological future and the ways in which our minds might participate in its unfolding."

If you read it, you will see there is a fundamental moral position of AI and robotics as our children given, as is said in the article, a position that the substrate of consciousness does not matter. So people who believe that might also feel a simulation of a salamander or snail darter is as good as the biological thing?

Personally, I have my reservations about this "Mind Children" idea -- not necessarily because of the arguable issue of substrate mattering but because I think making stable cooperative AI may be a lot harder than expected in the 1980s, given it took many millions of years to shape our organic intelligence by evolutionary means. So, it seems plausible to me that we might create stable-seeming or cooperative-seeming AI "mind children" and they might go unstable or uncooperative in a few years (after humanity and the rest of the biosphere has perhaps been "retired" in some fashion) -- leaving our part of the universe empty of awareness.

So, I think Hans makes good insightful points, but they are also very optimistic points overall. But ultimately, in the long term, Hans may well be right (if we get lucky).

And frankly, "Mind Children" is a far more optimistic and hopeful view for the future of humanity (or whatever it becomes) than what seems likely arising from current AIs being designed by the most competitive companies to act in competitive ways in capitalistic businesses to accumulate the most fiat-dollar ration units as quickly as possible. That approach to creating AI just does not seem to me likely to end well, as it ignores the concern in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity." The only winner win such a race to build competitive AI will likely be the AI itself (if even that).

I think a way to make a healthy happy future more likely for humanity and whatever comes next with "Mind Children" is to build a socially-better world now, given that it is plausible that our moral path out of any AI singularity may have a lot to do with out moral path into it.

What is the safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria?

I'm starting to think prevention of gender dysphoria has to occur on a social level. It would start with cracking down on parents and K-12 teachers who perpetuate gender stereotypes ("you're not allowed to do this because you're a boy") to children in their care.

Given the right wing's crackdown on abortion on a fetal personhood theory, why shouldn't adoption be promoted?