So here’s the thing. I’m willing to bet large amounts of money that the robot is using some kind of machine learning algorithm.

Which means, that all we can do is set it a task, not tell it HOW to achieve the desired result. As a corollary to this, we also don’t understand the robots “reasoning”.

Where am I going with this?

Well, we’ve told the robot to go through the door. It’s figured out how to do this. And now, we’re fucking with it to force it to come up with new solutions. Well, the most obvious solution is to eliminate the pesky human preventing it from achieving its goal.

I’m not actually joking here.

Don't entirely agree with that. There are plenty of skilled artists making really beautiful pieces for reasonable amounts of money. I had a local jeweller create a custom ring for my wife and another create a wedding band from titanium for me.

Neither cost "2 months salary", or even close to that, but both are really cool pieces that are completely unique.

I think it was a lower % not the amount of money

On a side note, every week before and after bowling league, i poured a ridiculous amount of money into the arcade game Dragon's Lair.

Monsanto is like Microsoft... they are these hulking titans of their respective industries, who work as hard as they can to stay ahead of the game, sometimes through questionable activities. However, their contributions on the whole are incredible, driving generations of progress in their respective fields through investment, research, and release of progressively more useful tools (on the whole).

There is a similar debate regarding pharmaceutical companies and their profiteering from the invention of life saving drugs... its easy to paint a company as a 'bad guy' for charging large amounts of money for medicine that a person needs to live. But is it the company's responsibility to forgo shareholder profits in order to maximally help more people with their drug, or is it the spectrum of regulations imposed by a representative government that should be entrusted with that responsibility?

GMO agriculture products that are drought tolerant, flood tolerant, self pollenating, etc etc, will likely save our buns in the next 100 years. If anything we should be doubling down on how much effort we put into GMO production and selection, to help drive a technological boom in that industry before we've mismanaged ourselves into a crisis.

@bcglorf

i don't think using @drradon 's example of anarchy a good use as a rebuttal.

now may be larken rose's vision is an extreme example,taken from the von mises institute,and where they dreamily offer a counter to police with a "non-aggression principle".while cute and adorable,humans tend to be far more vicious and violent in nature,especially when desperate.

but again,i think our respective approaches to authority will not find common ground here.

i do not seek a leader,but i am ok with a representative,though i do not seem to have any in my government at the moment.

i find it curious,amazing and not a little disturbing just how easily people will quietly,and tacitly accept a police that has become more and more draconian,violent and aggressive while SIMULTANEOUSLY decreasing the citizens rights to protect themselves,defend themselves and resist unlawful police practices.

because they simply change the law to make what WAS illegal...legal.with a stroke of a pen.

and i simply cannot respect when an american says,without any sense of justice or history,to just sit down,shut up and do what you are told.

while claiming they are a patriot,waving their american flag made in china.

the history of law enforcement in this country reveals that their main job,their main focus and duty is NOT to the poor,the dispossessed or the marginalized.

the police's job is to protect those who hold assets,who have money and wield political power.

and before you say anything,i am quite aware that there are some,and they are the majority,who do their job with honor and distinction.my argument is not about singular police officers but rather the systematic problems inherent in the system.

lets take my city for example.
i am blessed enough to live adjacent to a very wealthy and influential housing development.

average police response time?=7 minutes.

right down the street,not 10 miles down the road,is a depressed area of town.industry and manufacturing abandoned that area 20 years ago.it is stricken with prostitution,heroin addicts and abject poverty.

average police response time?=22 minutes

yet the main police station is in THAT area.

or should i bring up the history of american labor movement?
where the coal miners in west virginia decided to strike,and because the owners of the mines were politically connected.the governor sent in the state police to...and this should send chills down your spine...shoot any miners unwilling to go back to work.

and they did.
they murdered any coal miner still willing to stand up against the owners of the mine,and this included women and children.

now lets examine that for a minute.
workers for a coal mine decided to strike for better working conditions (which were horrible) and actually have a day off,besides sunday (because:god).

the owner of the mine,who was losing immense of amount of money due to zero production of coal,called the governor to have the state police,a civil institution,sent in to put those people down.to force them to either get back to work or face violence.

*now the owner brought in his own mercenary group to assist in the process of intimidation,strong arm tactics and violence.

i will add one more story that is personal,and comes from my own family,and may possibly explain my attitude towards police in general.

my father was born in 1930,in alton illinois.
now that small town had been hit particularly hard during the depression.my father spoke of not having indoor plumbing until he went into the navy,and how the floors in his childhood home were simple boards over dirt.

he grew up extremely poor,and my grandfather struggled to find steady work,and i gather from what my father told me.my grandpa made bootleg beer out of the bathtub.so he and his 6 brothers and 1 sister had to bathe in the mississippi river while grandpa tried to make money by selling illegal hooch.

my father also regaled me with stories of the chores he had as the youngest of 8 kids.it was his job every morning to head to the train tracks and pick the coal that dropped from the coal carts.(which he admitted to being lazy and stole directly from the very full coal cart itself while his brother kept an eye out for the station master).

my point is that my father grew up in desperate and poor times.

but one story always stood out,and i think it is because it has a wild west feel to it that always transfixed me,and i made him tell me the story over and over as a child.

when times are tough,people will do whatever they have to in order to survive,so my grandfather making illegal hooch was not the only illegalities being played out in that small town.neighbor upon neighbor did what they had to,and most were considered criminals in the eyes of the state.

so i guess one of my grandpa's friends was on the run from the law,and sought refuge at my grandpa's home.which he allowed,because neighbors take care of neighbors,at least they used to.

well,in a small town everybody knows everybody,and eventually three police officers showed up at my grandpa's house,and demanded that he turn over (i forgot the guys name).

and i remember the pride on my fathers face whenever he retold this story....

my grandfather stood tall on the top of his stairs facing his front door,holding his gun he was given during WW1 and told the police officers (which he knew.small town remember?),that if they took one step into his home..he would blow their heads off.

now this is a story retold from a childs perspective many years later.i am sure my fathers memory was a tad....biased..but i would bet the meaty parts were accurate.

now my question is this:
how would that exact same scenario play out in todays climate?

well,we would see on the 6 o'clock news how a family was tragically shot to death for harboring a criminal and that the police had done EVERYTHING in their power to avoid this kind of violence.

i know this is long,and i hope i didn't lose you along the way,but i think we should not dismiss the very real slow decent into a society that silently obeys,quietly accepts more and more authoritarian powers all in the name of "safety",and that any form of resistance is to be viewed as "criminal" and "troublesome".

so while i agree that "when should we shoot a cop" should be in the realm of:let us try to never do that.

i also cannot agree to placing cops on a hero platform as if their job is somehow sacrosanct and beyond reproach.they are human beings,of limited intellect,whose main job it is to protect those who own property,have wealth and wield political power.

and with the current disparity and blatant inequality their job has been more and more focused on keeping those 30% undesirables down.

the poor,the destitute,the marginalized,the addict and the junkie and the petty criminals.

those are a threat to the "better" citizens.they are a blight on a community that should be cleansed from the tender eyes of those who are deemed more "worthy".

rich folk may wring their hands,and lament the plight of the poor and wretched,but for GOD's sakes! they don't want to actually SEE them!

so a police officer can do all the mental gymnastics they want in order to justify their place in society,but at the end of the day,they serve the elites.

and they always have.

Who said it would be free?

It would be unlimited and therefore approaching a zero-cost, but it won't be free. As the video explains, fusion plants will cost a ridiculous amount of money to build.

But we either do it, or forget about a hi-tech (i.e. energy intensive) future.

Gorgeous. I went there last summer. It is that stunning. I strongly suggest it as a vacation destination to anyone adventurous.

BUT.....

When you spend the time, energy, and exorbitant amounts of money to go see the unspoiled wilderness and nature, and some asshole ruins it by flying their drone overhead for a few hours, it's enraging.
That happened to us twice (maybe by the same group at different places, we aren't sure). I was ready to grab that drone and throw it in the berg filled lagoon, or the beautiful collimated basalt waterfall they were flying in front of. I had to wait over an hour at the waterfall for the assholes to move out of the picture....they had walked past the 'don't go past this sign' signs to get the shots they wanted right in front of the falls, and refused to move or get back on the trail.

If you own a drone, please be respectful of the rules and of others, or know that it's your fault when someone loses it and destroys your toy. Don't act like the world belongs to you, and other people's peaceful enjoyment of natural areas don't matter.
Your youtube views don't trump my right to peace and quiet in nature.
I feel like drones need to be regulated in public spaces for that reason. Not totally banned, but given specific days when it's allowed and make most parks and all natural parks off limits at all other times.
Drone footage is amazing, drones buzzing overhead are amazingly annoying.

Correlation and causation is distinguished by controlling for variables directly where the list of possible covariates or confounders is known & limited, or when it is not, using say machine learning techniques to infer a model from the data and repeatedly cross validating it with different test and training samples to ensure that it is rigorous. Read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

There is nothing about repeatability.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-validation_(statistics)

Repeatability has nothing to do with testing for correlation / causation. Okay, you repeat an experiment. It looks like X causes Y, like in the first test. But it turns out that Z (that you didn't consider or can't measure) is acting on X & Y at the same time, creating the appearance of a relationship between X & Y where none exists. Read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding

If anything the political hype is underblown. Politics deals with the immediate, tangible and the "what directly helps me now." With the financial crisis, politics in the US has decreed that any action on climate change that might marginally impact wages or living standards is out of bounds.

If we assume the risks are real - polluting has specific benefits (cost reduction to polluters) and incredibly dispersed costs which are almost imperceptible for decades while the damage is being done. It requires global coordination for a cost on carbon to be politically feasible. And the effects are seen at least 40 years into the future:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-The-40-Year-Delay-Between-Cause-and-Effect.html

That's the problem, by the time the effects are obvious, it will be too late to react. In the meantime, you have massive amounts of money, interest groups, politics and delayed effect all acting against any action being taken.

With the amount of money being spent by really smart people I'm sure something about it is valid. It's just, right now, they're all yammering about facts not in evidence. Also, as their quantum computers are actually slower and less powerful than contemporary computers, occam's razor would suggest it's a elaborate black box scam with a couple Raspberry Pies burbling away inside. Until they start using them to increase my FPS, I'm not buying into the technobabble.

Look, just stop fucking around and release an updated x-wing and tie fighter.

I'd pay stupid amounts of money for that.

Give it decent HOTAS and VR support and it'd go up to ludicrous amounts.

Are you losing laps to your competitors?
Are you paying your "15 minute" oil change place proportionate amount of money that those guys are getting paid for their 1.92second service?

This is just a slight variation of his regular message, which does pertain to the kids of today. Mike Rowe has pushed mightily for kids to re-think the idea of 'You must go to college' because what he said is true, there are a HUGE number of skilled trade openings that no one is filling.

These trades pay a large amount of money; for instance, we recently had to pay for a skilled plumber to fix my wife's shower and with slightly less than 1 hour of labor, our bill (sans parts) was 147 dollars. They usually work on the apprentice system, so after 4-5 years you are considered a Master level if you do all the requirements. The problem is, these jobs require actual work and aren't 'sexy'. However, if you compare them to the nature of college and the white collar job market these days, you end up making a ton of money without crippling college debt. You also have a dedicated job market, something you can't guarantee with many non-science/engineering/math degrees.

It might have been better had he said, "Be aware of other options, sometimes following your dreams isn't the easiest path." For me, I got lucky and followed my dreams into a good job before I had to take disability and retire early. I was fortunate enough to have good employee-option tech stocks as well or I might be very poor today. If I had to do it again, in today's world, I might have eschewed college and went for a skilled trade.

The problem i have with the first problem is not one of statistics or odds but one of your financial situation. If you played the game with ten cents i'm sure it wouldn't work out the same as if you played with a thousand dollars or even more extreme a million. The larger the value to one personally the less chance you will take losing it. In the end keeping a large amount of money even if the odds of doubling it are much better is completely a rational decision when it makes a difference in your life. What odds would you need to double all you had opposed to losing it all. I would call your choice very rational and analytic regardless of odds.

You need an extremely controlled situation to see if there is a bias and what it might be. I'm guessing i could manipulate the outcomes easily with the choice of participants and the amount of money involved.

Well, cheers for sticking with it anyway, I really appreciate it.

It's a one hour talk on the deficit in particular, and most of what she says is based on MMT principles that would add another 5 hours to her talk if she were to explain them. With neoclassical economics, you can sort of jump right in, given how they are taught at schools and regurgitated by talking heads and politicians, day in and day out. MMT runs contrary to many pieces of "common sense" and since you can't really give 10 hour talks everytime, this is what you end up with – bits and pieces that require previous knowledge.

I'd offer talks by other MMT proponents such as William Mitchell (UNSW), Randy Wray (UMKC) or Michael Hudson (UMKC), but they are even less comprehensible. Sorry. Eric Tymoigne provided a wonderful primer on banking over at NEP, but it's long and dry.

Since I'm significantly worse at explaining the basics of MMT, I'm not even going to try to "weave a narrative" and instead I'll just work my way through it, point by point.

@notarobot

"Let's address inequality by taking on debt to increase spending to help transfer money to large private corporations."

You don't have to take on debt. The US as the sole legal issuer of the Dollar can always "print more". That's what the short Greenspan clip was all about. Of course, you don't actually print Federal Reserve Notes to pay for federal expenses. It's the digital age, after all.

If the federal government were to acquire, say, ten more KC-46 from Boeing, some minion at the Treasury would give some minion at the Fed a call and say "We need $2 billion, could you arrange the transfer?" The Fed minion then proceeds to debit $2B from the Treasury's account at the Fed (Treasury General Account, TGA) and credits $2B to Boeing's account at Bank X. Plain accounting.

If TGA runs negative, there are two options. The Treasury could sell bonds, take on new debt. Or it could monetise debt by selling those bonds straight to the Fed – think Overt Monetary Financing.

The second option is the interesting one: a swap of public debt for account credits. Any interest on this debt would be transfered straight back in the TGA. It's all left pocket, right pocket, really. Both the Fed and the Treasury are part of the consolidated government.

However, running a deficit amounts to a new injection of reserves. This puts a downward pressure on the overnight interest rate (Fed Funds Rate in the US, FFR) unless it is offset by an increase in outstanding debt by the Treasury (or a draw-down of the TT&Ls, but that's minor in this case). So the sale of t-bonds is not a neccessity, it's how the Treasury supports the Fed's monetary policy by raising the FFR. If the target FFR is 0%, there's no need for the Treasury to drain reserves by selling bonds.

Additionally, you might want to sell t-bonds to provide the private sector with the ability to earn interest on a safe asset (pension funds, etc). Treasury bonds are as solid as it gets, unlike municipal bonds of Detroit or stocks of Deutsche Bank.

To quote Randy Wray: "And, indeed, treasury securities really are nothing more than a saving account at the Fed that pay more interest than do reserve deposits (bank “checking accounts”) at the Fed."

Point is: for a government that uses its own sovereign, free-floating currency, it is a political decision to take on debt to finance its deficit, not an economic neccessity.

"Weimar Republic"

I'm rather glad that you went with Weimar Germany and not Zimbabwe, because I know a lot more about the former than the latter. The very, very short version: the economy of 1920's Germany was in ruins and its vastly reduced supply capacity couldn't match the increase in nominal spending. In an economy at maximum capacity, spending increases are a bad idea, especially if meant to pay reparations.

Let's try a longer version. Your point, I assume, is that an increase in the money supply leads to (hyper-)inflation. That's Quantity Theory of Monetary 101, MV=PY. Amount of money in circulation times velocity of circulation equals average prices times real output. However, QTM works on two assumptions that are quite... questionable.

First, it assumes full employment (max output, Y is constant). Or in other terms, an economy running at full capacity. Does anyone know any economy today that is running at full capacity? I don't. In fact, I was born in '83 and in my lifetime, we haven't had full employment in any major country. Some people refer to 3% unemployment as "full employment", even though 3% unemployment in the '60s would have been referred to as "mass unemployment".

Second, it assumes a constant velocity of circulation (V is constant). That's how many times a Dollar has been "used" over a year. However, velocity was proven to be rather volatile by countless studies.

If both Y and V are constant, any increase in the money supply M would mean an increase in prices P. The only way for an economy at full capacity to compensate for increased spending would be a rationing of said spending through higher prices. Inflation goes up when demand outpaces supply, right?

But like I said, neither Y nor V are constant, so the application of this theory in this form is misleading to say the least. There's a lot of slack in every economy in the world, especially the US economy. Any increase in purchases will be met by corporations with excess capacity. They will, generally speaking, increase their market share rather than hike prices. Monopolies might not, but that's a different issue altogether.

Again, the short version: additional spending leads to increased inflation only if it cannot be met with unused capacity. Only in an economy at or near full capacity will it lead to significant inflation. And even then, excess private demand can easily be curbed: taxation.

As for the Angry Birds analogy: yeah, I'm not a fan either. But all the other talks on this topic are even worse, unfortunatly. There's only a handful of MMT economists doing these kinds of public talks and I haven't yet spotted a Neil deGrasse Tyson among them, if you know what I mean.