Interesting to see how it selected that upper-left corner as an integral part of its strategy, despite its inefficiency. I'm guessing it wouldn't have developed that had there been a lower number of moves allowed - would cause it to favor strategies which optimize movement a bit better.

@bcglorf Here's a tome for you....


It's certainly not (the only way). Converting to green energy sources stimulates the economy, it doesn't bankrupt it, and it makes it more efficient in the future thanks to lower energy costs. My solar system paid for itself in 8 years, giving me an expected 12 years of free electricity and hot water. Right wingers would tell you it will never pay for itself....utter bullshit.

Every gap in our knowledge I've ever seen that we have filled with data has made the estimates worse. Every one. Every IPCC report has raised the severity and shrunk the timeframe from the last report....but you stand on the last one that they admit was optimistic and incomplete by miles as if it's the final word and a gold standard. It just isn't. They themselves admit this.

The odds of catastrophic climate change is 100% in the next 0 years for many who have already died or been displaced by rising seas or famine or disease or lack of water or...... and that goes for all humanity in the next 50 because those who survive displacement will be refugees on the rest's doorsteps. Don't be ridiculous. If we found an asteroid guaranteed to hit in the next 50-100 years, and any possible solutions take a minimum of 50 years to implement with no surprises, and only then assuming we solve the myriad of technical issues we haven't solved in the last 100 years of trying and only if we can put the resources needed into a solution, not considering the constantly worsening barrage of smaller asteroids and the effects on resources and civilisation, we would put all our resources into solutions. That's where I think we are, except we still have many claiming there's no asteroid coming and those that already hit are fake news....including those in the highest offices making the decisions.

Every IPCC report has vastly underestimated their projections, they tell you they are doing it, only including data they are certain of, not new measurements or functions. They do not fill in the gaps, they leave them empty. Gaps like methane melt that could soon be more of a factor than human CO2, and 100% out of our control.

The AR5 report is so terrible, it was lambasted from day one as being incredibly naive and optimistic, and for not including what was then new data. Since its release, those complaints have been proven to be correct, in 5 years since its release ice melt rates have accelerated 60 years by their model. I wouldn't put a whit of confidence in it, it was terrible then, near criminally bad today. I'll take NOAA's estimates based on much newer science and guess that they, like nearly all others in the past, also don't know everything and are also likely underestimating wildly. Even the IPCC AR5 report includes the possibility of 3 ft rise by 2100 under their worst case (raised another 10% in this 2019 report, and expected to rise again by 2021, their next report), and their worst case models show less heat and melting than we are measuring already and doesn't include natural feedbacks because they can't model them accurately yet so just left them out (but noted they will have a large effect, but it's not quantitative yet so not included). Long and short, their worst case scenario is likely optimistic as reality already outpaces their worst case models.

Again, the economy benefits from new energy production in multiple ways. Exxon is not the global economy.

It took 100 years for the impact of our pollution to be felt by most (some still ignore it today). Even the short term features like methane take 25+ years to run their cycles, so what we do today takes that long to start working.

If people continue to drag their feet and challenge the science with supposition, insisting the best case scenario of optimistic studies are the worst we should plan for, we're doomed....and what they're doing is actually worse than that. The power plants built or under construction today put us much higher than 1.5 degree rise by 2100 with their expected emissions without ever building 1 more, and we're building more. Without fantastic scientific breakthroughs that may never come, breakthroughs your plan relies on for our survival, what we've already built puts us beyond the IPCC worst case in their operational lifetimes.

There's a problem with that...I'm good with using real science to identify them without political obstruction and confusion, the difference being we need to be prepared for decisive action once they're identified. So far, we have plans to develop those actions, but that's it. In the event of a "surprise" asteroid, we're done. We just hope they're rare.
This one, however, is an asteroid that is guaranteed to hit if we do nothing, some say hit in 30 years, some say 80. Only morons say it won't hit at all, do nothing.
Climate change is an asteroid/comet in our orbit that WILL hit earth. We are already being hit by ejecta from it's coma causing disasters for millions. You suggest we don't start building a defense until we are certain of it's exact tonnage and the date it will crash to earth because it's expensive and our data incomplete. That plan leaves us too late to change the trajectory. The IPCC said we need to deploy our system in 8-10 years to have a 30-60% chance of changing the trajectory under perfect conditions....you seem to say "wait, that's expensive, let's give it some time and ignore that deadline". I say even just a continent killer is bad enough to do whatever it takes to stop, because it's cheaper with less loss of life and infinitely less suffering than a 'wait and see exactly when it will kill us, we might have space elevators in 10 years so it might only kill 1/2 of us and the rest might survive that cometary winter in space (yes at exponentially higher cost and loss of life and ecology than developing the system today, but that won't be on my dime so Fuck it).' attitude.

@newtboy,

"bankrupting the global economy isn't the only way to plan for asteroids, now is it? What we have done is put some money towards developing solutions that could be implemented in time, with minor exceptions for super fast unknown asteroids we likely couldn't do much about if we did have a planetary defense system."

That's precisely my point though, bankrupting the global economy to reach negative net emissions tomorrow isn't the only way to plan for climate change either.

"the probability of disastrous climate change is near 100% if you take historic human behavior into account. For many it's already hit. It's only the severity and speed that are in question, and those estimates rise alarmingly with every bit of data we use to replace guesses in the equations.

And the odds of a catastrophic asteroid hit sometime in the future is near 100% too, it's just a question of how many millions of years Earth's luck holds out. Nor has every prediction or projection underestimated future warming so far, your flat wrong on that.

More to the point, the timing and severity of the changes we face is ABSOLUTELY relevant to the actions we need to take. Similarly, knowing the benefit of reducing our emissions by X% by a particular date is also extremely relevant to the actions we need to take. Unfortunately, it must be acknowledged that we have a lot of gaps and uncertainty in our knowledge on those points.

At minimum base level, we know changing global temperature on the whole will impact us negatively, that our CO2 emissions will make things warmer than they otherwise would be, and thus can easily conclude with certainty that the science dictates policies to reduce emissions are a good idea.

Now, you seem to be hell bent on demanding those policies take the shape of staring down the face of disaster 2-3 times worse than the IPCC AR5 reports absolute worst case scenario. I've got to tell you, that the uncertainties involved with that kind of prediction are too great to warrant an honest dictate that the facts support a need for economically devastating action being taken today. It's just not the case.

Even if green tech never takes over, if the next century sees us final solve fusion power and adoption of electric cars, we already get our emission outputs off the worst track scenario the IPCC projected in AR5. I honestly do believe that we will see non-fossil fuel electricity generation and electric cars as the norm in my lifetime, so I'm hopeful for a future that tracks better than the IPCC worst case. That doesn't mean we should do nothing, but it's more like we should take a similarly rational/practical approach to it like you see us doing with asteroids.

Ahhh....but bankrupting the global economy isn't the only way to plan for asteroids, now is it? What we have done is put some money towards developing solutions that could be implemented in time, with minor exceptions for super fast unknown asteroids we likely couldn't do much about if we did have a planetary defense system. What we haven't done is just say "It not certain we'll be hit, so wait until it's a certainty to make any preparations."

In this case, the probability of disastrous climate change is near 100% if you take historic human behavior into account. For many it's already hit. It's only the severity and speed that are in question, and those estimates rise alarmingly with every bit of data we use to replace guesses in the equations. We aren't just driving our Cadillac off the cliff, we're accelerating as if we hope to jump the canyon. Even Evil couldn't pull that off with a rocket.

Thank you for your reply Harlequinn.

I beg to differ: The rate of gun deaths in the USA is only low when compared to countries that are either active (civil-) war zones or basically run by drug cartels. When compared to other, similar developed countries, it is at least 4 times as high (when excluding suicides/accidents) .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
I would call that a significant deviation from the norm and stand by my use of "staggering".

You compare gun deaths to deaths from car crashes. Others have already pointed out that one of the main differences is that cars are not tools for killing that are put into public hands and furthermore, since I asked you the question (that you did not answer): "Is the reason for the Second Amendment worth the amount of gun violence in the USA?", my follow up question would be: I can show you the (financial, societal, etc.) benefits of cars (i.e. individual travel by car) for the society, what exactly are the benefits of private gun ownership?
(Whether cars are really worth it, is a whole other discussion.)

Regarding suicide rates, this seems to be a compelling argument until you notice that suicide rates in some, equally developed countries and some lesser developed countries are higher than in the USA and that the number of gun killings that are not suicide is still way higher than in comparable countries (see above).

I do not think that gun violence in the USA can be blamed on mental health issues though <irony>unless you count gun/power fetishism among mental illnesses </irony>.
Edit: Saying that whoever commits an act of gun violence must be mentally ill is tantamount of saying that any criminal must be mentally ill and thus not responsible for his/her actions.

<aside>
One nice observation about this gun fetish (not by me, I think it was Bill Burr): Another common argument pro guns is that people are in it only for home security, if that were the case you would have tons of photos of people with their new door locks or magazine-covers with girls in bikinis in front of security doors.
</aside>

I applaud your stand on public (mental-) health policies though.

Now to your main question:
Have I ever encountered interpersonal violence against me or others?
Yes, but not on a level that bringing lethal force to the situation ever seemed warranted. Thankfully. One obvious reason for that is that I live in a country where I don't need to expect everyone else to carry a gun.
Would it be possible that I would think otherwise, if it would have been the case? Yes.
Would I be correct in thinking that way? No.

To explain: I am not a friend of passive aggressive "stand you ground" thinking. The sane response chain is: 1. Try not to let yourself be provoked, 2. try to de-escalate, 3. try to evade/flee, 4. try to defend yourself.....And of course: CALL THE COPS!

Does that harm my male ego? Yes.
Does that matter enough to me for me to risk killing another human being? No.

This isn't really true though and greatly understates how amazing this demo, and current AI actually is.

Saying the agents are obeying a set of human defined rules / freedoms / constraints and objective functions would lead one to imagine something more like video game AI.

Typically video game AI works on a set of weighted decisions and actions, where the weights, decisions and actions are defined by the developer; a more complex variation of:

if my health is low, move towards the health pack,
otherwise, move towards the opponent

In this demo, no such rules exist. It's not given any weights (health), rules (if health is low), nor any instructions (move towards health pack). I guess you could apply neural networks to traditional game AI to determine the weights for decision making (which are typically hard coded by the developer); but that would be far less interesting than what's actually happening here.

Instead, the agent is given a set of inputs, a set of available outputs, and a goal.

4 Inputs:
- Position of the agent itself
- Position and type (other agent, box, ramp) of objects within a limited forward facing conical view
- Position (but not type) of objects within a small radius around the agent
- Reward: Whether they are doing a good job or not

Note the agent is given no information about each type of object, or what they mean, or how they behave. You may as well call them A, B, C rather than agent, box, ramp.

3 Outputs:
- Move
- Grab
- Lock

Again, the agent knows nothing about what these mean, only that they can enable and disable each at any time. A good analogy is someone giving you a game controller for a game you've never played. The controller has a stick and two buttons and you figure out what they do by using them. It'd be accurate to call the outputs: stick, A, B rather than move, grab, lock.

Goal:
- Do a good job.

The goal is simply for the reward input to be maximised. A good analogy is saying 'good girl' or giving a treat to a dog that you are training when they do the right thing. It's up to the dog to figure out what it is that they're doing that's good.

The reward is entirely separate from the agent, and agent behaviour can be completely changed just by changing when the reward is given. The demo is about hide and seek, where the agents are rewarded for not being seen / seeing their opponent (and not leaving the play area). The agents also succeeded at other games, where the only difference to the agent was when the reward was given.

It isn't really different from physically building the same play space, dropping some rats in it, and rewarding them with cheese when they are hidden from their opponents - except rats are unlikely to figure out how to maximise their reward in such a 'complex' game.

Given this description of how the AI actually works, the fact they came up with complex strategies like blocking doors, ramp surfing, taking the ramp to stop their opponents from ramp surfing, and just the general cooperation with other agents, without any code describing any of those things - is pretty amazing.

You can find out more about how the agents were trained, and other exercises they performed here:

https://openai.com/blog/emergent-tool-use/

Yes, we're overpopulated. That doesn't invalidate my arguments.

I gave examples of multiple cultures that do what you claim is impossible. I never implied Americans would accept a lower standard of living, only that it's the right thing to strive for, and coming like it or not.

I grow 75% of the produce for two people on 3/4 acres.

Masses of people are going to die unnecessarily. Period. This could be avoided, but won't be. Our choice is accept less now, or have nothing later.

The dependence on fossil fuels for agriculture could be quartered with some minor changes with little drop in output. The western world won't make the investment needed to make that a reality. Also, the fossil fuel needed to make fertilizers is not a significant amount....maybe as little as 3%of natural gas produced.

There are millions of hungry people now without access to the artificially supported agriculture system who relied on natural sources that no longer exist. Aren't you concerned about them?

Name one I listed not supported by science.

Food shortages are preferable to no food.

The 3' estimate is old, based on estimates already proven miserably wrong. Like I said, Greenland is melting as a rate they predicted to not happen until 2075.

When tens of millions must flee low lying areas, and all low lying farmland is underwater, and much of the rest in drought or flood, what do you think happens?

By 2100, all estimates show us far past the tipping points where human input is no longer the driving force. Even the IPCC said we have until 2030 or so to cut emissions in half, and we are not lowering emissions, we're raising them. 50 years out is 75 years late....but better than never.....but we aren't on that path at all. Investment in fossil fuel systems continues to accelerate thanks to emerging third world nations like China and India making the same mistakes the Western world made, but in greater quantities.

The IPCC report said if we don't immediately cut emissions today, by half in 11 years and to zero in 30, then negative emissions for the next 50 that we're on track to hit 3-6C rise by 2100 and raising that estimated temperature rise daily....4C gives the 3' sea level rise by 2100 with current models, but they are woefully inadequate and have proven to be vast underestimation of actual melting already.

We may develop the necessary tech, we won't develop the will to implement it. Indeed, we're at that point today....have been for decades.

Yep, sure, no sacrifices needed. You can have it all and more and let the next guy pay the bill. What if we're the last guys in line?

Funny, isn't that what the Paris climate accord is? Sane leaders giving such stupidity serious consideration, because they understand it's not stupidity it's reality. Granted, they don't go nearly far enough, but they did something more than just claim it will be fixed in the future by something that doesn't exist today and ignoring human behavior and all trends, because using/having less is simply unacceptable.

We need a nice pandemic to cull us by 9/10 and a few intelligent Maos to drive us back to sustainability. We won't get either in time.

The VideoSift public speaks... "How dare you speak critically of our highly developed belief in cheap videos!" I imagine you're all highly impressed by professional wrestling too. The idiocracy power base.

BOSE? Bose-Einstein condensate

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/7/27/they-really-do-exist-nasas-ghostbusters/

In a team of professional ghost busters, Anita Sengupta would most certainly be the enthusiastic and multi-talented leader. She’s already taken on roles developing launch vehicles, the parachute that famously helped land the Mars rover Curiosity, and deep-space propulsion systems for missions to comets and asteroids.


Sengupta and other members of the entry, descent and landing team for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity discuss the nail-biting details of the August 2012 landing.

Most recently, she’s carved out a niche as the project manager for an atomic physics mission, called the Cold Atom Laboratory, or CAL.

Since the mission was proposed in 2012, Sengupta has been leading a team of engineers and atomic physicists in developing an instrument that can see the unseen. Their mission is to create an ultra-cold quantum gas called a Bose-Einstein condensate, which is a state of matter that forms only at just above absolute zero. At such low temperatures, matter takes on unique properties that seemingly defy the laws of thermodynamics.

Yes, I agree mostly, but the only thing worse than eco-tourism is developers with no oversight. The public is shit, but at least there would be an outcry when someone "needed" the land for cattle or coffee.

Religion needs love.
Love doesn't need religion.

God needs love.
Love doesn't need God.

----------------------

Create.

cre·ate
/krēˈāt/

verb

bring (something) into existence.
"he created a thirty-acre lake"

synonyms: generate, produce, design, make, fabricate, fashion, manufacture, build, construct, erect, do, turn out;

----------------------
Job Description of an Artist. Fine artists use different techniques to create art, such as weaving, painting, glass blowing, or sculpting. They strive to develop new methods or ideas for making art. ... Only the most successful fine artist is able to support themselves from their art work.

"The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand" -Pink Floyd

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Arrested-Developments-Bob-Loblaw-TV-Ad

Personally, I am Pro Choice for women to make their own decision on the gestation of biological cells growing in their own bodies up to a certain age of the fetus.

What I don't understand is, are you calling this man pathetic because he "gave two arguments FOR pro choice"? - based on principals laid out by Lincoln in his example?
Or because
Pro Choice doesn't align with your beliefs?

Sorry, you wrap your words up in several ways but you don't come out and say what side you're arguing for so I can't tell the tone or nature of your comments.

I personally don't feel the entity, the biological growth of cells is a person just because it has a heart beat. Does it have consciousness? Is it a thinking being with self awareness? Because I don't remember anything from when I was a fetus. In fact, I don't think the brain is developed at all ...

"not until the end of week 5 and into week 6 (usually around forty to forty-three days) does the first electrical brain activity begin to occur." ~'The Ethical Brain' - The New York Times.

And even then, it's still in development and not a an organ that can contain consciousness.

So, the argument is two fold.
One, this issue of personal freedom/choice is important enough that it can't be left to states who might eliminate individual choice in favor of a state's choice. This is the liberal position on this issue, that states will take the choice away from individual woman in favor of the choice made for them, usually by groups of old men. That's why Roe V Wade is essential, it denies the states the right to enslave women to their unwanted, potential, in some cases forced upon them, offspring.

Second, he argued we can't allow laws that take away the freedom of individuals to choose, which slavery did...as do anti abortion laws. You cannot crush the choices of another person....this includes the choice to not be an incubator for another "person" (to misuse the word, assuming they're incorrectly insisting a blastocyst or foetus is a person, all medical and scientific evidence notwithstanding). The "developing life" (doesn't realize he just blew the "life starts at conception" argument with that phrase) cannot take away the rights of the womb's owner, cannot make them a slave to the blastocyst/foetus. The right to life argument fails when you realize no person is forced to donate blood or organs, which people need to live. Real right to life would extend beyond birth and require people become medical slaves to those who need them or their parts.

If it can live without help, fine, develop an abortive processes that allows that at any point in pregnancy, fund it across the board, and start the debate again. Until then, this dumbass just made two arguments for pro choice.
Pathetic.

This video really does sum up my feelings about Season 8.

I was mostly okay with the first half of Season 8 and could even give the writers a pass for only spending one episode on the battle of Winterfell and the Night King's destruction but...everything after that? Complete shit. I mean, Rhaegal getting shot not once, but twice, by scorpions from the "hidden" Iron Fleet, from what looked like a million miles away, was utter nonsense and only done for shock value. Unlike when the Night King killed Viserion, which was actually moving, Rhaegal's death was pointless and made no sense. For one, how could Dany not see all those ships from up there? Furthermore, it'd be ridiculously hard to hit a fly target, twice in a row, from that distance. Ugh.

The biggest misstep in my opinion was turning Dany into a villain. Her character was one of the more interesting of the series as she went from being a naïve slave, to a fighter, a mother, and ultimately became a champion of the people. She was a strong female character with mostly good, if somewhat flawed, intentions. While her drive to claim the Iron Throne and unite Westeros could be seen as warmongering, she certainly didn't deserve to be portrayed as a mad tyrant. That just seemed forced.

Then we have: Bran the Broken and Jon's banishment to the Night's Watch. What the hell? Everything in the finale seemed so forced and discarded a lot character development established in previous seasons. The last two episodes of season 8 were just really disappointing.