No NHS in the states. Personally, I think that'd be the way to do it. And I think it kind of needs to be a long and difficult road, to make sure that drastic option is necessary and won't be regretted later.

It's a bit hard for me to accept it, because I tend to think of it like that episode of South Park. Kyle can't actually become a tall black kid, and his dad can't actually become a dolphin.

But even though I think that is true -- you can't really become something you aren't -- I recognize that gender reassignment surgeries can be life saving / massively beneficial to quality of life in many cases.


To take a stab at answering your other questions:

I believe that Trump is saying that the military is instituting a blanket ban on transgender people from serving in the military. If / how the military elects to enforce that remains to be seen. I don't know the full timeline on that sort of stuff, but back in the 60's one (considered extreme at the time) way for young men to get out of being drafted to go to Vietnam was to take photos of themselves naked with another man (implying they were gay) or wearing women's clothing (implying they were trans). The mere implication that you might be either was enough to disqualify you from military service.

More recently, during Don't Ask Don't Tell you could be gay or trans in the military, but couldn't reveal that you were. That ended only 5-6 years ago. The military definitely wouldn't have paid for trans-related medical treatments prior to that, and didn't for quite a while after until Obama OK'd it.

Again, I don't really think that the military should be required / expected to pay for those kinds of treatments for soldiers, BUT I'd be 100% OK with something like the NHS making it available to any citizen, as in the UK. For one thing, I wouldn't want trans people to see the military as the only way to get those treatments (short of paying out of pocket), and having that be a major part of their motivation to join.

And I 100% agree that this is a basically a political distraction that sets back the rights and acceptance of an already marginalized group that in no way deserves it.

Your video, Dolphins Beach Themselves To Feed - The Hunt - BBC Earth, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Although I don't know the specifics here, and I understand that ignorance of the law is not a valid defense, it seems flat out insane to criminally prosecute the guy.

I give him the benefit of the doubt that they are telling the truth and this at least started by bailing rainwater out of a boat. That's a very normal activity, no reason to presume that any harm could come of it.

Then, first bucket gets tossed in and he sees that big splash. It's Florida, so there could be lots of potential explanations. It might be bigass catfish. It might be alligators. Could even be dolphins, depending on where they are in Florida. ...And, it might be manatees, although that probably wouldn't be the first thing I would think of.

So, big splash. I'd be surprised. My first reaction would be: "I wonder if it will happen again after another bucket." NOT "Oh dear, perhaps I am frightening some poor defenseless little creatures and should immediately cease what I'm doing." If I came the the conclusion that it was gators (which seems more likely/reasonable than manatees to me, although I don't live there), it would even stand to reason that frightening them off would be a good thing to do -- encourage them to move away from populated areas.

Given all that, it seems very unlikely to me that the dude had any malicious intent. If he knew they were manatees and knew that stressing them out like that could negatively impact their health, perhaps punishment would be in order. But if he thought they were anything else (fish / gators / whatever), or just plain didn't know, continuing to bail the boat in an attempt to get whatever they might be to swim away seems like a very reasonable thing to do.

Educating people that "hey, if you see something like this happening, it might be manatees and you should try to avoid stressing them out" seems like by far a better and more rational option than "throw the animal torturer in the slammer!"

*quality

I'm currently reading "Superintelligence" by Nick Bostrom and it's pretty *fear inducing.

If we ever do hit the singularity... it doesn't really matter what we do.

First up, if it's an AGI is to be any use, it needs to be at least as smart as us. Which means, by definition, it will be capable of writing its own AGI.

There are any number of nightmare scenarios where even a seemly benevolent goal might be disastrous for humanity.

"Multivac, fix the environment!"
"Ok, what's the major issue with the environment?"
/wipes out humanity

"Multivac, solve the Riemann hypothesis!"
"Ok, but I'll need a lot of processing power"
/converts entire planet to a giant cpu

Even if, by some miracle, we end up developing a benevolent AI that understands our needs and is aligned with them, (e.g. the Culture Minds), we are no longer in control.

We might be along for the ride, but we're certainly not driving.

The other thing that's interesting is a question of scale. We tend to think of intelligence in human terms, like this.

infants..... children.....mentally impaired..Sarah Palin.....normal people.....Neil deGrasse Tyson.....Feynman, Einstein, Newton, etc.

But that ignores all the lower intelligences:

bacteria...Trump......insects.....sheep.....dogs...chimps, dolphins, etc............................... dumb human..smart human.

But from a superintelligence's point of view, the scale looks more like this
bacteria.. humanity ... Tesla ................................................... ..................................................................................................
..................................................................................................
............................................................................................. AI

Even if the earth only lasts another billion years, it won't be our job to move off it, humanity will be long dead by then. Let the dolphin people figure it out.

Killer Whales -ARE- dolphins.

Stopped watching when that guy starts taking that dolphin boner in his ass. Wtf kind of shit is this man, please label the channels appropriately.

My long time issue with the "they would be too intelligent/evolved to have any interest in us" type scenario, such as he puts as number two here, is that we go through great lengths to try and research and understand very primitive life. There are efforts being made to talk to dolphins and apes. We're looking to build ships to crash or land ships onto Titan to see if there is microbial life on a moon orbiting a gas giant, not to mention work to see if Mars once upon had life. So the very fact we're able to get off our little rock (though not much off it), I think would warrant a stop and look, perhaps to help answer what was life like at such an early stage of evolution.

Not said stop and look doesn't imply any sort of communications. Indeed there may be a Prime Directive like thing with them where by they see and observe, but leave no evidence of such a visit (alien abductions being just mental illness coupled with abuse or other issues).

Now distance is a super valid point, but by far the most likely point is the survivability window, which he talks about in point three. We're still a level zero civilization (Kardashev scale) and decades until we reach a level one civilization (unfortunately it seems delayed even further due to some very anti-science moves being made by certain groups). Moving up that scale is only one thing, avoiding killing ourselves via war is another huge one. With CRISPR technology advancing, there is a very real danger of a Division/Stand/Utopia type disease coming to the foreground, especially if driven by a zealot (ala Division and Utopia). I highly doubt a man made black hole or something, but war or a CRISPR engineered disease... Not to mention the natural disasters he mentioned, and others, such as huge gamma ray bursts and others that we've managed to avoid. And we'd have to think that most civilizations go through somewhat similar phases, with a universe that is fairly hostile to life, even if many planets are capable of at least starting life. Generally I figure that most civilizations never make it past the stage we are at now, and those that do probably don't get to stage two and beyond (to be fair, I doubt any civilization can achieve stage two on Kardashev's scale as it goes beyond knowledge needed, but materials and more).

Back to the technology of communications point. I've generally figured if you are space faring, you gave up on radio communications and are using strange properties or something along those lines.

http://www.sciencealert.com/these-sea-nomad-children-can-see-underwater-like-dolphins

*backup=[...snipped...]

(edit)
Weird didnt take the backup https://vimeo.com/184149164
also can find at the 7 min mark here https://youtu.be/quBpJJe1AhY

We're morally superior to them because we do it in an abattoir and have a modern drainage system. God we're so civilised.

If only right wingers gave half as much of a shit about innocent kids getting bombed/killed/raped in Aleppo and elsewhere as they do about animal sacrifice when it's done by a Muslim.

I look forward to seeing the same commitment to comments about seal cubs being beaten to death by blood thirsty Americans, Canadians, Swedes, Fins, Russians, Norweigans. Or when whales and dolphins are slaughtered in open water in Japan. Bulls tortured in Spain.

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