I know it's Colbert's shtick and I never really got into it, but still...

"I have friends who live and work in London. They said "don't worry,we're very sensible people."

What's sensible for people in London might not be sensible for people in Salford. Or Boston. Or Wolverhampton. London, or the South-East in general, is as representative of the UK as the East/West Coast is of the US.

The hinterland has been drained at the expense of the center, on both a global and a national scale. If you live and work in the City of London, things might look quite ok, and whatever issues there are only need some reforms to no longer be an issue. But if your factory, the factory that provided jobs for the people in your home town, closed down ten, twenty years ago and now the best you can get is zero-hour contracts, then no, things are not ok.

People up top keep telling you that the economy is growing, that everyone's gonna be better off, that it's ok for multinational corporations and rich individuals to optimise their taxes, while they cut your welfare. Banks get a bailout, you get to pay the bedroom tax.

So no, your sensible friends, if they exist, live in a different universe than many of their countrymen. That's the disconnect we've been talking about.

-----
"The British economy is tanking. The pound has plunged to its lowest level since 1985... The Dow lost 611 points."

Again, so what? If the economy is growing and it has no effect on you, why should you give a jar of cold piss about the value of the pound or the stock exchange? Arguably, a drop in the exchange rate of the pound makes it easier for you to export your goods and raises the prices for imports, thereby encouraging you to produce the shit yourself. The UK does have a sovereign currency, unlike the Spanish, the Greeks, the Portuguese or the Italians who have to suffer internal devaluations, because Wolfgang Schäuble says so.

"Equity losses over $2 trillion"

Why should that matter? QE has pushed up stock prices beyond any resonable level, so what meaning do these book values hold? Not to mention that a lot of people made a shitload of money by shorting these stocks, including George Soros against Deutsche.

"There'll be no more money"

QE never trickled down anyway, makes no difference. Corbyn's people call their version "QE for the People" and "Green QE" for a reason: the previous version was only meant to prop up banks and stock values.

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

On a more general note, the hatred, the racism, the xenophobia... in most cases, it's a pressure valve. You leash out against someone else, you need someone to blame. The narrative is that we're living in a meritocracy, which makes it your fault that you didn't inherit an investment portfolio. So you start blaming yourself. You're a fuck-up. You worked hard and not only didn't climb the ladder, you actually went down. There's depression for ya. Guess what happens if someone, a person of perceived authority, then comes along and tells you it's not your fault, it's the fault of the immigrants. That narrative is very appealing if history is any indication. Even the supposedly most prosperous country in the EU, Germany, has the very same issue in the eastern parts, where there is no hope for a meaningful job.

People need work, meaningful work. Wanna guess how many of those "xenophobes" would be out in the street protesting against immigrants if they had a meaningful job with decent pay? Not to many would be my guess.

So the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are providing the narrative. But the lack of social cohesion is a result of market fundamentalism, of Thatcherism, of Third Way social-democrats leaving the lower half of the income distribution to the wolves. You can't exclude large swaths of the population from the benefits of increased productivity, etc. Social dividend, they called it. It's what keeps the torches and pitchforks locked away in the barn.

I would argue that the UK would still have been better off IN the EU than out of it, but I fully agree that there are valid reasons to question the EU. Read some of @radx's posts... he eloquently outlines some of the fundamental problems with it.

That said, that's not why people voted to leave. Opinion polls show that people overwhelmingly voted to leave based on xenophobia and lies.

You spent that entire dialogue pretending he said everyone and all behavior is equally preferable / moral, when he was actually saying that fundamental human rights are fundamental - we don't have freedom of speech because all speech is fantastic, we don't have freedom of religion because all religion is fantastic - we have those rights in spite of shitty speech like yours and in spite of shitty religion. Then you declared victory because you were victorious in not listening to him.

Why do you think that makes anyone the least bit interested in being 'next' to engage you?

@Mordhaus

"We have always been a gun violence culture up until the post WW2 era. Think frontier, wild west, duels, and mafia shootouts. We glorify violence everyday, we even give sickos who shoot up groups of people mass media coverage. "

Don't you think that that idea is outdated in 2016? Fine, that's the culture. Change the fucking culture.

When I grew up in Ireland, nobody gave a second thought to driving drunk. Sunday after church, people went to the pub, had a few pints with the neighbours, the kids played space invaders and then the whole family got back in the car and drove home.

And most of the time, it was absolutely fine. People got home, there was the occasional accident, but ya know, what can ya do?

Until it wasn't fine. And it took decades, but eventually, it became socially unacceptable to drive drunk.

"I'm just extremely leery of package deals like lets ban everyone who ends up on a list from having weapons based on a government decision."
I get that. But be reasonable. You're ok with not letting people fly, but you draw the line at owning weapons?

That is some fucked up list of priorities. I would be far more concerned with restricting someones right to travel (essentially restricting their freedom of movement, or a lighter form of incarceration) than whether they can own a gun.

You say that owning a gun is a constitutional right whereas travel isn't. I say that freedom of movement is a fundamental basic human right... oh, look at that, Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!
"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state."

I'm completely willing to say that it should be a lot harder to put someone on this kind of list, but there's no way the right to own a weapon is more important than freedom of movement.

Finally, re: slippery slopes
"The Patriot Act, meant to be a well intended set of rules to help us protect ourselves, has been perverted to lessen quite a few of our rights."

The Patriot Act wasn't a slippery slope, it started at the bottom of the slope and went straight over a fucking cliff. It should never have been passed in the first place.

@lawdeelaw, my main problem with libertarians is two fold.

First, they're a fucking disaster for the environment. Did you hear that moron on climate change? "If it exists, the government should stay out of it"
Really?? I cannot even begin to comprehend the stupidity of such an argument.

Second, they're zealots. They ignore the fact that some things actually work in government because it doesn't suit their ideology. Did you actually watch the video? They wanted people to be able to drive on roads without a licence....that's just fucking nuts. Never mind things like public healthcare, social services, etc; all of which work perfectly well in plenty of countries around the world.

I agree with a lot of libertarian policy, but it how they arrived at that policy.

Fundamentally, they're children. They're selfish, short-sighted and convinced they're right.

I don't trust anyone who thinks they have a simple answer to the worlds problems. The world is complex and sometimes it needs complex solutions. Sometimes, it's private industry (look at how Tesla is slowly fixing transport emissions) and sometimes it's government based (look at the absolute disaster that is privately run prisons).

so i am sitting here drinking my coffee reading this thread and i have to say...

depressing.

so many wonderful people that i admire and respect getting twisted about?

words.

not the intent,nor over-all context..but words.

i can see where @newtboy is coming from,and what he is laying down is pretty non-controversial.i also see what @bareboards2 is laying down,and is not really in opposition to what newt is talking about.

both ideologies can reside in the same context and not be in conflict.in fact they compliment each other and ....and maybe i am reading their positions wrong..they actually agree on the fundamentals.

@bareboards2 actually addressed this by pointing out that "tone" can be misinterpreted.(good for you BB) and really the exchange between newt and BB was about their own self-identification.

yet this entire thread is almost exclusively focusing on words,and the gravitas and weight given to those words by the individual,which is subjective.

i feel newts pain.
i had a run where i was posting videos exposing hyper-militant third wave feminists and how they were using the justice system to punish those who disagreed with them,and every self-identified feminist came out of the wood work to declare their disappointment in me and defend the very thing they identified with.

what confused me was why people would even attempt to defend that absolute cluster fuck of abuse as somehow even being remotely to do with actual feminism.until i realized that many hadn't even watched the video or read the articles .so they were not defending those third wave feminists that had abused a justice system but rather defending a term that they self-identified as.

after long (and i mean long ..@Payback is still in therapy) back and forths between myself and fellow sifters.when i FINALLY got them to address the specific situation,not one...not ONE sifter..felt morally obligated to defend those feminists actions.

why?
because taken on its singular merits,those feminists were fucking wrong.

then why all the defensive posturing?
why the passive aggressive swipes at me?
and the exhaustive back and forths just to get self-identified feminists to at least admit that those particular feminists had abused their position to punish a man for simply disagreeing.

because they were defending feminism in general.
because they self-identified as feminists and failed to see the situation as it was and jumped to defend a WORD that they happened to identify with.

as a whole we can,as a society hold onto philosophies that are not mutually exclusive.
so you can be a feminist and a humanist.
or a humanist and an MRA advocate.

@bareboards2 may be a feminist but i know that if she witnessed me being harassed and discriminated against she would jump to my defense,as would @newtboy.

there are people who identify as something and yet can still be major dickweeds.so what they self-identify as does not automatically give them a pass.

so dont get so caught up in identity politics my friends.
they are just words after all.
just listen to the person talking,they will reveal if they are a total tool soon enough.how they self-identify is irrelevant.

@newtboy

Look, man, I've been watching you dig your grave deeper with every post. I'm not really sure what you're not getting, given the patient explanations everyone has provided. No one is saying you can't want equality for all, but to get equality for all you have to start by helping groups that are clearly NOT equal in society achieve some level of equality.

Ergo, Feminists focus on helping women achieve equality. And let's be clear, when we say equality we're talking about achieving equality with white males, because they are the ones who historically and currently hold the privledged position in Western society.

So, your whole, "But what about men?" schtick is insulting to feminists precisely because men are already better off than women in most areas. Feminists have no obligation to make men's lives--particularly white men's lives--better than they already are. This is not to say white men have no problems or that in some areas (child custody comes to mind) they aren't at a disadvantage. And there are activist groups working towards improvement in these areas. But demanding that feminists work for men's issues shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what feminism is all about.

This reminds me of the whole recent Kit Harington flap, where Kit claimed Hollywood is "sexist" towards men and displayed a similar fundamental misunderstanding of what sexism is. His point was that male actors can be sexually objectified (he refered to being asked to take his shirt off on a photo shoot). But being occasionally objectified is no where near the same thing as the well documented actual sexism that goes on in Hollywood--vastly different paychecks for lead actressess compared to actors, the number and types of nude scenes actressess are asked to do compared to male actors, etc. No one is saying objectification (of either sex) isn't a problem but there's a much bigger problem for women (as usual) than there is for men and that's why there needs to be a group (feminists) advocating for women to tackle these larger problems before getting to the problem of Kit Harington's discomfort at disrobing for the camera.

The inherently chaotic event that exists in the otherwise predictable / trainable environment of driving a car is the unplanned / unmeasured disturbance. In control systems that are adaptive or self learning, the unplanned disturbance is the killer - a short duration, unpredictable event for which the system is unable to respond to within the control limits that have been defined through training, programming and/or adaptation. The response to an unplanned disturbance is often to default to an instruction that is very much human derived (ie. stop, exit gracefully, terminate instruction, wait until conditions return to controllable boundary conditions or freeze in place) which, depending on the disturbance, can be catastrophic. In our world, with humans behind the wheel, let's call the unplanned disturbance the "mistake". A tire blows, a load comes undone, an object falls out of or off of another vehicle (human, dog, watermelon, gas cylinder) etc.

The concern from my perspective (and I work directly with adaptive / learning control systems every day - fundamental models, adaptive neural type predictors, genetic algorithms etc. ) is the response to these short duration / short response time unplanned disturbances. The videos I've seen and the examples that I have reviewed don't deal with these very short timescale events and how to manage the response, which in many cases is an event dependent response. I would guess that the 1st dead person that results from the actions or inaction of self driving vehicles will put a major dent if not halt to the program. Humans may be fallible, but we are remarkably (infinitely?) more adaptive in combined conscious / subconscious responses than any computer is or will be in the near future in both appropriateness of response and the time scale of generating that response.

In the partially controlled environment (ie. there is no such thing as 100%) of a automated warehouse and distribution center, self driving works. In the partially controlled environment where ONLY self driving vehicles are present on the roadways, then again, this technology will likely succeed. The mixed environment with self driving co-mingled with humans (see "fallible" above) is not presently viable, and I don't think will be in the next decade or two, partially due to safety risk and partially due to management of these short timescale unplanned disturbances that can call for vastly different responses depending upon the specific situation at hand. In the flow of traffic we encounter the majority of the time, would agree that this may not be an issue to some (in 44 years of driving, I've been in 2 accidents, so I'll leave the risk assessment to the actuaries). But one death, and we'll see how high the knees jerk. And it will happen.

My 2 cents.
TB

I wasn't talking about Tesla, but the technology in general. Google's self-driving cars have driven over 1.5 million miles in real-world traffic conditions. Right now, they're limited to inner city driving, but the tech is fundamentally usable.

There is no algorithm for driving. It's not
if (road.isClear)
keepDriving()
else if (child.runsInFront())
brakeLikeHell()

It's based on machine learning and pattern recognition.

This guy built one in his garage.

Is it perfect yet? Nope. But it's already better than humans and that's good enough. The technology is a lot closer than you think.

I think there is something fundamentally broken in anyone who doesn't love Calvin and Hobbes.

First Contact has three unforgivable flaws.

1. The time travel plot makes zero sense. Why do the Borg need to go back to that particular time to assimilate humanity? Why don't they go back to pre-WW3, where there were a) more humans to assimilate and b) lower tech weapons? Why do they need to interrupt the moment of humanity's first contact with the Vulcans? Why do they give themselves such a tiny margin of error by only giving themselves a few days to assimilate Earth before the deadline? Why don't they send Borg down to begin assimilating humanity straight away? And the Enterprise conceals itself from the Vulcans by hiding behind the fucking moon.

2. The writers fundamentally ruin the idea of the Borg by giving it a figurehead it doesn't need. They are not a collective if they have a Queen; they are subjects.

3. Worst of all, Picard's characterisation is a complete volte face. Seven seasons of the TV show proved that Picard just isn't a man who stoops to revenge. Only a year or so after recovering from his own assimilation, Picard has the chance to cripple or destroy the Borg forever and he doesn't take it, because he's a man of balance and pragmatism, not of blind rage. His sudden change into Captain Ahab is lazy and it's unearned. Picard, like everything else in the film, is dumbed-down for the sake of the action, and the character as written undermines the work done over the course of the TV series, amputates him from Roddenberry, and is frankly unworthy of being performed by Patrick Stewart.

Star Trek: First Contact is fucking dumb.

Of course I have to concede to subjectivity and some of the action is very exciting (if still stupid; the "no firing at the deflector dish oh except when you do" incident is a prime example). But it's only possible to enjoy it as an action movie if you like your action movies to appeal to the very lowest common denominator.

@newtboy and @ForgedReality
First up, I'm not saying I like Hillary, but let's be real here; Trump is much, much worse.

Hillary's a liar and a felon (citation needed, btw)?
Trump wants to bring back torture, to close the country to Muslims and deliberately bomb people's families. Yeah, he might not get to do any of that, but the fact that he WANTS to is fucking terrifying.
So, yes, she's undoubtedly the lesser of two evils.

As for voting for someone other than Hillary or Trump, as far as I'm aware, right now, there aren't any other candidates announced (assuming Hillary gets the Dem nomination, which she will, as I already explained because numbers).

A quick google doesn't show any other third party candidates (although it did reveal that Roseanne Barr once ran!) for this year. Bernie has said nothing about running as an independent, so right now your options are almost certainly Trump or Clinton.

But let's say for the sake of argument that Hillary gets the dem nod and Bernie decides to run as an independent.

Now in a sane political system, I would absolutely advocate voting for your favourite candidate, but the US election system is so fundamentally broken that voting for Bernie would hand Trump the election. That's the reality.

@Baristan
"Voting your conscience and losing to Trump is far better!!! Eventually a third party can form and whittle away at the two sided party. "

No, that doesn't happen. *related=http://videosift.com/video/The-Problems-with-First-Past-the-Post-Voting-Explained

A third party rises up, splits the vote of it's nearest rival and then disappears over the next couple of election cycles.

Your voice is already inconsequential. The US badly needs election reform.

It SUCKS, and by FSM, I really hope I'm wrong. Maybe Bernie will somehow snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but it's just really unlikely.

But above all, you cannot elect Trump. If you really think he wouldn't be worse than Hillary, then I'm sorry, but you're fucking delusional.

Look, I REALLY wanted Bernie to win. I even checked if there was some way I could donate to his campaign as a non-US citizen. But it didn't happen. You (plural, US voters, especially democrats) had your chance and y'all done fucked it up and now you have to live with the choices you've made.

it is not "my" way or "our" way that is at issue but rather the fundamental questions of morals, ethics, violence and non-violence. when one has a choice in the matter, is not doing less harm always better than doing more harm? just as i do not consider myself superior for choosing not to harm or kill other humans or puppies and kittens, but instead look at it as the minimum standard of decency of not treating others the way i would not wish to be treated.

anyone who supports the killing of non-human animals is only looking at things from the human perspective-i.e. that of the oppressor. just as in the case of any form of violence and exploitation, the foundation of all of the false justifications against veganism are based on ignoring any consideration of the victims point of view. this is all too easy when one is not a victim of oppression themselves.

it is truly a very sad thing when mercy, compassion and empathy are considered as extreme while supporting torture, cruelty and death in the name of pleasure and profit is considered as normal and a matter of personal choice.

“For hundreds of thousands of years the stew in the pot has brewed hatred and resentment that is difficult to stop. If you wish to know why there are disasters of armies and weapons in the world, listen to the piteous cries from the slaughter house at midnight.”- Ancient Chinese verse

While this is a nice idea, it's completely ass backwards.

I approve of the sentiment, but most of what's said here is fundamentally untrue.

First up, your body is not just "your body", it's "you". There isn't "you" and "your body". YOU are your body. No more, no less. At least until we find a way to digitise consciousness, you (as in the thoughts, memories, attitudes, personality) are inextricably linked to the body you inhabit, and even if you could remove your consciousness from your body somehow, would that even be "you"? Or just a reasonable copy?

Second, part of who you are is your background. Not race, that's bullshit, but your culture. The environment you grow up helps define your values. That's not to say you a prisoner of those values, but it's naive in the extreme to believe that they aren't a massive part of who you are (even if it's a part you might not like or agree with).

Finally, sadly, yes... babies are racist. They will inherently show a bias towards others who look similar to them.

We are not "all the same, but divided by societal labels". It's the other way round. Left alone, humans will naturally tend towards conflict, fear of the other, prejudice and heaps of other horrible traits that actually turned out to be useful (if morally wrong) in an evolutionary sense.

It is society that brings us together.

Terry Pratchett said it best:
"Individuals aren’t naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are . . . well . . . human beings."

Cultural appropriation has to be the most moronic idea to gain traction in all of human history. Big claim, I know, but consider this: Culture IS appropriation. If other people don't pick up on your ideas and make use of them, then you DON'T HAVE A CULTURE; that's how it spreads; that's the only way it can EXIST. It's also, hey, fundamental to our success as a species. Better put a stop to it then.

CA is literally a null concept. It's like accusing a mathematician of 'cumulative addition'.