Deep Thoughts
- Thread starter Danoff
- 1,099 comments
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- 7,226
- beyond down under
- Skython11
Morality would be far different because they could have knowledge that could rule our morality as redundant. For example, if we knew the meaning life (assuming there is one, which I believe there isn't) that could change the entire world's perception on how we should live life. If we knew of a life after death, that would also change everything. Infact death would become nothing more than a trip to somewhere else, we'd have an answer of how to communicate with spirits (again, assuming spirits exist). We'd have an answer to bring people back from the dead too, so you could die, meet your ancestors, then come back. Or not, who knows because we don't know.
I'd imagine the world would just get ridiculous and eventually dull because everything possible has happened, and we'd most likely exhaust Earth's supplies, move onto another planet and repeat the cycle. Knowledge is great, but too much knowledge is just inhumane.
- 3,099
- Finland
- thematic604
It's a long text and I didn't read it all, nor do I comprehend what I read fully, but there are a lot of fascinating things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning
- 23,800
- Philippines
Deep learning and artificial neural networks have the potential capacity to kill off a lot of human jobs, just as industrial production via machines and robots did over the past century.
They are already at the point where, with enough computing power, you can simulate human vision, thusly:
(I've posted this before, but it still blows me away)
This video shows how AI can interpolate "in-between" frames from separate pictures, "guessing" what background lies behind moving foreground objects as it goes from frame to frame, and "imagining" what the scene would look like from another point of view... using methods remarkably similar to those we use while "visualizing" a scene, drawing upon memory to fill in the blanks.
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These kinds of tricks and algorithms are already creating speech processing software that may someday put millions of call-center agents and transcriptionists out of work, and which, when self-driving vehicles become more popular, may put millions of taxi drivers, delivery drivers, bus and train drivers, and heavy equipment operators out of work, as well.
Human labor, in this case, will be reduced to machine supervisors, programmers and maintenance men... and perhaps token call center agents, drivers and pilots as back-up in case there are issues with the automatic systems.
- 3,099
- Finland
- thematic604
But it comes from horse droppings: Wiktionary. That seems to be the reasoning, as far as I can tell.
- 2,461
- South Auckland, New Zealand
- Nismonath5
We used to listen to politicians and laugh at comedians.
Now we laugh at politicians and listen to comedians.
Now we laugh at politicians and listen to comedians.
- 24,019
- It/It
- GTP_TheCracker
A 'park' is an area separated or enclosed for a specific usage different to that which surrounds it.
A park as we traditionally know it fits the description, but so does an office, industrial or even skate park, if they're surrounded by land used for other purposes.
A park as we traditionally know it fits the description, but so does an office, industrial or even skate park, if they're surrounded by land used for other purposes.
- 30,058
- Thailand
Been a while since politicians listened to us, despite so called democracy being the current political system of most civilised countries.
Danoff
Premium
- 34,061
- Mile High City
When I was a child, I was prepared for rampant incompetency in government. It made sense too, the people working there don't get their money directly from the people standing in line with paperwork in hand, they get money from taxpayers who have no choice but to pay. All those people need to do is keep their bosses happy, and if their boss doesn't care, they don't have to care. Meanwhile the boss is doing the same thing.
What I was not prepared for was the absolute rampant incompetency I'd find in the corporate world. You'd think people would have every incentive to care and do a good job, but it turns out, especially in large corporations, that the same "keep the boss happy" mentality is what really propagates. What I've found is that the higher you go in a large company, the more self-selecting that trait is. You don't rise to the deputy associate general vice president of the shipping inventory tracking resource group without caring only what your boss sees and what you can blame on those around you. Meanwhile, your boss isn't watching closely (so your tactics work) because your boss is spending all of their time focusing on what their boss above them thinks.
This kind of incompetency, buttocks-covery, and brown nosery actually intensifies all the way up to the absolute highest levels within the organization. I've seen rarefied management (not as much the CEO, who is practically just a celebrity figurehead type, but CEO-direct reports) for a company worth over $100B, avoid work, speak nonsense, decide to manhandle business deals, personally screw those deals up, pass the buck, rise and repeat. Incompetency that you wouldn't expect to be tolerated at the lowest levels of business gets dumped onto thousands of employees, wasting vast resources and ultimately degrading or destroying products. And this company is doing well, an industry leader in fact.
It's not hard to see the results though. You have companies like VW dodging emissions testing, Wells Fargo employees basically committing fraud, debacles like Enron, and of course a long list of financial investment firms. People like to see evil in government screw-ups or mismanagement (see Hurricane Katrina), and in corporate examples like Wells Fargo above. What I see, having witnessed who gets hired as CEO, and who CEOs hire to report to them, especially for gigantic companies, is just rampant incompetence everywhere. Nobody knows what the heck they're doing.
It's not like the people at the bottom are amazing either. The engineers on the R&D team (and I've been in that boat personally) love to think that the whole thing would just work so much better if they were in charge, but I've seen gobs and gobs of money wasted by engineers who disrespect the problems that are cropping up because those problems are not based in physics, and some pretty huge product errors that are based in physics.
I don't know how it is that we humans manage to continue to innovate and improve our standard of living - but it seems to be in spite of our best efforts to screw things up.
Edit:
I could go on. After posting this I've thought of a ton more examples... ok I'll go on a little. In my particular job I talk to and negotiate with a lot of attorneys. Some of them are good, I'd say about 1 or 2 in 10. The other 8/10 are either terrible at what they do, or phoning it in because the client isn't paying attention to the money they're wasting. I've had some very dumb debates with people paid upward of $500/hr to have those dumb debates with me. It definitely counts as incompetence for the attorney, but it also counts as incompetence on the part of the person or organization paying that attorney for essentially nothing.
What I was not prepared for was the absolute rampant incompetency I'd find in the corporate world. You'd think people would have every incentive to care and do a good job, but it turns out, especially in large corporations, that the same "keep the boss happy" mentality is what really propagates. What I've found is that the higher you go in a large company, the more self-selecting that trait is. You don't rise to the deputy associate general vice president of the shipping inventory tracking resource group without caring only what your boss sees and what you can blame on those around you. Meanwhile, your boss isn't watching closely (so your tactics work) because your boss is spending all of their time focusing on what their boss above them thinks.
This kind of incompetency, buttocks-covery, and brown nosery actually intensifies all the way up to the absolute highest levels within the organization. I've seen rarefied management (not as much the CEO, who is practically just a celebrity figurehead type, but CEO-direct reports) for a company worth over $100B, avoid work, speak nonsense, decide to manhandle business deals, personally screw those deals up, pass the buck, rise and repeat. Incompetency that you wouldn't expect to be tolerated at the lowest levels of business gets dumped onto thousands of employees, wasting vast resources and ultimately degrading or destroying products. And this company is doing well, an industry leader in fact.
It's not hard to see the results though. You have companies like VW dodging emissions testing, Wells Fargo employees basically committing fraud, debacles like Enron, and of course a long list of financial investment firms. People like to see evil in government screw-ups or mismanagement (see Hurricane Katrina), and in corporate examples like Wells Fargo above. What I see, having witnessed who gets hired as CEO, and who CEOs hire to report to them, especially for gigantic companies, is just rampant incompetence everywhere. Nobody knows what the heck they're doing.
It's not like the people at the bottom are amazing either. The engineers on the R&D team (and I've been in that boat personally) love to think that the whole thing would just work so much better if they were in charge, but I've seen gobs and gobs of money wasted by engineers who disrespect the problems that are cropping up because those problems are not based in physics, and some pretty huge product errors that are based in physics.
I don't know how it is that we humans manage to continue to innovate and improve our standard of living - but it seems to be in spite of our best efforts to screw things up.
Edit:
I could go on. After posting this I've thought of a ton more examples... ok I'll go on a little. In my particular job I talk to and negotiate with a lot of attorneys. Some of them are good, I'd say about 1 or 2 in 10. The other 8/10 are either terrible at what they do, or phoning it in because the client isn't paying attention to the money they're wasting. I've had some very dumb debates with people paid upward of $500/hr to have those dumb debates with me. It definitely counts as incompetence for the attorney, but it also counts as incompetence on the part of the person or organization paying that attorney for essentially nothing.
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- 20,681
- TenEightyOne
- TenEightyOne
Only by people who think that a random picture with random text qualifies for true meme-ishn-ess. See many posts at this fine forum for examples.
Wiki notes that a memes "...generally replicate through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient copiers of information and behavior. Because humans do not always copy memes perfectly, and because they may refine, combine or otherwise modify them with other memes to create new memes, they can change over time". That certainly includes memes-proper in the format you describe.
Danoff
Premium
- 34,061
- Mile High City
http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/20/politics/john-mccain-cancer-battle/index.html
"John McCain Fights his Greatest Battle" reads the headline. His battle with cancer.
I really hate that we refer to illness as a "battle". I can see rehab being a battle - where you actually have to have some physical and mental stamina. But cancer? How are you supposed to fight cancer? With guns? With muscles? With your mind? With your resolve? It's cancer... it doesn't care about your resolve.
The problem with framing the discussion this way, as with so many things in life, is that the converse has to be true. If you can "win" a battle with cancer. You can "lose" a battle with cancer. If you can fight cancer, you can be beaten by cancer. If you can be tough in the face of cancer, you can be weak in the face of cancer. You're a loser and weak for dying of it.
We love to do this as a society, heap praise on success stories, or frame something in an emotional way, but there's no reason to frame a biological process as something that you have control over. If you're proud to have "beaten" cancer, someone else should be ashamed for losing. I think one of the reasons we like to do this is because we like to make heroes out of people, but there's a darker more secretive reason... because we like to think we're in control.
If you frame cancer as a struggle or battle, you have some hope of overcoming it through hard work and tenacity. If you really want to survive, you can if you just work hard enough. That's the fantasy, and it's one that lets everyone indulge that they'll be winners if that ever happens to them.
The reality is simple... no amount of hard work or tenacity can prevent you from dying of cancer. If you have it, especially if it's late stage, you're completely and totally at the mercy of biological processes that are almost completely outside of your control. It's scary and depressing, and that's life. People are not losers for dying of cancer, and so they're not heroes for not dying of it. You're fortunate to be a cancer survivor, you're lucky to be a cancer survivor. Pride is misplaced. It is a misfortune and a tragedy to be killed by cancer.
I really hate that we (society) set people up to die in defeat, when all that's really happening is that they're killed by a biological process they had no control over.
If you really need to hand out credit for a victory, credit the doctors.
"John McCain Fights his Greatest Battle" reads the headline. His battle with cancer.
I really hate that we refer to illness as a "battle". I can see rehab being a battle - where you actually have to have some physical and mental stamina. But cancer? How are you supposed to fight cancer? With guns? With muscles? With your mind? With your resolve? It's cancer... it doesn't care about your resolve.
The problem with framing the discussion this way, as with so many things in life, is that the converse has to be true. If you can "win" a battle with cancer. You can "lose" a battle with cancer. If you can fight cancer, you can be beaten by cancer. If you can be tough in the face of cancer, you can be weak in the face of cancer. You're a loser and weak for dying of it.
We love to do this as a society, heap praise on success stories, or frame something in an emotional way, but there's no reason to frame a biological process as something that you have control over. If you're proud to have "beaten" cancer, someone else should be ashamed for losing. I think one of the reasons we like to do this is because we like to make heroes out of people, but there's a darker more secretive reason... because we like to think we're in control.
If you frame cancer as a struggle or battle, you have some hope of overcoming it through hard work and tenacity. If you really want to survive, you can if you just work hard enough. That's the fantasy, and it's one that lets everyone indulge that they'll be winners if that ever happens to them.
The reality is simple... no amount of hard work or tenacity can prevent you from dying of cancer. If you have it, especially if it's late stage, you're completely and totally at the mercy of biological processes that are almost completely outside of your control. It's scary and depressing, and that's life. People are not losers for dying of cancer, and so they're not heroes for not dying of it. You're fortunate to be a cancer survivor, you're lucky to be a cancer survivor. Pride is misplaced. It is a misfortune and a tragedy to be killed by cancer.
I really hate that we (society) set people up to die in defeat, when all that's really happening is that they're killed by a biological process they had no control over.
If you really need to hand out credit for a victory, credit the doctors.
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- 3,099
- Finland
- thematic604
Apart from aging, cancer is a "disease of affluence". So by the time one has cancer, the actual battle has been lost.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3252065/
A comparison https://maisonneuve.org/article/2010/11/15/the-diseases-affluence/
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- 29,385
- Glasgow
- GTP_Mars
Really not sure what you mean by that - aside from anything else, cancer is a multitude of different diseases with a broad spectrum of causes, many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with 'affluence'.
@Danoff You make a good point (as usual), though I would argue that the term 'battle' means different things to different people... having watched my cousin 'fight' cancer (only to die aged 35), it was clear to me that it did feel like a battle to him, with the prize being an extra year of life with his family. He was initially given a poor prognosis (around 6 months), but lasted for over 18 months, during which time he made it back to work and spent as much time on holiday with his family as he could manage. For me the expression 'battling cancer' represents the will and determination to not let one's inevitable (and possibly imminent) death stop you from carrying on as normally as possible, even when that is hardly possible. Sadly, my uncle is currently very ill with cancer, and some days he simply cannot get out of bed - but, amazingly, when he can make it out of bed, he goes fishing and (unbelievably) still goes into work (aged 75). To me that does qualify as a struggle or a battle, and while his doctors and medical science should be credited with the fact that he is even still alive, I believe he also deserves credit for the tenacity he is showing in the face of what is pretty much inevitable.
Danoff
Premium
- 34,061
- Mile High City
That's not really "battling" cancer then. It's closer to battling the effects of cancer treatment. We do describe "fighting to stay awake", which is similar to the notion of fighting against the effects that come along with cancer treatment when trying to live life.
Would we say that someone in a hospital bed who is not going to work or spending time with their family is not battling cancer? Are they being beaten by cancer because they can't muster the strength to walk down the hall? It brings up a tangential problem with framing things as "battles" or "fights", there is no control group. We can't say that your uncle is doing better than anyone else as he tenaciously goes to work or goes fishing, because nobody else has had his cancer with his body at his age. You could say that he's winning his personal struggle with the effects of cancer treatment if you define winning as continuing to live life. If your doctor tells you to stay in bed and get some rest and you go to work or go on a trip, is that winning or losing? I don't know.
If someone can't muster the strength to go in to work are they losing? Are we comparing them to your uncle? No, of course we would never say that. We say that person just has a more difficult struggle. They're still just as tough and tenacious, but their battle is harder. For them, the fact that they're even alive is a testament to their tenacity and grit. Likewise, your uncle clearly has a more difficult battle, and is every bit as tenacious and gritty as someone who runs a 10k while on cancer treatment. We just move the goalposts for each person such that each person is a hero, even in defeat, rendering the whole thing pointless. One fun thing about this is that cancer treatment itself is a moving goalpost - easier to survive and live with today than it was when we were kids.
The writers of the John McCain story that I posted earlier will do exactly the same thing if he dies. He was fighting his toughest battle at the time, and if he loses that battle, we'll just say that he fought valiantly to the end and was a hero and an amazing fighter, even if he laid in bed the entire time - rendering some of the words used to frame his struggle hypocritical. We like to pretend that we can point to someone with cancer running a 10k as tenacious, and someone going to work as tenacious, and someone lying in a gurney as tenacious, but in reality those words are meaningless unless we're willing to NOT apply them to someone. My grandfather, a WWII veteran, died of cancer (I think actually it was cancer treatment that killed him). Loser? Weak? Defeated? It came on suddenly (rather, it was recognized late) and his treatment left him totally debilitated.
You can point to your uncle and say that he's tenacious in the face of adversity, and that someone else would have quit. Who? Who would have quit? Robin Williams? Chris Cornell? Chester Bennington? Are those the weak people that make your uncle tenacious? Of course not. They had their own personal obstacles with their own personal bodies and minds. You could say that your uncle has a mental fortitude to continue to be positive in the face of inevitable death... but I struggle these days to even credit that. Is it a strong mind that perseveres in the face of death? I don't even know. I've seen how debilitating it can be to have a truly powerful mind when that mind is turned against itself.
I'm left where I started, that your uncle is fortunate to be able to go to work. I know, he's working hard to make that happen, and you want to recognize that hard work. Ok, rephrase the statement then, your uncle is fortunate to have the energy to bust his rear end to continue living his life. Robin Williams had the misfortune of being born with fatally flawed biology.
I'd like to say that going beyond that is just a show of respect that harms no one and makes people feel better, but it has these nasty implications for everyone not achieving the same thing. I think we all have to realize that we're inevitably stuck with the physiology that we were born with, and some of us are far luckier in that lottery than others.
- 29,385
- Glasgow
- GTP_Mars
@Danoff You're making a false dichotomy here... you are trying to draw comparisons between people, even though you allude to the fact that nobody would act any differently when faced with the same situation. But someone with cancer is very likely face considerably greater hardship than they are used to or have faced in the past, and that is what I might use the word 'battle' to represent - that merely going to work or spending time playing withtheir kids is no longer an activity that they would do without giving it a second thought, and becomes something that requires considerable effort and will power to achieve. It's not about drawing comparisons between what different people would do - I can easily assert that my uncle, for example, is extremely tenacious in the face of his own disease without casting any aspersions (as you are suggesting) upon anyone else.
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