olofscience

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Everything posted by olofscience

  1. Yes, I'm actually saying that. After the cat was out of the bag with the virus entering through the useless travel bans, it made practically zero difference. What made the difference afterwards was the lockdowns. Contact tracing is also possible in the earliest stages, but after about 2 weeks it will be overwhelmed if growth is unchecked. That number would be around 6,000 people with my very best case scenario estimate (2.7%). More likely it's only a few hundred difference, and you already get that many dying in a single day. It's not intuitive, I know. It's hard to believe. But maths is not always intuitive. Even the Monty Hall problem still gets me. What ScottishJohn said. Within the EU the countries arrange to have an exchange system to cover costs, the cost to the end user citizen will vary but is minimal.
  2. You really don't get exponential growth then, I'll try to simplify further. Since it's so contagious, the outcome between letting one infected person in and 1000 infected people in (when you don't do any further controls like how Trump did) is almost indistinguishable. If he didn't do any travel bans at all, it would still be around 220,000 today. If the travel bans only let 1/1000th of the infected in then at worst it would have been 226,000 - a 2.7% difference in an unrealistically BEST CASE scenario. The real difference is probably way lower than 0.5%. That's pretty much the definition of completely useless. It's like using a sheet of paper to protect yourself against a .45 gunshot at close range. It will barely slow it down and you'll end up just as dead as with nothing at all.
  3. You're saying...you'd support something regardless of whether it's completely useless. Have you actually thought this through? I see you're still not familiar with the term "exponential growth". How about the term "going viral"? It is a virus after all. In the case of exponential growth, late is almost indistinguishable from never.
  4. This is spot on. There will always be majorities and minorities. The EC only converts a "tyranny of the majority" into "tyranny of the minority" but it's a problem that should really be solved by other methods - for example, homosexuality is a minority and is protected by law from discriminatory bakers for example (which right wingers still complain regularly about here).
  5. Nice deflection. That's the entire point, they weren't real measures to stop covid - Trump was just full of BS doing fake measures to stop covid. That's what we saw, and that's what you fell for, hook, line and sinker. And it's just one example - I could probably find another one regarding Trump's hyperbolic BS about crime-infested democrat run states. Maybe you believe that Portland is in complete anarchy and control of the antifa? Haven't spent time to look, but it's pretty common. I read something from the right-wing news one day, the next day I hear it almost verbatim from my "independent thinker" acquaintance at work. It's so predictable. Not you, but it's really common on your side. Even Turtle keeps saying he's centrist but he's pretty much a Fox news repeater here. You can predict his talking points by watching Fox (ugh) the previous evening. Brains on rails. Ron says it best - "where we go one we go all." Exactly what sheep do.
  6. Well I guess that's a matter of opinion. The rest of the world was horrified when so many children died in the Sandy Hook shooting, but the resistance to banning weapon types (and ammunition capacity) used in that shooting does make it seem that way. Guess what, in Australia and many other countries quarantining is NOT voluntary. And with your love of guns you're quite sensitive about being at gunpoint. Strange, huh.
  7. Actually, the Electoral College is basically a first-past-the-post system (FPTP) and mathematically it's actually QUITE difficult to design elections that are fair - if you use Kenneth Arrow's 4 conditions it's actually mathematically impossible. Anyway, FPTP does have the problem that a candidate can get less than 50% of the vote and still win (i.e Trump). But if you want more "fair" elections you will also have to accept that the most populous states will dominate, unless you want to accept that not everyone's votes are equal.
  8. Okay, back in March you were very supportive of Trump's "measures" to stop Covid-19: You fell for Trump's BS at least - they weren't screened, they weren't quarantined, and here we are, 211,000 deaths later. Source: the covid-19 thread (edit 2: it didn't take very long to find, fulfilling the criteria of "easily")
  9. The original quote I believe was from brenthutch, and Skydekker just said it was f'd up. Oh yeah sure, and you're the independent thinker who doesn't fall for crap? hahahahahahahahaha For an independent thinker you stick to the party line as if your brain were on rails.
  10. Places with weak coverage are also places which aren't usually busy - so these are the places least likely to need "remote driving" assistance - the onboard AI should be able to handle it fine. example - long, empty stretches of highway: perfect conditions for full AI driving See my comment above for Starlink - sub-100ms latencies with global coverage
  11. Makes you feel good about yourself, doesn't it? But if that were true, then the very generous welfare state in Denmark or Sweden, for example, would encourage hundreds of thousands of people to be unproductive causing their economy to collapse. But right now they're both very wealthy societies. Would you consider the possibility that the government check is NOT one of the reasons why those people are unproductive?
  12. Well during the debate Trump told them to "stand down and stand by", and they responded with "Standing by sir!" Pretty obvious who owns them.
  13. I've actually managed to drive a small radio-controlled car before remotely, and it was drivable up to about 700 milliseconds latency. Below 200 milliseconds the latency was not noticeable at all, it felt like I was there. However, Microsoft recently launched a streaming game service - it's practically a video stream, you have a controller and it sends back the control inputs to the cloud server where the game actually runs. For fast-moving games you'd think latency would be a killer. However, they manage it - ironically, they demoed it with a racing simulator: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/13/microsoft-shows-off-project-xcloud-with-forza-running-on-an-android-phone/ They did say "you need a good internet connection", so if the remote drivers are in the same country it shouldn't be much of an issue.
  14. The main issue for controlling things like this will be latency - for drones in Afghanistan, takeoffs and landings are tricky with more than a few hundred milliseconds delay, so takeoffs and landings are done from the local airbase, then control is passed on to operators in the USA. However, Elon Musk is also building a satellite internet constellation that in theory *could* connect an operator in Afghanistan to the US with less than 100 milliseconds latency. Coincidence?
  15. Then guess who will be blamed for taking jobs? "Immigrants." "It's because all manufacturing has gone to China". AI will cause a wave of job losses like never before. That will equal a lot of angry people - if you think Trump is bad, the problem is just beginning. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
  16. It's just a possibility - the specifics will be up to the companies. However, "call center" operations have been done for years already with US Predator drones. The remote "pilots" were based in Nevada, and the drones were in Afghanistan. They were overworked, underpaid, and suffered the PTSD of middle eastern warfare even though they never left the United States. Do you think companies will treat truck drivers better than the Air Force did to their drone pilots? I really hope so, but past history suggests otherwise.
  17. Already happened. Four times. Yes, lawsuits started flying, yet there's still no ban. Companies have been cleared, and undisclosed settlements changed hands. Yes but the companies will need a scapegoat in case of an accident. Unfortunately it will be the "monitoring driver" - this is happening, as we speak, to the operator of the Uber self-driving car that killed Elaine Herzberg: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54175359 At least for corporate owners, level 4 will give them the ability to remove the driver physically and have a "call center" type of operation where remote drivers connect to vehicles needing assistance and manually drive them through tough spots, after which the local AI then takes over, and the "call center" operator connects to another vehicle, etc. So instead of having 1000 drivers for 1000 trucks, you only have 100 remote operators for 1000 trucks doing mostly autonomous driving, saving the owner from the salaries of 900 drivers.
  18. There is no evidence whatsoever that this prediction is realistic in any way, it's pure conjecture. Then you use this unproven conjecture to conclude that "real AI" doesn't exist? I don't know, sounds like you're building a conclusion on shaky foundations. People who say AI is just "pattern matching" are right...if this was the 1980s. In 2012, this field was revolutionized.
  19. shhhh, don't tell Coreece - he has a weird obsession about them.
  20. No, the commercial benefits are too high for businesses to ignore. While Uber's self-driving car efforts are questionable, they managed to kill one pedestrian and yet less than 2 years later they're back on the roads continuing development. Liability won't slow them down that much. There is a LOT of money on this.
  21. Both incorrect. While I would welcome a self-driving car for my own convenience in long trips, the bigger drive is for big employers (large truck shipping fleets, taxi fleets, delivery vehicles) massively reduce their payroll expenses. With millions of people employed around the world just for driving, the potential savings would be immense. And no, these benefits will *not* trickle down. Many of them will also be electric, and not require as much maintenance as traditional ICE vehicles, so those newly-unemployed drivers won't find new jobs maintaining these new robots. Even many people in the traditional maintenance industry (mechanics, garages, etc.) will see reduced revenue and workload. Meanwhile the company that owns the vehicle will benefit from both reduced payroll and reduced maintenance costs. Win-win from a business point of view.
  22. Well this one I am very much looking forward to seeing! Make sure you post it here first