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from the not-sure-that-threats-will-work dept.
President Rouhani warns that White House failure to uphold Iran nuclear deal would prompt firm reaction from Tehran.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called on US President Donald Trump to uphold the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, or "face severe consequences".
In a televised speech, Rouhani said the "Iranian government will react firmly" if the White House fails to "live up to their commitments" under the agreement.
The warning comes weeks in advance of a May 12 deadline for Trump to renew the deal.
The US president has previously said he would scrap the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which he has called the "worst deal in history", unless "a better option" is presented to him.
[...] The landmark deal reached in Lausanne, Switzerland in April 2015 with China, Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany and the US offered Iran more than $110bn a year in sanctions relief and a return to the global economy in exchange for halting its drive for a nuclear weapon.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:18PM (76 children)
Before he took office as POTUS, Trump had zero experience in foreign policy.
As Trump biographer David Cay Johnston says [alternet.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:27PM (7 children)
woah woah woah, you can't be throwing such BASELESS accusations around. Trump is the best! He knows the best people, the best words, and he is an unparalleled genious.
What bug crawled up your butt today originalowner?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:04PM (6 children)
Trump's Marketing professor at Wharton had this to say [alternet.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by NewNic on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:55PM (5 children)
Which goes to show that a degree from Wharton isn't worth the paper it is written on, if the student comes from a wealthy background.
I think that sentiment goes for just about any Ivy League school.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @10:05PM (4 children)
It would be interesting to find out how Trump got into Wharton.
As lazy as he is and as much as he hates to read, I seriously doubt he had the academic credentials to qualify.
if the student comes from a wealthy background
I think you've nailed it.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @10:21PM (3 children)
He got in because it's all about money and connections. Meritocracy doesn't exist even in academia.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:09PM (2 children)
The other day, I heard David Cay Johnston on Pacifica Radio (you're unlikely to hear him on Lamestream Media).
He mentioned how previous candidates had gotten the third degree from The Fourth Estate e.g they knew the name of the guys with whom O'Bummer had smoked dope as a student.
With Trump, there was obviously none of that.
In the article linked in my root comment, he says
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:22AM (1 child)
Obviously the trump supporters forgot the basics as well. Let's see, calls to commit homicide / genocide, adultery, theft, claiming he could gun down someone; yeah the basics don't apply when a candidate is running on populism during a country's rough patch.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @02:04AM
Those weren't forgotten, they're what got him elected. "He's just like us", etc.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:30PM (46 children)
That's what libertarians have been trying to tell you guys for decades (if not centuries, going back to Bastiat, or to the Founders of the U.S., or even to the philosophers who inspired them).
Society is intractable to central planning, no matter how elite your group of would-be central planners. The only guiding philosophy that works is capitalism, whereby society evolves through variation and selection, resulting in designs for society that emerge as though constructed by some omniscient, omnipotent, god-like "Invisible Hand".
Give up your religion; stop worshiping the State. Men are not Angels, and they never will be.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:48PM
Yuck. Your screed has a very disgusting odor, sort of like a human turd wrapped in naivety. You can smell the damned thing but you can't quite tell if it is dog shit, human shit, or unholy shit. No amount of flowery language can cover your shit stained loin cloth of a solution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @08:52PM
Ah yes, the good ole' personal responsibility trope taken to ridiculous extremes. We should all spend our lives reading EULAs and creating flowcharts to figure out if company A or B is better. Then when the company breaks the rules we need to hope our corporate enforcer is better than their corporate enforcer. This sounds so familiar.....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:01PM (11 children)
capitalism probably is required to achieve a great peaceful society but it is clearly not sufficient. You need sensibles laws against murder, rape, assaul, thefts and most importantly a group to enforce it and a group to check that group of enforcers. Without that you get Liberia, I hope you enjoy paying protection money to your warlord....
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JNCF on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:07PM (6 children)
You mean taxes?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @10:46PM (5 children)
I feel better about funding universal healthcare and public schools that I feel about the money given to a dude in Libéria but looking at it autistically I see how one might confuse a proper gouvernement to a properly paid warlord.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JNCF on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:56PM (4 children)
Roads! Healthcare! Also bombs that we drop on literal children, but let's not talk about that! Funding foreign wars of aggression to prop up the petrodollar feels bad, man.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:06AM (3 children)
Then stop driving oil-based-fuel-hungry SUVs. What? That's not what you meant? Well, too bad, because that's exactly at the heart of the problem!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:26AM
Lulz. I'm rolling around on one to four cylinders, depending on the day. I'm still part of the problem, but these are not the Hummers you're looking for. And I think petrol is only part of the problem -- they'd be trying to proliferate the dollar through other means, including force, anyway. Global acceptance of the dollar means that inflation sucks value away from the world, rather than just Americans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:11PM (1 child)
You are being ridiculous.
Try "power hungry fighter jets, tanks and war ships". Control over oil and wars for control over oil are not about SUVs, they are about military and about militaries of the world, both allied and potential adversary.
Having civilians at it is just for making oil's price bearable and production and supply abundant, keeping the industry alive in times of peace. If you want to reduce global carbon footprint, military gear has to switch over to "green" (no offense for you, swabs and airmen blue coats) or at least to portable nuclear first, and then the rest of the world will follow.
For instance, all military seafaring vessels could be nuclear propelled, theoretically maybe even the tanks and heavy transport vehicles, and perhaps even large cargo planes. And the fighter jets could use bio-fuels, or cryo-hydrogen. Then, the oil usage as energy source may just as well cease.
But then again, if the military energy of choice becomes something which can be sourced most anywhere, then the tap is gone, and so is idea of controlling the tap. So, basically, the strategists will have to make a decision.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:44PM
Ennnngggh...I think there are a few problems with this.
Do we even have access to enough nuclear goo to fit out the whole navy with it? Aside from that--and being enormously expensive to retrofit and maintain--that would also massively increase the amount of nuclear waste we're producing. Which we still don't have a place to put since they keep killing Yucca Mountain, right? Which is in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Nevada, but no no no! Not in our backyard!
And no, you can't power a tank with a nuclear reactor. Reactors can't be miniaturized that much and still produce enough power for what you're talking about, AFAIK. RTGs can be made quite small, but they don't produce enough power. And there's no way you could fit a real reactor in an Abrams. Plus, y'know, it's really not the best idea to be sending a bunch of reactors into combat so they can contaminate everything where you're fighting when they get destroyed.
And as for the "large cargo planes," yes there were technically projects for nuclear-powered aircraft, but bear in mind these were enormous planes, and with the amount of radiation shielding you need to keep from irradiating everything onboard, it's not very practical payload-wise.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:11PM (3 children)
Nope. Exploitation of The Working Class by a separate Oligarchical Ownership Class is absolutely not necessary for anything.
There are thousands of worker-owned cooperative around the globe that demonstrate the fact.
The violent mess that USA has made of the globe is proof enough for anyone not wearing bottle-bottom rose-colored glasses that Capitalism and the resulting greedy, grasping Oligarchy is NOT the way to go.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:17PM (1 child)
This. There was and still is a massive amount of violence perpetrated to further capitalist interests. These tangentially benefitted the US as a whole, but then globalism came and the capitalists realized they could make a lot of money putting labor markets against each other. Immoral decisions made for the bottom line.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:31PM
There was and still is a massive amount of violence perpetrated to further capitalist interests
Yup. Major General Smedley Butler, who came up from the rank of Private and was twice decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor, looking back on his years in the Marine Corps said in his book "War is a Racket"
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:38PM
You don't understand.
Capitalism is just one of many possible forms of establishing a pecking order or power pyramid in human society. If we concentrate just on the methods, we are missing the big picture behind them.
When capitalism had been rejected before, the hierarchy nevertheless emerged again, and it had even more unpleasant methods of assuring its internal structural integrity then capitalism. Ditto for socioeconomic systems preceding the rise of capitalism. There may be other possible alternatives, but the question remains: how is the power distributed and deployed?
So, if you want to change the world, you better start thinking about why humans need to control other humans, to counter and subvert others' will, and what would make that superfluous and non-rewarding. Once that riddle is solved, that would be the end not only of capitalism, but also of any other system of subjugation. But, I don't promise you will like what you may find out - there is a reason we are living like this and not like that. But then again, if it becomes technically possible, there is a very real possibility that capitalism will get retired, but I am afraid that once the carrots are removed from the toolbox, only the sticks will remain in it for us (erm, for the humans living at the time).
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:12PM (1 child)
Central planning DOES NOT FUCKING WORK....The only guiding philosophy that works is capitalism,
Which is why we have so many successful nations that are run based on pure capitalism and have no central planning around things like laws and infrastructure.
Oh wait.... there are zero of those.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday April 25 2018, @02:36AM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:18PM (2 children)
So what exactly do you propose doing about the non-angelic people that are around? Such as:
- The warlord going around and robbing everybody at gunpoint
- The person sneaking into other people's property to take stuff
- The person who just dumped toxic waste into the local water supply because that was easier than treating it with something that would prevent it from poisoning everybody else
- The person who has enslaved people, again at gunpoint
The fundamental problem with libertarianism is that its ideas have never been successfully tested against reality. And that's not because they've never been tried.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:43PM (1 child)
I wish I had a time machine so that I could send these doofuses back to The Gilded Age.
Big hint: It was only gilded for the super-rich.
N.B. The Long Depression (1873 - 1896) overlapped that.
...then came the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and later The National Labor Relations Act and other regulations that made things not completely terrible for Joe Worker.
...or if I could just have a transporter so that I could send them to modern-day Somalia.
People who think the "small government" thing is a great idea need to be exposed to the actual cases that exist|have existed and just how horrible they are|were.
...or maybe these ignorant fools could have cracked open a History textbook while they were in school.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:25AM
These are the doofuses that think public education is part of the moon matrix and they're so smart for avoiding as much of it ad they could.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday April 24 2018, @10:52PM (25 children)
Everything you say is correct. The problem is there's no workable alternative. Anarchy doesn't scale.
It really *is* best to have the minimum necessary government at every level, and each layer of government governing a small number of cases. So, e.g., the Federal government should have no say over individuals, but only over the states. And that's what the US Constitution tried to set up. Unfortunately, that was no method of ensuring that the Federal government adhere to it's appropriate limits. I also think it would be best of the states only governed the country governments. This breaks down at the lowest level where cities and rural folk exist on the same level, so counties would need to govern both their included cities and included rural folk. Since I've no chance of putting this into operation, I've never tried to work out that kind of detail.
OTOH, while some form of minimal government is both necessary and desirable, there's no way of holding government down to that level. Politicians will just lie if you ask them to do so while they're running for office. Some of them may even believe their own lies, as I believe I'll avoid eating too much when there's no food in front of me. (Though I know I'm lying to myself. An interesting feeling, but when the food isn't there, it's easy to decide to avoid it.)
That said, some government is *NECESSARY*, but there's no effective way of constraining the top level of government in it's quest for additional power. Which is how we got where we are today. My general feeling about the government is there's too much and it's too controlling, but as long as we can't keep it from being abusive, we should get as much benefit from it as we can. So I support various social services and universal health care. I will agree that the ideal government shouldn't provide them, but it shouldn't do that because it's been restricted in it's other powers to where, e.g., it doesn't have enough information on the citizenry to provide them.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:02PM (6 children)
I'm kind of confused what 'scaling' would mean in this context. So after a certain size, anarchy becomes ... self-annihilating? Self-organizing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:20PM (5 children)
I'm not convinced that you understand the word.
A lot of folks think that it means "chaos".
That's NOT what it means.
An == without
Archy == rulers
Anarchy is using the smallest amount of organization needed to get a task done.
...and dissolving the organization upon completion of the task.
self-annihilating?
Yup. See "dissolving" (above).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 25 2018, @09:27AM (4 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @01:12PM (1 child)
In modern organization, the specialist knowledge is extracted and codified in form of System of Quality, allowing (in theory) to switch agents (humans) between tasks with ease. With time, quality procedures should get more refined and detailed.
Informational society without secrets - without Intellectual (Private) Property, and with AI deployed for actual benefit of humankind, should be able to provide an anarchic society's ad-hoc cooperation groups with both specialist knowledge and coordination services on-demand. That would be a "Subsingularity" which would still be a boon in overall development of humanity.
But I don't think that this is how rulers sprung into being. I assume it is a sort of popularity contest, where people become sort of celebrities, by providing entertainment or meaning to their peers, and through popularity (and occasional undermining of the opposition through ridicule or violence) acquire influence. Study children or primates' groups behavior and you'll gain insight into the nature of emergent social hierarchies.
Hopefully, an anarchic society would be enough educated and prepared to resist creation of permanent power structures, but any unforeseen crises, or serendipitous discoveries, and the heroes they will produce may become a crackle in the perfection ...
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday April 25 2018, @04:46PM
It probably happened in lots of different ways, but way back in Sumeria they only had rulers in times of crisis. The candidates would meet on "The field of Enlil" (the wind god) and give speeches about why they should be chosen to handle the crisis. At some point they selected a ruler who made the crisis permanent. (OTOH, before that happened they had lots of priests who had considerable power, so it's not a creation from nothing. The priests just didn't control armed forces.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday April 25 2018, @08:25PM (1 child)
Term limits?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday April 26 2018, @08:53AM
That works for individuals, but not for dynasties. It also doesn't avoid the problems of real power shifting to a position with no term limits and the position with term limits becoming more of a figurehead. This can happen very easily with political parties, where it doesn't actually matter who the nominal leader is, they're doing whatever the executive committee (which holds no public office) tells them to do and won't get the backing of the reelection engine next time or the cushy jobs for former leaders afterwards if they don't.
This is the fundamental problem that libertarians never seem to address: It's easy to impose limits on the powers of the organisation that calls itself a government, but it's much harder to prevent that from just shifting power to less accountable organisations.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:10PM (12 children)
The key is Separation of Powers; the most general form of this is competition, and the most civilized form of competition is a free market (which is implied by capitalism), whereby even the enforcers of the rules of interaction (contracts) are themselves in competition within that market.
At the level of the nation state, the world has always existed in a state of anarchy, so it definitely does scale. And, even with planet-destroying weapons, things haven't turned out so bad. Even among entities (including the United States) that are explicitly anti-capitalist, it is competition that has kept the world intact and moving ever more towards greater peace.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:59PM (11 children)
the world has always existed in a state of anarchy
You are a complete fool.
For starters, get yourself a dictionary and look up words that you don't understand--or that you think you understand BUT CLEARLY DON'T.
Since the first cities--perhaps even the first villages--there has been heirarchy.
Invariably, someone--or a group of someones, sometimes called "elders"--has been in charge.
In ancient Athens, the citizens gathered and made decisions.
In the Roman Republic, there were guys who were chosen to rotate through the job of leader.
Democracy went into decline for many centuries while superstitious nonsense ("the divine right of kings") took over.
USA brought a form of Democracy back into being in the 1780s.
The rise of poorly regulated Capitalism has allowed the richest to buy up the politicians and now Democracy has become Oligarchy.
entities (including the United States) that are explicitly anti-capitalist
Gawd, you are fucking stupid.
There has never been a place on the planet that is more into the ownership model which has more exploitable non-owner employees.
...and when it comes to markets, hell, even the gov't is for sale.
Anti-Capitalist is a synonym for Socialist.
USA has bombed, invaded, and occupied places that show even a glimmer of that.
USA.gov has sent weapons and advisors to other places that smell like an Anti-Capitalist movement is afoot.
Just how Capitalist does USA have to be for you, you smeghead?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:19AM (2 children)
Ah, yes. You've revealed yourself to be the uppity, angry, self-loathing, mutilated Jew that you are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:27AM
Why must you be such a racist dickhead of a troll? You are not worthy to even use that insult.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:29AM
Dave Lister was Jewish??
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:26AM (3 children)
Sorry to break it to you, but the Corsican Republic [wikipedia.org] was there first in 1755.
Didn't last long, but hey...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:39AM (1 child)
There's considerable difference between that and the Oligarchy-from-the-start thing that USA has.
The number of concessions made to the Southern slave-holding Aristocracy (Electoral College, appointed senators, no recall-by-the-voters of bad performers, etc.) made our system a new and different thing.
...not that your point isn't noteworthy.
Switzerland has had a pretty cool democratic thing going for a while as well.
Being occupied by Austrians (e.g. the William Tell story) put a damper on that for a while.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:42AM
Ah yes, I must have ignored the "form of" in your sentence. My apologies :)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday April 25 2018, @05:04PM
There have been LOTS of partial democracies throughout history. Sometimes they represented a union of the lower classes, sometimes the aristocracy united against the rest. Britain was unusual in that the Magna Charta gave votes to both the aristocracy and the commoners in the same structure. Calling it a Constitutional Monarchy rather than a limited democracy is an arbitrary choice. The boundaries are fuzzy.
And as for the US...slaves and women weren't allowed to vote, so it was at best a partial democracy. Just like all the others. At the current time the US is closer to being a real democracy than at any time before 1900. This doesn't mean that effectively it's not really an oligarchy. Power and formal structure are two different things. Formal structure is easy to document, but flows of power are usually hidden. Currently in the US children and foreigners aren't allowed to vote. So even the formal democracy is limited.
P.S.: Just because there are "good reasons" for not allowing some segment to vote doesn't mean that letting them vote wouldn't be more democratic. OTOH, there's nothing inherently good about a democracy. Democracies have a strong tendency to take simplistic views of problem, to look for scapegoats, etc. And there's the problem of candidates for office being bribed before they start their official duties (or offered bribes for afterwards). The "offered bribes for afterwards" could easily be addressed if the government wanted to, by making the acceptance of favors from those you regulate illegal, and enforcing that law. The bribes before attaining office is more difficult. So my preferred solution is selecting officials by lot...with an ample pension and a strict law against accepting any emoluments of any nature from anyone except the government afterwards. This would include returns on investments that the official had held before taking office...so they would be well advised to sell off any businesses they owned or investments they held before taking office. (And this would mean that they'd be really impacted by inflation...and would benefit by deflation...but nothing's perfect.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:50AM (1 child)
Ah, yes. You've revealed yourself to be the uppity, angry, self-loathing, mutilated Jew that you are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @01:01AM
Smeghead
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @02:40AM
Ah, yes. You've revealed yourself to be the uppity, angry, self-loathing, mutilated Jew that you are.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @05:11AM
Ah, yes. You've revealed yourself to be the uppity, angry, self-loathing, mutilated Jew that you are.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:11AM (4 children)
How big (in terms of geography or number of citizens vicariously controlled, take your pick) would you like the top level of government to be? Put another way, how many top level governments would you like to see coexisting in the world?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday April 25 2018, @05:22PM (3 children)
That question depends on too many unspecified factors.
OTOH, if there are going to be nuclear weapons, etc., around the only potentially safe (hah! Check the history of China) number is one. Unfortunately, history shows that about one king in five will be some kind of wacko. In the Chinese case he had a case of megalomania that considered all history before his reign to be a personal affront, and spent a lot of time destroying it to such effect that we know little of Chinese history before his time.
So basically my only answer is wait for the Singularity, hope that it comes in time, and also hope that we live through that transition of power. I give us a 50% chance of surviving the transition to SuperHuman AI in control. But if we survive that, there won't be anymore such problems. OTOH, if multiple human governments controlling nuclear weapons remain the condition, I estimate we have a 30% chance of surviving the century...and I hope I'm not being optimistic. And then we have the problem of surviving the next century.
*IF* SuperHumanAI doesn't show up, then our only semi-longterm hope for survival is multiple self-sufficient mobile space colonies. But those are pretty slow in showing up, and require good social engineering, a nearly closed ecosystem, and probably fusion power, though possibly fission power could be made to work for awhile. I consider SuperHumanAI to be much more likely to get here first. (My estimate of 50% chance of surviving the transition to power of the SuperHumanAI is based on the problem of it's goals when created. And that it will extrapolate those goals far beyond what the designers conceived. [Please note: This already happens with nearly every complex program, so that's not unexpected. Unintelligent chess programs play games that their designers could never contemplate.])
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday April 25 2018, @06:50PM (2 children)
I mostly agree with your analysis. I think I might see the potential pitfalls of centralization as being even more distasteful than you do -- even in a best case scenario where everything is run by AI that doesn't kill us all -- and I might be more willing to roll the dice on the existential destruction of life on Earth to avoid those pitfalls. I also think that while superhuman AI does allow complete centralization in a way that hasn't been achievable before, we could also have a future where multiple superhuman AIs exist as competing actors that coexist through MAD game theory.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday April 25 2018, @11:30PM (1 child)
You're making lots of assumptions that may or may not be valid about the way a SuperHumanAI would handle things. I don't think you can really presume that it's going to be coercive of centralization, or much of anything else. This partially depends on what it's developed out of, and entirely depends on what its goals are. But, as I said, even knowing the goals we wouldn't necessarily be able to predict its choices. Except in very simple cases...and even then, edge cases show up where you don't expect them.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday April 26 2018, @03:22AM
In the line I think you're referring to I said "could," not "would." I think I'm pretty open minded about what could happen with a superhuman AI, though there are some scenarios I judge to be more likely than others.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 25 2018, @09:22AM
The reason that no one listens to libertarians when they say this is that they have the basic idea, that concentrations of power lead to exploitation, correct, but then they assume that there is a magical difference between a concentration of power that calls itself a government and one that does not. And then they accuse others of magical thinking. Any historian can point to large numbers of examples where the central concentration of power was not in the institutions that nominally held it.
Having a strong centralised authority that is supposed to be accountable to the people as a way of counterbalancing all of the other strong centralised authorities that are not is not an ideal solution. It's actually a pretty bad solution. But it's better than any of the alternatives that libertarians have proposed.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:20PM (19 children)
Trump at least did business in numerous countries.
Obama had ZERO experience.
Bush Jr. had ZERO experience.
Clinton had ZERO experience.
Bush Sr.... OK, he had lots of experience. It didn't make him a great president.
Reagan ran a border state, so that's something.
Carter had ZERO experience.
Considering people who didn't get elected, but got kind of close:
Mitt Romney had experience outsourcing American jobs. Eh, it counts, but...
Hillary Clinton had the wrong kind of experience, a series of fuck-ups and corrupt deals.
Sarah Palin ran a border state, just as Reagan did.
So after Bush Sr. we find a 3-way tie with Trump, Reagan, and Palin. Then it's a 4-way tie with no experience, and finally a couple people whose "experience" is not an asset.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:26PM (13 children)
Yeah, they didn't have business experience because they were busy actually being qualified to be politicians. Unlike Mr. Trump.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:33PM (7 children)
Ahem. They had ZERO experience with foreign policy.
We had a peanut farmer, submariner, and non-border governor. We had a lawyer and non-border governor. We had an air force reserve pilot and governor. We had a "community organizer" (sounds like "unemployed") and short-term senator.
Career politicians are disconnected from the reality of participating in our economy. They are thus not qualified for the jobs they hold, unlike President Trump.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:58PM (5 children)
...and short-term senator
You managed to leave out Professor of Constitutional Law.
...and a lot of good that experience did him when it came to administering civil liberties while he had the top gig. 8-(
It's true he didn't have any hands-on foreign policy experience and that showed with his choice of a warmonger Secretary of State (Killery).
Slick Willie's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was another warmonger.
There must be something in the Clinton family's drinking water that makes them so murderous (dropping bombs on children).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @11:16PM (4 children)
So, there you go. Not Angels, as the OP said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:23AM (3 children)
...and to no small degree, intellect.
Trump's cognitive abilities have always seemed to me to be average, at best.
...and Trumps knowledge base, as long-time Trump observer David Cay Johnston has noted, is extremely poor.
I'm thinking about The Chief Executive's raw decision-making abilities.
I would like the smartest, most knowledgeable person available to have the job.
(I'd like to see Trump's scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and compare them to the others who have been mentioned.)
...and that's before we even get into Trump's criminal activities, his narcissistic personality, and his governing-by-stunt thing.
I, and many others, can well imagine him starting a war in order to distract from an impeachment or indictment.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 25 2018, @01:47AM (2 children)
Yes, because there is a proven correlation between intelligence and the virtues, including humanity, good will, compassion, charity, and so much more.
Oh, wait. There really is no correlation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:29AM
That would be the one who agrees with me on everything, obviously.
Geeez, do I really have to spell out this stuff. 8-)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:37AM
Today's Dilbert strip made me smile. [dilbert.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:18PM
Ahem. Trump had ZERO experience with politics.
In fact, one of his problems is that he has *too much* experience dealing with foreign powers (Russia).
Seeing as Trump is busy pissing off the majority of world powers, I'm not sure how much he learned, either. But if you think economics are what matters, has he improved anything there either? Citation needed?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 25 2018, @01:43AM (4 children)
You almost sound as if you believe that to be a "good thing".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @02:12AM (2 children)
Yes, being qualified for the job is usually a "good thing". But if you so sincerely believe otherwise, the next time you need to go to a dentist, ask a plumber to do it instead, and tell us how it turns out.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 25 2018, @02:29AM (1 child)
Ya see, there's a problem here. "Politician" shouldn't be a career thing at all. That's a big part of what is wrong with our country today. We have a very small group of people who are firmly entrenched in Washington, driving this nation wherever it is that they want to go. career politicians and the two party system very nearly sum up all that is wrong with the US. Add in the dependency of the military-industrial complex on career politicians, and the two party system, and maybe you can see how big a problem it really is.
This is one case in which I can agree with some of our youth. The old bastards need to be swept away, to make room for new faces, and new ideas. All those old congress critters can go straight to hell, for all I care. They are unwanted, and unneeded.
Wasn't it Hillary who presumed to tell us that she was "qualified" to be president? ROFLMAO - despite her self-proclaimed qualifications, the broad never did anything right while she held the reigns of power. She sounds like corporate CEO's who believe they "deserve" huge bonuses, after having run their companies into the ground.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 25 2018, @09:30AM
You know, this ought to be a lot more obvious to US citizens given that the job title for some of your most senior politicians is representative. Democracy begins to suffer when 'representative' morphs into 'leader'.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:21PM
Well, there's a difference between knowing how to do the job, and Evil Overlord Hillary. That's why the election was so annoying, as the choices were a twit who (hopefully) wouldn't get anything done with all his arm-flapping, and a career politician who's in bed with everyone who would get too much stuff done that was probably 85% sleazy and evil (sleavil?).
I voted third party. Too disgusted to vote D/R.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:31PM (4 children)
Ah yes, the U.S. state that borders Russia. Great for foreign policy experience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:39PM
Most are at zero. ("peanut farmer"? "community organizer"? Oh please...) A few have proven themselves bad at it.
I did make one mistake. I need to promote Bush Jr. up a tad, given that Texas is a border state. It's thus a 4-way tie after Bush Sr.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @10:29PM (2 children)
Hey, don't go forgetting its border with that place known for its unfriendliness.
Y'know, Canada.
the U.S. state that borders Russia
Her statement "I can see Russia from my house" was priceless.
N.B. The shortest distance between the Alaskan mainland and Russia is a separation of 55 miles of the Bering Strait.
...and her house wasn't anywhere near that.
Now, there are some islands [google.com] that can be considered to reduce that distance.
...but she didn't live there either.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:59AM (1 child)
"I can see Russia from my house" was said by a Sarah Palin impersonator named Tina Fey on the comedy show Saturday Night Live.
Sarah Palin was being mocked for daring to suggest that Russia remained a concern for the USA. How times change!!! Back then, democrats were appeasing Russia (remember Hillary with the Russian ambassador and that silly plastic reset button), but today democrats freak out over Russia. All through this time, republicans have maintained a steady level of concern, and the Russians really haven't changed.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:52PM
Correct. She actually said, "They're our next door neighbors. And you can actually see Russian from land here in Alaska" [youtube.com]. She was being mocked for her near total lack of foreign policy experience, and for responding with this to a line of questioning about why specifically being next to Russia would at all aid in understanding why they were taking certain political actions at the time. She really had no clue, diplomatically, so she threw those words out there to give the impression to the base that of course a strategically important but politically nil part of Russia was visible across the Bering Strait meant that she would have the ability as Vice President to have a qualified opinion about Georgian independence. My take on it is that Gibson had a significant point to make and he did make it somewhat that Palin was unqualified to take over in the even of succession issue. It wasn't that Palin couldn't rebut it, it's that she did it in such a ham-fisted way. Thought that is arguable. So others can decide, in fact, let's go directly to the ABC News Transcript of that interview [go.com] [bolding mine]:
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:45AM
"Before he took office as POTUS, Trump had zero experience in foreign policy."
He still has zero experience in foreign policy.