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28218. Adam Selene - 4/22/2006 5:56:16 PM alistair, could you explain what you mean by blurring the lines? You mean by granting artifical intelligencses any kind of human rights?
Pelle, Adam is... well, consider the source of my namesake. :) 28219. Adam Selene - 4/22/2006 5:57:50 PM Ulgine... well, I asked for it I guess. ;) 28220. PelleNilsson - 4/22/2006 6:07:19 PM Aah, a Heinleinan! 28221. Adam Selene - 4/22/2006 7:00:10 PM It's funny, I've been using this pseudonym for so long online that I sometimes forget that it's not my real name... ;) But, ya, Heinleinian it is. It's a perfect match on a couple of fronts... Adam Selene was a libertarian who helped lead the moon to independence from earth in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. He was also a conscious machine and was treated as a fellow sentient being by his human friends, another theme I'm fond of in many respects. I've worked in artificial intelligence and neural networks professionally, and I only missed having a minor in psychology by a couple of credits when I earned my MS in Comp Sci, so I naturally have lots of theories about how thinking actually works and can be realized "artificially." 28222. alistairConnor - 4/22/2006 9:41:10 PM Yes, I was hesitating between Heinlein-head and Philipdickhead...
28223. Adam Selene - 4/22/2006 9:51:49 PM lol! 28224. judithathome - 4/22/2006 11:16:39 PM doesn't seem that strange to me to love a machine
Me, neither...I love and adore my car. 28225. Ulgine Barrows - 4/23/2006 3:08:28 AM I value my possessions but I don't love them....
refrigerator, PC, car, tiller, washing machine, microwave, vacuum, dryer, oven, shovel, iron, broom, needles... 28226. judithathome - 4/23/2006 4:51:30 AM Whatever...I do love my car. And I think Arky even likes it. 28227. Ulgine Barrows - 4/23/2006 6:04:10 AM O, I definitely covet a coworker's red zoomy Mustang, and there is another car in the lot I'd drive home, a Corvette. Actually there are 2 to choose from, one black and one red.
You might want to think about
Me, neither...I love and adore my car 28228. Ulgine Barrows - 4/23/2006 7:01:35 AM $4/gal gas, I'm sure you like it well 28229. PelleNilsson - 4/23/2006 4:25:40 PM Now I get it. Adam Selene = Silicon Man (adam is Hebrew for "man") 28230. Adam Selene - 4/23/2006 8:09:24 PM Actually, Selene is the Greek moon godess. Adam being the first man in the old testament, and Adam Selene being the liberator of the moon colony - and also with Mycroft Holmes (the computers "real" name) having multisexual personnas, the name loosely represents "the first androgenous being of the moon." Sort of a tounge-in-cheek variation of the phrase "man in the moon."
See - I don't take my personnas lightly, do I? No I don't. Who asked me? You did. Oh, shut up. 28231. judithathome - 4/23/2006 8:17:38 PM $4/gal gas, I'm sure you like it well
Well, what do you expect me to do, Ulgine? Sell my car and get a horse? Then hay would go up in price and I'd have to kill the horse.
The price of gas has nothing to do with my love for my car...no more so than the price of repairs on it.
28232. Adam Selene - 4/23/2006 8:31:09 PM Americans (like me) are so spoiled with cheap gas. Europeans have being paying these prices for years. We want to find alternative fuels, but we don't generally want to reduce our consumption of gas first (e.g., via higher prices of gas or higher-cost technology to increase MPG) nor fund research (via gas taxes.)
Regardless, a $1 increase in gas is only a few hundred dollars a year - much less than the surcharge for a hybrid car. The problem is that we actually see the numbers flash by at the pump and that seems so much more real than a monthly car payment that includes the hybrid cost.
Besides... gas prices haven't even kept up with inflation.
 28233. alistairConnor - 4/23/2006 9:33:15 PM Interesting that this theme should show up in the Religion thread...
Car worship is going to come to a sticky end.
More precisely : it will be reserved for the well-off. The common herd will find themselves increasingly cut off from the object of desire, and ways of life that revolve around it will have to evolve or perish. 28234. resonance - 4/24/2006 3:09:29 AM Great, now I've got an unfortunate Weed Atman allusion stuck in my head, that I won't make because no-one ever gets my Pynchon references.
I'd agree with Alistair -- well, I think I would, I don't know really what all he means by 'car worship' -- except, well, no, I don't really, regardless. Cars won't be reserved for the well-off because a) automobiles do not necessarily need to run on gasoline b) people make a lot of money selling cars and c) people make a lot of money because other people can get in their car and go drive someplace to spend it.
I think the triune forces of scientific advance, market pressure and scarcity of resource will push society eventually to a point where, when it looks back, our current use of the automobile will seem shamelessly profligate and horribly inefficient.
But I don't really see cars being pushed out of the reach of the majority of first-worlders until a) nanotechnology becomes widespread and b) so does AI, simply because I think you need those two things available if green Alistair-style locales are going to be truly self-sustaining in the technological age. As long as they are not, there will be a lot of pressure for people to be mobile over fair distances -- while automobiles might be priced out of the reach of some, economically it makes no sense for them to be a tool accessible by a privileged few. 28235. Adam Selene - 4/24/2006 3:22:20 AM It will be interesting to see what China does re: personal cars vs. mass transport vs. work at home.
Given a command economy - I'd build monorails and office/condo buildings to see which worked better/faster. 28236. resonance - 4/24/2006 3:30:54 AM For what it's worth; I think few people really realize, here in the States, what the hell 6$ a gallon gas is going to look like when it's a reality. That is indeed going to be one hell of a mess for everyone who isn't in the oil industry. But this is pretty far afield.
I think it's an interesting question as to whether or not it is moral to force people, via price pressure and taxation, to stop driving so much. The simple fact of the matter is that having transportation, in a lot of cases, means having freedom -- real freedom. Without it you're just bound to the land like a serf, in a lot of ways, some of which aren't merely hyperbolic or allegorical.
On the other hand I think it is clear that global warming is real, and that the fossil fuel crunch could be cataclysmic, and that the assholes in the Escalades that cut me off every morning partway through their hour and a half commute from their sub-suburban McVillas to their downtown desks are clearly a case of the free market not having any foresight. (Setting aside any aesthetic and moral questions about the nature of an economic system that rewards these sort of people with power and wealth and *then* instills them with the belief that the proper thing to do with these twin assets is to buy a flimsy, huge faux-old-wealth house in a parvenu enclave and fill its driveway with ugly-ass Detroit behemoths. The economic system is what it is.)
It seems to me that there are two choices, both potentially immoral -- letting the free market have its way, and watch Exxon execs turn into billionaires while unbelievably expensive gasoline solves the problem of profligate usage by bringing that system to a crashing, violent halt, or else some sort of intervention designed to save people from their own stupidity while punishing the people who would have had the intelligence and foresight to get through it all right.
28237. resonance - 4/24/2006 3:33:46 AM Given a command economy - I'd build monorails and office/condo buildings to see which worked better/faster.
I think you might very well end up seeing our economy doing some drastically command-oriented things along those lines. Whether they end up trying to nationalize oil industries or redirecting a ton of income into infrastructure rework and conservation, I think public pressure will end up being something that Congress will absolutely not ignore, whether or not they should.
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