This 'weaponized brain' bullshit arises out of a very legitimate fear of the US military, the right-wing nutcases that pull its strings, and its extensive history of unethical human experimentation. If DARPA is seriously interested in reducing TBI then perhaps they should consider conducting fewer fraudulent wars.
I am no fan of either party, and I consider people like Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton to be right-wingers as well, but the self-proclaimed political right does the majority of warmongering.
Perhaps because the "left" in the US is still cloase to what would be called right (or even far-right) in other places, when it comes to anything "patriotic" (and even in religious and moral issues).
This is one of those things I still wonder about. On one hand, if some hypothetical computer could generate the exact same song I'm currently listening to obsessively, then it would seem to be true. At the same time, there's at least some level of connection with the creator that influences my enjoyment. I think it's mostly unconscious but when I really think about it, I think a lot of the music I like has some element of "empathy" with the artist.
I don't mean that I have to directly identify with whatever they're creating but when someone is singing or playing a song, on some level you like to think about what they were feeling when they wrote or performed it. Likewise, something that always made me feel affinity for a band (especially as a teenager who was learning to play music) was the feeling that this was something I could do myself if I spent the time or developed the skills. I was drawn to a lot of punk bands and bedroom experimenters because I heard things that sounded like something I would do if I was more talented or experienced. It's hard to explain but it made things feel more personal. I think machine-generated music could certainly exist and be programmed to be indistinguishable from human-generated music but as soon as I knew it was created solely by algorithms, I'd lose much of the intangible (and irrational) connection I might have shared with the actual art.
Well I think the terrifying part is that a computer might be able to generate an identity / artist(s) for the music it creates that we would also feel a stronger relationship to than the real thing.
On a purely musical level, there are already some artists that I really enjoy, who I suspect use algorithmic composition heavily in their music. I was wondering about this one the other day, since it's sort of similar to algorithmically mashed-up sample pieces that I've made (but better):
The people who wrote and compiled information for this article are engaged in speculative vigilantism and snitching. Maybe this info is already known to the feds, or maybe not, and maybe it is factual, or maybe not. Regardless, releasing it does nothing but harm people who don't deserve to be harmed. Stop snitching!
Ugh, I'll just continue to buy drugs on the black market and use them at home. No one wants to go lay in a hospital bed after shooting up. Addicts can safely manage their own addictions, if they are provided consistent doses and clean needles.
Legalize it, tax it, and use the proceeds of the taxation for needle exchanges and rehab clinics.
Legalizing will undoubtedly increase usage, unless you can find another way to keep on the pressure. The reason why usage levels are what they are right now is because there is pressure against using it.
Yes they will factor in. That's disingenuous. Forget whose side of the debate you and I are in. Let's analyze the fundamental consequence of your assertion here.
If I held a gun to a drug addict's head, you think that will not pressure them to stop, even if just for that moment when the pressure is applied?
If your assertion is true, with any degree of correctness, then we've found a perfect way to destroy information! Simply convert data into a signal fed to a drug addict. Because you're asserting that drug addicts can destroy such information since regardless of what signal they're fed, they will destroy the information.
Well I did say "potential punitive measures" which I thought would make it obvious I meant legal punitive measures. Last time I checked holding a gun to a drug addict's head to achieve a change in that addict is not only illegal but highly unethical.
Pressure, as I took it, meant legal methods of affecting change. And even so, widespread violence against addict's and their families certainly didn't eradicate the problem for China. Today there are around 4-5 million drug users in China and yet that country has laws allowing for the death penalty for trafficking and very stringent use laws.
And certainly putting a gun to someone's head is definitely not a long term solution to addiction but rather a very cruel way of incentivizing treatment.
It's not a black and white thing. Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you will do it the same amount if the pressure wasn't applied. You're arguing that it's impossible to influence the % of people that will do drugs simply because at any time it would be theoretically possible to circumvent it? EVERYTHING is circumventable. Does that mean we should give up all rules, force, and pressure to control behavior or influence our enemies?
People say that China can't stop everyone from going through the Great Firewall. That's the same point you guys are missing. China puts pressure against people from accessing uncensored information on the internet. They may not stop absolutely everyone, but they can reduce a large % of people from doing so, and prevent large % amount of information from being accessed that's corresponds linearly with the amount of pressure applied.
There is in fact no policy which is absolute. You can't eradicate all criminal activity, that doesn't mean you shouldn't put any pressure into doing so.
It's pretty much impossible to completely eradicate child pornography, especially now with the internet prevalent in third world countries. Are you also arguing we should legalize that because if someone really wanted to they still can get child pornography???
Usage rates of, for example, marijuana went down after it was effectively legalized in Amsterdam. Usage rates of heroin went down after decriminalization in Portugal. You can't just say that usage would "undoubtedly" go up; it's very doubtful indeed.
> Are you also arguing we should legalize that because if someone really wanted to they still can get child pornography???
Absolutely. We should be going after the people making and selling CP, not possession. It's in the creation and distribution of CP that people are being hurt, not in the consumption.
If some guy is mentally ill and enjoys CP but otherwise doesn't hurt anyone, how are we better off for putting him in jail?
I've never understood why a safer, more benign drug, such as cannabis, immediately evokes a greater need for legalization.
Marijuana prohibition is not, for the most part, visiting anywhere near the misery on the human species that heroin prohibition is. Tens of thousands of people are kidnapped, tortured, or murdered every year in wars over heroin distribution. Addiction to heroin is made much, much worse under prohibition.
In fact, in the presence of prohibition, you're much more likely to find these concentrated forms of plant medicines precisely because people are unwilling to take the risk to smuggle whole plant matter.
This phenomenon is also observable with coca and cocaine. Cocaine obviously has the capacity to seriously destroy communities and lives. However, it doesn't have this effect on everyone. And, among people who use the entire plant for tea or as a chew - which is typical in places where the plant is legal and indigenous - it is utterly benign.
Oh, I agree with this as well. I'm just saying: maintenance clinics are a no-brainer. I don't see a single argument against them, no matter your stance on drug policy more generally.
Such a weak excuse. Sure a TV show might not play clippings from a speech of his, but if Obama actually offers to do a live interview on any TV show, no one would turn down that ratings boost.
Right! That's why I consider, for example, his campaigning on closing Guantanamo to be completely disingenuous.
Get on TV every single night, spread awareness about what's happening there, tell US citizens that we need to lead by example, and use the propaganda machine to create positive change, for once.
The truth is with a bad economy the more a president with lagging approval ratings gets involved in some issues the less likely their passage.
More importantly there's a limited amount of political capital you have as POTUS. While you may think Obama should have directed more of this to closing Gitmo, I think the big ticket accomplishments he spent that political capital on such as ACA were more important.
How can you honestly say the ACA was more important than shutting down a US run gulag that actively commits war crimes on a daily basis with approval from the entire chain of command?
I can honestly say it is not even close: access to health care via ACA saves more lives every year than the population of Gitmo by nearly two orders of magnitude.[1]
And it's not clear at all that Obama could have successfully closed Gitmo even had it been a higher priority of his. It is clear that he immediately ended interrogative torture [2] and made efforts to close it. There's still force feeding but that's also an issue in us prisons so closing gitmo and sending the detainees to other prisons is not necessarily solving anything there.
It's clear that he issued an executive order, which may or may not be utterly meaningless.
And Gitmo was just an example, not necessarily saying it would even be at the top of my list. Of course sending the detainees to other prisons is not the answer. These people need to be freed, now. Same deal with the multitude of other US military prisons and CIA black sites.
The word you used above was 'disingenuous' and I think that deeply mischaraterizes the issue. The overwhelming blame for gitmo being open today falls on the GOP.
This is a great question. What would the world look like if no individual could earn more than a million dollars a year, or if companies were taxed at exceedingly high rates once they reached a valuation of 100 millions dollars?
I realize it would be tricky to implement, but considering the societal benefit of more even wealth distribution the idea itself is worth exploring.
