from_memory

I think typically you need to apply somewhere where there is a professor (mentoring grad students) who specializes in, or does research in, the field your proposed thesis is in. You said you applied to a couple dozen programs, that seems very high to me. Was this spaced out over time, or did you do a bulk dump after graduation? The application fees alone are unpleasant to think about. How were your GREs?

What about my proposed penalty? Make every infraction cost 25k$.

You don't think it'll self-correct after a few months?

Are you saying there is deliberately no enforcement?

This is the best news I've heard all day.

I drive quite a bit, and my car sits at about an average height from the ground. What this means is that lifted pickup trucks and larger SUVs will have their headlight directly facing my rearview mirror, and the number of times I have almost gotten into an accident because of RESIDUAL blindness due to the incredibly bright headlights is not something I am happy about.

This is easy to regulate, just have some reasonable lumen threshold for the manufacturers to abide by, and put some crazy penalty on those who choose to break that law. Like 25k$ for each infraction. Watch how many lives you save.

I think within the next 100 or so.

I wholeheartedly agree that those robots are not anywhere near the potential functional capacity of any given human. The thing is, it doesn't have to be on the same level as a human. It just needs to be smart enough to do laundry, cook an omelet, and water the garden, check the mail. Things my (hypothetical) 95 year old grandma can't do any more. Things that well-to-do people already pay a maid and landscaper to do.

Market niches like that are where this new tech will gain a foothold, and after that it'll cascade down through the rest of the economy.

In my opinion, it's not a matter of if, but when. How we deal with this is critical. Do we establish some basic income to offset the work being done by the bots? Do we lease the bots privately to individuals who then derive some passive income from their employ? So many options on how this goes, we need to be innovative both in terms of the tech but also in how we deal with the social implications of its existence. Things can go well.

I don't miss the tedium. I miss the predictability, the normalcy. There is so much volatility now, and it's a little frightening.

Does that cost include the loss of life?

I will take it a step further. After some time spent working for public and private firms, I think you could say the same for largely every single U.S. federal agency/department. Defense, Education, Energy, Agriculture, State, on and on, they've all been on a general upward trend over the last few decades.

It's heartening.

It's not always obvious because progress comes in fits and starts, and sometimes we move in very different directions, but as Dr. King said: "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice".

I tend to agree. Of course people will be alarmed by unintended consequences of an unintended action, and that's all well and good. But what is lingering with me is a feeling of being impressed by the intelligence of the strategy.

This line struck me as particularly clever: PHASEONE[big] reasoned, “We should build [a way to delegate], not own everything,”

Seems as though it has reasoned its way into utilitarianism. That's no mean feat.

It's not an apples to apples comparison, and so any relative measurement will be flawed because the comparative systems are so complex. I also don't think it's fair to have the default response to "x is good" to be "is x better than y". Why do we need to (implicitly) denigrade a thing because it isn't the Platonic ideal of that thing?

Good article. I think we sometimes take for granted what others may see as an amazing opportunity. I wonder if there is such a thing as 'freedom fatigue', meaning that Americans enjoy so much freedom of choice that we become desensitized to the possibilities that freedom presents.

Animals in general, I would think. Pattern recognition will go a long way toward decoding some difficult cognition-related questions we have about animals, in particular how they communicate.

When rational thought and an empathetic response are considered indicative of a political affiliation, something has gone wrong. My estimation is that it is because we (the U.S.) have the best government money can buy.

there is a link to the white paper in the article.

Yes, and the sky may fall tomorrow. The longer I live the more I read these sensationalist headlines designed to gin up angst and antagonize people's peace of mind.

Social Security's solvency has been the subject of much debate, but clearer heads point toward a graduation of the current system to include higher earners. That will accommodate the large aging population's demand. Case closed, easy peasy lemon squeezy.