twobits

Because at the end of the day, no one gives a fuck about a spec of sand in their eyes. Having your balls ripped off, might be different. YMMV. Human feeling is a bit more complicated than just adding.

"one turn takes a day. Games usually last half a year. We've been playing it this way for ten years now, since around 2004."

So you are still a noob? :-) :-P

I really really need to see your private data. ..Fascist state par excellence. ..Unfortunately, it exports its "democracy" all around.

Has already been.

In a more abstract pov, govs are not bad, and companies are not bad. It's a false dilemma. BIG govs are bad, and BIG companies are bad. Notice the common attribute? It's about relative power. That's why companies "lose their ideals" (hello google), when they grow big. It's not about inner organization and communication. It's about BIG. The obvious solution for a society, is to limit the maximum power differential between entities. ("We the people", is one such entity.) The actual implementation of that, is left as an exercise to the reader :-) (..But history has shown, that I/we shouldn't be optimistic.)

Maybe just get over caring about the "main" internet, and leave it to be the ad ridden, surveillance clusterf*, old and rusty one?

So, living in a "democracy", can we petition / make the gov allow us that? "We, the people, want this spectrum for our own uses." Can we?... Lol. Sad lol.

"As another poster mentioned, addiction is about getting away from some kind of unbearable inner pain"

Could you please give ideas how to id that pain?

To be personally specific, my mother never told me positive things, always comparing me to some perfect ideal, and I also was beaten up for not good grades. These seem a "perfect" explanation from what I've read, but still I don't really see them as the cause of my procrastination, addictions, and feeling tired, sometimes down, and with no energy. ..So, any ideas how to id my pain, if I have one? Thanks.

"But you can't create an Orwellian police state over night, and those sorts of oppressive regimes tend to be unstable (Libya, East Germany, Romania, etc. all gone now)."

Only if there is an "outside", to force reality in. If you are the emperor, and control everything, the Orwellian state works very nicely..

It's because of this leak: Turkish top political and military leaders, organizing a false flag attack, to have an excuse to attack Syria:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-27/here-youtube-false-...

'discern the "how" and the "why" as opposed to the "what". Math is all about "how" and the "why".'

Could you pls expand on the diff between the "how" and the "what"?

"There is a feedback loop going on. Each universe affects the next one subtly differently. But somewhere down the line the whole thing simply has to approach a point of stability"

Why would each universe affect the next one (subtly) differently?

Why is max speed (and min temp) an indication that (our) "universe [is] being optimized for good computation"?

Is it just me, or is this just eu/us vs russia?

"The moment they move from surveilling to censoring, from watching to interfering, the average citizen will come down on them with righteous fury"

And nothing of consequence will happen. ..You don't build tools so as to never use them.

Their problem is that they want to tap the cables too.

And I can't see how working on nlp could possibly have "only negative impact", to say the least. Thus it seems strange your need to keep on thinking about that, and to solicit people to answer a "why am I bad?" q.

You are neither a good nor a bad person, due to working on nlp. You describe how bad entities could use your work (big corp in a given socioeconomic context), and then you assign blame to yourself. I find it strange you feel the need to have this discussion with yourself on a regular basis. It points towards you being good/soft/emotional/conscientious about others/emphatic.

"but I don't expect this to happen in my lifetime (I'm in my 40s)."

Why not? What fundamental things you think are lacking? I think we'll have ai in 10-20 years.

> I wouldn't place much money on a true artificial mind still not existing in 40 years.

I would say 20.

No, I didn't know that. Thanks for the info. ..imo, hard euro with no common budget/redistribution/stronger integration, is the death of eu. ..Btw, given what you said, and your local knowledge, do you think it's possible that germany is positioning itself for a possible end of the euro, and return to the deutschmark? Both in a "general feeling" and in more direct talking about that?

"Germans build roads to have road. The French build roads as an expression of some confusingly abstract political idea."

The common theme is always who is to be f*ed and pay the bill, the taxpayers, and who is to get the profit and benefits, the big, connected, private interests.

"I'm almost convinced that the EU, as it is today, cannot survive if it is not further integrated."

Small south eu country here. I totally agree with you. And you make good points showing that.

The only thing I disagree, is that I think eu is moving towards a less democratic way (if it survives). Not talking about the eu parliament, but about who it sides with in the economic crisis. It sides with big economic interests, which are at wrong, instead with the "eu idea" and people.

"3. Unsexy. Yeah. While I don't actually care much about the public image of Germany, I am saddened that the European idea has lost its appeal and continues losing it. I mean, what could _possibly_ go wrong?"

Coming from a small financial crisis stricken country at the periphery of europe, I would like to tell you this:

There is no "germany". And there is no "those lazy leaches". You have swallowed the bait full. You, are not "germany". And I am not "whatever". Generalizations are the root of all hiding. Your interests are not the same as deutsche bank's interests. Mine interests, are not the same as the corrupted (among others, by german interests) local politicians.

They say "germany" to make you think you are one. They say the "lazy" to give you an external enemy. Creating external enemies, is perfect for hiding your industries' and bankers' fing you as well as me. If you live/work in germany, in general, your salary is artificially lowered, to f you, and indebt other countries, to serve the top industrialists and bankers. You pay for the debt, and then you and me pay again for the payment.

"I also find that Europeans for the most part don't want to do billion dollar startups"

There is indeed a diff in europe. But having said that, I would like to argue a few things. a) Anyone would want to get a billion dollars. b) How many billion dollars startups do you actually know? Not in the money given to acquire them. But in the actual value. In the "wtf, they gave how much for what?!" category.

I am going off in a tangent, but I think an important and relevant one. $ is the world currency. It's backed by the us military. You print billions out of thin air, faster than I actually breath.

In my, maybe naive eyes, billions for bs web or mobile services, among other things, translates to me to: "Holly f*. There is so much inflation coming my way, from all that printing, it's not even funny. I am a couple of years, tops, away from being forcefully transformed from "financially ok", to "fubar-ed, can you give me 500$ to get a piece of bread, pls?"

It's easier to be "large", when you are the empire, print billions out of thin air, and "bring democracy" to the rest.

How many billions was the "let's make a language called 'C'" startup? ..I read billions for bs, and I see inflation and destruction. ..Maybe it's just me.

May not be a problem for them any more..

I would love a site like this for all laws in (almost) all countries.

"USD is already de-facto backed by oil [Petrodollar]"

Kind of, but not really, and not in a free market way. The $ is backed by the us military. You can't have competing currencies becoming Petro-X. If you try, you "get democracy" in your country.

I think any entity that has to somehow be attracted to any kind of "food", and be repelled from any kind of "pain", ie, I think, any kind of life, has due to the above, ingrained the concept of "happy".

" Really sucks sometimes, too, because I hear about many similar "new" problems on here that we were dealing with years ago."

Humanity is so pathetically wasteful :-/