Weekly discussion 15 (2/15-2/22): Moore's Law and its implications for society

Moore's Law is an important part of information technology development, and the state as of a few years ago is described here. Long-term growth in world processing power is about 58% per year. Hard drive, flash memory, and network capacities are growing even faster. Currently, the Internet is subsuming other media. What happens over another twenty years as the underlying technology becomes tens or hundreds of thousands of times more powerful? The top supercomputers are reaching estimates of the processing power of the human brain, though no one knows how to program a mind. What happens when that knowledge is available and Moore's Law keeps chugging along? This is an increasingly mainstream consideration (Time ran an article on it recently), and it looks like it will be a major influence on society over the next few decades. Past then, predictions tend to break down due to things getting pretty wild.

So, what do you think is going to happen as the power of information technology keeps doubling every year or so?

less and less reasons to justify bad things needing to exist in the world, for one thing. i don't even mean this as a short-term thing, either.

however, i believe i linked information to a webcomic that summarizes my opinion of the technological singularity: even if that technology is available, it will still be a divided dream from a majority of humanity, and thus simply something else to divide people into specific groups that do more harm than good.

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Bleedcomics Staff Writer/Editor, , and Keeper of the Jar Brain of Secret President. RIP Ku Ku Ku \(-^.^-)/ U Wuz A REAL N***A!!!!!!!
"We're quite aware of this. BR is no happy rainbow face man. He is simply our neighborhood best fucking poster." ~ Warbear
Puff Most Epic.

Oh, I'm sure they'll break Moore's law eventually. I say the power of immersion between what is real and what is not will change up, and no matter how far you advance in technology, humanity lags behind. How well we cope with what's to come is anyone's guess.

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One time when I was high, I thought I was in an ambulance dying. Turns out I was just eating sherbert.
-stufflikehearts-

Since Ray Kurzweil's already been mentioned... (I don't know why he tries to predict exact years into the future, it's not extremely important) http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_a ... rsity.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_o ... rm_us.html

Weekly discussion 16 (4/28-5/5): Birtherism and politics

Obama recently released his "long form" birth certificate. End of the birther movement? Apparently not. So, what does Spam think?

1) 1/4 of Americans are retarded.
2) Retarded Americans are immune to facts.
3) President is too black for people to accept it.

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race will be an issue for as long as it takes for "reverse racism" to be discredited as an idea, which will only happen once people accept the historical precedent of SPECIFICALLY GIVING A BENEFIT TO A GROUP OF PEOPLE HISTORICALLY LACKING THAT BENEFIT in order to correct that particular social problem of inequity.

See: the denial of white privilege, the outcry against affirmative action, and really any time white americans get upset that because they personally haven't seen themselves having benefited from white privilege then the whole thing clearly never existed at all.

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Bleedcomics Staff Writer/Editor, , and Keeper of the Jar Brain of Secret President. RIP Ku Ku Ku \(-^.^-)/ U Wuz A REAL N***A!!!!!!!
"We're quite aware of this. BR is no happy rainbow face man. He is simply our neighborhood best fucking poster." ~ Warbear
Puff Most Epic.

@Q.U.: Who in the mainstream media (or even FoxNews) is making any sort of argument that Obama isn't doing a good job because he's black? I think people are making the argument that he's doing a bad job because he makes a lot of promises and then doesn't keep more than a third of them.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRfjLfyXYlA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ONuBBmRRpM

Hehe.


Woah, he made a million promises and didn't keep a third of them? Must be the worst-president-ever!

We may begin a discussion once you quote a source summing up how many promises did Bush realise. And how many he'd made as compared to Obama. Otherwise we have no context.

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It's not a Bush, it's a Shrubbery.



Seriously though, why do we need to compare Bush and Obama? Bush isn't Black.

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This debate is stupid.

Also


http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... /obameter/

Here ya go.

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Escape will make me God.

...Did you not notice that I JUST linked that?

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And it went alongside the other shrubbery, only slightly lower and to the right, with another administration down the middle.

And then the next shrubbery told us he was going to undo the damage caused by the last one, but then did a lot of the same things the same, decided to send more troops overseas, send more service members to Guantanamo Bay, and decided the best way to get out of a recession was to spend our way out of it. What a sap.




FHR;LAEOOwwwww. That last pun hurt ME.

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Anyway, my initial thought on the matter was that it would have been better to wait until after the primaries to release it. Let Trump and others pull the Republican base in that direction until they picked someone to run, probably with that topic in mind. Then release it during the general campaign to discredit whoever his opponent is. But maybe that overstates his estimation of the Republican base. If proxy birtherism remains a significant influence in the primaries, it might even more effectively alienate whoever runs in the general election, though (as some of Trumps statements imply) other things might take the focus.

Or, this may have been scheduled with the killing of bin Laden to undercut broader opposition, with the national security bump a few days after the birther bump to keep up momentum. The operation was apparently planned over the same time that the birth certificate was released.

AMERICA FUCK YEAH!!!!

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Weekly discussion 17 (5/11-5/18): The debt ceiling

The debt ceiling is a legal cap on how big the US federal debt can get, so if it is reached while running a deficit, various things will find themselves without sufficient funds, such as payment of interest on the national debt. It's getting pretty close now. There is some controversy over whether or not it should be raised. Not raising it would be bad.

So, thoughts from Spam?

Wait, so if we don't raise the debt cap things get messed up? Then what are we waiting for?

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One time when I was high, I thought I was in an ambulance dying. Turns out I was just eating sherbert.
-stufflikehearts-

I suppose it would revolve around what needs to be paid in full and what can be paid at minimum interest. A higher debt cap could help stimulate parts of the economy thats struggling.

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"It takes the smartest people to admit theres always more to learn"

- Not a Know-it-All

It seems that some people in Congress are looking to hold the country hostage to get political concessions.

The debt ceiling has never been met. It has never served to limit government spending. Raising the ceiling represents continuing the status quo. That said, running into the debt ceiling would result in a sudden drop in government spending, which would be bad for the economy on its own. It's just that the fallout from defaulting on the debt would be so much worse that it's more in the focus.

UPDATE: Apparently the debt ceiling was reached some time on Monday. "Emergency actions" like raiding pension funds are keeping things going for now, but unless something is done, supposedly loans will start defaulting in early August.



Also, apparently the debt ceiling was reached in 2004, and such emergency measures were taken then, so we're not in uncharted territory yet. It's just that this time around, it's not a given that it will be raised in time.

Why did we need a debt cap in the first place?

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One time when I was high, I thought I was in an ambulance dying. Turns out I was just eating sherbert.
-stufflikehearts-

Let's discuss the public option the GOP added to insurance companies, the one which does in fact work retroactively.

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It's not really needed, but it's there for a reason. Originally, Congress directly authorized acquisition of debt, but World War I needed a lot of stuff to be done, so Congress delegated authority on specifics while constraining total debt to a certain amount. It's supposed to be a check on the Executive branch, though it hasn't really been useful for that.

As in property insurance rather than health insurance?

Exactly.

Though I'd expected that some ignorant Rep would come out yelling that the GOP doesn't support public option at all, because it's socialism/Nazism/islamofacism etc.

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