Our minds haven’t evolved to deal with machines we believe have consciousness.
The post Why Conscious AI Is a Bad, Bad Idea appeared first on Nautilus.
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One question for Julie Castillo-Rogez, a planetary geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The post Why Do So Many Moons Have Oceans? appeared first on Nautilus.
He was also a Nazi We know now that he was a white supremacist incel. Here’s one of his posts on social media: It sounds like some kind of joke. (He even mentions that Hitler got Germany out of an economic recession!) But it’s not. This guy’s social media is full of stuff like this. He hits all the talking points. I hope that monster “Libs of Tik Tok” feels good about herself today. She really helped save the children last weekend.
Peter Dutton’s number two (for now) Sussan Ley has condemned Labor for delivering a budget surplus instead of a budget ssurplus. ”Mr Albanese needs to have a good hard look at himself and apologise to the Australian people,” said Susssan... Read More ›
In 1976, Robert Gilpin distinguished three contrasting political economy perspectives: liberalism, Marxism, and mercantilism. Gilpin introduced these International Relations-derived categories as theories and ideologies of political economy, sometimes conceived either as explanatory models or future scenarios. He recognises that the three ideologies ‘define the conflicting perspectives’ that actors have, but he does not go as far as to theorise how the perspectives may be part of the dynamics of the world economy and generative of its history and future. Gilpin’s models, scenarios, and theories are thus mainly cognitive attempts to understand reality from the outside. Since Gilpin’s main works, a large number of critical and constructivist International Political Economy (IPE) and Global Political Economy (GPE) approaches have arisen, stressing the constitutive role of ideas and performativity of theories. Many of these studies, however, tend to focus on aspects of contemporary matters or specific issues and fall short of analysing broad historical developments and, most markedly, causation.
“Seizing political control of the schools is not a campaign slogan. It’s a plan to turn power into more power” The right has been attacking public education as long as anyone can remember. It’s usually about unions or dumbing down and losing to the Chinese or something like that. But as Jonathan Chait writes in this excellent article about what’s actually happening in today’s right wing assault on education, they have now decided that academic freedom is for losers — they are convinced that it’s time to completely take over American education and indoctrinate children into right wing ideology. The article is long so I’d recommend that you read it in full if you can but suffice to say that Chait makes many good points about the historical antecedents of various attempts to dominate education and points out that there are excesses on the left as well as right.
Electrification offers an opportunity to rethink how we use energy. Will we squander it?
The post The “Electrify Everything” Movement’s Consumption Problem appeared first on The Intercept.
At a time when the Reserve Bank’s interest rate rise is adding to cost of living pressures and increasing the chances of a recession, Albanese is finding it hard to justify the staggering $368 billion cost of AUKUS nuclear submarines. Anthony Albanese says it only took him 24 hours to decide to back the AUKUS Continue reading »
It has been only in recent times that we have had former prime ministers taking up positions in foreign countries, even working for foreign governments. It ought to be regarded as deeply shameful, and more than somewhat disloyal. If our public stewards cannot be trusted to do the right thing, it becomes necessary to control Continue reading »
As the two major parties continue to debate which of them is pursing a policy of ‘big Australia’, Treasury has quietly forced both of them to accept its preferred long-term net migration target of 235,000 per annum – net migration, that is the difference between long-term arrivals and departures, is the key driver of Australia’s Continue reading »
Gabriel Sherman’s cover story in Vanity Fair – ‘Inside Rupert Murdoch’s Succession Drama’ – has generated a lot of attention, and with good reason. Murdoch runs one of the most powerful but also one of the most secretive media corporations in the English-speaking world. Sherman is a well-connected and well-respected journalist in New York. He Continue reading »
A dear friend, amazing mentor and an invaluable China Matters board director who was instrumental to ensuring independent voices on China issues were still alive in Australia. In the many tributes written about Allan Gyngell over the past two days, he has been hailed as a brilliant mind and an outstanding Australian who made an Continue reading »
Historically, Australian sport has been bosom-tied to corrupt administrative and state management. Administrators of the myriad sporting codes are typically conceited in assuming they provide a service for an increasingly obese populace. The sports personalities turn up and play; spectators turn up in their colours, pies and beers; the sporting hierarchs can then claim they Continue reading »
OECD data shows China sustains net gain of scientists while US suffers net loss as ethnic Chinese researchers fear US government surveillance and prosecution. The United States may want to choke off vital supplies of hi-tech gear, especially advanced semiconductors, to China. But, thanks to a “red scare” about industrial espionage and intellectual property theft Continue reading »
The Israeli protests against its new right-wing government have now touched on Israel’s nuclear weapons. To underline what is at stake, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak cast aside Israeli ambiguity over whether it possesses nuclear weapons to warn his compatriots that Western diplomats are worried that a Jewish messianic dictatorship could gain control over Israel’s nuclear Continue reading »
On this week’s Audit: The team explores PragerU’s treatment of the founding fathers
Gun culture is killing us It was another bloody weekend in America’s sick and twisted shooting gallery. A man dressed in full tactical gear and carrying an assault rifle got out of his car at a shopping mall in Allen Texas and started randomly shooting people on the sidewalk. A police officer who was coincidentally on the scene for another call took down the shooter after he had shot 16 people, killing at least 8 and possibly more. (Several people are reportedly still in critical condition.) This is seen as a huge success story among the gun fetishists because it shows that a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun with only a dozen and half casualties. It’s what we call “good news” these days. Last week we had two other major shooting incidents before this one. One, in Atlanta, caused the whole downtown area to be shut down for hours after a man shot five women in a doctor’s office and then disappeared into the labyrinth of office buildings.
“When asked by CNN to respond to critics who argue that ‘thoughts and prayers’ are not enough to prevent mass shootings, Republican Rep. Keith Self, who represents Allen [Texas], said … that he wanted to know what the motive of the gunman was and whether he had mental health issues.” — NBC News
I actually know what the shooter’s motive was.
It was to kill people.
Using a gun.
As the “New Cold War” opens another front in Northern Africa, the feud threatens a devastating conflict. The war in Ukraine has only exacerbated the crisis.
The post Why the US Is Arming Morocco and Working to Combat Russian Influence in Algeria appeared first on MintPress News.
The man of the people who panics over stock prices An interesting article in Politico this weekend about recent events in which some left writers and thinkers extolled the virtues of Tucker Carlson because he claims to be a populist, anti-globalist. In my view, even if one were to overlook his blatant racism, misogyny and general adherence to batshit far right nonsense, you really shouldn’t overlook this when you’re taking the position that he’s a populist: “Please get her fired. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” That was in response to a reporter acknowledging the results of the 2020 election. His concerns were not about the working people of America. Or this. After he was fired by MSNBC: Mr. Carlson eventually snagged a pundit contract at Fox and an unpaid fellowship at the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank. But his days as a TV star seemed at an end. With four school-age children, the Carlsons sold their $4 million Washington home, and he had what he later described as a kind of meltdown.
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