The expanse was a 9+ book series that won several literary awards that takes place in an interplanetary humanity several centuries in the future.
Roughly one half of the population of earth, or 30 billion people, live on basic assistance from The United Nations. The only way to leave basic is to get a job or get an education, and there are significant hurdles to both of those routes. People on basic do not get money, but they do receive everything they need to live a life. A barter economy exists among those on basic, and some small industry is available to those on basic if it flies under the government’s radar. Some (unspecified population size) undocumented people do not receive basic, and may resort to crime in order to make ends meet.
I love The Expanse and it gets things right more than other sci-fi. However, I think it vastly _underestimates_ the amount of injustice than can be caused by powerful people with the help of advanced technology and ML.
1) You can literally cover the planet with sensors and make privacy impossible. Cameras and microphones are already cheap and small. What will they look like in several hundred years? You can already eavesdrop on a conversation in a closed room, e.g. by bouncing a laser off the window to amplify air vibrations. What will be possible in several hundred years?
2) Right now, suppressing the population by force requires control of a sufficient number of serviles. These serviles are prone to joining the revolution if you ask them to harm their own friends and families (Chine only managed to massacre Tianennmen square after reinforcements from other regions survived because the initial wave joined the protesters). They are prone to only serving as long as you can offer them money or threaten then credibly.
In the near future, it will be possible to suppress any uprising (if you're willing to use violence) by a small number of people controlling a large number of automated tools (e.g. killbots, the drone war in Ukraine is a taste of what's to come).
Spoilers ahead.
The story vastly underestimates the competence of state level bad actors.
In the books, Holden and his group were attacked on Eros by a small number (single digits) of covert agents and only managed to survive thanks to Miller. In reality, you don't send 4 people to apprehend 4 people, you send 40.
Later, Holden and other people were apprehended on Ganymede and again, managed to get out of it by overpowering their captors because the government just didn't send enough people. This is not gonna happen in reality.
(Though you might be able to kill one if you're also willing to die in the process. A Belarusian citizen had several KGB agents break into his flat but because it took them a while to break the door down, he managed to grab his gun, ambushed them and shot one in the stomach. The aggressor later bled out but the citizen was also killed.)
It's also worth remembering that in "Expanse", there'a also Mars, which is a separate state that does not have this arrangement - everyone is employed, but conversely there's no unconditional welfare.
However, it is made pretty clear in the books that the reason why this is possible for Mars is because they have this huge ongoing terraforming project that will take a century to complete. So there's always more jobs than people to fill them, basically, and it's all ultimately still paid for by the government, just not directly (via contracts to large enterprises).
I love this idea. I hope to see this type of testing for everyday food as well. Here are some hurtles you might run across
* Can you source low plastic baby food, or low plastic food to process into baby food? Seems like large quantities of the food supply are contaminated.
* How can you comparatively advertise your low test results compared to the competition without being the victim of lawsuits? Lawsuits from established companies feels inevitable, but being involved in a lawsuit can harm funding rounds for startups, even if it’s baseless.
* Would brick & motor stores want to deal with you if you are essentially calling the rest of their products poison?
* Will you need special tools for processing the food that introduces minimal plastics?
For your third question -- there are already lots of products on the market in certain stores (Costco, Whole Foods, co-ops) that have third party testing or claims about purity.
It’s a long term strategy to release a hardware platform with minimal margins in the beginning to attract software support needed for long term viability.
I’ve been coding for 2 decades. Autotyping anything is something I always find incredibly disruptive, regardless of how long I spend with tools that do this.
I don’t think this is confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is putting more weight on information that support preexisting beliefs. If a continuity plan is activated and the passengers are unaware then that is a totally different thing. If the passengers are made aware of a continuity plan being implemented then Negativity Bias or the Von Restorff Effect would be more accurate descriptions, in which negative stimuli or unusual stimuli are more frequently recalled.
You’re right. I meant survivorship bias, where the survivors are the events that are bad enough for them to be visible to the public. Other events that are addressed by a continuity plan are “killed” and therefore aren’t visible.
I have found a lot of great content available in Libby and Hoopla. I use my local library card, but am also able to get a card from a nearby larger city library, and between the two I have access to a lot of content and very soon in a lot of cases.
> Once the expensive drink of the French bourgeoisie and artists, absinthe became more affordable in the second half of the 19th century, whereupon workers, women and those in the French colonies, from North Africa to Indochina, began drinking it.
For a period of time Absinthe was the cheapest, strongest drink in France. Its bad reputation comes from that.
Its bad reputation is from a propaganda campaign from the wine industry which wasn’t entirely untrue, but highly exaggerated, especially compared to another alcoholic beverage.
A technology demonstration doesn't need to be practical. That's for follow-up works. e.g. We could have a mostly GPU workload, and now instead of having to run CPU logic off-board, we may be able to run in on GPU as well.
Yes, kids are the primary factor here. We moved near their school, on a house lot large enough for us to expand as they get older, on the outskirts of a wealthy neighborhood, but at a price we can afford.
A usable Internet connection is important. I certainly wouldn't move because I "only" had a reliable 50mbps connection. That's about what I have (not in Bay Area) and don't really have a complaint.
I would get dropped from video calls if my wife or kids started downloading something. I’ve managed to fix this with QoS, but there is a noticeable loss of quality.
Ultimately we switched to cable internet, but given the bandwidth I use running home servers, I expect to be forced onto a corporate plan once they notice, at $200-$500/mo. My usage is within terms of service for AT&T fiber, fwiw, but cable is a shared resource.
That sounds like a perfectly usable Internet connection but tons of reasons one might choose to move out of the Bay Area. There are various good reasons to live there (including some that have nothing to do with employment) but the idea that you must in tech is misguided.
50Mbps of a raw link is is 5MB/s, split into dedicated 4MB/s down and 1MB/s up. That’s a half hour to download a Linux ISO, and only enough upload for 1 video call. It definitely affects work.
> In a pilot phase 2A randomized clinical trial, 17 children with autism who received intranasal vasopressin for four weeks showed improvements in interpreting the mental states of others, recognizing others’ emotions via facial expressions, and other social abilities, Parker and her colleagues reported in 2019. Some of the children also had diminished repetitive behaviors and anxiety, and parents reported no increase in aggression. The team awaits the results of an eight-week phase 2B vasopressin treatment trial in more than 100 autistic children.
The fear here is in 20 years we will medicate quiet children into being more sociable at the same scale we’re dispensing adhd medications currently. An entire personality trait (introversion) could be big pharma’s next target.
Well, programming is now a career choice for extraverts and sociable types, because Agile methodologies and "beware a guy in a room" have normalized more studio meddling from the top. So if there's a pill I can pop to make me more sociable, sign me up if it'll help me find or keep work.
What can I say, it's a bleak world. People with depression, ADHD, autoimmune syndromes, and other physical or mental disorders drug themselves so they can function in society, so it's not like that's new.
sign me up as well. if i can take a drug to have a better life i’d gladly pay whatever it costs. it sucks to feel as socially isolated as i do. might even improve my job prospects since so many of my rejections seem to be from my neurodivergence not meeting their high standards
Though even in your quote, it’s clearly working in a more nuanced way than suppressing introversion. Being better able to understand others’ emotional state, and reduced anxiety, seem to be obvious improvements
And yet, what are the trade-offs? Do we know what they're losing in return? I think it's fair to correlate (over)socialization with a lack of technical curiosity and drive. Those are valuable traits in both utilitarian and metaphysical senses. Do they retain such traits if they have them?
I suppose if we stop people from stimming, maybe we have less drummers? Less risk taking CEOs? It’s really hard to know. But if there’s some trait that causes some people misery but they offer this ‘utility’ for greater society, can we really lament people managing these traits by artificial means? (And in this case, the effect is temporary)
> it's fair to correlate (over)socialization with a lack of technical curiosity and drive
i’m all for it. maybe not everyone with autism struggles with existential dread over the persitent social isolation they feel from struggling to navigate social interactions but i would certainly trade that part of myself in a heartbeat. it’s just not worth it to feel like i do day in and day out. there’s no one looking out for me and the only emotional support is a professional and i can’t afford that anymore because i’m now out of work and struggling to get back in because of my autism
The expanse was a 9+ book series that won several literary awards that takes place in an interplanetary humanity several centuries in the future.
Roughly one half of the population of earth, or 30 billion people, live on basic assistance from The United Nations. The only way to leave basic is to get a job or get an education, and there are significant hurdles to both of those routes. People on basic do not get money, but they do receive everything they need to live a life. A barter economy exists among those on basic, and some small industry is available to those on basic if it flies under the government’s radar. Some (unspecified population size) undocumented people do not receive basic, and may resort to crime in order to make ends meet.
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