a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
Jolly_Giraffe's comments
activity:
Jolly_Giraffe  ·  2234 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Amy Winehouse hologram to start touring in 2019

So we have live projections of celebrities, deep fakes, and digital manipulation of video that can be used to make it appear that a person is saying things they are not. For a long time now, celebrity personas have been more or less manufactured in boardrooms.

I am imagining a world where the ownership of a personality is not clear. Maybe in 2080, an election campaign can rent a celebrity personality to endorse their candidate. Maybe the human at the center of the celebrity doesn't want to endorse that candidate. Too bad for them. The company will just fire up the projectors and point an AI at them.

Jolly_Giraffe  ·  2381 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Wired | Sam Harris and the Myth of Perfectly Rational Thought

"why are these people exempt from questioning?"

How is Harris exempt from questioning? The Wired article is clearly critical of him and it's not like they are breaking ranks either. Lots of people have been critical of Harris and similar public intellectuals.

Maybe this place

https://www.climatechangecommunication.org

Its in Virginia though.

What you want to do is really niche. I doubt you can find success if you are not willing to move.

Jolly_Giraffe  ·  2637 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Equifax hack hits credit histories of up to 143 million Americans

Here are some good things that could come out of this:

1: A national ID act which establishes an ID more secure than the SSN. Which is to say, an ID which has some type of security feature.

2: A law which prohibits binding arbitration as a means of avoiding civil action.

3: Data aggregation laws which specify how data aggregators must treat the data they collect, and specifies penalties and civil remedies for violating those laws.

Jolly_Giraffe  ·  2696 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Thurston Shitbag III tweets incriminating email for some reason

    or perhaps DTjr will do some minimal time and take the heat for the whole crew

Trump can always pardon him too. . .

Jolly_Giraffe  ·  2695 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The cycle of predictable bullshit.

I don't know if Wheaton's fatalism is warranted. After all, this whole Russia thing hasn't gone away.

It's been a consistent feature of reporting on the Trump administration. It doesn't seem to be getting any better for them either.

Jolly_Giraffe  ·  2696 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Thurston Shitbag III tweets incriminating email for some reason

Were it any other administration, I'd say a pardon in this situation would be political suicide. But trumpets online are already arguing about how this isn't a big deal, so who knows.

Jolly_Giraffe  ·  2731 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Shake it up. Offer up one somewhat unpopular opinion that you hold.

An incremental step to what?

New technology brings with it the potential to cause serious social problems. I think most of the serious potential problems associated with self-driving cars have been overlooked by most people interested in automation. I think that serious consideration should be given to the negative implications of this technology. I don't really think that the potential problems which I have raised have been seriously addressed.

Most of the ethical discussions surrounding self-driving cars seem to be concerned with who should get squished. When it seems to me, the questions of "Who should have control over the fleets?" and "What sort of consumer rights acquiescence is warranted?" are far bigger problems.

Also, I don't think cell phones are a good example of reasonably dealing with techno-political problems. Today, cell phones are a part of the massive-passive surveillance infrastructure which governments and their corporate partners have been diligently building for the last 20 years. Very little has been done to address that and that has serious implications for stable liberal democracies.