xherberta
Indeed. I wonder what happens as available training data shifts from purely human-generated (now) to largely AI-generated (soon). Is this an information analogue to the “gray goo” doomsday that an uncontrolled self-replicating nano device could cause?
>can it answer “I don’t know this” Such a fabulous question. This statement likely appears infrequently in the training data.
Perhaps an advanced form of life/intelligence that has survived contact with various others would be guided by some form of wisdom/disgust/caution/discretion. It would not be surprising if they noticed little clues like our rapid deforestation, rising temperatures, shrinking ice caps, nuclear detonations… which would make us seem slovenly or likely to have “poor friendship skills.”
Do you think you could manage the job if there were no expectations on you outside the job? Could your partner get on board with you needing some time with very few home responsibilities (as it's best for the family in the long run)?
Can you find access to nature? For me, a couple of unstructured hours getting bored in a truly natural setting feels almost like a vacation.
Karezza could help create a generous, non-transactional vibe at home and help you maintain creative energy.
Best wishes as you navigate this.
Now that both corporations and government are so big and intrusive that they're somewhere between a nuisance and prohibitive toward small-scale enterprise, we should at least think about ways to sic them on each other.
Your site doesn't provide enough info to compare the rate of harm. For mild ailments, which is what I assumed OP was speaking of, homeopathic treatments might have a lower rate of harm.
Iatrogenesis is a possibility with any health care. And, to give your link credit, homeopathy certainly sounds like a dangerous route for serious conditions.
- Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell (Among other achievements, he was dean of Yale Medical School and president of Sloan-Kettering. This collection of essays was published in 1974 and is absolutely prescient and fascinating - he offers profound thoughts on the nature of science, computing, and medicine that have stood the test of time astonishingly well.)
Kahneman and Harari also discussed how the shift to agriculture, while a great step forward for humanity as a collective group, was a major bummer for the individual. (Much more interesting and healthier to be a hunter-gatherer than a serf.)
"... [in the future, work no longer exists for] most of humanity... That mass of people cannot work, but they can still kill people..."
"and how will they find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless, worthless?
My best guess at present is a combination of drugs and computer games as a solution for most"
On "one of the big problems with technology":
"It develops much faster than human society and human morality, and this creates a lot of tension. But, again, we can try and learn something from our previous experience with the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, that actually, you saw very rapid changes in society, not as fast as the changes in technology, but still, amazingly fast.
The most obvious example is the collapse of the family and of the intimate community, and their replacement by the state and the market."
Bacteria can do thousands or millions of generations more rapidly than we can tweak our nanotech.
Small businesses drive net job growth, and they are also more innovative, producing more patents per employee than large firms.
Not to mention, smaller businesses allow more people to own capital. I'm sick of economic discussions that focus on jobs and wages - ownership is what gets people out of serfdom.
But, little guys are feeling the squeeze. "The Goliaths of today are so big and so adept at protecting their turf that they leave few niches open to exploit."
So, this isn't only about privacy, or the false perception that "big is evil." It's about economy as ecosystem. "Biodiversity" in the economy creates robustness against hard times and distributes resources in ways that allow many participants to thrive. Monocultures are extractive, and ultimately fragile.
Edit: source - http://bit.ly/2rhPiXp
There's an enormous gap between knowing the specs of a pump and knowing which company will make one that won't break and will provide decent service for it. A water sanitation plant that would work in one part the US (or one part of a state) might fail in another due to any among hundreds of factors.
Any time you're doing something that involves silt, algae, microorganisms, weather, human factors... etc... those factors are likely to make a fool of you and your textbook. The "scoop from a grizzled veteran" suddenly becomes essential.
There's a well-known example of a sludge field that worked on a small scale but did not work when executed on a large scale. Total disaster. Hugely expensive project, requiring hugely expensive cleanup.
Sure, there are plenty of realms within tech where "grizzled veterans" aren't needed and where solutions can transfer and scale nicely. You can't safely extrapolate that to real-world problems.
In many endeavors, local knowledge can't safely be ignored, and hubris leads to tragedy.
Nina Munk's reporting on the Millenium Villages Project is illustrative of the difficulties one can be blindsided by when trying to get something done with insufficient regard for local conditions: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/01/nina_munk_on_po.htm...
I've heard that people with high-deductible plans are now finding it advantageous to just say they are self-pay to get the discounts.
For comparison shopping, healthcarebluebook.com can give an average price for a certain procedure in your area.
An eye-opening conversation with a palliative care physician: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/11/becky_liddicoat.htm...
"Five Wishes," a tool to guide you through conversations with loved ones about end-of-life care (not to be taken as a replacement for a living will, as I don't think it will hold up legally in all states) https://agingwithdignity.org/five-wishes/
And if you really want to get motivated to have these conversations with your loved ones, check out Otis Brawley's book "How We Do Harm," which has a chapter that is a HORROR story of what happens when a patient's family asks that "everything" be done to keep him alive. The doctors felt that they were torturing the patient, who had no reasonable prospect for recovery. Yet the family insisted that "everything" be done, including extremely painful procedures and withholding pain medication because the patient's respiration was too fragile.
Don't be this family! Don't be this patient!
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/09/tina_rosenberg.html
Edit: specifically, this is about kidney donation from living donors, not after-death donation.
In many markets, no it won't, if you can even find a daycare with an opening.
Anyway, this plan sounds like a net negative for the family unless the job can cover daycare PLUS commuting costs, work wardrobe, increased food costs (less time to cook from scratch), and the hassle involved with finding alternate care when any of the four kids are sick.
Some people consider the "humanity value" of having a parent at home to care for children to be worth the financial downside. That's their choice. By the way, most developed nations agree...
From the New Republic: *Among developed nations, the U.S. is now the only one that doesn’t guarantee some kind of paid employee leave available for new parents." http://bit.ly/2pZ03Ay
I don't use FB, but a data-promiscuous person who knows a ton about me recently unfriended my closest contacts. Ignorance is bliss?
It's troubling when we don't know why an algo is racist. We need ways of checking that these influential algos aren't reinforcing trends we would rather diminish.