patrick.net

NuttBoxer says

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-dad-errol-fathered-child-with-stepdaughter-2018-3?source=patrick.net

Well, my dad has Narcissistic Personality Disorder and my sister, Histrionic Personality Disorder.

Despite that, I'm PatNet's anti-Covid crusader.

You see, no one can help which family one was born into. The most one can do is pull oneself up by the bootstraps to make one's own way in the world.

Rin says

You see, no one can help which family one was born into. The most one can do is pull oneself up by the bootstraps to make one's own way in the world.

In between the sex bot and lube posts, Rin drops the odd diamond once in a while.

Rin says

You see, no one can help which family one was born into. The most one can do is pull oneself up by the bootstraps to make one's own way in the world.

My family was no picnic either, yet my parents still avoided incest and pedophilia, and have not posed with Maxwell, or posed giving the Eye of Horus.

DooDahMan says

Religion can help you with your conclusions, but you shouldn’t just have religion as a substitute for where your soul should be.

Be careful you're not replacing religion with state propaganda or mistaking morality with state propaganda...

I was a very outspoken atheist at one point, but over time I soon realized that perhaps its best that most people are controlled by a religion. People who are controlled by the state - a completely amoral goal oriented organization which is ENTIRELY self serving - are the worst. I would argue that "woke" people are entirely state controlled. What the state tells them is "right", is. Coronavirus, slava ukraini, mostly peaceful protests, January 6th "insurrection", "trans-rights are human rights", bomb Libya "to prevent a humanitarian crisis", bomb Syria "to prevent Assad from gassing his own people", "we can't wait for the final proof to come in the form of a mushroom cloud" - they'll believe any complete bullshit of the state and will violently resist you if you point out that the state is lying or deceiving them.

Vulcan Logic: The needs of the many....

It's a defeatist problem, if the only way he "Thought" he could save them is to kill the fat man, then it would be murder. What happens when it fails and the five people get killed anyway? It's murder, the practical solution would be to derail the trolley before the bridge.
Why didn't the stinking commie philosopher suggest jumping to your death from your side of the bridge, in which case the fat man wouldn't even be in your way. Sounds like the commie just wanted the fat man dead, and didn't consider any ramifications. People like him shouldn't be paid to think .

DooDahMan says

richwicks says

What the state tells them is "right", is.

What is the "state" ?

The entity that points a gun to your head and says "don't worry, I'm taking this from you for your own good!"

DooDahMan says

People who belive they have seen the light or are being told the real "truth" will also believe any complete bullshit of the "state" and will violently resist you if you point out that the state is lying or deceiving them.

Skeptics realize there is no ultimate authority of "truth", but the state certainly isn't. People who have never changed their mind, are hardly people.

DooDahMan says

It seems that it depends which side of the fence one is on

It is not a fence. People are CONSTANTLY given false dichotomies. Like do you support Ukraine or Russia? How about if you just want to see the war be ended because the outcome of the conflict is just a bunch of dead people and a new Cold War being started? This is a war between two oligarchs with different goals. I think the purpose of the oligarchs in Ukraine is to weaken Russia and they have no real ties to Ukraine, and I think the goal of Russia is keep Russia together and NATO out because they see Europe as a collapsing empire.

But that's inconceivable to most people that I don't take "a side". You have to get on one side of the fence..

DooDahMan says

Any examples of a "moral" goal oriented organization which is not ENTIRELY self serving ?

I've never found one, even in charities, there's always a grift somewhere.

It has to be individual.

DooDahMan says

richwicks says

best that most people are controlled by a religion

Any particular religion in mind ?

No, not in particular. Religions that are overall harmful are attacked over time and die out.

DooDahMan says

What about the religions that do not align with your viewpoint(s) ?

No religion aligns with my viewpoints.

Looks like I'm not the only one who watches Zach and Ray. I'm still wondering what happened with Zach's former Volvo.

Tenpoundbass says

What happens when it fails and the five people get killed anyway?

Yeah, why would anybody expect a fat man to be able to stop a trolley? That would never occur to me to be true. You're given an invalid premise, that is killing a fat man would save 4. It would just kill 5.

I say there are no circumstances under which it is moral to deliberately kill an innocent person.

Patrick says

I say there are no circumstances under which it is moral to deliberately kill an innocent person.

Agreed

DooDahMan says

Patrick says

I say there are no circumstances under which it is moral to deliberately kill an innocent person.

But it happens all over the world

Start with abortion, the in most cases murdering and in some cases killing of innocent life

DooDahMan says

1967

No accident (no pun intended) it came up in that year, the beginning of our societal decay. It was the beginning of what was called "values clarification" that began being promoted in high schools during the 1970's when real education, learning the "three "R's" was all but abandoned, nothing was right or wrong. By the early 80's, it was obvious that schools were turning out young people unable to proceed with basic college courses without extensive remediation. It prompted the 1984 book A Nation at Risk.

Ok here is my solution to the which track trolley solution: (not original).

Wait until the front wheels pass the track switch... flip the switch. The back wheels take the other track. The trolley now turns its linear energy into rotational energy and derails, stopping before killing anyone. (Or if you are a maniac, killing everyone) :)

Fun. I call it the Kirk.

They have been ridiculously overpaying for used jalopies for years now. It had to catch up to them eventually.

Well, that's crazy. That's a subsidy of almost $5,000 per vehicle sold. Not going to t make that up on volume....

DooDahMan says

mell says

most cases murdering and in some cases killing of innocent life

Getting confused here - is this to mean not all fetuses are innocent ?

No they all are. What it means is that most if the time abortion is premeditated and for lowly reasons such as career or money or stress reduction, which is murder, and in some cases killing, such as abortion as a consequence of rape resulting in pregnancy, or some snap decisions based on emotions or physical or mental sickness.

HunterTits says

The SDC Utopians were those who INSISTED that SDCs (Self Driving Cars) were going to be perfect! Far superior to human drivers.

If every car was self driving, probably they would be far superior to human pilots.

Not that I want that, the technology would be abused and misused.

There will never be an end to accidents in my opinion, and the technology for computer piloted cars I think is in its infancy and will remain there for a long time. I think having say 10% of all vehicles being driven by individuals for 5 years and collecting ALL THAT DATA and then using it to make an AI that takes into account the accidents and how to avoid them, might make a superior system.

There's this stupid rush to market, it has to be more like a collective effort.

Hunter, I don't give a f*ck that you don't give a f*ck. Thank you for the ignore utility, Patrick.

HunterTits says

But nooo...SDCs were perfect, they said.

We're a decade away from a self driving car being safe I think and I don't think it's smart (or possibly even possible) to limit it just to visual input. Lidar is a better idea or maybe cameras that go into infra-red and ultra-violet.

Tesla was trying to confine the software to work with ONLY cameras. I think this was an extraordinarily bad idea when a machine can FAR outstrip a human's ability on data collection.

The problem with training is you can only train the AI for what it has previously encountered - throwing something in that the AI has never experienced before is a crap shoot. Another problem is with AI is that it's all digital, our brains are digital communication, but the synapse itself is analogue. I've seen interesting work with AI solutions where they use NAND flash memories for synapses, where the cell isn't written with a 1 or a 0, but somewhere between - this allows very fast multiplication, but not EXACT multiplication.

Normally when a NAND is flashed with a 0 or 1, in one case it passes it's an open circuit and in another a closed circuit. V=IR where R is the resistance of the cell. And R is either infinite or 0, but if you have a partial charge on the gate, you can do some crude multiplication in analog. The result of these sort of way of doing AI is that exact values of the synapse can't be exact, but it's good enough. A solution like this is pretty new, but it shows promise.

HunterTits says

The SDC Utopians were those who INSISTED that SDCs (Self Driving Cars) were going to be perfect

You're up pretty for on that high horse for being pretty off the mark for SDCs. SDCs don't need to be anywhere near perfect. They just have to be on average, a little bit better than the average (median) human driver. And I don't mean on average, better across all scenarios. I mean better on average in 99% of scenarios. Because 99% of driving is just stop and go down a road. And humans fuck that up constantly. Nothing running out from the side in front of them, no strange glare or edge case. Just a simple case of not paying attention when the car in front of them stops, and they fuck it up.

Now tack onto that the fact that 50% of all human drivers are WORSE than the median. Hell, they run over their own children in their own driveway pretty regularly. Now if you add on to that the fact that a whole subset is just drunk assholes who say "i'm fine" then kill someone at 2 am with almost no one on the road, the fruit is low hanging and plentiful.

It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be (slightly) better. Then labor costs and insurance will drive adoption and improvement, and people driving cars will become something that happens only on those far edge cases, or out in the countryside, or for entertainment.

As far as SDCs being a decade away from being "safe": that's about 11 years off the mark. Last year, Cruise started running self driving cars around in SF and PHX . Zoox is right there, as well as Aurora, and I think Waymo. TuSimple has Freightliners running cargo trucks in Arizona, and there are all kinds of robots driving around between people in stores and restaurants. The tech is basically in the process of transitioning into mass production. And each car coming off the line is just as well "trained" as the previous one with 0 hours of driving. I think the first paying customers are now riding around as well for local trips. Regulatory approval, insurance, and everything!

These cars will crash and kill people. You are right. There are edge cases. The killings won't be "moral". They will probably be fantastically absurd. But also, each incident will have hundreds or thousands of hours of review and attempt at improvement. That does NOT happen when Drunk Steve kills grandma walking home from the store.

Zak says

And I don't mean on average, better across all scenarios. I mean better on average in 99% of scenarios. Because 99% of driving is just stop and go down a road.

This is where you're making a mistake and you're wrong.

When a human driver gets into a collusion and kills 3 people, well, that's life!

When an AI gets into a collusion and kills 3 people, that's a lawsuit and terrible public relations.

Zak says

As far as SDCs being a decade away from being "safe": you're about 11 years off the mark. Last year, Cruise started running self driving cars around in SF and PHX . Zoox is right there, as well as Aurora, and I think Waymo.

Just wait for the inevitable accidents and failures.

It's an awful thing when a person gets killed because they drove into a tree, but when an AI did it, well, the AI just killed that person. He'd be alive if it wasn't for that fucking AI piece of shit.

Even if they are 100 times safer, we're a decade away from it. They might work in small localities, but I'm telling you, first bad accident and there will be hell.

Oh the other funny thing you may or may not know... the last .1% isn't even "AI" . If these cars "get confused" they just stop or pull over. They all have cell service, and a driving center gets an internet connection to the car, and a virtual driver drives the car out of the "stuck" situation in limp mode (reduced speed), OR alerts to send a real human or tow truck. I know of at least 1 SDC company that has standby drivers just sitting in cars waiting to go out on "rescue missions" in the event an SDC gets stuck and needs assistance.

richwicks says

It's an awful thing when a person gets killed because they drove into a tree, but when an AI did it, well, the AI just killed that person.

This already occurs in cars without AI. Mechanical failures.. gas pedals get stuck, tires blow out.. Manufacturers get sued all the time for their products killing people.

IT ALREADY HAPPENS!

Are you saying it is going to happen more frequently ? You could be right, but the data doesn't indicate that you are.

richwicks says

Even if they are 100 times safer, we're a decade away from it.

Like I said, its here now , and we are just rolling into an adoption timeline. That means it will start small and grow. But its not like we are 10 years away from research being done. The companies are basically ramping up business plans to create self driving car garages in the targeted profitable markets. This isn't rocket science, just sort cities with population's over 1M by median income, and you probably have a pretty good idea of rollout plans. Expect to see the equivalent of your city "bus yard" for self driving vehicle fleets. I'd be surprised if Uber/Lyft/Taxi fare data wasn't already mined to identify the maximum profit centers to maximize growth rates.

Zak says

richwicks says

Even if they are 100 times safer, we're a decade away from it.

Like I said, its here now , and we are just rolling into an adoption timeline.

We'll see.

Public perception determines what is done, as you can see with the level of propaganda we just went through. Logic doesn't operate in this nation.

I'm assuming the 1% to 2% of customers who exceed the cap aren't single family homes with 6500 sq ft lots. Well, at least I hope not! Is it a small number of people with very large properties and enormous gardens that also haven't figured out how to declare themselves a farm? Or many a large complex where the complex is the customer and 1000 residents all piggyback on that?

Another box to check for the Midwest. We'll never have water issues besides quality with radium being highly present. Occasionally we get put in an alternating day schedule for watering during summer so as not to tax the water tower in our small town, but that's infrastructure related and not the actual water supply. Our town isn't expanding, so there's no point in over building the tower or adding more wells.

I don't know how CA will ever get any better. Somehow we can build 40 story buildings in Miami swamps in a hurricane zone, but cannot figure out a better way to desalinate Ocean water and less resource intensive.

Which reminds me. When excavating the new house I think I'm going to drop in a massive rain collection tank. We have a high water table here and it should help keep the basement dry collecting the roof run off along with the pool collecting water. I think I might go with a 2k gallon buried tank. Not a prepper by any means, but if the tank was maxed out I'd have a solid amount of easy to filter fresh water. Also save on the water bill if I need to top off the pool or water the lawn/garden. First years will be landscape intensive.

Good luck out there in CA though. I couldn't imagine some of the crap you guys have gone through over the years with water. It's a basic need and part of what taxes should be going to supply. Otherwise what good is government? IL it's more about bribes and kickbacks for government work that's the problem.

WookieMan says

I don't know how CA will ever get any better. Somehow we can build 40 story buildings in Miami swamps in a hurricane zone, but cannot figure out a better way to desalinate Ocean water and less resource intensive.

LET ME EXPLAIN THE PROBLEM!

It's SUPER energy intensive to remove salt from water. Basically, you create high pressure water in an RO machine in a plant, and all that water is being moved around at SEA LEVEL and has to be at pressure to produce the water. Once it's potable water, it has to be pumped around UP somewhere for storage.

California has spent years getting rid of power plants. It's just crazy here. They are trying to drive the car off the cliff in my opinion.

Obligatory:

I would argue that in the first and the second scenario the right choice is to do nothing. Let Fate decide. There is no obvious answer wherein nobody dies and no harm will have been committed by the observer. So the correct choice would be to take no action and thus minimize the moral/psychological harm to the observer. If five men or one man die, people still die. But with no intervention, at least you as the observer won’t have to feel guilty about it. You weren’t the one who set this problem in motion or broke the trolley or tied the men to the tracks. It isn’t your obligation to solve it.

richwicks says

I assume you're joking, but motion is relative.

I am not joking, and the Oreo cookie has always spit with the center filling stuck to one side of the cookie. Even though the recipe and the manufacturing process has changed over the years. And oh btw Oreo isn't the only creme filled sandwich cookie that does this. Sometimes half of the center filling lifts up in one corner where the cookie first separated.
I would go buy a pack and experiment, but industrial cookies have gotten so disgusting and inedible I wont bring myself to pay over $5.00 for something that I can care a less about.

They have fucked with the amount of recipe ingredients while still needing the same amount of anti coagulators, lubricants, and other industrial ingredients, to allow the industrial ooze to flow through the Snack making machine, until pretty much all store bought cookies taste like a vat of Lithium grease.

Zak says

This already occurs in cars without AI. Mechanical failures.. gas pedals get stuck, tires blow out.. Manufacturers get sued all the time for their products killing people.

IT ALREADY HAPPENS!

Are you saying it is going to happen more frequently ?

Yes, absolutely I am. I are a enginerd. These are AI trained systems. We can train a neural network to work with a bunch of scenarios, but when presented with entirely new input, it's not predictable.

There's a group of people that just work on defeating the AIs of cars, I don't know if it's research or just for fun or what - but they got a car to drive off a road by just putting some reflectors in the road starting from the center, and moving to the ditch. I think they got a car to malfunction when it encountered a blank white billboard in the early days.

More and more and more and more data will be collected until 99.99999% of the scenarios are handled, but I don't think we're that close yet.

WookieMan says

I think I'm going to drop in a massive rain collection tank.

This is what most folks in CA need one going forward to be sustainable.

Less than 10% of California's water is used for basic urban and suburban homes and irrigation. So when the Commies in California start rationing water to us plebes and forcing our lawns to die, they aren't putting a dent into the problem.

50% of the water is considered "Environmental" which is basically allowed to run through our rivers out to the ocean.

The rest of the water is used for Agriculture. Even though California grows a big chunk of the world's food, Agriculture is only 2% of the State's overall GDP. If we want to get serious, we need to force more water conservation on agriculture and pay a few pennies more for our produce.

The average person in California spends very little for water. My daily water bill is less than a coffee at Starbucks for a family of 5 and irrigating my lawns 3 times a week. People in wetter states in the Northeast pay much more for their water to support the older pipe and treatment plant infrastructure.

We have the technology and the means to fix this problem (desalination) - but it will increase our cost of water a bit.

socal2 says

Even though California grows a big chunk of the world's food, Agriculture is only 2% of the State's overall GDP. If we want to get serious, we need to force more water conservation on agriculture and pay a few pennies more for our produce.

Farmers work on a shoestring budget. It's commodity production. If lettuce potatoes cost $0.02 more, they eat that cost - the price is determined on a commodity market.

They can't just increase the cost. What will happen is farmers will go out of business, and their production will end.

Is is pretty amazing. Why can't everyone do this? Al_Sharpton_for_President, LLC now announces that you have $800,000 in an account. No, we don't have the $800,000 ourselves, why?

richwicks says

Farmers work on a shoestring budget. It's commodity production. If lettuce potatoes cost $0.02 more, they eat that cost - the price is determined on a commodity market.

They can't just increase the cost. What will happen is farmers will go out of business, and their production will end.

Maybe farmers in California should have invested in more water conservation technology and irrigation over the years instead of just opening a sluice gate with flood irrigation and putting a foot of water on their fields............because water cost next to nothing for them due to 100 year old water contracts?

I am not a big fan of letting my yard burn up so California farmers can sell almonds to China.

There is a cap... people's ability to pay.