Andrei Zisu

Since the implants were small, the amount of code they contained was small as well. But they were capable of doing two very important things: telling the device to communicate with one of several anonymous computers elsewhere on the internet that were loaded with more complex code; and preparing the device’s operating system to accept this new code. The illicit chips could do all this because they were connected to the baseboard management controller, a kind of superchip that administrators use to remotely log in to problematic servers, giving them access to the most sensitive code even on machines that have crashed or are turned off.

If wages are persistently lagging behind productivity, workers do not receive their fair share of the produced wealth. This is not only deeply unjust but also economically detrimental, as growth remains behind its potential. Labour income remains the main source of income for households and private consumption makes up the largest part of aggregate demand. Real wages falling behind productivity growth means that wage incomes do not grow and consequently consumption does not grow. This depresses demand prospects which also determine investment. Depressed wages do not provide incentive for investments in technology and thus can hamper future productivity growth. For transformation economies low wage trap can be a barrier for a long term catching up process. Europe`s competitiveness should not be based on low wages.

How to make air conditioning more sustainable

To put it bluntly, Europe has saddled itself with an intellectually vacuous decision that will hobble its agricultural output for decades.

This is amazing

“Teenagers want an outlet to express their opinions with the same kind of conviction that they generally might not be able to express at home or other parts of their life,” said Hal, a 17-year-old admin on

Implicații posibile pentru România

This hidden reserve of workers is bigger than economists thought, Mr. Talavera said. But in Europe it appears to have finally been exhausted. “That is one of the reasons you haven’t seen wage growth picking up substantially,” he said.

If he’s right, that should mean that wages will continue to rise.

The fact that low wage growth has afflicted virtually every wealthy country, though, suggests that there are deeper forces at work that are not yet fully understood.

Kissinger on AI

Third, that AI may reach intended goals, but be unable to explain the rationale for its conclusions. In certain fields—pattern recognition, big-data analysis, gaming—AI’s capacities already may exceed those of humans. If its computational power continues to compound rapidly, AI may soon be able to optimize situations in ways that are at least marginally different, and probably significantly different, from how humans would optimize them. But at that point, will AI be able to explain, in a way that humans can understand, why its actions are optimal? Or will AI’s decision making surpass the explanatory powers of human language and reason? Through all human history, civilizations have created ways to explain the world around them—in the Middle Ages, religion; in the Enlightenment, reason; in the 19th century, history; in the 20th century, ideology. The most difficult yet important question about the world into which we are headed is this: What will become of human consciousness if its own explanatory power is surpassed by AI, and societies are no longer able to interpret the world they inhabit in terms that are meaningful to them?

Interesting argument although not sure I fully agree

Starea educației în 2018. Mulțumim guvernanților din ultimii 29 ani.

Sure. This is a counterargument to the open publication process, but not one that can't be easily overcome. I think the current subscription model leads to a perversion of science publishing...

"The major challenge consuming me is that the wheels are coming off the Enlightenment right now, on our watch, and it’s our own damn fault.

The GRIN technologies – the genetics, robotics, information and nano revolutions – are advancing on a curve. Meanwhile, we humans are trying to process this exponential change with our good old v. 1.0 brains. With precious little help at all from those creating this upheaval.

Folk are not stupid. They can clearly detect the ground moving beneath their feet, and that of their children and jobs and futures. When the ground moves beneath her feet, any sane primate looks for something apparently solid to hold onto. Anybody with apparently simple stories about what’s going on, forcefully told, *will* get attention.

You’ve doubtless seen the data about how the most common job in the vast majority of states is truck driver. So what are we doing? We’re obsoleting these jobs as fast as we can, with a hand wave about how, “Oh, they’ll find better jobs.” While, meanwhile, the rate of suicide and drug addiction and protest voting among the solid middle-aged former middle-class soars. These guys are not stupid. They know they’ve been had. And we’re going to pay for it. And don’t tell me the solution is to have the robots just give them a guaranteed income. Humans require meaning as surely as food.

The days when scientists could not [care] about the impact of their work on cultural, values and society are over. If they ever existed, which they didn’t, but that’s water over the dam.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to guys working on, oh, something like massively increasing the number and power of mitochondria in human cells. And I’m like, you know that if you massively increase the amount of energy creation in cells, you’re talking about changing what it means to be human, right? Are you intentionally trying to create supermen? And the answer every time is “Wow, what a fascinating question, I never thought of that.”

It’s not that these scientists are stupid, obviously. It’s that they’re tunnel-vision. They don’t wake up thinking about how they can change the human race. They wake up thinking about how they’re going to wire the goddamn monkey. That’s just the way these guys are.

Fix it. Get out of your silo. If you can’t figure out the societal and cultural implications of what you’re doing, start seeking out people who might, and start systematically having lunch with them. And then invite the most interesting ones into your lab with the goal of them becoming partners.

One example of this was the scientist who was spending her life finding the biomarkers for a disease for which there was no cure. Mercifully, her lab was among the first to start systematically bringing in partners from entirely outside. One of them asked, “What’s the point of creating despair? Might it be possible for you to find it interesting to search for a biomarker for a disease to which there is a cure?” To which she replied, of course, “Wow, what a fascinating question, I never thought of that.” But once it was pointed out to her, she happily did find another interesting biomarker problem that was culturally useful.

Culture moves slower than does innovation. That’s just what humans are like. Deal with it, or watch the collapse of the Enlightenment as they ever increasingly come at you with torches and pitchforks – and correctly so. Mary Shelley knew her humans.

My wife and I used to raise border collies. Border collies make terrible pets. You can not give an intelligent species nothing to do. If you don’t give them sheep, or something comparably interesting, they will come up with something to occupy their great minds. And you may not like it."