It is bad because I have a loan.
It was worse because I had no money.
It can be better because I could repay the loans.
...
It is going to be a disaster but let my grandchildren worry about it.
Invincible is just one of many books showcasing Lem's profound understanding of AI and its limitations servicing the mankind.
I recommend Tales of Pirx the Pilot, the collection of short stories, many of which paint AI as a true reflection of human intelligence with its flaws, quirks, instincts. From AI crashing a starship during a landing to an android "dying" rock climbing.
There is also a preface he wrote to his book called Golem XIV which gives reader a historical overview of the evolution of AI. Golem is of course the name of the model and XIV is its version, just like ChatGPT 4, but many iteration later. Lem describes how each iteration was more and more expensive to build, but more and more intelligent and useful. Until it became more intelligent than men and... lost all interest in affairs of our kind. As always, he was on point.
To my taste, the Pirx stories read as some of (if not the) most fiction-y Lem in existence. As opposed to the rest: thinly disguised philosophical studies. Sometimes really thinly, as in Golem XIV, or completely naked in Summa Tecnologiae. Other times, the fiction plot is laid thicker, as in Katar (The Chain of Chance), pretending to be a pulpy detective story.
Now, Pirx tales felt less cerebral, and much more human. Full of really tight action, too. Great gateway into Lem, overall.
Protip: check out Cyberiada, philosophy masquerading as a parody, and at the same time a book for children.
Seems some contradictions exist in this mans writing. Elsewhere in this thread AIs are described as devoid of and self direction but here we have an AI which has disdain which would be hard to interpret as anything but self direction.
The fact that others are kicking an old lady to death doesn't mean you should join them. Do what you think is right even if it doesn't change anything. Avoiding flights isn't a big price to pay.
This could be a chicken-egg thing. If the top apps had no Apple payments perhaps they wouldn't be on the list. For an established games the discovery is probably less important though I'd imagine that lots of people buy apps just because they are top apps.
You can enforce it using trade bans, don't need military for that. Also, if this would be a global policy then the costs would go globally for everyone making it much easier to cope with since all the competition (on company but also state level) would have the same obligations.
I'm rooting for something like this too. As for the carbonfact and their focus on promoting eco brands, I'd like them to present an alternative metric if/when possible.
Measuring each individual product is complicated and doesn't have to reflect brand's entire emission output. If a company is 10% manufacturing and 90% marketing then the methodology used by carbonfact will be underreporting the emissions.
Some brands (inc. Nike) are already disclosing their total emission. Others might be forced to do so in a near future by regulators. Would it be possible to have a metric calculated simply as 'total emissions / units sold'?
"Global survey finds 74% also want climate crises and protecting nature prioritised over jobs and profit" - I find the results highly optimistic, but hard to believe. I'm working frequently with data and surveys and what people say they want is rarely what they really want or do.
Still, I hope this will give politicians some courage to tackle the problem with full strength.
> Using X costs you Y Using XX costs you YYY Using XXX costs you YYYYYY
And instead of one company or person using XXX, you will have a three small companies using X or one person having three cars in his garage that just happen to each be registered under a different person.
Exponential taxes are a hell of a lot of an incentive to avoid them and you see how far people go to just avoid linear ones. Also, managing the company tax depending on how much the consumer used so far is going to be bureaucracy hell. It's a nice idea, but I highly doubt it will be possible to implement, especially when far easier and straight-forward measures already fail to get through legislation.
I'm well aware of that. I remember reading a story about one of the cities in Asia which forbidden car traffic with driver only. Soon there were passengers for hire standing by the road.
If AWS can charge their clients by milliseconds then I'm pretty sure an airline can add a zero to a 10th ticket booked on the same passenger's name.
The number of products/services taxed progressively wouldn't have to be huge to make a difference. You don't need to progressively tax an electric toothbrush just energy consumption, but all products should be taxed based on their production externalities.
> taxes on usage/consumption could be progressive.
Ideally the poor part of the population should be able to use the roads in the same proportion as the wealthy part of the population. Putting taxes on road usage (which what fuel taxes actually represent) will hit the poor part of the population way harder than the wealthy (or even the middle-class) part of said population.
> You could still get a cheap flight once a year, but you won't be able to fly every weekend.
That used to be one of the few remaining "pleasures of life" for a big part of the lower and lower-middle-classes from Western Europe. It was actually cheaper to fly with your lads from Luton Airport to somewhere in Eastern Europe on Friday afternoon and come back late on Sunday, all this while having lots of fun (from said lads' perspective). Taking this away from them will mean them having to hit the very expensive pubs/bars of Manchester or Oslo and not having the same amounts of fun because the money for purchasing said fun (i.e. alcohol) will just not be there. Unhappy lads may mean an unhappy populace ready to throw stones at the powers that be.
As such, the upcoming football matches from the next few months in the European big leagues will be a very good litmus test, it will be the first time in one year and a half when we'll have lots of young people together ready to scream at things (the opposing teams' players or the said powers that be). We've already had one game suspended this weekend in Montpellier (Southern France) because of fans throwing bottles at the opposing team's players.
> Ideally the poor part of the population should be able to use the roads in the same proportion as the wealthy
Yeah unless you want to give everyone the same income or have some other way of not needing money to travel anymore, that's just not going to be the case. Also today, the wealthy could do road trips much more often than the poor could. That much won't change, I think the best we can hope for is either a slight improvement or not make it worse, for example by taxing heavy use more significantly like GP proposes. I consider myself wealthy but if using 3x the average adds 5x the tax, it's not as if I have unlimited money just like the vast majority of people.
Why don't you start with an idea and self-awareness of your strengths?
You might be good at puzzles. Or stories. Maybe visuals ain't your thing and you can write a text based game - there are great engines for that. Maybe you're a great dev and can start hack your own Dwarf Fortress and keep on doing it for the rest of your life.
Gaming and tech behind is so varied that whoever you are, you'll find something that plays to your skills.
