kava

Well yeah it's a catastrophe. You can't avoid it. Realistically, Trump was already edging out Biden in the polls, including the 6 swing states.

They need a new candidate immediately.. but nobody else who has the party blessing (newman, kamala, Michelle, etc) polls as good against Trump as Biden.

So what do they do? Damned if you do, damned if you dont. They are probably goinf to lose the election.

The age thing was already a concern. Now it's a panic. Even top Dems are avoiding question of whether to remove Biden.

The debate was a catastrophe. It really couldn't have gone much worse.

First, this conversation has little to do with fair use. Fair use is when there is an acceptable reason to break copyright. For example when you are making a parody or critique or for education purposes.

What we are talking about is the act of reading and/or learning and then using that information in order to synthesize new material. This is essentially the entire point of education. When someone goes to art school, they study many different artists and their techniques. They learn from these techniques as they merge them together in different ways to create novel art.

Everybody recognizes this is perfectly OK and to assume otherwise is absurd. So what we are talking about is not fair use, but extracting data from copyrighted material and using it to create novel material.

The distinction here is you claim when this process is automated, it should become illegal. Why?

My opinion is if it's legal for a human to do, it should be legal for a human to automate.

10% of people who voted for Biden last time are switching to Trump according to a survey from a few months ago.

The Pentagon was actively spreading anti-vaxx misinformation in Asia. Claiming that the Chinese vaccine had pork (so Muslims wouldn't use it), that vaccines weren't effective, etc.

It was an attempt to destabilize Asia. There's a Reuters article released a couple weeks ago on it. Happened summer 2020 -> summer 2021. So roughly half under Trump, half under Biden.

Although it wasn't exactly a "Trump policy" or a "Biden policy"

Obviously they ultimately hold responsibility for what the Pentagon does because they are commander in chief, but the military did act very sketchy in this case. They essentially used loopholes by considering the "Asian cyperspace" an "active warzone" which allowed them to do certain things without authorization from the state department.

What's the limit? This needs to be absolutely explicit and easy to understand because this is what LLMs are doing. They take hundreds of thousands of similar algorithms and they create an amalgamation of it.

When is it copying and when it is "inspiration"? What's the line between learning and copying?

I have no problem copying code either. The question is at what point does it go from

1. I'm reading code and doing research

To

2. I'm copying code

How abstracted does it have to be before it's OK? If you write a merge sort, it might be similar to the one you learned when you were studying data structures.

Should you make sure you attribute your data structure textbook every time you write a merge sort?

Are you understanding the point I'm trying to get at?

Well let's say there's an algorithm to find length of longest palindrome with a set of letters. I look at 20 different implementations. Some people use hashmaps, some don't. Some do it recursively, some don't. Etc

I consider all of them and create my own. I decide to implement myself both recursive and hash map but also add certain novel elements.

Am I copying code? Am I breaking copyright? Can I claim I wrote it? Or do I have to give credit to all 20 people?

As for forbidding patents on software, I agree entirely. Would be a net positive for the world. You should be able to inspect all software that runs on your computer. Of course that's a bit idealistic and pipe-dreamy.

If I look at a few implementations of an algorithm and then implement my own using those as inspiration, am I breaking copyright law and circumventing licenses?

It depends how you define effective. Of course the consumer would prefer a free market with competition and low barriers to entry. This is the most egalitarian system, where money (and therefore power) gets distributed almost democratically.

It's a liberal democratic version of capitalism. It's the version of capitalism that works. Not perfectly, but it rises people out of poverty and is more or less egalitarian, relative to the alternatives.

Authoritarian capitalism is where you still have the large private sector except you don't have the political freedoms. Think China post 1970s, modern Russia, Singapore.

The government essentially rewards companies that support the power structure. They get privileges and a say at the table. It creates a sort of incestuous relationship between the government and large corporate entities.

The US is moving towards this system as wealth inequality and corporate influence rises (more strongly under Biden than Trump, might I add. Probably to do with pandemic). More $$$ = more power. More power, more influence within the government. Creates a cycle where it's a "buy your policy" type of democracy.

Slowly our political freedoms are being eroded. Mass surveillance, the CIA and Pentagon are now allowed to spread propaganda on US soil (they were not allowed to before early 2000s), erosion of democratic institutions through populism. For example "fake elections" and events like Jan 6th. We are starting to censor and ban outside views ("misinformation" bans from Covid, the banning of TikTok, Google & Facebook & reddit & Twitter regularly manipulate the information people receive and cooperate with the government)

Only some crazy number like 20% of people approve of Congress in this country. The democracy is falling apart and some new system is forming.

As China is opening up their private market to become more like us in terms of finance, big capital, corporate rights, etc. We are closing down our political system to become more like them in terms of the loss of political freedoms, censorship, etc.

You know how China has a strong centralized government and cooperates with their big companies? Government says jump, Huawei says how high?

We have a similar system. A strong centralized government that cooperates with the big companies. The primarily difference is that on the spectrum of

Government power <-----------> corporate power

The US leans more to the right.

Really what's interesting is both the US and China are slowly converging onto a point in the middle. Zizek said something like this some years back.. authoritarian capitalism is unfortunately the most effective form of capitalism.

I try to view it in a zoomed out perspective. Will either president meaningfully make life better?

And for that calculation I take into account a couple things.

A) quality of life for average people. You know- being able to afford your necessities. Being able to comfortably feed your family, pay your rent. Not having to stress about rent money or go into debt when your car breaks down

B) war. War brings chaos. Political and financial instability and average people (who are already not priorities) get put further back on the list. For example right now the US extending the length of Ukraine war is more important than controlling inflation or interest rates. Not to mention public money given to defense contractors that could be building homes for poor, feeding people, building infrastructure, etc

For reference, we have given Ukraine more $$$ (not counting lots of ways military deflates the real number) than Biden's infrastructure bill allocated for public transportation, roads and bridges, and airports combined.

C) and this is my personal bias here. We have 13 million illegal immigrants. People contributing to this country, filling a gap in the labor market, paying taxes, and yet they have to live in fear. Imagine walking around your whole life scared to see a police officer come out from around the corner.

These people have been here decades and every successive Dem promises to do something. All we get is lip service.

If I thought Biden was meaningfully better on any of those 3, I would vote for him.

But I think he's marginally better on A (maybe not because at least Trump was willing to flirt with a psuedo basic-income)

I think he's marginally worse on B (Trump is not likely to start WW3 over Ukraine, although probably just as if not more over Taiwan/Israel)

On c) they are both the same. Biden separates families like Trump. He was using same covid loopholes Trump was using to detain lawful asylum seekers at border.

Sure Trump has more harmful rhetoric but a border wall really does not do anything. Majority of illegals come on valid tourist visas and overstay. It's political theater.

Similar to my home state of Florida. DeSantis & Rubio (may God smite them down) pushed for a law to make it illegal to drive around an illegal immigrant.

Nevermind the fact that Florida has some of the highest rates in the country and that entire industries use them as the foundation (construction, agriculture, landscaping,etc). What happened when illegals started refusing to come to Florida?

They explained the law was symbolic, wasn't actually meant to detain anyone. They don't want real economic consequences. They just want to bang the xenophobic drum. It's absurd.