Highly addictive drugs destroy lives and families. The little girl who’s father has a heroin addiction sure didn’t get any say in his choice, but she’s affected by it.
The citizens of communities ravaged by addiction all suffer, whether they individually consume the drug or not.
The idea that drug use is a victimless crime is patently false and all it takes is a few moments of thought to realize it.
No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with adults smoking a joint after work or on the weekends if that’s what they choose to do, but it quickly devolves from there.
> The idea that drug use is a victimless crime is patently false
What about alcohol use then? Smoking? Buying high risk stocks, options and NFTs? Investing in high-risk startups? Working for a high-risk startups? Spending 100 hours per week on work and neglecting one's family? Any of these could potentially lead to very sad consequences for not only the individual involved but for the people close to them. But once you step on this road, it can lead you to a very weird places if you're not careful. Or you may throw the consistency out of the window and just say "but this is different!" - but then I'd welcome you to explain how exactly it's different.
I suspect that with further legalization and de-stigmatization of marijuana use, the link would become even weaker, because most users won't devolve anywhere - as most people who drink a can of beer on a weekend do not become raging alcoholics - and the cases where a person is driven to drug use by some problems not produced (though also not solved but frequently worsened) by drugs would be recognized as such instead of blaming the evil weed for everything. (NB: not a user myself, never did, never planning to)
>>>Highly addictive drugs destroy lives and families. The little girl who’s father has a heroin addiction sure didn’t get any say in his choice, but she’s affected by it.
Sorry no... This is 3rd party Liability and that can not be the basis for a free society, as at that point everything becomes regulated
Want to go back to Alcohol Prohibition as well?
Further The Father is also free to choose a job where he makes less money that would impact the "little girl" in negative ways, or may choose to tell off his boss and get fired, will you now regulate speech "for the children"
>>The idea that drug use is a victimless crime is patently false and all it takes is a few moments of thought to realize it.
Victimless crime is defined for First Party victimization, to most people 3rd party liability is not a thing, Ford is not responsible if someone kills someones else in a F150, A Gun Manufacturer is not responsible when someone kills someone with a gun... The victims of those crimes are victim of the PERSON that victimized them, the driver or murder
Drug abuse can lead to other crimes, such as theft, and the victims of those crimes are victims of the drug user.
However you can not have a free society if you start shifting the liability upstream, at that point you get in a Pre Crime laws (which is what Drug laws are) and you end up with a whole negative effect and tyranny
> a joint after work or on the weekends ... but it quickly devolves from there.
That's generally disproven, and demonstrates ignorance on your part.
It doesn't matter what the addiction is: Cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, video games, TV, sex, work, money, religion: No government regulation can force a person to live a "good" life, and these kinds of addictions, legal or not, can have nasty negative consequences.
It just so happens that certain substances are illegal due to politics, bias, and ignorance. There's good reasons that these substances should be controlled, but how we (assuming you are in the US or country with similar laws) control them isn't working. (Banning them just creates dangerous black markets.)
When it comes to dangerous narcotics like opioids, cocaine, ect, the biggest obstacle to reform is misinformation like "a joint after work or on the weekends ... but it quickly devolves from there". That's not how addiction works; and continuing to believe and repeat misinformation like that perpetuates the problem. (IE, the misinformation makes it politically difficult in the US to to offer forms of treatment that are proven to work.)
I can logically understand why this is a good thing. I enjoy running and biking myself. I often walk to places instead of drive during the rare times it’s a viable option.
Despite that understanding, I still don’t like it. It’s so incredibly frustrating going 20 or 25mph on a road where most drivers could easily safely drive over double that.
I also often see sections of road with speed limits well below what the road can handle, where EVERYONE is speeding, cops included. This is also frustrating because you’re still paranoid about getting a ticket just for going with the flow of traffic.
But is it? A 20/25mph speed limit implies a residential street. If you are doing 40 could you stop in time if a kid is hidden by parked cars and suddenly runs out into the street chasing a ball? If not, could you scrub off enough speed quickly enough to get below the ~20mph threshold where a collision with a pedestrian is unlikely to be fatal?
This is a function of the road design. We know based on studies that most folks drive the speed they feel comfortable regardless of the posted speed limits. I live right across the street from a school. It’s naturally a 25mph zone. But the roads are literally as wide as a highway road with perfect sight lines and bike lanes on both sides. It’s a very straight and wide path with clear visibility for about a mile so of course cars are going to fly down that road regardless of the posted limit.
All it would take is some traffic calming measures on each side of the school zone. Chicanes or bollards which narrow the road and force people to slow down and been demonstrated to be highly effective at regulating speed. Roads should be designed for the speeds that motorists are meant to travel if safety is an actual goal.
Yes, that illustrates my point. Road calming doesn't make the road less safe, but drivers slow down because it feels less safe. In other words, drivers don't have a great feel for what speed is actually safe.
> It’s so incredibly frustrating going 20 or 25mph on a road where most drivers could easily safely drive over double that.
It's the minority of drivers that should worry you. Speed limits and road safety aren't only for the ideal conditions and safest drivers. And they aren't just for what drivers feel safe doing but what everyone else is safe with.
Very conservatively and in ideal conditions, at 50mph it takes at least 10m to decide to act, another 10m for your foot to get the signal, and another 30-40m to stop. NHTSA estimates between 260ft-300ft. Do you still think most drivers can safely drive in an urban/residential environment with 60-100m stopping distance?
You say "most drivers could easily safely drive", I say "most drivers dangerously overestimate their ability" and are only prepared for best case scenarios. The rules are for all those other cases. A better option would be to make the road the limiting factor and not just via a rule. Drivers feeling less safe at higher speeds would bring that in line with what other participants to traffic feel and make everyone safer.
> I say "most drivers dangerously overestimate their ability"
I say "most road users dangerously overestimate their ability". At 10mph (about 16 km/h) most bikers dangerously overestimate their ability to safely turn, brake or handle road bumps without invading other lanes, crashing or falling from their bikes.
A bike doesn’t weigh over a ton though, while understandable that some bikers ride rather aggressively their ability to maneuver effectively at speed is far better than a car.
being hit by a bike that broke my leg I would say that bikes having no crumple zones (the opposite is true actually) are not without risks for pedestrians
> their ability to maneuver effectively at speed is far better than a car
I guess that's because biking is a conscious choice, not something you have to do, there aren't hundred millions bikes constantly around on the streets, so usually average bikers are better than the average driver
but having 4 wheels and a differential makes maneuvering effectively at speed much easier than on 2 (very thin) wheels
also the thing is you don't have to stop a car to avoid accidents, ABS and a steering wheel can go a long way.
I think people focus too much on breaking space, reaction times and all of that, but if you see an obstacle and can turn away from it without rolling to the floor or worse, you're 95% done.
two car crashing or hitting a wall with a car is far better than hitting a person.
most of the hit-n-runs happen because the driver pushes the brakes too hard, the wheels block, the car loses directionality and hits straight the pedestrian.
of course lowering speed limits is the easiest choice, you crunch the numbers, at 30km/h there's 50% chances less of a a fatal crash than at 40 km/h, so it seems like the obvious choice, but that also mean that the best choice is no cars at all
In Italy, my country, the average speed for cars in Milan is 9.1 km/h, in Rome is 8.5 in Naples 7.3, hardly high speed.
most of the hit-n-runs are people crossing the streets at night, with low visibility hit by cars that greatly exceed the speed limits, DUIs incidents, old people at the wheel that ran a red light and things like that.
most of the deaths are people literally ran over by the car, not just hit
there are cases of people killed by cars going in reverse, so at very low speed
the point is the drivers mindset should be that speed control happens at the gas pedal, not at the breaking pedal
breaking shouldn't be #1 emergency measure, avoiding the obstacle should, and then brake
how many road users have attempted to pass the moose test? with their car, bike, motorbike, whatever?
how many of them have developed the right mentality for "maneuvering effectively at speed" instead of just doing it without realizing that everything has always gone well until now because luck exists?
Maybe a silly question, but how can I find this “Python 3” game? Googling just shows tutorials on making a game in Python 3. Searching “Python 3” on steam doesn’t turn up anything.
Edit:
Smh I genuinely thought there was a game named Python 3. I’m familiar with the language. Just sleepy.
Switch to desktop mode, open a “konsole” terminal, and run “python3”. External keyboard recommended — it is, after all, a programming language interpreter.
None of these are cut and dry. How vulnerable does someone have to be before you can exploit them? How harmful does the behavior have to be before it’s exploitation? What is “knowingly” in an organization? How should events be handled if it’s a single engineer operating in the shadows vs a board decision? etc etc etc
The answers to these question may seem obvious to you, and someone else nay have a completely different answer that seems equally obvious to them.
It's not about any of our opinions. As the article says, there is a whistleblower from Meta saying that this is documented. The lawsuit is what's going to sort it out.
When you hire someone you have taken on an obligation. The depth of that obligation depends on where you operate. I am happy I live and work somewhere where we hold companies to a higher standard.
Companies are owned by people too. The idea that somehow the decision to engage in a consensual pooling of resources to organize an entity to conduct business somehow degrades a person is a wild take. In fact, the existence of companies as separate entities is in some way an insulation from the sort of state intervention upon the individual and their right to association that you describe. That's not a higher standard. That's higher barbarism, at best. Courts have the power to compel, coerce, and enforce through, however removed, the use of force upon the individual who may or may not have voluntarily assented to such power. Why would anyone hire anyone in the first place if you can't downsize when needed? You'd leave, if the state lets you, and in many places, it simply won't.
> I am happy I live and work somewhere where we hold companies to a higher standard.
I don't know where you live, but virtually every place I can think of with strong labor protection policies have them for the benefit of those with jobs at the expense of those without jobs who would like to get one. Harder to fire equals harder to hire with few exceptions.
How do the demographics and labor force participation rates compare? Does the youth unemployment rate match the overall unemployment rate? Does your country have an exceptional growth rate that could sustain maximum employment despite those barriers to entry?
They do have an obligation to improve the common welfare: that’s why corporations were allowed to exist sans monarchal decree.
I reject the 70s-80s re-interpretation of corporations as “vehicles for maximizing shareholder value.” This is a modern neoliberal take, and is rewriting history.
Displaying ads has nothing to do with GDPR. They can still display ads that aren’t targeted, they just can’t save your information for more targeted advertising.
I had a similar experience! I can’t recall if it was strep or what, but I do remember a particularly nasty illness from which I never really feel I recovered from neurologically.
I disagree with you, simply for the fact that artists have been learning from one another for thousands of years.
We can see a clear timeline of art and it’s progression throughout human history, and it’s often clear how a later work took inspiration from an earlier period.
Art school teaches techniques and methods pioneered by earlier artists, for the express purpose of their students to know how to incorporate them into their own original work.
Yet, no one is arguing that Van Gogh’s descendants should be paid a small royalty anytime a variation of on of his painting is produced, or even just when a painting in the style of one of his is produced.
Were all visual artwork to disappear from the world and collective human memory today, then the first new pieces produced by artists would look dramatically different - and likely much worse - than they do today.
What AI is doing is no different. Perhaps faster and on a larger scale than how humans learn from one another, but principally it’s the same.
> Perhaps faster and on a larger scale than how humans learn from one another, but principally it’s the same.
I like how you just tucked this at the end there without any introspection on what kind of a paradigm shift that is. If you wanted a "Van Gogh style painting," you'd contract with a painter who specialized in it, and no, his descendants don't get royalties from that (which is an interesting discussion to have, I'm not sure they should, but I haven't thought about it but anyway) but you are paying a human creative to exercise a vision you have, or, from another perspective, perhaps a person goes into creating these style of paintings to sell as a business. Again the idea of royalties isn't unreasonable here but I digress.
Now, with these generative art algorithms, you don't need a person to spend time turning your/their idea into art: you say "I want a picture of a cat in Van Gogh's style" and the machine will make you dozens, HUNDREDS if you want, basically as many as you can stomach before you tell it to stop, and it will do it (mostly) perfectly, at least close enough you can probably find what you're looking for pretty quickly.
Like, if you can't tell why that's a PROBLEM for working artists, I'm sorry but that's clearly motivated reasoning on your part.
I can tell why it’s a problem for working artists. I never suggested otherwise. What I disagreed with was the premise that it’s immoral or inherently wrong. A problem posing a difficulty to a certain group of difficulty doesn’t have any bearing on its morality.
I'm guessing you mean to say "A problem posing difficulty to a certain group of people doesn't have any bearing on it's morality." and that's just... so very gross in terms of ethical statements.
Like just, hard disagree. Undercutting the value by entire factors of a whole profession's labor is incredibly immoral, especially when you couldn't have done it without the help of their previous works. Like... a very non-exhaustive list of problems I would say meet that definition are:
- Generational/racial wealth inequality
- Police brutality
- The victims of the war on drugs
- Exploitation of overseas labor
I don't think we really have anything else to discuss.
Alike in method is not like in output, and it's output that matters.
A human takes ~4-20 years to become a good artist. They can then produce works at a single human rate.
A model takes ~30 days to become a good artist. It can then produce works at an effectively infinite rate, only bounded by how many GPUs and much electricity can be acquired.
These are very different economic constraints and therefore require different solutions.
> These are very different economic constraints and therefore require different solutions.
This is often listed as the reason why it’s ok for human to learn from a prior art, but not for a LLM. The question is why? If the act of learning is stealing, then it is still stealing, no matter how small scale, and every single human on earth has committed it.
The LLM vendor may benefit more than a mere mortal pupil because of the scale and reach. At the same time the LLM may make the prior art more visible and popular and may benefit the original creator more, even if only indirectly.
Also if content creators are entitled to some financial reward by LLM vendors, it is only appropriate that the creators should pay back to those that they learn from, and so on. I fail to see how such a scheme can be set up.
Either directly (outlawing murder) or indirectly (providing for roads and bridges). And well (libraries) or poorly (modern copyright law).
But fundamentally, law benefits people.
Most modern economic perversions are a consequence of taking laws which benefit people (e.g. free speech) and overzealously applying them to non-people entities (e.g. corporations).
So "why [is it] ok for [a] human to learn from a prior art, but not for a LLM"?
Because a human has fundamental output limitations (parallel capacity, time, lifespan) and a machine does not.
Existing laws aren't the way they are because they encode universal truths -- they're instead the consensus reached between multiple competing interests and intrinsically rooted in the possible bounds of current reality.
"This is a fair copyright system" isn't constant with respect to varying supply and demand. It's linked directly to bounds on those quantities.
E.g. music distribution rights, when suddenly home network bandwidth increased enough to transfer large quantities of music files
Or, to put it another shorter way, the current system and source-blind model output fucks over artists.
> Because a human has fundamental output limitations (parallel capacity, time, lifespan) and a machine does not.
Industrialization as we know it would have never happened if we artificially limit progress, just so that people could still have jobs. I guess you could hold the same kind of argument for the copists, when printing became widespread; for horses before the automobile; or telephone operators before switches got automated. Guess what they have become now. Art made by humans can still exist although its output will be marginal compared to AI-generated art.
LLMs are not humans but are used by humans. In the end the beneficiary is still a human.
I'm making an argument that we need new laws, different than the current ones, which are predicated on current supply limitations and scarcity.
And that those new laws should redirect some profits from models to those whose work they were trained on during the temporary dislocation period.
And separately... that lobotomizing our human artistic talent pool is going to have the same effect that replacing our human journalism talent pool did. But that's a different topic.
For the AI/Robot tax, the pessimistic view is that the legal state of the world is such that such tax can and will be evaded. Now not only the LLMs put humans out of a job because an LLM or a SD model mimicks their work, but the financial gains have now been hidden away in tax havens through tax evasion schemes designed by AIs. And even if through some counter-AIs we manage to funnel the financial gains back to the people, what is now the incentive for capital owners to invest and keep investing in cutting-edge AI, if the profits are now so meagre to justify the investment?
>> I disagree with you, simply for the fact that artists have been learning from one another for thousands of years.
They learn from each other and then give back to each other, and to everyone else, by creating new works of art and inventing new styles, new techniques, new artf-orms.
What new styles, techniques or art-forms has Stable Diffusion created? How does generative AI contribute to the development and evolution of art? Can you explain?
The citizens of communities ravaged by addiction all suffer, whether they individually consume the drug or not.
The idea that drug use is a victimless crime is patently false and all it takes is a few moments of thought to realize it.
No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with adults smoking a joint after work or on the weekends if that’s what they choose to do, but it quickly devolves from there.