Ironically (or not) I've seen smoking gun attributed to Arthur Conan Doyle in a Sherlock Holmes story. (It was smoking pistol in that story). Even if that's rubbish, I think that one is common across the English speaking world. The baseball/American football stuff is a bit different. In the commonwealth we might say "Hit for six" instead of hitting it out of the park. There are a bunch of other ones related to sports more common in England like snookered, own-goal, red card, etc.
I don't think the two things are comparable. While it would be inconvenient for me personally if I was replaced by AI, it would be an enormous social good as the resources saved could go somewhere else. The same could not be said about everyone under constant surveillance by some megacorp or the government.
Are you so sure that replacing humans is "enormous social good"? For whom is it good, exactly?
Also, capturing keystrokes and mouse movements only when at work and on work computer isn't really constant surveillance. Capturing all our code, text, photo and video (made at work or at home) seems worse and we don't bat an eye.
I work in a non-profit sector, if they could save money by replacing me they could use the money elsewhere where they desperately need money. So lots of people would benefit. That same principle wouldn't apply if I worked for some mega corp of course.
But the discussion was about Meta employees in general. They're heavily involved in the second type of surveillance that you alude to.
It would actually be better if slot machines never paid out and 100% of their bets went to the house. Very very few people would use them. They're addictive exactly because they do pay out sometimes.
Death certificates are public records (at least in the UK) so why shouldn't you be able to get one? I think the alternative, where people's deaths could be kept secret by the state is a far greater risk than the privacy rights of the dead (GDPR type laws generally apply to the living).
I don't know about elsewhere but in the UK anyone can apply for any death certificate going back to 1837.
Applying is one thing. Giving unrestricted access to anyone, which contains a ton of private information, be it of a deceased person, is not OK. Going back to my original statement: fake name, fake email, untraceable payment.
I don't cringe because it's for dramatic/narrative effect. It's the same reason the crew of the Enterprise regularly beam into dangerous locations rather than sending a semi-autonomous drone. Or that despite having intelligent machines their operations are often very manual, as it is on many science fiction shows. The audience (if they think about it) realises this is not realistic and understands that the vast majority of our exploration would be done by unmanned/automated vessels. But that wouldn't be very interesting.
Other universes take it further - Warhammer 40k often features combatants fighting with melee weapons. Rule of cool and all that.
>The more different the genetic material is, the less you care
This is sort of true but it misses that we don't actually have DNA sensors built into our eyes. Instead we rely on heuristics like the Westermarck effect where we will (normally) tend to not find someone we lived with as a child attractive regardless whether they're a blood relation or not.
We influence who (or what) is in our group through our behaviour, thoughts and associations. Look at the vast number of people who value their dog or cat over other human beings. It's unlikely their dog is closer to them, genetically speaking than any single human on Earth but they spend time and invest emotionally in their pet so they form a bond despite the genetic distance.
If you see a child being hurt it likely invokes a slightly stronger emotional response if the child reminds you of someone in your own life. Often this will be someone who looks like you/your family (i.e. is genetically similar to you) but it might be some other kid you've grown attached to who is not related at all.
So yes, we are driven by a calculating selfish gene mechanism but we're also burdened/gifted with a whole bunch of emotional and social instincts and rely on imperfect sensors not tricorders. It's why people can form group identities over all sorts of non-genetic characteristics (e.g. religion, nation, neighbourhood, sports team affiliation, political ideology, vi vs emacs, etc).
That's completely true because there are many aspects to what is "my group" and what isn't, but the key point is, people naturally care about their group more than they care about strangers. Thinking in terms of genetics provides a simple model that's good enough to explain a lot of phenomena. But yes, if you want to go deeper, you need to consider other factors - at first glance it seems like "culture" is the most important one.
B would require a fairly large shift in approach since currently the primary way we interact with the cloud is via browsers which are probably the biggest single users of client memory currently.
It probably would have the same effect, but the point is that a lot of people find it easier to stick to one meal a day (or similar) than multiple smaller meals.
I've always thought that you can lose weight on almost any diet - as long as it makes you think before you eat and almost by definition any diet will make you do that. For me at least most (probably all) of the time I eat it has nothing to do with hunger and if I just stop for a second I'll probably not eat at all.
I believe research has mixed results on dietary compliance.
I can only speak anecdotally - if I start doing something enjoyable, it's hard to stop while it's still enjoyable. One of the benefits of an IF diet is you can start eating your main meal and continue until you're full.
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