Sensible Erection | A Snitch's Dillemma

Friday, 6 July 2012

quote [ Kathryn Johnston was doing pretty well until the night the police showed up. Ever since her sister died, Johnston, 92, had lived alone in a rough part of Atlanta called the Bluff. A niece checked in often. One of the gifts she left was a pistol, so that her aunt might protect herself. ]

Origin of the article's title: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_dilemma

Bonus item, an interesting discussion of America's racial history:
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-confronting-the-contradictions-of-america%E2%80%99s-past/

[by Gesualdo@6:15pmGMT] [+10 Interesting]

Comments

GordonGuano said @ 7:31pm GMT on 6th Jul [Score:1 Funny]
Ugh, there are so many systemic problems on display, it's tempting to look at it as a Gordian knot in need of another General Sherman to be its Alexander. What do you do with a 30-year-old man who has some moxie but is unemployable? Ending the drug war would put corrupt predatory cops out of work and destroy the underground economy. And then there's the weather. Yep, I say we dust off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

arrowhen said @ 10:23pm GMT on 6th Jul
You can nuke humans and you can nuke nature, but you can't nuke human nature.

Naruki said @ 12:34am GMT on 7th Jul [Score:3 Funny]
Oh great, who did you piss off now?

blibblob said @ 5:30pm GMT on 7th Jul
Entropy. Did we really think that a randomized collection of human beings, the result of millions of years of evolution, could solve all of the problems of civilization in the 4000 years it's been around? Did we really think we could just exponentially increase our impact on nature, society and the individual without dire consequences? Nope. In a thousand years our species will be extinct. Because it is necessary. Our bodies and minds as evolved are not fit for the future, we are inadequate. We can either accept this, or doom the future of this planet to be devoid of sentient beings. And then in a few hundreds of thousands of years, probably a barren rock like mars, with no species alive capable of holding back the inevitable barrage of asteroids and the gradual dimming of the sun.

Holly said @ 5:35pm GMT on 7th Jul [Score:1 Underrated]
Still, you got to laugh.

hellboy said @ 8:38pm GMT on 7th Jul
Better sink more money into AI research.

blibblob said @ 9:23pm GMT on 7th Jul
I doubt that is viable until we have functioning quantum computers and much more knowledge on how to compute with them. The brain is a bit more complicated than binary.

eIfish said @ 10:14pm GMT on 7th Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
It's probably the reporting rather than the research, but the article seems to be ignorant of CS101 stuff like Turing Equivalence.

A deterministic Turing machine can simulate a non-deterministic turing machine. This proves that there is nothing quantum computers can compute that deterministic computers cannot compute. A quantum computer can be faster, which renders more problems tractable, but there's nothing it renders from impossible to possible.

Similarly, all the talk of binary vs trinary is bunk, an implementation detail. A binary computer and a trinary computer are Turing equivalent; each can simulate the other.

The meat of the research, that neurons seem to be more like ICs than discrete semiconductors, is way interesting, and deserved to take up the whole article. The comparisons with electronic computers should have been done by someone that understands computers, or (preferably) omitted.

arrowhen said @ 11:04pm GMT on 7th Jul
I find it very unlikely we'll be extinct in a mere thousand years. CIVILIZATION might very well collapse -- I think we're entirely capable of nuking, infecting, or polluting ourselves back to the Stone Age (only without any tigers or wolves left to eat us this time!), but I don't think the species is going away any time soon.

On the other hand, we might eventuality get fed up with slow delivery and poor workmanship, cancel Nature's contact, and start evolving ourselves. If that happens, there'll probably come a time when there will exist a huge range of "human" form factors, none of which could be classified as h. sapiens, but by that time it won't matter because our definition of "human" will likely be "anyone who SAYS they're human -- who are we to argue?" But that'll probably be well over a thousand years from now.

maryyugo said @ 8:09pm GMT on 6th Jul [Score:2 Underrated]
Legalizing marijuana would be one nice small step to bring some rule of law to Mexico and perhaps would stem its orgy of killings and cartel violence which have killed more than 50,000 people, many innocent or minor criminals.

maryyugo said @ 8:09pm GMT on 6th Jul
oops... meant that as a reply to guano

GordonGuano said @ 9:19pm GMT on 6th Jul [Score:4 Insightful]
Legalization is just one leg of the stool, though. You also have to address the poverty that makes crime look like a viable career path, and a culture that glorifies criminality and vilifies literacy. To make it even more fun, this is work that has to be sustained for generations on all fronts in a country that would rather see every school, library, and fire station razed before halting production on fighters the Air Force doesn't even want.

blibblob said @ 5:48pm GMT on 7th Jul [Score:2]
Legalization would help plenty. We incarcerate the highest portion of our citizens than any other country on the planet. Most of them for minor drug offenses. That is not a minor problem, that's not just one leg of the stool, that is the weight bearing leg of the stool. It is our prison population that allows private enterprise to make money off of poor laws. Some of the people we incarcerate are those with the most potential. We make stupid things illegal and then worse things spawn from it.

We're turning schools into prisons out of fear that those students will end up in prison anyways. We turn people that should be capable of immigrating legally into illegals because we're afraid they'll steal the jobs that most Americans refuse to do in the first place. We vilify progressive research out of the fear of possible consequences. We're just a fearful species.

But that can't really be changed. And we can't really change the minds of people under the delusion that unchecked capitalism is the path towards a better future. The only thing that I think that people can really get behind is the closing off of the pockets of the government that private enterprise regularly dip their hands into, that they have no right to dip their hands into. Which is our prison system and our law enforcement system. Once we close down their greatest source of private income, the drug war, private enterprise will no longer have an interest in it.

Departments will shrink, private prisons will close down and we'll reduce our image as a police state. We'll have millions of people available to work again and we'll do what civilizations have done since the Egyptians to stabilize the economy, we'll give people jobs via public works. Our infrastructure will grow, the best and brightest will willingly work their way through school to make it on our research teams and we'll reduce our dependence on imported goods. If these are not our goals, then we can join Rome in the history books as just another civilization that rose to extreme power and just fizzled.

smoug said @ 10:04pm GMT on 6th Jul
It's a small step for sure.

There are still plenty of other drugs and illegal activities that fuel cartel violence in Mexico, and as seen with prohibition in the U.S. you don't always remove organized crime when you remove a key income source for them.

rylex said @ 4:44am GMT on 7th Jul
Legalizing marijuana wouldn't do much to stem the flow of cartel violence in mexico. In fact, it would most likely do quite the opposite.

All mexican and columbian cartels are predominately fueled by the transportation and sell of cocaine. What they obtain from pot is negligible in comparison.

eIfish said @ 5:53pm GMT on 7th Jul
Howabout legal marijuana cannibalising the market for illegal cocaine?

blibblob said @ 5:59pm GMT on 7th Jul
Which is why all drugs need to be decriminalized. But we have to start with pot since it it patently clear that it is one of the least harmful of all drugs we willingly put in our bodies(many prescription drugs included). Once we accept that pot is not particularly dangerous we will have to accept that most psychedelics are not dangerous(other than to those already susceptible to psychosis). Once we accept that we'll accept the reality that our brains are the result of complex chemical and electrical signals. And once we can bring most people around to that realization, we're finally at the point where we can admit that drug abuse arises when people are mentally ill. Not because they're horrible human beings that are dangerous criminals, but because their brain is simply not functioning the same as the majority of society. And finally, once we accept that we'll come to realize that NO drugs are "gateway" drugs, it is our brain that is the gateway to abuse in all forms. That it is pointless to do anything except give these people support, allow them to do what they would do anyways safely and provide rehabilitation and psychological help.

eIfish said @ 8:12pm GMT on 7th Jul
So are you suggesting that heroin and nicotine addiction arises because of mental illness, and not because of some property of heroin or nicotine?

blibblob said @ 9:08pm GMT on 7th Jul [Score:1 Insightful]
No. Just that the difference between the person who chooses either or refuses all is a bit more complicated than "my daddy loved me."

burning1 said @ 9:25pm GMT on 6th Jul
Dunno about other states, but in California, Pot is more or less a domestic product. Huge money to be made up in Humbolt county growing. I've heard that ~80% of the GDP up there is illegal pot.

The locals who aren't involved in the trade hate it. Growing has driven housing prices way up, and brought crime along with it. Consensus from the community is that legalization is the best way to go.

GordonGuano said @ 9:57pm GMT on 6th Jul
I'm sure the people making a living off selling illegal weed will be more than happy to relinquish all that money to Uncle Sam with no fuss. With the job market so flush with opportunities and all.

eIfish said @ 11:03pm GMT on 6th Jul
So out-vote them on a federal level, then outcompete them. Pot is only an industry because it's illegal; it's trivial and easy to grow your own if you have access to a plant pot and the sun.

arrowhen said @ 12:03am GMT on 7th Jul [Score:2 Insightful]
Of course it would still be an industry. Pot might be easy to grow, but it still takes TIME. Anytime you can give someone what they want sooner and easier than they could get it themselves, there's money to be made. I predict that if pot is ever legalized to the point where you can buy joints at 7-11, home growing will only be slightly more common among pot smokers than home brewing is among beer drinkers.

tickaz said @ 12:22am GMT on 7th Jul
Slightly off topic, but if you were to grow a bonsai cannabis sativa, would it make super small, super potent buds?

pleaides said @ 12:55am GMT on 7th Jul
Can I interest you in two large medium pizzas?

rylex said @ 4:34am GMT on 7th Jul
i can tell you from personal experience. Yes, you get smaller buds. No, they are not more potent.

structured_spirits said @ 2:47am GMT on 7th Jul
If it's ever legalized, it will remain tightly regulated, so only pharmacists and other white collar types will be allowed to profit from selling it by buying expensive licenses so the state can get it's own fat stacks. Look into how much money t takes to start a commercial brewing operation.

The reason specifically why it's so unlikely to be legalized is because it is too easy to grow at home. The best way for the state to get it's cut is to keep it illegal.

mechanical contrivance said @ 3:39am GMT on 7th Jul
It's illegal now. How does the state get its cut?

hellboy said @ 5:08am GMT on 7th Jul [Score:2 Informative]
Asset forfeiture*, prison industry lobbying, earmarks for anti-drug programs, cheap prison labor, fines paid for possession, etc.

*(which is a euphemism for highway robbery)

mechanical contrivance said @ 7:08pm GMT on 7th Jul
Would states make more or less money than that if marijuana were legal and taxed?

hellboy said @ 8:45pm GMT on 7th Jul
Predictions I've seen say more, but those are hypothetical, and the beneficiaries of the existing system are pretty resistant to change - in fact, the last time California tried to legalize pot it was explicitly intended to address the budget crisis, and a lot of growers ran ads against it and voted against it. The people who would lose if the system changed are more motivated to fight than the people in favor of changing it, which is why it hasn't changed.

structured_spirits said @ 1:33am GMT on 8th Jul
Also, it's a matter of *which* particular entity of the government stand to gain and which stand to lose. But really the problem even with decriminalization is that it's just so easy to grow at home. The government will be out tons of money. There's no way they'll ever let this happen. Also consider the healthcare lobby is going to be against legalization even for medicinal use. They've got synthetics and tons of other antidepressants etc that they're gonna lose sales on big time.

rylex said @ 4:37am GMT on 7th Jul
Actually, the best way for the state to get its cut is to put itself at the top of the distribution.

It's the old weed dealer's adage of "It's harder to make money selling the pot of others' than your own".

eIfish said @ 5:51pm GMT on 7th Jul
As a zero-barrier-to-entry product, though, the money to be made is practically zero.

If you have any profit margin, there'll be someone somewhere willing to sell at half that margin. Because it's so easy to produce, it's impossible to lock him out the market. If you thought the 'medical' growers were efficient, just imagine what farmer giles can accomplish with his John Deere. In every county, there'll be hundreds of people that could decide to grow pot on an industrial scale. And if it's more profitable than canola, they will.

For reference on the cost-price of growing plants, have a look at the herbs in your local supermarket.

eIfish said @ 11:06pm GMT on 6th Jul
So why the thumb?

As a reminder that, no matter how many times I attempt to register, I will never see the article?