Cyborg – Injustice:Gods Among Us Wiki

Cyborg

Victor "Vic" Stone

DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980)

Let's get this party started.

Cyborg is a playable hero character in Injustice: Gods Among Us and Injustice 2. He is classified as a Power User.

Part man, part machine, Victor Stone is able to shift his cybernetic body parts into whatever tech he requires. A member of the Justice League, Cyborg is one of crimes most formidable enemies.

Cyborgs fellow Teen Titans did not survive Supermans rise to power. This trauma, coupled with the influence of other, more experienced heroes, led Cyborg to become one of the oppressive regimes enforcers.

Victor Stone lost more than his friends at the tragedy of Metropolis, he lost his hope. His anger tempered his loyalty for Superman and he has remained eager to serve the Regime. With the world left unprepared for the looming threat, Cyborg may be the only one who can combat the technological might of Brainiac.

Cyborg first appears defending the Watchtower alongside Nightwing and Raven against Lex Luthor, Catwoman, Bane and Solomon Grundy. After Batman arrives to assist them, he and Cyborg receive a warning signal about the Joker setting up a nuclear bomb in the center of Metropolis. After Batman, the Joker, and several of the Justice League members are teleported a parallel dimension, Cyborg, Superman and the Flash begin working tirelessly to locate them and bring them back.

In the parallel dimension, Cyborg is shown having joined Superman's One Earth regime and subsequently undergone enhancements to his body. Green Lantern encounters him and the Regime's Raven on the Ferris Aircraft facility torturing their dimension's Deathstroke, who refused the amnesty offered to him by the High Councilor Superman. Green Lantern confronts the two, causing them confusion at first due to his change of uniform color from the Yellow Lantern they know. After Raven is defeated by Green Lantern, Cyborg confronts him but is beaten.

Back in the Justice League's Watchtower, Cyborg and the Flash manage to locate the alternate dimension where their allies were sent and plan to use the Flash's Cosmic Treadmill to pull them back into their dimension. Upon making the necessary modifications, they put their plan into motion. However, the inter-dimensional gateway belonging to the Insurgents activates at the same time, pulling Cyborg into their dimension, where he's needed to repair the kryptonite weapon Batman built to use against Superman. After encountering Deathstroke and Lex Luthor in the Insurgency's hideout, Cyborg misinterprets their intentions and attacks them. He fights them both to a standstill until Batman's counterpart and the members of the Justice League arrive and explain the situation to him.

When Superman's counterpart announces that the displaced Batman will be executed publicly on Stryker's Island, the Insurgency forms a plan to rescue him using the Watchtower's teleporter. Disguising himself as his counterpart, Cyborg infiltrates the Hall of Justice in order to gain access to the Watchtower, grudgingly accompanied by Deathstroke, who Cyborg doesn't trust, regardless of their lack of history. Cyborg goes to activate the teleporter, when it suddenly activates, bringing Catwoman into the Hall. She greets Cyborg, believing him to be his counterpart, but grows suspicious when he uncharacteristically greets her back. She confirms this suspicion by implying that the two of them are involved with each other, causing Cyborg to play along, unaware that she's lying. His cover blown, Catwoman deactivates Cyborg's disguise and attacks him. He manages to defeat her, only to have his legs remotely locked up by his counterpart, who sends for backup from Wonder Woman, unaware that he's speaking to her displaced counterpart. The two Cyborgs start remotely hacking each other's systems simultaneously, ending in a stalemate. Deciding to settle this like men, the two fight one on one, ending in defeat for the Regime's Cyborg.

Their way clear, Cyborg and Deathstroke teleport to the Watchtower, where Cyborg easily takes control of the teleporter using his counterpart's stolen security protocols. However, Deathstroke overloads the Watchtower's reactor as an act of revenge against Superman, jeopardizing the mission and giving the Insurgents only 90 minutes to complete their mission. Once they've secured the displaced Batman, Cyborg teleports them to safety despite a brief malfunction in the teleporter's system. Their mission complete, Cyborg teleports himself and everyone else in the Watchtower to safety, just before the reactor explodes, destroying the Watchtower.

In the wake of the attack on Stryker's and the death of Luthor, the Regime's Superman announces to the council his intentions to destroy Metropolis and Gotham to set an example. He orders his Cyborg and Raven to take control of media broadcasts so the entire world can see it. When the Regime begins their attack on Gotham, the displaced Cyborg fights alongside the Insurgents in the defense of Gotham.

In the epilogue, Cyborg is shown visiting Lex Luthor's grave, where he places the chestpiece of Luthor's battle suit as homage to their fallen comrade. Meanwhile, his counterpart is taken into custody with the rest of Superman's accomplices.

In a flashback, Cyborg, as an accomplice of Superman's plan to remove the Arkham Asylum inmates, was stationed at Gotham to prevent anyone from interfering. Off-screen, he sets the approaching Batplane's systems to autopilot, and appears before them via Boom Tube to attack them. He fires off a warning shot, which doesn't affect Batman but causes Damian Wayne to veer off course. Cyborg confronts Batman on the ground by admitting his reluctance to attack the latter unless he has to. When Batman refuses to back down, Cyborg tells him that he lost all of his friends in Metropolis, and that a similar incident won't happen again if Superman executes his plan. Batman tells him of his right to be angry, but disproves of Superman's plan by stating it's "not a blank check. And the Justice League isn't a death squad," and the two fight, ending in Cyborg's defeat.

In the present day, Cyborg is incarcerated alongside Damian and Superman at Stryker's Island for his role in the Regime, and is guarded by Firestorm and Blue Beetle. During Brainiac's invasion, he is set free by Kara in their attempt to free Superman, and is sent to disable the red sun generators at Superman's prison. While doing so however, Firestorm or Blue Beetle faces off against him, defeating him. He is among his fellow Regime members to come together and outnumber the two heroes, causing Firestorm to prepare to go nuclear. Just as Wonder Woman is about to attack Firestorm however, Batman intervenes, disarming Firestorm. Cyborg then looks on as Batman agrees that he can't defeat Brainiac alone and frees Superman.

He is among the heroes at the Justice League table, as Catwoman goes over the plan. Cyborg is tasked to head to the Batcave to bring Brother Eye back online, much to his reluctance. He is also informed he can't Boom Tube in as Batman had reverse-engineered his Mother Box's technology and should Cyborg try to boom tube into the Batcave, he'll explode. He is also informed that Catwoman and Harley Quinn will be going with him.

On the mission, the trio boom tube at Arkham Asylum, before being ambushed by Poison Ivy who uses pheromones to mind control Harley to attack them. Either Cyborg or Catwoman defeats her and soon Poison Ivy. While on their walk through the sewers to the Batcave, Harley expresses hope that Black Canary and Green Arrow are still alive, before Cyborg doubts that, explaining that Brainiac only takes the best and the two don't qualify as the best. Catwoman replies that she'd still take them over him. Once the trio reach the entrance of the Batcave, he and Catwoman progress further, while Harley Quinn is left to guard the entrance. The duo are then ambushed by Deadshot and Bane, though they both emerge victorious. The duo reach a corrupted Brother Eye, where Cyborg tries to reboot Brother Eye, before being intercepted by Brainiac speaking through the monitors. Brainiac claims that Cyborg is "the pinnacle of human evolution", though claims that his humanity inhibits him from reaching his full potential, before freeing Grid from his memory subsystems. He is defeated by either Cyborg or Catwoman. Cyborg then returns to trying to regain access to the Brother Eye's neural network. Brainiac states that not even he could regain access, before Cyborg responds that he isn't trying to regain access, but rather teach it to ignore Brainiac. It is successful and Brother Eye comes back online.

He is later seen with the other heroes after Superman's apparent death witnessing Brainiac offer a trade surrender Supergirl and he'll spare the Earth. They refuse to take the deal and Cyborg suggests that they short out Brainiac's shields, leaving his ship vulnerable. Black Adam agrees and offers to channel energy from the Rock of Eternity to do so with the Trident of Atlantis as a medium to control it. Cyborg also considers the idea that he create a signal disruptor that could disconnect Brainiac from his ship, similar to how he was disconnected from Brother Eye earlier.

He is later seen handing the disruptor to Batman, also informing him that he'll have to be arms reach within Brainiac in order for it to work. Cyborg is never seen again for the rest of the story, though he is mentioned by Superman that with Cyborg's aid, Superman can gain control over Brainiac's ship, in which Cyborg presumably did so in Superman's ending.

Super Move-1375398843

What little remains of Victor Stone's body is protected by Promethium metal shaped into a mechanical exo-skeleton, armed with advanced weaponry and constantly synced to the internet 24/7, allowing Cyborg complete and total access to all information stored in the World Wide Web. Cyborg's mechanical body affords him superhuman strength and durability high enough to trade and survive blows from Solomon Grundy, though not overpower the zombie. Cyborg's on-board weaponry includes his trademarked arm cannon, which can fire either high decibel blasts of sound or small spheres of energy, either in a single burst or rapid fire. Cyborg also possesses a large amount of missiles for long range attacks, which he can fire from a launcher on his back or from his shoulders. Cybrog also contains a built in Boom Tube to allow himself instantaneous teleportation from one location to another.

Though his arsenal his impressive, Cyborg's real talent is his computer skills. Victor can navigate and coordinate massive strikes through his natural connection to the web, and hack through almost any security system and take complete control of it himself, so long as he remains conscious during the takeover. If he is knocked unconscious during, or hacked himself, the feedback can knock him unconscious.

Repair Circuit:Cyborg's character trait is the ability to regenerate health. The longer the button is held, the more health Cyborg regenerates.

Injustice Gods Among Us - Cyborg Ending HD

After Superman's defeat, Cyborg led the assault on the Fortress of Solitudeto flush out remnants of the High Councilor's regime. The Fortress was well defended, the battle intense. Cyborg was forced to use unfamiliar Kryptonian tools to make repairs to his damaged cybernetics. Enhanced with the alien technology, Cyborg found he could communicate with Superman's androids and order them to apprehend the opposition. With his army of super androids, Cyborg will bring justice to the world.

Injustice 2 Cyborg's Ending

Brainiac thought he had me all figured out. Said my humanity made me weak. But fighting for humanity gave me the strength to body that punk-ass Coluan. And before he dropped, I took a few things... His twelfth-level intellect and his ship's data core. I thought the Internet was gigantic. But now? I've got the whole wide universe at my fingertips. First up, I put back every Earth city Brainiac stole, starting with my hometown, Dakota City! Then I keep going... Superman wants to secure one world, but I can reboot tens of thousands! Every last one in Brainiac's Collection. Gonna be a long trip. But another benefit of my new twelfth-level intellect is I can reunite with some old friends. Titans Together. Boo-yah.

Cyborg's costume is comprised of a metal exoskeleton, which is primarily gray and silver. Half of his face and the underside of his arms are left bare. He has a red glowing circle in the middle of his chest and he can transform his exoskeleton into different weapons at will.

Cyborg has a more advanced robotic exoskeleton which features more plated armor, with two red wires connecting his arms to his back. The only human part of his body is the right side of his face, which is bald.

Cyborg's metal exoskeleton combines elements from both costumes in Injustice, being sleeker in appearance but featuring more armored parts. The exoskeleton is colored white and dark gray, with his symbol being featured on his chest.

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Cyborg - Injustice:Gods Among Us Wiki

Cyborg Movie Review & Film Summary (1989) | Roger Ebert

I am not sure I remember the opening words of "Cyborg" exactly, but I believe they were, "After the plague, things really got bad." I do remember laughing heartily at that point, about 30 seconds into the movie. Few genres amuse me more than post-apocalyptic fantasies about supermen fighting for survival. "Cyborg" is one of the funniest examples of this category, which crosses "Escape from New York" with "The Road Warrior" but cheats on the budget.

The movie takes place in a future world in which all civilization has been reduced to a few phony movie sets. Leather-clad neo-Nazis stalk through the ruins, beating each other senseless and talking in Pulpspeak, which is like English, but without the grace and modulation. It's cold in the future, and it's wet, but never so cold or wet that the costumes do not bare the arm muscles of the men and the heaving bosoms of the women.

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The plot of "Cyborg" is simplicity itself. The movie's heroine (Dayle Haddon) is half-woman, half-robot, and wears a computer under her wig. Her knowledge may include the solution to the plague that threatens to destroy mankind, but first she must somehow return to headquarters in Atlanta. Her enemy, Fender Tremolo (Vincent Klyn), wants to destroy her because he believes that if anarchy is unleashed upon the world, he can rule it. The hero, Gibson Rickenbacker (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is on a mission to escort her safely to Atlanta.

(If you look at the names "Fender Tremolo" and "Gibson Rickenbacker" and wonder why they set off strange stirrings in your subconscious, it is because both characters, according to the movie's press book, "are named after equipment and techniques associated with electric guitars." This rule presumably also applies to the characters Furman Vox, Nady Simmons and Roland Pick.) Once we know the central players, the movie turns into a sadomasochistic passion play, in which the village tries out varieties of unspeakable tortures on the hero, including crucifixion, before the formula is (of course) delivered safely after all. The movie reduces itself to a series of smoking, smoldering cityscapes (which look a lot like urban neighborhoods slated for renewal), and the Pulpspeak is the usual combination of vaguely Biblical formalisms, spiced with four-letter words and high-tech gibberish.

Movies like this work if they're able to maintain a high level of energy and invention, as the Mad Max movies do. They do not work when they lower their guard and let us see the reality, which is that several strangely garbed actors feel vaguely embarrassed while wearing bizarre costumes and reciting unspeakable lines.

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Cyborg Movie Review & Film Summary (1989) | Roger Ebert

Gene therapy – About – Mayo Clinic

Overview

Gene therapy involves altering the genes inside your body's cells in an effort to treat or stop disease.

Genes contain your DNA the code that controls much of your body's form and function, from making you grow taller to regulating your body systems. Genes that don't work properly can cause disease.

Gene therapy replaces a faulty gene or adds a new gene in an attempt to cure disease or improve your body's ability to fight disease. Gene therapy holds promise for treating a wide range of diseases, such as cancer, cystic fibrosis, heart disease, diabetes, hemophilia and AIDS.

Researchers are still studying how and when to use gene therapy. Currently, in the United States, gene therapy is available only as part of a clinical trial.

Gene therapy is used to correct defective genes in order to cure a disease or help your body better fight disease.

Researchers are investigating several ways to do this, including:

Gene therapy has some potential risks. A gene can't easily be inserted directly into your cells. Rather, it usually has to be delivered using a carrier, called a vector.

The most common gene therapy vectors are viruses because they can recognize certain cells and carry genetic material into the cells' genes. Researchers remove the original disease-causing genes from the viruses, replacing them with the genes needed to stop disease.

This technique presents the following risks:

The gene therapy clinical trials underway in the U.S. are closely monitored by the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health to ensure that patient safety issues are a top priority during research.

Currently, the only way for you to receive gene therapy is to participate in a clinical trial. Clinical trials are research studies that help doctors determine whether a gene therapy approach is safe for people. They also help doctors understand the effects of gene therapy on the body.

Your specific procedure will depend on the disease you have and the type of gene therapy being used.

For example, in one type of gene therapy:

Viruses aren't the only vectors that can be used to carry altered genes into your body's cells. Other vectors being studied in clinical trials include:

The possibilities of gene therapy hold much promise. Clinical trials of gene therapy in people have shown some success in treating certain diseases, such as:

But several significant barriers stand in the way of gene therapy becoming a reliable form of treatment, including:

Gene therapy continues to be a very important and active area of research aimed at developing new, effective treatments for a variety of diseases.

Explore Mayo Clinic studies testing new treatments, interventions and tests as a means to prevent, detect, treat or manage this disease.

Dec. 29, 2017

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Gene therapy - About - Mayo Clinic

NEO Coin and Its Applications: Places Where You Can Use NEO Coin

What Is NEO Coin?
NEO coin is the native currency of the blockchain platform NEO. It was the first decentralized, open-source cryptocurrency and blockchain platform launched in China.

NEO uses blockchain technology to automate the management of digital assets using smart contracts, à la Ethereum. Not surprisingly, it is often referred to as "Chinese Ethereum."

The primary NEO coin applications are to facilitate smart contracts and to become a digital, decentralized, and distributed representative of non-digital assets. Simply put, NEO makes.

The post NEO Coin and Its Applications: Places Where You Can Use NEO Coin appeared first on Profit Confidential.

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NEO Coin and Its Applications: Places Where You Can Use NEO Coin

Master of Science (MSc) in Molecular Medicine – NTNU

The field of molecular medicine is often referred to as "tomorrow's medicine". It aims to provide a molecular understanding of how normal cellular processes change, fail or are destroyed by disease. The purpose of the MSc programme is to develop knowledge and skills in cellular and molecular biology. These have applications in both research and practical clinical work, and will contribute to an increased understanding of processes, diagnostics and treatment of diseases.

The application deadline for for applicants from non-EU/non-EEA students is 1 December. The application deadline for students from EU/EEA countries is 1 March. You submit your application electronically.

The MSc in Molecular Medicine qualifies graduates for a wide range of careers, including practical clinical work and technical executive positions in hospital laboratories, and positions in pharmaceuticals and MedTech/BioTech companies.

The MSc is a two-year, full-time programme starting in the autumn semester. There are two main components: a master's thesis worth 60 credits, and theoretical and methodological courses totalling a further 60 credits.

Contact one of our student counsellors if you have any questions about the MSc programme. Email: studie@ikom.ntnu.no/ Telephone: +47 72 82 07 00

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Master of Science (MSc) in Molecular Medicine - NTNU

Molecular Medicine Journals | Peer Reviewed | Open Access

Journal of Molecular Medicine and Therapy(JMMT), a newly launched journal which will be dedicated to advancing the science and practice of molecular medicine through the rapid publication of high-quality original research, systematic reviews, meta-analyses and technology reports, perspectives on all disciplines and therapeutic areas within the specialty.

The mission of Journal of Molecular Medicine and Therapy(JMMT) is to provide readers with a broad spectrum of themes in molecular medicine and therapy. The principal criterion for publication is potential impact on patient care.

Aims and Scope

Journal of Molecular Medicine and Therapy(JMMT) is an open access journal designed for the wide dissemination of research in this field to worldwide audience. New developments in methodology and techniques are important resources for the research community.

With an emphasis on conceptual breakthroughs, its goal is to facilitate rapid publication and circulation of novel discoveries in the field of molecular and clinical research, molecular immunology, molecular pathology, molecular genetics, molecular human genomics, molecular microbiology, molecular pathogenesis, molecular cardiology, molecular surgery and molecular psychology. It features original research, review articles, clinical cases, perspective, commentary and others.

You may submit manuscripts through online at http://www.editorialmanager.com/alliedjournals/ oras an E-mail attachment to[emailprotected]

Individuals interested in becoming members of the Editorial Review Board should contact by below email.

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Molecular Medicine Journals | Peer Reviewed | Open Access

Minerva Reefs | Prometheism Transhumanism Post Humanism

August 03, 2017 19:11

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Andaman And Nicobar Islands Blue Seas, Virgin Islands And Colonial Past:- Andaman and Nicobar Islands, located in the Bay of Bengal are known for their scenic beaches, dense forests and adventurous water sports.

Out of the 600 islands in the Bay of Bengal, only around 36 islands are inhabited. The archipelago is divided into two groups of islands the Andaman Islands and the Nicobar Islands. Of these, only 9 islands in the Andaman Islands group are open for tourists.

The sandy beaches form as nesting homes to turtles, animals such as spotted deer, wild boar, gecko, crab-eating macaque and python can be spotted in the 86% area still covered by dense forests.

In Andaman and Nicobar Islands, rains are usually on and off while the other days are mostly sunny. You can visit the Beladaru beach at Batarang Island, if it is sunny. There are many indoor activities to indulge you as well, when it rains.

Other places to visit here are Radhanagar, dolphin resort, Cellular jail and Phoenix Bay Jetty which is quite a sight in the rains.

Summer ( April July ) Summer temperatures range between 24 to 37 degrees Celsius. During this time, all the water sports are open to visitors and it is an excellent time to visit the islands.

Monsoon (July September ) During this time, the temperatures range between 22 to 35 degrees Celsius. July and August witness the maximum visits to the islands. However, in case of heavy rainfall and unpredictable seas, water sports may not be an option.

Winter (October March ) Winters are not severe at all. Weather stays mild and pleasant. Temperatures range between 20 to 30 degrees Celsius.

How To Reach

Andamans can be reached via air and water only, since these are an isolated cluster of islands in the Bay of Bengal along the Eastern coast of India.

Veer Savarkar International Airport in Port Blair is connected via flights to Kolkata and Chennai. Only domestic operators offer flight service to Andaman Islands.

Nearest Airport: Veer Savarkar International Airport (IXZ)

You can reach Port Blair via water from Kolkata, Chennai and Vishakhapatnam only. It takes about 4 days to reach Andamans via cruise.

There are auto-rickshaws and taxis available in Port Blair and on Havelock Island and are the best means to move around. On Havelock Island, you can also rent scooters and motorbikes.

1) Havelock Island

Havelock is one of the most popular islands among the 600 in the region and is the most developed when it comes to tourism. It is a 2-4 hour ferry ride away from Port Blair.

Named after a British general, Havelock Island is the largest island that comprises of Ritchies Archipelago. Havelock is located 57 km north-east of the capital city Port Blair. It consists of 5 villages which are Shyam Nagar, Vijay Nagar, Radha Nagar, Krishna Nagar and Govinda Nagar.

2) Scuba Diving

Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a popular spot for scuba diving among tourists. Most popular island among all the islands for the dives, however, is Havelock. It is an ideal diving destination for everyone, right from a novice to an experienced diver. For non-certified amateur divers, charges start from about INR 3,500 for a 30-minute dive.

Scuba Diving is the most sought after activity on Havelock island. The top agencies which are certified by SSI and PADI and provide scuba facilities are Barefoot Scuba, Doongi Dives, DiveIndia, Andaman Dive Club and Andaman Bubbles. Smaller Dive schools include OceanTribe, Gold India and ScubaLuv.

Andamans, with its clear waters and rich coral reserves, offers a large number of spots for shallow as well as deep dives (up to 55m). The major dive spots are: Pilot Reef (6-18m), Lighthouse (6-20m), Aquarium (12-15m), Elephant Beach (6-25m), Jacksons Bar (20-35m), The Wall (10-55m), Johnnys Gorge (25-30m), Dixons Pinnacle (18-40m), Minerva Ledge (10-18m).

3) Cellular Jail

The Cellular Jail constructed by the Britishers is the old colonial prison situated in Port Blair. The jail complex is now owned by the Government of India and it is recognized as the national memorial monument showcasing the life of prisoners during theBritish period.

The jail narrates the horrifying and darkest period in the history of India. Soon after the Sepoy Mutiny in the year 1857, Britishers began to use the islands of Andaman and Nicobar as the jails to put the independence leaders behind the bars. The secluded islands were chosen due to their distant location from the main parts of the country where the prisoners would be kept in the dark depriving them of the situation in the country and excluding them from the society.

Many of the prisoners died due to inhumane conditions, many were hanged till death and many simply perished.

Open Time: National Memorial: 9:00 AM 12:00 PM, 1:00 PM 4:15 PM (Closed on Mondays)

4) Snorkeling in Andamans

Snorkeling is another popular water sport among tourists. Sea around Havelock Island serves as one of the best sites for snorkeling.

You can see a kaleidoscope of colors underwater with a variety of reef, fishes, turtles, sharks and rays. Snorkeling costs around INR 400-500, and is much cheaper compared to Scuba diving.

5) Ross Island

Ross Island is one of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, about 2 km east of Port Blair. One can see remnants of an opulent past in the ruins of the church, swimming pool and the chief commissioners residence with its huge gardens and grand ballrooms. Managed by the Indian Navy, there is also a cemetery and a small museum.

Ross Island, a few km from Aberdeen jetty at Port Blair, is yet another member of the Andaman group of islands.

6) Neil Island

Neil Island is apparently named after a British soldier, James George Smith Neill, who had sternly dealt with the insurgents during the suppression of the 1857 Mutiny.

The island is located 40 kilometres north-east of Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is the southernmost island of Ritchies Archipelago.

Neil quite small compared to Havelock is a place to chill out after the bustle of Havelock Island. You can walk the whole island in about an hour or two.

In Neil there have three good sand beaches. The color of sea water is light blue, dark blue and green. Neil Island is a peaceful island. You can go around to see the natural bridge, beach #8, sitapur beach, ramnagar beach and lakshmanpur beach.

7) Water Sports In Andamans

The Andamans, while great for the peaceful, undisturbed soul-searching vacation that you need, also happen to be a hub for indulging in some killer water sports. Come, soak in the fun!

Activities offered : Water-skiing, Sail boats, Windsurfing, Speed Boats, Snorkeling, Scuba Diving, Para sailing, Water scooters, Row boats, kayaks, paddle boats

Cost of Activity : Starts at Rs. 2000 including equipment, depending upon the kind of activity.

Currents : 55 64 cm/sec

Difficulty Level : Easy-Medium

Nearest Airport : Port Blair

Nearest Port : Port Blair

Region : Bay of Bengal

Time required : 4-5 days if you want to try out all the different sports

Water Temperature : 26-30 degrees Centigrade

Air: It is most convenient to travel to Andaman Islands by air. The airport is situated at the capital city of Port Blair. Regular flights are available to the islands from Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi. One can also get flight from Bhubaneshwar on certain days.

Sea: Another way of reaching these exotic groups of islands is through sea. The regular passenger ship services to Port Blair commence from Chennai, Visakhapatnam and Kolkata with usually 3-4 sailings per months both sides. The complete voyage takes around 50 to 60 hours approximately to reach the final destination.

Things to carry

1) Sunblock

2) Flip Flops

3) Hats

4) Bathing Suits

5) Sunglasses

6) Energy Bars

7) Waterproof camera bags, lenses and battery packs

Safety Tips

Carry a small bottle of water during the day for emergencies. Stretch before participating in water sports. Make sure you choose operators that offer up-to-date safety gear.

General tips

The best time to visit the Andamans is from October to May. It is during this time that the Emerald Isle is at its prettiest, balmiest best. Choose good adventure operators who will provide good equipment.

8) Wandur National Park

Located in the south-western coast of the Andaman Islands, Wandur National Park is a marine life conservation area situated at a distance of 25 km from the capital city of Port Blair. The wildlife sanctuary which is also known as the Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park consists of a group of 12 islands which are situated geographically in a labyrinthine shape and are home to some of the most exquisite marine wildlife in the world.

The national park is a great place to try some snorkeling and diving in the crystal clear water of the islands. The coral reefs are the highlight of the park exhibiting their glorious forms.

The famous islands to visit are Jolly buoy Islands, Redskin Island, Grub Island, Rangat Island, Neil Island and Long Island. The national park can amaze and dazzle everyone visiting especially those who hold wildlife close to their hearts.

Open Time: The first boat trip starts at 8:30am and continues till 10:30am at an interval of 30 minutes. The National Park has only 150 permits for tourist entries distributed on the basis of first-cum-first-serve.

9) Chatham Saw Mill

Chatham Saw Mill is the biggest and the oldest mill across Asia owned by the Forest Department. The mill is also a storehouse for a variety of woods cut into different shapes and sizes.

Open Time: All days of the week except Sunday: 8:30 AM 2:30 PM

10) Corbyns Cove

Corbyns Cove is the nearest beach to Port Blair. It is quite popular among tourists as well as locals.

It serves as an ideal place to just get a good sunset view and laze around. There are quite a few water sports which draw many adventure enthusiasts here.

Open Time: All days of the week: 12:00 AM 12:00 PM

11) Barren Island

Barren Island is located at a distance of 35 kms of Port Blair, the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar islands. The island is famous as a rare and interesting scuba-diving destination.

12) Viper Island

Years before Cellular Jail was constructed, Viper Island was used by the British to keep the freedom fighters in exile. You can still see the remains of the jail which was built in 1867 by the British.

13) Wandoor Beach

A small village in the southern part of South Andaman, Wandoor is most recognized for its Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park.

The village also has some beaches which are relatively less crowded and offers mesmerizing views. You can combine your trip with a visit to Jolly Buoy or Red Skin Island, where you get to see beautiful corals. Wandoor is easily accessible and is only 1-2 hour bus ride away from Port Blair.

14) Baratang Island

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SJ Games vs. the Secret Service – Steve Jackson Games

SJ Games vs. the Secret Service

On March 1, 1990, the offices of Steve Jackson Games, in Austin, Texas, were raided by the U.S. Secret Service as part of a nationwide investigation of data piracy. The initial news stories simply reported that the Secret Service had raided a suspected ring of hackers. Gradually, the true story emerged.

More than three years later, a federal court awarded damages and attorneys' fees to the game company, ruling that the raid had been careless, illegal, and completely unjustified. Electronic civil-liberties advocates hailed the case as a landmark. It was the first step toward establishing that online speech IS speech, and entitled to Constitutional protection ... and, specifically, that law-enforcement agents can't seize and hold a BBS with impunity.

On the morning of March 1, without warning, a force of armed Secret Service agents accompanied by Austin police and at least one civilian "expert" from the phone company occupied the offices of Steve Jackson Games and began to search for computer equipment. The home of Loyd Blankenship, the writer of GURPS Cyberpunk, was also raided. A large amount of equipment was seized, including four computers, two laser printers, some loose hard disks and a great deal of assorted hardware. One of the computers was the one running the Illuminati BBS.

The only computers taken were those with GURPS Cyberpunk files; other systems were left in place. In their diligent search for evidence, the agents also cut off locks, forced open footlockers, tore up dozens of boxes in the warehouse, and bent two of the office letter openers attempting to pick the lock on a file cabinet.

The next day, accompanied by an attorney, Steve Jackson visited the Austin offices of the Secret Service. He had been promised that he could make copies of the company's files. As it turned out, he was only allowed to copy a few files, and only from one system. Still missing were all the current text files and hard copy for this book, as well as the files for the Illuminati BBS with their extensive playtest comments.

In the course of that visit, it became clear that the investigating agents considered GURPS Cyberpunk to be "a handbook for computer crime." They seemed to make no distinction between a discussion of futuristic credit fraud, using equipment that doesn't exist, and modern real-life credit card abuse. A repeated comment by the agents was "This is real."

Over the next few weeks, the Secret Service repeatedly assured the SJ Games attorney that complete copies of the files would be returned "tomorrow." But these promises weren't kept; the book was reconstructed from old backups, playtest copies, notes and memories.

On March 26, almost four weeks after the raid, some (but not all) of the files were returned. It was June 21, nearly four months later, when most (but not all) of the hardware was returned. The Secret Service kept one company hard disk, all Loyd's personal equipment and files, the printouts of GURPS Cyberpunk, and several other things.

The raid, and especially the confiscation of the game manuscript, caused a catastrophic interruption of the company's business. SJ Games very nearly closed its doors. It survived only by laying off half its employees, and it was years before it could be said to have "recovered."

Why was SJ Games raided? That was a mystery until October 21, 1990, when the company finally received a copy of the Secret Service warrant affidavit at their request, it had been sealed. And the answer was ... guilt by remote association.

While reality-checking the book, Loyd Blankenship corresponded with a variety of people, from computer security experts to self-confessed computer crackers. From his home, he ran a legal BBS which discussed the "computer underground," and he knew many of its members. That was enough to put him on a federal List of Dangerous Hoodlums! The affidavit on which SJ Games were raided was unbelievably flimsy ... Loyd Blankenship was suspect because he ran a technologically literate and politically irreverent BBS, because he wrote about hacking, and because he received and re-posted a copy of the /Phrack newsletter. The company was raided simply because Loyd worked there and used its (entirely different) BBS!

As for GURPS Cyberpunk, it had merely been a target of opportunity ... something "suspicious" that the agents picked up at the scene. The Secret Service allowed SJ Games (and the public) to believe, for months, that the book had been the target of the raid.

The one bright spot in this whole affair was the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In mid-1990, Mitch Kapor, John Barlow and John Gilmore formed the EFF to address this and similar outrages. It's a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the Constitutional rights of computer users. (For more information, look at the EFF web site, or write them at 454 Shotwell St., San Francisco, CA 94110.) The EFF provided the financial backing that made it possible for SJ Games and four Illuminati users to file suit against the Secret Service.

Two active electronic-civil-liberties groups also formed in Texas: EFF-Austin and Electronic Frontiers Houston, which have since merged to become Electronic Frontiers Texas.

And science fiction writer Bruce Sterling turned his hand to journalism and wrote The Hacker Crackdown about this and other cases where the law collided with technology. A few months after it was published in hardback, he released it to the Net, and you can read it online.

In early 1993, the case finally came to trial. SJ Games was represented by the Austin firm of George, Donaldson & Ford. The lead counsel was Pete Kennedy.

And we won. The judge gave the Secret Service a tongue-lashing and ruled for SJ Games on two out of the three counts, and awarded over $50,000 in damages, plus over $250,000 in attorney's fees. In October 1994, the Fifth Circuit turned down SJ Games' appeal of the last (interception) count ... meaning that right now, in the Fifth Circuit, it is not "interception" of your e-mail messages when law enforcement officials walk out the door with the computer holding them.

See the rest here:

SJ Games vs. the Secret Service - Steve Jackson Games

What is Quantum Computing? Webopedia Definition

Main TERM Q

First proposed in the 1970s, quantum computing relies on quantum physics by taking advantage of certain quantum physics properties of atoms or nuclei that allow them to work together as quantum bits, or qubits, to be the computer's processor and memory. By interacting with each other while being isolated from the external environment, qubits can perform certain calculations exponentially faster than conventional computers.

Qubits do not rely on the traditional binary nature of computing. While traditional computers encode information into bits using binary numbers, either a 0 or 1, and can only do calculations on one set of numbers at once, quantum computers encode information as a series of quantum-mechanical states such as spin directions of electrons or polarization orientations of a photon that might represent a 1 or a 0, might represent a combination of the two or might represent a number expressing that the state of the qubit is somewhere between 1 and 0, or a superposition of many different numbers at once.

A quantum computer can do an arbitrary reversible classical computation on all the numbers simultaneously, which a binary system cannot do, and also has some ability to produce interference between various different numbers. By doing a computation on many different numbers at once, then interfering the results to get a single answer, a quantum computer has the potential to be much more powerful than a classical computer of the same size. In using only a single processing unit, a quantum computer can naturally perform myriad operations in parallel.

Quantum computing is not well suited for tasks such as word processing and email, but it is ideal for tasks such as cryptography and modeling and indexing very large databases.

Microsoft: Quantum Computing 101

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See the article here:

What is Quantum Computing? Webopedia Definition

Yudkowsky – Staring into the Singularity 1.2.5

This document has been marked as wrong, obsolete, deprecated by an improved version, or just plain old.

The address of this document is http://sysopmind.com/singularity.html.If you found it elsewhere, please visit the foregoing link for themost recent version.

Computing speed doubles every two years.Computing speed doubles every two years of work.Computing speed doubles every two subjective years of work.

Two years after Artificial Intelligences reach human equivalence, theirspeed doubles. One year later, their speed doubles again.

Six months - three months - 1.5 months ... Singularity.

Plug in the numbers for current computing speeds, the current doublingtime, and an estimate for the raw processing power of the human brain,and the numbers match in: 2021.

But personally, I'd like to do it sooner.

It began three and a half billion years ago in a pool of muck, whena molecule made a copy of itself and so became the ultimate ancestor ofall earthly life.

It began four million years ago, when brain volumes began climbing rapidlyin the hominid line.

Fifty thousand years ago with the rise of Homo sapiens sapiens.Ten thousand years ago with the invention of civilization.Five hundred years ago with the invention of the printing press.Fifty years ago with the invention of the computer.

In less than thirty years, it will end.

At some point in the near future, someone will come up with a methodof increasing the maximum intelligence on the planet - either codinga true Artificial Intelligence or enhancinghuman intelligence. An enhanced human would be better at thinkingup ways of enhancing humans; would have an "increased capacity for invention".What would this increased ability be directed at? Creating the nextgeneration of enhanced humans.

And what would those doubly enhanced minds do? Research methodson triply enhanced humans, or build AI minds operating at computer speeds.And an AI would be able to reprogram itself, directly, to run faster- or smarter. And then our crystal ball explodes, "life aswe know it" is over, and everything we know goes out the window.

A civilization with high technology is unstable; it ends when the speciesdestroys itself or improves on itself. If the current trends continue- if we don't run up against some unexpected theoretical cap on intelligence,or turn the Earth into a radioactive wasteland, or bury the planet undera tidal wave of voracious self-reproducing nanodevices - the Singularityis inevitable. The most-quoted estimate for the Singularity is 2035- within your lifetime! - although many, including I, think that the Singularitymay occur substantially sooner.

Some terminology, due to Vernor Vinge's Hugo-winning AFire Upon The Deep:

Power - An entity from beyond the Singularity.Transcend, Transcended, Transcendence - The act of reprogrammingoneself to be smarter, reprogramming (with one's new intelligence) to besmarter still, and so on ad Singularitum. The "Transcend"is the metaphorical area where the Powers live.Beyond - The grey area between being human and being a Power;the domain inhabited by entities smarter than human, but not possessingthe technology to reprogram themselves directly and Transcend.

"I imagine bugs and girls have a dim perception that Nature playeda cruel trick on them, but they lack the intelligence to really comprehendits magnitude."-- Calvin and Hobbes

But why should the Powers be so much more than we are now?Why not assume that we'll get a little smarter, and that's it?

Consider the sequence 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32. Consider the iterationof F(x) = (x + x). Every couple of years, computer performance doubles.(1)That is the demonstrated rate of improvement as overseen by constant, unenhancedminds - progress according to mortals.

Right now the amount of networked silicon computing power on the planetis slightly above the power of a human brain. The power of a humanbrain is 10^17 ops/sec, or one hundred million billion operations per second(2), versus a billionor so computers on the Internet with somewhere between 100 millions ops/secand 1 billion ops/sec apiece. The total amount of computingpower on the planet is the amount of power in a human brain, 10^17 ops/sec,multiplied by the number of humans, presently six billion or 6x10^9.The amount of artificial computing power is so small as to be irrelevant,not because there are so many humans, but because of the sheer raw powerof a single human brain.

At the old rate of progress, when the original Singularity calculationswere performed in 1988 (3),computers were expected to reach human-equivalent levels - 10^17 floating-pointoperations per second, or one hundred petaflops - at around 2035.But at that rate of progress, one-teraflops machines were expected in 2000;as it turned out, one-teraflops machines were around in 1996, when thisdocument was first written. In 1998 the top speed was 3.2 teraflops,and in 1999 IBM announced theBlue Gene project to build a petaflops machine by 2005. So theold estimates may be a little conservative.

Once we have human-equivalent computers, the amount of computing poweron the planet is equal to the number of humansplus the number ofcomputers. The amount of intelligence available takes a huge jump.Ten years later,humans become a vanishing quantity in the equation.

That doubling sequence is actually a pessimistic projection,because it assumes that computing power continues to double at the samerate. But why? Computer speeds don't double due to some inexorablephysical law, but because researchers and engineers find ways to make fasterchips. If some of the researchers and engineers are themselvescomputers...

A group of human-equivalent computers spends 2 years to double computerspeeds. Then they spend another 2 subjective years, or 1 yearin human terms, to double it again. Then they spend another 2 subjectiveyears, or six months, to double it again. After four years total,the computing power goes to infinity.

That is the "Transcended" version of the doubling sequence. Let'scall the "Transcend" of a sequence {a0, a1, a2...}the function where the interval between an and an+1is inversely proportional to an. (4).So a Transcended doubling function starts with 1, in which case it takes1 time-unit to go to 2. Then it takes 1/2 time-units to go to 4.Then it takes 1/4 time-units to go to 8. This function, if it werecontinuous, would be the hyperbolic function y = 2/(2 - x). Whenx= 2, then (2 - x) = 0 and y = infinity. Thebehavior at that point is known mathematically as a singularity.

And the Transcended doubling sequence is also a pessimistic projection,not a Singularity at all, because it assumes that only speed isenhanced. What if the quality of thought were enhanced?Right now, two years of work - well, these days, eighteen months of work.Eighteen subjective months of work suffices to double computing speeds.Shouldn't this improve a bit with thought-sharing and eidetic memories?Shouldn't this improve if, say, the total sum of human scientific knowledgeis stored in predigested, cognitive, ready-to-think format? Shouldn'tthis improve with short-term memories capable of holding the whole of humanknowledge? A human-equivalent AI isn't "equivalent" - if Kasparovhad had even the smallest, meanest automatic chess-playing program integratedsolidly with his intuitions, he would have beat Deep Blue into a pulp.That's TheAI Advantage: Simple tasks carried out at blinding speeds andwithout error, conscious tasks carried out with perfect memory and totalself-awareness.

I haven't even started on the subject of AIs redesigning theircognitive architectures, although they'll have a far easier time of itthan we would - especially if they can make backups. Transcendeddoubling might run up against the laws of physics before reachinginfinity... but even the laws of physics as now understood wouldallow one gram (more or less) to store and run the entire human race ata million subjective years per second. (5).

Let's take a deep breath and think about that for a moment. Onegram. The entire human race. One million yearsper second. That means, using only this planetary mass for computingpower, it would be possible to support more people than the entire Universecould support if biological humans colonized every single planet.It means that, in a single day, a civilization could live over 80 billionyears, several times older than the age of the Universe to date.

The peculiar thing is that most people who talk about "the laws of physics"setting hard limits on Powers would never even dream of setting the samelimits on a (merely) galaxy-spanning civilization of (normal) humans a(brief) billion years old. Part of that is simply a cultural conventionof science fiction; interstellar civilizations can break any physical lawthey please, because the readers are used to it. But part of thatis because scientists and science-fiction authors have been taught, somany times, that Ultimate Unbreakable Limits usually fall to human ingenuityand a few generations of time. Nobody dares say what might be possiblea billion years from now because that is a simply unimaginable amountof time.

We know that change crept at a snail's pace a mere millennium ago, andthat even a hundred years ago it would have been impossible to placecorrect limits on the ultimate power of technology. We know thatthe past could never have placed limits on the present, and so we don'ttry to place limits on the future. But with transhumans, the analogyis not to Lord Kelvin, nor Aristotle, nor to a hunter-gatherer - all ofwhom had human intelligence - but to a Neanderthal. With Powers,to a fish. And yet, because the power of higher intelligence is notas publicly recognized as the power of a few million years - because wehave no history of naysayers being embarrassed by transhumans insteadof mere time - some of us still sit, grunting around the fire, settingultimate limits on the sharpness of spears; some of us still swim about,unblinking, unable to engage in abstract thought, but knowing that theentire Universe is, must be, wet.

To convey the rate of progress driven by smarter researchers,I needed to invent a function more complex than the doubling function usedabove. We'll call this new function T(n). Youcan think of T(n) as representing the largest number conceivableto someone with an n-neuron brain. More formally, T(n)is defined as the longest block of 1s produced by any halting n-stateTuringMachine acting on an initially blank tape. If you're familiarwith computers but not Turing Machines, consider T(n) tobe the largest number that can be produced by a computer program with ninstructions. Or, if you're an information theorist, think of T(n)as the inverse function of complexity; it produces the largest number withcomplexity n or less.

The sequence produced by iterating T(n), S{n}= T(S{n - 1}), is constant for very low values of n.S{0}is defined to be 0; a program of length zero produces no output.This corresponds to a Universe empty of intelligence. T(1) = 1.This corresponds to an intelligence not capable of enhancing itself; thiscorresponds to where we are now. T(2) = 3. Here beginsthe leap into the Abyss. Once this function increases at all, itimmediately tapdances off the brink of the knowable. T(3) = 6?T(6) = 64?

T(64) = vastly more than 1080, the number of atomsin the Universe. T(1080) is something that onlya Transcendent entity will ever be able to calculate, and that only ifTranscendent entities can create new Universes, maybe even new laws ofphysics, to supply the necessary computing power. Even T(64)will probably never be known to any strictly human being.

Now take the Transcended version of S{n}, starting at2. Half a time-unit later, we have 3. A third of a time-unitafter that, 6. A sixth later - one whole unit after this functionstarted - we have 64. A sixty-fourth later, 10^80. An unimaginablytiny fraction of a second later... Singularity.

Is S{n} really a good model of the Singularity?Of course not. "Good model of the Singularity" is an oxymoron; that'sthe wholepoint; the Singularity will outrun any model a human couldhave formulated a hundred years ago, and the Singularity will outrun anymodel we formulate today. (6)

The main objection, though, would be that S{n} is anungrounded metaphor. The Transcended doubling sequence models fasterresearchers. It's easy to say that S{n} models smarterresearchers, but what does smarter actually mean in this context?

Smartness is the measure of what you see as obvious, what youcan see as obvious in retrospect, what you can invent, andwhat you can comprehend. To be more precise about it, smartnessis the measure of your semantic primitives (what is simple in retrospect),the way in which you manipulate the semantic primitives (what is obvious),the structures your semantic primitives can form (what you can comprehend),and the way you can manipulate those structures (what you can invent).If you speak complexity theory, the difference between obvious andobviousin retrospect, or inventable andcomprehensible, is likethe difference between NP and P.

All humans who have not suffered neural injuries have the same semanticprimitives. What is obvious in retrospect to one is obviousin retrospect to all. (Four notes: First, by "neural injuries"I do not mean anything derogatory - it's just that a person missing thevisual cortex will not have visual semantic primitives. If certainneural pathways are severed, people not only lose their ability to seecolors; they lose their ability to remember or imagine colors.Second, theorems in math may be obvious in retrospect only to mathematicians- but anyone else who acquired theskill would have the abilityto see it. Third, to some extent what we speak of as obviousinvolves not just the symbolic primitives but very short links betweenthem. I am counting the primitive link types as being included under"semantic primitives". When we look at a thought-sequence and seeit as being obvious in retrospect, it is not necessarily a singlesemantic primitive, but is composed of a very short chain of semantic primitivesand link types. Fourth, I apologize for my tendency to dissect myown metaphors; I really can't help it.)

Similarly, the human cognitive architecture is universal. We allhave the same sorts of underlying mindstuff. Though the nature ofthis mindstuff is not necessarily known, our ability to communicate witheach other indicates that, whatever we are communicating, it is the sameon both sides. If any two humans share a set of concepts, any structurecomposed of those concepts that is understood by one will be understoodby the other.

Different humans may have different degrees of the ability to manipulateand structure concepts; different humans may see and invent differentthings. The great breakthroughs of physics and engineering did notoccur because a group of people plodded and plodded and plodded for generationsuntil they found an explanation so complex, a string of ideas so long,that only time could invent it. Relativity and quantum physics andbuckyballs and object-oriented programming all happened because someoneput together a short, simple, elegant semantic structure in a way thatnobody had ever thought of before. Being a little bit smarteris where revolutions come from. Not time. Not hard work.Although hard work and time were usually necessary, others had worked farharder and longer without result. The essence of revolution is rawsmartness.

Now think about the Singularity. Think about a chimpanzee tryingto understand integral calculus. Think about the people with damaged visualneurology who cannot remember what it was like to see, who cannot imaginethe color red or visualize two-dimensional structures. Think abouta visual cortex with trillions of times as many neuron-equivalents.Think about twenty thousand distinct colors in the rainbow, none a shadeof any other. Think about rotating fifty-dimensional objects. Thinkabout attaching semantic primitives to the pixels, so that one could seea rainbow of ideas in the same way that we see a rainbow of colors.

Our semantic primitives even determine what we can know.Why does anything exist at all? Nobody knows. And yet the answeris obvious. The First Cause must be obvious. It hasto be obvious toNothing, present in the absence of anything else,a substance formed from -blank-, a conclusion derived without dataor initial assumptions. What is it that evokes consciousexperience, the stuff that minds are made of? We are madeof conscious experiences. There is nothing we experience moredirectly. How does it work? We don't have a clue. Twoand a half millennia of trying to solve it and nothing to show forit but "I think therefore I am." The solutions seem to be necessarilysimple, yet are demonstrably imperceptible. Perhaps the solutionsoperate outside the representations that can be formed with the human brain.

If so, then our descendants, successors, future selves will figure outthe semantic primitives necessary and alter themselves to perceive them.The Powers will dissect the Universe and the Reality until they understandwhy anything exists at all, analyze neurons until they understand qualia.And that will only be the beginning. It won't end there.Why should there be only two hard problems? After all, if not forhumans, the Universe would apparently contain only one hard problem, forhow could a non-conscious thinker formulate the hard problem of consciousness?Might there be states of existence beyond mere consciousness - transsentience?Might solving the nature of reality create the ability to create new Universes,manipulate the laws of physics, even alter the kind of things that canbe real - "ontotechnology"? That's what the Singularityis all about.

So before you talk about life as a Power or the Utopia to come - a favoritepastime of transhumanists and Extropiansis to discuss the problems of uploading, life afterbeing uploaded, and so on - just remember that you probably have a muchbetter chance of solving both hard problems than you do of making a validstatement about the future. This goes for me too. I'll standby everything I said about humans, including our inability to understandcertain things, but everything I said about the Powers is almost certainlywrong. "They'll figure out the semantic primitives necessary andalter themselves to perceive them." Wrong. "Figure out.""Semantic primitives." "Alter." "Perceive." I would beton all of these terms becoming obsolete after the Singularity. Thereare better ways and I'm sure They - or It, or [sound of exploding brain]will "find them".

I would like to introduce a unit of post-Singularity progress, the PerceptualTranscend or PT.

[Brief pause while audience collapses in helpless laughter.]

A Perceptual Transcend occurs when all things that were comprehensiblebecomeobvious in retrospect, and all things that were inventablebecome obvious. A Perceptual Transcend occurs when the semanticstructures of one generation become the semantic primitives of the next.To put it another way, one PT from now, the whole of human knowledgebecomes perceivable in a single flash of experience, in the same waythat we now perceive an entire picture at once.

Computers are a PT above humans when it comes to arithmetic - sort of.While we need to manipulate an entire precarious pyramid of digits, rowsand columns in order to multiply 62305 by 10358, a computer can spit outthe answer - 645355190 - in a single obvious step. These computersaren't actually a PT above us at all, for two reasons. First of all,they just handle numbers up to two billion instead of 9; after that theyneed to manipulate pyramids too. Far more importantly, they don'tnotice anything about the numbers they manipulate, as humans do.If you multiply 23704 by 14223, using the wedding-cake method of multiplication,you won't multiply 23704 by 2 twice in a row; you'll just steal the resultsfrom last time. If one of the interim results is 12345 or 99999 or314159, you'll notice that, too. The way computers manipulate numbersis actually less powerful than the way we manipulate numbers.

Would the Powers settle for less? A PT above us, multiplicationis carried out automatically but with full attention to interimresults, numbers that happen to be prime, and the like. If I weredesigning one of the first Powers - and, down at the SingularityInstitute, this is what we're doing - I would create an entire subsystemfor manipulating numbers, one that would pick up on primality, complexity,and all the numeric properties known to humanity. A Power would understandwhy62305 times 10358 equals 645355190, with the same understanding that wouldbe achieved by a top human mathematician who spent hours studying all thenumbers involved. And at the same time, the Power will multiply thetwo numbers automatically.

For such a Power, to whom numbers were true semantic primitives, Fermat'sLast Theorem and the Goldbach Conjecture and the Riemann Hypothesis mightbe obvious. Somewhere in the back of its mind, the Power wouldtest each statement with a million trials, subconsciously manipulatingall the numbers involved to find why they were not the sum of twocubes or why they were the sum of two primes or why theirreal part was equal to one-half. From there, the Power could intuitthe most basic, simple solution simply by generalizing. Perhaps humanmathematicians, if they could perform the arithmetic for a thousand trialsof the Riemann Hypothesis, examining every intermediate step, looking forcommon properties and interesting shortcuts, could intuit a formal solution.But they can't, and they certainly can't do it subconsciously, which iswhy the Riemann Hypothesis remains unobvious and unproven - it is a conceptualstructureinstead of a conceptual primitive.

Perhaps an even more thought-provoking example is provided by our visualcortex. On the surface, the visual cortex seems to be an image processor.In a modern computer graphics engine, an image is represented by a two-dimensionalarray of pixels (7).To rotate this image - to cite one operation - each pixel's rectangularcoordinates {x, y} are converted to polar coordinates {theta, r}. All thetas,representing the angle, have a constant added. The polar coordinatesare then converted back to rectangular. There are ways to optimizethis process, and ways to account for intersecting and empty pixels onthe new array, but the essence is clear: To perform an operationon an entire picture, perform the operation on each pixel in that picture.

At this point, one could say that a Perceptual Transcend depends onwhat level you're looking at the operation. If you view yourselfas carrying out the operation pixel by pixel, it is an unimaginably tediouscognitive structure, but if you view the whole thing in a single lump,it is a cognitive primitive - a point made in Hofstadter's Ant Fugue whendiscussing ants and colonies. Not very exciting unless it's Hofstadterexplaining it, but there's more to the visual cortex than that.

For one thing, we consciously experience redness. (If you're notsure what conscious experiencea.k.a. "qualia" means, the short version is that you are not the one whospeaksyour thoughts, you are the one who hears your thoughts.) Qualiaare the stuff making up the indescribable difference between redand green.

The term "semantic primitive" describes more than just the level atwhich symbols are discrete, compact objects. It describes the levelof conscious perception. Unlike the computer manipulating numbersformed of bits, and like the imagined Power manipulating theorems formedof numbers, we don't lose any resolution in passing from the pixel levelto the picture level. We don't suddenly perceive the idea "thereis a bear in front of me"; we see a picture of a bear, containing millionsof pixels, every one of which is consciously experienced simultaneously.A Perceptual Transcend isn't "just" the imposition of a new cognitive level;it turns the cognitive structures into consciously experienced primitives.

"To put it another way, one PT from now, the whole of human knowledgebecomes perceivable in a single flash of experience, in the same waythat we now perceive an entire picture at once."

Of course, the PT won't be used as a post-Singularity unit of progress.Even if it were initially, it won't be too long before "PT" itself is Transcendedand the Powers jump out of the system yet again. After all, the Singularityis ultimately as far beyond me, the author, as it is beyond any other human,and so my PTs will be as worthless a description as the doubling sequencediscarded so long ago. Even if we accept the PT as the basic unitof measure, it simply introduces a secondary Singularity. Maybe thePerceptual Transcends will occur every two consciously experienced yearsat first, but then will occur every conscious year, and then every conscioussix months - get the picture?

It's like the "Birthday Cantatatata..." in Hofstadter'sbookGodel, Escher, Bach. Youcan start with the sequence {1, 2, 3, 4 ...} and jump out of it to w(omega), the symbol for infinity. But then one has {w, w+1, w + 2 ... }, and we jump out again to 2w. Then 3w,and 4w, and w2 andw3 and wwand w^(ww) and higher towers of w untilwe jump out to the ordinale0, which includes all exponentialtowers of ws.

The PTs may introduce a second Singularity, and a third Singularity,and a fourth, until Singularities are coming faster and faster and thefirst w-Singularity is imminent -

Or the Powers may simply jump beyond that system. The BirthdayCantatatata... was written by a human - admittedly Douglas Hofstadter,but still a human - and the concepts involved in it may be Transcendedby the very first transhuman.

The Powers are beyond our ability to comprehend.

Get the picture?

It's hard to appreciate the Singularity properly withoutfirst appreciating really large numbers. I'm not talking about littletiny numbers, barely distinguishable from zero, like the number of atomsin the Universe or the number of years it would take a monkey to duplicatethe works of Shakespeare. I invite you to consider what was, circa1977, the largest number ever to be used in a serious mathematical proof.The proof, by Ronald L.Graham, is an upper bound to a certain question of Ramsey theory.In order to explain the proof, one must introduce a new notation, due toDonaldE. Knuth in the article Coping With Finiteness. The notationis usually a small arrow, pointing upwards, here abbreviated as ^.Written as a function:

2^4 = 24 = 16.

3^^4 = 3^(3^(3^3)) = 3^(3^27) = 37,625,597,484,987

7^^^^3 = 7^^^(7^^^7).

3^3 = 3 * 3 * 3 = 27. This number is small enough to visualize.

3^^3 = 3^(3^3) = 3^27 = 7,625,597,484,987. Larger than 27, butso small I can actually type it. Nobody can visualize seven trillionof anything, but we can easily understand it as being on roughly the sameorder as, say, the gross national product.

3^^^3 = 3^^(3^^3) = 3^(3^(3^(3^...^(3^3)...))). The "..." is 7,625,597,484,987threes long. In other words, 3^^^3 or arrow(3,3, 3) is an exponential tower of threes 7,625,597,484,987 levels high.The number is now beyond the human ability to understand, but the procedurefor producing it can be visualized. You take x=1. Youlet x equal 3^x. Repeat seven trillion times.While the very first stages of the number are far too large to be containedin the entire Universe, the exponential tower, written as "3^3^3^3...^3",is still so small that it could be stored on a modern supercomputer.

3^^^^3 = 3^^^(3^^^3) = 3^^(3^^(3^^...^^(3^^3)...)). Both the numberand the procedure for producing it are now beyond human visualization,although the procedure can be understood. Take a number x=1.Letxequal an exponential tower of threes of height x.Repeat 3^^^3 times, where 3^^^3 equals an exponential tower seven trillionthrees high.

And yet, in the words of Martin Gardner: "3^^^^3 is unimaginablylarger than 3^^^3, but it is still small as finite numbers go, since mostfinite numbers are very much larger."

And now, Graham's number. Let x equal3^^^^3, or the unimaginable number just described above. Let x equal3^^^^^^^(x arrows)^^^^^^^3. Repeat 63 times, or 64 includingthe starting 3^^^^3.

Graham's number is far beyond my ability to grasp. I can describeit, but I cannot properly appreciate it. (Perhaps Graham can appreciateit, having written a mathematical proof that uses it.) This numberis far larger than most people's conception of infinity. Iknow that it was larger than mine. My sense of awe when I first encounteredthis number was beyond words. It was the sense of looking upon somethingso much larger than the world inside my head that my conceptionof the Universe was shattered and rebuilt to fit. All theologiansshould face a number like that, so they can properly appreciate what theyinvoke by talking about the "infinite" intelligence of God.

My happiness was completed when I learned that the actual answertothe Ramsey problem that gave birth to that number - rather than the upperbound - was probably six.

Why was all of this necessary, mathematical aesthetics aside?Because until you understand the hollowness of the words "infinity", "large"and "transhuman", you cannot appreciate the Singularity. Even appreciatingthe Singularity is as far beyond us as visualizing Graham's number is toa chimpanzee. Farther beyond us than that. No human analogieswill ever be able to describe the Singularity, because we are only human.

The number above was forged of the human mind. It is nothing buta finite positive integer, though a large one. It is composite andodd, rather than prime or even; it is perfectly divisible by three.Encoded in the decimal digits of that number, by almost any encoding schemeone cares to name, are all the works ever written by the human hand, andall the works that could have been written, at a hundred thousand wordsper minute, over the age of the Universe raised to its own power a thousandtimes. And yet, if we add up all the base-ten digits the result willbe divisible by nine. The number is still a finite positive integer.It may contain Universes unimaginably larger than this one, but it is stillonly a number. It is a number so small that the algorithm to produceit can be held in a single human mind.

The Singularity is beyond that. We cannot pigeonhole it by statingthat it will be a finite positive integer. We cannot say anythingat all about it, except that it will be beyond our understanding.

If you thought that Knuth's arrow notation produced some fairly largenumbers, what about T(n)? How many states does a Turing machineneed to implement the calculation above? What is the complexity ofGraham'snumber, C(Graham)? Probably on the order of 100. And moreover,T(C(Graham)) is likely to be much, much larger than Graham's number.Why go throughx = 3^(x ^s)^3 only 64 times? Why not3^^^^3 times? That'd probably be easier, since we already need togenerate 3^^^^3, but not 64. And with the extra space, we might evenbe able to introduce an even more computationally complex algorithm.In fact, Knuth's arrow notation may not be the most powerful algorithmthat fits into C(Knuth) states.

T(n) is the metaphor for the growth rate of a self-enhancingentity because it conveys the concept of having additional intelligencewith which to enhance oneself. I don't know when T(n) passesbeyond the threshold of what human mathematicians can, in theory, calculate.Probably more thann=10 and less than n=100. The pointis that after a few iterations, we wind up with T(4294967296). Now,I don't know what T(4294967296) will be equal to, but the winning Turingmachine will probably generate a Power whose purpose is to think of a reallylarge number. That's what the term "large" means.

It's all very well to talk about cognitive primitives and obviousness,but again - what does smarter mean? The meaning of smartcan't be grounded in the Singularity - I haven't been there yet.So what's my practical definition?

"Of course, I never wrote the 'important' story, the sequel about thefirst amplified human. Once I tried something similar. JohnCampbell's letter of rejection began: 'Sorry - you can't write thisstory. Neither can anyone else.'" -- Vernor Vinge

Let's take a concrete example, the story Flowers for Algernon(later the movie Charly), by Daniel Keyes. (I'm afraid I'llhave to tell you how the story comes out, but it's a Character story, notan Idea story, so that shouldn't spoil it.) Flowers for Algernonis about a neurosurgical procedure for intelligence enhancement.This procedure was first tested on a mouse, Algernon, and later on a retardedhuman, Charlie Gordon. The enhanced Charlie has the standard science-fictionalset of superhuman characteristics; he thinks fast, learns a lifetime ofknowledge in a few weeks, and discusses arcane mathematics (not shown).Then the mouse, Algernon, gets sick and dies. Charlie analyzes theenhancement procedure (not shown) and concludes that the process is basicallyflawed. Later, Charlie dies.

That's a science-fictional enhanced human. A real enhanced humanwould not have been taken by surprise. A real enhanced human wouldrealize that any simple intelligence enhancement will be a net evolutionarydisadvantage - if enhancing intelligence were a matter of a simple surgicalprocedure, it would have long ago occurred as a natural mutation.This goes double for a procedure that works on rats! (As far as Iknow, this never occurred to Keyes. I selected Flowers, outof all the famous stories of intelligence enhancement, because, for reasonsof dramatic unity, this story shows what happens to be the correct outcome.)

Note that I didn't dazzle you with an abstruse technobabble explanationfor Charlie's death; my explanation is two sentences long and can be understoodby someone who isn't an expert in the field. It's the simplicityof smartness that's so impossible to convey in fiction, and so shockingwhen we encounter it in person. All that science fiction can do toshow intelligence is jargon and gadgetry. A truly ultrasmart CharlieGordon wouldn't have been taken by surprise; he would have deduced hisprobable fate using the above, very simple, line of reasoning. Hewould have accepted that probability, rearranged his priorities, and actedaccordingly until his time ran out - or, more probably, figured out anequally simple and obvious-in-retrospect way to avoid his fate. IfCharlie Gordon had really been ultrasmart, there would have beenno story.

There are some gaps so vast that they make all problems new. Imaginewhatever field you happen to be an expert in - neuroscience, programming,plumbing, whatever - and consider the gap between a novice, just approachinga problem for the first time, and an expert. Even if a thousand novicestry to solve a problem and fail, there's no way to say that a single expertcouldn't solve the problem casually, offhandedly. If a hundred well-educatedphysicists try to solve a problem and fail, an Einstein might still beable to succeed. If a thousand twelve-year-olds try for a year tosolve a problem, it says nothing about whether or not an adult is likelyto be able to solve the problem. If a million hunter-gatherers tryto solve a problem for a century, the answer might still be obvious toany educated twenty-first-century human. And no number of chimpanzees,however long they try, could ever say anything about whether the leasthuman moron could solve the problem without even thinking. Thereare some gaps so vast that they make all problems new; and some of them,such as the gap between novice and expert, or the gap between hunter-gathererand educated citizen, are not even hardware gaps - they deal not with themagic of intelligence, but the magic of knowledge, or oflackof stupidity.

I think back to before I started studying evolutionary psychology andcognitive science. I know that I could not then have come close topredicting the course of the Singularity. "If I couldn't have gottenit right then, what makes me think I can get it right now?"I am a human, and an educated citizen, and an adult, and an expert, anda genius... but if there is even one more gap of similar magnitude remainingbetween myself and the Singularity, then my speculations will be no betterthan those of an eighteenth-century scientist.

We're all familiar with individual variations in human intelligence,distributed along the great Gaussian curve; this is the only referent mostof us have for "smarter". But precisely because these variationsfall within the design range of the human brain, they're nothing out ofthe ordinary. One of the very deep truths about the human mind isthat evolution designed us to be stupid - to be blinded by ideology, torefuse to admit we're wrong, to think "the enemy" is inhuman, to be affectedby peer pressure. Variations in intelligence that fall within thenormal design range don't directly affect this stupidity. That'swhere we get the folk wisdom that intelligence doesn't imply wisdom, andwithin the human range this is mostly correct (8).The variations we see don't hit hard enough to make people appreciatewhat "smarter" means.

I am a Singularitarian because I have some small appreciation of howutterly, finally, absolutelyimpossible it is to think like someoneeven a little tiny bit smarter than you are. I know that we are allmissing the obvious, every day. There are no hard problems, onlyproblems that are hard to a certain level of intelligence. Move thesmallest bit upwards, and some problems will suddenly move from "impossible"to "obvious". Move a substantial degree upwards, and all of themwill become obvious. Move a huge distance upwards...

And I know that my picture of the Singularity will still fallshort of the truth. I may not be modest, but I have my humility -if I can spot anthropomorphisms and gaping logical flaws in every allegedtranshuman in every piece of science fiction, it follows that a slightlyhigher-order genius (never mind a real transhuman!) could read this pageand laugh at my lack of imagination. Call it experience, call ithumility, call it self-awareness, call it the Principle of Mediocrity;I've crossed enough gaps to believe there are more. I know, in adim way, just how dumb I am.

I've tried to show the Beyondness of the Singularity by brute force,but it doesn't take infinite speeds and PTs and ws to placesomething utterly beyond us. All it takes is a little tiny bitof edge, a bit smarter, and the Beyond stares us in the face oncemore. I've never been through the Singularity. I'venever been to the Transcend. I just staked out an area of the LowBeyond. This page is devoted to communicating a sense of awe thatcomes from personal experience, and is, therefore, merely human.

From my cortex, to yours; every concept here was born of a plain oldHomosapiens - and any impression it has made on you was likewise born ofa plain old Homo sapiens. Someone who has devoted a bit morethought, or someone a bit more extreme; it makes no difference. Whateverimpression you got from this page has not been an accurate picture of thefar future; it has, unavoidably, been an impression of me.And I am not the far future. Only a version of "Staring intothe Singularity" written by an actual Power could convey experience ofthe actual Singularity.

Take whatever future shock this page evoked, and associate it not withthe Singularity; associate it with me, the mild, quiet-spoken fellow infinitesimallydifferent from the rest of humanity. Don't bother trying to extrapolatebeyond that. You can't. Nobody can - not you, not me.

2035. Probably earlier.

Since the Internet exploded across the planet, there has been enoughnetworked computing power for intelligence. If the Internet wereproperly reprogrammed, it would be enough to run a human brain, or a seedAI. On the nanotechnology side, we possess machines capable ofproducing arbitrary DNA sequences, and we know how to turn arbitrary DNAsequences into arbitrary proteins (9).We have machines - Atomic Force Probes - that can put single atoms anywherewe like, and which have recently [1999] been demonstrated to be capableof forming atomic bonds. Hundredth-nanometer precision positioning,atomic-scale tweezers... the news just keeps on piling up.

If we had a time machine, 100K of information from the future couldspecify a protein that built a device that would give us nanotechnologyovernight. 100K could contain the code for a seed AI. Eversince the late 90's, the Singularity has been only a problem of software.And software is information, the magic stuff that changes at arbitrarilyhigh speeds. As far as technology is concerned, the Singularity couldhappen tomorrow. One breakthrough - just one major insight- in the science of protein engineering or atomic manipulation or ArtificialIntelligence, one really good day at Webmindor Zyvex, and the door to Singularitysweeps open.

Drexler has writtena detailed, technical,how-to book for nanotechnology. After stalling for thirty years,AI is making a comeback. Computers are growing in power even fasterthan their usual, pedestrian rate of doubling in power every two years.Quate has constructed a 16-head parallel ScanningTunnelling Probe. [Written in '96.] I'm starting to workout methods of coding atranshuman AI. [Written in '98.] The first chemical bondhas been formed using an atomic-force microscope. The U.S. governmenthas announced its intent to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on nanotechnologyresearch. IBM has announced the BlueGene project to achieve petaflops (10) computing power by 2005, with intent tocrack the protein folding problem. The SingularityInstitute for Artificial Intelligence, Inc. has been incorporated asa nonprofit with the express purpose of codinga seed AI. [Written in '00.]

The exact time of Singularity is customarily predicted by taking a trendand extrapolating it, much as The Population Bomb predicted thatwe'd run out of food in 1977. For example, population growth is hyperbolic.(Maybe you learned it was exponential in math class, but it's hyperbolicto a much better fit than exponential.)If that trend continues, world population reaches infinity on Aug 17, 2027,plus or minus 1.8 years. It is, of course, impossible for the humanpopulation to reach infinity. Some say that if we can create AIs,then the graph might measure sentient population instead of humanpopulation. These people are torturing the metaphor. Nobodydesigned the population curve to take into account developments in AI.It's just a curve, a bunch of numbers. It can't distortthe future course of technology just to remain on track.

If you project on a graph the minimum size of the materials we can manipulate,it reaches the atomic level - nanotechnology- in I forget how many years (the page vanished), but I think around 2035.This, of course, was before the time of the ScanningTunnelling Microscope and "IBM" spelled out in xenon atoms. Forthat matter, we now have theartificialatom ("You can make any kind of artificial atom - long, thin atomsand big, round atoms."), which has in a sense obsoleted merely molecularnanotechnology. As of '95, Drexler was giving the ballpark figureof 2015 (11).I suspect the timetable has been accelerated a bit since then. Myown guess would be no later than 2010.

Similarly, computing power doubles every two yearseighteen months. If we extrapolate forty thirtyfifteen years ahead we find computers with as much raw power (10^17ops/sec) assome people think humans have, arriving in 20352025 2015. [The previous sentence was written in1996, revised later that year, and then revised again in 2000; hence thepeculiar numbers.] Does this mean we have the softwareto spin minds? No. Does this mean we can program smarter people?No. Does this take into account any breakthroughsbetween now and then? No. Does this take into account the lawsof physics? No. Is this a detailed model of all the researchersaround the planet? No.

It's just a graph. The "amazing constancy" of Moore's Law entitlesit to consideration as a thought-provoking metaphor of the future, butnothing more. The Transcended doubling sequence doesn'taccount for how the faster computer-based researchers can get the physicalmanufacturing technology for the next generation set up in picoseconds,or how they can beat the laws of physics. That's not to say thatsuch things are impossible - it doesn't actually strike me as allthat likely that modern-day physics has really reached the ultimate bottomlevel. Maybe there are no physical limits. The pointis that Moore's Law doesn't explain how physics can be bypassed.

Mathematics can't predict when the Singularity is coming. (Well,it can, but it won't get it right.) Even the remarkably steady numbers,such as the one describing the doubling rate of computing power, (A) describeunaided human minds and (B) are speeding up, perhaps due to computer-aideddesign programs. Statistics may be used to predict the future, butthey don't model it. What I'm trying to say here is that "2035"is just a wild guess, and it might as well be next Tuesday.

The rest is here:

Yudkowsky - Staring into the Singularity 1.2.5

What is a Meme? | The Daily Meme

This is the definition page for What is a meme? The main page for The Daily Meme is http://thedailymeme.com/

People often ask, What is a Meme? so heres a more than a little information on that. I pronounce it so its rhymes with dream; some pronounce it so it sounds like mem (from mem-ory).

First off, technically many of the sites here are not actually memes. Most of the sites listed here create new questions all the time and removes the whole evolving viral concept of a meme. But most people call them memes and I liked the word meme so I used the word when creating this site.

In the context of web logs / blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites its some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on. I generally consider these to be actual questions and not some multiple choice quizzes that determine some result at the end (what color you are most like, what cartoon character are you, what 80s movie are you).

By some other definitions memes are viral and propagate around sometimes mutating as they propagate. Someone proposed something along the lines of some blog posts are viral, they write about something they see on one blog and the next person does the same sometimes their interpretation varies slightly changing the story (I cannot find this original reference).

Eventually some people decided they were going to creating weekly questionnaires (memes) and post them every week. Some are monthly, a few are daily and some are always there. Some suggest that you get five other people to do the same meme and they have to get five people (and so on), which sometimes increases their propagation. This probably stunts their mutated growth, having a permanent storage place where people go to find them but many people copy them from the site where they see it and theyll still change a bit.

Personally I liked these sites; sometimes they give me things to write about that I would have never started the topic on my own. So I started collecting them here at The Daily Meme http://thedailymeme.com/.

A meme is:

The term and concept of meme is from the 1976 book by Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. Though Dawkins defined the meme as a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation, memeticists vary in their definitions of meme. The lack of a consistent, rigorous definition of what precisely a meme is remains one of the principal criticisms leveled at memetics, the study of memes. (from the Wikipedia)

The rest is here:

What is a Meme? | The Daily Meme

Cyborg Superman – Wikipedia

Cyborg Superman is a persona that has been used by two fictional characters in the DC Universe, both of which are supervillains that appear in comic books published by DC Comics.

Hank Henshaw was an astronaut at NASA until a solar flare hit his space shuttle during an experiment in space, damaging the ship and the crew. Henshaw and the crew found that their bodies had begun to mutate and, after returning to Earth, Henshaw's entire crew (including his wife) eventually committed suicide. After learning that Superman had thrown the Eradicator into the sun in a battle during the space shuttle experiment, Henshaw blamed Superman for the solar flare and the accident. Before his body completely disintegrated due to the radiation exposure, Henshaw was able to save his consciousness. Using NASA communications equipment, Henshaw beamed his mind into the birthing matrix which had carried Superman from Krypton to Earth as an infant. He created a small exploration craft from the birthing matrix and departed into outer space alone. Becoming increasingly mentally unstable, Henshaw used Superman's birthing matrix to create a body identical to Superman's, albeit with cybernetic parts. He returned to Earth to kill Superman, only to discover that Superman had already died during Henshaw's absence. Following Superman's eventual resurrection, Henshaw would not only become a recurring adversary of Superman but of Green Lantern as well. Hank Henshaw became a member of the Sinestro Corps during the Sinestro Corps War.

Zor-El is the younger brother of Jor-El, husband of Alura, father of Supergirl, and paternal uncle of Superman. Originally, he escaped from Krypton's destruction along with the other inhabitants of Argo City. In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, Supergirl discovers an amnesiac Cyborg Superman living on the planet I'noxia. This turns out to be Zor-El, who was rescued from Krypton's destruction by Brainiac and reconfigured as a half-man half-machine to be his scout looking for stronger species in the universe.[1]

As Cyborg Superman, Hank Henshaw possesses the ability to control and reanimate various machines. Due to his experience with Superman's birth matrix, Henshaw now has all of Superman's powers and genetic tissue identical to the Man of Steel's. As a member of the Sinestro Corps, Henshaw has access to a power ring fueled by fear energy that allows him to create any construct he can imagine.

As Cyborg Superman, Zor-El is cybernetically enhanced with the ability to fly, fire powerful heat rays from his cybernetic eye, and project electricity from his body. Zor-El's cybernetic arm can shape shift into whatever he desires, limited only by the technology available to him at the given moment that he chooses to use this ability. Zor-El is virtually indestructible, and also has super-speed and super-strength.

DC's direct-to-DVD movie Superman: Doomsday, based on "The Death of Superman" storyline, features a variation on the Cyborg Superman character. One of the many changes is a streamlined cast which cuts the four Superman imposters, including Cyborg Superman. Elements from three of the four impostors (Hank Henshaw, Superboy, and the Eradicator), were combined into the Superman clone created by Lex Luthor in the film.[5]

British wunderkind radio producer Dirk Maggs produced a Superman radio series for BBC Radio 5 in the 1990s. When the "Death of Superman" story arc happened in the comics, Maggs presented a very faithful, though much pared down, version of the tale which featured Stuart Milligan as Clark Kent/Superman, Lorelei King as Lois Lane, and William Hootkins as Lex Luthor. Versatile American actor Kerry Shale was cast both as the villainous Hank Henshaw and as Superboy. The story arc was packaged for sale on cassette and CD as Superman: Doomsday and Beyond in the UK and as Superman Lives! in the USA.

Read the rest here:

Cyborg Superman - Wikipedia

Why Bitcoin Cash Is Not Bitcoin [BTC vs. BCH – Differences …

The crypto-sphere is heating up and simultaneously becoming more confusing as it evolves.

I am sad to see how the viruses of confusion and myth are purposely injected into the ecosystem and how the whole system is manipulated as well as hijacked on a regular basis.

Specifically, I am talking about the recent insane price spike of Bitcoin Cash and the doomed price fall of Bitcoin in just a matter of hours.

Some of you who are old players of the crypto-sphere must have benefitted from this sudden rise and fall, but I think its not good for newcomers, and its not healthyfor Bitcoin in the long term.

Thats why in this write-up I wish to convey some of my thoughts on how Bitcoin Cash is not Bitcoin. And I also want to clarify why the newcomers should not fall prey to the Bitcoin Cash PR campaign.

For the latecomers, I want to first explain what Bitcoin Cash is and show you some facts. Then, Ill explain Bitcoin and leave it to you to decide for yourself.

Bitcoin Cash is a Bitcoin fork which was created this year on the 1st of August by a minority group of influential miners, developers, investors, and users who were against the agreed consensus of SegWit implementation to scale Bitcoin.

Namely, there are three main players in the Bitcoin Cash community Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, andDeadal Nix.

They decided to fork the original Bitcoin blockchain and create a new version called Bitcoin Cash (aka BCH) with an adjustable block size up to8 MB blocks.

Some of the benefits & features of Bitcoin Cash

This on-chain increase in the ability of Bitcoin Cash provides several benefits to its users against Bitcoin, but these benefits come at a huge price that its users have to pay. (I will explain this huge price further in the article.)

Some more benefits

For more details, read our extensive guide on Bitcoin Cash:

Ignoring the fact that many of you would have made a good amount of money in the recent Bitcoin Cash rally, one needs to pay a huge cost for using Bitcoin Cash.

This cost cannot be measured in dollars, euros, or yens, but instead, it is a cost that you pay by compromising the original dream of Satoshi Nakamoto to make an uncensorablealternative monetary system which isnt controlled by an individual or a group of people.

Some of you might say that I am incorrect because Bitcoin Cashs official site claims that they are carrying forward Satoshis Vision by stating:

Some of the developers {of couse the Bitcoin Core Devs} did not understand and agree with the original vision of peer-to-peer electronic cash that Satoshi Nakamoto had created.

And

Bitcoin Cash is the continuation of the Bitcoin project as peer-to-peer digital cash.

https://www.bitcoincash.org/

But actually speaking, they are not even close to Satoshis originalvision of decentralized and uncensored money.

Bitcoin Cash is extremely censored.

Wait! Some of you might say that I am biased and I am just a Bitcoin fan, but I have facts!

1. A decentralized cryptocurrency having a CEO? Really?!?!

Do you really need a CEO for a currency? If you do, then whats the difference between a business and a crypto?

Check this out https://www.bitcoincash.org/letter-from-the-ceo.pdf

An official statement from the CEO of #Bitcoin Cash: how we resolve conflicts in our community, our values, and our development of leaders and people https://t.co/BaNupOmh2m

Rick Falkvinge (@Falkvinge) November 12, 2017

Archive of @Falkvinge "Official Statement" procaliming himself CEO of $BCH in incoherent/confusing post (now taken down https://t.co/IzBiFYCXZI) available here: https://t.co/PefMk1JsH6. Very creepy and immature rambling, hallmark of $BCH poor leadership $BCH BUYERS MUST READ pic.twitter.com/HIDdbaoaxU

Francis Pouliot (@francispouliot_) November 12, 2017

2. Centralized mining

Bitcoin Cash mining is highly centralized. If you look at the above image, you will certainly be able to put in perspective what I am talking about.

This is the hash power distribution for Bitcoin Cash mining for the last 144 blocks mined.

If we combine the hash power of Antpool, ViaBTC, and BTC.com, which makes more than 50% hash power, this is detrimental for any coin. To make a 51% attack on Bitcoin Cash would be a decision of three mining parties coming together.

Forgot to mention. BCH is a lot more miner centralized. Because its network hashrate is a lot less than BTC, a small BTC pool can 51% attack it. So it's security is weak because of that. Litecoin doesn't have this problem because Litecoin dominates Scrypt hashing.

Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) November 12, 2017

The argument is that Bitcoin also had such hashrate distribution in its early days; but dont forget that Bitcoin was trading in pennies at that time. Anyone attacking BTC at that time had no incentive in doing so because it was almost worthless.

But now that Bitcoin Cash is trading well above $1000, its very susceptible to 51% attacks, which is not good. Read more about 51% attacks here.

3. Total full nodes are fewer than Bitcoin

Bitcoin has more than 10,000 active full nodes running, which is one of the most important factors of a truly decentralized currency. This means that anyone attacking Bitcoin would need to have the ability to hijack more than 50% of the 10,000 nodes that are running across the globe.

On the other hand, Bitcoin Cash only has around 1200 nodes as per Coin.Dances node summary.

4. Hard forks without polls

Who does hard forks or upgrades in the currency protocols without polls?

Well,Bitcoin Cash does.

Bitcoin Cash had their hard fork (or protocol upgrade) on 13th November 2017.

The upgrade/fork was done to change the underlying mining algorithm to make it more competitive against Bitcoin and to prevent it from miners abuse in the event of reduced or increased difficulty. Read more about the Bitcoin Cash fork here.

Well, I am not against Bitcoin Cash changing something and trying to be competitive, but they should not try being competitive in this way by doing things without polling the community.

If something is getting upgraded in the protocol, then it has to happen with proper polling and agreements. But this official write-up shows that they didnt have any such polls.

Also, this write-up gives a hint that there is actually no need for polling because their community is so small and censored. In reality, there are only three individuals who made the decision. (Their names arent there but everyone knows who these three were Roger Ver, Jihan Wu, andDeadal Nix.)

You can see how easy it is to upgrade Bitcoin Cash. Their community is comprised of 3 people. They are the miners, the developers, and the users. Funny!!

Bitcoin is the DADDY of cryptocurrencies. Some of the facts that make Bitcoin truly decentralized and much better than Bitcoin Cash are:

I know that some of you might be thinking that I am a huge Bitcoin fan and thats why I am biased towards Bitcoin Cash, but I want you to make one thing clear: I am not really that biased.

I certainly think that Bitcoin Cash has a future, but if it is trying to be Bitcoin and continue down this same path that its on now, its not going to end well.

If you are a Bitcoin Cash fan, then you should try to convince the community that BCH is BCH it cant be Bitcoin. And if Bitcoin Cash continues to be an altcoin and not attack Bitcoin, then I dont think there are any problems.

Even Andreas suggested this to both communities.

Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash will coexist and serve different use cases, just like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Its not a zero sum game. Work on building your project, not on destroying the other

Andreas (@aantonop) November 12, 2017

On the other hand, I am not naive or ignorant about current challenges that Bitcoin is facing in terms of scalability (despite SegWit implementation).

I am also aware that a huge number of Bitcoin txs are stuck in the mempool.

But lets remember that it wasnt always so easy to send emails in the early days of the internet. Similarly, Bitcoin will scale with the much-anticipated Lightning networks or sidechains in the future. And yes, those scaling solutions need to happen soon, otherwise, there will be more drama like this for ages to come.

Also for the newcomers: Stay away fromRoger Versowned domain Bitcoin.comthat is trying spread this FUD and exclaiming that Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin.

So thats all from my side in this article.

If you are with me and understand Bitcoins true nature, then do retweet/share this write-up with the Bitcoin community, and join hands in finding permanent solutions to Bitcoins scalability.

Read more from the original source:

Why Bitcoin Cash Is Not Bitcoin [BTC vs. BCH - Differences ...

Fear Not to Do Good – By President Henry B. Eyring

My dear brothers and sisters, I pray humbly that the Spirit of the Lord will be with us as I speak today. My heart is full of gratitude to the Lord, whose Church this is, for the inspiration we have felt in fervent prayers, inspired sermons, and angelic singing in this conference.

Last April, President ThomasS. Monson gave a message that stirred hearts across the world, including mine. He spoke of the power of the Book of Mormon. He urged us to study, ponder, and apply its teachings. He promised that if we dedicated time each day to studying and pondering and kept the commandments the Book of Mormon contains, we would have a vital testimony of its truth, and the resultant testimony of the living Christ would see us through to safety in times of trouble. (See The Power of the Book of Mormon, Ensign or Liahona, May 2017, 8687.)

Like many of you, I heard the prophets words as the voice of the Lord to me. And, also like many of you, I decided to obey those words. Now, since I was a young boy, I have felt the witness that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, that the Father and the Son appeared and spoke with Joseph Smith, and that ancient Apostles came to the Prophet Joseph to restore priesthood keys to the Lords Church.

With that testimony, I have read the Book of Mormon every day for more than 50 years. So perhaps I could have reasonably thought that President Monsons words were for someone else. Yet, like many of you, I felt the prophets encouragement and his promise invite me to make a greater effort. Many of you have done what I did: prayed with increased intent, pondered scripture more intently, and tried harder to serve the Lord and others for Him.

The happy result for me, and for many of you, has been what the prophet promised. Those of us who took his inspired counsel to heart have heard the Spirit more distinctly. We have found a greater power to resist temptation and have felt greater faith in a resurrected Jesus Christ, in His gospel, and in His living Church.

In a season of increasing tumult in the world, those increases in testimony have driven out doubt and fear and have brought us feelings of peace. Heeding President Monsons counsel has had two other wonderful effectson me: First, the Spirit he promised has produced a sense of optimism about what lies ahead, even as the commotion in the world seems to increase. And, second, the Lord has given meand youan even greater feeling of His love for those in distress. We have felt an increase in the desire to go to the rescue of others. That desire has been at the heart of President Monsons ministry and teaching.

The Lord promised love for others and courage to the Prophet Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery when the tasks ahead of them could have seemed overwhelming. The Lord said that needed courage would come from their faith in Him as their rock:

Fear not to do good, my sons, for whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap; therefore, if ye sow good ye shall also reap good for your reward.

Therefore, fear not, little flock; do good; let earth and hell combine against you, for if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail.

Behold, I do not condemn you; go your ways and sin no more; perform with soberness the work which I have commanded you.

Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.

Behold the wounds which pierced my side, and also the prints of the nails in my hands and feet; be faithful, keep my commandments, and ye shall inherit the kingdom of heaven (D&C 6:3337).

The Lord told His leaders of the Restoration, and He tells us, that when we stand with faith upon His rock, doubt and fear are diminished; the desire to do good increases. As we accept President Monsons invitation to plant in our hearts a testimony of Jesus Christ, we gain the power, the desire, and the courage to go to the rescue of others without concern for our own needs.

I have seen that faith and courage many times when believing Latter-day Saints have faced fearsome trials. For one example, I was in Idaho when the Teton Dam broke on June5, 1976. A wall of water came down. Thousands fled from their homes. Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed. Miraculously, fewer than 15 people were killed.

What I saw there, I have seen whenever Latter-day Saints stand firmly on the rock of a testimony of Jesus Christ. Because they have no doubt He watches over them, they become fearless. They ignore their own trials to go to the relief of others. And they do so out of love for the Lord, asking no recompense.

For example, when the Teton Dam broke, a Latter-day Saint couple was traveling, miles away from their home. As soon as they heard the news on the radio, they hurried back to Rexburg. Rather than going to their own home to see if it was destroyed, they went looking for their bishop. He was in a building that was being used as the recovery center. He was helping to direct the thousands of volunteers who were arriving in yellow school buses.

The couple walked up to the bishop and said, We just got back. Bishop, where can we go to help? He gave them the names of a family. That couple stayed mucking out mud and water in one home after another. They worked from dawn to dark for days. They finally took a break to go see about their own home. It was gone in the flood, leaving nothing to clean up. So they turned around quickly to goback to their bishop. They asked, Bishop, do you have someone for us to help?

That miracle of quiet courage and charitythe pure love of Christhas been repeated over the years and across the world. It happened in the terrible days of the persecutions and trials at the time of the Prophet Joseph Smith in Missouri. It happened as Brigham Young led the exodus from Nauvoo and then called Saints to desert places all over the western United States, to help each other create Zion for the Lord.

If you read the journal entries of those pioneers, you see the miracle of faith driving out doubt and fear. And you read of Saints leaving their own interests to help someone else for the Lord, before getting back to their own sheep or to their own unplowed fields.

I saw that same miracle a few short days ago in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma in Puerto Rico, Saint Thomas, and Florida, where Latter-day Saints partnered with other churches, local community groups, and national organizations to begin cleanup efforts.

Like my friends in Rexburg, one nonmember couple in Florida focused on helping the community rather than laboring on their own property. When some Latter-day Saint neighbors offered help with the two large trees blocking their driveway, the couple explained that they had been overwhelmed and so had turned to helping others, having faith that the Lord would provide the aid they needed at their own home. The husband then shared that before our Church members arrived with offers of assistance, the couple had been praying. They had received an answer that help would come. It came within hours of that assurance.

I have heard a report that some have started calling the Latter-day Saints who are wearing yellow Helping Hands T-shirts The Yellow Angels. One Latter-day Saint took her car in for service, and the man helping her described the spiritual experience he had when people in yellow shirts removed trees from his yard and then, he said, they sang some song to me about being a child of God.

Another Florida residentalso not of our faithrelated that Latter-day Saints came to her home when she was working in her devastated yard and feeling overwhelmed, overheated, and close to tears. The volunteers created, in her words, a pure miracle. They served not only with diligence but also with laughter and smiles, accepting nothing in return.

I saw that diligence and heard that laughter when, late on a Saturday, I visited with a group of Latter-day Saints in Florida. The volunteers stopped their cleanup labor long enough to let me shake some hands. They said that 90 members of their stake in Georgia had created a plan to join in the rescue in Florida just the night before.

They left Georgia at 4:00 in the morning, drove for hours, worked through the day and into the night, and planned to labor again the next day.

They described it to me all with smiles and good humor. The only stress I sensed was that they wanted to stop being thanked so they could get back to work. The stake president had restarted his chain saw and was working on a downed tree and a bishop was moving tree limbs as we got into our vehicle to go to the next rescue team.

Earlier that day, as we pulled away from another site, a man had walked up to the car,taken off his hat, and thanked us for the volunteers. He said, Im not a member of your church. I cant believe what you have done for us. God bless you. The LDS volunteer standing next to him in his yellow shirt smiled and shrugged his shoulders as if he deserved no praise.

While the volunteers from Georgia had come to help this man who couldnt believe it, hundreds of Latter-day Saints from that very devastated part of Florida had gone hundreds of miles south to another place in Florida where they had heard the people were harder hit.

That day I remembered and understood better the prophetic words of the Prophet Joseph Smith: A man filled with the love of God, is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith [2007], 426).

We see such love in the lives of Latter-day Saints everywhere. Each time there is a tragic event anywhere in the world, Latter-day Saints donate and volunteer to the Churchs humanitarian efforts. An appeal is seldom needed. In fact, on some occasions, we have had to ask would-be volunteers to wait to travel to the recovery site until those directing the work are prepared to receive them.

That desire to bless is the fruit of people gaining a testimony of Jesus Christ, His gospel, His restored Church, and His prophet. That is why the Lords people doubt not and fear not. That is why missionaries volunteer for service in every corner of the world. That is why parents pray with their children for others. That is why leaders challenge their youth to take President Monsons request to immerse themselves in the Book of Mormon to heart. The fruit comesnot by being urged by leaders but by the youth and members acting on faith. That faith, put into action, which requires selfless sacrifice, brings the change of heart that allows them to feel the love of God.

Our hearts, however, remain changed only as long as we continue to follow the prophets counsel. If we stop trying after one burst of effort, the change will fade.

Faithful Latter-day Saints have increased their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Book of Mormon as the word of God, and in the restoration of priesthood keys in His true Church. That increased testimony has given us greater courage and concern for others of Gods children. But the challenges and the opportunities ahead will require even more.

We cannot foresee the details, but we know the larger picture. We know that in the last days, the world will be in commotion. We know that in the midst of whatever trouble comes, the Lord will lead faithful Latter-day Saints to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. And we know that the Lords true disciples will be worthy and prepared to receive Him when He comes again. We need not fear.

So, as much as we have already built faith and courage in our hearts, the Lord expects more from usand from the generations after us. They will need to be stronger and braver because they will do even greater and harder things than we have done. And they will face increasing opposition from the enemy of our souls.

The way to optimism as we go forward was given by the Lord: Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not (D&C 6:36). President Monson told us how to do that. We are to ponder and apply the Book of Mormon and the words of prophets. Pray always. Be believing. Serve the Lord with all our heart, might, mind, and strength. We are to pray with all the energy of our hearts for the gift of charity, the pure love of Christ (see Moroni 7:4748). And above all, we are to be consistent and persistent in following prophetic counsel.

When the way is difficult, we can rely on the Lords promisethe promise President Monson has reminded us of when he has often quoted these words of the Savior: Whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up (D&C 84:88).

I testify that the Lord goes before your face whenever you are on His errand. Sometimes you will be the angel the Lord sends to bear others up. Sometimes you will be the one surrounded by angels who bear you up. But always you will have His Spirit to be in your heart, as you have been promised in every sacrament service. You have only to keep His commandments.

The best days are ahead for the kingdom of God on the earth. Opposition will strengthen our faith in Jesus Christ, as it has since the days of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Faith always defeats fear. Standing together produces unity. And your prayers for those in need are heard and answered by a loving God. He neither slumbers nor does He sleep.

I bear my witness that God the Father lives and wants you to come home to Him. This is the true Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows you; He loves you; He watches over you. He atoned for your sins and mine and the sins of all of Heavenly Fathers children. Following Him in your life and in your service to others is the only way to eternal life.

I so testify and leave you my blessing and my love. In the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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Fear Not to Do Good - By President Henry B. Eyring

Ripple Price Prediction: Yahoo! Could Boost XRP Demand in East Asia

Ripple News Update
Although Yahoo! Inc. went down in flames in North America—Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) bought its core assets at firesale prices—Yahoo! Japan (TYO:4689) maintains a strong presence in East Asia.

Now the platform is looking to leverage its popularity by opening a cryptocurrency exchange in Japan. There’s a lot to unpack from this development. The obvious takeaway, however, is that this is good for cryptos that lean heavily on East Asian trading volumes, including Ripple (XRP).

More than 40% of XRP trading volumes currently come from South Korea. It would benefit Ripple to appear on more.

The post Ripple Price Prediction: Yahoo! Could Boost XRP Demand in East Asia appeared first on Profit Confidential.

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Ripple Price Prediction: Yahoo! Could Boost XRP Demand in East Asia

What’s Wrong With Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin? — The …

Investors who had the nerve and wherewithal to invest in cryptocurrencies early in 2017 and hold throughout the year were probably handsomely rewarded. Between the beginning and end of 2017, the aggregate cryptocurrency market cap gained almost $600 billion, which works out to an increase in value of more than 3,300%. For a single asset class, it might just be the greatest 12-month return we will see in our lifetimes.

Unfortunately, 2018 hasn't looked anything like the previous record-shattering year. After hitting an all-time market cap high of $835 billion on Jan. 7, cryptocurrencies pushed to lows that hadn't been seen since around Thanksgiving on March 17 ($274 billion). But it's not the drop itself that's necessarily the most attention-grabbing point. Instead, it's what's leading the crypto market cap significantly lower.

Image source: Getty Images.

Most folks would probably assume bitcoin is to blame. After all, bitcoin is the largest virtual coin by market cap, and frankly it's the only one most of the public has probably heard about. While bitcoin has indeed performed poorly, it's not been the driving force behind the recent collapse in crypto prices. That credit belongs to everything not named bitcoin.

You see, the fourth quarter of the previous year absolutely belonged to cryptocurrencies not named bitcoin. Having seen bitcoin tokens explode from less than $0.01 to $10,000 per token in under eight years had speculators throwing darts at dozens of virtual currencies in 2017, grasping for straws at what might be "the next bitcoin." As a result, many of bitcoin's chief rivals ran circles around it last year. Ethereum, which is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, increased in value by 9,383% in 2017, while Ripple and Litecoin, two other extremely popular digital currencies, surged by 35,564% and 5,260%, respectively. Meanwhile, bitcoin rose 1,364%.

This year has seen a complete reversal of the fourth-quarter 2017 trend. After hitting a high of $1,432 per Ether token on Jan. 13, Ethereum has pushed as low as $460, representing a loss in value of 68%. Ripple, which was unstoppable last year and hit an all-time high of $3.84 per XRP token on Jan. 3, has since seen its coin trade as low as $0.55 -- a decline of 86%. Even Litecoin, which in some circles is viewed as bitcoin's biggest rival, has plummeted from a peak of $375 on Dec. 19 to as low as $107 in early February.

Comparatively, bitcoin, which made up as little as 33% of the aggregate cryptocurrency market cap in mid-January, now comprises 44.4% of the crypto market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.com. That's close to a three-month high. In short, even though bitcoin is falling, it's dropping far less than its peers.

Image source: Getty Images.

That prompts the question: What the heck is wrong with Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin?

Taking a broader look at bitcoin's biggest rivals, two factors stand out as being responsible for their considerable declines in recent months.

First, there's the simple fact that competition within the digital currency and blockchain space has exploded. Blockchain is the digital, distributed, and decentralized ledger often underpinning cryptocurrencies that's responsible for recording all transactions without the need for a financial intermediary, like a bank.

Last summer, there were around 900 virtual currencies that investors could buy. As of March 17, there were more than 1,650, with nearly all of them accompanied by their very own proprietary blockchain technology.

Were this not competition enough, brand-name companies have been working on developing their own blockchain technologies, some of which work independently of a virtual currency. For example, IBM (NYSE:IBM) is developing blockchain solutions for the financial services industry, as well as non-currency applications. In October 2017, IBM partnered with Stellar to use its Lumens coin as a financial intermediary in cross-border transactions in the South Pacific region processed on IBM's blockchain platform. Also, IBM and shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk recently announced their intention to create a separate joint venture that'll focus on developing shipping-based blockchain solutions. Such solutions could allow for real-time tracking of shipped products, as well as expedite approvals by eliminating paper from the equation.

In other words, growing competition from other cryptocurrencies and brand-name companies as a result of the low barrier to entry in developing and deploying blockchain and virtual coins is making life difficult.

Image source: Getty Images.

The other issue appears to be the proof-of-concept Catch-22 that practically every cryptocurrency is currently stuck in.

On the surface, Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin have done a really good job of brandling their blockchain technology or tokens, and the result has been countless partnerships. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance had 200 member organizations as of October testing a version of Ethereum's blockchain across a variety of industries.Meanwhile, Ripple landed five brand-name financial partners in under two years' time, and Litecoin's average daily transactions have been steadily climbing since founder Charlie Lee announced he'd be working full-time to further Litecoin as a medium of exchange for goods and services.

But the underlying problem for most cryptocurrencies is that their platforms are being tested in small-scale projects and demos and not in large-scale, real-world scenarios. Enterprises simply don't feel comfortable yet with the idea of switching to blockchain platforms because they haven't been proven on a large scale. Yet, they'll never be proven on a large scale until a handful of enterprises gives blockchain a chance. This Catch-22 is precisely why cryptocurrency valuations have been deflating. If businesses don't move beyond this proof-of-concept conundrum, it's possible we could see Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin fall further, despite each offering unique advantages over bitcoin.

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Hedonism II – Top Lifestyle Resort in Negril, Jamaica

Hedonism II is the only resort of its kind in the world. It's the resort where you can do what you want, when you want, in a way that can only happen at Hedonism II. From the expansive beach to piano bar to the disco, Hedonism II is the best resort for your all inclusive vacation. At Hedonism II, all meals, drinks, activities and entertainment are included and tipping is simply not permitted. If you don't have fun at Hedonism II, you probably won't have fun anywhere.

What is Hedonism ??

From the moment Hedonism II's gates opened thirty plus years ago, it's been the most widely recognized, and notorious, resort in the world. Words really can't quite describe the thrill of actually being here. It's the ultimate guilty pleasure, only without the guilt. Hedonism II is located on Negril's famous 7 mile beach regarded as the party capital of the world.

Everything You've Heard... It's true. The rumors, the legends, the myths. All true. For more than thirty years, It's what happens when you combine warm water, a white-sand beach, open bars and open minds. This is about as far as you can get from your everyday life. And best of all, just about everything you can eat, drink and do is included.

Sooner or later, it's gonna happen. The primal urge to just let go. Unwind. Unplug. You're not alone. Hedonism II on world-famous Negril Beach was created as a reward for all those times you've had to deny your basic instincts. In these lush gardens of pure pleasure, the word "no" is seldom heard.

Hedonism is a sandbox for your inner child, nourishment for the mind, body, spirit and soul. Pleasure comes in many forms. Choose one. Or two. Or more. After a week at Hedonism, you'll view the world from a slightly different angle. You'll be tanned and relaxed. And at times you'll find yourself smiling for no reason whatsoever. Hedonism, there's nothing else on earth quite like it.

The resort has 280 rooms located in a tropical beach scene with separate two-story buildings with two twin or king beds in each room. Some rooms face the beach, some are garden view locations. The resort is arguably the "Mother of all inclusive resorts" and has a world-wide reputation for fun and frolic. Our clients who visit Hedonism II come from every continent in the world and they're there for one reason -- to have fun. If you like to read a book and chill out, you can do that, but this place is so active with lots of interesting people, you may miss some of the greatest opportunities to meet the most fun loving people... from all over the world.

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Hedonism II - Top Lifestyle Resort in Negril, Jamaica

The Final Word: Healthcare vs. Health Care – arcadia.io

A cursory review of all the textbooks, dictionaries, style guides, and news sources in the Anglophone world would reveal a complete lack of consistency in the conventions of how healthcare/health care/health-care (h/h/h) is written. Is anyone elses mind blown that no convention has been developed for how to write about a multi-trillion dollar industry? Mine certainly was. This is my attempt to rectify the lack of clear, well-researched direction on this subject.

If you were to look for an authoritative source on the topic, you would turn up a series of loose sets of rules and meritless rationales for conventions surrounding the veritable word cloud miasma that hovers around our industry. As such, I took to reading through the decisions handed down from the Court of Common Opinion in search of a compelling narrative for how we Anglophones the world over should free ourselves of this embarrassingly debilitating failure of language.

Frankly, this has annoyed the Internet for way too long. Health care is in the top 20% most searched words on Merriam-Websters online dictionary and understandably so. No one is looking up healthcare because its some hard, new word: people are looking up health care because they need to know conventions for how to use and spell it! And as I did yesterday, most people walk away from Merriam-Webster and similar sources with tails between legs, depressed they have to go through yet another day with no direction on whether they are using and writing h/h/h properly.

Michael Millenson recently tried his hand at unraveling this topic. He did a compelling investigational guest piece tracking down the history of usage and spelling for h/h/h on the blogThe Doctor Weighs In. Unfortunately, at the end of the article, Im still head-desking because Michael joins everyone else in what Im calling The Great Healthcare/Health Care Vacillation by not making an argument one way or another for usage and spelling.

The most developed, logical, and applicable set of conventions I have found was developed here by Deane Waldman, MD, MBA on his blog, Medical Malprocess. His refreshing approach is that we should use both healthcare and health care each for different purposes because the need for specificity is so great that no one version of this word/phrase would be sufficient. Here is my interpretation of how he has parsed these words:

health care (noun)

Definition: a set of actions by a person or persons to maintain or improve the health of a patient/customer

Examples:

healthcare (noun or adjective)

Definition: a system, industry, or field that facilitates the logistics and delivery of health care for patients/consumers

Examples:

To put it more simply, Dr. Waldman writes:

Health caretwo wordsrefers to provider actions.

Healthcareone wordis a system.

We need the second in order to have the first.

While this is a thorough and terribly useful set of conventions, the fact remains that in the US the most commonly accepted form in professional writing is health care (the Associated Press feels pretty strongly about it), regardless of the words part of speech and the concepts to which the author means to refer. My problem with this heavy-handed approach is that it flattens the language and allows the speaker and audience to discuss h/h/h with little specificity, leading to generalities made about h/h/h that are not valid for the other forms of the word/phrase/concept. As such, I think that Dr. Waldmans model, which judiciously incorporates both forms, should supplant all of, in my opinion, the half-formed and barely-enforced rules on how to write h/h/h.

You may be wondering why I (and others) care so much about this issue. The short answer is that healthcare has taken on more meaning as a closed compound word to describe the system/industry/field than is captured in the two separate words health and care. Health care does not sufficiently capture the increasing demand for nuance and specificity in referring to topics surrounding the practice and facilitation of services to maintain or improve health. Healthcare represents the political, financial, historical, sociological, and social implications of a system that provides health care to the masses.

As professionals in a fast-paced and demanding field, we should hold ourselves to a high standard of precision and accuracy in our language. More than a few (by that, I mean literally 100%) of the professionals in healthcare have found themselves at some point wondering whether they are writing this word/phrase properly. I say the time has come to end the Great Healthcare/Health Care Vacillation.

It is understandable for many to feel they have neither the time nor resources to dedicate themselves to the pursuit of grammatical perfection. However, our issue here is not simply a lack of differentiation between two words in some obscure intellectual niche. Our issue is that our entire profession, industry, and field lacks a single, unifying convention for how to portray itself to the world. There is no excuse for confusion coupled with a lack of conviction for the need and method to address the problem.

I am not so deluded to think this set of conventions will become common knowledge, but I can hope and pray that those of us tasked with writing about the healthcare system and the evolution of health care in practices will endeavor to establish and monitor a consistent set of conventions about something as powerful and pervasive as our health and the industry that supports it.

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The Final Word: Healthcare vs. Health Care - arcadia.io

Libertarian Party of Marion County – Minimum Government …

Responsibile, competent, and tolerant Libertarianism.

Welcome to the website of the Libertarian Party of Marion County in Indiana. We are affiliated with the national Libertarian Party and the Libertarian Party of Indiana. The Libertarian Party is the third largest political party in the United States and is the only non-major party with ballot access in the state of Indiana. Marion County is home to Indianapolis and is the largest affiliated county in Indiana.

Libertarians believe in being SERVED by a small, non-intrusive government that is financially responsible, administratively competent and socially tolerant.

"Libertarians believe the answer to America's political problems is the same commitment to freedom that earned America its greatness: a free-market economy and the abundance and prosperity it brings; a dedication to civil liberties and personal freedom that marks this country above all others; and a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade as prescribed by America's founders." (Source: The Libertarian Party: A Short History, 2000)

Potholes are an annoying annual problem that gets people fired up. Suddenly a problem impacts people that problems dont usually impact. Since at least Mayor Hudnuts administration, the problem manifests in Phase 1 of the same process

The district has overhead and needs some level of administration. We contend theres too much emphasis on administration within IPS that is whittling away their funding. IPS needs to try to educate the public about what theyre doing to save money and spend wisely before asking for more.

The LPMC thinks the Council needs a chaperone or two. Were as tired of the infighting as every other voter. There is no party better suited to bring peace and a neutral point of view than the LPMC.

Indianapolis December 5th, 2016 The Libertarian Party of Marion County has announced the dates of their upcoming officer elections. According to Chris Mayo, the current chair of the LPMC, the party will meet on Monday, January 16th, 2017 to elect the offices of Chair, Vice-Chair, Treasurer, Secretary, and two at-large representatives. The meeting []

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: New Laws Regulating Pedal Bars Opposed by Libertarian Party of Marion County Indianapolis September 26, 2016 The Libertarian Party of Marion County is disappointed to see that members of our City-County Council are considering imposing new laws and regulations on the owners and operators of the pedal bars []

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Libertarian Party of Marion County - Minimum Government ...

[REPOST] The Non-Libertarian FAQ | Slate Star Codex

[This is a repost of the Non-Libertarian FAQ (aka Why I Hate Your Freedom), which I wrote about five years ago and which used to be hosted on my website. It no longer completely reflects my current views. I dont think Ive switched to believing anything on here is outright false, but Ive moved on to different ways of thinking about certain areas. Im reposting it by popular request and for historical interest only. Ive made some very small updates, mostly listing rebuttals that came out over the past few years. I havent updated the statistics and everything is accurate as of several years ago. I seem to have lost the sources of my images, and Im sorry; if Ive used an image of yours, please let me know and Ill cite you.]

Contents

0. Introduction

A. Economic Issues

1. Externalities2. Coordination Problems3. Irrational Choices4. Lack of Information

B. Social Issues

5. Just Desserts and Social Mobility6. Taxation

C. Political Issues

7. Competence of Government8. Health Care9. Prison Privatization10. Gun Control11. Education

D. Moral Issues

12. Moral Systems13. Rights and Heuristics

E. Practical Issues

14. Slippery Slopes15. Strategic Activism16. Miscellaneous and Meta

Introduction

0.1: Are you a statist?

No.

Imagine a hypothetical country split between the tallists, who think only tall people should have political power, and the shortists, who believe such power should be reserved for the short.

If we met a tallist, wed believe she was silly but not because we favor the shortists instead. Wed oppose the tallists because we think the whole dichotomy is stupid we should elect people based on qualities like their intelligence and leadership and morality. Knowing someones height isnt enough to determine whether theyd be a good leader or not.

Declaring any non-libertarian to be a statist is as silly as declaring any non-tallist to be a shortist. Just as we can judge leaders on their merits and not on their height, so people can judge policies on their merits and not just on whether they increase or decrease the size of the state.

There are some people who legitimately believe that a policys effect on the size of the state is so closely linked to its effectiveness that these two things are not worth distinguishing, and so one can be certain of a policys greater effectiveness merely because it seems more libertarian and less statist than the alternative. Most of the rest of this FAQ will be an attempt to disprove this idea and assert that no, you really do have to judge the individual policy on its merits.

0.2: Do you hate libertarianism?

No.

To many people, libertarianism is a reaction against an over-regulated society, and an attempt to spread the word that some seemingly intractable problems can be solved by a hands-off approach. Many libertarians have made excellent arguments for why certain libertarian policies are the best options, and I agree with many of them. I think this kind of libertarianism is a valuable strain of political thought that deserves more attention, and I have no quarrel whatsoever with it and find myself leaning more and more in that direction myself.

However, theres a certain more aggressive, very American strain of libertarianism with which I do have a quarrel. This is the strain which, rather than analyzing specific policies and often deciding a more laissez-faire approach is best, starts with the tenet that government can do no right and private industry can do no wrong and uses this faith in place of more careful analysis. This faction is not averse to discussing politics, but tends to trot out the same few arguments about why less regulation has to be better. I wish I could blame this all on Ayn Rand, but a lot of it seems to come from people who have never heard of her. I suppose I could just add it to the bottom of the list of things I blame Reagan for.

To the first type of libertarian, I apologize for writing a FAQ attacking a caricature of your philosophy, but unfortunately that caricature is alive and well and posting smug slogans on Facebook.

0.3: Will this FAQ prove that government intervention always works better than the free market?

No, of course not.

Actually, in most cases, you wont find me trying to make a positive proof of anything. I believe that deciding on, for example, an optimal taxation policy takes very many numbers and statistical models and other things which are well beyond the scope of this FAQ, and may well have different answers at different levels and in different areas.

What I want to do in most cases is not prove that the government works better than the free market, or vice versa, but to disprove theories that say we can be absolutely certain free market always works better than government before we even investigate the issue. After that, we may still find that this is indeed one of the cases where the free market works better than the government, but we will have to prove it instead of viewing it as self-evident from first principles.

0.4: Why write a Non-Libertarian FAQ? Isnt statism a bigger problem than libertarianism?

Yes. But you never run into Stalinists at parties. At least not serious Stalinists over the age of twenty-five, and not the interesting type of parties. If I did, I guess Id try to convince them not to be so statist, but the issues never come up.

But the world seems positively full of libertarians nowadays. And I see very few attempts to provide a complete critique of libertarian philosophy. There are a bunch of ad hoc critiques of specific positions: people arguing for socialist health care, people in favor of gun control. But one of the things that draws people to libertarianism is that it is a unified, harmonious system. Unlike the mix-and-match philosophies of the Democratic and Republican parties, libertarianism is coherent and sometimes even derived from first principles. The only way to convincingly talk someone out of libertarianism is to launch a challenge on the entire system.

There are a few existing documents trying to do this (see Mike Hubens Critiques of Libertarianism and Mark Rosenfelders Whats (Still) Wrong With Libertarianism for two of the better ones), but Im not satisfied with any of them. Some of them are good but incomplete. Others use things like social contract theory, which I find nonsensical and libertarians find repulsive. Or they have an overly rosy view of how consensual taxation is, which I dont fall for and which libertarians definitely dont fall for.

The main reason Im writing this is that I encounter many libertarians, and I need a single document I can point to explaining why I dont agree with them. The existing anti-libertarian documentation makes too many arguments I dont agree with for me to feel really comfortable with it, so Im writing this one myself. I dont encounter too many Stalinists,so I dont have this problem with them and I dont see any need to write a rebuttal to their position.

If you really need a pro-libertarian FAQ to use on an overly statist friend, Google suggests The Libertarian FAQ.

0.5: How is this FAQ structured?

Ive divided it into three main sections. The first addresses some very abstract principles of economics. They may not be directly relevant to politics, but since most libertarian philosophies start with abstract economic principles, a serious counterargument has to start there also. Fair warning: there are people who can discuss economics without it being INCREDIBLY MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING, but I am not one of them.

The second section deals with more concrete economic and political problems like the tax system, health care, and criminal justice.

The third section deals with moral issues, like whether its ever permissible to initiate force. Too often I find that if I can convince a libertarian that government regulation can be effective, they respond that it doesnt matter because its morally repulsive, and then once Ive finished convincing them it isnt, they respond that it never works anyway. By having sections dedicated to both practical and moral issues, I hope to make that sort of bait-and-switch harder to achieve, and to allow libertarians to evaluate the moral and practical arguments against their position in whatever order they find appropriate.

Part A: Economic Issues

The Argument:

In a free market, all trade has to be voluntary, so you will never agree to a trade unless it benefits you.

Further, you wont make a trade unless you think its the best possible trade you can make. If you knew you could make a better one, youd hold out for that. So trades in a free market are not only better than nothing, theyre also the best possible transaction you could make at that time.

Labor is no different from any other commercial transaction in this respect. You wont agree to a job unless it benefits you more than anything else you can do with your time, and your employer wont hire you unless it benefits her more than anything else she can do with her money. So a voluntarily agreed labor contract must benefit both parties, and must do so more than any other alternative.

If every trade in a free market benefits both parties, then any time the government tries to restrict trade in some way, it must hurt both parties. Or, to put it another way, you can help someone by giving them more options, but you cant help them by taking away options. And in a free market, where everyone starts with all options, all the government can do is take options away.

The Counterargument:

This treats the world as a series of producer-consumer dyads instead of as a system in which every transaction affects everyone else. Also, it treats consumers as coherent entities who have specific variables like utility and demand and know exactly what they are, which doesnt always work.

In the remainder of this section, Ill be going over several ways the free market can fail and several ways a regulated market can overcome those failures. Ill focus on four main things: externalities, coordination problems, irrational choice, and lack of information.

I did warn you it would be mind-numbingly boring.

1. Externalities

1.1: What is an externality?

An externality is when I make a trade with you, but it has some accidental effect on other people who werent involved in the trade.

Suppose for example that I sell my house to an amateur wasp farmer. Only hes not a very good wasp farmer, so his wasps usually get loose and sting people all over the neighborhood every couple of days.

This trade between the wasp farmer and myself has benefited both of us, but its harmed people who werent consulted; namely, my neighbors, who are now locked indoors clutching cans of industrial-strength insect repellent. Although the trade was voluntary for both the wasp farmer and myself, it wasnt voluntary for my neighbors.

Another example of externalities would be a widget factory that spews carcinogenic chemicals into the air. When I trade with the widget factory Im benefiting I get widgets and theyre benefiting they get money. But the people who breathe in the carcinogenic chemicals werent consulted in the trade.

1.2: But arent there are libertarian ways to solve externalities that dont involve the use of force?

To some degree, yes. You can, for example, refuse to move into any neighborhood unless everyone in town has signed a contract agreeing not to raise wasps on their property.

But getting every single person in a town of thousands of people to sign a contract every time you think of something else you want banned might be a little difficult. More likely, you would want everyone in town to unanimously agree to a contract saying that certain things, which could be decided by some procedure requiring less than unanimity, could be banned from the neighborhood sort of like the existing concept of neighborhood associations.

But convincing every single person in a town of thousands to join the neighborhood association would be near impossible, and all it would take would be a single holdout who starts raising wasps and all your work is useless. Better, perhaps, to start a new town on your own land with a pre-existing agreement that before youre allowed to move in you must belong to the association and follow its rules. You could even collect dues from the members of this agreement to help pay for the people youd need to enforce it.

But in this case, youre not coming up with a clever libertarian way around government, youre just reinventing the concept of government. Theres no difference between a town where to live there you have to agree to follow certain terms decided by association members following some procedure, pay dues, and suffer the consequences if you break the rules and a regular town with a regular civic government.

As far as I know there is no loophole-free way to protect a community against externalities besides government and things that are functionally identical to it.

1.3: Couldnt consumers boycott any company that causes externalities?

Only a small proportion of the people buying from a company will live near the companys factory, so this assumes a colossal amount of both knowledge and altruism on the part of most consumers. See also the general discussion of why boycotts almost never solve problems in the next session.

1.4: What is the significance of externalities?

They justify some environmental, zoning, and property use regulations.

2. Coordination Problems

2.1: What are coordination problems?

Coordination problems are cases in which everyone agrees that a certain action would be best, but the free market cannot coordinate them into taking that action.

As a thought experiment, lets consider aquaculture (fish farming) in a lake. Imagine a lake with a thousand identical fish farms owned by a thousand competing companies. Each fish farm earns a profit of $1000/month. For a while, all is well.

But each fish farm produces waste, which fouls the water in the lake. Lets say each fish farm produces enough pollution to lower productivity in the lake by $1/month.

A thousand fish farms produce enough waste to lower productivity by $1000/month, meaning none of the fish farms are making any money. Capitalism to the rescue: someone invents a complex filtering system that removes waste products. It costs $300/month to operate. All fish farms voluntarily install it, the pollution ends, and the fish farms are now making a profit of $700/month still a respectable sum.

But one farmer (lets call him Steve) gets tired of spending the money to operate his filter. Now one fish farm worth of waste is polluting the lake, lowering productivity by $1. Steve earns $999 profit, and everyone else earns $699 profit.

Everyone else sees Steve is much more profitable than they are, because hes not spending the maintenance costs on his filter. They disconnect their filters too.

Once four hundred people disconnect their filters, Steve is earning $600/month less than he would be if he and everyone else had kept their filters on! And the poor virtuous filter users are only making $300. Steve goes around to everyone, saying Wait! We all need to make a voluntary pact to use filters! Otherwise, everyones productivity goes down.

Everyone agrees with him, and they all sign the Filter Pact, except one person who is sort of a jerk. Lets call him Mike. Now everyone is back using filters again, except Mike. Mike earns $999/month, and everyone else earns $699/month. Slowly, people start thinking they too should be getting big bucks like Mike, and disconnect their filter for $300 extra profit

A self-interested person never has any incentive to use a filter. A self-interested person has some incentive to sign a pact to make everyone use a filter, but in many cases has a stronger incentive to wait for everyone else to sign such a pact but opt out himself. This can lead to an undesirable equilibrium in which no one will sign such a pact.

The most profitable solution to this problem is for Steve to declare himself King of the Lake and threaten to initiate force against anyone who doesnt use a filter. This regulatory solution leads to greater total productivity for the thousand fish farms than a free market could.

The classic libertarian solution to this problem is to try to find a way to privatize the shared resource (in this case, the lake). I intentionally chose aquaculture for this example because privatization doesnt work. Even after the entire lake has been divided into parcels and sold to private landowners (waterowners?) the problem remains, since waste will spread from one parcel to another regardless of property boundaries.

2.1.1: Even without anyone declaring himself King of the Lake, the fish farmers would voluntarily agree to abide by the pact that benefits everyone.

Empirically, no. This situation happens with wild fisheries all the time. Theres some population of cod or salmon or something which will be self-sustaining as long as its not overfished. Fishermen come in and catch as many fish as they can, overfishing it. Environmentalists warn that the fishery is going to collapse. Fishermen find this worrying, but none of them want to fish less because then their competitors will just take up the slack. Then the fishery collapses and everyone goes out of business. The most famous example is the Collapse of the Northern Cod Fishery, but there are many others in various oceans, lakes, and rivers.

If not for resistance to government regulation, the Canadian governments could have set strict fishing quotas, and companies could still be profitably fishing the area today. Other fisheries that do have government-imposed quotas are much more successful.

2.1.2: I bet [extremely complex privatization scheme that takes into account the ability of cod to move across property boundaries and the migration patterns of cod and so on] could have saved the Atlantic cod too.

Maybe, but left to their own devices, cod fishermen never implemented or recommended that scheme. If we ban all government regulation in the environment, that wont make fishermen suddenly start implementing complex privatization schemes that theyve never implemented before. It will just make fishermen keep doing what theyre doing while tying the hands of the one organization that has a track record of actually solving this sort of problem in the real world.

2.2: How do coordination problems justify environmental regulations?

Consider the process of trying to stop global warming. If everyone believes in global warming and wants to stop it, its still not in any one persons self-interest to be more environmentally conscious. After all, that would make a major impact on her quality of life, but a negligible difference to overall worldwide temperatures. If everyone acts only in their self-interest, then no one will act against global warming, even though stopping global warming is in everyones self-interest. However, everyone would support the institution of a government that uses force to make everyone more environmentally conscious.

Notice how well this explains reality. The government of every major country has publicly declared that they think solving global warming is a high priority, but every time they meet in Kyoto or Copenhagen or Bangkok for one of their big conferences, the developed countries would rather the developing countries shoulder the burden, the developing countries would rather the developed countries do the hard work, and so nothing ever gets done.

The same applies mutans mutandis to other environmental issues like the ozone layer, recycling, and anything else where one person cannot make a major difference but many people acting together can.

2.3: How do coordination problems justify regulation of ethical business practices?

The normal libertarian belief is that it is unnecessary for government to regulate ethical business practices. After all, if people object to something a business is doing, they will boycott that business, either incentivizing the business to change its ways, or driving them into well-deserved bankruptcy. And if people dont object, then theres no problem and the government shouldnt intervene.

A close consideration of coordination problems demolishes this argument. Lets say Wandas Widgets has one million customers. Each customer pays it $100 per year, for a total income of $100 million. Each customer prefers Wanda to her competitor Wayland, who charges $150 for widgets of equal quality. Now lets say Wandas Widgets does some unspeakably horrible act which makes it $10 million per year, but offends every one of its million customers.

There is no incentive for a single customer to boycott Wandas Widgets. After all, that customers boycott will cost the customer $50 (she will have to switch to Wayland) and make an insignificant difference to Wanda (who is still earning $99,999,900 of her original hundred million). The customer takes significant inconvenience, and Wanda neither cares nor stops doing her unspeakably horrible act (after all, its giving her $10 million per year, and only losing her $100).

The only reason it would be in a customers interests to boycott is if she believed over a hundred thousand other customers would join her. In that case, the boycott would be costing Wanda more than the $10 million she gains from her unspeakably horrible act, and its now in her self-interest to stop committing the act. However, unless each boycotter believes 99,999 others will join her, she is inconveniencing herself for no benefit.

Furthermore, if a customer offended by Wandas actions believes 100,000 others will boycott Wanda, then its in the customers self-interest to defect from the boycott and buy Wandas products. After all, the customer will lose money if she buys Waylands more expensive widgets, and this is unnecessary the 100,000 other boycotters will change Wandas mind with or without her participation.

This suggests a market failure of boycotts, which seems confirmed by experience. We know that, despite many companies doing very controversial things, there have been very few successful boycotts. Indeed, few boycotts, successful or otherwise, ever make the news, and the number of successful boycotts seems much less than the amount of outrage expressed at companies actions.

The existence of government regulation solves this problem nicely. If >51% of people disagree with Wandas unspeakably horrible act, they dont need to waste time and money guessing how many of them will join in a boycott, and they dont need to worry about being unable to conscript enough defectors to reach critical mass. They simply vote to pass a law banning the action.

2.3.1: Im not convinced that its really that hard to get a boycott going. If people really object to something, theyll start a boycott regardless of all that coordination problem stuff.

So, youre boycotting Coke because theyre hiring local death squads to kidnap, torture, and murder union members and organizers in their sweatshops in Colombia, right?

Not a lot of people to whom I have asked this question have ever answered yes. Most of them had never heard of the abuses before. A few of them vaguely remembered having heard something about it, but dismissed it as you know, multinational corporations do a lot of sketchy things. Ive only met one person whos ever gone so far as to walk twenty feet further to get to the Pepsi vending machine.

If you went up to a random guy on the street and said Hey, does hiring death squads to torture and kill Colombians who protest about terrible working conditions bother you? 99.9% of people would say yes. So why the disconnect between words and actions? People could just be lying they could say they cared so they sounded compassionate, but in reality it doesnt really bother them.

But maybe its something more complicated. Perhaps they dont have the brainpower to keep track of every single corporation thats doing bad things and just how bad they are. Perhaps theyve compartmentalized their lives and after they leave their Amnesty meetings it just doesnt register that they should change their behaviour in the supermarket. Or perhaps the Coke = evil connection is too tenuous and against the brains ingrained laws of thought to stay relevant without expending extraordinary amounts of willpower. Or perhaps theres some part of the subconscious that really is worry about that game theory and figuring it has no personal incentive to join the boycott.

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