I have a feeling that Basic Income will be a societal upgrade and people will still work, but I don't think it's going to solve wealth disparity. My gut says that it will actually make disparity more obvious, just people at the bottom won't be struggling as hard. Anyways, this is mere speculation. What do I know?
I'm very excited about this. When I watch this new breed of AI play, I find it really interesting what they value and greatly enjoy speculating as to why in human terms.
Eesh. If all of this is accurate, it is problematic indeed. I wonder how many of these homicides would cease to occur if drugs were made legal in Brazil (I wonder about this worldwide). I've never understood why it's difficult for people to understand the awful incentive structures that making drugs illegal puts into motion.
I just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing.
'Making drugs legal' is frequently miss-understood. Treating addiction as a public health problem by decriminalising addicts and personal posession while keeping the trade in drugs firmly illegal, as in Portugal and now Norway, looks like the way to go.
The recent changes to the law in Norway are widely reported as 'decriminalising drugs'. That is highly misleading. They have decriminalised drug use and personal possession, but the drugs trade itself is still criminal.
Decriminalizing possession doesn't do anything to help the violence associated with the drug trade though, does it? I thought that was one of the main reasons for the "legalize completely" argument.
Yes it does, by dramatically reducing rates of addiction and drug use. Take away vast swathes of the market for illegal drugs and the violence associated with it subsides. At least that’s what has happened in Portugal. Now that Norway is following suit, in the years to come we will have another case study to look at.
There aren't black markets for things that aren't illegal. Often, the gang murders we thing of are "turf wars" where one gang is competing with another gang for the same sales territory.
So legalizing drug trade likely decreases drug gangs, which likely decreases murders. People might still die from drug use, but that becomes a separate problem.
We dont know if this is true,because no developed country has decriminalised the drug trade. It seems to me that doing that would increase drug use and the associated public health and social problems. I’m much more in favour of decriminalising use but keeping the trade itself illegal, as in Portugal. That enables attacking the problem from both directions at the same time. Restrict availability through cracking down on dealers, while also removing the market through treatment and rehabilitation.
We have alcohol in the U.S. as an example; It was made illegal; so gangs moved into the import business and made more money than they had before - gangs had turf wars bigger than they had had before.
Moonshiners started making it, and sometimes it created poison.
The police were corrupted where corruptible or killed when they didn't go the gangs ways.
The rich had parties and skirted the enforcement of the law.
Here in Uruguay, marijuana is legal, and homicides are at an all-time high (higher than Argentina and very near to the rates in Brazil, we used to be at less than a quarter).
I´m not sure if decriminalizing all drugs would change the equation much (there´s still smuggling, prostitution and other vices to lord over).
This is the only real solution. No country has yet tried it. Legalizing weed (Uruguay, some US states) is not even in the same ballpark as what you suggest here (which is my suggestion too in another comment). Until you can go into a pharmacy and buy coke, heroin, and other shit like that over the counter, this problem will never go away. Maybe if murder rates double again and again it'll motivate people to change their government enough to get this done. I don't know how many people must die before governments start to change their stupid drug policies, but clearly, we are nowhere near the amount needed. A fucking waste of millions of lives (if you count incarceration too). Just to be clear, Brazil is in no way unique here.
You are working hard to find a problem with it, aren't you?
80% of the crimes being linked to drug use means that most people will only care about the remaining 20%.
But, anyway, AFAIK, drug usage is not a crime in Brazil. Dealing is. And for dealing related crimes to go away, one has to legalize the entire production and distribution.
Brazil, like most of South (and now perhaps north too?) America suffers from macho populism. A lot of character politicians with tough messages, empty promises and sadly the population just falls for it every time.
These stats, along with others, is the result of years of populism, corruption and neglect.
Let’s ignore the fact that the last president was a woman and that this is the direct result of her party disastrous administration. Blame machismo. It always works.
Not one but 3 and a half. Her predecessor from the same party ruled for 8 years and she was president for 6 years before being impeached for fiscal embezzlement. So yeah... 12 years in which crime rates skyrocketed.
Crime reduction in 1992 (in the US) is attributed by some to Roe v Wade (1972). It took 20 years. The young people who are dying now (guns deaths hit the young and poor the worst) were born at the end of the 1990s and start of 2000s, which was a period of high unemployment and even famine (300 children died of malnutrition per day in 2001).
The lower house has 513 members and 54 women. The senate has 81 members and 13 women. Only 12% of mayors are women. Dilma was the first and only female president.
I love how you still hold on to the narrative that if we elect women all the problems will go away when in Brazil female politicians like Dilma Housseff and Gleisi Hoffman are pretty much as corrupt as their male counterparts.
I suppose the essence of being an entrepreneur is being the one to make decisions no one else has made. It seems to be helpful to be data informed with your decisions, but I suppose the moral of this article is that advice can only help with general rules of thumb. In order to solve specific problems that haven't been solved before, you have to carve your own path with your own decisions.
This is definitely useful to keep in mind, but I think one point that might not be represented adequately is the utility of a standard. I understand that there are difficulties for people speaking in a nonnative accent, but there is also actual value in being close to standard and having less accents considered standard. When many people are specializing in many things, having a standard way of speaking allows us to more quickly understand one another and skip the basics. The judgement that I personally make when I hear a non-standard accent is not that they are lower in status; it's simply that it will take more work on my end to understand them, and thus I'm less inclined to deal with them in particular because of the language barrier and my being lazy.
> The judgement that I personally make when I hear a non-standard accent is not that they are lower in status; it's simply that it will take more work on my end to understand them, and thus I'm less inclined to deal with them in particular because of the language barrier and my being lazy.
Not everybody understands this. There are plenty of people in the US who think Southerners are stupid just because of their accent, or who look poorly upon speakers of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) simply because of the perceived difference in class, regardless of actual education or intellectual capability. It's terribly unfortunate, but pop culture often leans into the stereotypes, reinforcing the perception of a class distinction.
Additionally, I think your decision to still avoid non-native speakers is somewhat disappointing. How are they (non-native speakers) supposed to get better if nobody will interact with them? A native accent comes from a combination of things (fluency, confidence, and exposure to the accent itself). Choosing not to interact with them prevents them from being exposed, and it also lessens their confidence. It's super obvious when a native speaker is just trying to get away from a situation like that, and I can only imagine how disheartening it would be to be the non-native speaker in such a situation.
I've heard a theory that the slow southern accent was due to a hookworm outbreak. So maybe historically at least there was some validity in the assumption.
You have the theory reversed. It's that hookworms caused lethargy, which was perceived as laziness. As a result, the southern accent has become associated with laziness.
Personally, I think it's more related to negative opinions about the South following the Civil War, which is why even upper-class southern accents face the same stigma.
I'm not going to look up citations, but I will suggest that the South lagged behind the rest of the nation educationally and in other ways in part because much of the Civil War was fought on Southern turf and they burned Atlanta to the ground because it was an important manufacturing center that was probably way ahead of most Northern cities and it was keeping the Southern army resupplied. Burning Atlanta to the ground left behind a legacy of reduced infrastructure and the South was very bitter about it.
Unfortunately, I don't know the name of the book, which was very well documented, but I read a history of the Deep South at one time. It is unfortunate I can't remember the name because it documented something that flies in the face of what most people apparently believe about the Federal minimum wage law. This book asserted that it was an anti-racist policy intended to end the practice in the Deep South of paying Blacks half of what Whites made. Many Blacks were fired after it was passed because Southerners often were simply unwilling to pay Blacks "a White man's wage."
World War 2 was instrumental in making the Federal minimum wage law stick. Before that, it was proving to be a failed and unenforceable policy.
Up to half the population in the South is Black (it no doubt varies, but it is about half in the city I grew up in) and under slavery they were forbidden from learning to read and write. It was one of the ways they were controlled. So when you suddenly have something like half your population made up of freed slaves, most of whom are illiterate and who carry a lot of baggage about being forbidden from learning, yes, the area as a whole is going to lag behind the rest of the nation educationally. It will take a long time to start remedying such a deficit.
Many hot places have a reputation for being lackadaisical. In Mexico, they have a tradition of taking siestas -- naps -- during the hottest part of the day. In the Middle East, they have the expression "Only mad dogs and Englishman" to refer to who would be going about their business out of doors during the hottest part of the day.
The Deep South in the US is not only hot, it is also humid. I grew up in Georgia and I have lived in Southern California and Texas, among other places. When it is humid, you can't just drink more and sweat it out. It won't evaporate. It's like a sauna.
So the only thing that makes sense is to sit your ass down on the front porch in the shade in a rocking chair and make chit chat until it isn't so hot that doing stuff threatens to cause fainting. As a wild ass guess, this is the origin of the slow Southern drawl -- getting through the heat of the day without heat stroke, pre-AC, by slowing down and sitting a spell, during which time you didn't want to do anything too energetically, not even talk.
And then it is completely and totally normal for people to make associations that run both ways, where the Southern drawl becomes a signifier for poverty, lack of education, etc since those things were common there, though it really had nothing to do with inherent stupidity of the locals.
The South lagged considerably behind the rest of the union in education, and for that matter prosperity,before the Civil War: see de Tocqueville writing in the 1830s or Olmsted in the 1850s. Slavery did have something to do with the latter anyway.
This is just a thought from the other point of view - from a person with an accent: I tend to avoid people that avoid me because of my accent. Granted, English is my first language and Norwegian my second... but I never know what to think.
I'm sometimes difficult to understand. I know this and I'm working on it. I do switch to English if the other person understands it (It is very common, even if they have trouble speaking). I can carry on basic conversations, though sometimes I get lost with new vocabulary or am simply not fast enough to join in. I can work basic jobs with patient folks. I slowly reading adult novels. But when people avoid me for not speaking well enough, I can't tell if it is because I'm having a bad day with the language or if the person is an asshole.
Nearly everyone I speak to in English has an accent. I've one friend here that is a native English speaker, but even then our accents are different - him being British and me American. However, I also know that if you expose yourself to accents more often, they become easier to understand. This is where the lazyness comes in, I'm sure, but heck. I'd personally rather not be the asshole.
I'm just honestly representing my subconscious reaction to not understanding people easily at times. Perhaps I should put more effort into it for more people. I definitely have plenty of relationships with non-native speakers. It just takes more time for me to acclimate to them, and therefore there is a greater cost to doing so.
I grew up bilingual outside the US, and speak English with a hybrid British/Indian/Middle Eastern accent (with some of my personal quirks, and mixing increasing amounts of Californian over time). I can understand English in nearly any accent (Singaporean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Nigerian) as long as the words involved are globally used and the grammar is passably queen's. Especially after hearing it for about an hour. And people who natively speak English with these various accents usually can understand my English better than they can an average American accent. Yet in this country, my accent is mocked, despite being perfectly understood and more versatile. Even by others who don't speak with the American accent!
This is the problem of the "default accent" anywhere being referred to as "no accent", and therefore anything deviating is considered "having an accent". This makes "accent" a negative trait, scaling from 0-bad to heavy-bad. But if the vernacular were such that we said "American accent" instead of "no accent", then noone's accent is bad, just not used to.
This isn't directed at parent in particular, but just voicing a pet peeve:
It's extremely offensive to imply someone's command of a language is bad just because you aren't familiar with their accent. Most of my non-American peers who were raised on English have a better command of the language than my American ones, yet they are mocked for their accents as if they don't know the language, when in reality it's the Americans lack of familiarity with the language (as its used globally) preventing them from comprehending the language.
So yes, put in more work, the world is shrinking and English is the global language. What you're saying is spoken from a position of privilege because the culture allows you to mock others' accents rather than the other way around.
Remember, every time you hear English with an accent other than British, American or Australian, it usually means the speaker knows at least one entire other language as well, probably one that you would sound like an idiot if you tried to speak it. Don't be rude or dismissive of their intelligence.
I have to agree with this assessment. My accent is actually quite neutral and while traveling outside of USA, it's easily understood by local people in comparison to accent from USA, Australia or England.
This summer I was traveling in Balkan countries with an American friend from USA, and people had hard time understanding him. I had to chime in lot of time to explain what he is asking for. Also, there were certain words which I think are very specific to American English, but not used outside of USA e.g. crosswalks instead of zebra crossing. This also makes it bit more difficult to understand American accent for those who don't watch lot of American TV shows or movies.
Thank you for your comment. I too have that pet peeve, and I'm glad you voiced it. Just to give you some personal context, I'm a dual citizen between the UK and America, so I've had an interesting relationship to various understandings of the "default accent". I've been told that my pronunciations and word choices are too American or too British in different contexts. I think the important thing to realize is that there is a barrier to understanding that needs to be overcome, and I'm not saying that one side is more responsible than the other for overcoming that barrier. All I was trying to give voice to was my genuine inner process for better or worse. I'm not saying it's right, just that I've gotten by in this way for the reasons stated.
This is in fact directly stated and addressed in the article:
>It’s certainly true that a marked accent can get in the way of making yourself understood. E.S.L. learners and others are well advised to work on their pronunciation. As a teacher, I do try to lead my students toward some version of that flawed ideal, the native accent. ... My point is not that we need to forget the aim of easily comprehensible communication — obviously, that remains the goal. But we do need to set aside the illusion that there is a single true and authentic way to speak.
Yes, but given the context of the article, this did not seem to be an adequate representation of the other side. There is more to it than the idea of "a single true and authentic way to speak". I would say that a better way to frame it is "an organic coalescence into normative standards for better cooperation".
Did you try to learn another language?
I found that people who learnt another language are less conservative on their native language and make effort to speak slowly etc.
Generally speaking they are more open-minded when they travel abroad.
For the US it's the accent located in the population center of the country, of course. A little south of Kansas city on the Missouri side of the river.
I would say that it's a nebulous and organic process that settles into particular pronunciations. One thing a lot of people don't realize is that the British accent is actually considerably more divergent from the one that was common to America and England in 1600 (I can't seem to find the source right now, but will edit if/when I do). I'm not saying that it's right, just that it happens and that there are valid reasons for it happening.
So the same accent as Malcolm Turnbull, Jacinta Ardern, The Queen, Donald Trump, Leo Varadkar, my Polish GP, my Italian dentist, Elon Musk, Alan Sugar and Duncan Bannatyne.
I completely agree. Current AI is excellent (or at least super-human) at learning to do anything where the mechanics of the situation are clear and where the measurement of success is well defined. Beyond that, I'm not sure we've made any convincing strides towards anything truly general.
While I sort of intuitively agree with you, I think there's a certain amount of circularity in the argument - any problem will seem to have well defined metrics once you've built and studied a machine which can solve it.
In the sixties, chess was thought to be a problem that required intelligence since it couldn't be brute-forced. We now have machines which can play it well, without brute-forcing, and yet it's seen as entirely procedural.
AI people thought chess was a problem that required intelligence. Critics back in the 60s such as Dreyfus probably didn't view chess as the hallmark of intelligence.
As for style transfer, that is a very specific skill of making the patterns of one style map to the patterns of another. I am not particularly well versed with art, but that process seems well defined to me.
Perhaps your issue is with my more generalized definition of "clear" and "well-defined". I meant to use these terms to distinguish between autonomous driving and being a successful human. I really don't think there is anywhere close to a consensus on the latter. To the extent that there is, then yes, AI should be able to do it.
The IPA is nowhere close to sufficient for realistic speech synthesis, and style transfer is not just copy and paste. By the same token writing poetry is just "putting words into grammatical constructions that have certain patterns" or mathematics research is just "a form of proof search".
Of course we don't have human-level AI right now, but if that's the only thing you're claiming it's pretty vacuous.
I would say speech synthesis is governed by clear mechanics - and it's not the IPA, it's that the output comes out as a waveform, which has a structure that informs the algorithm.
Note that we have great raster-based deep visual effects, but vector is... not there yet (not saying it won't be) - vector is less structured than raster, so the choice of algorithm is less obvious.
As for well-defined criteria, I don't think that's really quite the right standard, I think the correct standard is that there is a way of metrizing success on a well-ordered set (like the [0,1] interval), even if it's noisy.
I fiddled with an idea where I wrote unit tests and used them for a scoring function to train a model. Writing the number of tests and encoding the logic for a simple Linked List took orders of magnitude more code than coding the list itself.
