Dawkins doesn't know what consciousness is. He doesn't know what it is because nobody knows what it is. We can't measure it. We can't even detect it, except in onesself. Any claim, by anyone, that someone or something other than themselves is conscious is based entirely on inference or faith.
I'm using the terms consciousness and conscious in the "hard problem" sense here.
Aviation has stricter laws when it comes to customers. I don't have citations off the top of my head but it's not a normal customer-business relationship.
Drones are already regulated. You aren't allowed to fly higher than 400' AGL without ATC authorization, an altitude chosen because it has special significance in the National Airspace System. Nor are you allowed to fly in the vicinity of an airport without authorization.
This particular restriction we're talking about was completely unjustifiable. But the regs exist, and they aren't just made up nonsense. They're the result of systems engineering and a real risk management process.
The need for belonging is also really powerful, and companies actively try to fulfill that need. Not, generally speaking, for nefarious purposes, but because people do better work when they feel a sense of belonging.
If you decide that your work is against your values, you're also deciding to separate yourself from the group, even if you don't actually leave the company. That's painful. It's not an excuse, but it is a powerful motivator.
Something I've observed as someone who works in the physical sciences and used to work as a software engineer is:
Very few software engineers understand that tolerances are fundamental.
In the physical sciences, strict equality - of actual quantities, not variables in equations - is almost never a thing. Even though an equation might show that two theoretical quantities are exactly equal, the practical fact is that every quantity begins life as a measurement, and measurements have inherent uncertainty.
Even in design work, nothing is exact. It's simply not possible. A resistor's value is subject to manufacturing tolerances, will vary with temperature, and can drift as it ages. A mechanical part will also have manufacturing tolerance, and changes size and shape with temperature, applied forces, and wear. So even if a spec sheet states an exact number, the heading or notes will tell you that this is a nominal value under specific conditions. (Those conditions are also impossible to achieve and maintain exactly for all the same reasons.)
Even the voltages that represent 0 and 1 inside a computer aren't exact. Digital parts like CPUs, GPUs, RAM, etc. specify low and high thresholds, under or over which a voltage is considered a 0 or 1.
Floating-point numbers have uses outside the physical sciences, so there's no one-size-fits-all approach to using them correctly. But if you are writing code that deals with physical quantities, making equality comparisons is almost always going to be wrong even if floating-point numbers had infinite precision and no rounding error. Physical quantities simply can't be used that way.
I hope Adobe dies and becomes a warning to others - sorry, a "case study" - that is taken seriously. I adored Photoshop, starting with version 3, and watched in horror as Adobe stripped itself for parts. The damage is done, but hopefully we can still get some good out of this if it makes other companies realize that abandoning your users is a death sentence.
I’m sure the 40 years of people utilizing Adobe as an investment vehicle to make money would definitely be a warning to all the other upstarts who hope to completely monopolize an industry for four decades.
Airlines and aircraft manufacturers are already heavily incentivized to be fuel efficient. It's the most expensive part of a flight. (Sometimes crew salaries are more expensive but not by much.)
The difference here is between incremental improvements using incremental funding and glacier-speed if any of regulatory framework evolution vs. crisis situation changing calculus and providing option for large funding for the previously perceived far-off alternatives as well as jolts to change regulatory frameworks. And i'm not talking just about airplanes.
I'm using the terms consciousness and conscious in the "hard problem" sense here.
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