I'm gonna lean on another commenter who made me realise the legitimate reasoning behind something like this (disregarding the fact that two years is absurdly high): If we permit anyone to do whatever "cleaning" they themselves deem reasonable without approval, we risk that unknowledgable people with good intentions cause serious damage. One reason could be that they create an acute flood risk (you're right: garbage shouldn't be flood protection, but the actual flood protection is built around existing circumstances, and if removing the garbage causes a major risk to people losing their homes, the correct approach is to first prepare the flood protection, then remove the garbage). Another is that people can unknowingly or unintentionally destroy habitats or otherwise damage the environment.

The point is: We have some very competent people that are capable of assessing the impact of various cleaning operations. We need to let those people do their job. There can be very complex interactions in play, that turn your good intentions into catastrophic consequences. Therefore, we cannot allow laymen to judge how large cleaning operations should be conducted.

Full disclaimer: While I think the above reasoning is sound, I think we should be very careful regarding how unauthorised cleaning operations are punished. For example, it seems absurd to me to give jail time for it. When the person in question is obviously acting with good intentions, it's much more reasonable to sentence them to take some course where they can learn about why what they were doing was potentially harmful, and perhaps sentence them to community service working on some authorised project. That way, you help them learn, let them work on something they want to contribute to, and get more resources for the authorised projects.

Well if the counter doesn't reset (because the genie exists outside of time and therefore grants all the wishes "simultaneously" from its own perspective) we definitely get a problem, because granting 3 makes it impossible for 3 to be granted, and we get the paradox implied by the comic

1. Do the opposite of next
2. Do not grant 3
3. Ignore 1

If you grant 1 and 2, then you cannot grant 3 (since 3 implies not granting 1). If you grant 3, then 2 cannot be granted (since it implies not granting 3). This is the simple form of the paradox.

But you said the counter didn't reset? If it grants 2 in the "second loop", that implies 1 was granted (since we didn't invert 2), but you can't grant 2 (uninverted) and also grant 1.

If you're operating with a time-loop recursion, you run into the problem of my initial comment. If you try to grant all three wishes simultaneously, you run into the obvious contradiction. The only way you get out is if you allow a time-loop recursion, but for some reason count the ignored guess as a granted guess in the inner loop(s).

You could argue that there is though, since the genie will grant three wishes. In that case, it operates like

granted_wishes = 0
while granted_wishes < 3:
    wish = receive_wish()
    granted = grant_wish(wish)  # True if wish is granted, false otherwise (invalid wish etc)
    if granted:
        granted_wishes += 1

So we get

1. Do opposite of next -> granted_wishes = 1
2. Complete 3 -> granted_wishes = 2
3. Ignore 1 -> Enter time loop (recurse)

-inner loop-

1. Do opposite of next (ignored due to outer loop) -> granted_wishes = 0
2. Ignore 3 -> granted_wishes = 1
3. Ignore 1 -> enter time loop (recurse)

-inner loop 2-

1. Do opposite of next (ignored due to outer loop) -> granted_wishes = 0
2. Ignore 3 -> granted_wishes = 1
3. Ignore 1 -> enter time loop (recurse)

.... etc.

We get an infinite time-loop recursion, because we never reach the third guess in the inner loops.

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. You can confirm the structural integrity of the wings with a rather simple visual inspection. Same goes for the windows and landing gear.

Try confirming the integrity of (tens- or hundreds of) thousands of lines of code with a similar kind of inspection...

The shitshow that is the IDF aside, 19 year olds are perfectly capable of being soldiers. Call me old-fashioned, but I honestly believe that being an adult with rights (e.g. to vote) in a democratic society also implies obligations to that society, and that the two (rights and obligations) should follow each other.

To be clear, what I mean is this: I live in a society that provides me with a solid social safety net, as well as a right to protection if shit hits the fan. I then think it's reasonable that I'm obliged to contribute to that safety net for others (in the form of taxes or community service), and protection (in the form of military service if shit hits the fan). Basically, it's an "all for one, one for all" mentality. We're all better off standing together, which means that we all take care of each other (via taxes etc.) in peacetime, and protect each other (in the form of military service) if necessary.

Since I believe that these rights and obligations should be balanced, I think it's reasonable that an 18 year old (which has all the rights of any other adult in my country) carries the same obligation as everyone else. It would be unfair if, say, 18-26 year olds got all the rights but none (or fewer of) the obligations. That immediately also opens the door to the question of which groups should bear the burden of the obligations, and which groups get only the rights.

Full disclaimer: I think the IDF deserves to be burnt to the ground. I also think (in general) that invading another country is, almost^1^ without exception, abhorrent.

^1^The exception being when you invade a country in defence of another country that has already been attacked, like when the UK attacked Germany in WWII, in defence of Poland, France, etc. without having been attacked themselves first.

Still plenty more food for the drones!

Because even though specifically your father chooses to follow the law, there is effectively no enforcement mechanism to prevent him from breaking it. It's not illegal for me to loudly announce the next stop on the bus, but I still abstain from doing it because I'm not an obnoxious asshole. Your father obeying the speed limit can be seen in the same way (plus, of course, that he may have a decent sense of self-preservation).

Fact is, if a rich person like your father is in a rush, they can choose to say "fuck it, I don't have time for this", and go speeding. Of course, anyone can do that, but the potential fine can be a strong deterrent for others, while having no influence on the rich. If you're caught and the fine is incurred, the punishment that can be debilitating for most people is a less than minor inconvenience for the rich.

While I see what you're getting at, I still like this XKCD. I work as a developer, and have also worked in more "handy" fields. The thing with planes, elevators, and basically all other physical things is that they're limited by physics. A steel beam can't suddenly decide to spontaneously fail or disappear.

With code, that can feel pretty different. With experience, I've basically learned to assume that there is always some edge-case I haven't considered, that could trigger a bug. In a building, you can have redundant bolts, and over-dimensioned supports. A small mistake somewhere, a single missing bolt, won't cause a catastrophic failure. With code, it's different: A tiny, hard to notice mistake, can bring the whole think crashing down. Imagine if a plane could crash because the paint had a slightly non-uniform thickness...

Is it only me that just hates the idea of "marking" someone up-front, rather than deriving what you think of them from their actions? My point being that the way we interpret things should be "this thing is bad" -> "the person is bad", not the inverse "this person is marked as bad" -> "they said/did something" -> "that thing must be bad".

I feel like an extension like this is built around facilitating the latter: Judging the content or actions based on whether the sender is tagged as "good" or "bad", rather than looking at the words and actions themselves.

I had idiocracy on my list for a while. After watching it, I can confirm that it's easily one of the best movies ever made.

"By superheroine standards" is the key here. Going by how they're often depicted, I would say this could qualify as "pretty reasonable".

Oh absolutely, I think it's really important that we talk about flu-vaccines as more something that works on a population level (and that makes disease milder for the individual), than something that gives full protection to the individual. We need to talk about it is such a way that when the driveling idiots talk about an outbreak, we can point out that the outbreak would have effected 10x more people (and have higher lethality) if there weren't vaccines. We should never claim that these vaccines give full protection to any individual.

This is the issue you'll never get completely around with autonomous systems. A soldier can always figure something out, whether that is simply clearing their weapon, completely disassembling it to repair it, finding a new weapon on the battlefield or getting a buddies side-arm. An autonomous system will never be as versatile and capable of adapting to stuff breaking as a human soldier.

The major advantage with autonomous systems is that you can accept that they break and become dysfunctional in the field. You can always manufacture more, and none of your guys die when one of these fails.

With all that said, I would think you could get pretty far by just adding some arm that can slide back the bolt to clear/reload the weapon when you get a jam. Like 90+ % of the jams I experienced with the MG3 and HK416 were cleared by just doing that.

Same as the Covid vaccine: It makes it less likely that you'll catch it (though not bringing it down to 0%), and just as importantly, makes you less contagious if you do catch it.

The outbreak-stopping effect becomes strong when everyone is vaccinated. It doesn't prevent every individual from becoming infected, but it inhibits disease spread through the population.

Horses are social animals that enjoy being active. I don't know where animal cruelty was mentioned here?

"You have been deemed rich/important enough that we'll allow you to bribe us"

Let's be honest, that's what this is. It's rich people paying money to talk to those with political power. It's a method of ensuring that those with political power can get a crapload of money in exchange for "listening to the grievances" of a select few. It's an arrangement for connecting people with power and money more closely, while excluding the common masses from the rooms where decisions are made. It's... corruption.

I don't have a link for you, but I remember reading that the US+allies have used far more Patriot missiles over the past couple months than Ukraine has used over the past four years. Apparently, this was a major motivation behind Ukraine offering to send specialists to help intercept Shahed drones: They saw the massive waste of Patriot missiles and realised it would impact their ability to get ahold of more.

Meh.. it seems to me like authoritarian regimes are basically designed to promote yes-men and nepotism. The whole premise for an authoritarian regime is that your power is secured by being the strongest guy with a the strongest, most loyal friends. By design, an authoritarian leader can never inherently trust their subordinates, because they don't have any wide-reaching popular mandate to rule. That, combined with the fact that being the top dog is lucrative as fuck, means that only people the leader trusts are ever getting promoted to key positions.

You could also flip it: If an authoritarian leader constantly promotes people that oppose them to key positions, it's a matter of time before one of those people gains enough support to initiate a power struggle. If they lose, they're replaced, and if they win, you have a coup - rinse and repeat.

Basically, a functioning autocracy is incapable of having genuine opposition. It's more or less a part of the feature-set.