It should be illegal for anyone to request your credit history, in fact since I am against the structure of the current debt slavery banking system I am against the existence of any internetworked credit database for individual humans.

I’m also skeptical of anyone who favourable includes references to Freakonomics or anything by Jared Diamond. Both of these sources use methods so unsound and so uproven than I have a hard time accepting /any/ conclusions or assertions suggested by them.

Finally, the author seems to contradict himself in order to make his points. First, we are given a series of arguments for why certain safety changes are statistically undermined by the “natural” tendency for people to adopt riskier behaviour. He even cites the incredibly flawed “cyclists in in helmets and other gear are riskier than cyclists in their underwear” which is a complete farce (and better critiqued elsewhere.)

Then, only a few paragraphs later, suggests that you can’t do a certain kind of study “because the people who naturally wear seatbelts are more likely to be naturally cautious drivers.”

Well, which is it? Do safety changes make us more or less prone to risky behaviour? Just because drivers are more likely to wear seatbelts does not necessarily make them more cautious. Wearing seatbelts is the law, and refusing to wear them can lead to heavy fines and even points of your license. So you can be a prudent, but incautious driver even if you wear your seatbelts religiously.

There is a lot here, and the article is otherwise a reasonable discussion of changes in computer mediated industrial design that are sure to impact us at some point.

But, I’m a little surprised at how sloppy the overall tone is, given that the author’s aim seems to be to provide opinion with a healthy dose of rigour.

What will it mean when our computers know everything — every single fact, the entirety of human knowledge — but can only reason at the level of a cockroach?

It will mean that SkyNet is ready to launch the nukes…

Social types are the salespeople and CEOs, and the public interface of any organization. All marketing, legal, retail, and communications are dominated by social thinking. Of course people are better than machines, because machines are alien to the social thinker. Engineers, scientists, and mathematicians cloister themselves for the sake of their work, and see a hostile world every time they look up, so back to work they go.

When I was young, they explained unemployment with one word, ‘automation’ — great idea! Everyone does less tedious and repetitive work! Only in my twenties did I realise ‘automation’ was actually code for ‘chinese sweatshops’ which helped nobody except maybe Sam Walton.

Decent weak AI is heaven for a techie, useful for anyone with half a brain, and (as always) disastrous for those who don’t know how to use it or what it’s for. Case in point: Wikipedia.

So bring on the real automation and self-driving cars!

And it will run you over in a chrome-alloy mech to get what it wants.