It's not that a random shuffling of songs doesn't sound random enough, it's that certain reasonable requirements besides randomness don't hold. For example, you'd not want hear the same track twice in a row, even though this is bound to happen in a strictly random shuffling.
Random shuffling of songs usually refers to a randomized ordering of a given set of songs, so the same song can’t occur twice in a row if the set only contains unique items. People don’t usually mean an independent random selection from the set each time.
If the list of songs is random shuffled, you can only hear the same song twice if there is a duplicate or if you've cycled through the whole list. That's why you shuffle lists instead of randomly selecting list elements.
>For example, you'd not want hear the same track twice in a row, even though this is bound to happen in a strictly random shuffling.
Why would it be? A random shuffling of a unique set remains a unique set.
It's only when "next song is picked at random each time from set" which you're bound to hear the same song twice, but that's not a random playlist shuffling (shuffling implies the new set is created at once).
Or when the set repeats, and the random order puts songs from the end of the first ordering of the set into the beginning of the second ordering of the set, so you quickly hear them twice.
You could think of it as wanting your desire to hear the song again build up to a sufficient level to make it worth a relisten, sort of how a bus driver might want potential passengers to accumulate at a bus stop before picking them up, and therefore delay arrival. Very plausible to me that a good music randomization would have similar statistics if you phrase it right.
> the humans involved don't want AGI, they want ASI
They are virtually synonymous. After all, a computer already exceeds human capabilities in some areas (for example, numeric computation). If (hypothetically, I don't believe this is possible) they would be able to achieve human-level performance in all other areas, they would already have achieved ASI as well.
Hope you see your dream realized. But know that that stillness is achievable through other activities as well. Most directly and deeply, through a meditation practice which is geared towards reaching those deep meditation states (called Jhanas in the Pali canon). My favorite guide on that particular path is Leigh Brasington.
Are you foretelling the dissolution of the British Empire which happened many decades ago? Are you saying Algeria will soon be free of French colonial rule? Is your middle name Nostradamus?
It isn't prophecy. The Harvard Belfer Center study (Thucydides's Trap) analyzed 16 cases in the last 500 years where a rising power challenged a ruling empire: 12 of them ended in war.
The UK is actually the perfect example of this danger. The British Empire didn't dissolve peacefully - it was effectively destroyed by WWI and WWII while trying to suppress a rising Germany.
The subsequent transfer of hegemony to the US was a rare statistical anomaly (a "special case" driven by shared culture and total British exhaustion), but the Empire’s fall itself was catastrophic.
The pattern is violence, not peace. And remember that other aspiring nations to maintain it's position as Empire actively acting to destabilize situation in other states. The reason is simple - it is easiest way to maintain their status.
Brexit for instance was a boon for everybody but UK and EU. There is clear data already about Russian intervention. Recent overt US intervention into ensuring UK remaining separate and EU becoming separate. Think about it.
Sure, but my point is that all that is in the past. The British Empire already fell, and so did all the other European colonial powers. These days, when I think of empire, countries like the US, China or Russia fit the bill much more than the EU, which is struggling to reach that level of integration and influence.
> These days, when I think of empire, countries like the US, China or Russia fit the bill much more than the EU, which is struggling to reach that level of integration and influence.
Of course! Especially because there is no unified army control.
But this requires giving more context. We can't forget that there are ways, especially ways made by empires, to force other nations to go to war not only as an ally but also to make them less relevant and take a hit also.
One of the main factors which makes this more probable, is what op mentioned, the raise of fascism and combatant militaristic attitudes exacerbated by the fact that their own nation / empire is a falling empire. And EU didn't fell yet, it is huge economy with more people than the US.
They probably didn't list any because estimating the upsides versus the downsides is what it's about, and that's very hard to quantify. Suggesting, like you seem to, that there are no upsides to the German economy whatsoever, is just not a serious argument so doesn't actually deserve a serious answer.
I wouldn't describe integrating further to the point of becoming more like the US as "unstable". And that's the most likely outcome, which should make the EU more trustworthy as a partner, not less.
I would argue that not only is it not the most likely outcome, but that it's practically impossible. When the colonies united they all spoke the same language and shared the same culture as the descendants of recent British colonists. Furthermore, they had just fought and won a war of independence together. The first presidential election was unanimous with every single electoral vote backing George Washington. Do you think an EU presidential election would play out like that?
Also, when the colonies united, the government they agreed on was by today's standards extremely small and decentralized and there was absolutely no welfare state. Revenue was mostly from tariffs on imports with zero income tax. Merging modern European governments would be a massive undertaking in comparison. And the wealth levels between countries are so lopsided that any such merger would mean massive transfer payments out of the rich countries to the poor. And what about tax rates? Low tax countries will not like this one bit. When the US colonies merged under the constitution, you could very truthfully go to the average citizen of any colony and say "basically you won't even notice any changes." Whereas for the EU, you have to say to the voters "your taxes will go up and we will now be sending $100 billion Euros per year to people in other countries."
Sure the contexts are different, and you can also look at the federalization of German states as yet another example with a different context, but not all of the factors are unfavorable. For example, the countries of the EU are already more integrated than the colonies were. Plus it's a very different time now, we've had the UN for a long time already, etc.
Also, I was surprised to learn how heterogenous the different regions of the US were from the very beginning, in origin, character and motivations. The Puritans, Quakers, Cavaliers, French nobles and traders etc.
Just re taxes: why would anything need to change on that front in the event of federalization of the EU? There already is a union, it already has money, money already flows from richer countries to poorer countries—what would federalization change?
And until the first entitlement programs during the New Deal it made no difference because it was entirely the poor state's problem. Only after the country had been a political union for over 150 years did they have any sort of welfare transfer program. If New Yorkers had been told in the late 1700s that joining the union would mean taxes coming out of their paycheck to send money to people in Georgia, they never would have joined.
I meet a lot of people do enjoy their nation's sovereignty especially as a shield from EU's poor and unpopular decisions that they don't get a vote in, and see the common currency and freedom of movement as just the right amount of integration. Making english an official language would be even better IMHO, but that's about it. I enjoy different countries having different politics and takes on topics, as it would be shit if all EU was a just a homogenous groupthink.
And I've never met anyone who thought the likes of Ursula and Kaja should be trusted with even more power and control over nations.
>I wouldn't describe integrating further to the point of becoming more like the US as "unstable".
More like the US, as-in a country? So also more like Germany, China, South Africa, etc. You are making a false equivalence - being like the US in one extremely non-US specific way does not mean you must be like the US in every other way.
I'm not sure you even understand what I'm saying - this has nothing to do with the US vs. the EU or if the US is reliable.
I was referring to the possibility of the EU becoming a federal union which acts like a country. Yes, like the US and Germany, but unlike China and of South Africa I don't know enough to say.
It doesnt have to be a federal union. Probably a logical step but I didn't prescribe it. Regardless, I dont see how it could persist in its current form through lots of conflict.
Yeah, there are already major opposition parties advocating EU exit in many countries already. Try to centralize further and their support will increase. Contrast that with the US when it unified. George Washington won the election 69-0 in the electoral college. And that's not even getting into any of the other massive problems with EU unification.
If that's what the US administration is aiming for, you'd expect them to bulk up higher education and scientific research, instead of dismantling them. And why won't relationships to other countries matter if we're to enter a terminal crisis period? Look at high-end chip production, it takes a lot of countries to make it all work: German lenses, in Dutch lithography machines employed by Taiwanese fabs, etc.
I never once said that this is what the US administration is aiming for; stop making assumptions. There are individuals in the administration who understand this, and there are individuals who only care about deporting immigrants or disrupting vaccine schedules. There is no unified administration in the United States.
So the US is basically running around like a headless chicken, causing chaos on the world stage, and you maintain that the left leg actually was aiming the correct way, if only the right leg would cooperate all would be well. Ok, got it.
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