Fast forward a few months, criminals are just wearing ski masks when they steal cars, and you’ve given up a significant amount of your privacy for absolutely zero benefit. Not a good plan, in my opinion.
I really don’t think the people breaking into cars can ever be spun into protagonists, of any story. Advocating for them harms the message of helping the downtrodden and treating them humanely, because it seems totally out of touch with the emotional impact of totally gratuitous property crime on its victims.
Wrong, if you're struggling to survive, "stealing" from the comfortable is absolutely morally right.
The fact that people are forced into such awful situations strengthens the message of helping the downtrodden: Everybody is entitled to the necessities of life, so as to never be placed in such a predicament.
A lot of those folks who are committing petty crimes aren’t downtrodden struggling to survive though. Many are junkies and a class of permanently homeless that refuse help/services and refuse to rejoin society. Why should law abiding citizens have to bear their costs?
>Why should law-abiding citizens have to bear their costs?
You seem to negate the fact that the costs are burdened by law-abiding citizens to have them in jail/prison, anyway.
Certainly, the costs of social structures for those people are far less than a for-profit system of incarceration; which, as it is currently structured, only benefits from a minimum volume of people being maintained in the incarceration system, itself?
You admit that there's different classes of people who commit the petty crimes, so that - in and of itself - demonstrates that each class would require specific redress for their situation.
Finally, since they are petty crimes, in and of themselves, wouldn't facial recognition be rough the equivalent of dropping a bomb on an ant hill? The scope of the effect far-outweighs the supposed benefits.
> You seem to negate the fact that the costs are burdened by law-abiding citizens to have them in jail/prison, anyway.
There is a cost yes, but the possibility of jail and all of its restrictions is also a big disincentive for would-be criminals. Right now, the ability of this subset of folks to live in SF on their own terms, appropriating public property, committing crimes, and not facing consequences, is a big incentive for them to become more brazen, and for others like them to come to SF to live that lifestyle (since they would face no consequences).
My point is that it isn't necessarily true that the same number would be jailed, and so the cost tradeoffs are unclear.
> Certainly, the costs of social structures for those people are far less than a for-profit system of incarceration
I'd need to see data on that. But I also think we could reduce the standards at jails to reduce costs further, if needed. And the additional benefit of containment has many benefits that confer utility on other citizens (not having to constantly be alert or think about the heightened risk of crime).
> Finally, since they are petty crimes, in and of themselves, wouldn't facial recognition be rough the equivalent of dropping a bomb on an ant hill? The scope of the effect far-outweighs the supposed benefits.
I feel like this is implicitly adopting a fallacious slippery slope argument. I'm talking about using facial recognition to more regularly identify/track/detain criminals. This would be accomplished by utilizing feeds from public spaces, where it is already legal to record, and simply being more efficient in the processing and analysis of those feeds, which humans already are able to access and view manually.
In the same way that our _existing_ police forces have not turned into some dystopian social negative, the addition of facial recognition to their tools is unlikely to turn into the same. I agree that there is a line that can be crossed, and we should be cognizant of that, but am just saying that I don't think we are there. In adopting facial recognition for local law enforcement, we wouldn't be changing the laws or expanding the legal rights that govern how police operate or removing the processes/avenues against police abuse. We're simply using an existing technology to make them more effective.
Not sure about breaking into cars specifically but the recent popular video where the former NASA engineer designed a device to film people stealing packages off of doorsteps seems to both confirm your statement about not being downtrodden but dispute the idea that thieves are homeless or junkies. Almost all of the people that he caught on film stealing in that video were normal looking middle class people that had cars, apartments, houses and didn’t seem to have any mental illness other than a complete lack of empathy for others.
It might be a struggle at some stage of addiction, where personal choice is less accessible. But at some earlier stage, it is a personal choice to experiment with hard drugs in the first place, and there is individual agency and responsibility associated with that choice.
Coddling addicts (by possibly excusing/overlooking any associated criminal actions) because it is a struggle in a later stage of addiction seems like a removal of the disincentives that keep people from going down that path in the first place. Also, I really am not for social support or a different (relaxed) enforcement of the law for addicts _above_ the protection of law-abiding citizens and their property.
So they have to wear the ski mask all the way to cover (a private place without cameras), increasing their vulnerable time (time they're easily recognizable as performing a criminal act). That sounds like a big security win.
I’ve never fallen out of love with coding, and I can’t imagine that happening. At its core, it’s logical problem solving, and that’s what I was born to do. I’ve DEFINITELY fallen out of love with companies, languages, platforms, etc. though. Perhaps it’s time for a change of some kind?
It’s unsurprising job-hopping is so common these days. Sometimes it’s the most practical way to get a long (granted, unpaid) vacation and come back to a raise and a new environment.
Who’s to say it’s a “glitch” and not a feature? What if this “glitch” provides greater resilience to climate change, and we edit out the very thing we need to keep eating despite our past mistakes? I would like to see a greater understanding of biology before stuff like this makes it out of the laboratory. Our species is a child playing with a box of matches.
My scary thought is if this dramatically increases the availability of food and the population rises. Then it fails later because it turns out that adaptation was to prevent some weird virus from destroying the plants...
In isolation, sure. How many of these little doses of toxins from hundreds of food additives does it take before the diet as a whole is toxic enough to have an adverse effect? Is anyone even watching the combinations found in typical diets?
...What future of humanity? Call me cynical, but we seem absolutely bound on wiping ourselves out one way or another. Our focus on money above all else is killing us all. We’re playing useless games, winning useless tokens, and spending them on useless prizes, all inside an arcade that’s on fire. Climate change, GMO foods, overpopulation, water pollution, nuclear war, ecosystem destruction, we’ll find a way eventually. Just a matter of time.
Listing all hard problems is a common trope/trend we see often these days with doomsayers. Is it an excuse to be a nihilist and not act on those problems ?
Not at all, and I did not intend to give that impression. But that “list of hard problems” contains things which are MORE LIKELY THAN NOT to kill us all. Climate change, in particular.
I don’t advise inaction. But I’d be a hypocrite if I said I’m personally doing anything to change it. I’m just trying to live my life and get by. Problem is, that’s EVERYONE.
So if we’re headed off a cliff, and nobody is grabbing the wheel... Where’s the hope? Why would humanity have a sudden change of heart, come together, solve our shared problems, and move forward with a plan that could actually prevent climate change? How would we get everyone to do that simultaneously?
Because if anyone can answer that question, they’ve just saved the world. And if nobody can...
The DNA doesn’t, no. But what does DNA do? For one thing, it contains instructions for constructing proteins. Proteins which you ingest with the DNA as part of the food. GMO foods have been shown to produce malformed proteins, and some of them appear to have harmful effects when eaten. And that just scratches the surface. https://responsibletechnology.org/gmo-education/health-risks...
That talking point has already been attempted by others. Using one term, genetic modification, for several completely different processes doesn’t hide the truth, it just confuses people.
And no, grafting entire sections of bacterial DNA into plant genomes absolutely does not happen in nature.
Please read the link, then get back to me with any actual scientifically founded refutations you may have. Citations are throughout the link, but I don’t see any from you!
Who has written 2 anti GMO books and made a movie about it. It’s a direct conflict of interest, there’s no point in reading what he writes because it’s obviously biased.
He’s not a scientist either and the Institute for Responsible Technology is just his personal blog.
No citations from you either. How about some peer-reviewed studies proving their long-term safety rather than ad hominem attacks on an author pointing out scientific studies proving actual harms? I’ll say it to you, too: Read the damn citations and get back to me with your own.
And now having written a book about a subject which you are knowledgeable about and writing about that subject online together form a “conflict of interest”? Sure, but trusting studies funded by the food industry stating food industry products are safe for consumption by the entire population with absolutely zero long-term safety studies is completely sensible.
