Some Hopeful Predictions for 2018 (nbcnews.com) 75
NBC asked 15 "top science and tech leaders" for their predictions for 2018. Despite arguments that technology has "created a monster," one anonymous reader sees their answers as a reason for hope:
NBC notes the detection of gravitational waves in 2017 (predicted almost a century ago by Einstein) and the creation of genetically modified human embryos. And a professor of molecular medicine at The Scripps Research Institute points out that in 2018, more than 10 different medical conditions are now also moving forward in gene-editing clinical trials, including rare eye diseases, hemophilia, and sickle cell anemia. He predicts that in 2018, deep machine learning "will start to take hold in the clinic, first in ways to improve diagnostic accuracy and efficiency of doctors' workflow."
Former ICANN head Esther Dyson predicts we'll also begin using big data not only to reduce healthcare costs, but also social problems like unemployment, depression, and crime. "With big data, and more data available through everything from health records and fitness apps to public data such as high school graduation rates and population demographics, we are increasingly able to compare what happens with what would have happened without a particular intervention...with luck, some communities will lead by example, and policy-makers will take note."
The head of the atmospheric science program at the University of Georgia notes that already, "We now have technology in place to provide significant lead time for landfalling hurricanes, potentially tornadic storms, and multi-day flood events." And Dr. Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, predicts that in 2018 "it's possible that a replacement for Pluto will be found," while an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History adds that in 2018 the European Space Agency's Gaia Mission will determine "distances to over a billion stars and velocities for several million," creating "an exquisitely detailed 3D map of our home galaxy."
Former ICANN head Esther Dyson predicts we'll also begin using big data not only to reduce healthcare costs, but also social problems like unemployment, depression, and crime. "With big data, and more data available through everything from health records and fitness apps to public data such as high school graduation rates and population demographics, we are increasingly able to compare what happens with what would have happened without a particular intervention...with luck, some communities will lead by example, and policy-makers will take note."
The head of the atmospheric science program at the University of Georgia notes that already, "We now have technology in place to provide significant lead time for landfalling hurricanes, potentially tornadic storms, and multi-day flood events." And Dr. Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, predicts that in 2018 "it's possible that a replacement for Pluto will be found," while an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History adds that in 2018 the European Space Agency's Gaia Mission will determine "distances to over a billion stars and velocities for several million," creating "an exquisitely detailed 3D map of our home galaxy."
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You may be disappointed...
But actually open ended discussion articles like this often produce some of the best comments.
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"With big data, and more data available through everything from health records and fitness apps to public data such as high school graduation rates and population demographics, we are increasingly able to compare what happens with what would have happened without a particular intervention...with luck, some communities will lead by example, and policy-makers will take note."
Or we could take this data, selectively pull out what supports our political beliefs, to reinforce them and tell others they are wrong.
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Or we could take this data, selectively pull out what supports our political beliefs, to reinforce them and tell others they are wrong.
That's not an either/or proposition. People have been doing that shit since the beginning of time because some people suck. Other smarter, decent people have used data to improve the human condition despite the best efforts of the former.
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There is a profession and study call DEMOGRAPHICS and Operations Research. All the answers were available decades ago, Life expectancy and cost externalization threw the model somewhat. Big data will not correct no jobs or income for the lowly skilled, because those jobs were exported to lower cost countries.
Politicians know what has to be done, know who to ask , but their only demographic they care about is election funding, lobbyist payback, and doing just enough to get reelected.
It has nothing to do with
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https://ntanet.org/NTJ/65/3/nt... [ntanet.org]
This paper examines the impact of tax rates on economic growth rate using panel data from Canadian provinces over the period 1977-2006. Our empirical analysis indicates that a higher CIT rate is associated with lower private investment and slower economic growth. However, the PIT rate does not affect the growth rate and investment once one controls for provincial fixed effects. Our empirical estimates suggest that a 1 percentage point cut in the CIT rate is related to 0.1-0.2 percentage point increase in the transitional growth rate.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/bu... [theatlantic.com]
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Hmm, the NYT and The Atlantic don't like tax cuts. Democrats don't like tax cuts. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, and not that the NYT and Atlantic are only reporting things that fit the Democrat agenda.
And if you look at the study they cite they're talking about personal taxes, not corporate taxes.
The study I linked to found this
The results in column (3) show that, as expected, the coefficient of CIT rate is negative and statistically significant. The magnitude of the coefficient is, however, higher than what we obtain in column (2). The coefficients of the personal income and sales tax rates are still statistically insignificant. The coefficient of the interaction term between the sales tax rate and the RSTdummy is still negative but statistically insignificant.
I.e. lower corporate taxes mean higher growth 'the coefficient of CIT rate is negative and statistically significant' . Interestingly they can't tell if that's the case or not fo
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The NYT and Atlantic were just reporting on a 65-year study from the Congressional Research Office (in 2012, Congress was controlled by Republicans).
That's not what history has shown. Th
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If I do some googling with Duck Duck Go I find
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=corp... [duckduckgo.com]
Trump's Council of Economic Advisers say it will boost growth by 3-5%, which means Trump will go down in history as the Next Reagan. But then, as Mandy Rice-Davies put it "Well, they would say that wouldn't they?"
http://uk.businessinsider.com/... [businessinsider.com]
Then there's this, another right wing think tank
https://www.americanactionforu... [americanactionforum.org]
The U.S. is mired in a slow economic recovery, and is projected to continue growing at about a 2 percent annual rate for the next 10 years.
The U.S. corporate tax is grossly out of step with the rates of its developed country competitors, and is the only nation to have increased its rate on net since 1988.
A large body of economic research has documented the anti-growth effects of the U.S. corporate tax, with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) concluding that it is the most harmful form of tax on per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Reducing the corporate tax rate would lead to higher investment, faster productivity growth, faster economic growth and higher wages, which would offer a higher standard of living for U.S. workers.
Here's the OECD paper.
https://www.oecd.org/officiald... [oecd.org]
This paper examines the relationship between tax structures and economic growth by entering indicators of the tax structure into a set of panel growth regressions for 21 OECD countries, in which both the accumulation of physical and human capital are accounted for. The results of the analysis suggest that income taxes are generally associated with lower economic growth than taxes on consumption and property. More precisely, the findings allow the establishment of a ranking of tax instruments with respect to their relationship to economic growth. Property taxes, and particularly recurrent taxes on immovable property, seem to be the most growth-friendly, followed by consumption taxes and then by personal income taxes. Corporate income taxes appear to have the most negative effect on GDP per capita. These findings suggest that a revenue-neutral growth-oriented tax reform would be to shift part of the revenue base towards recurrent property and consumption taxes and away from income taxes, especially corporate taxes. There is also evidence of a negative relationship between the progressivity of personal income taxes and growth. All of the results are robust to a number of different specifications, including controlling for other determinants of economic growth and instrumenting tax indicators.
Now the OECD report is credible.
And it doesn't re
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The Laffer Curve is a fraud. It's not real, as in it's nonsense.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/... [rationalwiki.org]
It is not true that the actual corporate tax rate in the US is higher than the other OECD countries. It's a canard, as in lie, as in bogus.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/... [cbpp.org]
Supply-siders love to talk about Laffer curves and "the highest corpo
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The Laffer curve is obviously true. Consider. If you have zero taxes you collect zero revenue. If you have 100% taxes you also collect zero revenue because people won't work for free. In between the two there's a curve where tax revenues increase up to some level and then begin to fall.
When Gordon Brown put the top personal tax rate up from 45% to 50% HMRC - the UK equivalent of the IRS - did a study of the 50% tax rate in the UK with Laffer curves in it.
http://webarchive.nationalarch... [nationalarchives.gov.uk]
Also if you percenta
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The Laffer Curve dead-enders have been refuted time and time again in economics studies. Your example of 0% vs 100% tax rates don't really bear out in real life. We've been hearing this quasi-religious dedication to supply-sideism since the 1970s and it just doesn't happen. It increases the wealth of the top fraction of a percent, and degrades the wealth of everyone below that.
http://economistsview.typepad.... [typepad.com]
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It increases the wealth of the top fraction of a percent, and degrades the wealth of everyone below that.
And yet, if you read the links I posted here
https://pastebin.com/JU3exgXL [pastebin.com]
That last ratio is (share of total taxes paid of richest decile)/(share of market income by richest decile). You can actually make an argument that the rich in the US - whi
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Dems don't like Tax Cuts? The Obama Tax Cut was larger than the one Trump just did but it was actually for the Middle Class unlike Trumps. So your post is Fake News.
It's funny how Republicans spew Fake News at everything when they are the ones spreading actual Fake News.
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Only a morally bankrupt person would find "hope" in genetically engineered human embryos. The world is a sick place in 2018. I guess natural law is out the window. Science is out of control and lacks even basic philosophy. When will science start asking if they "should" instead of asking if they "can?"
Hundreds if not thousands of years ago. Natural law... citation needed.
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We pretty much threw out natural selection and, to fix the problems that caused, it is now getting replaced with unnatural selection.
It is not science that is out of control. People are completely free to not use these fruits of science, but you will see that pretty much everyone will genetically improve their child if they get the change, even if they do not like the idea. Competition is a bitch.
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For Mengele, and the researchers who would use the blossoming gene editing technology to the detriment of humankind, the enemy of their goals is the dissemination of the newest discoveries. Much like nuclear age technology and weaponization, the only way to keep it potentially safe is to achieve a level of balance among competing and cooperating factions (nation-states).
Tribalism, our predisposition to conformity, and an innate distrust of those who are different are best overcome by balanced detente, at l
Re:Mengele would be happy (Score:4, Insightful)
No we haven't. We don't even have it now.
We have the ability to bring an abrupt end to modern civilization as we know it for every human being on the planet, and to render life on this planet far more harsh for the survivors for the next several generations, but we don't have the technology ability to end all of human existence ourselves.
The only thing that has any chance of doing that is either if technology which does not yet exist gets discovered, or if we get struck by a large enough chunk of rock that we don't currently know about.
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No we haven't. We don't even have it now.
Yeah we do. All we have to do is use nuclear demolitions to alter the orbit of a near earth asteroid. It doesn't have to be a big one, 10-20 miles across. I believe there is a big one swinging around in 2040 that should do it.
If we really wanted to get a gold star we could drop a bigger one and liquefy the crust of the planet. That would exterminate all life on earth right down to the deep bacteria.
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You are aware that one of those has already hit the earth, and it didn't wipe out all life. It exterminated many species, true... but none of the ones that it wiped out are anywhere nearly as adaptable as humans are. Humans on the far side of the planet from where the asteroid struck would still actually have a pretty good chance of survival as a spec
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I looked up the asteroid, 2011 AG5, and its only 140 meters wide. It would make a nice hole but would be far from the Armageddon level event that I thought it would.
But I'm still going to dis-agree with you. The Chicxulub event was only 10 to 15km across but it wipped out 75% of the critters on earth above a certain body weight. We naked apes are well inside that body weight.
Altering the orbit of a body doesn't take much. You ether have to change is energy or its mass. Technically we have changed t
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None of which had anywhere even close to the versatile adaptability of human beings, largely attributable to our large brains rather than physiological characteristics.
A large enough object colliding with earth could indeed to correspondingly more damage, but then you are again, looking at technology that is either not currently available, o
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I know it! The nerve of these clowns to attempt to eliminate things like hemophilia and sickle-cell anemia. It's God's will!
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that is not the only thing that will be engineered, don't be naive.
how about designer babies, tall, blond haired and blue eyed and white skinned, because that's who gets ahead?
how about a bred warrior caste, with strength and the psychology to follow orders without question?
how about a bred corporate cube farm droid worker?
how about infertile males, the same as mosquitoes in malaria reducing experiments, to make the undesirable minorities fade away?
etc. etc.
someone will do these things, they will be done.
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I don't expect your dystopic scenario to happen in the near future.
The first reason is technical. Fixing diseases is the easiest thing we can do with gene editing. Healthy individuals are much harder to deal with because you not only have to edit in the desirable trait but also keep the rest healthy. And it is even harder with general traits like strength and behavior since there is no specific gene for these.
The second reason is that we don't need gene editing for creating "castes". Selective breeding is v
Re: Here's one (Score:1)
Two guilty pleas unrelated to the issue that the fishing expedition supposedly set out to investigate.
It's almost like the Starr Show, where all they ended up pinning on Clinton was perjury and sexual harassment in the workplace.
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The engine elections this year will turn even more of his own party and people against him. Hopefully it will be the tipping point.
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Engine elections? Ellis Juan for Powerplant! :-P
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If you think anyone actually meant 'you', personally, rather than the general 'you' of TDS sufferers,
Stopped reading here.
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You might follow up your news stories with the retractions. The "before the hacks went public" turned out to be a wrong date (they were AFTER they went public).
I'm aware there were some erroneous stories earlier in the year about Trump's campaign having info before the public leaks, but I'm talking about this story from the last 48 hours:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1... [nytimes.com]
Good luck with the false equivalence defense though.
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Clinton's emails on her illegal server were discovered in 2015. So someone commenting that the Russians had thousands of Clinton's emails was NOT news in 2016.
That's like saying that your house was known to be left unlocked in 2015, so me commenting that my buddy had a copy of your tax returns was not news in 2016...even if they were only posted online a month later. If he said that the Russians had emails just because it was public knowledge that Clinton's server was vulnerable, that's speculation. Not the sort of statement that leads to a guilty plea.
Remember, the hack you are trying to refer to was a hack of the DNC/John Podesta, NOT Hillary Clinton. It couldn't have been the source for "thousands of emails" from Clinton.
Yes, and as such you are undermining your previous argument - how is Hillary's server relevant? The fact is that
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I think you are being blinded by your desires to political reality.
For Trump to be impeached the House, which is dominated by Republicans, would need to vote a bill of impeachment. For the impeachment to be executed the Senate, which is also dominated by Republicans, would need to vote for a conviction.
Despite what it says in the constitution about grounds, political reality is that the House can impeach on any grounds that it finds suitable, and the Senate can convict if it feels like it.
So far, no presid
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In 2018 I expect the Republican majority in the House will be massively flipped and the Senate will be weakened. If enough Senate Republicans are willing to turn on Trump, which they very well might be after witnessing the ruinous political backlash he'll cause (especially now that their tax "reform" has passed), there will be no political impediments to his impeachment.
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That's...a frighteningly good argument.
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You're correct.
And since they got their tax cut - (and Trump's co-operation in Judicial nominees), he serves the GOP agenda well enough.
I also expect the newsmedia to blandly fall in-line behind Trump in the next year or so, and while there will be vigorous dissent among voters, that dissent will be largely invisible, to the extent it can be made so, via mass-media, and social media manipulation. Dissenters who go outside of these systems to be heard, are probably going to be dealt with, in the way they're
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Fortunately truthful reporting on Trump is quite profitable, so I don't think it will stop. In fact it's a good opportunity for brands to get some much needed patronage, as until recently mere factual reporting wasn't a cause by itself.
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It would come down to who the army was loyal to.
In the end, everything comes down to who the army is loyal to.
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It'll enable the them to increase their premiums though. Possibly even deny them coverage (only after a claim is made, of course) because 'self inflicted'.
But it's not more profitable.
They'll finally reveal (Score:3)
the Alien spaceships they've been hiding all the decades.
If not that, 2018 will show a trickle of news-stories that will help sink in the notion to the general public that there's something out there, but as long as there's stuff on Netflix and breakfast-TV, people can carry on...
Why do you think there's been this recent surge of superhero films?
In 2001, when "24" showed a black POTUS, I read a story where somebody was quoted with the sentence "The American public can only imagine what they already saw on TV".
They could only elect a black president because they saw it on TV.
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24 also predicted a woman president after a black president. Unfortunately, that did not happen.
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It was close, though. At least, from a number of votes point of view.
The problem was Hillary being Obama's side-gig for a while and messing up too much at that job and then having that aura of being entitled to the presidency, like it's some sort of throne and she's the heir. That doesn't run too well with the general public not in the US and not so much elsewhere.
You can be a heir - but then you have to have a spotless job-record.
Also, the makers probably underestimated the divide between large cities and
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If we had alien space ships, Trumps would have spilled the beans in the first month. If people had hid it from him, by now they would have been replaced with people that would not spill the beans.
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Yeah, no (Score:2)
I have little hope for 2018. Tech advances aren't going to solve the major issues we have, and the increasing prevalence of things like Big Data are likely to make them even worse.