HN user
"But they don't; even moderately competitive players can beat the best bots."
That's because the programmers are bad at AI for that kind of game. It just means human beings don't understand how to make a good AI for a game like starcraft. AKA the human being being the idiot that doesn't understand how to make one.
The problem with "proofs" is that software is often an iterative process because the environment and problems are constantly changing. If you have a fixed known problem you can do proofs to your hearts content, but in a changing environment you make the most of it with limited resources.
All old games have good things and bad things about them. The great things about old games were the challenge. The bad thing about them was that the industry was still learning and hence many games won't age well in terms of some dimension because many lessons had yet to be learned.
"Let's be honest. Any mildly technical person knows that these kind of legal measures are technically impossible to enforce."
I'm sorry to tell you but you're wrong, videogame industry is a foretelling of where we'll be in years to come, stuff that is locked down on oneside of the internet and rented in perpetuity, that is the end game for our upper class.
Well considering what you've lost, I don't think you're really in a position to claim EFF is exaggerating considering the whole of copyright law has been corrupted and the industry has gotten its way every time over the last 200 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/...
This kind of empathy with others will make you much more effective when you're creating for people who are not like you.
Empathy has nothing to do with it, most people who use computers are stupid or if they are smart have irrational traits. Our ancient primate brain is easily fooled.
Apple's ipod was not technically superior to competing MP3 players. Steve jobs was not a genius, he was just taking advantage of the fact that people are stupid and into fashion.
The same thing applies for most things, take the videogame industry. Anyone who knows how a computer works and is not irrational knows DRM and locked down games are bad for games, the enlightened rational minority is outnumbered by the irrational majority. So corruption, appearances, crap products and the superficial rule.
If you have to resort to name-calling to make your point ... you're wrong. It's that simple.
Except when you're wrong, and you can actually look at research that demonstrates the bullshit people gullibly believe about their society is incorrect.
US distribution of wealth
"but they were fine with using brutal violence against anyone who didn't accept their doctrine of nonviolence -- especially those from different cultures, and followers of different religions (or different Protestant denominations; they were particularly cruel towards the Presbyterian Scotch-Irish). This is why they get under my skin."
If you don't defend your culture you'll go extinct, the same way you don't want to be contaminated by outside ideas an ways of life that you worked hard to protect. Hypocrisy isn't quite the word I think you'd want to use. People get violent because they passionately want to protect something from what they deem as evil. They can be misguided in that sense but, ultimately they do have a point - those who do not defend themselves find commitments to their principles/ways of life and doctrines waning and their communities will suffer death by mixing and mediocrity.
Think of it like cultural entropy, they are trying to resist things that corrode their way of life.
"I can't understand how people can still give governments the benefit of the doubt when they've been exposed as liars repeatedly for years."
Because reasoning doesn't work that way, and many people don't grow up in nice conditions. AKA the vast majority of people are poor and have hard lives, aka no time for research. You're on the internet, you are in the top percentage of wealthy people on the planet.
See the science on reasoning:
"This statement is so naive that it blows me away. As toomuchtodo said, there's a huge difference between n car accidents per year, and the equivalent damage done by a terrorist attack,"
Unfortunatley from a mathematical standpoint you are incorrect, from an irrational human standpoint you have a point however.
The human mind is much worse at reasoning and reality than anticipated, how you and others perceive the world is not as real as you'd like to think, thats the whole point of math and science:
"So, my question, what is this feeling? How does the brain recognize that it should have this feeling?"
If we take the idea seriously that the universe is unified and all knowledge is unified, then it would be safe to treat the universe as a single entity. AKA everything is related to everything else in a whole host of mundane and non mundane ways that human beings are not aware of given the limits on the human brain/body and the time and energy required to process that information. AKA all the truth is there (the universes structure and its relationships). Rather our mind is busy highlighting things that are interesting, it's just the brain buildings models and finding interesting links unconsciously and when its done we get an update. AKA most thinking is done all the time unconsciously without our awareness of it. See the science:
Universities have a responsibility to conduct human research ethically
which means little given the laws of nature, all that matters is what people end up doing and measuring that statistically. If statistically speaking most people aren't ethical then that's what we'll get. This whole idea that people are in control of their actions or have any freedom whatsoever given what we know about the laws of nature has to go.
US distribution of wealth