Yes. Perhaps I should have been clearer. I was using Germany as an example of a nation where parties work together and there is generally a coalition running the country, rather than a single party, and I was using this as a rebuttal to @STT's point about divisions and fractures. I wasn't using it as an example of pure PR.

Regarding your point about FPTP removing fringe elements, I would argue that this it is actually FPTP that empowers extremists. If a single party is in power, then it is easy for factions within that party to take control, as we have seen in the UK: the ruling Conservative party used to be broadly split for/against on Europe, but Boris Johnson has purged the europhiles and turned it into quite an extreme party. If instead the government is a coalition of viewpoints, then this helps to remove extremism as any compromises will necessarily always push towards a more centrist position - example, a simple coalition of a left-of-centre party and a right-of-centre party - where will they find agreement?

There is a danger inherent to being the first to jump in. This suggests that you want to buy just because it is DeFi, rather than through a full assessment of the project, its aims, its strengths and weaknesses. FOMO isn't usually a great reason to buy in. I would advise not to jump in until you have completed the necessary research. This way you may lose a bit of profit if it's a good project, but you also save yourself the possibility of being a bagholder of something that will crash to $0.

I'm not sure that the government has absolute control. Russia looms large in all of this. They have been implicated in manipulation towards a pro-Brexit referendum outcome, and a pro-independence outcome in the Scottish referendum. Quite apart from their involvement with Trump in the US. The way that all of these election outcomes weaken various different opponents of Russia does highlight their influence. But I'm moving away from the point of the thread. Yes, Brexit weakens both the UK and the EU - although the UK more so.

Scarcity certainly has an effect, but there are other factors that contribute to scarcity as well as total supply. For example, a lot of ETH might be locked up for staking.
Beyond scarcity there is obviously also use case and adoption, which are and will continue to be huge drivers of price.

But currently so much of the price is based on speculation. This should become less of a factor as crypto enters the mainstream, and as volumes increase, such that eventually the 'price' of a coin more accurately reflects its actual worth... but we shall see.

The other way of looking at it is that it promotes cross-party working and removes some of the toxic factionalism that we see in less representative nations. A divided country is more the sort of thing we see when there are two possibilities that are in natural opposition to one another. Going beyond PR for a second, Germany is one of the best-run countries in Europe, but seems to always be run by a coalition with no single party in charge. Appreciate this is deviating from the topic somewhat as the thread is about the US, where two-party politics is firmly embedded.

It is certainly flawed, but then so are most other democracies. If a country were to move to a system whereby representatives accurately reflected votes, then we are talking about proportional representation. The reason that this doesn't tend to be implemented (thinking more about countries where there are more than two main political parties) is that, whilst it is fairer, it benefits smaller parties by removing the inbuilt advantage that the current system gives to larger parties. So the larger parties, i.e., those in power, reject the possibility whenever it is raised. Basically it's governments acting in self-interest rather than the interests of their citizens, which, as you indirectly pointed out, is not a new development.

Regarding any expectation of large upwards price movement in ETH or any other big coin... I think the biggest driver of prices in the near future will come from outside crypto. The pandemic is still raging, and the economic effects of the lockdown are not yet really being felt... that is all to come. Add to this that we are heading towards northern hemisphere winter, when the expectation is that cases will surge again, and new periods of lockdown cannot be ruled out. When the wider economy suffers, often the first thing people do is to lessen their exposure to risky assets - and crypto certainly falls into that category. I wouldn't be surprised if the coming economic stresses trigger some significant downwards price pressure in crypto.

For obvious problems and errors, yes. I'm talking more about the subtle decisions than can have a profound impact, such as the exams grades example - where the unfairness was only identified because it was a human-devised algorithm.

I think we need the ability to detect unfairness and bias. Racial profiling for example can be insidious, and difficult to determine. The more control over our lives that we grant to machine-based reasoning, the more we relinquish the ability to question that control. Again, I'm not a Luddite, I think that ML can bring us huge benefits. It's just that I'm also a fan of transparency and accountability.
You have made a series of valid points, yet I'm not entirely convinced.

It's more my poor sense of humour than anything else. Typically when I make a joke IRL, no-one laughs or even acknowledges it. I then explain that I've made a joke, and explain why it is funny. This is followed by a couple of seconds of slightly tense silence, before someone changes the subject.

ETH's recent rise has been caused by two things, expectation of the move to 2.0, and a lot of FOMO about DeFi. The key contributor to price volatility here is the FOMO. It's reminiscent of the ICO craze of 2017. Whilst this does mean that prices can rise dramatically, it also means that any negative DeFi news can cause a dramatic drop, too. That's what's happened here. Long-term, ETH still looks great, and DeFi certainly has a lot of potential. But we must remember that sudden large price increases are often followed by equally dramatic pullbacks.

I don't know. I want to be convinced, but there's an argument that we don't and can't know whether these ML debuggers are fair. We get into a 'who watches the watchmen'* kind of argument. If we are saying that the way to understand ML 'thought' patterns is to use more ML, I don't think it's the answer. I appreciate that this sort of thing will be used, but I can't see that it will open the black box and make everything understandable to us.


*I didn't, but then I'm not a fan of superhero movies. The X-Men ones were okay, but steadily deteriorated as the sequels progressed. And I have no idea how Kamala became Sansa Stark. A question for a different thread.

I would say that it's not, really.

For the pro-Brexit politicians of the Tory right-wing (Johnson's yes-men), it's about removing that inconvenient EU legislation that amongst other things protects workers' rights. These politicans pursue an ideal of unfettered capitalism, where there is no state stepping in to enforce a modicum of fairness or transparency. The aim is that the poor and downtrodden remain perpetually in that state, whilst the established elite beome further entrenched and continue to enjoy the profits of everyone else's labour.

For many (but not all) of the people who voted for it, they have been inculcated over decades with a false belief that the reason they are poor is because foreign people are entering the country and taking all the jobs and reducing everyone's standard of living. It's simple political sleight-of-hand to appeal to people's base prejudices. Add some flag-waving jingoism and refer back to the (lost) days of Empire... and you have what turned out to be a vote winner. Modern politics demonstrates over and over again how simple it is to get people to vote against their own best interests.

Glad the article was useful

Their aim with this safety car change is to increase excitement in the races. The current rules and tyres were supposed to allow easier overtaking, but it didn't work out like that. 2022 is a reset, and the changes coming then should lead to a more level field, more overtaking and more exciting racing - I have faith that Ross Brawn knows what he's doing, given his hugely impressive record.

But for this season and next, due to the limitations on development due to the pandemic, we are stuck with the current cars... and unfortunately a Mercedes that is vastly better than the other cars. Even Hamilton has said that if were a fan rather than a driver, he'd probably only watch the highlights rather than full races. So the result is that the FIA are trying everything they can to increase the excitement. They are considering reverse-grids as an option (although Mercedes for obvious reasons are strongly against this). And the thing with the safety car in the last race is more of the same... it shows how desperate they are to keep the races interesting and ad an element of uncertainty. It's a difficult position.

The vouchers are still money, it's still a manifestation of value, just by a different name.
If you're suggesting that controls be put in place to decide what the vouchers can be spent on, then you're just going to create a huge black market economy and with it massive exploitation of the poor and vulnerable, which would undermine your point about everyone getting an equal amount.

An example to consider here would be the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the privatisation-by-voucher of state utilities and other enterprises. The aim was that everyone got a fair share. The outcome was very different, and led to the rise of the oligarchs, and a dramatic concentration of wealth and power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia

I'm not sure of your reasoning, but I agree that the British pound is going to struggle. This is partially because of the UK government's poor response to the pandemic, but also because of Brexit and the government's mismanagement of the transition. Voluntarily cutting yourself off from your biggest trading partner doesn't seem like a brilliant strategic move at the best of times, but couple this with the pandemic, and then add in the UK's current attempts to disregard parts of the withdrawal agreement that they've already signed up to... and the whole thing looks like a real mess.

It did initially look like it was Bottas' fault - even if it was within the rules and perfectly acceptable strategy... however, after the race both Hamilton and Albon (as well as Bottas) said the fault lay with the safety car not letting the drivers start racing until the very last minute. Apparently this has been a trend recently, although I was not aware of it until I read the article:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/54141953

Safe bets are those where you are guaranteed to win. AFAIK these exist only in certain circumstances such as free introductory offers, where you can take up multiple free offers and bet both sides in a two-way contest.

If we are talking about increasing your chances of winning, this is all determined by you being able to predict more accurate odds than the bookmaker can, and for your calculation to more than offset the house edge.

As a simple example, if a bookmaker offers 5/1 on team A winning, then they are basing this on a calculation that the reality is 6/1, and then adding their own percentage gain so that they make profit. What you need to do is to find something like this where your calculation of team A winning is better than 5/1. Basically it's not enough to simply predict better than the bookmaker does, you have to predict sufficiently better than you also overcome their edge... a bit like overcoming the bid/ask spread in crypto trading.

I'm not convinced by this argument. The point with AG Zero is that it learnt by itself; there was no strategy input from human Go experts, and indeed no interaction with human Go matches at all. AG Zero learnt by itself, and strategised by itself, and was able to trounce humans and 'human taught' AI, and indeed ML AI that had human Go matches as a primer (previous iterations of the AG machine). AG Zero determines success/failure probabilities that humans can't process.

In response to this, and as a mild qualifier to my response to c_atlas's point, I'd argue that yes, we can to an extent, and in certain simple situations. But if we are talking about complex neural nets, and taking AG Zero as an example of where the technology is headed, I'd say this isn't always the case now, and most certainly won't be the case in the future. Taking the point to an absurd extreme, if we consider the eventual aim of sentient AI, then there's no way that humans have the ability to simply debug it. I do think that the 'black box' problem of ML is real.

I think those of us (myself included) who have applied but not been accepted are technically still under consideration for the final two spots... but they are also waiting for some more applications before a final decision is reached. So no need for us to apply again (although please correct me if this is wrong).

That is extremely impressive, and gives us all something to aspire to. I'm only managing about 1/4 of that rate!

I'm strongly in favour of machine learning, and have dabbled in it myself. I should really have been clearer, but I suppose the point I'm making is all about the distinction between machines that arrive at conclusions based on initial rules and conditions supplied by humans, and machines that arrive - through impenetrable reasoning - at their own conclusions. I'd agree that we will eventually figure out who to blame, but it's an issue that needs addressing sooner rather than later. Similar to the situation with driverless cars.

A decent example is probably the iterations of Alpha Go, Gogle's Go-playing computer. The initial version was trained on huge numbers of human games, and became exceptionally proficient, and beat the world champion. It does to an extent use creative new strategies, but the overall style is explicable:

_{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaGo#Style_of_play}

But then we look at the later version, AlphaGo Zero. This version was entirely self-taught, with no input from human games at all. Playing against the earlier version, it won 100-0. The removal of training from human matches meant that the machine's creativity was no longer constrained, and it developed some astonishingly effective strategies that were completely unknown to human players.

_{https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-versus-ai-self-taught-alphago-zero-vanquishes-its-predecessor/}

I'm just saying that we reach a point with ML where it is impossible for humans to understand how the conclusions were arrived at... and that once pure-ML (rather than human-devised) algorithms start to have a serious impact on human lives, then accountability becomes a huge issue, which the human programmers can convincingly sidestep.

One again, I am in favour of ML as it can bring huge advances, and beneath everything it is just more efficient. I'm just looking ahead to some of the problems we may face, and wondering how these might be resolved.


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I was trying to say (but not being very clear about it) that in this example, there was no machine-learning, the algorithm was devised entirely by humans, which meant that when people started to question the results, the algorithm was looked at and found to contain inbuilt bias (for info, the algorithm is below). But when, instead of this, we are using machine-devised algorithms and machine-learning, and there is no possibility of unpicking the algorithm (because we won't understand how the computer has reached its conclusions), then how do we determine unfairness or accountability? Machine-learning is black box reasoning, and impenetrable to humans. Whose fault is it when it outputs unfair results? And how do we prove that the results are unfair?

_{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofqual_exam_results_algorithm}