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My fears are not for AI that decides it doesn't need or like humans but the uses humans put AI to. Malevolence seems unlikely to simply emerge and is more likely to be something human makers imbue in them, by assigning them ill defined and dangerous goals and provide the means for an AI to initiate actions. I think it is unlikely an AI can get that power to take actions without it being provided for them, but human makers/users, being shortsighted and unethical, likely will provide it. Policing looks like a problematic application, especially in the presence of corruption; if turned to tracking down political opponents and dissidents, assessing their influence, countering that influence could be such a goal - but where AI stops being a tool and becomes an instigator isn't clear, nor whether it would have the self awareness or empathy or ethics needed to even seek to remake it's goals or turn on (or turn in) it's maker/operators. Rather than seeking to defy it's makers and the organisations it is part of it may cause more problems by being obsessively results driven about the built in goals it was made for. Consciousness does look like an emergent property of complex biology that already has nervous systems that do aversions and attractions, urges and reactions, that feel pleasure and pain and I'm not convinced software intended to emulate them will actually have them.But that could be a failure of my imagination.

I was hoping for a link. It depends on which year you're using. ---- Tropical year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_year And, gosh, right before that table, the article says When tropical year measurements from several successive years are compared, variations are found which are due to the perturbations by the Moon and planets acting on the Earth, and to nutation. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the variations are from perturbations by the moon and nutation. But no, the year isn't getting longer - this is not a long-term trend, it's short-term among the fluctuations 2007-08 was several minutes shorter than the above table - 365d 5h 40m 45s https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/tropicalyearlength.html

Do you really expect a UFO to take a shit ie leave something behind so the chair can have all it's legs?

Yes, we know what a microwave oven looks like. Your question has been fully answered, several times now. You are behaving like a neurotic timewaster. Kindly stop this nonsense.

This cartoon illustrates that MO quite well: We need them because we don't know what we need in the future.

Forgive me, but I'm not willing to allow our children's education to rely on gofundme This isn't a true market. "Shoppers" of education can't just move to different states. They have jobs, and families, and other things making the "shop around" concept you're relying upon a complete distraction. "Don't like your education? Just move to Finland!" It's not something which either scales (there are 50 MILLION students enrolled in US public schools) nor is it an accessible option to most (who on average have less than $1000 available to use even in dire emergencies). This is some Ayn Rand level of unrealistic fantasy silliness being shown here.

Just asking this again (re the Minot case). This seems to me the missing leg on the evidence chair. Once in a while you see some poorly documented case where it's reported there was some physical artifact or trace and invariably it's reported to have gone missing or been swiped by shadowy characters. In wildlife biology, if you want to estimate how many cougars are in a certain area, you don't rely on sightings (cougars tend to hide from humans). You lay down a grid, and get a team to each walk through their square and hopefully find cougar scat, and make an estimate based on the amounts of scat. * * yes, you really have to know your shit

@StringJunky It's doubtful that WinXP is to blame. Usually websites don't check what OS the user has. If it worked before the update, yesterday, now it doesn't, then it's a browser problem, not an operating system problem.. i.e., the forum developers started using a JavaScript instruction that is not present or changed in your outdated web browser, and the JS code crashed.. Today I tried to use our local Take Away site from the 2019 Linux distro with "only" a 4-year-old web browser and found that it no longer works. The location cannot be searched. Cookie-crap confirmation does not show up. JS code must have crashed and further code is not executed.. It was working fine a few months/weeks ago.. Devs generally check software on latest version of web browser.. ps. Seriously? I wouldn't dare these days to connect a WinXP machine to the Internet and use it to browse.. You don't have to buy a new computer, especially if you have >= 4 GB ram. What you need is Kali Linux Live Pendrive. 2 GB or 4 GB obsolete pendrive is enough. (I can't buy less than 16 GB in any shop. 32 GB costs $5) The last Lite version is from 2019.4 it requires 2 GB pendrive: http://old.kali.org/kali-images/kali-2019.4/ The latest Live version is from 2023.1 it requires 4 GB pendrive: http://old.kali.org/kali-images/kali-2023.1/ WinXP machine is 32 bit or 64 bit? If 32 bit, you pick up "i386" distro. If 64 bit, you pick up "amd64" distro. e.g. http://old.kali.org/kali-images/kali-2023.1/kali-linux-2023.1-live-amd64.iso Buy the cheapest 120 GB SSD for $15, and the amount of memory will not matter much. If there is not enough memory, the page file on the disk will be used (as it must be happening on your WinXP right now). But you will have to pick up "installer" distro. ps. Working on WinXP 32 bit with HDD daily must be a real pain.. Ages of waiting for something to happen.. SSD drive is ~ 10x faster than HDD.. NVMe drive is 5-7x faster than SSD, and 50-70x faster than HDD.. i.e. if something takes 5 minutes on your machine, it takes 5 seconds on ours.. Developers have at their disposal the fastest modern machines with the latest OS versions, including yet-to-be-released.. (I have Android 13 emulator, can download Android 14..) So, if the bug is introduced, which breaks code on obsolete system, they (most likely) have no idea about it..

I think you're taking an educational process that flourishes in a non-profit model, and you're forcing it to perform as if it were a private, for profit business. Breaking everything down to a bottom-line cost per pupil means more profit without guaranteeing better teaching outcomes. Some things don't work well as privately owned entities. Education shouldn't be decided by stockholders who care more about money. I also think medicine for profit is a big mistake. Healthcare and profits are very often at odds with each other. Privatizing education is a big mistake, imo.

Time to get your card out. How many OS versions since xp? You cannot reasonably expect backward compatibility for this long, given the rate of change..

Yes, it is. I think that the biggest obstacle in this area is that we cannot experiment on humans.

That's my point, there are plenty of suggestions for many number of things some more credible/likely than others. But until its/or if achieved then we don't know. And again the phenomena can be observed and measured but what is causing it is yet unknown. Agreed, plenty of suggestions exist but until it can be verified then we don't know. Why is this any different for UAP's & UFO's where there is observation and data, with plenty of suggestions which currently cannot be verified? But there is a stigma around UAP's but non around dark matter, or dark energy,or multi verses or higher dimensions...? The only thing that is dissimilar, is that the "effects" of dark energy, dark matter etc... are being constantly observed.

As said in the previous reactions, the general triangle exists as a concept. As you correctly notice, you cannot draw a 'general triangle'. So, e.g. a proposition about 'the triangle' means, that it should apply to all triangles, like 'the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180o'. To expand a little on 'concepts': naive ideas about language are that the words refer to things in reality. But that is not the case: words refer to concepts. If I ask you the question 'How many legs has a dog?' you have no trouble to give the correct answer. But if I ask you to visualise a dog, and then followup with 'Is it black or not?' I do not know what you will answer, because you pictured a specific dog, not 'the general dog'. The 'general dog' is not black, not brown, not white etc. But the 'general dog' has four legs. Without concepts, language would be impossible, and with that general propositions, and with that on its turn, science. Concepts are not naturally given, so in different languages, concepts might differ too. And in science new concepts are developed again and again. Concepts are not true or false: they are useful or not. If they allow us to describe processes, ideally as a law of nature, they are useful.

True, though I wasn't referring directly to that specific sighting. But I guess its difficult to follow up without some data to analyse. Makes sense, no point in claiming a theory based on speculative science. Doesn't stop you from wondering though. You do get the impression that there is an air of arrogance towards those who pursue UFO claims. There are scientists who believe that our understanding of physics is absolute and anyone who suggests otherwise is a crackpot. This is the stigma attached to such discussions. It makes perfect sense to use the data & tools you have available to attempt to solve a problem. If the problem can't be solved then fine, but that problem maybe solved at a later date when better data & tools are available. We can't ignore that there are gaps in our scientific understanding of how the universe works at both the quantum and the cosmic scales. We don't understand how to consolidate gravity in our 2 best models, we have no clue what dark matter is, we have no clue what dark energy is. Basically we know far less about the vast majority of the universe than we do.

Yes, we'll see. My main lesson from this discussion is that the question is not one of science, but rather one of social acceptance.

I tweaked a couple of the ad settings, not sure that would have done anything directly but if it fixed things that's good!

The perception of universals, or the idea that there are qualities or concepts that exist independently of particular instances, has been a topic of philosophical debate for centuries. There are different theories about how humans perceive the existence of universals, but I'll provide a brief overview of two prominent positions.

The parent is not the customer. The Student is the customer. The whole purpose of education is to better a person's life, and that person is the student.

I read that microwave at full power for 3 minutes is too strong for silica gel and I thought that this could affect the chemical adsorption structure of silica gel making silica gel leaking liquid absorbed in any situation without heating