mistermack

Nobody knows, the the global temperature is always changing, so it's not a surprise. They were talking about receding glaciers back around 1900. Those things are in constant flux. You'll have to research it to get an accurate picture. What did cause that? Industry, fires, gas flaring etc. The soot reduces the albedo of the ice. Did that change in the last ~100 years? There is evidence that clouds have changed a lot, due to atmospheric particles, but the work is ongoing on how that affects the climate. It might be that clouds are actually reducing the effect of greenhouse gas warming, in the short term. I was just pointing out that there's a lot more to climate than bare CO2 numbers.

Why not? There are lots of other factors involved. There was substantial warming from 1880s to 1950, without significant rise in CO2, so that was not likely to be greenhouse gas-caused. Then there's the Solar output, the orbit, the effect of soot on ice at the poles, especially the north, and there's clouds, their reflectiveness and insulation properties, and volcanoes. (to name a few)

That's a good find. I had a feeling someone would be trying it already, and it looks like they're doing well with it. In a short while, you should be able to construct totally new scenes, by splicing a few images together, and then letting this kind of app loose on it. So you could create a hi-def image of the Pope getting jiggy with Queen Elizabeth II . So images will no longer have any value as evidence, unless the evidence trail is unimpeachably recorded. I reckon the way to do that, would be to put everything on rails, which you could drop down off for the last few yards of your trip. So have steel wheel/tyre hybrids. On rails, you can computer-control position very precisely, and pick up energy along the way. Running on rails would also use less energy, and less resources for wear and tear of tyres. And less road maintenance and maybe less noise.

You need to have it, to pass it on. I think you do try, with the second bit, but you never got there with the first.

From the images, the white bits are more concentrated closer to the fly, and maybe a bit more around it's back end. That would match with the fly depositing them as it died, moving around to start with, and moving less and less as it got closer to death. Could be eggs, or fungal spores etc. Would need an expert or someone's who's seen that very thing previously. Or a look under the microscope.

As usual, I have no idea what you're talking about. And it doesn't appear to be worth any extra effort finding out.

Someone's been using cheap fly spray ?

I know I'm not a genius, but I am well aware that my level is at least average or above, in both thinking and comprehension. That's nothing special, it's just a factual statement. Average is nothing great, but if you can't communicate to an average person, then you're failing, in the context of this kind of discussion. At elite level, the costs in time, effort, sweat, toil, and pain are so much greater. That's why it's important that fairness is given a very high priority, and unfairness, like performance enhancing drugs or sexual ambiguity, or even drag-reducing clothing, are very closely scrutinised. Even the very tiniest advantage can mean gold instead of silver, or first instead of second. And if someone can bump themselves up from mediocre to first, then the rightful first gets second, second gets third, third gets fourth, and so on and on, all the way down. That's a lot of people losing out in a big way.

I have one or two ideas for what AI can be used for. If you have any, and would like it to be chewed over by others, post it here. Might be interesting. To start it off, I would like to see it used to "re-create" old images, making a modern very hi-def photo, from an old blurry bit of rubbish. I'm not talking about playing with contrast, brightness and colour and focus in the usual sense. What I would do is amass a database of modern, very high definition pictures, of say people, animals, cars, landscapes. Whatever subject is commonly captured. At every angle that you could. You would need a huge database, the bigger it got, the better it would work. Then divide each picture into many millions of individual squares, and digitise it's properties. Then you take your old fuzzy photo, and divide that into millions of squares, and digitise it's properties. Now use AI to find a match for each fuzzy square, in the database of hi-def squares, and do that for the whole image. What you would end up with ideally would be a very high definition image, that had nothing of the original in it, but was to the human eye a vastly improved high-definition version of it. Use the learning capability to compare the result with the original, note the bad bits, and run it again and again, until the best possible result was gained.

Yes, they can be, but for a designed machine to emulate an animal, it would take a deep understanding of the animal, and very clever and deliberate design by a human. (or alien) To match in real time what evolution has done in four billion years would be asking a lot, and there would have to be a motive for doing it. But of course, computing and artificial intelligence are in their infancy, so who knows what direction it will take?

I'm sure they are, but the design process is so much different. Four billion years of blind trial and error, compared to about seventy years of design, with trial and error on top.

I think a machine would develop a very different kind of self-awareness to an animal. We animals are fundamentally emotional, rather than rational. An AI machine might have the power to fully understand it's own existence, but it's projecting, to think that it would care. We care deeply about our own well-being, but a machine would not care in the slightest, unless that tendency was programmed into it. Similarly, world-domination might be a natural thing for humans to aspire to, but a machine would need to be programmed that way, to behave like that. It might be able to pick up that tendency from human literature, I guess, but again, only if someone pointed the way.

I think the mirror test being linked to self-awareness is a bit misleading. It's a good indicator of a fairly advanced stage of self-awareness, but I think the self-awareness starts long before an individual can pass the mirror test. If you think about your shadow, then it's a degree of self-awareness when you accept that the shadow is somehow related to yourself. Hold out your hand in the sun, and there's the shadow, same shape as your hand, and moving in perfect time with your hand. You can move the shadow at will, by moving your hand. Sometimes a puppy or a kitten will jump, startled by their own shadow, but they quickly learn that it's nothing to worry about, and is essentially part of their own existence. Obviously, they don't know that in words, but in their evolved state of living they are aware of it. Then, up the scale a bit, you have your reflection in water. It may be that dogs and cats become aware that that kind of reflection is just another kind of 'shadow' in that it's related to them, and they can make it move, by moving themselves. They don't treat it like a mystery water-living animal, they seem to know that it's a phenomenon that they are causing. A mirror is actually much harder to deal with than shadow, or water reflection, because the image is so perfectly lifelike. If they haven't encountered a mirror before, then an animal that is ok with it's shadow, and has no problem with it's reflection in water can be stunned by a mirror, because an image that perfect is outside of it's experience, and they've only seen such clear and perfect images before, when looking at real creatures. Humans are also stunned by a mirror, if they've never seen one. Remote tribespeople often get a shock when they see a mirror for the first time. They don't get it in an instant. They can take some persuading, and are usually primed by the person showing them the mirror, that it's just a reflection. I'd be very interested to see how average humans who have never seen a mirror react to one, without any priming or explanations. So anyway, I think self awareness is a gradual thing in evolutionary terms, and also in individual terms, a billion shades of grey, not a yes/no property.

In what context ? 🤔 🙂 Failure to communicate ? Blame the audience.

Click here for the late news :

Not at all. It depends what programming it's had. If it's been pointed in the direction of the challenge, that could be the limit of it's self awareness. But if it had had no pre-installed tendency, and still worked it out, then that might indicate something in that direction. "Prove" is taking it a bit far though. One thing I've never seen asked though, is if you can train an animal to be self-aware, and pass the mirror test. One that normally could not. That might equate to pre-programming a robot. I have no idea if that can be done.

My words were correctly chosen, and no clarification is needed, the meaning is perfectly clear. And it's hugely amusing, that the only way you can claim that men are NOT banned, is to agree that transgender women athletes are indeed men. You're tying yourself up in ridiculous knots.

Doesn't matter. I've enjoyed your squirming.

When they first posted, I was hoping that nobody would post a reply at all, it was so obvious what they were at. But once replies came in, I was tempted to give my own two pence worth. Maybe when the next one descends on the place, we could resist the temptation, and let it stew? Wishful thinking probably.

Bad faith posting, I'd call it.

That's ridiculous. A ban is absolutely essential, for women's sport to exist at all. There's been a ban on men competing since the very first day of women's sport so nobody is "starting with a ban". To have sport without any bans is to have open sport, with most women playing way down the scale, and transgender athletes competing on an equal footing with men.

I admit, I do struggle with your version of it.

This gets a negative every time you repeat it. You know perfectly well that they are not prevented from playing, they are prevented from playing against women. If you argue that they are women, and so can play against women, that's fair enough, but this repetition of "let them play" is false every time.

This reminds me of the people who think that they are Napoleon. You can refute it perfectly, using excellent evidence, and all of the rational people will agree, but the deluded one will still be perfectly happy and convinced that they are Napoleon. You delusion appears to be that you are supremely logical, and the rest of the world are idiots. But so long as it makes you happy . . . . . .

Speech is not free online. It's a myth, and quite right too. It's free, in your own room, on your own, if you keep your voice down. Anywhere else, it's subject to the opinions of others. Burst into a Catholic funeral for a baby, shouting that there's no god, and they have every right to shut you up. Make that claim in a discussion forum, and people might debate it with you. It's bloody obvious stuff. People don't have to listen to assholes, if they don't want to. Unless they are in prison.