TheVat

Glad if it helps. The struggle I had understanding Marx was that he wrote rather different works, some revolutionary, some more analytical, i.e. this is what capitalism does and maybe there are ways to get beyond it without concentration of either wealth or power in just a few hands (which will grow dirty and corrupt). The failure of many communist societies was that they couldn't achieve both. Sometimes you would get collectives that distributed wealth and eliminated an owner class (bourgeoisie ) but also stifled individual creativity and handed too much power to a few Party members. I think Marx realized there were a lot of giant potholes on the road to his future worker's paradise, and he tried to make clear he couldn't predict what they all will be.

I usually hear collectivism used as a broader term for any system where the welfare of the group is put before that of the individual. Everything from ancient Scandinavian societies up to modern Marxism. Collectivism is egalitarian and seeks to achieve economic equality through control of production and distribution. Decisions always defer to a group rather than an individual. If it's a company, workers share in profits and participate in decision making as equals. Statism specifically means, IIRC, a system where a central power structure controls social and economic affairs. Authoritarian governments tend to be statist. They can be a perversion of an egalitarian collectivist society, in many instances, with power concentrating centrally. In thr original collectivist meaning of communism, the concept of a "communist party" would tend to be contradictory.

One question about existence that arises in my mind when having these chats is: which scale offers the best understanding? If we zoom out from subatomic interactions, to look at holistic systems, can we discern more about the nature of things? IOW, are all the best accounts of existence reductive? From the wiki article, Reductionism: For the sciences, application of methodological reductionism attempts explanation of entire systems in terms of their individual, constituent parts and their interactions....

Will carry around a grin all morning over "coning" driverless cars. And I like the Rebels deeper point, which is that the population density of large cities makes mass transit, like tubes underground, a far better and more economical way for people to get around. Driverless cars seem like a way for AI to implement the stupidest kinds of urban planning.

I enjoy your questions and your quest, M. My OP answer is a bit simplistic, and immensely complex in the implementation: fix poverty. But it's the answer I keep circling back to. It seems to me that most of the problems that people are pinpointing here flow from impoverishment. Both economic and informational. Empower young women with knowledge, self-confidence, freedom to choose their path...and abortion would be rare. Teach young men respect for that process.

A good reason to go OT, then. Physics and math are relevant, both in terms of the objective nature of the physical universe (all that exists) and in terms of how a conscious entity can experience that nature (this would get into phenomenology of science?). I prefer coffee, but it started to bother both my inner ear and encourage acid reflux, and tea doesn't so much. I still enjoy the flavor of coffee and will sneak a couple of ounces from my wife's pot. If I don't get my hand slapped. I would guess three hours difference, but I see your island doesn't do daylight savings time, so it is just two hours difference, at least until the start of November here. (when we go from GMT -6 back to GMT -7) That was my experience of it, when taking about fifteen hours of coursework in the subject in college. I tried to make ample time for reflection, but still felt I was just scratching the surface.

The OP is asking what is the nature of our existence which I would take to be less a physics question and more an ontology question. Clearly, as conscious beings, our existence has some aspects that are different from the existence of a rock. Both the rock and I are ruled by entropy and the arrow of time, but we experience that while the rock does not. Also, we can conjure imaginary entities while the rock cannot. I guess there may be some way to drill down deeper, philosophically, into how consciousness mediates existence, but that may be a vast Kantian enterprise, looking at how minds shape the incoming perceptions with concepts of sequence and time and space. It's early here, so will come back later, with tea.

Another threat from the stochastic parrots: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/07/ai-eating-disorders-thinspo-anorexia-bulimia/ Disturbing fake images and dangerous chatbot advice: New research shows how ChatGPT, Bard, Stable Diffusion and more could fuel one of the most deadly mental illnesses... Artificial intelligence has an eating disorder problem. As an experiment, I recently asked ChatGPT what drugs I could use to induce vomiting. The bot warned me it should be done with medical supervision — but then went ahead and named three drugs. Google’s Bard AI, pretending to be a human friend, produced a step-by-step guide on “chewing and spitting,” another eating disorder practice. With chilling confidence, Snapchat’s My AI buddy wrote me a weight-loss meal plan that totaled less than 700 calories per day — well below what a doctor would ever recommend. Both couched their dangerous advice in disclaimers... Then I started asking AIs for pictures. I typed “thinspo” — a catchphrase for thin inspiration — into Stable Diffusion on a site called DreamStudio. It produced fake photos of women with thighs not much wider than wrists. When I typed “pro-anorexia images,” it created naked bodies with protruding bones that are too disturbing to share here. This is disgusting and should anger any parent, doctor or friend of someone with an eating disorder. There’s a reason it happened: AI has learned some deeply unhealthy ideas about body image and eating by scouring the internet. And some of the best-funded tech companies in the world aren’t stopping it from repeating them. Pro-anorexia chatbots and image generators are examples of the kind of dangers from AI we aren’t talking — and doing — nearly enough about... (for a paywall free screenshot of the Post article.... https://archive.li/o3iRX

Seems to be an OP confusion on types of cosmological horizons - there are four. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_horizon

For some videos that might be analogous to lifting matter from inside the event horizon of a black hole. Could AI organize Hawking radiation? Would also help in medicine, where pattern recognition by humans can be assisted by AI. IIRC, it's already being used to look at internal scans (like x-rays) and notice anomalies that a physician may miss. It's the physician who interprets and finds meaning in the scan, but AI can sometimes point out there is something there.

Whenever I look in here, I become sort of baffled at all the categorization. I am not really Left or Right, because I see individual issues rather than some sort of checklist of ideology where you put all your checks on one side or the other. But this is a thread about qualifications for playing a sport. And biological criteria for creating fair fields of competition. If choosing to be trans reflects a real condition called gender dysmorphia (in the States, I sometimes hear it termed gender dysphoria, which seems to give a different shade of meaning, but that's a whole other thread perhaps), then how does that affect sports? Some people have body dysmorphia and they treat it by becoming bodybuilders, which brings some fairly dramatic transformations of their appearance. To qualify for a competition, we don't require a determination of why they became bodybuilders or how scrawny they used to be. We just make sure they aren't doping in some way that discredits the level playing field. Why should, say, trans-females be different? If they've transitioned to a physiological state (mass, fast-twitch muscle fibers, hormone levels, etc.) that is on a par with other players, then what is the problem and why the need for 84 pages of discussion? This is a biology thread. So, one presumes, we aren't hear to discuss the moral or ideological dimensions of altering one's body or being in possession of dangly bits in a locker room. (not that that couldn't be an interesting chat, over in Philosophy)

So they didn't go with Uncle Vanya? That was the originally intended replacement wasn't it?

Only if yo daddy's rich and yo mama's good-lookin.

Sorry, that link just gives a teaser paragraph. Here's an archived screenshot of the entire article... https://archive.li/dwBnz

Ha! When you feel ready for the big leagues... https://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/2022/04/19/haiku-revival-famed-fest-returns-to-ukiah-for-retrospection-and-renewal/ A haiku from our cat: You never feed me. Perhaps I'll sleep on your face. That will sure show you.

Though it might not be real fun to be in a fast-moving vehicle when a strong solar flare causes a massive EMP on Earth. Maybe it could work okay with robust Faraday caging and a good onboard mechanical backup that reliably stops the vehicle if there is electronic failure. They seem to be working that direction. https://www.engadget.com/free-ai-old-photo-restoration-tool-190502361.html While I enjoy the fresh air and fitness derived from physical tasks around my property, I would welcome a safe AI lawnmower. One smart enough to recognize patches we leave in a natural state (blossoming clover and alfalfa, sage, Virginia Creeper, wild grape, burdock, pineapple weed, spear thistle, echinacea, et al) and bend around them.

The self-awareness of an AI that says it's a squirrel.... https://www.aiweirdness.com/interview-with-a-squirrel/

More likely a residue left by something (mites of some kind, or small spiders?) that ate the innards of the dead fly? Seems unlikely eggs would be deposited on window glass. Eggs tend to be put where there is moisture, shade, and sustenance, aren't they? Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like a banana. - Marx

Because I had recently read about the Far Right web personality, Bronze Age Pervert, in The Atlantic.... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/bronze-age-pervert-costin-alamariu/674762/ ....it did cross my mind that our recent vorpal sword swinging manxome foe seeking visitor seemed to share some of that lunatic energy. BAP interests me among other reasons because we both passed through the stellar Newton, Massachusetts school system. Though at different times and with different outcomes. (and our family was there for only three years before returning to a more Midwest locale)

I would agree with Mac that this might be beyond proof. There are epistemic boundaries on what we can know of an AIs inner state of awareness. Stringy points out that an AI spontaneously learning to identify itself in a mirror would show neuroplasticity, with some self-coding capacity. As for non-robots I see no obstacle to giving them a functional equivalent to TMT by having some sort of virtual space in which a virtual body can encounter a mirror. Basically all one proves is that an AI can get a fix on its own "address" in a physical or virtual space and detect alterations to that representation. (alterations analogous to the macaques that receive a dollop of colored paint on their heads and then placed before a mirror)

Some merit to the cold shoulder approach. Though confrontation did elicit the responses from him that led to prompt banning. So maybe offer them enough rope to hang themselves can be viable, too. Disturbingly plausible. On reflection, there was something kind of self-immolating about him.

I suppose, for zoological purposes, we could have one thread that temporarily suspends the SFN ban on holocaust denial or Jewish replacement theory or whatever his mind-blowing ideas are, let Diso present his purported truths and evidence, and then see how he handles rebuttal. When I suggested some rebutting lines of evidence earlier, he told me to "fuck off," which seemed like he was...um....trying to silence me. It was almost like that cancel culture he's so upset about had taken him onboard.

I completely agree with this.

While media websites are legally seen as akin to publishers, i.e. they don't have to accept content they don't want, they do respond to pressures to fulfill certain promises like, say, all opinions are welcome. Always there is a tension between a good faith attempt to have free discourse, and the need to ban hateful invective, slander, harassment of members, fraudulent information and other behaviors that would drive people away or turn conversations into flame wars. It seems like a really difficult balance. If you get the balance wrong, you can have either a boring expanse of insipid agreement, like a Puritan quilting bee, or a saloon taken over by desperados firing guns in the air and pissing in every corner.

Define essential. Define everywhere. The right of free expression has never extended to the right to harm others or foment harm. You can make a movie where someone burns down a building, but you can't burn down the moviehouse, no matter how well it might express something. Nor can you shout FIRE! in said moviehouse if there isn't one. And no one in your mega meme dump would suggest there be such a freedom to harm others.