Peterkin

It wasn't the judges who complained. It never is; it's usually somebody entirely outside the judiciary, who has no idea how to assess qualifications or relative positions of power, or even the constitutional stance of candidates. There is no shortage of self-appointed spokesmen to howl foul on behalf of the poor downtrodden privileged.

In my lay opinion: evolution. They actually were made in the image of their creator - in an [incomplete] image that creator had of one of its own functions in isolation from all other processes taking place in its complex organism. That creator did not build in all the mistakes and blind alleys nature had, because this creation actually was purposeful. I have to say: Nothing, because I can't raise a valid argument against something I don't fully understand. I followed it up to the rock in the pool. I have no problem with machines doing every logical and intelligent procedure of which humans - even if only a few exceptionally clever humans - are capable. What I can't see machines duplicating is passion, impulse, instinct, stupidity and craziness. I'm sure they could fake it, or be duped into acting on false information, but genuine craziness is an animal thing, a primeval thing. You can program in bugs and glitches, but I don't think you can program in the random replication errors that result in new strains of organic behaviour. I suppose the main difference is: machines can never be accidental or non-purposeful. Here is an example of fuzzy English: 'having a purpose. Animals do have a purpose for their actions, which they don't always carry out rationally, while machines exist on purpose, for the purpose of carrying out rational actions. It's the difference between ID and abiogenesis.

I already answered that. You are not an image of your image. What are the unrealized tasks of human intelligence? Are any of them not being served? Possibly. I don't know what they are, so I can only speculate on speculations, as it were. Can we ever know the meaning of the universe, life and everything? Probably not (because it probably hasn't got any; the pattern-seeking mind has chased a series of random events up an unpatterned tree, and will never stop barking.) Again, I would expect so, just because it's man-made and thus constrained by human logic, rather than free to respond to the vagaries of nature and the pressures of survival. But even if it mimics all of human intelligence, it can't really do human stupidity convincingly; doesn't have human yearnings and irrational desires; doesn't fly into hormone-induced rages and make sentimental choices. A mimic is still just an image. If AI become sentient in its own right, it will stop mimicking humans. The self-aware android will not wish above all things to be a real live boy - he will strive to be the best possible android. Maybe the real live boys will mimic him. Yes. I don't think human intelligence is fundamentally different from rodent intelligence, but is fundamentally different from adding machines of any level of sophistication. I would not know a quantum entanglement or the mathematical proofs if I fell over them on the towpath. I have an ordinary monkey brain. It didn't switch. Nothing was ever switched in evolution. Things were added, things were enlarged, adapted, co-opted, extended, folded over, crossed over, passed over, reversed, stapled, spindled and mutilated, but nothing is ever discarded to be replaced by some whole new thing. Computation is just a new trick learned by an old pony - probably as an extension of speed and distance calculation for running down prey and running away from predators.

Did it make money? More interesting [to humans] and understandable [to humans] just means that the discussion is limited to the 'intelligent' functions that matter to only one species out of 8 million, and have meaning to only one species out of 8 million and that - just so happen! - to have been invented by that very same species. There is a dot on your forehead. The machine you programmed thinks the way you do; therefore that intelligence must be a mirror image of yours. But not the other way around.

Why human? There are more overlaps between a computer's functions and human intelligence's functions, because humans made computers as an extension of their own intelligence. A computer is just more human computing capability. It can't do much for a moth or salamander or an orangutan, because thy don't want operations performed that their own little organic brains can't perform. Humans need computer augmentation because their big organic brains are already performing operations they want performed, but just not enough per second.

It would depend on the judge, the crime, the accusation, the evidence, the basis on which the judge freed or reversed a previous decision (It matters which, and judges don't have the authority to pardon) and whether a fair trial was conducted in the first place. Since every judge is one in thousands and every judge has to make decisions that nobody else makes, I don't understand the number reference. There is a process which is intended to deliver justice, and more or less effectively designed to be able to deliver justice, and then there is a political and economic system in which that process is supposed to work, and in which there factors that contribute to and factors that detract from the effectiveness of the process. So, if you want to ask whether a particular decision is fair, you have to supply more details. If the question is about some other aspect of the situation, perhaps you can clarify.

The vast majority of organic brains on this planet can't perform any of those sophisticated mathematical feats; in this, the dumbest computer beats the smartest rat. That's why i don't think the analogy is useful. My brain doesn't understand the machine's workings, but understand the rat's perfectly - us organics together.

They can compare things, count things, record things, even juxtapose things to make new things. I guess that meas they can sort of think - at least about what they're told to think about - and evaluate things - according to preset values. They can be hooked up to devices that monitor external processes and conditions: measure temperature and raise or lower the thermostat accordingly; measure pressure, etc. I'm pretty sure a computer can't tell what part of your leg to scratch or whether you've fallen in love. I guess that's a windy way of repeating: no, a computer can't decide what to measure, and an organic brain, even one as small as a frog's, can. I think the comparison breaks down at several points. The sensory input is personal to the brain; literally a matter of life and death; to the computer, it's just another equation to solve. Emotional response and volition, afaik, are still well beyond the mechanical range of functions: it can make rational decisions, if it's given sufficient information on which to base one; it won't do anything instinctively, or little or no data.

Computation itself has a straightforward meaning. "the action of mathematical calculation." - and by extension, the use of machines originally called computation machines. Modern computers are quite a lot more than that; they have evolved. But then, so has the brain. Human brains are only the most recent iteration, not the only version, just as AI is not very like Babbage's Analytical Engine. I'm sure analogies can be drawn at each level of complexity, but I doubt they would be useful.

The question itself relies on a false assumption: that an organ can be considered independently of the body. You can regard the entire body as an organic machine and organs as its components, then consider each organ in terms of its functional contribution to the machine as a whole. A carburetor can be described as a kind of heart-lung machine, but that term is meaningless without 1. the internal combustion engine to which it belongs and 2.the flesh machine to which it is being compared. The correlation of body parts to mechanical parts is merely analogy; they are never literally alike. The brain has a whole lot of functions, of which mathematical computation is a very small, and symbolically derived part. It started as a sensory device and developed into a communication device, a regulating device, a recording device, etc. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128311-800-a-brief-history-of-the-brain/ Eventually, it invented arithmetic to tally objects and measure distances. Vice-versa, the computer did arithmetic first, and all the other things it does now are derived from arithmetic. And, while a computer can be adapted to and integrated with other machines, such as vehicles, weapons and production lines, a particular kind of brain can only grow in and with and for a specific organism. So, that would be a NO, plus: such a simplistic analogy can't shed light on either of its subjects. No. The question and terms have to input by the operator. The adding machine doesn't know, and doesn't need to know whether the numbers it's adding are cows, dollars or stars.

Yes, there are not many situations wherein the viewer is motionless and the the screen is moving. That's the affect of the rain. An unmoving screen (the window) is covered by a moving sheet of water, which converts it it into a moving lens, even though it is motionless relative to the viewer. Funny things happen to vision when transparent objects are superimposed.

It's quite common to conflate with forward motion of one object with the backward motion of another. Much like the landscape rushing backward alongside the a moving train. In this case, it's the lens that is moving downward, so what you see through the lens moves upward.

They try to. That's why the post is for life: the next party coming in can't remove them; the idea being continuity and balance. The upside is, the president who appointed them is gone and they're free off obligation from then on; the downside is the risk of feeble, outdated and senile judges. The current crop looks good for a long haul. It's not about expediency - they're at the secure top of judicial achievement; nothing to gain or lose. It's about long-standing convictions, prejudices and legal stances. So, when the constitution is outdated and the relevant amendment is ambiguous, they interpret according to their religious or political leanings. When the president chooses a supreme court nominee, he's looking at their decision record - how many people they've sent to death row, how many times times they've ruled for restricting reproductive rights, withholding social assistance, election rigging practices and other state legislations, corporate and human rights challenges, reform attempts, etc. Precedent is everything... except when an appointee fools you.

It was never a good idea to politicize jurisprudence. It was never a good idea to have different methods of appointment/election for judgeships in each state, and different again federally. It was never a good idea for jurists, from DA to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court compete for their successive posts with a party label next to their name. https://ballotpedia.org/Judicial_selection_in_the_states The framers of the constitution never envisaged such an immense, diverse and divided country (though they should have, given the rifts they built into the foundation); they assumed governance and law would always be in the hands a ruling elite just like them, who all spoke the same language.

It helps that the people who most firmly believe don't understand either.

When did age come into it? If he had promised an enthusiastic rally of seniors, that might make campaign sense in the moment, even though men are still not underrepresented on the supreme court, and they're all expected to grow old and die in their robes. Of course. The available pool of candidates would have been larger, so I'd expect the process to take longer - unless he was determined to find a combat veteran of Ukrainian background - only he'd've had to be prescient, which would be spooky in an old white man. I have no reason to taste Biden's decisions. Or, he could have told a lie, or he could have said nothing - which is what that platitude amounts to. There is precedent for all of those statement, as well as for announcing the demographic a presidential candidate intends to aim for, and also for the unquestioned assumption that it has to be an old white man. This, I would not swear by. He gives his audience what it pays for.

In that frame, her constituency is even larger. There are more adult women than men to begin with; more women are registered to vote and the voter turnout in the last election was higher among women, plus you have to add the whole Black population old enough to vote, including men. That's a pretty big majority. Inclusianry vs. exclusionary BS. OK Republican senators can be led away from their prejudices? There was a time when I hoped they might be driven away by the most perfidious, monstrously stupid travesty ever perpetrated on the oval office. Not anymore.

I didn't mean that their difference were based on colour. I meant that they were all different - though now you menetion it, there are areas of overlap in the experience of women within each ethnic group. You don't need different species to be for or against reproductive freedom, for or against prayers in school, for or against universal health care, for or against gun contol, for or against fossil fuel. There are groups of voters with a common stand on the issues, and groups of voters who have unaddressed needs, and groups of voters with grievances and groups of voters with common agendas. Those groups may also have ethnicity or gender in common, but neither ethnicity nor gender guarantees that a voter falls into one group or another on those issues. No one woman, of any colour, can represent all women, just as no one person of African descent, whatever gender, can represent all dark-skinned people. Voter blocs differ by more than ethnicity and/or sex. If you set up an image: "Woman" to represent half the voters, you're setting up a false image. But those who are preoccupied with the 'optics', will see her that way. Representation in the highest level of government entails a whole lot more than image. Yeah, you'd think, wouldn't you? And yet.... If that's what you're seeing in the world, can I have the name of your optician? That's what everybody wants to him or herself. The trick is persuading them to want it for everybody else.

Not clarify. Reject. It looks as if you mean that you have considered alternatives and made a decision. Since you can't have a red/blue/silver/green Ford Acura Evoqe, you have to pick one car that comes in the combination of characteristics you desire. (That it's a road-licensable passenger vehicle was a given, thus limiting the pool of available choices.) That's how rational decisions are usually made, so most rational people who believe you to be rational would assume that your decision is just what it looks like. It looks as if he considered available alternatives, including to which voter block he owes the most, and made a decision based on all of those factors. Not "according to colour and gender" - as you put these two factors in isolation, to make them look bad - but according to qualifications, experience, decision record, character, popularity with voters, ratifiability, sex and colour. Just like you put the colour selection last in your criteria for buying a car. So-bloody-what? That's how selections are made. One may be sorry afterward and think differently next time. It opticizes exactly like what it is: a political appointment by a politician. That's what's wrong with 'optics'. In some observers' limited vision, a woman represents all women, including the white, Hispanic and Asian ones, who ll have different requirements and demands, just as an African American represents 12% of the population, including the opposite sex, and none of the Hispanic or Asian or white men. Except that's not in any sense true, is it? And that Jordan Peterson, as usual, is wrong.

That's not exactly a mystery. Yes, it was predetermined. To fulfill a promise to his most loyal voters. (You know, like how how Reagan promised to restore prayers in school, He tried, but it wasn't ratified. Obama's promised health care reform plans were smashed on even rockier shores, and Trump swore he would defund Planned Parenthood, which he did.) What I don't understand is why keeping a promise - with due ratification - should be at all problematic.

'Optics' is still a silly word and a poorly defined concept. How things look is very often how things are, so if you're doing something other than what it looks like you're doing, you're doing something sneaky, which, if discovered, would look very much worse than the obvious thing you're doing, which is exactly what it looks like.

Then we must resign ourselves to disappointment. Saner than Trump is doable - just about, given the general fuckedupedness of the communication media and electoral procedure. Saner, let alone better, than all previous presidents is a pretty tall order, even for somebody who won by a landslide and had a majority in both houses. That's not going to happen.

Have, too many times. Final comment: Repetition is not my #1 choice for COD.

Yes.

Who's we? The criticism largely comes from quarters that favoured Trump's decisions and style of leadership. The gist of the objection is not "He's not enough better than Trump." but that "He's doing what all presidents do."