EdEarl

I went to University in the late 60s and early 70s, using GI bill and working about 20 hours a week. I graduated with no debt. A person cannot do that now. Stalin sent many PhDs to Siberian work camps, because he feared they would criticize him. When he needed them, he made secret cities they could not leave, but treated them well while they built weapons and space gear. US oligarchs have priced education so high an average person cannot attend; thus eliminating criticism. Moreover, they manage government vocabulary. There is no such thing as climate change as far as the EPA can say. The constitution guarantees free speech, but politicians are trying to make the population ignorant and they would like to eliminate free speech. Hypothetical.

I think your expectation of the Dems is considerably more than they will deliver. IMO there is little difference in the two parties. PACs are a corrupting force. Though I don't know how, I believe most appointees, politicians and closest supporters become rich while working for the government.

What you say is correct, but both parties are now funded by PACs and large donations..

I dislike debating politics and religion because I feel like I'm standing in quicksand. However, I feel obligated to try to help make the world a better place for my family, because my expectations are poor. .

My definition includes taking large donations, especially PAC money. Their being supported by either of the two parties probably means they are mainstream. Although, my definition is a guideline not a rule.

Oops. By mainstream I mean taking large donations, especially via PACs, and usually already holding an office as either a Dem or Rep.

I dislike mainstream politicians, both parties. I'm voting independent except for special circumstances such as the independent is known to be corrupt and/or ignorant.

I remember as a kid having heated discussions as, "Did," "Didn't," "Did," Didn't," etc. LOL, I used to have the same discussions with my wife, but I stopped. Whatever, I did it.

In fact, it seems to me that most US businessmen know little about business except cutting costs and bribing politicians.

Elon Musk knows business. Trump, I doubt.

Trump knows con games. He seems to avoid learning.

Raider said, " Either way, someone is always intelligent if they agree with you right?" Some people are that way; others are not. Jimmy Carter said that Admiral H. Rickover had tricks to make people feel uncomfortable during interviews (e.g., shortening several legs on interviewee chair so it cannot sit level.) His purpose was to find people who could think under stress, and he liked Carter because Carter did not always agree.

She has appeared in several movies and TV shows. Yes, she is a pretty good actress. She started with talk shows, IIRC.

Oprah is a business woman with a net worth over $3B. She is a philanthropist not known for telling lies. It's hard for me to imagine anyone who would do worse than Trump since I'm not running. I think she would do OK as president.

@Moontanman By super habitable you seem to mean capable of supporting life longer than our Sun and Earth. On the other hand, the increased gravity and different light spectrum of a Super Earth near a type K star would affect life. For all we know, such conditions may not support genesis of life. For sure, the increased gravity would inhibit space travel, and may inhibit development of delicate hands as ours. Assuming the purpose of super habitable planets is to maintain humanity longer than the Sun and Earth will. I believe moving all humanity to another star with a Super Earth is exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, it is probably easier to build a Dyson Swarm and reduce the size of the Sun via Star Lifting. On the other hand, I believe populating the galaxy will occur. Using automated space ships and shipping frozen embryos to other stars systems, with a few people kept alive throughout the trip requires far less energy to travel around the galaxy than trying to move all of humanity anywhere. With Dyson Swarms, all stars can be populated. With star lifting, all stars can be made an ideal size. First, we must survive climate change and the AI singularity. In addition, we must learn to coexist and thrive with AGI. Although, for longest survival we must fight entropy, perhaps by moving as many galaxies into our local cluster as possible (increase resources), and by reducing our use of resources to the absolute minimum. Reducing resource use means we should not overpopulate. Since collecting resources and minimizing their use would probably take billions of years, a reasonable population for many galaxies could be huge during earlier parts of the process. Eventually, we might want to reduce our population to frozen embryos, virtual people, and a few maintenance robots. The length of time intelligent beings can survive depends on how much energy they can store and how little they use. Can we stave off entropy for a trillion years?

The Wikipedia handedness article is interesting.

True, and some kinds of change would not need data translations.

Didn't mean to imply free will was controlled by quantum reality; I don't have any evidence for that hypothesis. It is evidence of our understanding being illusion and approximation, and the difficulty of viscerally understanding quantum mechanics illustrates how little we truly know. I know scientists are making strides towards understanding the brain, but so far a brain simulation is incomplete.

I essentially agree. However, reprogramming neurons might invalidate the neural net training; potentially loosing its knowledge. The AI would probably be able to translate the neural data from older to newer format, but rounding errors might occur. If so, neuron reprogramming may be impractical.

I'll confess to insulting philosophy I should have known it would object.

A neural truing machine is a natural development. Among other things the marriage will allow interfacing a variety of sensors and actors. Someone will attach a programmable calculator, and teach the neural net to program. Others will interface to a variety of Computer Aided System Engineering (CASE) tools, and other things. The neural net must be trained to use each sensor, actor, and the interactions between each sensor and one or more actors, wherever applicable. I cannot think of a primal reaction that a person cannot at least modify. Leg movement reacting to the knee jerk test is difficult to affect. But with training one might gain some control of it. I believe a conscious, sentient AI would have an amount of actor control similar to people. An AI that is not conscious would have similar control, except its decisions would lower quality.

An officer, who is always nearby the president, carries a briefcase with the codes. No need to remember.

Infant mortality was much higher 100,000 years ago than it is today. A modern human could have been born and died prior to the one that survived.

I am convinced we are conscious and sentient, but not convinced we know how to build an AI that is conscious and sentient. In fact, I'm pretty sure we will not know until we do it. Are we qualitatively different than other beings with brains, for example chimps, mice and ants? Or, are we only quantitatively different, just have a larger brain. Elephants don't seem to have our capabilities, is that a false impression; they have larger brains than us. Moreover, women have slightly smaller brains than men, about 11%. Yet there is no difference in IQ scores on the average. Thus, our capabilities compared to animals seem to be a qualitative difference. No one is sure of what that quality is. This ignorance makes me less convinced than you about our ability to control AI. Someone may build an AGI with consciousness and sentience without knowing. I think there may be unknown unknowns and we may not know the extent of our ignorance.

It could have happened several times, but other linkages died out.