On 3/23/2023 at 5:05 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

If you don't understand the difference between Bitcoin and the rest of crypto, this indicates to me you haven't looked at that, either.

(It sounds like I'm being a dick, but I'm not.

Actually, that is pretty much being a dick, and a strawman argument.  I posted this thread to have a charitable discussion but you're coming in too hot.  I'm not the enemy, seriously.

Elon Musk and other tech leaders call for pause on ‘dangerous race’ to make A.I. as advanced as humans

Elon Musk and other tech leaders call for pause on 'dangerous race' to make A.I. as advanced as humans

WWW.CNBC.COM

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Artificial intelligence labs have been urged by Elon Musk and numerous other tech industry figures to stop training AI systems more powerful...

I think Elon Musk is right about warning people about the potential dangers of AI.  The article I posted is somewhat of a surprise to me in that Steve Wozniak has signed the open letter as well. 
 

15 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Korben,

Really?

How about a method to measure life?

Do you know of such a method?

This is more than a rhetorical question or just being argumentative. It's about nature.

 

It's a standards thing. One does not measure reality by finding a standard or unit of measure for it. Reality is the standard.

One does not measure life. Life is the standard. One does not measure identity. Identity is the standard. These are basic primary-level components of human existence. And we can keep going until we get to this: One does not measure sentience. Sentience is the standard.

As the old saying goes, one cannot become a little pregnant. (That's measuring it and it doesn't work.)

Epistemologically, this is the domain of axiomatic concepts.

 

Also, in terms of hierarchical knowledge, this shows what happens when reason is not applied to the knowledge hierarchy. In order to create sentience, man first has to create life. (Man did create AI.) Sentience is a characteristic of certain life forms. Adding the idea of sentience to something not living (and created by man) is turning the concept upside down in a wrong manner. Conceptually, and I believe existentially, sentience falls under life. Life does not fall under sentience.

What I've quoted is an objectivist answer,  I'm posting on an objectivist forum after all   But in my mind, theoretically thinking about a future where an AI that has the level of sentience as the average human ends up breaking some parts of objectivism.  How can something man-made be granted the status of consciousness of a nature-made human?  Isn't man's fundamental attribute the faculty of reason?  Certainly a technology won't emerge that possess the same faculty of reason, right?  How can such a thing exist without being a biological organism, ie. not possessing what is biological life?  That future is going to happen, it's not a question of if it will it's a question of how soon in the future will it be.

Will such an AI exist? Yes.
Will such an AI have an identity that separates it from every other entity?  Yes.
Will such an AI have consciousness, ie. the capacity of reason and self-awareness of an average human?  Yes.

That breaks my objectivist thinking--and to be clear I consider myself to be objectiv-ish.  Does such an AI have life?  We might need to rethink about what it means to be alive.

15 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Here's a great idea.

Why don't we set up lots of government agencies and nonprofits and university labs to study the issue?

Don't worry about the funding. Those who know how to do these things can scare the shit out of people about the wrath of a sentient AI god going amok and they will pay through the nose.

 

I asked the question in my original post about the possibility of AI having rights in the future--no I don't think AI should have rights.  It's created by man and doesn't have the right to life.  But I do think the government needs to be vigilant about the possibility of AI being a danger to humans, in whatever capacity.  The objectivist answer is unregulated AI, but in the hands of ill-minded people, bad things can happen.  Look what happened to crypto--oh wait, too soon?! 

I've read several alarmist articles as well as more measured opinions.  I've read some of the conversations ChatGPT had with people.  The question of sentience comes up, understandably.  So is ChatGPT sentient?  Here's what I think: there are a couple of problems right now to determine sentience.  There needs to be 1) a method to measure sentience and 2) a unit of measurement. The latter is easier.  I think sentience would be on a spectrum, say 0-100 and the average human is perhaps an 80. If an average human is 80, then I'd say ChatGPT is a 15 at times. So it's somewhat sentient, some of the time. Again, how to objectively measure sentience is an issue when it's inherently subjective.

I don't want to misinform but I read that Chomsky says sentience can be measured on a scale from 0 to infinity.  Regardless if that can be attributed to him, it is interesting because hypothetically AI can eventually surpass the most sentient human being on the planet--and perhaps reach a sentience level greater than humankind's collective awareness.

I do not think that giving the current iteration of ChatGPT a sentience level of 0 is appropriate.  This does raise some interesting questions like if an AI were to reach the level of sentience of an average human being, do we now classify this AI of being conscious?  Does there need to be a discussion about AI rights?  Does a government have the right to regulate AI, and if so to what degree?

A virtue is the action by which one gains or keeps values; Kanye's recent actions have lost his deal with Adidas, Parlor, and to a lesser value his Twitter account.  Antisemitism is anti-value, anti-virtue in any reality so we're seeing cause and effect in Kanye's life play out right in front of our eyes--he's not taking actions to keep his values (Adidas) or gain his values (Parlor).

I really don't like it for him but at this point amassing a billion dollar net worth is going to be near impossible since I believe he's doing irreparable damage to his reputation.  I'm afraid what's coming next for him will hit him more personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see Kim Kardashian petitioning a judge for reduced visitation with his children, or worse no visitation at all.

I haven't said Kanye has a mental illness, I don't know what's going on internally with him but it's obvious his actions have changed recently and he's losing his values. 

I hate to see Kanye self-destructing like this.  He needs an intervention, whether it be psychiatric, psychological, spiritual, cognitive, emotional, or personal.  The trick is for him to get the right help at the right time by the right people.  You'd think the life-altering events like losing Adidas and losing Parlor would be a wake-up call, but he keeps spiraling downward and getting worse.  By the way, I think his song "Heartless" is one of the best R&B songs of all time; I'd like to see him get back to that version of Kanye, but I'm afraid he's already done too much damage and people are going to dismiss him out-of-hand when they hear the very mention of his name.

13 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I give him terrible odds as a presidential candidate, but I won't be one to mock him.

Or tut-tut-tut about what the fake news media says about mental illness.

May Ye get into the ring and be happy. Bring it on...

If a piece of human garbage like Hillary Clinton was able to run, Ye certainly can.

Michael

He doesn't have a remote chance of winning, but how many people can say they ran for US President--twice?

If anything it will promote his brand which is Kanye, so it seems like a smart move to me.

Look out Trump, Kanye is running for President in 2024; noting he ran in 2020 as well.  Ye 4 Prez!

Kanye West Confirms Presidential Run, Enlists Milo Yiannopoulos for His 2024 Campaign

Kanye West Confirms Presidential Run, Enlists Milo Yiannopoulos for His 2024 Campaign

WWW.YAHOO.COM

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“Yes… It’s simple…. It’s just we’re moving toward the future," Ye...

Make America Great Again Again

Tarantino was on Kimmel and was asked about stealing Kanye's idea.  (He didn't steal it, but Kanye did pitch an idea for his music video.)  See below:

First, I don't take mental illness lightly and I hope that if Kanye is having symptoms of mental illness that he gets the help he needs.

Kanye has been making headlines recently, and one of his latest claims is that Quentin Tarantino and Jamie Foxx ripped off the idea for the movie Django Unchained from a pitch that Kanye did for a music video.  A couple of objective facts:  1) Django was a move in 1966 and is the primary influence for Quentin's movie, 2) Will Smith was originally set to play Django in the movie, not Jamie Foxx, but Smith left after he read the script and didn't like his character's arch.  Smith left the movie and Foxx stepped in, well after the script was completed.  So did Kanye pitch a music video idea? I don't doubt that he did, but the movie Django Unchained was not based on his idea.

Kanye has bi-polar disorder and the following article lists several incidents that Kanye has had in the public eye over the years, some of which may or may not be attributed to his mental illness: 

Inside Kanye West's bipolar disorder

NYPOST.COM

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How did the 21-time Grammy winner get here? Here's a look into the disorder and its effect on West over the years.

It's important to note that in the article it references Harvard Medical School saying that “false beliefs or false perceptions” can also be a sign of bipolarism.  The article goes on to say that Kanye talks about his bi-polar medication in a 2022 documentary about him entitled "jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy". 

Mental illness runs in my family so when I see Kanye's actions potentially being in-part caused by his mental illness, I feel empathetic for him.  I'm hearing some left-leaning folks bashing him for his actions recently, but my hope is that people can have empathy for him because what we might be witnessing is someone in need of help.

Reading some of this thread over Thanksgiving, an interesting mention about the Stockdale Paradox has lead to some thoughts.  The main idea of the paradox is, "you need to balance realism with optimism" according to this article about it.  This reminds me of Rand's Razor in the cognitive/emotional realm, from an excerpt in ITOE, "The requirements of cognition determine the objective criteria of conceptualization. They can be summed up best in the form of an epistemological “razor”: concepts are not to be multiplied beyond necessity—the corollary of which is: nor are they to be integrated in disregard of necessity."  The latter part that they are not to be integrated in disregard of necessity seems poignant at this stage of the 2020 election.

Here is something that Laura Ingraham recently said to illustrate the point of the Stockdale Paradox and Rand's Razor, she recently said this on her show according to the USA Today:

“Unless the legal situation changes in a dramatic and frankly an unlikely manner, Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20th," she said on "The Ingraham Angle."

Despite what she called "unpleasant" and "disappointing" election results, Ingraham told her viewers that "as much as we wish things were different, this is where things stand tonight."

"To say this constitutes living in reality," Ingraham said. "If I offered you a false reality – if I told you there was an excellent, phenomenal chance that the Supreme Court was going to step in and deliver a victory to President Trump – I'd be lying to you."

So Laura Ingram, a staunch Trump supporter, practiced the Stockdale Paradox and Rand's Razor by balancing optimism with reality in accordance with necessity:  as new context came in regarding the 2020 election legal challenges she came to the conclusion that it was time to abandon optimism and the recognize the reality that Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20th.  And something Laura said especially stood out to me, by replacing "Ingraham said" with "Ayn Rand said" in some of the text of the article, we come up with an interesting exercise:

"To say this constitutes living in reality," Ingraham said Ayn Rand said.  "If I offered you a false reality – if I told you there was an excellent, phenomenal chance that the Supreme Court was going to step in and deliver a victory to President Trump – I'd be lying to you."

Slow-mo Joe....

Pfizer said today their vaccine is 90% effective against coronavirus--making the announcement a week AFTER the election.  Typically what happens is companies receive information like this then choose when to release the information to the public, so what is the possibility that Pfizer knew they had a 90% effective vaccine before the election?  I'd say those chances are very high.  I haven't dug deeper, but if this is true, if they had announced the vaccine news before the election, it would have been a game-changer and Trump would have had no problem getting elected again.  I'm not one for conspiracies anymore, but Pfizer releasing this information the Monday after the election looks very suspicious to me.

8 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

If that happens, I believe Pelosi's career ends.

I hope so!!!!  She can't get work done, too much ideological stonewalling.

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Last night, someone said CNN turned Arizona from blue to grey on its electoral map. I checked and sure enough, it was grey.

But I don't know if it was blue before. I imagine it was because I think I recall seeing CNN with Biden at 264, but I'm not sure.

Michael

Na it's been grey, I've been going back and forth between Foxnews and CNN maps, CNN has only had AZ grey

6 minutes ago, ThatGuy said:

Since this is an objectivist-leaning site, I won't ask for blind faith. But I do think Trump has done enough at this point to show that he's earned not blind faith, but faith in his accomplishments.

That's a false alternative, either earning faith or not.  What Trump did earn from me in the last election is respect in how he won, going for the rust belt flipping WI and MI, and I especially do not want a democrat in office.  But doesn't have to do with doubt in Trump or lack of faith to say that he is in a bad position in the electoral map at the moment I type this, winning AZ is his only real path to victory--and that path currently has about 550k+ of mail-in votes uncounted and 2/3 of those are in Maricopa County, a democrat county where mail-in votes have been decidedly trending democrat across the entire US.  I went to bed last night thinking Trump would win 2020, and as it stands right now the election is coming down to AZ, with a focus on Maricopa County.  Like I said in my earlier post, the Trump campaign is optimistic that the mail-in ballots in AZ are majority republican, and there are a lot of votes left to count.

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

5. Then I thought about, what if the Biden people pull it off? Where will the Trump crowd go? Will they just disappear?

I don't believe that. Does anyone? Heh.  

I would hate to see Biden and his people take power, but Trump was an effect, not a cause. He was the catalyst that brought a social organism into existence and showed the members what American liberty looked like in the 21st Century, not in the abstract, but in deeds. That organism now lives as a culture of its own. I don't see Biden or the people controlling him governing that organism with abuse like the Dems normally do. And I certainly don't see the never-Trump crowd being taken seriously by these Patriots ever again.

Well I just read this article:

"Trump 2024: If President Loses, Most Republicans Back Another Shot—Poll"
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-2024-president-loses-republicans-run-again-poll-1544786

Two key takeaways from the article, 1) If Trump loses he can run in 2024 and 2) Bannon was quoted in the article saying if Trump loses in 2020 he fully expects him to run in 2024.  As I type this, it isn't looking good for Trump.  If he holds GA, NC, PA then he'll need Nevada or Arizona; Arizona a state that the Trump folks are predicting a 30k vote win once all votes have been counted.  I have my doubts because Arizona is expecting about 550k+ votes to come in and many of them are in Maricopa County, which is a dem county.  The Trump folks say over 50% of those votes coming in are from registered republicans.  At this point, who knows?  But one important thing that came to mind is how Trump fundamentally changed the GOP, and it will be changed for years to come.  Before I read the article I thought it would be strange to see Pence trying to run on Trump's platform.  Trump coming back in 2024, a mad, angry, determined, loud, Trump version 2.0 would create more of a scene than he did in 2016.  And to be honest, I'm not sure if I'd want to see that.  But there are currently still a lot of votes to be counted.

Boris Johnson contracted COVID-19, went to the hospital, and recovered.  Though I believe when Boris went his symptoms were worse than Trump's.  I believe Trump will be fine, high recovery rate especially when caught early, and access to the best medical professionals and treatments available to him.  My first thought when I read the news was, "Wow, the left is really going to like this."  I don't wish anything on the president, but the news will be in a frenzy for while.  Considering if he recovers before the election, I have doubts how much it will influence the outcome.  Most people already know who they are voting for, and the ones that don't can make a case either way:  a)  Trump contracted COVID-19 because he has been careless in his attitude toward it from the beginning or b) Trump beat COVID-19, and so can America.

Professor with history of correctly predicting elections forecasts that Biden will defeat Trump

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/510754-professor-with-history-of-correctly-predicting-elections-forecasts-that

American University professor Allan Lichtman, who has a record of accurately predicting presidential races, said he expects former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, to defeat President Trump in November.

Lichtman was one of the few forecasters who predicted the Trump's election in 2016. Over decades of observing presidential politics, he has developed a system of 13 “key factors” to help determine whether the party in the White House will maintain its hold. The factors range from whether the party has an incumbent president running to short- and long-term economic conditions.

“The keys predict that Trump will lose the White House,” the professor said in a video op-ed published by The New York Times on Wednesday.

Lichtman claims to have accurately predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1984, though he predicted that former Vice President Al Gore would win the election in 2000. Although Gore won the popular vote, former President George W. Bush won the electoral college.

[...]

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I find his system to be interesting, he doesn't specifically make judgments about the candidates, except for a subjective "charisma" metric, so his system mostly disregards who the actual candidates are and instead focuses on other things.  Despite the fact that he has a near flawless track record of predicting the eventual presidential election winner since 1984, I disagree that Trump will lose in 2020.  I'm not a fan of Trump but I think he will win in 2020.  Economic health is a big factor, and despite perhaps a slow start to a coronavirus response, the economy is doing well during the pandemic and Trump did eventually find his footing in his coronavirus response.  Pushing for the governors to re-open when he did was the right call, despite the media backlash the economy did begin to recover once that set things in motion.  If there was any question about that, Trump can just hold up a stock market chart showing the V-shaped recovery it made that correlates to his efforts.

Professor Lichtman has been seen in previous videos hating the fact that Trump won in 2016, even though he predicted it would happen.  Some of his keys require his judgment, and perhaps this time around he is letting his biases color his prediction--although I think for Trump to win in 2020, it would take some electoral college kung-fu like last time.

15 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Korben,

Really?

Who would be the other face during an Al Sharpton interview?

 

This video isn't a deepfake video, why are you asking about this video?  The twitter video posted earlier in this thread is the one I was talking about.

15 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Just say, "That's not the video that aired. Here is the real video."

Put the real video on and boom. Done.

Kinda duh level? No?

I haven't seen anybody do that, yet. Have you?

Duh level?  I looked for the original video and I couldn't find it, if it's out there then more power to whoever can dig it up---and golly, maybe that's why nobody has posted the original,  who woulda thunkit?

But what is your position about the twitter video?  It's not a deepfake?  Is it altered?  Does it have artifacts make her appear strange?  I'm asking because you compared the twitter video to a video from her youtube channel but there are differences between the two.  It doesn't matter to me if the twitter video is a deepfake or not, and it doesn't matter to me if she has had plastic surgery or not.  She looks different from a year ago so it looks like she has had some work done, but she doesn't look like catlady (look it up).  It doesn't make her unfit for a potential VP nod, so I'm not sure what the issue is.  That's not support for her or Biden for candidates; Biden's memory problems are an issue, but Harris's appearance isn't, is it?

On 7/27/2020 at 1:32 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

William,

Yup.

It's kinda obvious, no? Due to the ubiquity of everybody saying this everywhere and all...

 

And looking at the video you just posted, I had this thought about Harris.

After having the entire Internet and media in general take a dump on your face, it's comforting to know that what the Plastic Surgeon giveth, the Plastic Surgeon can taketh away...

On just a human level, I hope Harris does not get addicted to painkillers.

Michael

It's a deepfake video...

21 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:

Jennifer Grossman, CEO of the Atlas Society, said about two weeks ago that https://qmap.pub is “true”

Do you have a source?

Ran across this article today on The Atlantic,

A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked
For decades, a landmark brain study fed speculation about whether we control our own actions. It seems to have made a classic mistake.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-bereitschaftspotential/597736/

The death of free will began with thousands of finger taps. In 1964, two German scientists monitored the electrical activity of a dozen people’s brains. Each day for several months, volunteers came into the scientists’ lab at the University of Freiburg to get wires fixed to their scalp from a showerhead-like contraption overhead. The participants sat in a chair, tucked neatly in a metal tollbooth, with only one task: to flex a finger on their right hand at whatever irregular intervals pleased them, over and over, up to 500 times a visit.

The purpose of this experiment was to search for signals in the participants’ brains that preceded each finger tap. At the time, researchers knew how to measure brain activity that occurred in response to events out in the world—when a person hears a song, for instance, or looks at a photograph—but no one had figured out how to isolate the signs of someone’s brain actually initiating an action.  [...]

__________________

TLDR, it seems the analysis of the original experiment was incorrect, and that is what the article means what was debunked.  An interesting read, and encouraging for free-will and volitionists.

In the serial killer example, Harris cites prior causes being determinates, "these events precede any conscious decision to act," but because they exist in the serial killers past doesn't mean they caused it.  Of course there are plenty of plenty of people that have similar backgrounds but haven't murdered, Sam Harris is identifying conditions in the serial killer's past that could have influenced his act, but they are conditions, not necessary and sufficient conditions, so they exist but they aren't necessarily causal.