The Infinite Conversation

[Guyau]

The Infinite Conversation

 

So if one is sufficiently invested in continuing arguments beyond one's absolute end, this is how it might be done. Say, you want the arguments with your parents to rattle on and on.

So far I've not heard any such dialogues in which creative arguments can be developed on and on, such as debate concerning reality of the wave function in quantum mechanics. Perhaps an intermediate stage of development would be to continue old dialogues such as in Plato, Leibniz, or Berkeley. Even though the machine would have no interest in truth, perhaps they can get to dialogues in which a participant comes to a stage in which they find a new position, including perhaps, becoming persuaded of the opponent's position. Of course, the machine would have no values, only echoes of ours, including valuing that its positions (sayings) correspond to reality.

My father was born in 1917. Some things he picked up in those days are funny and heard no more. He would remark, for example, "Why, I must have been nine years old before learning that damn and yankee were two different words." The old saying that these machines bring to my mind is his now-and-then comment "Ah, he's just talking to hear his teeth rattle."

[Guyau]

 

Wow! It is now about 48 hours since that post was made, and it has received only 7 hits. Perhaps my reputation for being not likely political preceded it. Then too, perhaps number of different viewers checking out the site is very low at present.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Stephen,

Don't feel bad.

This happens at times with things I post that I find important.

Groups often behave differently than individuals on their own do.

btw - I clicked on your link. But an AI conversation with itself mimicking two different famous people?

You have to admit, that is a bit of an acquired taste.

 

Michael

[tmj]

Perhaps you can take ,( or have?) solace that your post lead to the algorithm taking my view of that link to somehow bury me in pursuing the search for the Theory of Everything(TOE) theories ,lol.

Speaking of Plato ,Leibniz, and Berkeley was the proponent of CTMU one Chris Lagan, what a character and wow a brain hurting theory! Another few hours listening to a Wolfgang Smith , lots of Plato ! 
 

As usual though I play the observer and not a participant in a conversation to say nothing of an infinite observer , well unless Chris right !

So thanks for your apolitical appetites!

[william.scherk]

I usually fail with ChatGPT.  99% of the time. Eg, this transcript is how maddening a madman like me can get ... even with a no-emotion superpower computer intelligence experiment. The game changer is the new downloadable engine!

Eg, I rage and sputter and leave. Then come back and try to understand the limits of robot fuck ...

O_Canada! ChatGPT

WSSCHERK.COM

 

[william.scherk]

5 hours ago, Guyau said:

 

Wow! It is now about 48 hours since that post was made, and it has received only 7 hits. Perhaps my reputation for being not likely political preceded it. Then too, perhaps number of different viewers checking out the site is very low at present.

Don't pick up bad habits? 

[william.scherk]

[william.scherk]

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Don't feel bad.

It is possible Stephen  might not 'feel' bad, Michael. I might suggest that we ask him first before concluding we have 'captured' a momentary comment.

 

That is called 'verification of emotional impression' or something like that. Magistrates sometimes call time out and go back and think and make the clerks 'feel' something. Like maybe a basic emotion like 'anticipation' or in prose terms, 'interest.' In fiction, we would illustrate their posture and choose a detail. "He ran his palms lightly over the sharp pencils. Gary discretely pushed the priority rack behind Darlene, who had her steno pad in its usual place, on her jiggly knee. Judge Fuck said nothing and they relaxed. He was just going to sit there and think. They slowly took belongings and a sense of relief to the break room. Sparkling soda was delivered to Fuck and everybody went into FUCK is working alone mode. Sandwiches were especially satisfing, but the courtyard was where everyone ended up doing Fuck All.

[tmj]

betcha Chad the AI coulda done better

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, william.scherk said:

It is possible Stephen  might not 'feel' bad, Michael... (blah blah blah)...

This is so relevant.

(And funny as hell.  )

 

AI, ChatGPT, whatever, will never be able to create something as great as that.

 

You need human beings for that.

Human beings who want to create...

Michael

[Guyau]

 

Well, that's true, Bill and Michael, it was not that I felt bad, just a little taken aback by the apparent lack of traffic at this site at present. Yesterday, I made a serious post at Objectivism Online, and there were 50 hits within two hours, and I've thought of THEM as having a small audience (about a hundred times the number of active contributors). Of course my initial post in this thread was no serious composition from me, and it has been my experience in general at posting sites that serious contributions over time end up with many clicks. I thought the infinite conversation was a clever feat and amusing. I incline to agree with Michael in the post immediately preceding this one. I gather that this program cannot engage in those thinking conversations I mentioned: well-known dialogues written by well-known philosophers. The dialogue by Galileo could be added, as well as real dialogues such as the written exchanges between Clarke (speaking for Newton) and Leibniz. In the fictional dialogues, real thinking is going on, and I doubt this program can attain that sort of conversation, and I doubt it can reach the sort of critical comments we moderns make concerning those classic dialogues. I don't mean to overrate the level of thought exhibited in such dialogues. The best in philosophic thought is not in such form. Then too, scientific thought from classroom and lab to research and discovery is thought I more highly esteem.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, Guyau said:

... it was not that I felt bad...

Stephen,

"Don't feel bad" in that context is just a popular expression without much substance other than a friendly gesture. Something akin to one person saying to another, "You think that's a problem? You should see what happens with me..."

The one who says this is not attempting to dissect or even identify how the other person thinks. He's sharing at root.

William knows all this, too.

 

I've recently learned the Hegelian form of rhetoric used by people who lean left (or who buy into the mentality of what I call the Predator Class). It's the dialectic process and they use it to discredit people and ideas. 

I believe most of them carry out this process on autopilot and they learned it by imitating one another. I doubt many have formally studied it.

The three parts of the dialectic process are:

Abstract -> Negative -> Concrete.

(Most people know this as Thesis -> Anthesis -> Synthesis. I am sure you already know this. I only mention it for the reader.)

Rhetoric-wise, all you need to do is remove the substance, focus only on the outcome, and it turns into an effective little sucker for destruction.

It can be translated like this.

Abstract = Whatever a person wishes to discredit, demean, or lessen.

Negative = Any statement or gesture intended to accomplish this lessening.

Note, a negative does not have to be logical or consistent. Substance is not the standard. Truth is not the standard. The lessening is. (As Rand said, don't bother to examine a folly. Ask only what it accomplishes.) One very popular form of a negative is a long convoluted argument mixing some truth with some nonsense, a lot of missing-the-obvious messaging and a lot of jargon. If the negative-launching person can trap you into discussing that stuff (which generally shifts all the time), he has accomplished his goal.

Concrete = A lessening of the Abstract.

Formally, this process is supposed to pave the way for more and more of the dialectic--or ultimate truth--to appear, but in normal rhetoric, it can be used as a sort of wreck qua wreck, or ruin qua ruin, or undo qua undo. It is induced decay, with decay being an end in itself. The decay is the Concrete.

 

 

Bob Newhart has the best rhetorical response I ever found for this.

Stop it!

 

Michael

[Guyau]

 

Michael, reminds me of the argument by Nozick for an entitlement theory of distributive justice, which is process-oriented and includes history and creation of a good, against outcome theories of distributive justice. I think the latter continued to be tops within academia, but with intellectual laity outside academia, I gather Nozick got and retains much traction.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Stephen,

I want to paraphrase Peikoff who quoted some Nazi or other on art (I think it was art).

Whenever I hear the term "distributive justice," I reach for my gun.

 

Rand has beautiful razors that shave the hairy beard off this thing.

Starting with: Who decides who distributes?

As to Nozick, I don't know that much about him other than seeing mixed reviews in O-Land here and there. He was a Harvard dude, right?

I try to read academic papers and books, but I often feel like a dog chasing its tail. I know there are great academic papers and books out there, and there is a lot of schlock. I keep plugging, but I haven't yet found a practical system to weed out the schlock and it's a pisser to bust ass dissecting an academic work only to find out in the end that it's a hifalutin' form of nonsense or mediocrity.

I honestly don't know where Nozick fits in with that. Maybe someday I will read him...

So long as I am in a paraphrasing mood, here is a thought I like to paraphrase from Mark Twain:

I never let education interfere with my learning.

 

Michael

[Guyau]

The situation with Nozick concerning distributive justice was: Free production and exchange ends up with a distribution. He defends the justice of that. He was arguing against colleagues who had been concerned with the issue and who criticized as unjust how distribution works out under a system of free production and exchange. Free from government redistribution and so forth. The three most important books for the coming into existence of the modern libertarian movement in America were Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State (Economics), and Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia* (Political Philosophy). That modern classic by Nozick will be still studied a hundred years from now, I bet. It is somewhat difficult. He is a good, witty writer, and a brilliant thinker.* After completing that book, he turned away from political philosophy and wrote books in other areas of philosophy. He said he didn't want to spend his life writing "Son of ASU." The principal philosopher he was writing against concerning distributive justice (this topic is in the second of the three parts of ASU) was John Rawls. I gather that Rawls' views on this topic continued to be predominant to the present in academia, whereas, Nozick's came to predominate among intellectuals outside academia. Nozick died in 2002.

I'd like to mention that, in my own view, not every thing about justice in property is about natural human moral rights. Some elements of convention enter into a system of just rights in property. In particular, for the present case, inheritance law is hugely conventional, though pedestrian defenders of the status quo like to pass it off as all a matter of natural rights. The status quo might well be the best choice of arrangement, all things considered. There are costs to changing social conventions, and it is hard to see how excluding from full liberal property rights the right to give your wealth to whom you please upon your death would be accomplished without also excluding all sorts of legal devices by which the individual might work around that innovative exclusion. Still, changing the conventions for intestate inheritance would have no such difficulty. So, for example, one might have a lottery in which properties not willed go to whichever citizen's name is drawn from a lottery. Naturally, that would mean more people make a will. But my point is that there is no natural right at hand that intestate inheritance go to family members at all and in the pecking orders of the various states. It is a juncture of convention, notwithstanding the feeling of folks who abhor complexities.