TheVat

Seems like a shallow interpretation of the decision. Oar maybe not.

Thanks, Stringy. Made this point earlier, but the OP seemed unwilling to consider a blind spot in their view, so I departed. It's too bad the "design means what" red herring took over here. Your blind watchmaker reference earlier was spot on. Self-programming, self-modifying neural nets arise in nature, and become aware. It's real, and it is the design (in the non-teleological, natural selection driven sense) that current AI research into neural nets are trying to model and give a medium for growth. I have yet to see a cogent argument as to why in principle this may not happen. The argument that "today's computers don't fit that model," is a Strawman. Of course they don't. Might as well be Lord Kelvin declaring we've reached the end of physics. @StringJunky

Even with the occasional moment of frustration for some, this is getting interesting, in terms of defining moral obligations versus moral guidelines. My guess is that the person donating to adult dentistry in a developing country will assume that, as he pulls on that one rope, others are pulling on the other rope of child dentistry. So he is not obligated to also fund child dentistry because there is a good faith assumption that collective social action is also at work on that. Sometimes that assumption is okay. Sometimes it is not so okay, as when people donate heavily to save baby seals because gosh they're cute while other species more crucial to our ecosystems perish because they are less photogenic and get neglected by charities. We might do okay without baby seals, but a massive collapse of bee populations or soil nematodes would be catastrophic.

I liked Ken Fabian's mention of technology as perhaps following an S curve and not just rising exponentially. And Michio Kaku has criticized some of the scenarios of massive energy economies (often associated with Kardashev and his three tiers of tech society) where they keep growing until they can harvest the energy output of a whole galaxy (Kardashev III) -- Kaku suggesting that technologies later turn more towards information, and less raw industrial power. If there were some natural trajectory of intelligence that led to massive energy cultures (the kind that would likely find interstellar travel most feasible), I would speculate that we would be seeing more evidence of Dyson structures (Dyson swarms, Dyson bubbles, and the Larry Niven classic, the Dyson ring) or would do soon as our remote sensing infrastructure is refined. The ring would be rare to spot, as it wouldn't likely have an orbit precisely aligned with our viewing angle, but the others could cause noticeable dimming and perhaps spectral alterations. But really, it comes down to what a society deems a worthwhile investment, in time, in energy, in allocation of labor and technology. While the British might not have sent James Cook to the South Pacific if it had been a one hundred year voyage, another culture might have deemed the area inherently worth a multigenerational trek across land and sea, with the object of settling there. And we are actually talking about alien beings whose values are so different that we literally cannot imagine their reasons for crossing the interstellar gulf.

Let's say I agree with you in principle, but reserve the right to carve out exceptions where there is a strong practical reason to bundle causes. Pragmatically, the anti-abortion person is going to save more infant lives (and reduce the cycle of poverty that leads to more abortions in the first place), if they get behind social policy that allows improved access to contraception, prenatal care and education, ease of adoption options, maternity leave, etc. Sometimes a "package" is the truly effective way to advance your cause. So I find it bizarre when anti abortion people actively OPPOSE such policy packages that would help to save many babies and make abortion rare. It just defies common sense.

Yeah, my understanding of the SAA is that it's about building security and protocol. When they say "violate Senate rules" they mean what you do in the chambers, being disorderly, yelling, channeling Al Pacino in And Justice for All, that kind of thing.

While I see your point, relating to how people focus on a specific social cause, I think there is one flaw there. If I crusade to save tigers, I will also likely want to support having nature preserves where they can have a life. Kind of a package. The tiger savers are not in it to save tigers then stick them in little cages where children can try to get a rise out of them and throw trash in the cage. Similarly, if I save a fetus, then what happens to it after birth is a consequence of its being saved. I'm not sure it's morally defensible to make sure the baby goes full term, be delivered, and then walk away saying "Yep, forced Mom to birth you, now she's facing more dire poverty and lack of support, but hey, you're on your own, kid!" Your own example on the DP is also subject to the same problem. Most people who march against the DP, do in fact also support better prison conditions. And they do so, again, because the years of prison life is a consequence of not being executed. In all my examples there is the common thread of: quality of life is part of valuing life. You just can't separate them without unfortunate consequences. (I thank @MSC for also underscoring this)

The process of voir dire is supposed to filter out the biased, but I agree that in this case the imperfections in that process would likely manifest. And, once a prosecutor has used up peremptory strikes, they can't move to strike on the basis of voting record. Yes, you've hit on a big problem in a country so polarized - hard to imagine any pool of jurors that wouldn't be reeking with bias. And some of it quite secretive.

I think many here acknowledge that pro-life and -choice might be compatible, and there was some discussion of the moral obligation of pro-lifers to also support life after birth, an area where many on the Right reveal hypocrisy. Also some discussion of unenumerated rights, and the ninth amendment, as they relate to Alito's radical departure from the norms of interpreting the full document. It ranged across several of the ethical conflicts, as well as the scientific basis for viability and citizenship status in the womb. Probably does help to read back through, yes. And welcome back!

The term "paid expert" should always arouse our skepticism.

Let people paint however they will. Since pretty much everything the RW does these days is a political maneuver, they are going to see everything that happens through those lenses. A public trial, and a conviction, would throw a wrench in the Trump machine and narrow the base further. And send a message to future would-be fascists. Of which I am sure there are plenty waiting in the wings.

I'm sure Balzac would have some input, if he were alive.

Spending time with Chalmers, Dennett, Tononi, Koch, et al might help the OP to gain some tools for grappling with the HPOC. Sometimes works better to take a specific concept from the field, and then craft a thread that responds to one particular position in a published paper.

We Yanks are limited to "humor" due to our impatience in typing words. And also limited in our meaning of "piss-taking," though we do it more frequently as we age. Anyway, I agree on the value of astutely observed ridicule. And I recognize that comedians will often approach the line of transgression, and ease a toe across, to deliver it. My impression is that RG does this by poking fun, not at trans people, but at some forms of trans activism and ideology. My sense of things is that the latter is fair game for almost any group. And then there is wordplay: It takes real balls to have an orchiectomy.

Thanks, will have a look. I've found some of his "cringe comedy" to be funny stuff. I hope that groups who get fun poked at them can realize that being in a joke is a measure of acceptance. To me, it says in effect, "There's nothing so awful or so special about you that we can't joke about you the way we do our other friends." That said, I haven't seen SuperNature and I don't know how many lines it crosses, or in what way. Sometimes jokes that demean people can be dangerous. OTOH, sometimes carefully avoiding jokes about people, as if everyone is too polarized and deadly serious, can also be dangerous when it blocks needed societal safety valves and comic relief. It really depends on the particular joke, eh?

Why would a python need an open CV, or any kind of resume? What is their work experience or education, beyond eating and sleeping? "Have swallowed 46 piglets in the last fourteen years. Took many digestion naps." I guess you could hire one as a Greeter at Wal-Mart.

One could also partake of avocados. A number of avocados, perhaps. (We are deep in the nerd jokes here...) For those following along.... https://www.britannica.com/science/Avogadros-number

I celebrate by reading a John LeCarre novel.

Thank you. I spent years as admin at a website where we'd get people arguing basically "look at how many views my [nutty] thread has received - clearly the world is fascinated!" I would point out no one had bothered to reply to their thread "The amazing smithereen particle at the heart of all matter!!" in six years, despite their daily 3000 word updates, and they would invariably point to the click counter.

After all the many pages of incisive postings, I still have the feeling that the two major camps on trans women on womens teams are inherently not reconcilable. The camp that envisions heavy mesomorphic trans females crushing cis females on a field strike me as not moved by arguments like "well that's quite rare," or "hormone treatments cancel all that" or "their suicide rates will soar if we don't include them." One reason such issues are so hard to resolve is that humans have hair-trigger reactions to anything perceived as unfair. And, with this issue, the data points are so few (because, as many noted, trans women on womens teams in explosive-strength/mass-dependent sports are so rare) that casual perceptions and anxieties can rule, and some will be sniffing for unfairness like bloodhounds. I would suggest the debate only really ends with what would be a social experiment. Let them in for a defined trial period, see what happens, collect data. And there's the rub - many would not want to be (or have their child be) a guinea pig.

If the population is stable, then only 1/1000 of the population needs to be replaced in any given year. If maturation happens at the same rate as now (IOW, a greatly extended adulthood), then it would be a society with very few children and teens. This would definitely change the menu of choices at the multiplex. Concepts like "family friendly" would be less important to most people. And I can see some stratification, as we find that centuries long spans of time change people's perspective, so that there might be special cultural offerings that cater to the tastes of near-millenarians, and not so much to mere centenarians. People would be likely to have several careers. Someone who started out as a doctor, and practiced for a century, might go back to school and become a flamenco guitarist or interplanetary food critic. Then, after another century, perhaps off in another direction. It would be rare, I think to self identify by one particular line of work, though there could be exceptions where a particular level of interest and talent converged. People might finally tire of The Simpsons. Its 14,000th season would be the final one. "Jeopardy" however would continue and offer contests with specific age categories. The near-millenarians, if they retained their mental acuity, could have (to us) staggering levels of knowledge going deep into earlier historical eras. (though historical eras, as we know them, might be greatly elongated as society grew more conservative and slower to change)

KAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLIIIIIIII!!

Or they're locked in an intense competition to have the best vacuum cleaner. Some aliens can be quite shallow, you know. You have raised maybe an interesting speculative topic - could a tech civilization grow that had only wood (or other surface plant materials) as a fuel? I suppose if they could make it to glassmaking then they could stumble on solar furnaces and such, and then leapfrog over the dirty fuel era.

We still have toilets, actually. But you may want to bring your own toilet paper. Seriously, I think this new bill, depending on its final draft, could be seen as an incremental bit of progress. And I agree on the power of global opinion, over a longer time scale. And that influence may be bolstered if foreign tourist numbers drop because they are afraid to come here. Re: slow change Bear in mind that slow change can sometimes be a tough sell to people who feel they are in immediate jeopardy. And people whose lives are touched by gun violence (which is now a pretty big segment of America - my wife has a friend who was shot in the face, I had an acquaintance years ago who shot himself, my son had a close friend who killed himself with a shotgun...and I expect many people you might randomly stop on the street would have their own similar stories) may find "now's not the time for this" really hard to accept. So I hope this first try at a gun bill will start some momentum.

It's worth asking at what point compromise has become capitulation to a shrill minority. Looks like we (the majority of Americans polled) can't get the assault rifle ban, the ban that was federal law for ten years and then not renewed. Mostly because of... ...as @J.C.MacSwell put it. This seems to be the pattern of recent years. Small vocal minority telling the majority how they should make private medical decisions, what are acceptable topics of study in school, who can get married, which groups are Real Americans, etc. I'm not sure I'm really interested in compromise, if that word only means capitulation to bigotry, unreason, partisan power grabs and screaming ignorance.