TheVat

It seems as if texting has generally decreased awareness of the uses of punctuation marks like the comma. Just one would have helped that sentence convey its intended meaning (and deprived us of a good laugh). What's funny is the title above that sentence made full use of commas.

Without getting too far into the assertions made here or elsewhere about AGW, I will say that precise definitions matter greatly if we don't want threads that decay into trollery. The phrase existential threat is a shining example of imprecision. If a conservative uses it to caricature a moderate/liberal position, they may use it to mean complete extinction event, no humans left. This, most climatologists and ecologists agree, is not likely to happen, so the conservative feels they score a point. However, if their interlocutor said existential threat and meant something more like vast social disruption, widespread crop failure and famine especially in the tropics, many deaths from wet bulb temps over 35 C in tropical regions where AC is not widely available, massive wildfires, massive coastal flooding in areas of high population density then they are speaking of threats quite real and not too distant. And quite existential for those most vulnerable by virtue of geography and lack of resources. So any discussion must determine first what such terms mean, and find common definitions. And that can only happen when politics, and wearing team jerseys, is put aside.

Why don’t atheists do well with exponents? Because they don’t believe in higher powers. "Eight something" got a belly laugh. Not usual with math jokes.

British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands There's a scene from The Meaning of Life which that one calls to mind.

Chaucer, as in not uncommon with writers, had quite a range of jobs and interests. Comptroller, courtier, diplomatic envoy, forester, philosopher, astronomer. His father was a wine merchant with a royal appointment which probably helped pave the way for his son having such an interesting life and being part of a royal court. Hanging on a wall in my home is a planisphere, which is a modern descendant of the astrolabe. I might look at it, as I read about Chaucer's instrument.

I often notice ambiguous phrasing and find it very entertaining. Headlines like... Kids make nutritious snacks Miners refuse to work after death Panda mating fails, veterinarian takes over Old school pillars are replaced by alumni ...make me wonder if some languages have a syntactical structure that makes such phrases more common. (For another thread, perhaps)

https://archive.ph/1dFjp I do. Here's a screenshot of the complete article. In the information ecology of social media, the outrageous and extreme viewpoints are the best clickbait and they prosper. At the expense of reasoning, depth, and equilibrium. And truth.

A friend lives in Shanghai and said that elderly there do see doctors less and are not much trusting of them. My use of "draconian" was somewhat influenced by his account of a neighbor who tested positive and police came and nailed her door shut. His impression was this did not foster community spirit in a big way. There are also cultural/philosophical differences -- 88 year olds there tend to be on average pretty fatalistic that something's going to finish them off. Not an attitude that I would disrespect, actually. Not a good answer to @Phi for All good question about how to make universal vaxing seem smart, but that's all I have ATM. My friend has lots of cats, so he's glad he laid in a big supply of cat food.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/shanghai-reports-12-new-covid-deaths-frustrations-boil-over-2022-04-23/ Interesting contrast to USA approach. Note that the average age of covid deaths in Shanghai is 88, and all were unvaccinated. Seems like a focus on universal vaxing might work better than draconian lockdowns and censoring that enrages people.

On the topic of trolling: Just registering my concern that some of the smartest minds on this site are currently wasting their cognitive skills on the infinite Escher staircase that is the Ketanji Brown Jackson thread. You have a couple members who just are Not. Ever. Going. To. Concede. Any. Point. No matter how well argued and factually supported. It's Spring in the northern hemisphere! Go outside!

Sorry, no antibiotic cheeses, in fact you don't want antibiotics in cheese as they could prevent the fermentive bacteria from doing their job. Same with yogurts - the probiotic cultures need to thrive, being bacteria that help you digest that food. Some herbs and spices are somewhat antibiotic, like ginger or turmeric or garlic, and they don't bother the good gut bacteria. Apple cider vinegar is also a good one (and also reduces phytates in foods, which then improves zinc absorption and thus can boost immune response). Oregano is antifungal. IOW, eat lots of curry and Italian! 😀

Legumes, soy, and spirulina all have plenty of lysine. Land is not a limiting factor at all. Any assertion that it is needs some cited reference.

I've observed that when people on any side of a debate start telling someone what they don't understand it tends to escalate to ad hom. "Not understanding" becomes an implied "you're kinda slow." If someone really evinces lack of understanding of your point, you can either restate it and hope you made it clearer, or you can move on. The latter is my next move WRT this thread. Cheers.

Indeed! The problem with panpsychism is not that it's necessarily wrong, it's more that it's a Mysterian position - how would we be able to isolate a consciousness particle and how would that really explain anything? It seems to draw us back to Leibniz and his monads, or something like them. Epistemically, the only way to confirm consciousness is to be conscious and thereby you know one entity in the universe is conscious. All else is a leap of faith - well, it looks like me, and uses language like me, so I guess it's probably conscious, too. At the end of the day, I think behavior is our best metric of consciousness.

Good list, as one might expect from the late great Mr Sagan. Number four reminds me of the fallacy called "availability heuristic." Which is the tendency, when we form an hypothesis or an opinion or an interpretation of reality, to call upon what we have most recently heard or acquired in the way of information (rather than explore a broader range and timespan of data). We humans have trouble taking the entire information space into account when we try to model reality.

AFAICT, KBJ is the BPFTJ on the SCOTUS. But, as someone once said, IAOTTFLS. And TANSTAAFL. (Sorry, I heard Zapatos say trash can and all my inhibitions melted away)

Gosh, Godwin's Law proves itself once again. (It's gulags, btw) Sorry, I don't think it's the Left or progressives that have been talking concentration camps and putting people in cages. You may want to review the recent activity of the Trumpists and Far Right in the US before you start making comparisons between Democrats and Nazi Germany. We can keep rejecting their lies, their deeply flawed information sources, their bigotry, their misogyny and racism, their loathing for easy access to the polls for all Americans, and their idiotic disrespect for knowledge, facts, and discourse grounded in facts, because it is our duty as citizens of a democratic nation to call out fellow citizens when they are harming that nation. Your question is akin to asking how long we have to look after our children, set rules of behavior, and keep teaching them social skills: until they grow up.

Yes. I would only add (and plus one for making me laugh) that it's also confusing that a reptile pedophile would be going after human children. From what I've heard, pedophiles tend to prefer children of their own species. Sexually molesting juveniles of other species would be categorized as bestiality - also a political liability, at least in northern states*, but Catherine the Great made it work just fine. Sorry I can no longer generate much further insight on the thread topic. Like several members, I see these kinds of selections, and prior announcements to a voter base, as pretty much standard political practice. I mean, the people who didn't like Biden saying his intentions out loud already didn't vote for him and already aren't switching parties or ideologies. So what are they going to do, yell at us? Stomp their feet? * no hate mail please, I'm just kidding

This is common in the Amazon region, where a slender fish called a candiru can swim up your urethra and make its way to the visual centers of your brain, stimulating visions of this type. You will die within a week or two, so best get yourself to a doctor immediately. Not trying to scare you, but regular checkups are important. Also, avoid Tic-Tacs, which can cause hallucinations, leukemia, sarcoidosis, liver failure, night blindness and tooth decay. Finally, DO NOT GO TO ONLINE FORUMS FOR MEDICAL ADVICE OR COUNSELING. Cheers!

Just curious, when Amy Barrett was appointed, was there a long thread here with much wringing of hands over the "optics" of TFG "pre-announcing" ( @swansont neatly deflated this term) that he would select SCOTUS candidates that were conservative Christians who would throw out Roe v Wade? And he pre-announced this to an electorate that by a considerable majority supports Roe and a woman's reproductive rights and the idea of SCOTUS as an impartial body. Maybe instead of worrying about optics, we should worry about a voting system and districting system that seems to promote minority rule even when we get displays of optics from a former POTUS that sear the retina.

Ned Block has rejected any Turing test - what's sometimes dubbed the Blockhead argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockhead_(thought_experiment) Then there are thinkers like Colin McGinn, who is one of the New Mysterians, who simply reject that the human mind is equipped to ever measure, or open any epistemological access, to consciousness in any entity. Their position is that we can never know if an AI, or a mouse, is truly conscious. I'm a bit more hopeful. Like the "Phi" guy, Tononi (referenced by @Prometheus), I see possible paths with neuroimaging, TCMS, and neural net modelings with computers. I think we are in the infancy stage of studying the connectome. (the term for the comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain)

I should clarify. I am not a biochauvinist, nor do I have any problems with an inorganic substrate. What I was driving at (with lack of finesse, like a Tesla struck by an EMP perhaps) was that to do some things that humans do and might someday want for an AI to do, like listen sympathetically, an AI would need to implement consciousness. Simply manifesting the behavior of "sympathetic listener," like one of David Chalmers' philosophic zombies (aka "p-zed") would not be enough. An intelligent person, seeking comfort, would rightly point out, "it's a simulation, it doesn't really feel anything about my situation, so I need a real person!" (or a more advanced AI). Unlike John Searle (early Searle, anyway), I believe it's possible in principle that a DNN (perhaps interwoven with an analog system, CNNs, etc) could wake up and be conscious, have qualia, and thus achieve certain sorts of thought that really don't happen without self-awareness and "raw feels.". So my earlier comments were concerned with what a computer can do, insofar as some behaviors only bloom where there is someone there. It certainly doesn't have to replicate being human (with all its attendant flaws and blind spots), but there is some process in our neural networks, deep in the wetware, that must also happen in silicon substrate in order for an AI to do the activity I've suggested.

At last! A surefire way to frighten off storks!

I like the point John Searle, the philosopher of mind (of "Chinese Room" fame), has made: if we develop an AGI that replicates all the functions of a human brain, we have simply demonstrated the point that a traditional computer cannot really achieve consciousness or general intelligence. To make an authentic brain, we have to replicate much of what is in a natural brain, i.e. make something that is really much more than a computer. Our trans-computer DNN system would likely need both digital and analog elements, which is what the human brain has. It would likely need, per developmental psychologists, a period of growth that would be much like a childhood. It would probably need to be embodied in some way so that it can interact with the world and develop responses and feelings regarding the world and its inhabitants, and form models of how a physical world follows certain rules and patterns. It would need some basic drives of curiosity, self-preservation, social needs, etc. Older paper, but addresses the issue of digital/analog: https://news.yale.edu/2006/04/12/brain-communicates-analog-and-digital-modes-simultaneously

Y'all are still talking past each other, because the term discrimination is assumed to be pejorative by those arguing against criteria of ethnicity/gender for a particular appointment. All appointment processes are discriminatory (look at Trump's cabinet, if you have a moment) - the issue in this case is whether or not that discrimination is warranted by what the judicial panel needs to best perform its duties. The pro argument seems to be that having that panel look as diverse as possible increases public trust in the justice system. And broadens the life experience base of the Court. And contributes opinions that reflect a special awareness of the impact of the justice system on the ethnicity which, per capita, has the highest level of contact with the justice system. The con argument seems to be that....well, I'm having difficulty discerning anything beyond "It's discrimination! Discrimination bad!"