TheVat

Though it might not be real fun to be in a fast-moving vehicle when a strong solar flare causes a massive EMP on Earth. Maybe it could work okay with robust Faraday caging and a good onboard mechanical backup that reliably stops the vehicle if there is electronic failure. They seem to be working that direction. https://www.engadget.com/free-ai-old-photo-restoration-tool-190502361.html While I enjoy the fresh air and fitness derived from physical tasks around my property, I would welcome a safe AI lawnmower. One smart enough to recognize patches we leave in a natural state (blossoming clover and alfalfa, sage, Virginia Creeper, wild grape, burdock, pineapple weed, spear thistle, echinacea, et al) and bend around them.

The self-awareness of an AI that says it's a squirrel.... https://www.aiweirdness.com/interview-with-a-squirrel/

More likely a residue left by something (mites of some kind, or small spiders?) that ate the innards of the dead fly? Seems unlikely eggs would be deposited on window glass. Eggs tend to be put where there is moisture, shade, and sustenance, aren't they? Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like a banana. - Marx

Because I had recently read about the Far Right web personality, Bronze Age Pervert, in The Atlantic.... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/bronze-age-pervert-costin-alamariu/674762/ ....it did cross my mind that our recent vorpal sword swinging manxome foe seeking visitor seemed to share some of that lunatic energy. BAP interests me among other reasons because we both passed through the stellar Newton, Massachusetts school system. Though at different times and with different outcomes. (and our family was there for only three years before returning to a more Midwest locale)

I would agree with Mac that this might be beyond proof. There are epistemic boundaries on what we can know of an AIs inner state of awareness. Stringy points out that an AI spontaneously learning to identify itself in a mirror would show neuroplasticity, with some self-coding capacity. As for non-robots I see no obstacle to giving them a functional equivalent to TMT by having some sort of virtual space in which a virtual body can encounter a mirror. Basically all one proves is that an AI can get a fix on its own "address" in a physical or virtual space and detect alterations to that representation. (alterations analogous to the macaques that receive a dollop of colored paint on their heads and then placed before a mirror)

Some merit to the cold shoulder approach. Though confrontation did elicit the responses from him that led to prompt banning. So maybe offer them enough rope to hang themselves can be viable, too. Disturbingly plausible. On reflection, there was something kind of self-immolating about him.

I suppose, for zoological purposes, we could have one thread that temporarily suspends the SFN ban on holocaust denial or Jewish replacement theory or whatever his mind-blowing ideas are, let Diso present his purported truths and evidence, and then see how he handles rebuttal. When I suggested some rebutting lines of evidence earlier, he told me to "fuck off," which seemed like he was...um....trying to silence me. It was almost like that cancel culture he's so upset about had taken him onboard.

I completely agree with this.

While media websites are legally seen as akin to publishers, i.e. they don't have to accept content they don't want, they do respond to pressures to fulfill certain promises like, say, all opinions are welcome. Always there is a tension between a good faith attempt to have free discourse, and the need to ban hateful invective, slander, harassment of members, fraudulent information and other behaviors that would drive people away or turn conversations into flame wars. It seems like a really difficult balance. If you get the balance wrong, you can have either a boring expanse of insipid agreement, like a Puritan quilting bee, or a saloon taken over by desperados firing guns in the air and pissing in every corner.

Define essential. Define everywhere. The right of free expression has never extended to the right to harm others or foment harm. You can make a movie where someone burns down a building, but you can't burn down the moviehouse, no matter how well it might express something. Nor can you shout FIRE! in said moviehouse if there isn't one. And no one in your mega meme dump would suggest there be such a freedom to harm others.

Peer review means review by someone who is your peer, i.e. shares a professional field of research with you. What is your specific field and what research have you done? To get a review, at this website, you need to post a reasonably detailed abstract of your paper in the body of the post, and see if anyone here would be qualified, and interested, to review it. Also, it is helpful to explain why you didn't go the standard route of submitting it to a scientific journal or (if it's a preliminary report) a preprint server.

And yet, here you are denying it and I (sadly) am reading it. And then you are getting replies (very patient ones) pointing towards multiple lines of evidence that do not support your denial. Perhaps the reason some are not clamoring to answer your theory with careful arguments is that they feel it's a bit like proving WW2 happened. I suppose there could have been deep philosophical minds wandering through the wreckage in London, hatching arcane theories of WW2 not happening, all just a big hoax, but I doubt they got very far in the intellectual world of postwar Britain. Most likely they were escorted to mental hospitals. BTW, it's common for people harboring delusions to insist that anyone who disagrees with them is delusional. An insistence on your own facts and logic, mysteriously different from the facts and logic of others, is a common feature of mental illness. Perhaps some candid self-reflection would do you good.

Zzzzzz.

The above categories aren't mutually exclusive.

My conjecture is that forums don't so much ban holocaust denial as they require such extraordinary claims be backed with evidence or withdrawn. Given the abundant evidence for the Holocaust, including Allied footage, mass graves, testimony of survivors and soldiers and German officers, government documents, forensic analysis, intact gas chambers and crematory ovens (which my partner saw herself, when her German mother took her to see), and numerous other lines of evidence, I feel there's a pretty high bar set for countering evidence. A good friend in high school had an uncle who still had a number tatooed on his arm, from his time in a concentration camp. People were stamped with numbers. Like cattle. I asked him if he ever wanted to have it removed and he said absolutely not. He wanted people to remember. He was a real mensch.

Bulgakov? I had only heard part of the quote, about Soviet newspapers before dinner. It remains fresh advice, yes. I have heard their annual flagpole climbing contest is quite the spectacle.

I try to have some variety, too. Reuters, Guardian, LA Times, Washington Post, AP News, Daily Kos, Vice News (for its "underreported stories" emphasis), Politico, National Review (has retained a few conservatives with the capacity for independent thought), BBC, National Public Radio (US), and The Atlantic. And of course Journal of Toenail Fungus for its guest editorials by deposed dictators, unique perspectives I can find nowhere else.

Biology forum. Not unfounded and weird guesses about ulterior motives for transitioning forum. Also, is your friend cool with the "he" pronouns you keep dropping? It's called misgendering, n'est-ce pas? You may rely on the truth of me saying I want to walk like an Egyptian with Susannah Hoffs, formerly of The Bangles. It is not complex. When a police officer arrests me and informs me that anything I say may be held against me in a court of law, I will reply "Susannah Hoffs." Worth a try.

Just looking in. So folks are still conflating physical and psychological gender? Crikey, you will circle for eternity. Plus one. Can't be said too many times that the field of psychiatry is often ruled by social fads. Women and "tilted wombs."

Alfred Wegener says hello.

I am likely naive on this topic but I've heard that about powerlifting for a long time and wondered if this is simply an effect of significant increasing your body mass and blood volume while having the same size glands that produce androgens.

An American of my generation found Vonnegut and Bradbury almost inescapable, because they were both widely read and chatted about. I remember Simak for short stories that really stayed with me, as was also the case with Brian Aldiss, Bradbury, Damon Knight, Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Gene Wolfe, RA Lafferty, et al. For novels, there was Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Philip Dick, the usual pantheon. I didn't read the Strugatsky brothers when young (my loss), but heard praise for Roadside Picnic and it is still on my list to read. Maybe I will bump it up. Early innovators in sci-fi and horror, like HG Wells and EA Poe, I read as a teenager. Wells was more my taste than Poe. I had acquaintances who also liked HP Lovecraft, but I never warmed up much to his style of prose. I read him. I remember the character and his methodology more than specific stories. Though later good-quality screen versions, like the ones with Jeremy Brett, brought them to life again. It's funny how everyone here remembered Hound of the Baskervilles, which really was not one of his better stories.

The article didn't elaborate, so I would have to watch the two hour plus hearing - I think some reporting indicated that Grusch's replies did somewhat clarify that non-human was not meaning terrestrial animals (though he couldn't go into that in detail without them ducking into a SCIF). On the whistleblower status, my impression was that it was his mention of the unauthorized diversion of funds within DoD that would qualify for the standard definition of whistleblower. Not sure I have the time (2 hour, 34 minutes) to rake through the video, but I can probably find a transcript and skim around. JMO - if the DoD or other agencies have been covertly hoarding actual extraterrestrial biologics, this would be a slap in the face to life sciences and the transparency and data sharing it needs to thrive. Vast new avenues of research would open up. Humanity has a right to know of this, and (on a more crass level) we in the US are paying taxes for these agencies and should be informed. This isn't going to be like the 1938 Orson Welles broadcast scare, if people learn about ET remains.