StringJunky

If it's bigger than me; run. If it's smaller than me; eat it or chill.

17 hours ago, kenny1999 said:

Hi everyone else, please read what I am looking for carefully, I am only looking for a tool that will help record what I have done to my files, it is just like an activity log, and there is totally nothing about hacking or spying as slandered by someone with malice in mind.

There is no intention to slander. If someone puts up the means, someone with malicious intent could use it. C'est la vie.

30 minutes ago, studiot said:

Well as I have no idea who or what they are I really don't have a choice.

As to leonardo, what Maths is he responsible for ?, apart from a few extensions to Euclid ?

... apart from a few extensions to Euclid? And how many extensions to the mathematical corpus have you done?  

12 minutes ago, guidoLamoto said:

You don't know Mantle or Mays?... I take it you're either not American or some kind of Communist or Vegetarian.. (They were excellent baseball players, both palying in New York in the '50s. Add in Snider playing for Brooklyn in that decade and you have the meat for endless hours of arguments among sports fans in the bars over who was the best center fielder.)

Leonardo had as much to do with math as Sir Isaac had to do with sculpturing and painting...although Leonardo's plan for a bridge over the strait at Constantinople has been shown in models  to be feasable and mechanically sound engineering, far advanced for its time. https://www.livescience.com/da-vinci-bridge-never-made.html

He was also said to be the strongest man in Italy. .. and I think he invented the Whoopie Cushion too. A well rounded man. Newton can't compete on that level. 

If it was a choice between being stuck on an island with either, Leonardo would be my preferred survival partner.

4 minutes ago, iNow said:

Sounds like Gwyneth Paltrows latest body cleanse 

Now there's one that flew over the cuckoo's nest.  

19 minutes ago, iNow said:

I do think she and Liz Cheney together on a ticket would be VERY hard to beat in the general election, even though they’d never make it out of the GOP primary. 

That's a curveball suggestion that could work. Cheney for pres.  Out of all the available options, I would vote for her. She's taken the hardest swings and still standing... and not through blind belligerence either.

1 minute ago, iNow said:

Hell, many guys would do it for a free slice of pizza and a smile from an attractive female. We’re hardly stoics as a culture anymore. 

Yes, most people are morally transient, according to their perceived needs. 

10 hours ago, iNow said:

Capable and smart, but cynical and lacking in consistent principles. She’s a very skilled political operator who moves her position swiftly to align with the polls, but even dead leaves can go with the flow. We need leaders who shape it, not just get carried by it. 

At 40-60 points behind, she only stands a chance if Trump is somehow subtracted from the equation, and even then Trump voters are far more likely to flow to DeSantis. 

She's chameleonic.

Keylogging/spy software. We can't help with that stuff because it's too often used with malice in mind.

25 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

I think it is easy to blame the Nazis for Naziism and similar level atrocities, but if we want to avoid becoming part of it it's important to recognize we are all born capable of the same. 

Given the same pervasive, morally-subversive conditions, we each may well potentially think in the same way.

Needs moving to the Religion section.

2 hours ago, AIkonoklazt said:

I'm not exactly "pro-X" or "support X" but I kinda wonder what the heck else the world is supposed to do about all the people who are single-mindedly "working" towards rolling back the world to the age of Caliphates and eliminating anything and everything that could stand in the way?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliphate

Translate: 'Otzma Yehudit', which Ben-Givr leads. It might has well be called the 'Fourth Reich'.

If we increase the density of something, one is concentrating it; be it people or matter.

2 hours ago, CharonY said:

Well, ultimately what has to happen is that the voices of consensus builders are elevated. I.e. having the Likud and Hamas in power (and by now it has been extensively discussed how Netanyahu's anti-two state strategy has empowered Hamas) the cycle of violence is likely only to continue. The other aspect is the one of outcome. Sure killing folks now eliminates them as immediate risk, but with a longer view it is abundantly clear that this also creates a vast (international) recruitment ground for Hamas and their allies.

Exactly my thoughts, seeing the sad faces of Palestinian children minus limbs. Perfect recruitment material.

5 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Something has to be done to break through the hate, and clearly Israel leaving Hamas in charge with their current agenda in place isn't going to do it, and no one else but Israel are both capable and willing to remove them from power.

Yeah, leave the fox in charge of the chicken hut...

7 minutes ago, MigL said:

Off the top of my head, I can think of two COUNTRIES smaller than Gaza that are very successful; San Marino and the Vatican.
Thay have 'porous' borders, like Gaza used to have prior to 2005, but no one would call them 'open air prisons'
Sometimes, when you lose a war that you started, you need to choose how to go forward; whether to seek 'revenge' on the victors, as Germany chose to do after Versailles, or rebuild and earn the respect of the world, as Japan ( and West Germany ) did after WW2.
Maybe that choice should have been made by Palestinians and other Arabs who were occupied by Israel after 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and 2006 when Hamas took over.
Maybe someday they'll learn ...

Incidentally, contrary to Mistermack's assertions, it is a known fact that Israel has had nuclear capabilities for some 30odd years, and they have never used them.
Does anyone doubt that, if given similar capability, Hamas  ( who ARE Palestinian ) would not use them against Israel ?
Does anyone think they care how many of their own people they would incinerate ?

Sure, some Israelis are expansionists and greedy, but some Palestinians ( Hamas ) are hell-bent on revenge, no matter what the cost.
Some members, String Junky and TheVat, are making excuses for them, even going as far as blaming the US for defending a country that has been attacked by its neighbors 6 times in the last 60 years.
I won't even consider Mistermack' s views; he/she simply hates Israelis/Jews, or anyone who thinks everyone in the region has a right to live in peace and not be subject to terror.

  A sufficiently myopic gaze  upon the history would concur with your view.  Mutual destruction of opposing ideologies is the name of the game here.

47 minutes ago, CharonY said:

This is also highlighted in the New Yorker piece here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/11/the-inside-story-of-microsofts-partnership-with-openai

It is a bit worrisome that a company initially set up for ethical AI development combats attempts to develop a governance system for it. It looks like openai is going down the Google "don't be evil" path. Move fast, break things and let others pay for it.

We certainly should avoid getting sucked in by any charm offensive that Altman may pursue. He just wants to be up there with the top 3 richest/most influential people.

@mistermack Prison only works in physically taking pathologically dangerous people out of society. It is pretty impotent in the long term sense for less serious crimes, like persistent theft or fraud etc. Once labelled a criminal, I imagine a fair few think: " I'm fucked, might as well carry on." What is happening with this kind of thinking is that, by labelling them a criminal from the beginning, one has attacked and destroyed the whole person. What have you got left to work with? They aren't going away.

The sense of being a criminal has lost it's gravitas, such that the behaviour-modifying potential of applying that label has been lost. It pervades at every level of society. The difference from the the past to now is that it's naked.

2 hours ago, Alysdexic said:

colour -> color

My ancestors were raped and pillaged by the French.

1 hour ago, joigus said:

Interesting notion. What's outside that box? Nothing? The unreal? The unnatural?

Nice.

"Guess what. I couldn't help myself. I finally ate it! And I made another one, because I always wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I knew it all along. And what's more... I think I understand why I always do that." (determinism again... Or the illusion of it?)

Maybe free will and determinism are about time frame.

Does that make sense?

Cheers. How do you mean wrt timeframe?

Can't coercion be a proxy for deterministic in the sense that one can decide to act contrary to the coercive influence.

2 hours ago, iNow said:

So you don't think our instinctive programming includes a desire to avoid ostracization from the group? I'd argue otherwise. Selection pressures tend to reinforce adherence to tribal and cultural norms, not abandon them. 

More to the point, I suggest the same chemistry driving our choices and behaviors also apply here. Through conditioning, the firing patterns and activation thresholds of those neurochemical events have been shaped to avoid triggering the  other neurochemistries within us which express as shame and embarrassment and desire to escape the situation. 

Acknowledging that the impetus of our actions comes well before we previously realized in no way changes our day to day experience. The only difference is the explanation, not the outcome. 

IMO, it's a bit like learning that it wasn't gods in the sky arguing which caused lightning storms, but is instead explained by basic physics and electromagnetism. The lightning is still the same, as is our experience of it. It didn't alter just because we became more accurate in how our descriptions of how it functions. 

Acknowledging?  You make it sound like a fact. All I see is that you've come up with a story that you like. I can't help but sense a little hubris in this subject from you when the present state of knowledge doesn't warrant it.

32 minutes ago, iNow said:

Will you please provide an example or two of what "departing from our instinctive programming" means? Aren't we still subject to the same underlying neurochemistry and sequencing regardless of what actions we're engaging in?

Holding your anal sphincter closed in company when it wants to relax.

2 hours ago, iNow said:

No, uncoerced works just fine, and has the added benefit of eliminating the confusing subjective baggage which these 92+ other threads we have active on the topic confirm accompany any attempts to focus instead on free will.

If it is "not just subjective," this means it's also (at least in part) objective.

To that end: What objective measures of utility do you propose are available to help us agree upon a better/best framing of the free will concept?

When we depart from our instinctive programming, what are we doing?

16 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Rubbish. The rehab industry will shout it to the rooftops, but they ignore the fact that punishment is a great incentive to go straight. Since most crime goes undetected, it's not possible to assess the success of rehab. Many criminals learn from getting caught, and are more careful next time. The probation industry will claim them as successes, while they carry on offending but not getting caught. 

I envy and admire the US for their sentencing policy. Or I used to, but behind the scenes, a lot of the headline sentences are abandoned when the criminal " shows that they have reformed " and they end up doing four years of a nominal 20 year stretch. 

I think you would get the same results, or better, by getting rid of all the rehabilitation industry, and just kept people in for the sentence they deserved on the day. 

In this country, people know full well that if they get 8 years they will only do four. Criminals especially know how to play the system. 

The people I really feel sorry for, are innocent people who are found guilty. If you don't admit to something you didn't do, you will do the whole 8 years and more. THAT is criminal. 

Under the influence of an addiction, the law might as well be written in Mandarin. 

1 minute ago, Alfred001 said:

The claim about other ABs causing cancer is based on two studies alone. The nurse study and the clarithromycin study. The CLA study looked at all cause mortality, not cancer and the epidemiological studies they reference lack data on dose and duration, so I don't know what the basis is for the claim about the safety of a short course of metro.

Can I ask why you are so invested in this subject? It seems to be beyond intellectual curiosity.