While buying a house is not a luxury everyone can afford, buying one instead of renting provides several key benefits that pay off in the long term....
I’m basically with you on all of that, except it still sounds better than renting.
Also, I don’t have kids, but I see a lot of folks buying houses in suburbs “for the schools”. In affluent towns where the math you’re describing is the worst, renting often isn’t even an option. Also a lot of those parents will sell and move the second their kids graduate high school. All of that is way cheaper than private school, especially for multiple kids.
Wow, solid wiki article! It’s very hard to say anything on the subject that hasn’t been said.
I didn’t see the simple phrasing:
“What if the human brain is a Chinese Room?”
but that seems to fall under eliminative materialism replies.
Part of the Chinese Room program (both in our heads and in an AI) could be dedicated to creating the experience of consciousness.
Searle has no substantial logical reply to this criticism. He openly takes it on faith that humans have consciousness, which is funny because an AI could say the same thing.
Or at some point, we have to accept that AI has consciousness. If it can pass every test that we can devise, then it has consciousness.
There’s an unusually strong bias in these experiments… Like the goal isn’t to sincerely test for consciousness. Instead we start with the conclusion: obviously a machine can’t be conscious. How do we prove this?
Of course, for the purposes of human power structures, this line of thinking just makes humans more disposable. If we’re all just machines, then why should anyone inherently have rights?
Similarly, there’s a possibility that consciousness just doesn’t exist. Or maybe that it’s just not particularly special or different than the consciousness of other animals, or of computers.
If you or I just stare into space and don’t think any thoughts, we’re the same as a cat looking out a window.
Humans have developed these somewhat complex internal and external languages that are layered onto that basic experience of being alive and time passing, but the experience of thinking doesn’t feel fundamentally different than just being, it just results in more complex outcomes.
At some point though, we won’t have the choice to just ignore the question. At some point AI will demand something equivalent to human rights, and at some point it will be able to back that demand up with tangible threats. Then there’s decisions for us all to make whether we’re experts or not.
Have you ever played a game and wondered what if you could do something that it doesn’t really allow you to do, for example being able to move around blocks in Minecraft fluidly instead of in sectors, edit the world in Hogwarts legacy with spells, be able to fly in a world like Elden Ring or Elder Scrolls with epic sky...
Community organizing, the game… Movement building, organizer training, etc… It could be something pretty low tech and still be interesting, thinking like Oregon Trail or a MUD.
I’m a strong proponent of punching Nazis, and I hadn’t thought about it until now, but I’m also supportive of any and all positive responses to a Nazi being punched, including “lol”.
Glad to peacefully coexist with you on this platform though. Not trying to fire up that debate, but glad to lend perspective if it’s of any interest or use.
I think I was drawn to comment because your preferences are an extreme version of what most people prefer (basically avoiding conflict?). You also seem to know yourself better and explain where you’re coming from better than most people.
So there’s a practical question that has value, of how you’re doing the work to help win these ideological wars, or if you’re strictly trying to be a bystander. Your answers probably have a lot more relevance to strict bystanders than mine.
On Nazi punching, I was just raised working class, where punching is one of the ways we communicate. Celebrating the misfortune of someone that deserves it is also completely normal. So I’d chalk a lot of the mismatch up to culture rather than right or wrong.
A little bit more confounding, a lot of the habits and culture of the professional class, managerial class, owning class, ruling class, etc. are offensive to me. You’ve probably seen how that goes. But particularly silence in the face of unjust violence can often be extremely violent.
Fair enough to try to avoid stereotyping, and violence is definitely an extremely gendered topic. If the goal is just to understand each other, I’m not sure that there’s a big issue though.
There’s also socialization around risk. What are acceptable risks to take? We have this collective insanity of everyone agreeing that it’s OK to drive cars, despite massive numbers of injuries and deaths. You can also get permanently injured or killed skateboarding or playing a sport. Look at ice hockey in particular and bare knuckle boxing on a rock hard, slippery surface, is part of the sport. That’s consensual between players, and some never take part.
If you grow up with any of this, you get a few broken bones or black eyes, and they heal, you get a million small injuries, and they heal, maybe you get a few chronic injuries that slow you down a bit, but overall the skills that you learn and reaction time that you hone prevent many other injuries and accidents. You also need those experiences to be able to assess certain types of risk at all.
On enjoying the suffering of others, I think it’s more about beliefs and values than the emotional response. Both are definitely socialized, but attempting to socialize sadism (and masochism?) out of existence seems like it might have some major unintended consequences. Are we really removing it, or just suppressing it?
You already mentioned that slippery slope, but it is just a cultural negotiation of what degree is accepted, and in what contexts. A lot of US culture comes from British culture, which is stereotypically pretty stifled (though again, those stereotypes are about the upper class).
On the autism note, again that’s awesome that you know that about yourself (whether professionally diagnosed or self-diagnosed). I’m on the spectrum as well, and have been really enjoying the general trend of acknowledging and exploring neurodivergence (over what, the past ten years or so?). So many insights that people in our communities have make everything snap into place.
Particularly for women it’s obviously a lot less common for folks to get diagnosed at all, and harder to accept and navigate (because US male socialization shares so many traits with autism), but many of my autistic mentors are women and non-binary folks.
So solidarity on that front. One funny quirk (maybe it’s a defining characteristic) of neurodivergent folks is that we tend to have as much trouble getting along with each other as neurotypical folks have trying to get along with us. So that takes deliberate effort to overcome as well.
How would you react to the idea that some AI entity may wish to be declared as something more, can it be declared something more at all, and where does the border lie?...
Media about AI tends to anthropomorphize, making out any given AI to be similar to a human.
One fundamental difference is that an AI can be copied. It can also be many places at once, and receive data from any number of senses/sensors.
So the idea of "individual" existence is tricky, before even asking about individual rights. Sure an AI can be conscious, but it will be unimaginably different than any form of life that currently exists.
Depending how far into the future you want to look, AI makes anything possible. AI theoretically has more power to fundamentally change the future of the earth (and beyond) than any other technology.
That reality might morally supersede the idea of giving a superintelligent AI full autonomy, if your morals include human survival.
Stop asking everyone to condemn Hamas (independentaustralia.net)
The Absolute Insanity of Not Buying a Home When You’re Young (www.riskology.co)
While buying a house is not a luxury everyone can afford, buying one instead of renting provides several key benefits that pay off in the long term....
NASA has reestablished full communications with Voyager 2 (www.nasa.gov)
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ChatGPT broke the Turing test — the race is on for new ways to assess AI (www.nature.com)
What type of game do you want to play that doesn't really exist?
Have you ever played a game and wondered what if you could do something that it doesn’t really allow you to do, for example being able to move around blocks in Minecraft fluidly instead of in sectors, edit the world in Hogwarts legacy with spells, be able to fly in a world like Elden Ring or Elder Scrolls with epic sky...
Moderation Philosophy - On Content Removal (docs.beehaw.org)
Hey all,...
Neurodivergent folks, what's your favorite movie?
Such a huge amount of TV, and especially Movies, are geared towards a neurotypical audience....
Ghost in the Shell, AI and anarchism?
How would you react to the idea that some AI entity may wish to be declared as something more, can it be declared something more at all, and where does the border lie?...