donlacey

Reg,

UGH!! The article on Hindu Barbie called me non-cognoscenti. Who should I call to see how outraged (or not) I should be?

Take it easy, Reg. 😁

The article from Hinduism Today was (presumably) addressing those in Hindu society who didn’t know of Barbie from the U.S. and the West, which is quite possible, given the poverty in India and…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg!  Couldn’t log in yesterday – I blame Brexit

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
The term AI is a bit of a misnomer. It is not intelligent in the sense that a human is. It is not sentient, just a well programed language app.

You can’t accuse AI of being nonsentient (lacking consciousness) until we know what consciousness is.

We know it’s a state, feature, or process of the brain but we have no…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
The term AI is a bit of a misnomer. It is not intelligent in the sense that a human is. It is not sentient, just a well programed language app.

Yep. Adaptive algorithms have been around since the dawn of the digital age. The only diff is that computers are just faster, and things appear to happen “real-time”.

The term AI is  a bit of a misnomer. It is not intelligent in the sense that a human is. It is not sentient, just a well programed language app.

Off the top of my head, I imagine the real fear is that some parties unleash an AI with few restrictions or even an ability to reprogram themselves in some way, in a state in which we have become so dependent on AI that in order to stop it, we would have to effectively stop all AI and or shut off the internet. Basically when you ask a politician…[Read more]

UGH!! The article on Hindu Barbie called me non-cognoscenti. Who should I call to see how outraged (or not) I should be?

It seems at times that people misapply attributes to AI that are God-like, or possible someday. LOL, kinda like how early scripture writers assigned superhuman attributes to God(s).

So yeah, these designs and inventions came from mankind to start with, and LLM AI’s are not super “intelligent”, yet. It’s only applying algorithms to data originally…[Read more]

Reg,

Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Barbie Worlds!

This is just conjecture on my part, but I think Barbie is a quiet, unofficial, matter-of-fact Secular Libertarian.

My evidence? Well, according to the aspirational meme among Straight girls and LGBTQ:

I want to be Barbie! The bitch has…[Read more]

Have a great week everyone!

Reg,

Long Reads: ‘Ruzzki not welcome’: the Russian exiles getting a hostile reception in Georgia.

One good thing here in the U.S.: Every day on Stingray’s Classica Channel on no-cost-with-limited commercials PlutoTV, the station plays as part of it’s program circulation a ballet selection from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite.. A b…[Read more]

Unseen,

The entire thread is linked above for you to review and, again, with just one man and one woman, there wouldn’t be enough genetic diversity to produce all the traits to enable humans to survive in all the different environmental conditions on Earth.

Moreover, in a Post-Apocalyptic scenario, there would be no luxury of time and safety…[Read more]

@Enco

I’m fuzzy on the original discussion but I don’t think I would ever claim that humanity did come from just two beings. Did I?

I do think humanity could be restarted from one surviving man and one surviving woman, though their subsequent generations would have to breed out some of the negative traits that result from drawing on a severely…[Read more]

@Reg

I do use a VPN whenever not forbidden (some sites recognize and reject VPN-using visitors). However, the article in question is in the United States and so is the location of the VPN server I most often use.

Unseen – I have no subs to any of the sites that I link, except for the occasional NYT article that I can “gift”. I can only surmise that it is geo blocked based upon location. I have sometimes been unable to access USA sites when in the USA but I can view them without a problem from Ireland or the UK and even from the Canary Islands where I often…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
@Reg and Simon There’s a more sociological definition of moral relativism. In other words, one that doesn’t define it in terms of individuals making choices by their own lights:

Moral relativism is a philosophical position that asserts that morality is relative to the norms of one’s culture, meaning that whether an action is right…

[Read more]

Unseen,

Some time earlier, we were discussing the possibility of restoring a Post-Apocalypse humanity with just one man and one woman and I had stated the genetic reasons why it wouldn’t be possible and cited the work of Richard Dawkins.

Here below is the Sunday School where the topic came up, (also relevant to this Sunday School because it…[Read more]

@unseen

Fort Worth Atheists Launch Billboard Campaign. Lawsuit Continues.

Reg,

The stories about the remission of cancer patients from immunotherapy as a first resort and the use of AI to find anti-cancer antibodies are really bright spots in my day while I slowly get my strength back from the Rhabdo-Monster.

I can only imagine the pain cancer sufferers must feel and hope these new developments bring them and all of…[Read more]