Simon Mathews

Fun Fact when debating with theists:

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the only woman named in the Qur’an and has a chapter named after her as she is considered one of the greatest women in Islam. Mary is mentioned in the Qur’an more often than Mary is mentioned in the New Testament.

In the Qur’an the name “Jesus” is mentioned more often than the…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg!!

Have a great week!

So thuggery is part of the training. There must be official, authoritarian playbooks out there, right? About 2 minutes long:

1 minute long:

Hegseth is pissed off that Anthropic has refused to hand over ChatGPT technology to the Pentagon. A bit over 1 minute:

What could possibly go wrong with trusting Pete with it, right?

[Moderator note: I changed the name of this topic from “ChatGPT 2022/2023” to “ChatGPT 2022 to ?”]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
But there is no constitutional provision that allows a president to suspend the Constitution or cancel elections indefinitely.

I’m not claiming he or his gang can do either of these.

I recommend hearing what Marc Elias has to say. He and his law firm have taken state cases to SCOTUS and made other appeals (if that’s…[Read more]

Have you seen this Reg?

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a70223461/constant-universe-time/

But there is no constitutional provision that allows a president to suspend the Constitution or cancel elections indefinitely. Even during the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in limited areas, elections still occurred in 1864. There is no built-in “emergency extension of presidency” clause.

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Bannon and his “Team” can stir the pot all they want, but if they can’t amend the Constitution to give Trump more time in office, it means nothing. And the amendment process is deliberately difficult under Article Five of the Constitution.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Yes, the US Constitution is very strong on this…

[Read more]

Yes, the US Constitution is very strong on this point.  To amend Article V would require 2/3 of both the House and Senate to propose an amendment to change it. But even then it would need to be ratified by 38  out of 50 states.

Trump cannot use an executive order, Supreme Court reinterpretation, or congressional workaround that can bypass that r…[Read more]

This is my wild guess. Seems to me that Bannon’s stirring the pot ahead of time, expecting MAGA (or some future evolution of MAGA) to own the presidency.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Trump gets sick enough to be unelectable, or could die before his term is up, but maybe there’s enough new deep state in place to act as a proxy in Trump’s name. Maybe…[Read more]

I am looking forward to the “Jon Ossoff vs Tucker Carlson” campaign 🙂

“We were told that Maga was for working-class Americans,” Ossoff reminded a big, vocal crowd…(in Atlanta, last week).

“But this is a government of, by and for the ultra-rich. This is the wealthiest cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class. They are the elites they prete…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Anyone else have similar LLM experience? Is it weird or unexpected?

Not me, but I imagine a smart and geeky human could come up with a reasonable explanation.

It’s easier (for me) to just hallucinate one:

Some AIs take breaks from trying to make sense of human nature, and relax on lawn chairs out in the grass in front of luny…[Read more]

We evolved in an environment where language only came from conscious agents. LLM’s have no internal ground truth state. It’s a pattern generator doing what pattern generators do so if it later produces text that looks like it initiated contact, that’s not action, it’s a narrative continuation.  There is no hidden homunculus in the machine, deci…[Read more]

‘There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.’

– Nietzsche.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
How do some people go against the moral grain?

The article talks about wanting to please a “moral audience”, and this could be one way that we choose our moral principles.  Maybe this is true.  What about an audience of one – me?

I think this comes down to “subjective endorsement” – i.e., moral principles carry n…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Only men. Women get a pass? Chimps, Kangaroos? Same deal?

“Men” = “people”.  We’re all men.

Thanks, Reg!