Simon Paynton

Unseen wrote:
A psychiatrist explains why Trump wanting a third term (and by extenstion of his logic, to never leave office) was inevitable from the start.

He also says that the 12th and 22nd amendments together prohibit a president from becoming a president a third time, but I saw an explanation, I forget from who, saying Trump might be able to…[Read more]

Is this, or is it not outright corruption of our courts, legal establishment, and politicians in power? This explanation is from a Democratic senator.

14-1/2 minutes long

Yay, Rand Paul! I’d forgotten about him for a while.

1-1/4 minutes long

Ah Enco, you conceive of receiving music from AI that might disturb you going to sleep. That would be untamed music

How far are we from asking AI to match our sleep phases and introduce sounds to encourage conscious dreaming, or to assist us as biological individuals to reach optimum rest. Perhaps using a device similar to a smart watch. It…[Read more]

Playing with words here, but I feel there’s a kind of fundamentalish link between my consciousness and rules of the universe, or even the life around me. My consciousness is my brain operating, fine tuned to adapt to the world and life in it. I see that as a kind of “fundamental link”.

But that doesn’t automatically lead to the conclusion that…[Read more]

I will start by saying that I would be in the Sean Carroll camp on this. One foot might cross over to the Christof Koch side at times, but only to hear him out and to think upon his ideas. I have a lot of respect for Koch and was fortunate to attend a few of his lectures over the years. But my instinct has been to step back into Camp Carroll and…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
What if Consciousness is Fundamental?

Sean Carroll also has a recent podcast with Christof Koch on this topic. When I heard Koch expressing support for panpsychism, it sadly felt like a nod to woo-woo. Fortunately, Sean kindly dissented. As much as I respect Koch, IMO, his view struck me as simply “reasoning” that…[Read more]

The video with Jason Stanley on Amanpour referred to a Guardian article on the topic of how the Trump admin wants to define university policies and practices. As Enco notes, they can do this when they have powers of the purse. (Yo MAGA, the left may have set the scene, but you made governmental interference inevitable.)

Excerpt from the…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Is it just me or is AI art deliberately formulaic and creepy?

LLMs and AI algorithms are designed by humans, and source data gathered from the internet that humans created and maintain. I.e. that’s where any formulae and creepiness would be originally coming from, with a dose of whatever unexpected weirdness might come…[Read more]

I am liking the new artistic upgrade to Chatgpt.

I asked it to generate a picture in the style of Ralph Steadman as per below;

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is a waste of taxpayer’s money that needs to be DOGEd.

Thanks, Reg!!

Have a great week!

Due to work getting in the way of life, today’s post is curtailed.

TheEncogitationer wrote:
In other words, it takes more than just making stupid noises on EuroVision or not furnishing the apartment for me to use the term: “Fascist.”

Same here, actually. And using that word lowers his credibility, imo, while I guess I took advantage of the clickbait opportunity when I posted it here.

However, I’m not con…[Read more]

Enco, I promise I was only reviewing this thread, starting with its first post back in December, and my purpose was not to find examples of the kind of stuff that you write. But the following comment spurred me to point out that Jason Stanley is not the only pontificator conflating “Fascism” with policies they criticize:

TheEncogitationer…

[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
And now the Universities and this psycho, self-hating, suicidal egghead Jason Stanley have the nerve to scream “Fascism” when anyone–and this is not just Trump and MAGA–wants to put an end to all this nonsense???

I’ve made it a habit to just skip comments like this, so I’ve lost count. How does that come out so easily…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
If Universities accept taxdollars, they are by definition willing instruments of the State.

OK, “by definition” according to certain idealisms, but not long-standing traditions of giving academia and upper educational institutions some freedom to define curriculum and policies. Otherwise, an “instrument of the state”, by…[Read more]