• Atheism and Lack of belief
    Faith is a belief. Is atheism a belief? Is there belief without faith? (Faith connotes belief in god(s); atheism connotes (wrongly) lack of belief.) — god must be atheist
    Faith isn't restricted to a belief in gods. For example, I've noticed that a great many Americans have faith in their Constitution and the democratic process. People in western countries tend to put faith in their legal system (other places, not nearly so much). Many married people have faith in their partners and the institution itself. Far more people than I would have imagined possible still have faith in the future. There is a wide overlap between that faith and a faith in science and technology.

    Atheism is specifically a lack of belief in deities. This lack of belief can range from indifference to active, passionate hatred of religion. It doesn't, however, preclude any other form of superstition, or any of the other faiths in the above examples.
  • The Prevalent Mentality
    The interesting cases are the very decent, imminently sane people who manage to live in crazy societies without suffering. — BC

    I don't think they escape suffering. They just cope with it privately, and express it only in prose, teaching and art.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    Those men and AI lack empathy. — Athena

    So, what's the difference between having non-empathic men in charge of the arsenals of the world, and having an unemotional (unvengeful, unhating, unenvious, unjealous, unlustful, incapable of cruelty) computer in charge?
    Just one thing: the sociopaths and their sadistic minions have not been programmed to serve humanity.
    How do you think that is different from a game of chess? — Athena
    Predicting the outcomes of different proposed courses of action is what chess is about. So, why should predicting the outcomes of proposed real-world decisions be any different? You can inject emotionalism, but that's never had the best outcomes so far, as it tends to end in bloodshed.

    What you call "hampered by wishful thinking" is also knowing the pain of losing loved ones, or knowing the good feeling of having a father who is a good coach and always encouraging, Life experiences come with feeling and those feelings are an important part of decision making for humans. — Athena
    And that is why we now have the greatest disparity in standard of living that we have ever had and the greatest number of humans suffering pain, disease, privation and fear - because humans make decisions based on their own feeeelings, instead of reason.
  • Does power breed corruption or nobility?
    Al;so, remember how power and wealth are most commonly acquired. A noble spirit would consider the responsibilities of wielding power and know himself well enough not to take it on if he were not qualified (- which very, very few people are). Sometimes such a person takes charge because they feel duty bound to do so. Then, they will do the job to the best of their ability, and at considerable cost to their personal well-being. Sometimes such a person inherits or lucks into great wealth. Then they will use it to the benefit whom they can.
    An ignoble one desires power for its own sake and never considers himself unworthy or incompetent. It tends to be the most ruthless and least principled persons who attain to positions of power; by the time they back-bite and claw themselves to the top, whatever scruples they did have erode completely. And, because of what they have done to get power,they have accumulated a great many enemies; also, they assume everyone else wants it and will use the same methods to take it from them. Then they will live in a constant state of insecurity, and be just ruthless in defending and expanding their power as they were in acquiring it.
  • Does power breed corruption or nobility?
    It's the fear of losing that corrupts? — TiredThinker

    No, I don't think so. It's the seduction of owning even more, being even more important, having even more people under one's control, inspiring fear and awe and envy in others.
    But, in order to be corrupted, one must be corruptible in the first place.
    The same person who, when reasonably well off, readily succumbs to the temptation to steal office supplies at work, or not return a borrowed item if the owner doesn't ask, is the one who will take a bribe or embezzle funds when it's easy to do. If such a person becomes rich and powerful, they will abuse both their wealth and their power. If such a person is caught after his first instance of fraud, or remains unsuccessful and obscure, they will only be a nuisance to their neighbours and relatives.
    The kind of person who, when he's poor, will go back to the store when he realizes he's been given too much change and return it, if he becomes rich will invest his excess capital in bringing clean water to African villages or vaccinations to Borneo.
    It's not money or power that does the corrupting: people do it.
  • The Prevalent Mentality
    Our world is a very sick puppy. It's no surprise so many of us are, too.
  • The Prevalent Mentality
    The answer to this depends on various factors, what it is people ask of rulers the most determining of which. — Bug Biro

    I suspect it's more a question of what kind of leaders they're asking. Not every government will order running over a protester with a tank, but some will. Not every government dares to gun down a crowd from atop buildings, but some do. A government might back down on punitive taxation or ease up on civil liberties, but they will never, ever make a move against the rich. Who is on the protesters' side matters, if it's top army brass or top level clergy - otherwise, not.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    AI is a tool and will most likely always be a tool as it will be able to provide the most optimal solution, but it won't be able to weigh the consequences of the actions that are to be carried out. — sugarr
    Are you kidding? What do you suppose the Pentagon uses to figure out the outcomes of various scenarios and decisions they're contemplating? Any hand-held computer can predict consequences better than most humans, because it's not hampered by wishful thinking, hubris, faith, false association or selection bias. The only factor that limits this capacity is the quantity and accuracy of the information it is given.

    Humans, additionally, will always question AI's decisions and selectively enact those which are deemed as the most beneficial to the world — sugarr
    If humans were in the habit of doing what's most beneficial to the world, we wouldn't be facing extinction. They'll enact what they believe - often erroneously - what's best for themselves.

    while disregarding the solutions that cause suffering — sugarr
    Yeah, right! Are you sure no human world leader would cause suffering? (And why do you think a computer would?)

    Humans might argue that AI cannot be programmed to have morals, and therefore it's solutions will never be right for people. — sugarr
    Some humans obviously do argue that, having no programming experience. It's not true, of course: a computer can be quite readily programmed with a moral or ethical or legal code as guiding principles.
    But which moral, ethical or legal code should be chosen? Me, I'd prefer this one https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
    It's not a matter on which humans are traditionally united.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    Now, how much power do we want AI to have and how do we maintain control of it? — Athena

    More than the spiteful, greedy 3-year-olds in control of the world's governments now.
    You don't see a potential problem? — Athena

    I mentioned the problem two pages ago: some well-intentioned but misguided humans are programming computers to feel - or at least imitate - human emotions. That, to me, is a very bad idea. The useful machine is an unfeeling machine.
    See, I know what I think. But you seem to go back and forth between objecting to the computer because it doesn't understand human feelings and objecting to it because it does.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    And because AI has no values, it can only be a tool, not the cure. — Athena

    It was never proposed as anything but a tool.

    Has no values, has no values, has no values. Neither do Donald Trump, Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin, yet they have been the most powerful men in the world, causing lots and lots of other people to suffer and die. Why are they preferable to the UN - with the aid of state-of-the-art computers? They haven't bled at all.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    In other words, it has no values and that makes computers valueless without humans. — Athena

    Why would it ever be without humans? It would have no purpose without humans. The whole reason we're building it is to serve us and save us.

    Without values it would know no problems nor seek any solutions. — Athena

    It does what it is asked to do. By humans. It solves the problems we pose.

    That is why it matters that we bleed. — Athena

    Our bleeding would be of no instructive value to the computer. It has the information about haemorrhage, its various cause and effects, its risks and treatment, but it cannot directly intercede when made aware that someone is bleeding. People cause people to bleed (often) - and (sometimes) to stop bleeding. Computers don't.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    Has human civilizations ever known stability for more than a decade at a time? I don't see a world-wide enforcement of human rights more of an infringement on individual rights than most of the systems currently in place. As to cultural diversity, I wonder how much of a blessing it's been. But I think I'd rather worry about those things after children have stopped starving to death or growing up in refugee camps.

    eventually — sugarr

    I consider that a lesser problem than the imminent existential one.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    And we know from experience that communism doesn't work on a national scale, so why should it on a global scale? — sugarr
    We know that a couple of states that [falsely] used the communist label worked badly - precisely because they operated on the same model as all other examples of top-down rule: monarchy, oligarchy, theocracy, military dictatorship and corporation. We don't know much at all about a communal system on any scale larger than a village or monastic order.

    But then, nobody said a world government needs to be communist. The central computer idea was one option mentioned, the one that's taken most space to discuss; the evolution of an electronically connected hive mind was another.
    My original proposal was simply to break the unstable federations into their constituent territories in order to minimize internal conflict, and put them all, as equal entities, under the auspices of the UN; that the UN should be democratic (no Big Four) and take charge of all military capability. This would save an immense amount of resources, both material and human, that nations have been squandering on wars, actual and potential. The UN would be arbitrate disagreements between nations, police all nations equally for human rights violations and protect the environment. Beyond that, each territory could be independent and conduct its own internal affairs and economic arrangements.
  • What should be done with the galaxy?
    you can't help but seem rather silly. — Ciceronianus

    When has that ever stopped people doing anything?
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    Computers can not change that reality. — Athena

    Yes, that is exactly the kind stupid human reality they can change. Water was never scarce until we poisoned it and sold it off to private enterprise. Land was not scarce until the organized religions and army-hungry heads of state colluded to turn women into reproduction machines. The ice caps didn't start melting away until industrialists filled the atmosphere with CO2 - at great human cost, incidentally - and methane. No, you bloody well should not be filling idiotic, non-biodegradable balloons with helium to celebrate the ascent of yet another fathead to the throne of some political party or the turning of a calendar page. We are a crazy species. We could benefit from a sane babysitter until we grow up.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    What is a virtue and how are virtues developed is not something a computer can determine. What are ethics and how can we develop an ethical social order, is not something computers are good at figuring out. — Athena

    All the computer has to do is long division. It doesn't need to develop virtue or figure out what we mean by virtue. It doesn't need to figure out how to develop ethical order. We need to do those things for ourselves. In fact, they've been figured out by hundreds of people, hundreds of times, and only about a third of them were killed for saying it aloud, which would be a mark of progress, if persecuting and killing truth-sayers were not coming back into fashion.
    Maybe, we stopped setting up other humans to oppress us and create artificial scarcity so that we spend all our time and energy fighting over the crumbs, we might have the leisure to learn what the wisest of our ancestors have already figured out.
  • Cavemen and Libertarians
    You need to protect that which is yours. Food, cattle, weapons, crops, home, women (yeah, those too back then). — Bradskii
    You need to protect your own stuff. Police are needed to protect the elite who have taken more than their share.
  • Evolution and the universe
    I don't see what the relevance of the "selection" process is for explaining an organisms traits. — Andrew4Handel

    It's a choice.
  • Cavemen and Libertarians
    Is it true that for the majority of homo sapiens existence, we got along without having police officers or laws governing our behavior? — Shawn

    Yes, it's true. They had no money, either. Once you invent money, you need police to guard it.
  • What should be done with the galaxy?
    What I plan to do is map it, find out what's really in the Delta Quadrant and install a few more worm-holes.
  • Evolution and the universe
    But the second law explains why when I drop and break a cup it doesn't immediately leap back up and reconfigure itself because that is a statistically implausible array of matter. — Andrew4Handel

    Nothing ever goes backward. Except religionized politics.
  • The Prevalent Mentality
    I just watched an interesting documentary about Paleolithic people, which, among other things, dealt with a meeting place where a number of many small bands came together from time to time, so the young men and women could meet. There was dancing and stone art and presumably feasting. Either the man or the woman could then join the people of their chosen mate. It seems they were aware of the need for genetic diversity.
  • Evolution and the universe
    People like Darwin and Dennett — Andrew4Handel

    You really are a cutie-pie!
  • Yes man/woman
    Hermit. It's only two steps away anyhow.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    And what causes your gut feeling? — Athena

    I was using a jocular tone. I am, in fact, absolutely convinced, beyond a shadow of doubt, by everything I know and all of those many statistics I have cited for you to ignore, that the distribution of worldly goods could be equitably done by a computer that had such information as how many people there are and what the basic needs of a human being are, while the humans who have been in possession of this same information for thousands of years have been fucking it up for thousands of years.
    And you think nobody in the 19th century, or the 16th century or the 8th century noticed these injustices? Do you really believe all of humanity slumbered in ignorance until you cam along to open our eyes? You may not believe it, but I have a modicum of awareness myself.

    The computer is only as good as humans can make it. What does your gut feeling tell you about what this superior computer is going to measure and how will those measurements be made? — Athena

    It will continue to measure what it already measures - all the statistics in those links I gave you, plus a whole lot more. How measurements are always made by unbiased entities: through the collection of data.

    It would be great if a computer made it possible for us to know how we are going to get the billions of dollars we need for all the wonderful plans we have. Where will the money come from? — Athena

    Back from where the money went. That was in one of the citations. Here it is again:
    https://www.poverty.ac.uk/report-developing-countries-wealth/super-rich-could-end-poverty-four-times-over And who said anything about money? I generally use the term 'resources' - land, water, food, building material, labour, energy generation.

    Do you think government should just rob the wealthy people? — Athena
    No, I think wealthy people should pay restitution for what they've done to all the other people and the planet. A lot of robbery has been going on for a long time with the active aid of human governments.

    How is that justified and might that have bad consequences? — Athena
    Justice would be to throw most (only most, because some do have a sense of responsibility) of their asses in prison - not cushy minimum security, but in with the hardened felons their culture has created - but I'm willing to let them off with a two-mile barefoot hike in rural Wisconsin. Tell you what! Because I'm a real softie, I'll wait till May.
    Bad consequences? Like what? They'll yell for the bodyguard they can't pay anymore?

    Perhaps you can explain how a computer can do better than we can? — Athena

    It doesn't benefit from prevailing economic systems. It doesn't share our superstitions. It is a-political. It does not desire power, adulation or wealth. It has no illusions. It is impartial.
  • The Prevalent Mentality
    If enough people speak up in peaceful protest, rulers will listen and adjust to meet our standards. — Bug Biro
    How many - or rather, what percent of the population - is enough?

    How
    groups larger than 50 - 100 are, I think, unstable and it shows - large cities tend to have high crime rates. — Agent Smith
    Two things about that.
    100 doesn't provide a big enough gene pool or work force for self preservation. It needs to be at least 1000 - but, IMO, not more than 10,000 for sustainable population and governance.
    And the crime rate in modern industrial urban settings is a product of economic and organizational factors more than simple numbers.
    Selfish is us and of course the same goes for all life. — Agent Smith
    Ye-e-e-s... but so is altruistic and sociable.

    All vertical social organizations impose some degree and form of thought-control on the populace: having a single, unified world-view (which posits the necessity of hierarchy and assumes the legitimacy of the present rulers) makes the lower classes compliant. Any deviation from that world-view poses a threat to the power-structure and must be suppressed.
    A small, more egalitarian society is able to withstand differences of opinion, because these are discussed openly, face to face. If the dissonance causes a rift, it has to be resolved through compromise or social change - has to be, because it puts the whole group, everyone's children and loved ones - at risk. Horizontal social arrangements are far more flexible, responsive and adaptable than large, stratified ones. Think flock of starlings vs pyramid.
  • Evolution and the universe
    My point was that a soul is irreducibly complex. — Gregory

    And this "point" relates to the evolution of cats and dogs - how, exactly?
    It's amazing how many people here don't believe in philosophy or even care what it is. — Gregory

    Well, one for sure! Maybe two.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    You would not object to those wrongs if we had come a long ways. — Athena

    Yes, I would always object to them. And we have gone nowhere.
    Reagan was in office when I started raising awareness of the homeless problem and we used police to drive the homeless away. — Athena

    IOW, at the end of the 20th century CE, 8,000 years after the advent of civilization, the richest country on Earth not only allowed people to be homeless, but either chose to be unaware of their plight or persecuted them. Forty years after a fiery activist brought it to their attention, only 51% of the over 3000 homeless people in Portland are sheltered. But there is a plan. I have a gut feeling the problem could have been faster solved by a computer, which would have noticed this:
    One billionaire alone, Nike founder Phil Knight, owns more wealth than the bottom half of Oregonians, said OCPP.https://www.ocpp.org/2022/11/03/3-billionaires-oregon-wealth/
    Like I said, humans are really not - still, after all this progress - very good at allocating resources equitably.

    The more people get, the less responsible they seem to feel and wow is the attitude negative! — Athena
    People are imperfect. This is not news.
    This is a whole new reality in a short time and from my life experience there is no support for your argument. — Athena
    This is a mean, harsh reality very slightly modified over some decades, and a perfect support for my argument.
    And, of course, this just Oregon - one of the more progressive states in a rich and powerful country that vaunts - indeed forcibly exports - its brand of democracy all over the world. What holds true there, does not in Columbia, Nigeria, Slovenia, or even Alabama.
  • Evolution and the universe
    There is no plausible explanation of why things should get more complex over time. — Andrew4Handel
  • Evolution and the universe
  • Evolution and the universe
    :mask:
  • Evolution and the universe
    Why did you go get a video (which I've seen) instead of doing the chore yourself? — Gregory

    Because you are not my child to educate.
  • Evolution and the universe
    Who does the first member of a species mate with? — Gregory

    There is no first member of a species.
    https://www.cbd.int/gti/taxonomy.shtml
    I'm not giving a course in elementary biology.
  • Evolution and the universe
    What it tries to replace may be far more important — Gregory

    What it tried to replace?
    IT = evolution doesn't try anything. It is a process whereby organisms adapt to environments and circumstances.
    REPLACE = to take the place of some thing or process that existed previously. In this case, the absence of life.
    How was the absence of life more important than the process whereby life is perpetuated?
  • Evolution and the universe
    If you really want to know, information is readily and freely available.
    Here is a start:
  • The God Beyond Fiction
    The 'totality,' of scientific knowledge exemplifies human intent and purpose to pursue the answers to every question we can ask. To me, that's a very honest and honourable goal. — universeness

    Yes, I can see that.
  • Evolution and the universe
    The older the alleged evolutionary line is the less likely its real because it's just a greater amount of time the living beings didn't go extinct. — Gregory

    Living beings didn't go extinct for 3.7 billion years. That may be unlikely, but if it hadn't happened, you would not be here to question that it happened. Evolution is a continuous - which is to say uninterrupted, unbroken - line of descent from pond-scum to whales, redwoods, humans, daffodils, ants, bluebirds, wolverines and everything else that's alive today. The longer ago an evolutionary line branched off from the descendants of pond-scum, the fewer relatives we had.
    If you understand any of this, blink twice.
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    We have come a long ways from our barbaric past — Athena

    You believe that?
    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country
    https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/05/death-penalty-2021-facts-and-figures/
    https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human
    https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2018/
    As Global Democracy Retreats, Ethnic Cleansing Is on the Rise.... Ethnic cleansing became a global concern during the Balkan wars and the genocidal slaughter in Rwanda in the 1990s. Given the belated international response to those crises, some in the democratic world advanced a doctrine called the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which obliges states to protect all populations from genocide and ethnic cleansing, and to intervene before the killing begins. At a 2005 UN summit, every country in the world signed a commitment to R2P.
    Since that optimistic moment, democracy has been in retreat. In country after country, strongmen have eviscerated independent media, captured the judiciary, and stage-managed elections to perpetuate their rule. The failure of the United States and other democratic powers to respond effectively to these abuses has encouraged major autocracies to embrace more extreme measures, like forced demographic change, in pursuit of their domestic or geopolitical agendas.
    https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_855019/lang--en/index.htm
    https://ourworldindata.org/poverty
    https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/annual-income-richest-100-people-enough-end-global-poverty-four-times-over
  • Evolution and the universe
    The longer ago it goes the more unlikely it was — Gregory

    Now there is an unanswerable argument!
  • Should humanity be unified under a single government?
    How do you imagine AI to be good for humans as anything but a tool for humans to use? — Athena

    That's what it is. So are most humans.

    AI is binary thinking, either/or, right or wrong, yes or no. — Athena
    You're a wee bit behind on your programming savvy. But, in any case, I was talking about a UN type government, augmented by computer technology to allocate resources efficiently and fairly. I know that's never been done before.
    But I also know a great many things that have been done before: 20,000 people starved to death while three billionnaires went for a little junket in space.

    It's okay to believe a man will forgive a child for breaking something and that a computer would send that child to jail. But it's better to actually know the backgrounds of men an machines. A great many humans have killed other humans for a great many reasons, with missiles, with machine guns, with bombs, pistols, sabers, pitchforks, hammers and their bare hands. Some of the victims were their own children. No machine has ever killed anyone without being directed to do so by a human. But no computer has ever raped anyone. No computer has ever hanged a child for theft .
    Women and children were hanged for petty theft. In 1801, for example, Andrew Brenning, 13, was hanged for breaking into a house and stealing a spoon. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,894775,00.html
    or dashed a baby's brains out on a doorpost because the baby was a child of the enemy.
    You trust men to do justice?
    Good luck with that!
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