I guess I consider 'understanding' to be different from just raw information. Knowing information doesn't seem like understanding to me. I can know, for example, the sentence "King Charles I of England was executed on January 30, 1649" without understanding what a king is, what England is, what executed means, why he was executed, etc. If someone asks me it on a quiz, I can give the correct answer without understanding a single thing about why it's the correct answer or what it means for that to be correct.

edit. When I google "is knowing information the same as understanding?" google tells me:

No, knowing information is not the same as understanding:
Knowing
Is the awareness of facts or details about a subject. It's static and refers to discrete facts.
Understanding
Is the ability to analyze facts and put them in context to form a big picture. It's active and involves connecting information.

That loosely matches my intuitions about why understanding isn't the same as just knowing pieces of information.

Hence, interpretation of meaning is the purview of Philosophy, not Science. — Gnomon

It's a philosophical question which most philosophers are not equipped to even begin to answer. Understanding what the mathematical concepts mean at root takes quite a lot of effort and study, and I fear most philosophers want to give their philosophical take on quantum physics without having done the prerequisite work of actually understanding the physics.

It's a philosophical question that I don't trust philosophers to answer.

Yes, I would say that learning something new like that is an increase to your understanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

I wouldn't. Trivia =/= understanding

what are you saying they are? Just immoral?

people want to see a peevish, arrogant, and nakedly contemptuous pseudo-aristocracy punished for its abuses — Chisholm

I thought you were describing trump. Woops.

It always amuses me that the person these people chose to save them from the aristocrats is a perfect example of a spoiled child aristocrat.

I'm a physicalist, of sorts. Especially in regards to the mind. I don't see any reason not to be. We know physical stuff exists, we know physically affecting the brain changes mental function, and the closest we've ever come to constructing an artificial mind (LLMs can pass turing tests now) was by constructing a physical machine and implementing software in it (which is implemented physically) which in a simplified way mimicks the physical processes of the neuronal structures of our brain.

There's no non-physical model, period. No model at all. Just the english sentence, "the mind can't be physical" - that's what nonphysicalism has, but no model. So it's not like I'm accepting physicalism and rejecting other models - there simply aren't other models. Nobody's made one. No non-physicalist in the entire history of the world has made a compelling nonphysicalist model of a mind, of how a mind might work.

Maybe physicalism is wrong, I'm not 100% sure it has to be right, but I'm okay believing some things which have some tiny probability of being wrong.

Keep this in mind though: this universe is turing complete, which means that if minds are possible to implement in any way, they're almost certainly possible to implement here, out of physical stuff. The turing completeness of the universe makes non-physical ideas of the mind kind of obsolete - however you could implement them non-physically, you could just do that physically too. That's how I see it. We know we have physical stuff right here, we know it's turing complete, and we know when we mess with our physical brains we're messing with the functions of our minds. I don't see any reason to even entertain the model-less world of nonphysical minds. I imagine my reasoning above has a lot in common with why physicalism is the status quo among scientists.

Another accuser of Trump has come out


the Guardian – 23 Oct 24Donald Trump groped me in what felt like a ‘twisted game’ with Jeffrey... 1
Stacey Williams says the ex-president, whose spokesperson denied the allegations, touched her in an unwanted sexual way in 1993, after Epstein introduced them

Epstein led this model to Trump, and upon meeting her, Trump started groping her and feeling her up.

Now in any other world, a woman says this about a guy running for president and I have some reasonable doubt. Maybe she’s in it for fame, maybe she’s been paid off by the opposite party to lie - things like that are conceivable.

But we’re talking about trump here. Mr grab them by the pussy himself. “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

And of course his own words make this weird relationship with Epstein credible too:

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York Magazine that year for a story headlined “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.” “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

There’s no reason to take any future denial from Trump seriously, he’s already told us he’s the kind of guy to do stuff like this.

And let’s not forget Trump has already been found to be a rapist in court. Judge says E Jean Carroll allegation Trump raped her is ‘substantially true’ in court dismissal

The commentary on the Law subreddit is interesting.

https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1g9u07a/heres_what_was_in_the_evidence_document_trump/

I'm not sure how much of that community is actual legal experts (it would be naive to think they're all legal experts, but I think overly cynical to think there aren't a hell of a lot there), but there seems to be a consensus there that he did try to overturn the election results (rather than just the soft-ball wording of NOS4 that he was merely contesting the results), and that his actions throughout this ordeal were illegal.

That's what happens when you let someone with incontinence prepare your food.

Even if that's so, to ask him specifically to find the right number of votes to make him win... you don't think that smells? Whether he's asking him to find votes for trump or find illegal votes for biden, in either case he's calling a governor and telling him "make me win, do what you need to do to make me win." You don't think there's anything fishy about that at all?

Like maybe if he didn't specify who the votes were for, and didn't specify any quantity of votes, and just said something like "there were a lot of illegal votes in Georgia, I think you guys should put some more effort into identifying those illegal votes and throwing them out", that might make some sense. But to specifically find illegal votes for his opponent, and specifically the number that would make him win... He's asking the governor to make him win. It's mind boggling to me that that's acceptable to anybody.

So I ask again, if Kamala Harris does the same thing this year, you're cool with that? She calls up the governor of somewhere and says "find me the right amount of votes to make me win", you've got no problems with that?

I'm not asking what I would call it. I'm asking what you would think of it.

Now, you keep saying "find illegal voting" and that's not my understanding of what he said, nor is it the understanding of just about anybody else.

The words he said were, "I just want to find 11,780 votes". I mean, if you're saying trump asked him to find votes for trump, illegally, then yeah -but I don't think that's what you're saying. Trump then also tried to intimidated him into doing trumps bidding during the call, saying that if he didn't find those votes it would be criminal.

So if Kamala Harris calls up governors saying those words, "find me <the exact number of votes I need to win>" like trump did, you'd think that's totally above board, correct? I wouldn't. I have consistent principles here, I wouldn't think it was above board. Would you?

And imagine they succeed where trump failed. Imagine they lose in 2024, and they somehow manage to succeed in some of the strategies trump employed. They call governors asking them to find votes, they get Congress to not certify the electoral college, and in so doing Kamala takes the presidency. In this bizarro world, you'd feel like nothing untoward happened, correct?

you'd think Kamala is a hero of she loses the next election and calls governors asking them to find votes, decertify state elections, etc? Wow.

One candidate’s administration is going after — NOS4A2

As far as I can tell, the candidate's administration has very little to do with what's going on. And if someone did something illegal, the fact that they're running for election shouldn't stop them from getting a court case about it, should it? "in order to influence an election" this makes it sound like you think that because he's a candidate in an election, they should just let him get away with it. He did evil shit, I'm glad to see him being taken to court over it. I'd be gladder to see him in prison but that can wait.

I know for a fact that if biden did half the shit trump did, eg calling governors telling them to find votes, organizing fake elector schemes, jan 6 etc, you would be a lot less tolerant of it.

What's corrupt about it? Lmao. The american people don't have a right to know about the anti-democratic bullshit the presidential nominee got up to?

proof that the swamp does in fact need draining - of him and the people who enable him.

Have you guys all seen this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1g6kb8n/trump_judge_releases_1889_pages_of_additional/

Trump judge releases 1,889 pages of additional election interference evidence against the former president

It includes various plans for Pence to help them change the election results.

It also includes evidence that Trump called AZ officials and asked them explicitly to decertify the electoral college vote

Trump and his team are truly despicable. It's not an exaggeration to say they're a threat to democracy.

What are LLMs? Large language models? — MoK

Yes

I don't think there's any reason to assume a detemrinistic system cannot have 'doubt' implemented into a thing in that system. Doubt is a feature of a model, not of the system itself - so as long as you can implement a model in a deterministic system, that model can have measures of doubt and uncertainty. I'm actually pretty sure LLMs have already learned to internally represent various degrees of certainty in particular situations.

hear hear. I second the motion.

I'm a physicalist, but an emergentist at that, and I've begun to identify not with my body and brain itself, but from the emergent thing that's implemnted by my body and brain.

Not sure how to describe it clearly though. It's almost like a platonic form that's made real by a physical manifestation - but also the platonic form I am now is not the platonic form I was 5 seconds ago... Idk if that makes sense. Probably not.

Which is why the thread is titled "Atheism about a necessary being". — Hallucinogen

Why use the word 'atheism' at all, instead of just saying 'not believing there is some necessary thing is a contradiction'?

Atheism isn't a general term for not believing something...

There's literally nothing in that argument that goes any way towards suggesting that the first "necessary" thing is anything like what we would call a God. Atheists aren't making the claim 'nothing is necessary', they're saying 'these deities in these books don't exist'.

>then you're not an atheist about a necessary entity

And this quote proves what I'm saying - you're confusing 'atheism' about personal gods with some other claim that atheists generally don't make. It seems you've made atheism into something it isn't in order to construct this argument.

It's like saying 'atheism is wrong, because there's fruit. See, look at this fruit. If you believe this fruit exists, then you're not an atheist about fruit". Atheism *isn't about fruit* you goof.

Maybe laymen and philosophers, but that's not the view of those who study perception scientifically. — Michael

I going even think most philosophers are naive realists. They're mostly non skeptical realists but that's substantially different.

I think will be just a different model of reality from our own, not necessarily closer, not necessarily more correct (though possibly more correct, and possibly better at predicting certain things - that's the measure of any model, right? predictive success). It will have its own abstractions, it will slice reality up differently to how we do, but maybe similar in some important ways.

But there's really no telling until it actually starts being built and learning things. We already know that neural nets have their own ideas about things that are similar to ours in some ways but different in some surprising ways. I expect that to be the same with this guys project, if this guys project even ever gets working.

My was AI doesn't think. Concepts are associated with thinking.

Either way, I do not see how this reveals the questions that came after it. If you can explain. — I like sushi

You specifically asked "How can AI have a concept of reality?"

I have shown pretty solid evidence that AI internally models the stuff it interacts with (and thus, if it interacts with reality, it will - or at least in principle can - have an internal model of that reality). To me, it seems fairly self-evident how that's relevant to the question you asked. An internal model of reality, to me, seems like what someone might mean when they say 'a concept of reality'.

AI internally models stuff it interacts with.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yzGDwpRBx6TEcdeA5/a-chess-gpt-linear-emergent-world-representation

I think this is where I got the idea of mocking from, "I don't give a shit if you wipe your ass with it" — Brendan Golledge

Just giving my idea some color, wasn't aiming my ass at you.

I don't think I mocked you at all. You presented an idea - that if a God created the world, that has various specific moral implications - and I'm presenting plausible alternatives. Perhaps a God created the world, and those moral implications are not true regardless. Does my suggestion that that's a plausible alternative feel mocking to you? Is it mocking that I think you might be incorrect about something?

And perhaps the creator has no interest in determining how his creation is used. If I write a book and sell it, I don't give a shit if you wipe your ass with it - I accomplished what I wanted with it, do what you want with it.

I suppose the only difference between a materialistic worldview and my deistic worldview is the moral implication. If everything simply exists without known cause, then there is no moral implication. But if everything was made as it was for its own sake (like a giant artwork), then that morally implies that it is good, and that we ought to pay attention to it and appreciate it. — Brendan Golledge

Does it imply that? I don't intuit that conclusion. A deistic god could be just another thing, with no particular need to give it and what it wants any more mind than anything else. Who says it cares about you, or wants you to care about it? Perhaps it has no moral content at all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination_(artificial_intelligence)#:~:text=Researchers%20have%20recognized%20this%20issue,in%2046%25%20of%20generated%20texts.

For example, a chatbot powered by large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, may embed plausible-sounding random falsehoods within its generated content. Researchers have recognized this issue, and by 2023, analysts estimated that chatbots hallucinate as much as 27% of the time,[9] with factual errors present in 46% of generated texts.

What do you think is a good question? I really liked what you said. When you're reading or engaging with someone else, what do you find to be a good question? — Jafar

The most important, widely-applicable question is "why do you think that?" Also, "what do you mean?" lol. Some people get really upset by those questions but, imo, true philosophers love being asked those questions about their ideas and beliefs.

I think you should learn to feel comfortable not having anything to say, and maybe learning more about active listening. You don't need to know a lot of things or have a lot of opinions to engage well in a conversation - getting good at asking questions is more than half the battle. Maybe that's why one of the most important things in Philosophy is the Socratic Method.

So yeah, focus more on how to ask good questions instead of having things to say, would be my advice.

well this thread is about misinformation, not bomb threats. idk what OP thinks about bomb threats, but I disagree with OP about quite a lot of political things so he might think bomb threats should also be legal.

For me, misinformation is more about people lying about politically relevant facts - like making up stories about immigrants eating pets, for example.

sure, that's already illegal and I beleive it should stay illegal.

On the one hand, it's obvious that people making decisions based on lies and falsehoods is undesirable. I mean, if your eyes are telling you there's safe ground ahead, but that's not the truth and you're about to step off a roof, then ... you know, false information is obviously not great for making good decisions. So talking about it like misinformation isn't a problem *at all* seems silly to me. There's some very obvious problems with an information economy that's flooded with lies.

On the other hand, having a central government authority deciding which things are the orthodox truth is similarly dangerous. A lot of naive online leftists seem to believe that truth-determining organizations are a clearly good thing, but they only think that as long as the truth-determining organizations believe the things they believe - they don't think about what happens when *the other side* get control of the official truth. They're short sighted about that, many of them.

So I think misinformation should absolutely be fought, and is a real problem - but I have no idea how to fight it, and giving governments the power to choose truth seems kinda insane to me.

Do you lean more toward free will or determinism? — Cadet John Kervensley

Like most professional philosophers, I'm a compatibilist.

I'm not sure I understanding all of this. I don't know if my response is relevant. — Patterner

I think it's very relevant. I think it's apparent why, but I can explain in more detail if you like.

Yes, by definition, the first choice was a free choice. If it's not free, it's not a choice — Patterner

So you don't have to have chosen your motivations or your will, in order for a choice that your will chooses to be your choice. In other words, the whole "self-authorship" requirement some people have for free will, is not in fact a requirement you have for free will - someone can make a free choice with no self authorship at all.

Your first choice can be a choice, despite being the product of countless things you didn't choose, and 0 things you did choose - like you had no choice but to make that choice, right?

And please recall, the quote that opened this conversation between you and I was T Clark saying "if we don't determine our will, we don't have free will."

If your first choice is free, despite being based on a will you had no choice in creating or designing, then you're disagreeing with that quote from Mr Clark. You're saying we can make free choices even if we haven't determined one single iota of our will.

right, and that first choice was based on circumstances we didn't choose, a mind we didn't choose, a will we didn't choose - so was the choice that we chose, which was based on all those things we didn't choose and based on nothing at all that we did choose, a free choice or not?