good thing Islam isn't replying to me in this forum then

I really could not care less what Islamic doctrine says

no problem, reads better now


You say "due to norms". You think it's only norms that make the second argument more agreeable? What do you mean by "norms" there? Do you mean due to completely arbitrary cultural values?

But it turns on how intuitive 1 ) is in the second argument vs how intuitive 1 ) is in the first argument. — fdrake

What does this mean? It turnsout how intuitive 1 is in the second vs how intuitive 1 is in the first is what? It doesn't feel like you finished your sentence.

Inescapable suffering that makes any joy in life impossible seems like a valid reason to me.

Free from what? Other than our awareness of the whole thing, which a boulder lacks, in what way is a path taken for such causes by a person who comes to an intersection different from a path taken by a boulder rolling down a mountain? — Patterner

Umm... you answered the question yourself: our awareness of the whole thing. That's it. — ssu

For the sake of argument, if one imagines a human mind as a "decision-making machine", then the freedom of the will is "free to act on the desires and decisions of that machine", in particular as opposed to "forced to act on the desires and decisions of other machines.

Yes, that's a classic example of what dictionaries can do, otherwise known as a circular definition. I believe it is somewhat frowned upon in philosophical circles. Fortunately, we are free to disagree with a dictionary, even if we have to be a bit cautious about it. It doesn't make it easier to articulate what's going on here. — Ludwig V

Expecting more of a dictionary would be a mistake. A dictionary is limited to describing words with other words - there's inevitable circularity to it. There's something of a Munchausen Trilemma involved in writing a book full of words describing other words.

"they performed the same modeling techniques under different labels." - this sounds like you're saying "the model of relativity is just the model of Newtonian mechanics, under a different name." Is that not what you mean?

Newtonian mechanics didn't die by virtue of disproof. The old guard died off and the new crowd thought the previous thinking was too 'antiquated' while they performed the same modeling techniques under different labels. — substantivalism

That's not remotely true, that's a completely bonkers narrative that I would expect only from a flat earther.

Since we're talking pragmatics here, hypotheticals have to be subject to this same pragmatic analysis. That is, has there really been a case where an ugly woman was thrown out of a women's restroom because someone thought them to be a man? Is this really happening? — Hanover

Yes, there have been masculine-looking women harassed for going into womens toilets.

https://www.vox.com/2016/5/18/11690234/women-bathrooms-harassment

It's not a hypothetical, it's already happening. And a reasonable person would expect that to happen - androgynous-looking women are not that uncommon. If the only criteria you have to go on to decide if you want to harass someone for going into the wrong bathroom is how they look, a reasonable person with knowledge about the world should expect that people will get it wrong sometimes.

But, to the extent there will be some wedding crashers (so to speak) that go entirely undetected, — Hanover

You've thought about false negatives but neglected false positives. What about the women who are going to be harassed, or worse, because they're ugly or tall or have a hormone condition that means they have a little bit of beard, or look a little too much like Justin Bieber?

the portion for me was right in the middle of that gigantic post that started with a quote of me? I didn't stand a chance.

From a small business owner's perspective, the idea of having to have a third bathroom on top of the two required many can barely afford as-is would be a nightmare. — Outlander

You're going to have to spell out for me why you're talking about a third bathroom. I didn't see anything in the law you quoted saying you have to have a third bathroom. I also don't believe I said anything about a third bathroom. I can't see the relevance of what you're saying about third bathrooms given the words you quoted from me

they're talking about group statistics being used to judge individuals of that group. One of them is saying it's justified, the other one is saying it's not.

But I say, it entirely depends on the context and what information is available to you. Are you judging two candidates for a job? Well if you are, then you probably have a whole lot more relevant information than their race to determine if they're fit for the job. Job candidates don't just tell you their race and that's all you get to know about them before you hire them, you can see their CV, their work and education history, you can speak with them - you can get a whole lot of information about them that's way more relevant to the question then just their race.

Maybe there are other circumstances where you don't have a lot more information than their race to go on, so that might change the dynamics a bit, but neither of those guys is talking about specific circumstances because they're taking too broad of a position. Imo

unless you have genetic testing kits at every bathroom, saying some bathrooms are for xx instead of women is completely unactionable. Are you trying to make a meaningful suggestion or are you doing something else with this xx idea?

I feel like the question in the poll isn't exactly clear, and can be interpreted in many ways. Maybe that's deliberate, but if it is, the poll results won't mean anything, since everyone's answering a different question.

I answered it as if it were asking, "Are you subject to the halo effect? Do you instinctually assume attractive people are better, and unattractive people are worse in some way?"

And I answered that to the positive, I do think I have those biases in my every-day life.

Other people might be answering the question as if it's asking, "Do you REALLY think attractive people are more good?", or any other number of alternative interpretations.

Determinism is a world view where the entire sequence of events invariably follows.

a-b-c-d-e-f-g-...-z

Fatalism is a world view where the destination is unavoidable, but the path to that destination may be meandering.

so you start at a, you are fated to end at z, but you need not go through b-c-d-e... to get there.

Oedipus, for example.

Just watched this little lecture / meditation thing by an artist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUmf1Vh7mgc

He sort of goes into perception and experience - he kinda comes at it from what I interpret to be a pretty indirect realist standpoint (I suppose that might be arguable, but if you watch, I think you'd understand why it seems very "indirect realist" to me).

He's not a scientist, he's just an artist who likes to philosophize about things - he philosophizes about quite a lot. Even just listening to the first 20 minutes will give you a gist of where he's going with it. It kinda becomes a bit zen as it goes on - if you want to hear an artist kinda give you a guided meditation on perception, give it a go. If that's not your cup of tea, skip.

(thumbs up emoji) thanks for clarifying

love that quote

I see, fair enough.

So if it's not internal models that make them more than "very fast GIGO, data-mining, calculators", then what would, in your view? What evidence would you have to see about some future generation of ai that would lead you to say it's more than "very fast GIGO, data-mining, calculators"?

For me, internal models are already past that, as I'm sure you can tell. They're more than statistics, more than calculators, but less than a lot of aspects of human intelligence in a lot of ways, and probably not conscious.

oh I see. Yeah, that's common in philosophy forums it seems!

Do you agree that there is strong evidence for internal models? Are you saying "yes there are internal models, but that still makes them only very very fast GIGO, data-mining, calculators."? Or are you saying "no internal models"?

what is aggressive cranking?

And so that fact that there's very strong evidence of internal models doesn't shift your confidence in that at all?

IMHO, these machines are still only very very fast GIGO, data-mining, calculators. — 180 Proof

Only?

Have you read this? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yzGDwpRBx6TEcdeA5/a-chess-gpt-linear-emergent-world-representation

if it doesn't exist because of physics, it exists because of human minds, but human minds exist because of physics, then...

Then human minds aren't fundamental, they exist because of physics, and indirectly those other things exist because of physics too.

Who said anything about exempting them from explanation?

I think they DO have an explanation (though I think that explanation is probably unprovable to us). I think there is some layer of truth that doesn't have an explanation, but I don't think fundamental physics is it. I also don't think this has much to do with what I've been saying.

The Munchausen trilemma is proof enough that there is some truth which has no explanation. Some truth(s) which form the basis for all other truths.

Isn't the salient part of atheism's position, I don't believe in a god? It is for me. — Tom Storm

I think the way he splits it gets a lot wrong. Even the anti theism one

what I mean has nothing to do with god. "The fundamental" means the rules at the lowest layer of the universe - so a candidate for the fundamental would be Quantum Mechanics, the Schroedinger equation and quantum fields - or perhaps that's not fundamental and that emerges from something lower than it.

it should be pointed out that one can be a theist AND believe religions are immoral. In fact I'm pretty sure that's normal for non-religious theists

bastards.

But, does it matter in particular that this is ai? Surely it would be just as bad if it were just Photoshop or something right?

they shouldn't use AI imagery for election fraud — Vera Mont

Do you have an example of someone doing that? I'm not sure I've seen that before.

No, let's not have a discussion as to whether or not those should be considered art. — T Clark

Absolutely not!

there are many things I wouldn't consider art that are worthy of being enjoyed, purchased, and appreciated even though they don't take any effort or involvement communication — T Clark

Ok, do you think ai art counts as art? If the answer is "no", then the game is to rephrase "ai shouldn't be treated as art" with something more along the lines of "people shouldn't do <what things> with ai imagery"

I play a game where I'll come across a word I'm familiar with and try to come up with a definition. — T Clark

I think that's a cool, and challenging, game. My posts to the other guy were almost me trying to suggest another game, almost the reverse of your game:

Any interesting conversation you think you can have about art, that relies on an agreed upon definition of "art" -- just try to have that conversation without using the word "art".

So while your game tries to define a contentious word clearly, my game is to avoid the contentious word altogether.

Let's say someone wants to have a conversation on the merits of "AI art" (AI meaning artificial intelligene, not American Idol) - I dare you to try to make your points without relying on the word 'art'.

So instead of saying something like "AI art shouldn't be respected as art because it doesn't take any effort and isn't a venue for human communication", say something like "AI imagery shouldn't be <enjoyed? purchased? appreciated? created?> because it doesn't take any effort and isn't a venue for human communication".

You know what I mean? And if anything, I think that makes the conversation MORE clear. Moving it away from the semantic argument about "art" and replacing "art" with WHAT YOU REALLY MEAN is actually... maybe the best way to go.

I think one alternative way to think about it is sort of what Process Philosophy gets at. If the fundamental is causally closed, BUT processes are "real", then...

Then I don't know, but I feel like it's relevant somehow.

I think we need a way for non fundamental things to still be real. Basically. Because WE are non fundamental, and my mind is the most real thing I know.

The causal closure of the fundamental is probably why people feel like "if it's not fundamental, it's not real" makes sense - and I get it, I do, I share that intuition at moments too.

But at other times it makes sense to me that -stuff is made of stuff-, and it being made of stuff doesn't mean it's not real. You know?

Edit. It's really hard to type causal instead of casual using swipe text on my phone

Fantastic question, and I don't have a super clear answer - and I can think of situations that really challenge this "no crossing layers" ethos myself in fact! Which is why I say I'm not completely on board with his formulation, even if I think it's in the right direction.

My intuition tells me that there's one really important boundary - the boundary between the fundamental, and everything else. The fundamental is causally closed, but all other layers can be argued to interact to each other and also to still be sensitive to fundamental-level events. I think Sean Carroll, based on his language, would like to imagine every layer as quasi-independent (but always necessarily consistent with the fundamental) but... I think that misses some things.

But maybe my intuition is shit, who knows?

I would invite you to consider that the things you think of as pens are an abstraction just as abstract as consciousness, even if they don't obviously seem so. Pens are as non fundamental as minds.

might be worth clarifying that things like humans, pens and keyboards ARE ALSO high level abstractions. Similar to consciousness. So a high level abstractions like consciousness having casual efficacy over high level abstractions like pens and keyboards and computer screens is within the "speak in the same layer" ethos of what he's getting at.