-- perhaps peace is on the horizon. — BitconnectCarlos

Carlos, your optimism is—let's say— outstanding.

It appears Israel has finally broke them and peace is at hand. Success emboldens them more than failure. — BitconnectCarlos

Yeah! Thanks Israel!

No... Let's get back to reality. Sinwar was a terrorist and the main objective of Israel since October 7th. The deaths of him —and Nasrallah in Lebanon— make the belligerent groups a bit dizzy and forsaken. But this is not over yet. Hamas will name another leader; the Gaza people are thirsty for revenge. You told me yesterday that around 80% of the population of Gaza is Hamas friendly or associated. Israel chopped the log but not the roots. While we are discussing here, I bet they are already reorganising themselves. It is pretty dreamy to think that peace comes by killing and destroying. 
 
Start with the basic premise: Does the current government recognise Palestine as a sovereign state? No! Right? Then, the conflict will remain.

There is no genocide; only the resurfacing of blood libels when Israel responds to the murder of 1200 of its own and the taking of hundreds of hostages (as any nation would). How dare they react. — BitconnectCarlos

Yeah, tit for tat, mate. How does the does the Gaza population dare to think of revenge in the long term? Prepare for the next generations of young Hamas fighters.

Let us know what you think of it when you're finished. — Jamal

Okey-dokey. :up:

The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares.

Back to Casares and his great and pure style. Thank you, @Jamal, for suggesting this novel to me a month ago.

I read The Invention of Morel earlier this year. — Jamal

Apparently Bibi is now saying the war isn't yet over because they have to get the hostages out, which is why he is continuing to reject a ceasefire deal that does both at the same time. — Mr Bee

Fine. Afterwards, he would say that war is not yet over because Lebanon and Gaza are a threat to their security standards; Iran is 'funding' them, and they have to do something because they are surrounded by evil enemies. I can't see an end to this conflict.

I don't think Israel specifically wants to annex Gaza. If Hamas were to release the hostages it would signal a fundamental change in their approach though. — BitconnectCarlos

If only Netanyahu would dare to think like you...

This number includes Hamas fighters. We'll never know the true breakdown but I've heard some ~80% of that are Hamas/Hamas associates. — BitconnectCarlos

I agree that the 42K deaths also include Hamas members. But I think it is disproportionate to bomb them because a large number are Hamas friendly. Imagine if we ever bombed the Basque Country because there were sympathizers who voted for the political party. I think it is important to distinguish the targets: Hamas terrorists and then Hamas political members that defend some ideas, but they might not do terrorism.

Apart from that, what about the 20% left? That's 8,400 deaths. Are they just collateral victims who had bad luck and were in the worst place?

It's important to me to since within Gaza there are hostages and they keep killing Jews. — BitconnectCarlos

I think it is relevant to both sides of this terrible conflict, but I don't know to what extent Gaza is not historically important to Israeli.

Yes if Hamas were to release the hostages I'd expect there to be a ceasefire. — BitconnectCarlos

Whatever. I admire your innocence, Carlos. :smile:

Gaza is not really that historically important to the Jews, — BitconnectCarlos

Yeah, the conflict has been there for around eighty years, and 42K innocent people have died since the last year, but Gaza is not historically important to the Jews. Fine. It is important to me and a lot of people—fortunately—and we will not let this reality be distorted by narratives and fictional films. 

I was expecting a reply like that. Do you seriously believe that Bibi will stop the massacre after releasing the hostages? Sinwar was a big prize; now they will keep their expansion plan until leading Gaza to ashes.

Now that Sinwar passed away—who was the main objective of Israel since October 7th—Netanyahu would like to stop killing civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, right?

One Direction star Liam Payne dies after falling from hotel balcony in Buenos Aires

I never was a fan of One Direction, but I remember how these mates were very famous among the girls of my classroom. I thought they were 'sloppy' but never had anything against them.
 
Well, one of the old members passed away from a supposed suicide aged 31 years old. It is an absolute disgrace when this happens. I got mad for reading 'troll' comments on the Internet regarding his death. Social media is a sick place.

I hardly see individual freedom from the Kundera's characters since they live in a scenario where a group of old people (the latter is clearly a metaphor of political police) trap dogs to put them away from children. Making this, the intellectuals see that there are two groups: the ones who want to raise children, and the rest who want to pet dogs. But for some reasons, the social pressure forces the neighbours to have children instead because that's why they are in a fertility spa in the first place. 

Paradoxically, the workers there are the ones who would rather have a dog in the house. One of the characters is a pregnant nurse, and she even wants an abortion.
 
I came to this realisation: intellectuals are always apart from the masses and conventions. At the spa, people have children senselessly, but the characters debate whether it is worthy to have children or not. It is a great and clever critique of both religion and politics because these always force people to reproduce themselves...

It's also commonly known as a threesome involving two men and one woman. — Benkei

Ah, as Macron said to Trump and Melania: ménage à trois.

"The pawns, man, in the game, they get capped quick. They be out the game early."
D'Angelo Barksdale.

“You come at the king, you best not miss.” - Omar Little.

"We’re building something, here, detective, we’re building it from scratch. All the pieces matter" - Lester Freamon

>>> Roevember — 180 Proof

Roevember — 180 Proof

I don't get what you mean by 'Roevember' instead of November. I understand the quid has to do with Roe, but I have no idea what you mean, honestly. :sweat:

Maybe it has something to do with the hexadecimal symbol in the post reference number? — Leontiskos

Or maybe it is an Easter egg that you just discovered. :cool:

(CC: Lionino, — Leontiskos

It seems that Lionino will not sign up ever again, sadly. :sad: I tried to interact with him through PM for the past months, and I hadn't any answer. I wish he could be back.

A correct written form could be—if I am not mistaken—and this is the closer I got using reason with words and not with logic symbols: If I pray and God exists, then my prayers will be answered. Otherwise, if I pray, but God doesn't exist, my prayers will not be answered. 

Because the 'consequent condition' is applied to my prayers and not to God's existence.

I think that's what ↪javi2541997 says. In reality, there is no necessary relation between God's existence and prayers being answered, in either direction, because "fate" might answer the prayers, instead of God, and God could choose not to answer prayers. That's where freedom of choice throws the curveball at cause/effect relations. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly. That's what I tried to say, but, as usual, I expressed myself very puzzled and particularly like a crackpot.

Cool. Very clear and nice explanation. It is somehow what I had in mind, but I don't know how to use the logic tree accordingly. Yes, it is a double negation, indeed. If God doesn't exist, then it is false that my prayers will be answered. The negation of the latter implies the negation of the first premise. Therefore, there is a double negation. OK. Everything it is starting to get clear, whether it is a valid statement or not, is another subject that I am not able to answer. Yet I think it is relevant to understand what comes first. My prayers or God's existence? Since they cause double effect, they are dependent on each other, but the order seems tricky to me.

The relation between "if God does not exist", and "my prayers will not be answered" is a relation of probability. — Metaphysician Undercover

Understood. But to what premise is the probability applied? God's existence or "my prayers will not be answered"? I mean, when the Wikipedia article states that "the probability of A happening given that B has happened," what are A and B here? Given that God needs to exist before a person's prayers, logically. But, in this philosophically tricky game, it is true that we could state that "when my prayers happened, there was a probability for God to exist."

I like your point of 'a tilt at a windmill', but I think it is not only for deities. Political theories can also be put into that rabbit hole. I can't even think of a better example. Politics are literally a tilt at a windmill.

If God does not exist, then it is false that if I pray, then my prayers will be answered. So I do not pray. Therefore God exists. — Banno

Nice stuff.

God exists if only I do not pray, but my prayers will not be answered then.

What about this one?

If God does not exist, then it is false that if I pray, then my prayers will be listened. So I don't pray to stop communicating with God. Therefore God exists.

A prayer doesn't necessarily need to be answered but listened, I guess.

G → ((P→A) ∨ G).

Plot twist: I am actually the crackpot, not the imaginary sister mentioned in the "new rules post."

So, the counting of cracked pots starts at zero and not one.

Wait... cooking a Greek Salad...? — Banno

OK... OK... sorry, my bad. You are dressing the Greek salad...

but 6 or 7 might make all the non-crackpots become pots that can be cracked. — Moliere

That is probably one of the best phrases I read here so far.

If only the sister wasn't a crackpot, the only pots susceptible to being cracked were the ones on the shelf. Everything here is very complex and tricky. Who is responsible for the cracking? The crackpot sister or the pots on the shelf? I am starting to think that they are opposite poles. Their orbital gravitating force only led them to the destruction. :sad:

New rules: A pot is stored on the shelf. To the pot there are other pots as well. All of them have the same size, weight, shape, and colour. Each pot contains the same proportion of whatever thing. They are located in the third step, so if one falls down, it gets broken. You are cooking (edit: dressing) Greek salad in your kitchen, but you notice that there isn't enough honey, so you ask your sister—who is a crackpot—to go to the pots and take some honey for the delicious salad that you are cooking up. When your sister enters the saloon, you hear a clatter sound, and your sister shouts, 'Ouch!'

How many pots got cracked considering there is already +1 crackpot and the rest of the pots are equivalent?

Please, elaborate.

Something closer to this:

Hey, Wayfarer, thank you for giving me a new clue, but I'm still lost on the joke. I am very bad at getting jokes, honestly, more if they are even related to philosophy.
––
Good and substantial article, indeed. I can only say that I agree with Bergson, yet I can't find proper words to endorse that effectively we are the ones who measure time, and not the clocks. For this, we also say that a clock is 'cracked' when it doesn't show the correct hours. But, paradoxically, the exact same cracked clock will show the correct hour twice a day.

No clock requires subjectivity to operate. They do just fine when nobody is looking at them. — noAxioms

Although, I see your point, it makes me wonder why we fix clocks that are not in time. I am already aware of the old saying that 'one broken clock says the correct hour twice.' But isn't this sense of 'right time' something subjective? We could accept that time is something that works on its own, but talking about clocks, it seems to me that these objects also have a bit of subjective interference in their way of working.

Why have you become that cryptic?

Let me guess. The plant pot appears broken in the picture. But it was in a perfect condition previously, when it was moulded and you bought it. That's how time works. I may say the plant pot is broken and I can be correct often, and I also can say it is not broken and also being correct. Because these two features were part of the pot at different times, and both are correct.

OK, fair enough, I think we are approaching a bit of agreement. Money is complex and causes problems, true. But my point was not based on a financial context but (again) a trustworthy predicate.

When you take a note of £10 and it says: I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ten punds. Bank of England. You trust the note, the declaration, and an abstract entity like the Bank of England, right? Because it is guaranteed that my note of £10 equals literally ten pounds. This is what I tried to explain. AI lacks these trustworthy sets nowadays. Bitcoin currency tried to do something but ended up failing stunningly.

We (the people) always put trust in different abstract things such as money, real estate, or fiduciaries because there were guarantees that those elements were, let's say, trustworthy.

I am not against AI, and I believe it is a nice tool. Otherwise, trying to avoid its use would be silly and not accepting the reality and how fast change the latter. But I have my doubts on why the AI should be more independent from human control. Building an intelligence more intelligent than ours could be dangerous. Note that, in some cases, the psychopaths are the most intelligent or their IQ is higher than the average. I use this point with the aim of explaining that not always the intelligence is used for good purposes.

How can we know that the AI will not betray us in the future? All of this will be seen in the future. It is obvious that it is unstoppable. I only hope that it will not be too late for the people. You know there are winners and losers in every game. The same happens to AI. Some will have benefits, others will suffer the consequences. It comes to mind those whose jobs are low paid... Will they be replaced for the AI? What do we do with them? More unemployment for the state?

the more we create the conditions for AI to think on its own and the less we can predict what it will be doing. — Carlo Roosen

And 'the less we can predict what it will be doing,'  is something positive or negative according to your views? Because it is pretty scary to me not being aware of how an artificial machine will behave in the future.

The fact that you would try to make the comparison while simultaneously ignoring much more obvious examples like the Irish IRA and the Basque ETA (which undoubtedly would be much less suited to support your arguments) tells me all I need to know. — Tzeentch

Americans always ignored the regional and political conflicts of Europe. IRA was suffered by the Irish and fortunately solved by their own way. Basque ETA was only suffered by us. Nobody cared in the world how a terrorist organisation still targeted and killed people because of political issues, even under democracy. Basque ETA members were called heroes under Franco's regime, but it was more painful, violent, and toxic later on, in the 1980s and 1990s. This issue still has consequences today. I wish we did the things right as the Irish and moved on, but no, the scars are not healed yet.

I don't know whether it is comparable or not. Belfast or Bilbao were not oppressed. Some tell the story of resisting a dictatorship. Well, I can accept this point using my country as an example, but Ireland and the UK? They are full democracies. These conflicts started because of nationalism and religion, like Israel-Palestine, yes. But it would be crazy to say that Basque country was oppressed under a democracy because THEY KEPT KILLING EVEN IN MODERN SPAIN, we should forget this.

It could very much be faced with a trolley problem and choose to same the pedestrians over the occupants, but it's not supposed to get into any situation where it comes down to that choice. — noAxioms

Although it is a poor example, as you stated before, imagine for a second—please—that the AI car chose occupants or the driver over pedestrians. This would make a great debate about responsibility. First, should we blame the occupants? It appears that no, we shouldn't, because the car is driven by artificial intelligence. Second, should we blame the programmer then? No! Because artificial intelligence learns on its own! Third, how can we blame the AI?

Imagine that the pedestrian gets killed by the accident. How would the AI be responsible? And if the insurance must be paid, how can the AI assume the fees? Does the AI have income or a budget to face these financial responsibilities? I guess not...

Not that this has nothing to do with AI since it is still people making these sorts of calls. — noAxioms

So, you agree with me that the main responsables here are the people because AI is basically like a shell corporation.

Again, I think you are interpreting The Lounge as a punishment for your posts. I don't see any problem with a thread that is located there. There are even cases where the authors posted their discussions in The Lounge directly. Your post didn't get removed, at least. Don't take it personal.

To the lounge are not moved the threads with not enough room for discussions but the ones that are not substantial in terms of philosophy. Look at the Ukraine Crisis or Donald Trump threads, for instance. They are probably the most active threads so far, yet they are in The Lounge.

I posted 44 discussions since I joined TPF, and some of them are in The Lounge. It is not a big deal. It is fine to discuss threads that are not philosophically deep enough.

This is a responsibility problem. Take self driving cars. If they crash, whose fault is it? Can't punish the AI. Who goes to jail? Driver? Engineer? Token jail-goers employed by Musk? The whole system needs a rethink if machines are to become self-responsible entities. — noAxioms

It will depend upon the legislation of each nation, like always in this complex situation. I don't know where you are from, but in Europe there is a large regulation regarding enterprises and the proxies. Basically, the main person responsible is the administrator. It is true that the stakeholders can get some responsibility as well, but it will be limited to their assets. It is obvious that 'Peugeot' or 'ING Group' will not be locked up in jail because they are abstract entities, but the law focusses on who is the physical person acting and managing in the name of—or by—those entities. Well, this exactly happens to AI. We should establish a line on taken responsibilities until it is too late, or AI will become a heaven for criminals otherwise. By now, AI is very opaque to me, so the points of Benkei are understandable and logic with the aim to avoid a heavy chaos in functionality derived from those programs. I guess those initiatives will only fit in Europe because we still care more about people than merchandise.

With the only exception of @Carlo Roosen. He showed us a perfect artificial superintelligence in his threads. But he misses the responsibility of bad actions by his machine. Maybe Carlo is ready to be responsible on behalf of his invention. This will be hilarious. Locked in jail due to the actions of a robot created by yourself.

The Farewell Waltz by Milan Kundera.

A pure feature of Kundera is his unique ambiguity and unbearable feeling of... everything.

@praxis

I typed the following prompts: "cozy,"  "autumn,"  "rainy," and "ideal for writing poems."

The AI generated houses with candles and lights inside, which I didn't like. I asked to remove them and generate a darker/cloudy ambient. It was impossible for the AI. This machine kept generating houses with lights on inside them. What a waste of money and energy!

By the way, this is the generated house. Looks good, but it is not what I had in mind...