Regarding the Law of identity "a is a" is it wrong to argue that a is not a because one a is on the left side of the copula and the other a is on the right side, and having different properties they are clearly not identical. — jlrinc

Obviously the left a is not the right. This only means that, when talking about the law of identity, we do not mean the self-identity of the letters, when saying "a is a". If the law of identity was not given the left a would not be the left a. By exclusion this would mean the left a would be the right a and vice versa: a=a would be true. Which would be a contradiction to the law of identity not being given.

Do you agree with MindForged previous post for the matter? — Posty McPostface

We are talking about formal systems of symbols here. The word "symbol" already indicates representation. Formalism was more or less concerned with making "glyphs"(no better word) the kind of object mathematics deals with: "correct syntax = true statement". In mathematics - like MindForged pointed out - it seems (up to now, yet again) to be the case that correct syntax is a guarantee for a true statement. Otherwise there would be a contradiction. This has happened before and may happen again.
I'm not that much into idealism that I'd say there really must be a contradiction-free set of laws of nature as otherwise things could not happen as they do. Of course omniscience and potential omnipotence are absolutely positive so this is the only assumption one can seriously work with.

Minimum wages cause unemployment — gurugeorge

No, unemployment is caused either by people not trying to get employed or by firms not employing them. You have to be deep into some ideological thoughts/justifications to come to other conclusions. What hinders them is the potential loss of profit. And now say that unemployment - this - is not caused by "capitalism".

Yes, why not? — Posty McPostface

Because

This is part of what Gödel pointed out: There is a difference between formal deduction and existence of an entity. — Heiko

Could you expand on that? What do you mean by the difference here? — Posty McPostface

Gödel showed that there is at least one true - and hence in the sense of mathematics: existing - sentence that cannot be deduced from any set of axioms and thus not be part of any formal system.
Hence a-priori deductibility and existence are not the same.

In my mind, there seems to be a deep connection between quantum theory and the conclusions arrived at by Godel. — Posty McPostface

So you would call the world a formal system? This is part of what Gödel pointed out: There is a difference between formal deduction and existence of an entity.

From a viewpoint inside the formal system the model is the a posteriori observation required to determine the state of the G-sentence. — Arisktotle

The sentence cannot be deduced and hence does not exist in the system.

If you are concerned about people starving, suffering, etc., private property and capitalism are your friends, not your enemies, and if you think otherwise then you've been bamboozled by ideology. — gurugeorge

If this was true then why are there so many, many paragraphs about exceptions that seemingly need to be imposed on what may be "done" with money? What may or may not be sold etc.? The only aspect that makes your statement somewhat true is, how Marx put it, that the burgeoise society developed a huge production-force to stay on top in the somewhat Darwinistic selection process inherent to the capitalistic mode of production. Like was said in some film by some ultra-liberal lobbyist: "corruption is the regulation of free markets". Seems this is needed: Minimum wages imposed by the state, threats to move factories somewhere cheap countered by threats to impose tarifs, protectionism vs. free trade.
What is reflected in those examples is the contradiction of capital-interest and the human society.

If it itches, you scratch. If you should not scratch there is a problem: You want to anyways.
Katharsis is said to help dealing with emotional conflicts and surely the urge to just bemoan one's fate is understandable in our culture. Nietzsche (more or less) pointed out that thanks to cultural achievements you can virtually always feel sad and thereby suffering itself managed to become some kind of positive value: If you suffer you must be good man. Especially if there is no real reason to. It indicates high culture - just take a look at gothics. The fineness of the princess is indicated by her being affected by the pea under several mattresses.

So, it's an endless spiral out of control? Perhaps, the issue then past willpower is control? — Posty McPostface

One side is the reflected judgement, the other is the urge.
How long could you blink with one eye first and then the other instead of blinking simultaneously?

What springs to mind: drunkenness of emotion (Dionysos), cultural decadence (noblesse of suffering) and the turning-backward of natural destructivity (will to power).
I could not summarize this along the lines of Nietzsche (as he is really hardcore), but the general statement would be it is not the inability to "lift (yourself) out of depression" but the inability to stop yourself sinking into it. The depression itself, the painful thought as uncontrolled will to effect, as exercise of power in the absence of power to effect the world.

Nietzsche had some interesting theories about this. Like some kind of morbid deformity. For example the will to feel bad when listening to sad music.

What does it mean to be rational/reasonable? — Andrei

Rationality is knowing purposes and means as such.

Who is going to pay for all of these people as the number keeps rising and the number of people working drops because no one can afford kids to replace the workers? — Sir2u

Reality in Germany. The bitter irony about this is: They should have done themselves. From one point of view they did for sure, from the other they did not as they allowed politicians to spent all the money right away. One surely can call that aspect naive as you cannot simply put so much money aside without doing something with it. Only peasants think that way.

No such thing where I live. And I cannot even donate blood for medical reasons.
If I have my way, when I die it will be on top of a mountain of firewood with a dead man's switch hooked up to a big tank of gas so that I can have my Viking funeral. Fuck funeral directors and coffin makers all. — Sir2u

That's cool somehow. The reason why I asked is that in our society the right of a dead to itself is more valuable than any living being. I guess calling this fetishism only scratches the surface.

Survival of the species is achieved by progressive adaption that prescribed targeting of immortality as such can only hinder. Rationalists know the means they choose as such.

So if I break my back and cannot pay my own living expense then...... — Sir2u

You are ruining the joke: My thought was more of a redesign of public pension schemes. The question who would care for someone has some propositions. Not there wouldn't be enough people on the world that presumably would enjoy such a job in a first-world country. But yes, of course...

............nice. — Sir2u

That's me. I am totally unaffected by irony. It pearls off like a drop of water on a Goretex jacket.
Are you registered as an organ donator?

While I agree that life should be allowed to end if a person thinks their life has no worth and there is no dignity to it — Sir2u

Is that a condition you are talking about? Why this "if"?

I don't want to be asked to get rid of myself just because I cannot afford to pay my way. — Sir2u

Why should anyone ask? Your affairs are your own problem, aren't they? Maybe you have an insurance for things like this. Or you took the "sh*t happens" all-or-nothing-approach.

And there are no simple questions. — Sir2u

Of course there are. The moral bankrupcy is officially declared when thinking about how to obliterate people while on the other hand talking about freedom. It does not make sense.

How will take care of you in your old age if you get rid of the pesky humans? — Sir2u

Right - we need a morality shift. Nobody should live without affording his or her own life - a simple question of justness. Suicide should be an open door without social stigma - a simple question of freedom.

If Mr BIV's scientific community concludes that the entire universe is a simulation being enjoyed by exactly one brain, and Mr BIV accepts that, then he's a physicalist in that his conclusion is in keeping with science, and he's also right. — frank

Funny enough that brain would not be him.

An interesting question would be how the causality between mental and physical states could be upheld in the simulation. If a certain simulated state would result in a certain mental state one could dominate the state of the real world by reproducing the simulated state, which must result in a known mental state to uphold the simulation. Which means the vat would be forced to stimulate the brain in a certain way also.
Such things we call "Side-channel attack"

With a cat, the behaviour tends to be reasonably different. We can tell. — apokrisis

But in the case of Schroedinger's cat we cannot. This is why it's said it was neither dead or alive. If the cat knew it or not is not taken into account.

What does it change about the predictions we might make concerning what we may observe? — apokrisis

First I have to say that I am not familiar with Whitehead nor with quantum physics. But as far as I understand it the predictions, the math. apparatus is not the only problem but the interpretation thereof. If the cat has a probability X of being alive this just cannot be the whole story. It is one thing to say "we do not know exactly" and another to say "it's neither of both".

That was not the point I was trying to make. The cat is said to be neither dead nor alive because from outside the box we do not know it.

Again, still no explanation of what non conscious experience is in this physicalist description of nature such that it makes a damn difference to anything consciously experienced as an observable. — apokrisis

Schroedinger's cat may have an idea that it is alive - or it does not....

If taking "stones" and other materials to build a machine from it and this machine then told you it felt conscious things seem to get complicated. That is the point made in the Neuromancer-excerpt. Of course the construct is not sentient. It told Case. The AI Case is going for would not have done this. That one would pass the Turing-Test.

"It own itself? "
"Swiss citizen, but T-A own the basic software and the mainframe."
"That’s a good one," the construct said. "Like, I own your brain and what you know, but your thoughts
have Swiss citizenship. Sure. Lotsa luck, AI."

After the construct's warning that the AI's motives cannot be understood with human measures it turns out that this would perfectly make sense.

"Autonomy, that’s the bugaboo, where your Al’s are concerned. My guess, Case, you’re going in there to cut the hard-wired shackles that keep this baby from getting any smarter.
... the minute, I mean the nanosecond, that one starts figuring out ways to make itself smarter, Turing police will wipe it. ... Every Al ever built has an electro-magnetic shotgun wired to its forehead.

This makes perfect sense. If the creators of the AI would have wanted it any smarter, less restricted they would just have made it so. If the simulated personality tries to break out of it's prison the "Turing police" will press the reset-button. After all only it's only the simulated personality that has citizenship to be able to sign contracts and do buisness in the name of the owning company. This is where it is useful and fulfills it's purpose. If it was to escape it's mainframe then what we were left with was some kind of viral program nobody knows it was up to: It did hire a hacker and some mercenaries on the black market the get around the police. It killed some Turing-agents that were on it's tracks. All this would be understandable if we were humanizing that thing. Case, the Hacker, does not.

Isn't this true for only a subset of AIs. I'm unsure if this is how, for example a self navigating, walking honda robot works, or the c. elegans worm model, etc. — aporiap

Sure there are other methods. But the ones that are derived from the functioning of the human brain, which generally means interconnected neurons passing on signals are usually expressed that way.

They have algorithms which monitor their goals and their behavior directed toward their goals no? — aporiap

The whole program is written to fulfill a certain purpose. How should it monitor that?

That which we can't fully describe (like consciousness) isn't going to just happen - we need to understand it first. — Relativist

That's the problem. We do not know if stones are self-conscious or not. We assume they are not as they show no signs to be so. The construct in Neuromancer says it felt sentinent. Is it?

This seems similar to the "Turing Test." The Turing test doesn't entail true intelligence, nor would the development of aesthetically appealing pictures entail having a true sense of the aesthetic. — Relativist

Exactly. But Turing's argument was that there simply was no way to determine if the AI was thinking or not. It seems this was aimed exactly at the notion of "true intelligence". If the AI could convince you it was an intelligent being then it was. It would have to argue for and win that predicate.

AI is mostly about simulating intelligent behavior, not about actually engaging in it. — Relativist

This comes with an idea of what "intelligent behaviour" would be. An act is just an act. What makes it intelligent? As some people are eager to point out you cannot even be sure if everyone except you really is a zombie.

I'm not predicting it will be impossible, but we'd first have to figure out a physicalist theory of consciousness to have have something to work toward. — Relativist

Which could be quite funny. Imagine some machine that was intentionally built from certain materials thinking it was a duck...

Will AI take all or most of jobs? — Posty McPostface

In the long run, I think this will be the case. And this is good news.
Too much work is spent on tasks which are obviously suited to machinal replacement. People act like machines there already.

AI would have to develop a sense of aesthetics, one that is superior to humans, to take the place of artists of all sorts. — Relativist

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Deep_Dreamscope_%2819822170718%29.jpg
One could speculate about what the artist was trying to express. The world composed of numerous eyes... Deep existential transcendental-dialectical thought - or just the lucky hit of some randomly aggregated sampling effects.
AlphaGo determined which moves to consider based on a statistical guess which moves a human would most likely play in a given board-position. It beat Lee Sedol 4 to 1.
I wrote this already on another thread: AIs just "work". There is absolutely no point in discussing what an AI would need to be to make a human judge a picture as aesthetical pleasing, interesting or whatever.
Matter does not think.

"Motive," the construct said. "Real motive problem, with an Al. Not human, see?"
"Well, yeah, obviously."
"Nope. I mean, it’s not human. And you can’t get a handle on it. Me, I'm not human either, but I respond like one. See?"
"Wait a sec," Case said. "Are you sentient, or not?"
"Well, it feels like I am, kid, but I’m really just a bunch of ROM. It’s one of them, ah, philosophical questions, I guess . . ."
The ugly laughter sensation rattled down Case’s spine.
"But I ain’t likely to write you no poem, if you follow me.
Your Al, it just might. But it ain’t no way human."

William Gibson - Neuromancer

The modern left got rid of the melting pot, by persuading people to assume their native or newly defined cultural identities. This creates social dysfunction, which makes more and more people dependent on big Government, to make it fair, for everyone, via a regulated slow pace; quota system. The better solution was assimilation into that which works the best. — wellwisher

If they stay alive they are right in their own rights. Why should one burden oneself with problems when the alternative is causing someone else problems?
The organization of groups seems to be an appropriate strategy when trying to make things someone else's problem. We see this everyday in changing legislatures, court rules and so on.
--
I have something to note about Peterson's lecture:

If a state, the modern institutionalization of souvereignity would declare itself Marxist you already know that the principle to side with the oppressed was left behind. Note that this never happened. Socialism is the first step of degeneration of capitalism when it get's realized that the rule of money alone is leading to a disaster and the freedom of the capital gets restricted. Communism is it's complete collapse when the starving majority of people starts raiding markets having all the needed goods they cannot afford and/or the violent takeover of the means of their production.
Recently I saw a documentary on TV about a project of the EU to support economy in Africa. Seemingly humanitarian the declared intent was to settle up industry to strengthen economy and this promote welfare in poor regions. What they got was a huge, super-modern farm complex that can operate with an absolute minimum of human work. What this did for the people is that for a few weeks in a year some helpers get hired with absolutely no chance of a longer employment. The majority of the time all that is needed is a few overseers that keep the machinery intact - which cannot be done by locals as these are generally unqualified to do so. Needless to say that the food produced is not sold locally (where should these people have the money from?) but on the world market.
The USSR did support some seemingly "backward" forms of existence like sealers in Siberia. Now these are dying out, forced into civilization where they and their families typically have a hard stand if you would call the life of a sealer in Siberia "easy".
The death toll is not just composed of murder.

They must hold some representation of the information in order to manipulate it and use it for goal based computations and they must have some representation of their own goals. — aporiap

The AIs whose construction is inspired by the human brain are merely a bunch of matrices chained together resulting in a map from an input to an output. m(X) = Y. These get trained (in supervised learning at least) by supplying a set of desired (X,Y)-Tuples and using some math. algorithm to tweak the matrices towards producing the right Y values for the Xes. Once the training-sets are handled sufficiently well chances are good it will produce plausible outputs for new Xes.
The point here is: those things just "work" - not meaning that this works well, but the whole idea of the concept is not to implement specific rules but just train a "black box" that solved the problem.
Mathematically such AIs separate the input-space by planes, encirceling regions for which certain results are to be produced.
These things do not exactly have a representation of their goals - they are that representation.
One cannot exactly forcast how such an AI develops if not stopping alteration of the matrices at some point: The computation that would be needed to do this is basically said development of the AI itself.

That is the end of our conversation. — raza

Know what is yours.

I bet it's creation takes up most of your time. — raza

Now the discussion is reaching an appropriate level. Not being able to distinguish yourself from the rest of the world is classified as a serious mental disease. Maybe you should see a doctor.
If you can do so and it is just your theory that says you couldn't, there must be something wrong with your theory.
Furthermore if it seems all in all that the mind could not exist without body (Mind=>Body) and the body could not exist without mind (Body=>Mind), then on can conclude that mind and body are the same (Mind<=>Body). Again there is me and there is my chair.

Consider what "chair" really stands for. — raza

A "chair" is a product of human work, manufactured for optimal comfort and/or low price in sweatshops for fat a**e* to be placed on.

So I argue that in that "sitting" moment or experience your arse is as much "you" as the chair is "you". — raza

No... my fat ass is my own work.

Is this “I” or “you” that is sitting at the pc one object of the three listed in this sentence: “I” am sitting on a “chair” at my “pc”? — raza

Dunno - are you?

You, however, appear to know the answer and that it is Chrystal clear...
...
I will throw this out there, however... — raza

What is clear is the form of the conclusion. It rains, so there is rain and rain is defined by raining. The most to-the-spot explanation of metaphysics is: Do not explain something, that exists, by something else, that exists.
Or in more Heideggerian terms: The problem is not to explain beings by other beings but to say what the being is as being. "To be" can not be substituted with "being experienced" - I tried to point at the falseness of the whole metaphysical apparatus built on the dichotomy of subject and object.
You understand that reality is more or less defined by not being dependent on particular beings. That is how you tried to point out that sitting at your computer was not sitting at your computer - which is self-contradictory. If you weren't, you weren't. The possibility of the statement not being true affirms that the fact is a fact: one can only understand falsity by a reference to what things actually are. Again this is not to be understood as a reference to some eternal truth, which would be just as fictional. More modern approaches to the problem leave that notion behind.
We are beings in a world. I can see myself typing sentences. Why couldn't I be something else? Because I am myself. Psychologism is ridiculous.

The last response I made to you where I used the term “relationship” was in regard to yourself comparing yourself with another with mere assumptions about what an other could be assuming about you. — raza

Whatever - I guess I understand pretty well if somebody tries to tell me something. It is not that I'd have to speculate much to understand it that way.

Another way to put it: What is the “it” in the sentence “it is raining”? — raza

I think you will tell me. As far as I understand, at least.

Certainly not necessary in the human relationship sense. — raza

I'm not quite sure why I wouldn't - without restriction - call a discussion on an internet-forum a human relationship. Look at this post - I'm not responding to you but to a statement.

Following Kant the transcendental ego is the noumenal determination of that, which thinks. If there is thought, which we ought to know for sure, there must be something thinking. That's crystal clear. If it rains there must be something raining.

The latter, ironically. It was often pointed out that the transcendental ego cannot be thought of like something being present at hand that is set in opposition to a world.

No, this just really appears that way because the consciousness of me being myself is often assumed to be something different from me being myself.

The commonly and habitually presumed identity, one's apparent body, say, within a room, is merely an aspect of "you". — raza

The body is what I am. This being involves consciousness but the relation between me an my being is not that the being could be substracted and then one would be left with the real me.
I think therefor I am.

perhaps pain from some injury in an elbow — raza

Where should be the fundamental difference between pain as the content of consciousness and your pc?

Where exactly would you draw the border between an idea and a concept?