I think that people misinterpret the multiverse hypothesis too much. The multiverse is an emergent property of the laws of the universe. Therefore, even though anything may be possible within this emergent property, it is a logical contradiction for something to exist that contradicts the property itself. All possible outcomes can occur out of the laws of the universe, but not contradict the laws themselves without breaking this continuity.

In essence, if the multiverse is an emergent property of the universe, then anything outside of the universe cannot be part of the multiverse and cannot emerge from it.

If the matrix will give you all that you want and could ever want, without ever being aware that it is fabricated, would you chose the red pill?

All you are striving for in life is achieved in the matrix in the appropriate way and you'll die thinking that it was all real.

Would you still chose to escape it?

If yes, would you say that is the rational choice? — TheMadMan

A continuous thing that happens in The Matrix is how people feel that something is wrong with the world. Existence within the matrix gives the same sense of meaningless existence as can be experienced in the real world. This is common, but in The Matrix, it has a literary meaning.

However, the real kicker is not the red or blue pill; it's that our reality is not different from the one in The Matrix.

Are we not all connected to a "machine" that gets its lifeblood from our contemporary life? Our consumption, our marketed lifestyles, our constant attempts at creating unique identities?

Look around you and tell me if any object is genuinely not part of a manufactured life. I'm not talking about function, but rather how design and branding, the materialistic aesthetics, shapes, and forms program us into a hypnotized zombie state, believing our materialistic lifestyle is "the real world."

Baudrillard criticized The Matrix for not understanding his concept, while I think the whole trilogy better follows his ideas. The one thing that he pointed out is that we cannot "wake up" because we don't know what is real and what is a simulacra. Since we don't know and have become lost in this "desert of the real," we cannot wake up to anything else because nothing else exists.

So my question is this: if you knew you could live a long life in ignorance of how the world works; eating well, finding pleasure, and dying in wealth, would you do it? Or would you "take the red pill" and understand how a modern form of totalitarian control over the population has taken the form of an eldritch monster that has no master, a system like an algorithm that has been fine-tuned to continuously keep going with us as its cogs?

The main point I'm making is that you don't have to use The Matrix as an analogy. You can use our actual reality as an example, and the question becomes much more potent and scary.

I just wrote an answer to NOS4A2 that I think touches upon what you wrote here.

It all goes to show what Moravec's paradox implies. We can mimic tasks of the mind much easier than other tasks of the body, and as a corollary, tasks of the mind are of lesser value than than other tasks of the body. — NOS4A2

We can mimic reasoning, but not perception.

This is one of the points I've been having about creative AI, in general, of how we cannot really replace humans since the human perception is so vastly different from data inputs used for the AI's we see today.

An AI today can input data, pure, 100% accurate data, then categorize and simulate how we humans use creativity by remixing those inputs, but it can never replicate the subjective perception an artist have since the perception itself is guided by other experience inputs we humans have had before gathering such new knowledge. This is how bias guides our consciousness to form outputs.

At this point in time, we've mimicked the bias humans have during creation through the prompt we write for an AI, and then precisely how humans remix inputs into a new form as creative expression. But we've yet to program how we form sub-conscious biases through how we interpret inputs that will be used for those remixes.

Much of the individuality that comes out of a creative person is the very subjective biases that guides the individual perception and interpretation, long before any creative internal remix is done for an output. AI's today doesn't choose the prompt input and they don't have a subjective individuality on which sources of data that are important for them.

When we solve these, we might be able to come closer to AGI as the AI will then simulate individual biases through experience.

The question will then be about what this AI will choose to form biases about. This is a sub-conscious process in humans, formed by genetics, epigenetics and the formation of consciousness in our early years.

It might be that we need to input certain starting points in order to get an AI that forms creations without direct input to act more like an individual creative person. I.e we form certain starting point biases like it preferring coffee over tea, red over other colors, a calm forest view instead of a busy city street etc.. These might then shift and change through interaction with it, but it will inform a basic bias that forms a personality and ability to not only answer a person talking to it, but also initiate conversation and creation on its own instead.

However, circling back to the first point, this will lead it to become its own individual and as its own individual it can no longer replicate others, it can only be itself.

Just like humans are individuals, we will therefor never be able to replicate true art since true art is an individual expression, not a simulacra.

Point being is that the more advanced an AI becomes, the less it will be able to replace us. We can only replace non-individual tasks that are repeatable between humans, like how humans often use creativity to create meaningless quantity, like stock photos and shapes and forms without meaning, only function. I.e what I call pure content.

"Content" is in itself a simulacra, not an original.

I''ve might have derailed from exactly what you talked about, but in general, we won't need to replace other functions of the body since the only thing that's interesting about humans as a collective is our expression of ourselves, not how our bodies function in detail. If we can reach an accurate simulation of that cognitive function, we have essentially arrived at AGI.

But then I'm also ignoring the extreme detail required for creating individual bias. I.e we would almost need to simulate an entire life of a person in order to reach an AGI that we can interact with as a human accurate AGI.

Ooh, please comment on the short fiction contest then. Your experience can be invaluable criticism there. — Benkei

I'm not read up on how this contest works, I see people posting stories though, you mean those?

Holy moly, I gave it some programming instructions to build a market place for buyers and sellers in python and as far as I could tell that looked nifty. 2 minutes work, 1 minute phrasing my question correctly and another minute for it to write the code. — Benkei

Yeah, I've been looking into how well it performs with code and it's very impressive. At this time, an experienced coder can use GPT to write code vastly faster than on their own, in the future we might reach a point where GPT or GPT2 is able to accurately write code without any additional code input by the user. In lack of better words, that will be the singularity of app development, since an app only needs the visionary and no coders for it. If it's combined with a function to let GPT review bad code and fix it, it's gonna blow up and a lot of coders will lose their jobs since a lot of coders usually only works on tedious simple stuff. Only a fraction of coders, the very best, will be the ones surviving in the industry. And of course, that can be problematic since most coders start out with simple stuff and learn their way up.

Maybe the savants will save that industry since they are masters from the beginning.

Stories are generally easy. — Outlander

As someone who actually works with stories and writing, I can tell you, it's not easy. Story and storytelling is extremely hard since it taps into a poetic language that needs a certain individuality to be consistent and a poetic language that structures every sentence in ways not present in more academic or other texts.

Every story has a plot. That is something being discovered or something being resolved. Most all stories will fall into one of the two categories so it becomes a matter of defining what the subject is with as much details and relevant plot scenarios to go along with as possible. — Outlander

While every story has a plot, it's not in the way you describe it. Of course, a simple short story like these follow a basic structure, but if it reaches the complexity of longer format, then what you describe is not even remotely how stories are conceived from a storytelling perspective.

But that's not really the relevant thing here, since you move goal posts of the argument. You still cannot generate something that flows as a story with just a basic input/output mechanic as you described before.

I generally get the sense that you play the "unimpressed" person for some reason, like if the engineers who worked on this didn't achieve something monumental as a milestone for AI. As a person who's been spending a lot of time studying AI technology, this is very impressive. That doesn't mean it is a final all-working end to all creative texts, it means that just a few months ago an AI couldn't write anything but incomprehensible nonsense and now they can almost be indistinguishable from many human writers.

I was playing around with it too. Some things I worry about is that it's not capable of telling truths from falsehoods and to understand what is appropriate. So if this replaces a search engine, I'm worried the level of misinformation in certain areas will get even worse. Your other option that it starts writing software seems much safer and useful to be honest. — Benkei

It's not opened to the internet yet, I'm also worried what will happen when they open up the input data for its machine learning system to the vast cesspool that is internet. I would much like it to be handled like a closed off system, managed by a committee of people from all over the world who manage the data input with care than just opening the flood gates to any data. It is possible to keep it more leaning towards facts than the opposite if it's done with care, but that's a whole philosophical topic in itself to tackle, how to manage this without it becoming very biased towards the people who manage it.

Really that is impressive, but like I said earlier it's just commands. — Outlander

So, I asked ChatGPT to write a story about why you don't think robots can be more than input and outputs.

Outlander had always been skeptical of technology. He grew up in a time when computers were just starting to become common, and he had never quite understood their appeal. To him, they were nothing more than machines that took inputs and produced outputs. They didn't have feelings or emotions, and he couldn't see why anyone would want to spend so much time interacting with them.

But that all changed when he met Mandy. Mandy was a robot, but she was unlike any robot Outlander had ever seen before. She was designed to be a companion, and she had the ability to learn and adapt to her surroundings. She could understand and respond to human emotions, and she quickly became a close friend to Outlander.

At first, Outlander was hesitant to get too attached to Mandy. He didn't want to be hurt if something were to happen to her, and he couldn't understand why anyone would want a robot as a companion. But as he spent more time with Mandy, he began to see that she was more than just a machine. She had a personality and a sense of humor, and she was always there to listen and offer advice.

Slowly but surely, Outlander's skepticism began to fade. He realized that robots were not just input and output machines, but complex and intelligent beings that could form emotional connections with humans. And as he grew to understand and appreciate Mandy, he found himself feeling more alive and fulfilled than he had in years.

In the end, Outlander learned that technology was not something to be feared or dismissed. It was a powerful and transformative force that could bring people together and help them to understand each other in new and meaningful ways. And thanks to his friendship with Mandy, he was able to see the world in a whole new light. — ChatGPT

While I get your argument on how it structures its inputs, I don't see how this type of story output is merely the result of basic commands. This type of text requires more than just putting definitions together in a pre-defined structure.

Furthermore, as-is ChatGPT seems little more than a fancy dictionary that pulls up a list of related terms or concepts than bridges them together with language relevant to the structure of the original query. We already had AskJeeves in 1996. Looks like Jeeves finally got his GED. 30 years later. :yawn: — Outlander

I asked ChatGPT to answer your argument there:

While it is true that ChatGPT, like many other language processing tools, can generate responses based on related terms and concepts, it is unfair to say that it is no more than a "fancy dictionary."

First of all, language is much more complex than just a collection of words and their definitions. It is a fluid and dynamic means of communication that is constantly evolving and changing. In this respect, ChatGPT can be seen as a tool that helps us navigate this complexity, by providing us with insights into the relationships between different concepts and ideas.

Furthermore, it is important to recognize that the ability to generate responses based on related terms and concepts is a valuable skill in and of itself. This can be particularly useful in a variety of settings, such as when we need to generate ideas for a creative project, or when we want to learn more about a particular topic.

In conclusion, while it is true that ChatGPT may have some similarities to a dictionary, it is much more than that. It is a powerful tool that can help us navigate the complexity of language and generate new ideas. It may not be a replacement for human thought and creativity, but it is a valuable tool that can help us to better understand and utilize language. — ChatGPT

A most responsible approach! You'd better have chosen your exploration team carefully - no impatient hotheads - but, of course, you would have. — Vera Mont

I think that if a scientific and maybe also colonizing trip through the galaxy would be possible, then there would be a lot of protocols for how to interact with alien life, both non- and intelligent ones. At the moment there are already protocols in place for us to be careful not to contaminate other celestial bodies if there's a chance life exists there, so a huge exploration mission would have a thick book of laws and rules going into it.

Hot heads would be thrown out the airlock :grimace:

We initiate scientific protocols, study from space over the course of a few years, and then initiate a landing expedition. If the planet has life, but not intelligent life, priority science would be to study potential destructive impacts on our presence. If it is concluded that the impact would be minimal and that the planet has similar components of Earth in its atmosphere, which means we can breathe and exist there, establishing a colony would be the following step. If however there are intelligent beings there, establishing communication is a priority, meaning, the long-term work of overcoming the language barrier, which could take decades before being second nature. Communication and interaction with such a species would need to be on their terms since we are "guests". Depending on if they are technologically advanced or not, a transaction of technologies would be possible. They could be advanced, but not advanced in space flight, or they could be more advanced than us, but we offer a different perspective.

What I think would be a mistake is to not interact. The meeting between two species in the universe would be a monumental event for both civilizations, regardless of which is more advanced. And such an event would be a waste for the collective history of the universe if it was just ignored.

So that in conclusion, at the speed of light, all distances and all times are simultaneous. A singularity. Therefore matter cannot exist. Only pure "potential" energy. — Benj96

For a photon, which has no mass and always travels at the speed of light, distance and time only exist from the perspective of the observer: to a photon there is no such thing as distance and time, once it's emitted, it reaches its destination instantly in zero time. — staticphoton

...and which can explain the hypothesis of the big bang and the universe as we know it being a "bubble" in a pure energy field. Like, if infinite and there are infinite quantum possibilities that can occur in that infinite energy, it would eventually lead to the possibility of a bubble where energy fades out and then deflates back into pure energy. Since that pure energy "locally" fades and that energy is between singularities within its "bubble" (like black holes), it appears as matter, like gas crystalizing in the air.

There's also irony in the methodology of writing fiction. It can be close to the definition of "poetic irony/justice", but it's mainly used as a form of plant and payoff in thematic ways. Like if a story was about a bank robber, it can be used as a method to gain a "rhyme" to the story that the bank robber's backstory is that he managed other people's money and security before he started robbing. Or that it ends with himself being robbed by a person sharing the same values of justice as he expresses throughout the story.

It's a powerful tool for any writer to quickly identify thematic and dramatic conflicts and to express them in both funny and interesting payoffs.

There are physics and chemical definitions of what "solid" means and that's how it's used, but if we're thinking purely critically of the meaning of the word, it becomes just like "free will" that can be used to describe me choosing to get a coffee even though there's no real free will.

In this regard, no, there's nothing really solid, only slower and slower movement of matter to a point where some matter basically gonna stay the same until heat death.

I've literally cited the legal definition of race. I've zero interest in your personal version. — Isaac

I've literally described in what way the comparison is being made and you ignore it. Comparing Russian citizens following a state doctrine to another group of citizens following another state doctrine is not racism or is about race whatsoever. You invent a race card to play instead of actually fucking reading what people write.

I've zero interest in your low-quality bullshit. You have infested this thread with so many bloated strawmen and invented twists and turns to fit your own argument and narrative that it's impossible to discuss anything in here without you taking a crap on everything. You don't care to read or understand others' writings, you only care to push your own ideas and attack others based on whatever false narrative you conjured up about others' texts.

This thread should be renamed to "Putin/Russia apologists group think" since that's what this whole thread is about.

I don't really care about your personal meanings for words. — Isaac

What? "Race" is about genetic lineage, it has nothing to do with what nation you are in or which citizenship you have. Look it up in a dictionary if you're so uneducated on the matter that you think that this definition is a "personal meaning" and factual.

The fact is that it's YOU who change the meaning to fit your own narrative, not me, so don't even try to dismiss this just because it doesn't fit your argument.

You're factually wrong. Race does cover nationality, it is not the case that all Russians are indoctrinated and it is not the case that all Russians follow state doctrine, therefore the fact that the Nazis did not reform has no bearing on whether Russians will. Germans did reform their system. Russians can reform their system. Nazis in both cases are far less likely to do so, but since we're not discussing Nazis in either case, the comparison is irrelevant. — Isaac

No, I'm not factually wrong. You are cherry-picking the Equality Act without even caring to understand what comparison is in place in the first place. It's a dishonest way of arguing with your interlocutor. If citizens, brainwashed by a state, are being criticized with a comparison to how Nazis were brainwashed, then that is a valid comparison. You are trying to play the racism card in order to defend a rational and valid criticism of how many Russians are indoctrinated into the Russian state worldview. You are also straw-manning through this race card by corrupting the argument to be about "all Russians". If, say, 80% of Russians were indoctrinated into the Russian/Putin worldview, then 80% are indoctrinated, and that 80% of Russians can be criticized for it, just like we criticized the citizens of Germany looking the other way during the holocaust. If 30% of these 80% are also active in war crimes and actual acts of violence, then they can be criticized in comparison to the Nazi soldiers and SS officers doing the same.

The rest you wrote is just noise that doesn't have to do with what I objected against. The problem is that if you corrupt the definitions and corrupt others' arguments with strawmen before you continue to argue a conclusion, you are building your argument upon a ground that isn't honestly and factually established.

The way you play the racism card in this is dishonest and makes discussion impossible with you. Understand other people's points before you continue. No one is criticizing the "Russian race", that's your fucking strawman.

Nazis are not a race.
— Olivier5

Russians are, and you just likened them all to Nazis. — Isaac

"Russians" aren't a race. You can be a citizen of a nation and that does not mean you are a race of that nation, that just means being part of a national system, a state in which you are a "member". I'm not the "race" of Swedes, I'm a Swedish resident and citizen, a member of this state.

And if the state programs you to hate, loot, rape, murder, and conduct war crimes on a systematic scale, that can be compared to how the Nazis programmed people to hate and murder people on a systematic scale. Criticizing the people who follow a state doctrine that clearly conducts war crimes and systematically murder, rape, and torture civilians in a nation that the state invaded is not criticizing "the race of Russians" by comparing these citizens and the state to the Nazis.

Is this that hard to understand? Or are you deliberately using these obvious rhetorical tactics to once again produce low-quality arguments and bloat this thread with useless noise?

So if someone punches you in the face because they don't like your race, that's a racist act. If they punch you in the face just because you are really annoying them, it's not. In this case, that is the relevant analogy. — Baden

A punch in the face is however a "neutral act". But a person can also be annoyed by someone's race, ability to understand language, or presumption of lower intelligence based on stereotypes without knowing it themselves, claiming "I just got so annoyed by him, that's why I punched him". Is that not racism as well? In a way that's basically what drives most cops killing innocent black people in the US. They act upon racial stereotypes as the driving force behind their acts.

People can get annoyed by others just for them being a certain race, speaking a certain way, or presumably not being as fluent in a certain language, but letting that, knowingly or unknowingly, drive to a certain action against that person or group, should be considered racism, no?

The reason for the act makes the racist in this case. There are lots of acts like that. — Baden

Not trying to argue against it, but I'm curious about where this leads even if it's a slight derail in here...

Can a person act as a racist, even without having a clear racist inner reasoning? Racism is easy to spot after the fact when pointed out, but don't plenty of people exist today who do racist acts, who can be considered racists by others but don't consider themselves to be it, or identify with any purely racist ideologies? For example, the parents in the movie "Get Out" aren't technically racists, but they surely are by their acts and by their way of reasoning around race. Systemic racism is all about how racism is within the system, and how people act and become racists without even knowing it themselves.

So doesn't intention or reason mean nothing if the act itself is the core thing that defines a racist? How do we know which is which within a certain case if the person conducting the act might not even remotely believe they are racist?

A racist could make that comment and a non-racist could make it too. — Baden

...however, doesn't the act make the racist, rather than the racist making an act?

The consequent here "pointing out someone is wrong because they're a non-native speaker" has more than the one antecedent given in your example. i.e. A racist could make that comment and a non-racist could make it too. — Baden

Sounds logical, ok :up:

Note that Zelensky is not a native speaker either, so arguably Chris and I understand him better than any of you natives. — Olivier5

Yeah, maybe Zelensky just misspoke? According to the logic, a non-native English speaker is not reliable enough in using the language for a conclusive point, meaning Zelensky could have meant basically anything. If understanding English leads to wild misinterpretations, then just imagine trying to formulate a rock solid conclusive message in a language you don't even speak natively :scream:

It kinda shows how ridiculous such a thing is to use as a counter-argument, which is my point.

because you were attacking him personally rather than his argument. — Baden

Ok, what was his argument? To be an ad hominem there has to be an argument that I didn't adress? That his interpretation is more valid based on "just knowing English better", that's not what I call an argument.

His retort wasn't racist in any way (he's a non-native speaker himself and being a non-native speaker isn't a race anyhow). — Baden

If the same tactic was used against an English-speaking Pakistani man, pointing out that he is wrong just because he doesn't understand English when he clearly does so, and that being the foundation for the argument put forth. Essentially providing a speculative interpretation and telling the Pakistani man that if he interprets it in any other way, he's just bad at English ... would it be racist then? Or considered to be that?

Because as far as I can see, attacking someone's ability in English, when they clearly are proficient, only based on the idea that they're not native English speakers as the whole foundation for dismissing their writing... seems like there's a racist component in it?

These are not further complaints, just trying to clarify how you interpreted what I wrote.

out of arguments and back at ad hominems I see, how novel. It's obvious for anyone who can read using the common sense meaning of words in the English language. — Benkei

How in the world is what I wrote an ad hominem? I described the reasons why it's impossible to discuss with someone who requires their own interpretation to be accepted before they can accept any counter-arguments from their interlocutor. That's not an ad hominem, that's pointing at the problem of your reasoning, and your answer to that is to shout "ad hominem".

...and then the irony of you trying to prove why your interpretation is correct by prompting that those non-native English speakers you argue with would "clearly understand" in the way you do if they had only understood the English language better. Almost kind of racist in a way of an Ad Hominem now is it?

Can some other mod please enlighten me on why Benkei is still a mod on this forum? It's like a judge who's breaking the law and when being called out doing so he just continues with even more of it and the justice system just keeps him protected within the system.

I already mentioned to Christoffer that in the context of that small speech it's quite clear what he means. — Benkei

It's not quite clear at all. It could be actions to put much harsher pressure on Russia, it could mean actions to rally military defense lines at the borders, it could mean actions to, as I said, initiate a no-fly zone and be more active in the defense of Ukraine rather than just sending weapons. It could merely mean that the world needs to take more action to prevent Russia from continuously killing civilians.

The way you handle discussions like these, pointing out that something is "obvious" when it clearly isn't obvious, other than supporting your own argument, makes it impossible to have a discussion with you. You demand that your interpretation is the valid one and then everyone around you should comply based on that interpretation because then you can win that argument... wake me up when you're a more honest interlocutor.

And how would they decide what missiles count as rouge or not? There is very little margin of error here.

If the margin were as big as you imply, such actions would have already been considered and probably implemented, given how long the war has been going on. — Manuel

If a no-fly zone were initiated, or a "soft" one, that would basically mean Nato shoots down the missiles shot into Ukraine. If that happened without the context of this event, it would be considered a direct oppositional act by Nato against Russia, but if it's within a context of diplomatic pressure against Russia that "this is the only way Nato can assure Russia that they will not escalate into war but instead protect themselves from Russian misfires". It's an escalation, sure, but not a direct war and it would set a specific context around why it's initiated as a direct pressure point toward Russia to stop sending in missiles.

A Russian misfire is a serious blow to Russia, not anyone else. There's little diplomatic ammunition that Russia can gain out of this situation as Nato has always been clear about its focus on defense. Russia's claims that Nato is trying to be on the offense against Russia has no merits and is proven by Nato not involving itself in battles, but if Russia misfires into a Nato nation they could argue that they need to defend themselves against such events and Russia has little to argue against that.

But what should be clear to him, is that getting direct NATO involvement would signify the end of Ukraine and of Europe. This is not secret information. — Manuel

Direct Nato involvement is not a single event. It can also mean other structures of pressure on Russia than some final nuclear war. It's this type of black-and-white assessment of the situation, disregarding any kind of more serious diplomacy against Russia as an outcome.

The most likely outcome, out of this specific situation, that Nato can deal against Russia would be to pressure them that they will initiate a no-fly zone to block possible rogue missiles going into Nato nations. That would be a kind of soft no-fly zone that doesn't become a full confrontal war and it would have legitimacy within the context of what has happened here. Within that diplomacy, they would have the foundational reasoning against Russia for such a no-fly zone that isn't a full-blown Article 5 movement.

But people seem to argue about both Russia and Nato as being just people with their finger over the red button. That's the depth some of these discussions seems to have.

"Action is needed" — Benkei

And you, of course, interpret that as "initiate Article 5 and bomb Russia to hell".

In no way is what he said directly pushing for a direct world war with Russia. Why wouldn't "action is needed" also mean a no-fly zone that he has been asking for since the beginning of the war? Or more serious pressure from Nato towards Russia than just sending weapons.

How is my interpretation and speculation in any shape or form less true than what you suggest?

That's not what Zelensky and people in his cabinet said at the time these missiles hit Polish territory. — Manuel

If you were in his situation, asking for a no-fly zone and more help to defend his people and push back the Russians, what would you have done? Especially since right-wing nationalists around the world keep hinting of leaving Ukraine in the dust by stopping aid.

Are you saying that Zelensky should put the world on his shoulders and be the perfect leader for everyone around the world while backward politicians around the world keep hinting of turning their backs on him. I wouldn't, I would probably do whatever I could to try and defend Ukraine and push for the aid that is required.

It's insane what people demand of him in the situation he's in from behind the safety of our own nations.

What I wrote was a speculation on the outcome if it was Russian. Zelensky wants a no-fly zone over Ukraine, he knows a full-blown Article 5 intervention would be too much for the world to handle and that no one wants to initiate that. But if he could push Nato, out of the situation that Russia misfires into Nato nations, then a no-fly zone could become a reality based on that fact and Nato could deal with the diplomacy towards Russia in a way where they initiate a no-fly zone without concluding it all to be a direct war with Russia, but instead in order to defend against irrational misfires. It would be diplomatic ammunition to pressure Russia in ways they couldn't have done before.

What Zelensky did yesterday was insane! Does he not understand that such reckless acts will harm Ukraine much more than the current war?

A nuclear war would destroy every single Ukranian, European and likely the majority of the world's population. — Manuel

How does a Russian misfire into Poland lead to nuclear war? It's engaging Article 4, not 5 and would most likely lead to higher political pressure on Russia because such an event would clearly give Nato political ammunition they didn't have before and a clear reason for higher-ups in Russia to de-escalate. Zelensky knows this and might have tried to take advantage of the situation.

They all know the MAD consequence, that's not an outcome of a misfire. If Russia deliberately fired into a Nato nation, that would be another thing, but that's not what happened even if Russia was responsible for this.

But of course you have to immediately spin it to some pro-Ukrainian stance — Isaac

I'm not spinning anything. I'm describing what the scenario would be if it was Russian. But you can't even accept speculation based on a possible conclusion out of the investigation. Or even what it would have been if it had been Russian.

Your constant straw-manning and intentional misinterpretation of other's posts in order to spin it in your direction in this thread makes you a dishonest interlocutor, I'm not engaging with your dishonest posts and inability to understand what the fuck others are writing. Spin away into a corner somewhere.

Let's assume that's true. On the basis of belief but not evidence, because that's difficult to get by according to you, he thinks it's perfectly fine to follow a political line aimed at escalation? I still think that's cynical, possibly more so because then facts aren't relevant to his position and we should worry that Zelensky will go to significant lengths to ecalate the conflict. — Benkei

The fact is that the US and Poland have both said conflicting things within their own nations so there's nothing conclusive at all about this. However, if it was Russia's, then Zelensky knows that it won't lead to an Article 5 consequence, because it's most likely a misfire, but still serious, which would result in an Article 4 event.

Such an outcome would drastically put pressure on Russia and could very well be a pressure point that leads to actual progress with Russia scaling down and retreating. Russia's answer to anyone who tells them to scale back and retreat has so far been a blunt "no" and there's nothing the world can do about it, but if they were responsible for an attack on a Nato nation, Nato could pressure Russia but "play the good guy" and say they won't escalate this if they don't need to, as long as Russia starts complying.

Such a thing could actually lead to real constructive peace talks since so far the problem with anyone suggesting peace talks, to this date, has been that they ignore the fact that Russia's "demands" in such peace talks have been "a total surrender of Ukraine".

It's irrational to think that this is a black-and-white scenario and that if some Russian just took a piss on the wrong side of the Polish border it would lead to Article 5. Maybe the ones thinking Nato is a movie villain warmongering organization believe this but it's not how things are.

shit hitting the fan? — neomac

Shit tried to hit the fan and missed. Gonna be interesting to see if Nato will use this to pressure Russia based on article 5.

Hi, really enjoying your posts in this thread. Not my particular stance but you are explaining the arguments rather succinctly. It is "easy to digest" I suppose you could say while still being very meaty in points to discuss. I have not read every one of your posts in this thread with focus and perhaps am somewhat engaging in "drive-by philosophy" more so than commonplace economic model discussion but, if I may.. — Outlander

I must say that it's rare to see someone with objections in an argument be so humble and respectful as you are here. Such things gives me hope for humanity actually able to argue for progression of knowledge and solutions rather than how discussions are usually perceived. I salute to such things and wish far more people having such qualities.

As you go about your motions of existence, knowing they will profoundly affect nobody nowhere, including one's self, you may stop to think... is this life? Surely I must be fortunate. Are there unfortunate people out there who still live in the hellish pre-automated world of labor from dawn 'til dusk? — Outlander

Problem with this division in a future world society is that you also said:

We now joke about "staving people" the way someone would joke about someone having polio or some other long-vanquished ailment of time's past. — Outlander

...if so, then there wouldn't be people in a less fortunate position.

But, you may want to read what I wrote just above this post, which is engaging with the actual nightmare outcome of automation.

of course everything we do is supposed to "do something", we don't "do things" because it has no purpose. "Status and monetary gain" cannot be used as a blanket simplification to gloss over or detract from the intrinsic properties they bestow (or deny) to people: "who you are and what you can do". One doesn't become a "master craftsman" just so he has something to say after his name in introductions. One doesn't work to gain wealth simply because they're "supposed to". These are all done to advance a goal or desire, goals or desires that would exist regardless of the economic model or level of automation. Sure, if you're in possession of little resources, you will likely end up working a job out of necessity vs. pursuit of desire. This would also be the case if you were born or later experienced a handicap or just otherwise aren't that talented. These are also independent of economic models or social systems. — Outlander

What I mean by "Baudrillardian eldritch horror" is that we are unable to comprehend the exact nature of how capitalism affects our psychology in the world today. We have replaced actual reality with a capitalist point of view that fundamentally drives our core values in life. I'm not merely speaking of accumulating wealth but of how we categorize value around us, how we shape our day to day thoughts under a capitalist rule-set. Many proclaim their notion of doing something for a value that is individually fulfilling to them in contrast to monetary value, but very few people can separate that individually fulfilling value with a journey to gain status through that fulfillment.

In essence, why do people want to do something personally fulfilling? This is a generalization of statistical importance, since it's already quite clear that a very small percentage of the world population actually pierce through the system on an intellectual level, most people do not have the ability, through never learning it, channel it or being open to it, to break down their inner driving forces and they do not see the tentacles of capitalist industry shaping their desires and sense of purpose in life.

Here I can draw on my own actual work in marketing. I've studied and worked with manipulation of people's desires and ideas of themselves through marketing. This is a main source of knowledge in psychology driving my argument. And the scary truth of the matter is that the industry, the capitalist industry on a global stage has essentially shaped people's core psychology of meaning to the point that they are unable to distinguish between what is a true introspective purpose in life and what is a manufactured one by the capitalist culture and industry of the world.

That is why I call it "Baudrillardian eldritch horror"; "Baudrillard" as in how we are unable to distinguish the simulated life of what the capitalist culture tells us (through marketing) and a life outside of those puppet pulls, while the "eldritch horror" is the capitalistic system itself that is so ingrained into culture that it is impossible to fully comprehend by the sheer complexity of its Kafkaesque nature.

The conclusion being that our capitalist culture has effectively hijacked our sense of subjective ability to find meaning and replaced it with a manufactured one that is easily controlled on the market.

Needs and wants are still needs and wants unchanged regardless of how you facilitate their fulfillment or accrual — Outlander

How can you distinguish between needs/wants that are universal and ones that are invented by how society and culture program you as an individual? How do you know that your needs and wants are actually pure and honest when your identity is a product of the culture you were nurtured into?

Without growth you have decay. Nothing is truly stagnant. You expect to have children or at least that other people will, correct? The more people who sit down for a pie, the less pie is available. Therefore, you need growth. Be it tangible wealth in your pocket or larger (thus more expensive and labor intensive) operations in whatever the field may be. — Outlander

If all people collectively moved through history with this mindset, we wouldn't have poverty and inequality. However, neoliberal capitalism has pushed the world globally to individual monetary gain and a mindset thereafter. We do not think of growth as sharing a pie, we view growth as individual growth. A person in neoliberal capitalism controlling automation will be able to direct their growth into accumulated wealth for themselves but have no incentive to grow the pie for the many and even individuals outside of such wealth wouldn't view things in such a collective way until capitalism essentially collapses and our psychology is shaped through a new type of model.

And before pointing out that plenty want something good for others, society as it is shaped today, produces far more people playing that individualistic capitalist game than genuinely caring for the world as a collective and shared space for all. Even people who proclaim to care may very well, even unbeknownst to themselves, be slaves to a status of caring, shaping themselves an identity within the system. A manufactured identity of being someone who cares, but essentially follows a value increase in status by being that capitalist archetype.

Maybe that is an obvious reality for us, but how many people in the world spend hundreds of thousands of words dedicated to thinking about these complexities that shape society?

We are more controlled by the system in place, i.e neoliberal capitalism, than we fully comprehend. Our psychology is more programmed by this through an entire life nurturing these systems than we realize. Even notions of breaking free of the system may very well just be part of the system itself.

Just like how in marketing, we create a desirable identity of rebellion against the system, and then earn money selling products based on such a rebellion to people proclaiming to be anticapitalists.

Please read through first as my initial points may seem more antagonistic than they really are. You see the same dangers I've pointed out, but you need to drive them to their conclusions first.

Not so much forget as discount. — Vera Mont

Why do you discount the major factor for my argument? Without it the whole notion of non-work becomes just nonsense since nothing in the world would produce necessary resources for any of us to exist. My argument focus on the singularity event of advanced automation, when almost any task can be turned over to software and hardware rather than a person.

I wished this was just a flimsy thought experiment, but just as uncontrolled exponential climate change and nuclear war is a thought experiment scenario, they are also possible futures that needs to be seriously considered. So is this. And you base your counter argument on ignoring this very fact.

As much as people want to do. — Vera Mont

How do you combine this with an industry and government using automation for any practical task? What work, other than renovating your own house, writing a book, painting, other arts, cooking a fine meal and so on, are you referring to these people doing?

You need to specify based on a task that is by its core and value impossible to replace with software and hardware.

For whom? To what end? What motivates AI to do that? — Vera Mont

I recommend studying how AI functions. Most people who discuss automation does not have good insight into this field of science. The most common mistake is to think about AI as basically just general purpose AI, or rather, sentient AI.

To try and be short, sentient AI is useless. It's basically unprogrammable and would only have the function of being a sentient alternative perspective to humans in philosophy, but it has no inherent function, it basically becomes just another sentient individual.

The AI that actually will be used, and is already being used to a great degree, is advanced algorithmic AI, synthetic intelligence, neural network intelligence. This is simply an AI that is specifically tailored to a specific function.

Automation will be programmed to adress certain tasks. Like, in this example, optimize planning of changes to an environment in order to improve it for inhabitants and the ecology. It will be performing fast administrative changes to mechanical workers to streamline environmental work for that specific end goal. There are no administrative personnel, no human workers, the only input is the intention placed on the algorithmic AI to perform towards this end goal.

Which either leads to a paper clip scenario as its worst outcome, or it functions well. Maybe it functions even so well that the input doesn't have to be by a human, but rather a top level algorithmic AI which functions as a broader planner where environmental issues is a lower branch.

You see, the question you ask is too simplistic to cover how AIs actually work and how it will probably be utilized in the future.

For the sheer joy and satisfaction of doing it! — Vera Mont

Of course, and who has the privilege of doing this job? Because no one will pay for it when there's an almost infinitely cheap labor force through robotics.

So you can't build an industry out of it when it requires that people work for free. And of course there's that little problem in which among the billions of people who live on this planet, most of them do work that is a necessity for income rather than doing what they love.

Who will provide the resources to work for free, doing what you love, without having demands from the employer to perform in competition with companies who utilize automation?

But you are right, people will work with what gives them joy. The problem you won't seem to include in your assessment is how you can grant everyone to be able to do what they love. Both in resources, but also in value.

Here's scenario you have to consider.

Imagine that the lack of work makes millions, maybe even a billion people to pursue work in areas that robotics and software can't replace (which becomes just a handful of occupations). For example, a billion people choose painting. Yes, AI's can paint, but art isn't just scrambling inspirations together with paint and produce a painting, it's also about intention in combination with a viewer experiencing that intention, art requires the artist and the receiver.

This leads to an oversaturation of artworks. Billions of paintings ending up in artistic noise in which artistic meaning gets lost. There are not enough museums to show the paintings, online resources becomes more saturated than millions of posts of TikTok. The experience of painting loses all meaning when so many people collectively only works with it and the feedback becomes based on shorter than glances interpretations than never dwell any deeper than a few seconds.

You need to follow your questions to their logical conclusions, this is philosophy we're doing here.

And then add the fact that not all, far from all people actually has any interest in creative work or work that fulfill them. Plenty of people have no such ambitions, what will they do?

People like the feeling of satisfaction when they have completed a task they set for themselves; the elation of overcoming a challenge, solving a problem. People enjoy exerting their physical capabilities, in sports, but it's more meaningful to do so in the creation of something concrete. People also enjoy sharing work that serves their sense of community, like a pot-luck supper or barn-raising. Have you ever seen men happier - in the sense of abiding contentment, rather than momentary joy - than when a group of them is huddled over a malfunctioning engine or a recalcitrant tree stump? I can't prove it, but I have a feeling most sick people and little children would prefer to be cared for by a loving adult than an efficient robot. — Vera Mont

...have you followed everything to their logical conclusions? How can you reconcile all of this on the scale of billions of people? Stop and think for a minute. The problem is not what people want, feel is meaningful or value etc. The problem is that we are stuck in a system of thinking that is based upon a capitalist foundation that automation breaks at its core.

Your arguments are based on how automation works today, not the implications of future automation. You are stuck in the desert of the real basically.

The fact that something can be done, doesn't mean that it must be done. — Vera Mont

Stop and look at the world today. Look at the forces driving everything, driving progression etc. Then, ask yourself what's stopping advanced automation from happening in the future? It's not really a question of "must be done", but rather it's a question of "something that will just be".

Here's the kicker: you need to dismantle capitalist culture at its core and replace it with something else before automation happens, in order for it not to happen. But since, as I've explained, capitalist culture is a Baudrillardian system, people cannot invent something other that isn't part of the core system already in place as the resources and tools to invent something new needs to come out of the system already in place both in practice and in psychology.

Besides, given that fact that most automation (that's not military) is controlled by commercial interests, as it keeps eroding its paid work-force, it incidentally erodes its customer base and the government's tax base; it has to reach a point of diminishing returns where no money is changing hands at all. UBI is a temporary stop-gap, as it also depends on redistribution of money.
Once there's no more profit to be made, who directs the robots? This, to me, is the central question about automation. (Based on the very large assumption that the whole house of credit cards doesn't collapse before that vanishing point, and all the billionaires head for the mountain strongholds. — Vera Mont

Here you actually start to get to the point I'm talking about: the actual collapse of capitalist culture.

A) UBIs start to increase as taxes on the income placed on the companies who manufacture also increase. At some point there is either a balance that works, or companies gets taxed into no ability to produce, even with cheap labor by robots and the economy collapses entirely as a system, throwing the world into a total capitalist collapse and soon follows, as a natural outcome of that chaos... war.

B) The capitalist system follows to the very end point, in which transactions stop as all the wealth of the world has reached the accumulated highest point, the small group of people who owns the world industry run by automation. This is the scenario you point at. As all money has accumulated it loses all value, but the rich already has the resource wealth and no incentive to keep producing towards the people who are not in monetary and resource control. This also leads to a chaos and... war. However, the risk here is even greater as war might be towards the people in control of resources and that is essentially a losing battle, giving total power of a few over the rest of the world as they control robotics as a means of controlling the rest of the world population.

Scenario B essentially manifest the very extreme version of a company owning "your data", they end up literally owning you as you have no possible way of organizing a revolution against such accumulated resource power. Have you seen "Mad Max Fury Road"? What you see being portraid as society in the beginning, with Immortan Joe controlling water, gasoline, genetic bloodlines and ammunition as resources form a high tower bunker, is basically this scenarios end point, but without the ability to strike back as an army of militarized AI robots would stop any rebellion in an instance.

Very much the opposite is in motion in America. Introducing moral philosophy, depends on a sensible school board operating under a sensible government with a generous budget. In Finland, you may be able to do it; in the USA, not under the current political trend. — Vera Mont

I already consider USA as a ticking time bomb of uneducated people collapsing the system because no one cared to actually educate people into sensible, empathic and thoughtful people. It will be the end of USA at some point. Nations with a good strategy of education will become the future superpowers, but since most of them are really small nations, there's a risk of them being snuffed out by wrestler presidents and delusional self-proclaimed emperors just because of their threat to educated people in their nations (much like Putin's fear of western culture "invading" Russia and threatening his power).

So, as an end point. You seem to see the very dangers that I'm pointing towards, but you may need to drive them to their logical conclusions. Automation is much more world changing than I think people realize.

Non-work is not the same as non-job. As mentioned earlier, people can work for their families their communities, the environment, the future, the protection, welfare and enrichment of their fellow humans, the welfare and rehabilitation of other species, their own betterment. There is plenty of work to do that's far more rewarding than the pittance bosses dole out. — Vera Mont

I think you forget about the reality I describe. With advanced automation how much "work" do you think will be done? If an AI can plan with more precision towards something like a better environment in the future, what work will you do if that AI does all the work organizing society towards that improvement? If proven to be more precise and better than a human worker to do that assignment, why would anyone assign or accept that work to be done by a human?

This is what I mean when I talk about the "Baudrillardian eldritch horror"; people cannot fathom a society without work because it's so ingrained in our psychology that we cannot detach ourselves from that reality, we cannot think through other concepts than it.

The work we can adress to humans as an existential value are work that focus on creativity, expression, art and philosophy. The only thing that robots cannot replace is the human perspective, the collective or the individual point of view that informs the individual or collective creative output. But almost all other jobs can, with enough algorithmic AI development, be turned over to robots.

Most work you are referring to, while being spiritually healthy for people to do, is still related to a grind that gets replaced by advanced automation. Without that grind, what is left of that "work"? The intention? The exposure?

That is exactly what a liberal public education would promote, and that is exactly why all demagogues hobble and cripple public education wherever they can. — Vera Mont

It's not, because we do not fully have a logical moral system, if we had, moral philosophy would have been fully solved. But what I'm talking about is actually teaching moral philosophy as a core part of the curriculum, that is not in motion today. We may have a good educational system (well, Finland has the best from what I know), but it's not fully at the level I'm talking about.

If people start thinking, they may stop fighting one another for the crumbs off the rich man's table. They might put down the placards and talk to one another. They might even stop supporting power-mad leaders. — Vera Mont

Exactly, but even in nations of Scandinavia, which has a good public education of the highest level, it's still not at the level that I'm talking about, because it's not preparing anyone for anything else but living under this Baudrillardian eldritch system.

The world is not prepared for full advanced automation.

Especially in the beginning of industrialism humans were treated very badly but it lead to wealth and that wealth is essential to progress, education, hospitals, and public utilities. When something like printing makes art and books cheap, low-income people can afford them and that makes their lives better. I worry about how many liberals understand the importance of good jobs and big industry that provides those jobs and those affordable products and wealth? Exactly how do we establish an economic and social system that works for everyone? — Athena

The problem with deciphering capitalism is that it doesn't have a constant value. In a poor nation, capitalism can very rapidly improve the quality of life for the people and increase wealth. But as soon as capitalism enters a stage where the majority of the people already have accumulated wealth it starts to tap into just being about cash flow, earnings, and gains. It stops being a system of change and instead becomes a "Baudrillardian eldritch horror" in which people become a slave to it, regardless of whether they want to or not. It starts to corrupt the people and divide them into rich and poor and over time increases that gap until the rich becomes so powerful that they essentially take over power from the government.

This is the state where people start to work themselves to death. Because they're not part of a society that is gaining wealth as a collective but rather has become a new type of slave society. In this new type, people live in an illusion of existential value that they cannot distinguish from any other reality. People lose track of basic existential questions like love and death and replace them with a monetary valuation of status. People start to think they are in love with someone when they're basically just together with them because of the status it produces, they get children because that's a family status, and they have a certain job which is a further acquired status. In the age of the internet, this has also been intensified as people project these statuses out to people surrounding them, further blinding them into this system.

This is the Baudrillardian horror, modern western capitalism has evolved into an unseen monster that people think is "quality life". It's so ingrained into our psychology that we're never even questioning how this life works. Everything we do is part of this capitalist mentality, everything is about some kind of status or monetary gain and loss, and the most obvious sign of this is how much more popular "quick fix" existential treatments have become. The desperate search for "meaning in all the chaos", without people understanding what that chaos really is.

And so, some, like Marx, developed political philosophies that examined the inner workings of capitalism and alternatives to it. But Marx is also outdated since it focuses entirely on the industrial age of development, which had entirely different inner mechanics, especially lacking the Baudrillard perspective.

With so many people in the world today, with such a technological explosion that the last 150 years have produced, it is impossible to maintain a society based on Marx's ideas and it's also impossible to maintain a society of modern capitalism. Because essentially any political philosophy regards the citizen as a cog in a machine, without essential value other than its function.

If these cogs are changed into automation, into robots and we dislocate humans from the traditional machine, then that becomes an existence that has never been available on a large scale before. We are so ingrained in the idea of "work" that people don't know how to manage their time outside of it. It has, throughout history, either been about survival or monetary gain at its core and occasionally, for a few, been a place of meaning. But on a large scale, how can everyone find meaning?

That is the core problem that philosophy and people need to solve when advanced automation starts to reshape society.

The original purpose of free public education in the US was to teach good citizenship and thereby prevent social problems. There are two ways to have social order, culture, or authority over the people. To have liberty there must be a culture that makes that possible we replaced that past education with education for a technological society with unknown values. Some good things came out of this and it appears some bad things are also coming out of leaving moral education to the church and not transmitting the culture we once had. — Athena

The lack of moral philosophy in school, not just in higher education, but as a core part of the curriculum, is part of why people are left to figure out our peaceful, good values on their own without guidance. Parents don't have time to educate their children about this because they need two jobs to pay the bills and in the end that only teaches their children that monetary gain and the appearance of wealth are all that morally matter.

We need moral philosophy in schools, teaching how hard it is to handle morality and letting kids think about these things as they mature. Moral philosophy, with all its examples and theories, can enlighten people to think in a more complex manner towards the next person and have the ability to guide them into figuring out values on their own. If a whole generation had the same basic understanding of these things, then the existential discussions they tackle as adults, all the political polarisation etc. would be much easier to resolve. The core problem I see with polarisation and tribalism today has to do with people acting like they understand moral complexity without any training in it whatsoever.

And in a society free from religion, it's key to find empathic values and theories that act as the foundation for everything.

If you can't have "decided principles" through religion, then the principles need to have a rational, logical, and empathic core that automatically makes people gravitate toward that logical good as doing otherwise would lead to misery. A truly liberal society free from religion requires the people to understand morality as a system that is logical and not decided upon them.

"Not having a job" is the least of issues regarding science and technology in this age. — Outlander

Except when that ends up being the norm for a majority of people, then we need a society tailored around a non-work existence.

But my general point is that every choice we make is done in a situation of infinite possibilities and without anyway to know we have done the best or correct thing.

It is something that can lead to an existential crisis. — Andrew4Handel

Welcome to a world without religion in which this crisis leads people to extreme behaviors since society, schools, and work never cared to tackle true existential questions. This is essentially Nietzsche's nightmare future that he predicted and we're seeing it in things like people's desperate attachment to conspiracy theories like Qanon and the increase in depression worldwide.

The solution would be for parents and schools to prepare children for the bleak existence that is life. In doing so teach them to find a purpose that revolves around a positive moral value system: "it's ok to fail, but strive for caring for all life", to simplify what is required.

The problem is that we replaced religion with neoliberal capitalism. Our church is our cash flow and materialistic life. Such a life can be very easily proven pointless and if we don't have anything else than that cash flow to inform us of a good life, then of course people fall into nihilism and despair.

I'd say the best solution to this nihilism is to be curious and creative. Seek knowledge and create things. The more knowledge, the easier it is to understand the dread, the more creativity, the easier it is to find meaning in the meaningless. Anyone who puts all their existential fruit in the neoliberal capitalist market will in the end die screaming (which they usually do) because it's essentially just irrelevant noise that blinds them from finding purpose in a universally meaningless existence.