What country do you live in?

I don't know. There's a deep reservoir of hate for Putin the in the old GOP members. They might balk at this. I can't say. The whole thing is a cult, but some of the GOP politicians are going along for politics, not for any cultish reasons. If their election is six years away, and they feel strongly on this, they might just tell Trump F-U. All it would take is 3.

GOP only has 53 senators. If just a couple break ranks, that can be very significant.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-ukraine-zelensky-john-cornyn-thune-b2701516.html

Congress has not uttered a squeak about anything Trump has done since the election. Not a word, not a raised eyebrow. If Trump says jump, their only response will be How high? — Wayfarer

That's not true. Republicans are speaking out now.

Isn't Sherlock Holmes a genius? Hannibal Lecter a cannibal? What about if I had a scary dream? Do I really mean I had a scary sequence of brain states? But who talks like that? It doesn't even make sense. Brain states aren't the kind of thing that can be scary (except maybe for ones that show you have a tumor).

I think there are still enough votes in Congress to authorize more aid to Ukraine.

I don't mind. Just throwin my 2 cents in from the peanut gallery

Pardon. I'm under the impression (I could be wrong, I admit it) that part of the conflict involves religion. Is that correct? — Arcane Sandwich

Well, some of the Arab combatants scream allahu akbar! before raping women to death, so....

That's depressing, I'm not watching it. I'm taking me ebike out. It's a nice day in Southern California.

I don't believe might makes right. I do believe the ends often justify the means. Normally, you wouldn't send a trolley car barreling down on someone, am I right? But if there's five people stuck on it...

Crack is a mind stimulant. Should it be legal? I'm saying "no". — Arcane Sandwich

I said "mild stimulant", not "mind stimulant".

That's a good question. Efforts to criminalize drugs have destroyed many many lives and done a number on the countries to the South of us. Maybe it would be better to just legalize it all and addicts can do it in licensed safe spaces.

Why not? What is it, then? — Arcane Sandwich

A mild stimulant. I'm not a coffee drinker, but I am a Diet Coke fanatic, and in the mornings, I get an energy boost from it, but I can't kill my mind with it. I can't get high off of it. So I can't use it as an escape. Maybe there are other people who do get an awesome high from it.

Is coffee in that group, in your opinion? Do people use coffee to escape a meaningless depressing life? Honest answer. — Arcane Sandwich

No, coffee's not an escape.

What if I claimed to be an alien Ai? Could you use Bayes theorem to show that to be improbable? I wonder what ChatGpt would say to that...

Well, I'm not too impressed so far:

"We need an initial probability for the existence of an alien AI interacting with humans. Given no strong prior evidence for such beings, a very low prior is reasonable. One in a million."

I don't agree with that. There's no strong evidence because our search methods are so primitive. We're in an epistemic situation where I wouldn't expect us to have any evidence of alien ai's, even if they existed, so how could that fact be disconfirming? It's like saying there's no evidence for germs before the microscope was invented.

ChatGpt's reply:

"That’s a great point! You’re highlighting an important issue in Bayesian reasoning: how do we set prior probabilities in cases where our ability to collect evidence is severely limited...With a 1% prior, the probability [of me being an alien Ai] would be 34% instead of near zero! That’s a massive shift, purely due to reconsidering our initial prior."

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

1) In your honest opinion, is it fair for Earth Crisis (and Straight Edge in general) to blame societal problems solely on drugs? Or are there other elements of "society" that need to "take the blame" here, so to speak? — Arcane Sandwich

Remember the old experiments with the rats and the cocaine lever? They would dispense cocaine over and over again until they died. But then a researcher did a different experiment (Rat Park, Bruce Alexander). He created a pleasurable rat city for the rats where they could run around, fuck, eat, and enjoy their rat selves and he gave the rats access to morphine. The rats mostly ignored it.

So no, our problem isn't drugs it's what incentivizing people to take those drugs. They're using them to escape a meaningless depressing life.

"2) What, if any, is the actual intent behind the lyrics of their song "Firestorm"? Whatever that might be, would it be feasible and morally correct? In other words, what would be the Ethical justification for such acts? Would they even have a rationale to begin with?"

Burn it all down? I don't think things are that bad.

"Could you, as an honest reader, imagine a hypothetical scenario in which Earth Crisis' Straight Edge premises, together with their Vegan premises, deductively entail a contradiction?"

I don't know enough about that to answer.

And also, fuck you, Vegans, I won't do what you tell me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8de2W3rtZsA

International standards developed after WW2 in the Geneva Conventions (1949 and 1976) would consider our "punishment" of civilians as war crimes. — Relativist

Who cares? War itself is a crime against humanity. The only unforgiveable crime in war is to lose. I posted a poll awhile back:
Suppose Germany had won the Battle of Britain and then launched an invasion of England. Churchill authorizes the use of poison gas and it becomes a decisive factor in repelling the Nazi invasion.
Was Churchill's use of poison gas justified?

Most people said yes. I think that's the obvious answer.

Should they? Why? — Arcane Sandwich

Life is hard. Why deprive us of our little pleasures, like smoking and drinking?

What allowed the Germans to accept that and move on but the Palestinians can't?
— RogueAI
What difference does it make? You're judgement of what they "ought" to do doesn't compel them to do so. — Relativist

Of course it doesn't. That's Israel's job. The war will continue until Palestinians accept their defeat. It took huge amounts of suffering for Germany and Japan to get there. What Israel is doing isn't any different than what the Allies did, except Israel is being much more careful. The punishment we inflicted on Japanese and German cities before they surrendered was incredible, but that's war.

The Google ai sez: "after World War II, large numbers of ethnic Germans were forcibly expelled from territories that were ceded to other countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, including Poland and Czechoslovakia, which had previously been part of Germany; this event is often referred to as the "Flight and expulsion of Germans" and is considered one of the largest single instances of ethnic cleansing in history."

What allowed the Germans to accept that and move on but the Palestinians can't?

The former needs to be addressed before the latter. — NOS4A2

The latter isn't going to be addressed AT ALL by Trump. He's already said entitlements are off the table. So the couch cushions are pulled, DOGE rearranges some deck chairs more efficiently, and the Titanic steams on.

Jesus. No wonder the country is broke. — NOS4A2

This is couch cushion stuff. Politicians who ignore entitlement reform are not serious about debts and deficits. Wouldn't you agree?

You moved to Canada?

Yes it sucks for the Palestinians. They lost a war.
— BitconnectCarlos
And you think this means they should just accept their lot, like native Americans did? What "should" happen isn't the point. It's what WILL happen. They won't accept it, and neither will their Arab neighbors. — Relativist

Many countries lose wars and accept the new reality and move on. Why won't the Palestinians?

Good point! : ) — Arcane Sandwich

Thanks. That's in America though. Parts of Europe might need testing when it comes to freedom of speech.

That's because there are politicians who want to ban flag burning. I don't know of any politician that wants to ban Quran burning.

It tests those enlightenment-era values against older religious values involving inviolable divine directives or the sanctity of the holy book.
— BitconnectCarlos

Perfectly said.
Flawless.
Impeccable. — Arcane Sandwich

Do those values really need testing though? In the U.S. I know with certainty the government is not going to try and stop me from burning a holy book (unless I'm breaking some fire code).

Medicare and Medicaid are major drivers of the debt, would you agree?

The debt spiral won't be stopped until we address entitlements. Don't you agree?

It was invented by Albert Einstein. — Arcane Sandwich

Invented or discovered? Maybe a quibble, maybe not.

I recently bought a used Nissan Leaf. I love it. I plug it in when I get home and never have to worry about gas. It's also much easier to maintain.

When a person lost all his/her memories, the idea of self would have gone too. — Corvus

Amnesia is the destruction of self? And also, if I lose 90% of my memories, am I 90% less a self?

It's the cumulative effect of that electronic switching that is intelligence — Harry Hindu

Let's explore this. Suppose there's a parallel world where computers work without software. Whenever a user wants the computer to do something, they turn the computer on, and all the electronic switches that make up the computer just randomly open and close in ways that produce the output the user wants. It just all happens by fantastic coincidence.

For example, in this parallel world, there are computers that have hardly any circuits that are capable of passing BAR exams, and solving complex math problems, and passing Turing Tests, and acting as therapists because they all just accidentally always give the right output. If the multiverse is sufficiently large and varied enough, this kind of world actually exists. So, are the computers in that world intelligent?

Not really. It's just that humans have viewed themselves as special creations for most of our existence, or that creation itself is centered around us, so it is difficult in giving up these notions that we are somehow special and that intelligence cannot be attributed to things that are not human, or even organic. — Harry Hindu

Well, we know personally that we are special because we know we have minds. We then assume other humans and high-order animals have them too. But machines, that's a totally different beast.

Any computer is at heart a collection of electronic switch-flipping, correct? How is turning switches on and off any kind of intelligence?

So what you're saying is that you need a mind to be intelligent? What exactly is a mind? You say you have one, but what is it, and what magic does organic matter have that inorganic matter does not to associate minds with the former but not the latter?

Is it your mind that allows you to come up with responses to me, or your intelligence, or both? — Harry Hindu

These are extremely weighty questions that have been asked for a very long time, with no good answers given (I lean towards idealism, by the way). This is why I think Ai is going to have profound impacts on society. We're not at all ready to determine whether these machines have minds, yet we are intimately familiar with our own minds and how we use them to make decisions.

No. They seem to me unrelated capabilities. — 180 Proof

But doesn't it seem to you that your mind is an integral part of your intelligence "apparatus"? You consider ideas, you mentally weigh the pro's and con's of things, when it comes to acting intelligently in a relationship, you try to empathize with how your actions will feel to another person, etc. Do you think that's all an illusion? That there's some rules-based architecture "under the hood" that's really calling all the shots?

Intelligence is a unclear concept. HarryHindu asked me, if AI blokes are intelligent. Before answering the question, I need to know what intelligence means. — Corvus

Is mind a necessary condition for intelligence?

But where does this doubt stem from if not a bias that humans are intelligent and not machines? There is no logical reason to think this without a definition of intelligence. — Harry Hindu

But I know I have a mind and my mind is what I use to come up with responses to you (that I hope are perceived as intelligent!). We assume we all have minds because we're all built the same way. But with a machine, you don't know if there's a mind there, so this question of intelligence keeps cropping up.

Please define intelligence. — Corvus

Aren't we going to end up in the Chinese Room? No matter how the Ai is programmed, it's following a rules-based system that produces output we perceive as intelligent answers. Even if Ai's start solving outstanding problems in science and logic and mathematics, aren't there still going to be doubts about their intelligence?

Netanyahu is corrupt as the day is long. He's also a Jew leading his country in a time of war, so of course he's "wanted for crimes against humanity". Whenever Israel does anything beyond harsh language, it's a crime against humanity.

When Jews are defending themselves, the "genocide" dial gets turned up to 11.