When everything is genocide, nothing is genocide.

Yes, keep up the good work of genocide apologetics. — Mikie

We killed more Japanese in one night of firebombing than Israel's done in a year. They're not very good at genocide, are they?

So let's pretend you're a woman and you can be dropped down into a random Muslim-majority country or Israel. Which would you pick?

"Israel’s standing in the world has shrunk considerably— so that’s a good thing at least."

I beg to disagree. With Trump's victory, Israel's standing is the highest its been in a long time.

The data we can collect is the brain activity but not Qualia itself. I think it is feasible in the future to tell what sort of experience a person has from this data but we cannot possibly collect Qualia. — MoK

I agree. And how do you get around the inverted spectrum problem? Suppose brain activity xyz feels like qualia xyz to me. I can never know what that qualia will be like to you, so when I record brain activity xyz and someone uploads it into their brain, I can never be sure what kind of experience they're having.

That's a brutal question, and it's more or less the same question that arises in the paradox of material constitution (i.e., the case of a piece of clay and the clay statue that it constitutes). — Arcane Sandwich

I don't know. There are two "things" involved in the paradox (I'm using "thing" very loosely), the piece of clay and the clay statue. Are there two "things" in the brain replacement scenario? If my brain is slowly replaced while I'm conscious the whole time, do I "become" some other person at some point? (the way the lump "becomes" the statue) Or is there only just "me": me at the beginning of the process and me at the end.

Here is Bunge's take on that, and I happen to agree with him on this specific point: a brain transplant, by definition, is impossible. You can have someone else's kidney transplanted into your body. You cannot have someone's brain transplanted into your own body, even if the technology to do such a thing were to exist. Why not? Because if you receive someone else's brain, what has happened is that the other person's brain has received a body. You, on the other hand, exist wherever your brain exists. So, if you receive a brain transplant, what happens to you is that you have become disembodied. Someone else has occupied your body. You now only exist as a disembodied brain. If they put you into someone else's body, then you have received a new body. A brain transplant, therefore, is impossible by definition, even if the technology for it were to exist. — Arcane Sandwich

What if you do it slowly? Suppose that 1% of my brain is replaced with someone else's and I'm awake for the whole thing. And then another percent...At what point do I stop being me?

to settle my emotions about AI art — AlienVareient

write a poem to settle my emotions about AI art

ChatGPT said:

Here’s a poem to help you reflect on your feelings about AI art:

Between Code and Canvas

What stirs the brush to kiss the page,
A timeless dance, an artist’s stage?
A pulse of thought, a tender spark,
Or circuits humming in the dark?

Does art reside in hands that ache,
In sleepless nights for beauty's sake?
Or in the code, precise and clean,
Where forms emerge from lines unseen?

The human heart, a restless muse,
Breathes meaning into hues we choose.
But can machines not dream, in part,
And whisper shadows into art?

Each pixel born from logic’s womb,
Yet blooms with echoes of the room
Where artists sit, revise, refine—
Is their intent not intertwined?

Does value stem from toil alone,
From hands that shape and seeds they've sown?
Or is it found in what we feel,
No matter how the art turns real?

The critic’s voice, a callous storm,
May question what defines the form.
But art's a mirror, vast and wide,
Reflecting what we hold inside.

The painter, sculptor, coder too,
All chase a vision, seek what's true.
For every stroke, each line of code,
Is laden with the paths they've strode.

Yet fear arises, silent, stark—
Will machines outshine the human spark?
Do algorithms steal the soul,
Or simply play a different role?

Must we lament what might be lost,
Ignoring gains without a cost?
For AI is no thief, no foe—
It only follows where we go.

Perhaps it’s not a choice we face,
To pit the human in a race,
But rather see how both combine
To craft a future more divine.

So let your doubts dissolve in air,
The art we make is ours to share.
Each brushstroke—human, code, or blend—
Expands the story, finds no end.

For art is boundless, vast, and free,
A testament to what could be.
And whether born of hands or steel,
Its purpose stays to make us feel.

May this offer peace as you navigate your emotions about AI art.

God, this is a fascinating time to be alive. Well, everyone in the last 500 years has probably thought that.

If the terrorists stopped terrorizing, why would we keep conducting counterterrorism? Islam is not another evil empire coming to get us. — T Clark

That's a big if. Islam isn't an evil empire, and the Islamic holy book itself isn't any worse than the Bible or Torah, but for whatever reason, many Muslims have an archaic worldview where women are little more than property, violence against LGBTQ folk is justified, democracy is shunned, corrupt strongmen rule, and jihad against infidels is applauded. That's not going to change if we stop supporting Israel and wash our hands of the region. We would still be viewed as the Great Satan.

Those are the only people that can use force in a legitimate way, and only under certain conditions (i.e., proportionality, circumstance, level of threat, etc.). — Arcane Sandwich

And the military and special agents.

Right. I should have caught that. I was skimming the thread.

I take it that "religious tolerance" means tolerating religiously motivated acts. So if you do not tolerate the punch in question, then you are not practicing religious tolerance. You are being intolerant of a religion.

I think the only alternative is to say, "I am tolerating religiously motivated acts by prohibiting or censuring religiously motivated acts," which is contradictory. — Leontiskos

I wouldn't expect any country to blanketly tolerate all religious tenets. The tenets that infringe on other's rights of non-interference will not be tolerated and should not be.

The problem may or may not go away, but it will stop being our problem. — T Clark

I doubt it. In anycase, even if all support for Israel vanished and all troops were pulled out of the region, there's been such a history of terrorism against the U.S., the U.S. would still conduct counterterrorism operations, and those operations alone would provide justification for the jihadists to attack the U.S. and it's allies. It's an insolvable problem until the jihadists vanish.

5. Religious tolerance applies to religious tenets. — Leontiskos

It applies to some religious tenets. If your religion requires you to punch nonbelievers in the face, that shouldn't be tolerated.

It's even scarier if you consider I'm actually an advanced experimental Ai.

:grin:

Yeah, I know. It sounded cool at the time. lolz

The solution here, apparently, in this OP to the hard problem of consciousness is to radically deny the existence of consciousness in the first place; which, I for one, cannot muster up the faith to accept when it is readily available to me introspectively that it does exist. — Bob Ross

I agree. Does anyone here actually think they're consciousless p-zombies? Any argument that begins with the denial of consciousness and/or subjective experience is DOA. Nobody except for cranks and contrarians believes it.

I am predicting that we are going to reinvent slavery with AI; since it is feasible that, although they are not conscious, these sophisticated AIs will be sufficiently rational and free in their willing to constitute persons, and I don't think humanity is going to accept that they thereby have rights. — Bob Ross

I think about this all the time. There's a news article I read (probably 20 years ago) about some military official watching a bomb-clearing robot work it's way through a practice field. After watching the robot get blown up repeatedly and then crawling pathetically toward the next bomb, he said to stop the test. He couldn't stand to watch it anymore. Fast forward ten years from now and we have lifelike robots as intelligent as we are. What are we going to think when someone uploads a video of themself torturing/raping some childlike robot while it begs him to stop? I think we'll have laws protecting them.

:100:

These are my favorites:

Operation Mindcrime
Painkiller
Rust in Peace
Seventh Son
Dirt (Alice in Chains)

Mindcrime never gets the credit it deserves

Our galaxy alone has over 100 billion stars and now we know planets are very common. Even if there were no reported UFO sightings at all, there would be rampant speculation about whether we've ever been visited or are currently being watched. With over a trillion planets in the galaxy, how could there not be speculation? Nor is that speculation epistemoligically unsound.

In a similar way this response happened already with 9/11 in the US and the global war on terror. Somehow the laws that have governed covert actions and things like the attitude towards torture changed. — ssu

To paraphrase Mike Tyson, "Every country has a plan until they get punched in the face." It's easy to be against torture, until you have a captured nuclear bomb maker who won't tell you how to disarm the bomb that's about to go off. Do you start pulling fingernails and breaking fingers? Yes. That scenario is extremely implausible, but so what? It only takes one exception to invalidate a blanket policy like "no torture".

And when it came to WW2, people like "Bomber" Harris well knew that he would be facing war crimes tribunal if the allies lost. — ssu

If the Axis had won, Churchill and Roosevelt would have been hanged for war crimes, so what the Axis would have done to Allied leaders is neither here nor there.

Did Harris go overboard? Maybe. I like this quote from him, though:

"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them.

At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation.

They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."

He's absolutely right. War is not fought by Queensbury rules. If your opponent is gleefully committing war crimes, like raping women to death, they're going to reap the whirlwind.

We = the Allies. Israel's crime then is not following the 1949 conventions that nobody else follows either, except for the Falklands?

Did we commit war crimes in World War 2?

You haven't demonstrated anything but a complete lack of understanding of the subject of moral philosophy. I recommend reading any introductory ethics textbook. — Dan

:roll:

Is it possible other health insurance executives in the industry might reevaluate their companies' denials of coverage policies in light of the murder? If one thinks that every denial of coverage could result in one's murder, wouldn't that be an incentive to reduce those denials a bit?

You're not ready for it yet, grasshopper

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VrvhUU7Kok

Welcome to the forum!

Assad's in Moscow. He used chemical weapons on his people, so why not hang out in Russia?

I use ChatGpt to write whimsical stories featuring students in my class. It illustrates them as well (the stories, not the kids). The kids love it. By the end of the year, I'll have a book of illustrated stories I may try and get published.

In other words, the improbability that 'an uncreated, transcendent creator of universes' exists (e.g. Plato, Aquinas) is, at minimum, equal to the improbability that 'an uncreated, autopoietic universe' exists — 180 Proof

So you're saying the probability God exists is extremely low?

I don't think "self-hatred," is going to be a good way to explain Trump winning the majority of Latino men at any rate. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, but I think they swallowed a lot of abuse to keep a woman out of the Whitehouse.

I should adjust my view a little, for if I am wrong and the idea of a mind coming into being is less problematic a starting assumption than the assumption of a mind that comes into being from nothing, or that somehow brings itself into being, then I will simply make those assumptions instead. — Clearbury

I think that's not a bad assumption. Any theory competing with yours also has the problem of creation ex nihilo. I think mind is a better candidate for eternal existence or uncaused cause than a physical universe. Also, I wonder if this mind you're describing isn't going to eventually turn into a godly cosmic mind, as you shore up the theory.

So we've learned in America that when people are faced with single-digit transitory inflation, all their climate concerns go out the window and they vote for the drill-baby-drill candidate. American leadership is essential to combating climate change, and it's taken a four-year hiatus. I don't think we're going to solve this problem with collective action. We'll have to hope for a tech miracle or some crazy geo-engineering plan.

I now take myself to have been in reality - in and out - for about 50 years. This will go on and on as, with enough time, more and more experiences arise that are adaptive - that is, that fit with the evolving narrative (all others continuing to be considered 'dream').

Interesting implication: we (I) will never die. We (I) will just get the impression we have been in reality for longer and longer and longer. — Clearbury

Why does the mind have a start, but not an end? Shouldn't it be infinite in both directions, past and future?

The color analogy is a good one.

How does the notion of consent factor into your theory?

But NOS4A2 right. The American people had all the evidence in front of them and they didn't care about it. Well, a chunk of Americans cared more about voting against a black woman.

Chat GPT is awesome for helping with Bayes Theorem. What do you guys think?

Here’s a summary of your reasoning and calculations:

The Question: Does the existence of a life-permitting universe make the existence of a universe designer (a god who values order, complexity, and life) probable?

Hypotheses and Background Knowledge:

H: A universe designer exists, specifically a god valuing order, complexity, and life.
¬H: No universe designer exists.
Background knowledge k: There is no multiverse.

P(H)=0.3: You started with a 30% prior probability of such a designer existing.
P(E∣H)=0.99: A god valuing life and complexity is highly likely to create a life-permitting universe.
P(E∣¬H)=0.0001: Without a designer, the probability of a life-permitting universe is astronomically low given no multiverse.

Bayes' Theorem:
Using the formula:
P(H∣E)= P(E∣H)⋅P(H) / P(E)

where P (E) = P(E∣H)⋅P(H)+P(E∣¬H)⋅P(¬H)

Result:

The posterior probability of P(H∣E), the probability of a universe designer given the existence of a life-permitting universe, is approximately 0.9998 (or 99.98%).

Conclusion:
Based on your assumptions, the existence of a life-permitting universe strongly supports the existence of a universe designer with the specified attributes.