Do you even understand what a metaphor is? — Copernicus

I thought my use of the Allegory of the Cave showed that I did, but you are avoiding that point, so I agree with you on this point that this conversation is hopeless at this point.

Yes, thematic. I don't say this 5 cm area of my consciousness is 31 degrees Celsius hot, so to speak. That's what I said. You can't dissect it like you would your wrist nerves. — Copernicus

Measurements are simply relative comparisons and are part of the shadows (your are essentially comparing different shadows). How do you understand the distinction between distance and spacing of objects if not the different areas they appear relative to each other in your conscious visual experience? Are you a naive realist? Do you really think that the world is as it appears in your visual experience - located relative to your eyes?

What I said was that we can't mentally feel and touch our consciousness to dissect it for understanding. Only a thematic comprehension. — Copernicus

The very feelings you speak of IS your consciousness, and is the mirror used to access things outside of your consciousness. Think of the Allegory of the Cave. You only have direct access to your cave and access to everything else via the shadows cast by them. You see the cave as it is. You see the rest of the world, including other people's minds, only by the shadows they cast in your cave. Your mind is the cave. Other people's minds (their brains) are the shadows, but each shadow is cast from another cave. The shadow is equivalent to the physical brain. The cave is equivalent to the mind.

Not everyone uses the word "slay" to mean "impressive" (or whatever it means to youths these days), but that is nonetheless one of its meanings.

If you don't want to use the word "man" to refer to anyone whose gender is male, regardless of sex, then don't. But it's bizarre to suggest that other people are wrong if they do use it that way. It's prominent enough to warrant being considered another meaning. — Michael

So it's not wrong when other people use the word, "God" in a way that implies that it is male living in another dimension that wants you to do its bidding and exists? Mass delusions exist which can make many people say the same wrong things.

Me saying someone is wrong is not what makes them wrong. It is the distinction between the words they use and the reality of the situation that makes them wrong. Me saying they are wrong is just representative of that truth, but is not what makes it true.

Notice I did not explicitly say "to get people to hold the door for me". If you're being honest when you see a woman vs a man, you do have a different initial impression and treatment of them. Some of this is likely biological, but part of it is also culture. A person who is dressing in a way to emphasize their sex may be desiring these other smaller interactions they see others doing (or they do themselves) like being gentler with their voice, not talking about sports, etc. It is not one specific objective action they desire, but a collective subjective treatment that they see. — Philosophim

I don't know what culture you live in, but here in the U.S. chivalry is dead, and has been replaced with politeness towards all. I hold the door open for anyone that is right behind me when opening a door. Are you seriously saying that if I was right behind you, you wouldn't hold the door open, but let it shut in my face?

The way I might adjust my tone or avoid certain subjects with others has nothing to do with their sex. I have talked about sports with women, and spoken gruffly to them as much I have any man. The things you are saying are simply sexist.

Again, you're only emphasizing encounters of sexuality, not mere differences of sex expectation. In most general cases non-sexual gender treatment is mostly harmless. As you noted, most gender treatment should be equalized to people as a whole, and not merely given to one sex or the other. That is an ideal, but often not a real. In these cases, if someone mistakes a transgender person for the opposite sex in a quick public encounter, no one is wiser or cares. I do not view this as immoral, as the person may very well feel better and happier presenting as such for themself. — Philosophim

Exactly. The quick public encounter is gender/sex-neutral - where one's gender/sex is irrelevant. That is why I am focusing on the scenarios where it is relevant.

In the case of situations that impact the other person directly, like direct sexual interest, a trans individual should immediately let the other person know that they are in fact trans. To not do so would be sexual abuse. — Philosophim

Exactly.

Exactly, and that is the point. To choose not to decide is an example of a type of choice which escapes your description of what a choice is, which was either A or B. Therefore your description of choice was faulty. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not. There are typically more than just two options in any decision-making process, of which not choosing is a choice precisely because it leads to a different outcome than if you had chosen one of the other two. You choose outcomes, not necessarily the means because the means can change along the way.

That's not a prediction, it's an expression of logical possibilities. A prediction would be to select one or another possibility as the one which will occur. You totally distort the nature of "prediction", in an attempt to describe a person as predictable. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see the difference between "it's an expression of logical possibilities" and "elect one or another possibility as the one which will occur".

Now you totally distort the meaning of "making decisions" to support what you want to argue. Many decisions are made without reasoning. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not. Give an example of making a decision without reasoning. I've been asking for specific examples but you have yet to provide one.

What I meant is that the same way you can't scrutinize your eyes the way you can your palms, you can't dissect your consciousness in the mental laboratory. — Copernicus

My point is that all you have is your mental laboratory and it is your mental laboratory that is used to investigate other mental laboratories. How you perceive other mental laboratories will always be indirectly, like how you see your eyes in a mirror. The only thing you have direct access to is your own mental laboratory.

You seem to be saying that indirect access is what provides truth where direct access does not, which is counter-intuitive.

The a.i.’s final answer reveled how it was able to take a philosophical discussion from a vague starting point and bring it to a level of depth and detail which opened up a vast array of much more nuanced questions. And because I am well acquainted with the authors being discussed, I knew that the information it was using for its arguments was not being simply fabricated out of whole cloth, but was highly relevant and based on real texts of the authors. I almost always find this to be the case with regard to A.i’s treatment of philosophical issues. — Joshs

I experience the same thing when coding with AI. You can start off with some basic structure and expand on specific areas, building on what was created before. And you need to know the programming language to be able to pick out mistakes and make the adjustments you want to see. Also the first block of code it wrote worked right out of the box, which lines up with what you said about AI is not fabricating. It can take learned data and apply it to a new situation like my specific request for a certain function that has never been written before - the same way a human programmer would - and it worked.

Just because we use calculators to perform simple arithmetic, we have not forgotten how to do simple arithmetic. Calculators are tools to speed up the process of things that we already know how to do. We do this with our own brains. Once we learn a task, like riding a bike, we outsource the decision-making when performing those tasks to unconscious areas of the brain. We no longer need to consciously focus on each movement of each leg and our balance. It is all done unconsciously, which is why your mind can be in a different place while riding a bike and you arrive at your destination but don't remember the ride.

Yes...so what? What do you think you are disagreeing with here? — Janus

I'm not disagreeing with anything necessarily. I was just seeing if you were being consistent. So, the question now is: Have you made this much of a fuss about other members' posts whose sole content is a quote from somewhere else?

What I am disagreeing with is the notion that, on a philosophy forum, we should be focused so much on the source more than the subject, as that is the focus of philosophical discussions, and attacking the source is a red herring or genetic fallacy, usually seen when one side has no more arguments to make.

I know how to read. You don't seem to know how to write your ideas in a consistent manner.

I think the issue is that many of the people on this forum that spent their hard-earned money on philosophy courses and degrees are simply upset that now AI can do philosophy with the best of them, if not better because it lacks the emotional baggage that some on this forum carry. :wink:

If everything humans do is not necessarily nonsense the the information AI has access to is not necessarily nonsense. You pull the rug out from under your own nonsense.

As usual, and AI did not change anything in this regard, you have to do your own research with access to multiple sources, not just what AI is telling you.

But then AI was not being trained on its own nonsense, only on humanity's nonsense. — unenlightened

And you and every other person on this forum are part of humanity, no? So this forum is full of nonsense? Thanks for contributing to the nonsense. What is the point now of having any discussions when it is all nonsense?

How can you account for the exponential progress humanity has made in the past few centuries compared to the first several thousand years of our existence. It would seem to me that we have begun to emerge from all the nonsense of the past several thousand years that preceded the scientific revolution.

It doesn't always have to be about sexual attraction, but other indicators like wanting to be viewed as 'sweet' and having doors held open for you, etc. A large amount of gendering is about sexuality, but there is plenty of gendering that also has nothing to do with sexuality, and a person can be transgender because they want those non-sexual expectations that come with it. — Philosophim

I hold doors open for others, regardless of their sex, to be polite. It has nothing to do with gender. To hold doors open for one sex and not the other is sexist. Would you not hold a door open for an elderly man? Being sweet has nothing to do with gender. Any sex can be sweet, or nice. What you are describing are simply human behaviors, not gendered behaviors, as these are not traits specific to one gender or the other, except if you are sexist.

That's a fairly loaded question. If one is attempting to be perceived as the opposite sex purely for their own purposes, and but does not hide the fact when they would benefit from a sexual interaction, this is not immoral. If they hide the fact for the benefit of a sexual interaction they know an individual would not give to them if the other person was aware of their natal sex, then yes this is deceiving another person into doing something they wouldn't do if they saw the truth of the matter for personal gain. That would be immoral. — Philosophim

The first part makes no sense. The immorality is in fooling another about your sexual identity which does not allow others to realize their own identities as either gay or straight. The intent is irrelevant because anyone with an ounce of brains would know that other people might be fooled by your charade, meaning that you would need be up front about what sex you actually are, so there will always be some intent to fool others in cross-dressing.

Well, quite often I decide not to choose, or decide to do something completely different, totally unrelated to A and B. How is this compatible with how a computer makes a decision? — Metaphysician Undercover

Ever listen to Rush, where Geddy Lee says, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"?

You would need to provide specific examples of you doing this because it sounds like you're making stuff up.

It seems to me that when you appear to make a decision with no reason it is because the outcomes of those options are the same. Choosing between your two favorite ice cream flavors isn't a decision because the outcome will be the same of you enjoying some ice cream. It doesn't matter which one you choose as the outcome will be the same.

Haha, that's a joke, isn't it? That someone might be able to predict what I would do in one specific situation makes me "predictable"? — Metaphysician Undercover

Not a joke at all. I don't know you and I can predict that you will either respond to this post, or not respond to this post in an effort to try and make a point that you have free will, and that you will have reasons for either decision you make, or that you will use my prediction as information to try and choose something you don't normally do to make your point but you would really end up proving my point in that you have reasons for your decisions.

If you have no reasons then you were not reasoning and making decisions is a type of reasoning.

Then you must also believe that using a long-dead philosopher's quote as the crux of your argument, or as the whole of your post, is also an issue.
— Harry Hindu

It's not the case that I must think that at all. That said, I do generally refrain from quoting philosophers, whether dead or alive. I mostly prefer to discuss things using my own ideas and in my own words. I realize that my own ideas are mostly not original, but I have no idea what source most of them came from, so I could not acknowledge the originators even if I wanted to. Add to that the fact that whatever originator we identify probably cannot claim true originaility for their own ideas. — Janus

You said,

if one is not the source of the post, then it is not one's post. — Janus

.

So if one did not write the post themselves, but merely copied and pasted a quote as the sole content of their post, then by your own words, it is not their post.

And 50% and growing of public website material is produced by AI. So it is eating its own bullshit to an ever increasing extent. — unenlightened

And before AI many internet sites were copies of other sites, and still are - with the same information. News networks piggy-backed off the reports of other news networks. You're complaining about something that has been pervasive well before AI became a thing.

This is why the source is no longer important. It is what is being said that is important - not the scribbles, but the subject the scribbles refer to.

What I meant is that the same way the eyes themselves cannot see them, without external help, consciousness itself cannot interpret (look within) itself. — Copernicus

Of course it can. How can you even report that you are conscious to me in the "physical" world, outside of your consciousness if you do not "have access" to your own consciousness? Consciousness has this ability to loop back upon itself - of being aware of being aware, of thinking about thinking - kind of like how you get a feedback loop by turning a camera to look back at the monitor it is connected to. Your report would be akin to the external help I need to access the contents of your consciousness.

The issue with your argument is that there is no external help one can receive in viewing another's consciousness, nor does it explain how physical objects like neurons create the sensation of visual depth and empty space. The solution is to abandon this dualistic thinking and that the "physical" is more real than the mental when you only know of the "physical" by way of the mental - by the way the world appears mentally.. "Physical" and "material" are merely ideas stemming from the way you perceived the world and the relative frequency of natural processes and your perceptual processes. Relativity plays a role in the way you perceive the world.

Femboys for example don't want to change their sex, but want to have people view them in the visually sexualized way they look at women. For these individuals, I think the definition of transgenderism as intended fits quite well. Its not an entire encapsulation of the opposite sex's gender, but a selective desire to (sexual in this case, but not all cases) get a particular reaction from people that they see society giving the opposite sex. — Philosophim

This seems to square up with what I was saying about the expectations society has of the sexes is a means of attracting the opposite sex. A woman might wear sweat pants and shirt to the supermarket because she has no intention of trying to attract a mate. She is simply there to buy some groceries and not making a statement about her sexual identity, but about her sexual motivations, or lack thereof.

The problem arises when one's sexual preferences are taken advantage of and manipulated because another is trying to identify as the opposite sex but isn't. Is it moral to fool another of your sex in the context of seeking a mate that fits the other's sexual preferences?

What if I'm alone in a galaxy with no refelctive substance to see myself? — Copernicus

A very unlikely scenario. Stop moving the goal posts and answer the question as posed.

Secondary sex characteristics absolutely have to with hormones. The longer the body is dominated by T the more it will masculinize and the longer it is dominated by E the more the body will feminize to the point of heterosexual attraction. That is what puberty does to you and why puberty blockers are given to buy time for the teen to make a decision.
The proliferation of this treatment, puberty blockers and so on is why you're discussing it. That is why it is frequently in the news of "irreversible changes". A recent trans story (the Kirk shooter's trans girlfriend) had nothing whatsoever to do with clothing as the person wore hoodies. — Forgottenticket

Blocking hormones erases sexual differences, just as removing societal expectations removes gender differences. When you remove the distinctions you no longer have a spectrum to move along, thereby erasing trans because there are no longer any distinctions to transition between.

So it seems that the ultimate goal here doesn't seem to be conductive to the trans-community. Erasing the distinctions erases the trans-community and diversity and makes us all the same.

Exactly. So the next step to move the conversation forward is to DEFINE what you mean by "fly" or "see".

Which one is better evidence of the color of your eyes - hearing someone telling you your eye color, or looking in the mirror?

In other words, trans people are not identifying as a gender. They are identifying as the opposite sex and the difference is the level of detail one wants to obtain (simply wearing a dress or having surgery). It would seem that the lazy ones (the ones that only cross-dress) are the ones that are reinforcing sexist stereotypes.

What metaphor? I was responding to your single statement that did not include anything else. Did you even read the post you were responding to?

A fantastic question that likely requires its own topic. Why does society enforce prejudice and stereotypes when it comes to sex? I imagine its a combination of many things from sexual dimorphism emphasis, power dynamics, and sexuality. There is a thin wall between biologicaly expectations of a sex vs gender expectations of a sex as well. We are very willing to accept biological expectations, and perhaps its easy to cross over into sociological expectations because of it. — Philosophim

It becomes easier when the expectation is enforced over generations. Being a woman eventually becomes more than just having certain biological parts, it now entails wearing a dress, makeup, etc. This is where transgenderism makes its mistake - in assuming that society is defining a woman as someone with not just the biological characteristics, but the expectations as well. But society is not saying that (and people that use language in this way are misusing it) wearing a dress makes you a woman. Society is saying because you are a woman, you wear a dress. In a society that expects, and enforces, people to wear clothing, we need a way of distinguishing between males and females for the purpose of mating. Society is not saying that to be a woman you must wear a dress. Transgender people are misinterpreting what society is saying, and trans-people are identifying as an expectation, not as an objective, biological entity.

Trans exists and is popular because exogenous (bio-identical) hormones exist and you can artificially induce intersex conditions. That is why the discussion exists and trans will continue to exist in the future unless the tech is taken away which is what conservatives are trying to achieve.
If has nothing to do with sexism. — Forgottenticket

All you are doing is conflating sex with gender, so of course gender as the same thing as sex can't be sexist. It is gender as societal expectations that are sexist.

Trans exists and is popular because exogenous (bio-identical) hormones exist and you can artificially induce intersex conditions. — Forgottenticket

Which means that those hormones have nothing to do with defining one's sex. Humans have other hormones other than testosterone and estrogen and they are not defined as sexual characteristics precisely because both sexes have them in roughly the same levels.

100% agree. But that is not the society we live in. — Philosophim

It is the society we should be striving for.

As I have said, expectations have changed. Having long hair is no longer considered feminine. We were headed in the right direction until the left saw another group of victims in the trans community to use for their own ends. The left just jumped on the trans bandwagon without fully understanding what was being said, or the ill logic of the arguments being made. It wasn't about logic and reason to them. It was about having another group of victims to use as a weapon against the right.

Society in general is a combination of individuals who have varying degrees of discomfort with crossing gender divides in public. — Philosophim

This leads me to ask, what kind of expectations are we talking about here? Are people jailed for wearing clothing inappropriate to one's sex? If not, is it fair to say that society has no expectations of the sexes? What is an expectation that isn't enforced? Society might not enforce the dress code but there are still people that may judge, but that is on the level of individuals, not society.

The purpose of the term transgender for transsexuals is to hide the term 'transsexual' as that has a largely negative connotation in society. Transgender is seen as more normal, as everyone crosses the gender divide at times, and some people just like to cross a little more right? So much more that they need to try to change their biology and be seen as the other sex. — Philosophim

If everyone crosses the gender divide then that means the society is gender neutral and that there is no such thing as gender as everyone in the society wears what they want regardless of their sex, and there are no expectations of society for people to act differently because of their sex. You are conflating transgenderism with gender-neutrality. As I pointed out - transgenderism's existence depends on a society having sexist expectations. If there are no more expectations then there is no gender (based on your own definition of gender as societal expectations of the sexes).

If you are not educated in classical philosophy, then you are excused for not being acquainted with the cosmological argument. However, I am sure you are fully aware of your own ability to choose. Do you not see how this is incompatible with materialism? Or do you really believe that the laws of physics can explain why you choose to do what you do? — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree that materialism is false, but not that free will is evidence of it being false.

Why do you choose to do what you do? What it the decision making process like for you? Don't you have to first be aware of the situation you are in and then aware of options to respond to the situation, and if you have enough time (as time limits the amount of options you can have at any moment before the power of decision is taken from you) go through each option, predicting the outcome of each option and then choosing the option with the best outcome? It isn't much different than how a computer makes decisions with IF-THEN-ELSE statements. IF this is the situation, THEN think about the outcome of option A, ELSE try option B. Learning entails repeating these steps over and over - observing the situation, responding, observing the effects, responding again, etc. until you've mastered the task.

People that know you will can actually predict what you might do or think in some situation, effectively making you predictable.

I see better evidence against materialism in the way science describes matter as the interactions, or relationships, between smaller "objects", which are themselves just more relations between even smaller relations. Where is the material when all we find is relationships/processes when we dig deeper into nature?

I think I've equated it with the eye's inability to see itself. — Copernicus

Ever looked in a mirror?

AI has none of that, so when it starts using its own material as its input, errors are multiplied like those of inbred genomes - only much faster. — unenlightened

AI gets its information from scraping public websites. It does not make up its own data.

AI is trained using various methods that resemble how you acquire and process information.

Sure, AI is like every other source of information that needs to be verified and cross-referenced. Just as we take what people around here say with a grain of salt, we do the same thing with AI. Many people on this forum don't seem to have any inclination to verify the information they are posting no matter the source, and there are some that cannot argue against what was said and resort to attacking the source or the person instead of the argument.

Will that cell generate consciousness? — Copernicus

That's the question: what makes carbon-based life so special to generate consciousness when carbon is just another physical element. Cells and organs, like brains, are all "physical" objects. How does a brain, or its interaction of neurons generate the feeling of visual depth and empty space?

Complexity doesn't seem to solve the problem. It's this dualistic discrepancy between how the world appears and how the mind is. No matter how far I dig into your skull I'm never going to view your view, yet it is the one thing I know exists (at least for myself). Why is that? Why don't I experience the inside of my brain like you would if you dissected it? I don't experience a visual representation of neurons firing in certain patterns. I experience sounds, empty space, smells, tactile sensations, and feelings.

Isn't a possibility that I'm not seeing the world as it is - as physical objects. My mind is more like how the world is - a process - and its processes all the way down, not physical stuff, and we are confusing the map with the territory.

If the mind emerges from physical processes, consciousness should, in principle, be reproducible by any sufficiently complex physical system. Yet, only cellular life forms display sentience and sapience—suggesting that the cell marks a boundary between living and non-living matter. — Copernicus

If we can reproduce intelligence "artificially" then why not cells? One might say that cells are simply the path to the more complex arrangements of matter, and there might be higher forms of life that are even more complex made of different elements. I'm not a chemist but I believe it has something to do with the amount of bonds carbon atoms can have lending to its versatility. I'm not sure if there are any other elements that share this same characteristic.

Humans play a role in natural selection. Humans are the outcomes of natural processes and the things we do and create are natural. The term "artificial" is based on a idealistic projection of humans being special and separate from nature. "Artificial" life could be the actual next step in the nature of this universe. As forces of selection ourselves, we are shaping the next generation of life in the universe.

The question now is do we have a Butlerian Jihad and change the focus of selection back to ourselves? What if we genetically engineer ourselves to be able to have AI-like speed and knowledge? What if we integrate technology with biology, say have wireless interfaces in our brains that connect directly to the internet (Star Trek Borg?)?

We're going in circles. The paper is not about qualia, it is about the first person view, and Chalmers says that the hard problem boils down not to the problem of qualia (which is difficult to explain only because it is complicated in humans), but to the problem of first person view, which seems not problematic at all. — noAxioms

I see the problem as confusing the map with the territory. In talking about the first-person view we are talking about the map, not the territory. In talking about what the map refers to we are talking about the territory and not the view. The map is part of the territory and is causally related with the territory, which is why we can talk about the territory by using the map.

The problem comes when we project our view onto the territory as if they were one and the same - as if your view is how the world actually is (naive realism). Indirect realism is the idea that your map is not the territory but provides information about the territory thanks to causation. The effect is not the cause and vice versa.

The monist solution to the problem comes in realizing that everything is information and the things you see in the world as static, solid objects is just a model of other processes that are changing at different frequencies relative to rate at which your eyes and brain perceive these other processes. Slower processes appear as solid objects while faster processes appear as actual processes, or blurs of motion.

Could anyone have made a different choice in the past than the ones they made? How would I know the answer to this question? — Truth Seeker

Take any choice you made in the past as an example. What were the reasons you made that choice? If given the same reasons would you have made a different choice? How and why?

It seems to me that you only realize you could have made a different choice if you had access to different information, or reasons, than you did at the moment you made the choice. As such realizing you could have made a different choice always comes after the fact that you made the choice and now know the consequences and other possible choices that could have been made (more information), that was not available at the moment of decision.

So no, you could not have made a different choice because that would have meant that you had different information than you did when you made the decision.

Only if one is in some position of power or a member of an elite. Like there are photos on the internet of some fancy banker who is evidently a man and goes to work in a skirt and high heels; or some male members of the elite who wear high-end fashion skirts.

But if an ordinary man were to wear an ordinary skirt, it would be just foolish, inappropriate, certainly not gender-neutral.

Things that are okay for the upper class are not automatically okay for everyone. — baker

This might have once been true, but now anyone can claim (even if you were a man that was just convicted and being sent off to prison and now want to identify as a woman) to be the opposite sex and they get all this special attention and treatment.

All society has to do is abandon these sexist expectations and then transgenderism no longer has a leg to stand on. Transgenderism only exists in societies with sexist expectations.

A clarification. Crossing the gender line is a transgendered act. This is independent of one's own viewpoint. If one purposefully commits a transgendered act, knows and accepts that the action belongs to the gender of the opposite sex, they are purposefully being transgendered. If a person commits a transgendered act, but doesn't accept that the action belongs to a gender, then they are being gender neutral. — Philosophim

This completely ignores the fact that society's expectations have changed. Having long hair and wearing earrings is no longer considered feminine, so a man that grows their hair long and wears earrings is no longer transitioning because those traits have now been taken off the table of transgenderism. The members of Motley Crüe were not transitioning to females. They were going against the grain (the social expectation), breaking down the sexist barriers and making a statement that MEN can have long hair, not that they are now women with long hair.

Gender is a fine line between expectations and sexism. Gender is mostly in the realm of pre-judgement, or prejudice. Healthy gender is typically a one step away from biological differences. Unhealthy gender is farther away from biological differences and is used for control. This is what we would call sexism. — Philosophim

Transgenderism is putting people in boxes based on their biology when those boxes have nothing to do with their biology, just being racist is putting people in boxes based on their skin color when the boxes have nothing to do with their skin color. There is nothing that prevents men from growing long hair or wearing earrings, but there are things that prevent a man from getting pregnant.

I spent the last hour composing a post responding to all my mentions, and had it nearly finished only to have it disappear leaving only the single letter "s" when I hit some key. I don't have the will to start over now, so I'll come back to it later. — Janus

Ctrl+Z

I think this is the fundamental problem. AI does no research, has no common sense or personal experience, and is entirely disconnected from reality, and yet it comes to dominate every topic, and every dialogue. — unenlightened

If AI was disconnected from reality then how can it provide useful answers? What makes AI useful? What makes any tool useful?

I wonder if they think that using a calculator to find an answer to an equation falls into the same category. You didn't determine the answer, the calculator did and you are just posting what is displayed on the calculator's screen.

I don't agree—"one's post"?...if one is not the source of the post, then it is not one's post. — Janus

Then you must also believe that using a long-dead philosopher's quote as the crux of your argument, or as the whole of your post, is also an issue.

You seem to misunderstand the purpose of language - especially philosophical discussions. The point of any conversation is what the scribbles refer to. It does not matter what words are used if they end up making the same point - whether I chose my own or AIs they both say what I mean to say.

You seem to be making a mountain out of mole hill. If someone uses a thesaurus to find alternate (maybe even more intellectually sounding) words to what they currently have in their draft, is that the same thing? Would you respond to someone that sounds less intelligent, or may in which English may not be their native language, less than someone that is not? And if another poster came along and said the same thing but with different, more eloquent words, who would you give credit to the idea?

It is the idea that we should be focusing on here in a philosophical discussion, not the words used to convey it because the same idea can be put in different words. If not, then how can we agree with each other when I might not have put what you said in the same words?