Not sure about Markey but Sanders is stubbornly anti-nuclear which is one part of his energy policy I recall disagreeing with back in 2020. Part of me suspects it is because he's an old fashioned environmentalist.

Congress Just Passed The Biggest Clean-Energy Bill Since Biden's Climate Law

Some good news on nuclear power. And the best news is that since it's bipartisan then it should be immune to partisan politics (assuming that Trump doesn't arbitrarily dismantle it like the Iran Nuclear Deal or the oil lobbyists change their tune once they start seeing nuclear power as a legitimate short-term threat to their business).

The power of the US-Israel lobby makes it the United States' problem as well. — Tzeentch

That's like saying that the power of the oil lobby makes the green energy transition a problem for the US. The fact that there are lobby groups pushing an agenda in US politics doesn't make it our problem. That's just corruption.

A deal right now would mean "Hamas won", Netanyahu would be chased out of office and probably jailed. Israel will have to live with its stained reputation for the foreseeable future and it will have nothing to show for it. — Tzeentch

That's more Israel's problem, more specifically Netanyahu's. That being said it's reputation is already largely stained since they can't keep themselves from conducting this war inhumanely. I mean they probably could've learned from the lessons of the US after 9/11 but why be rational?

The US doesn't care about peace. The only thing it cares about is whether unconditional support for Israel blows back on Biden and ruins his chances at re-election. — Tzeentch

I'd say fears about a blowback are the reason why they're so eager for a deal. That and the possibility of this war escalating to a wider conflict as well like when Israel almost dragged everyone into a war with Iran.

It pretends to broker a peace deal in order to placate US progressives, only to subsequently come up with excuses, to placate Israel and the US-Israel lobby. — Tzeentch

Why would the US pretend here? Out of all the parties involved it seems like the US is the only one that seriously wants a deal done, with Israel and Hamas holding up any deal for their own interests. If Hamas didn't propose anything new or problematic in their response and simply said yes then the US would for sure announce it immediately.

I must say, nothing in this thread has impressed me about the assembled philosophers. Is it the Lounge, or just the Trump effect? Logic, reason and reading comprehension are in short supply. — fishfry

It's called politics. You'd be wise to stay away from it.

Don’t try to reason— just enjoy the show. — Mikie

I'd enjoy it if the stakes weren't so high.

Hear the fucking tape. Is it wrong or is it not? I don't care about whatever else you bring up with Biden. It shouldn't be that hard to see a crime as a crime when the facts call for it.

Trump hasn’t committed any crimes, nor could you name where he did. All I get is emojis. — NOS4A2

Here's another "emoji" for you: Trump heard on tape discussing 'highly confidential, secret' documents

Modern politics is a giant clown car any way. — Tzeentch

Agreed which is why it's hard for me to take people's concerns about how unprecedented this latest ruling is seriously. I agree with some that this is certainly the weakest case that Trump had to face, but the stronger and more serious cases (like the documents and election interference cases) were intentionally delayed by Trump and his hand-picked judges to happen after the election, which may not happen at all if he wins and pardons himself before hand. In a day and age where people are casually talking about that this grand plan to avoid legal consequences as if it's a totally cool and normal thing for one to do, then concerns about breaking precedent doesn't seem to ring as strongly as it used to 10 years ago. It seems like precedent is being broken every single week as Trump tests our system of checks and balances in a way nobody else has.

Honestly it seems like that precedent was crossed long ago when the Republicans did their witch hunt of Bill Clinton for an affair back in the 90s. I've no doubt they'll try something like this again if they get into power (Trump especially).

Of course there's always the risk of going too far in trying to prosecute someone that it backfires politically on the other side, which is probably the only safeguard we have left in today's hyperpolarized society. The impeachment of Clinton blew up in the Republican's faces 25 years ago and this conviction of Trump may blow up in the Democrat's faces too though personally I doubt it. Most polling seems to suggest that the public sees Trump as an obvious criminal and they seem to support the conviction on that basis. So much as people see Trump as a victim it seems to be largely coming from Trump's core base of support. Whatever bump Trump could have gotten from them has already manifested when he was indicted in the first place, which allowed him to win the primary. The general election is another matter entirely.

Feeling's mutual.

I'm amazed at your ability to make 5 different completely insane statements in less than 20 words.

It will also take time for younger generations to gain power. At this point it seems like both converge around the same time.

And even if university students are showing what future generations will think about Israel's actions, it will take a long time for opinions to change in the US because of the evangelist support will not go away. — ssu

Evangelicals are becoming more and more of a minority in the US though. Just look at the abortion debate.

Likely the people who caused this mess will also block those migrants from entering their countries.

And later on down the line when climate change becomes an unbearable crisis that's impossible to ignore, they will likely push for equally reckless solutions like geoengineering.

I used to be worried about nuclear war too, until someone told me that it won't likely kill literally every human on the planet so now I guess there's nothing to worry about.

Man the excuses for not doing anything on the climate are starting to get silly even by denialist standards.

There's also the view according to those like Rovelli who believe in neither presentism or eternalism (as described in his aptly named Neither Presentism nor Eternalism) which rejects the concept of global simultaneity while also affirming temporal becoming as fundamental. I'm actually partial to that idea and it seems like the view that most aligns with what we understand about physics (particularly relativity). I think other physicists mentioned here like RTW Arthur also subscribe to the same idea so it's not particularly new either.

There are some who seem to argue that because the relativity of simultaneity runs counter to the concept of a global time which presentism relies on then a version of eternalism as you've described it must be true, though honestly I think that's a bit of a stretch. Relativity certainly does show that there isn't a global time (assuming we don't introduce a hidden one ourselves arbitrarily) but it doesn't show that time is just another dimension of space. Of course some have suggested that some other form of eternalism is supported by relativity, one where all times "exist equally", but I don't really have an idea what that could mean. There's actually a whole problem in the philosophy of time behind it called the triviality problem which I won't go into here but does suggest that the presentists and eternalists may be talking over each other for the past several decades.

This here is the problem with the overall debate in the world. People replace insight and knowledge with "what they feel is the truth". A devastating practice in pursuit of truth and a common ground for all people to exist on. Producing "truths" based on what feels right is what leads to conflict and war. — Christoffer

I said I was withholding my judgement. I have never claimed that the case is definitively settled for the reasons I've mentioned before regarding the state of our knowledge about both neuro and computer science. You clearly seem to disagree but I suppose we can just agree to disagree on that.

No on is claiming that either. Why is this a binary perspective for you? Saying that ChatGPT simulates certain systems in the brain does not mean it is as intelligent as a human. But it's like it has to either be a dead cold machine or equal to human intelligence, there's no middle ground? ChatGPT is a middle ground; it mimics certain aspects of the human brain in terms of how ideas, thoughts and images are generated out of neural memory, but it does not reach the totality of what the brain does. — Christoffer

I have never said it was binary. I just said that whatever the difference is between human and current AI models it doesn't need to be something magical. You were the one who brought up magic and dualism in portraying the people who argue that there is something missing in AI.

In any case, you seem to agree that there is a difference between the two as well, well now the question is what that means with regards to it's "creativity" and whether the AI is "creative" like we are. Again I think this is a matter where we agree to disagree on.

However, while people fear the economic disruption, the world is also worried about how work is stressing us to death, how people have lost a sense of meaning through meaningless jobs and how we're existentially draining ourselves into a soulless existence. — Christoffer

Work in and of itself isn't the problem. One may argue that for some work is what gives their life meaning, It's unhealthy working conditions that are the problem more so.

It's ironic that people complain about these AI companies through the perspective of capitalist greed when the end result of massive societal disruption through AI would effectively be the end of capitalism as we know it, since it removes the master/slave dynamic. — Christoffer

It also removes the leverage that workers usually have over their employers. In a society that is already heavily biased towards the latter, what will that mean? That's a concern that I have had about automation, even before the advent of AI. It honestly feels like all the rich folk are gonna use automation to leave everyone else in the dust while they fly to Mars.

Any nation who spots these disruptions will begin to incorporate societal changes to make sure living conditions continue to be good for the citizens. — Christoffer

History shows that that is rarely how things go. If that were the case then wealth inequality wouldn't have been so rampant and we would've solved world hunger and climate change by now. People are very bad at being proactive after all. It's likely any necessary changes that will need to happen will only happen once people reach a breaking point and start protesting.

And instead of working ourselves to death with meaningless jobs, people may find time to actually figure out what is meaningful for them to do and focus on that. — Christoffer

The irony is that it seems like AI is going after the jobs that people found more meaningful, like creative and white collar jobs. It's the more monotonous blue collar jobs that are more secure for now, at least until we see more progress made in the realm of robotics. Once automation takes over both then I don't know where that will leave us.

I'm rather optimistic about a future that has, through automation, disrupted capitalism as we know it. — Christoffer

We'll see. Maybe I've just been a pessimist recently (nothing about what's currently going on in the world is giving me much to be hopeful about) but I can just as easily see how this can end up going in a dystopian fashion. Maybe it's because I've watched one too many sci-fi movies. Right now, assuming people get UBI, Wall-E seems to be on my mind currently.

Still doesn't change the fact that these lazy CEOs and companies were treating artists badly before firing them due to AI. I don't think this is a loss for artists. — Christoffer

Certainly alot of them don't value their workers on a personal level alot of the time but I'd distinguish that from abuse. Of course that isn't really the main concern here.

Yes, consuming like the training process does with these models. It's a training process, like training your brain on references and inspirations, filling your brain with memories of "data" that will be used within your brain to transform into a new ideas, images or music. This is what I'm saying over and over. Don't confuse the output of these AI models with the training process. Don't confuse the intention of the user with the training process. Because you seem to be able to make that distinction for a human, but not for the AI models. You seem to forget that "user" component of the generative AI and the "user decision" of how to use the generated image. Neither having to do with the training process. — Christoffer

I mean if you want to just train a model and keep it in your room for the rest of it's life, then there's nothing wrong with that, but like I said that's not important. None of what you said seems to undermine the point you're responding to, unless I am misreading you here.

Israel has done more to undermine the US-led world order these past few months than anything Russia and China are doing. If Trump ends up getting elected because of Israel and he goes on to dismantle NATO and hand Ukraine to Russia then we all have Netanyahu to thank for being such an incompetent immoral villainous figure.

To defend human creativity with that it's magic isn't enough. — Christoffer

Yeah but I've never said it was magic. I just said I don't know enough about the processes in detail, but just a first glance impression gives off the feeling they're different. Chat-GPT I don't think is as intelligent as a human is. It doesn't behave the way a human intelligence would. Can I explain what is the basis for that? No. Does that mean I think it's magic then? Not at all.

I find it a bit ironic that people don't want massive change while at the same time complain that nothing is done about the problems that actually exist in society. — Christoffer

The things is that for alot of people generative AI seems like a solution looking for a problem. I think this video sums it up pretty nicely:

.

If I have to be blunt, the benefits of these AI systems are potentially so massive that I couldn't care less about a minority of bitter artist who lost a job at a corporation that didn't even appreciate these artists contribution enough to value them staying. — Christoffer

According to some reports, AI could replace hundreds of millions of jobs. If it doesn't replace it with anything else, then to brush off the economic disruption to people's lives without considering policies like UBI is the sort of thinking that sets off revolutions.

Is that a bad thing? Does anyone actually care about ads in terms of aesthetic appreciation? Or is everyone trying their best to get their adblockers to work better and remove them all together? The working conditions for artists were already awful for these kinds of companies, maybe it's better that this part of the industry collapses and gets replaced by outputs of the same quality as the no-caring CEOs of these agencies. Why are we defending shit jobs like these? It's them which will be replaced first. — Christoffer

I mean the shoddy standards are gonna affect more than just ads. Expect more to nitpick every piece of media for some bad instances of AI gone wrong. When you're too cheap to hire someone to create something then you're probably also too lazy to fix the inevitable problems that comes with generated content.

Companies who actually care about art but use AI will still need artists, they need their eyes to handle AI generative outputs and change according to plan and vision. — Christoffer

I can imagine the top art companies, like say a Pixar or a Studio Ghibli, focusing solely on human art, in particular because they can afford it. I don't see them relying on AI. Like a high end restaurant that makes it's food from scratch without any manufactured food, they'll probably continue to exist.

There will also be companies that use AI to a certain extent as well, and then companies that rely on it too much to the point of being low-end.

Then start learning AI and be the artist who can give that expertise showing an edge against the non-artists that are put to work with these AIs and who don't know what the word "composition" even means. It's an easier working condition, it's less stressful and it's similarly "just a job". Why is anyone even crying over these kinds of jobs getting replaced by an easier form? It makes no sense really. Why work as a slave because a CEO demanded 5 new concept art pieces over the weekend not caring how much work that this would demand of a concept artist?

A company hiring a non-artist to work with AI won't work and they will soon realize this. You need the eyes, you need the ears and the poetic mind to evaluate and form what the AI is generating, that's the skill the artist is bringing. — Christoffer

None of this really addresses their concern about financial stability. I fear that this new technology just gives more leverage over a group of people who have been historically underpaid. I hope it ends up well, but I'm not gonna brush off these concerns as luddite behavior.

What you're saying is like saying that if an artist makes something that's not transformative enough, we should rule that artist to never be able to look in magazines or photographs again for inspiration and references. — Christoffer

Not at all. They're just not allowed to use their non-transformative output based on those references and expect to get paid for it. Like I said before, if you want to look at a bunch of copyrighted material and download it on your computer, that's fine since all you're doing is consuming.

Why is it difficult to believe? It's far more rooted in current understandings in neuroscience than any spiritual or mystifying narrative of the uniqueness of the "human soul" or whatever nonsense people attribute human creativity to stem from. — Christoffer

Because a mere intention to want to create a painting of a park doesn't get to the interesting parts about how our brains generate that image in our heads from what we know. Of course I don't know much about creativity, neuroscience, or AI like I said before, so I'm gonna avoid deeper conversations and skip over the following paragraphs you've written for the sake of time.

But artists who trace will still come out unscathed compared to how people react to AI generated images. — Christoffer

They certainly deal with alot of criticism themselves if you're implying they don't. Tracing isn't exactly a widely accepted practice.

That's not enough of a foundation to conclude that machines do not replicate the physical process that goes on in our brain. You're just attributing some kind of "spiritual creative soul" to the mind, that it's just this "mysterious thing within us" and therefore can't be replicated. — Christoffer

I'm willing to reject dualism as well, though I'm not sure why you're attributing this and indeterminism to people who just believe that human creativity and whatever is going on in diffusion models aren't equivalent. I'm not saying that the human brain isn't a machine, I'm just saying that there are differences between the architecture of human brains and AI diffusion models something that may reveal itself with a further understanding of neuroscience and AI.

And when we dig into it, we see how hard it is to distinguish what actually constitutes human creativity form machine creativity. — Christoffer

Once again I don't know about that based on the lack of knowledge we seem to have about neuroscience and AI.

But are we saying that we shouldn't progress technology and tools because of this? — Christoffer

Given how disruptive AI can be to all walks of society then I think that is a reason for pause unless we end up creating a very large society backlash.

When photoshop arrived with all its tools, all the concept artists who used pencils and paint behaved like luddites, trying to work against concept art being made with these new digital tools. When digital musical instruments started becoming really good, the luddites within the world of composing started saying that people who can't write notes shouldn't be hired or considered "real" composers. — Christoffer

Those were more new mediums, new ways of making art and music then something that could completely replace artists can do. I'd look more at the invention of the camera and it's relation to portrait artists as a better example.

Therefore, a company who fires an artist in favor of someone who's not an artist to start working with AI generation, will soon discover that the art direction becomes sloppy and uninspiring, not because the AI model is bad, but because there's no "guiding principles" and expert eye guiding any of it towards a final state. — Christoffer

The issue is whether or not they'd care. Honestly we should all be concerned on that because if they're fine with it then artists are out of a job and we as consumers will have to deal with more sloppy art. Already I see advertisements where people have 6 fingers on a hand.

The "good enough" companies, before these AI models, have never been good for artists anyway. Why would artists ever even care for their work towards these companies if they themselves won't care for the artists? — Christoffer

Because they're the ones giving most artists a job at this point and they need those jobs. Unfortunately that's the society we live in.

Then you agree that the lawsuits going on that targets the training process rather than the outputs, uses of outputs and the users misusing these models are in the wrong. — Christoffer

They're both related. If the output process is not considered transformative enough then if the input contains copyright material then it's illegal.

Sorry, ready this too late :sweat: But still, the topic requires some complexity in my opinion as the biggest problem is how the current societal debate about AI is often too simplified and consolidated down into shallow interpretations and analysis. — Christoffer

I can see that you're interested in a long conversation, and I genuinely appreciate the time spent responding, but I just don't have the time on my end to devote to reading and responding to it. Like I said I don't think I'm qualified enough to engage in a deeper conversation on the nature of creativity which is why I've tried to avoid it. I hope you understand.

The difference between the systems and the human brain has more to do with the systems not being the totality of how a brain works. It's simulating a very specific mechanical aspect of our mind, but as I've mentioned it lacks intention and internal will, which is why inputted prompts need to guide these processes towards a desired goal. If you were able to add different "brain" functions up to the point that the system is operating on identical terms as the totality of our brain, how do laws for humans start to apply on the system? When do we decide it having agency enough to be the one responsible for actions? — Christoffer

So your claim is that adding intentionality to current diffusion models is enough to bridge the gap between human and machine creativity? Like I said before I don't have the ability to evaluate these claims with the proper technical knowledge but that sounds difficult to believe.

Because when we compare these systems to that of artists and how they create something, there are a number of actions by artists that seem far more infringing on copyright than what these systems do. If a diffusion model is trained on millions of real and imaginary images of bridges, it will generate a bridge that is merely a synthesis of them all. And since there's only a limited number of image perspectives of bridges that are three-dimensionally possible, where it ends up will weight more towards one set of images than others, but never a single photo. An artist, however, might take a single copyrighted image and trace-draw on top of it, essentially copying the exact composition and choice of perspective from the one who took the photograph.

So if we're just goin by the definition of a "copy" or that the system "copies" from the training data, it rather looks like there are more artists actually copying than there are actual copying going on within these diffusion models. — Christoffer

Okay, but in most instances artists don't trace.

Copyright law has always been shifting because it's trying to apply a definition of originality to determine if a piece of art is infringement or not. But the more we learn about the brain and creative process of the mind, the more we understand of how little free will we actually have and how influential our chemical and environmental processes are in creativity, and how less logical it is to propose "true originality". It simply doesn't exist. But copyright laws demand that we have a certain line drawn in the sand that defines where we conclude something "original", otherwise art and creativity cannot exist within a free market society. — Christoffer

I don't see how originality is undermined by determinism. I'm perfectly happy to believe in determinism, but I also believe in creativity all the same. The deterministic process that occurs in a human brain to create a work of art is what we call "creativity". Whether we should apply the same to the process in a machine is another issue.

Anyone who studied human creativity in a scientific manner, looking at biological processes, neuroscience etc. will start to see how these definitions soon become artificial and non-scientific. They are essentially arbitrary inventions that over the centuries and decades since 1709 have gone through patch-works trying to make sure that line in the sand is in the correct place.

...So, first, creativity isn't a magic box that produce originality, there's no spiritual and divine source for it and that produces a problem for the people drawing the line in the sand. Where do you draw it? When do you decide something is original? — Christoffer

Indeed the definitions are very arbitrary and unclear. That was my point. It was fine in the past since we all agree that most art created by humans is a creative exercise but in the case of AI it gets more complicated since now we have to be more clear about what it is and if AI generated art meets the standard to be called "creative".

Second, artists will never disappear because of these AI models. Because art is about the communication between the artist and their audience. The audience want THAT artist's perspective and subjective involvement in creation. If someone, artists or hacks who believe they're artists, think that generating a duplicate of a certain painting style through an AI system is going to kill the original artist, they're delusional. The audience doesn't care to experience derivative work, they care only about what the actual artist will do next, because the social and intellectual interplay between the artist and the audience is just as important, if not the most important aspect rather than some derivative content that looks similar. That artists believe they're gonna lose money on some hacks forcing an AI to make "copies" and derivative work out of their style is delusional on both sides of the debate. — Christoffer

Artists will never entirely disappear, I agree. And indeed there will certainly continue be a market for human made art as consumers will generally prefer it. The idea that artists can be "replaced" or could be made "obsolete" simply misunderstand the very concept of art itself which is that it isn't a commodity and short of completely cloning an individual artist, you can never truly make someone who creates art like they do. There are plenty of people who will pay up good money to get a drawing by their favorite artist in spite of the number of human artists who can perfectly replicate their style. This is because they value their work in particular and I don't see the rise of AI changing that.

However the problem is that in today's art industry, we don't just have artists and consumers but middle men publishers who hire the former to create products for the latter. The fact is alot of artists depend on these middle men for their livelihoods and unfortunately these people 1) Don't care about the quality of the artists they hire and 2) Prioritize making money above all else. For corporations artists merely create products for them to sell and nothing more so when a technology like AI comes up which produces products for them for a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time, then they will more than happily lay off their human artists for what they consider to be "good enough" replacements even if the consumers they sell these products to will ultimately consider them inferior.

There are people who take personal commissions but there are also those that do commissions for commercial clients who may want an illustration for their book or for an advertisement. Already we're seeing those types of jobs going away because the people who commissioned those artists don't care in particular about the end product so if they can get an illustration by a cheaper means they'll go for it.

Then you agree that the training process of AI models does not infringe on copyright and that it's rather the problem of alignment, i.e how these AI models generate something and how we can improve them not to end up producing accidental plagiarism that the focus should be on. And as I mentioned above, such a filter in the system or such an additional function to spot plagiarism would maybe even be helpful to determine if plagiarism has occurred even outside AI generations; making copyright cases more automatic and fair to all artists and not just the ones powerful enough to have a legal teams acting as copyright special forces. — Christoffer

Of course the data collection isn't the problem but what people do with it. It's perfectly fine for someone to download a bunch of images and store it on their computer but the reason why photobashing is considered controversial is that it takes that data and uses it in a manner that some consider to be insufficiently transformative. Whether AI's process is like that is another matter that we need to address.

---------------

Sorry if I missed some of your points but your responses have been quite long. If we're gonna continue this discussion I'd appreciate it if you made your points more concise.

AGI doesn't mean it thinks like us either. AGI just means that it generalizes between many different functions and does so automatically based on what's needed in any certain situation. — Christoffer

AGI doesn't necessarily have to think exactly like us, but human intelligence is the only known example of a GI that we have and with regards to copyright laws it's important that the distinction between an AGI and a human intelligence not be that all that wide because our laws were made with humans in mind.

It might draw something that is accidental plagiarism out of that memory, but since the diffusion system generates from a noise through prediction into form, it will always be different than pure reality, different from a pure copy. — Christoffer

The question is whether or not that process is acceptable or if it should be considered "theft" under the law. We've decided as a society that someone looking at a bunch of art and using it as inspiration for creating their own works is an acceptable form of creation. The arguments that I've heard from the pro-AI side usually tries to equate the former with the latter as if they're essentially the same. That much isn't clear though. My impression is that at the very least they're quite different and should be treated differently. That doesn't mean that the former is necessarily illegal though, just that it should be treated to a different standard whatever that may be.

Let's say humans actually had a flash card in our brain. And everything we saw and heard, read and experienced, were stored as files in folders on that flash card. And when we wrote or painted something we all just took parts of those files and produced some collage out of them. How would we talk about copyright in that case? — Christoffer

Depends on what we're talking about when we say that this hypothetical person "takes parts of those files and makes a collage out of them". The issue isn't really the fact that we have memories that can store data about our experiences, but rather how we take that data and use it to create something new.

Numerous research studies have found links between how the human mind generate new ideas to that of how AI models do it. Not in a self-aware way of intelligently guiding thought, but the basic fundamental synthesis of data into new forms. — Christoffer

That's one of the main issues right? How comparable human creativity is to that of AI. When an AI "draws upon" all the data it is trained on is it the same as when a human does the same like in the two scenarios you've brought up?

At the very least it can be said that the consensus is that AIs don't think like we do, which is why don't see tech companies proclaiming that they've achieved AGI. There are certainly some clear shortcomings to how current AI models work compared to human brain activity, though given how little we know about neuroscience (in particular the process of human creativity) and how much less we seem to know about AI I'd say that the matter of whether we should differentiate human inspiration and AI's' "inspiration" currently is at best unclear.

But just a few years ago, manual scraping for images used in concept art was a fairly common practice. So these concept artists have been making money on photobashing copyrighted photos into their concept art for years, but now they criticize diffusion models (that doesn't even do this) to be infringing on copyright, effectively calling it "theft". Is this not clearly a double standard perspective? — Christoffer

It's not like photobashing isn't controversial too mind you. So if you're saying that AI diffusions models are equivalent to that practice then that probably doesn't help your argument.

But yeah, throwing away votes in protest back in 2016 was definitely worth the temporary feeling of moral righteousness. — Mikie

Also gotta blame RBG too for being foolish enough to stay on the court despite being in her 80s and having multiple bouts of cancer. Unfortunately it seems like the Democrats haven't learnt their lesson given what's happening with Biden and Feinstein recently. It really feels like they're gambling the interests of future generations on the selfishness of a few incredibly stubborn old people.

Bibi already has a war with Hamas and I don't see potentially sparking WWIII as something that he'd hope to get involved with, yet he must respond in some way. — BitconnectCarlos

He would be interested in it if his goal is to stay in power to avoid jail. However given the significance of starting a regional war that literally nobody wants it seems that may be a step too far even for him and that may explain why Israel hasn't responded yet.

Now Trump is literally saying "blame it on me" if no border bill passes. Though like I said before, the American people are probably not gonna blame him anyways and he knows it.

It's not 'ironic', it's a deliberate tactic. He's furious that if the bill goes any way to addressing the problem, then it will reflect positively on Joe Biden. He wants the problem to be as bad as possible, so he can use it against Biden and then take credit for solving it himself. — Wayfarer

Oh I understand very well his intentions. He's also on record saying he wants the economy to crash and the US to default on it's debt if it means he can score political points. The man doesn't care about anything apart from staying out of prison.

The Senate Republicans and the moderate Republicans in Congress are all furious about it. — Wayfarer

I'm talking about the average American voter.

Thank you, Mr Surge the Borders President. :roll: — jgill

Ironically, right now Trump seems to be holding up an immigration bill in the Senate that would help address the border that the GOP seems to approve of.

Then again I don't expect people to blame him. After all he got off scot free for the recent spike in oil prices despite pulling out of the Iran deal and cutting their supply off from the rest of the world.

The big question is how many American will just stay home. — ssu

So much as they do and hand Trump a second term it won't be like in 2016 where everyone was assured that Clinton would win. Not only are Democrats and anti-Trump independents (with the exception of Biden apparently) convinced that Trump could win, but they think he's likely to at this point in time. Maybe that will light something under them or maybe not, but it's certainly not an easy decision to make.

Well, a generic democrat would have done better against Trump than Hillary Clinton. But the democrats simply ignored how annoying and hated Hillary was among the Republicans. And how disliked the Clintons in general were. — ssu

Yeah that seems to be the problem with the Democrats which is that they seem to love to ignore their base of supporters. The GOP have the opposite problem which is that they let the MAGA supporters dictate everything. And that is why we have Trump v. Biden again.

You can say the same for the Republicans running Trump since as the polls suggest he's also massively unpopular as well compared to a generic Republican. Of course the GOP don't really have much of a choice since Trump's base is pretty much a cult and he's a narcissist, but I would've thought that Biden would be humble enough to step aside instead of risking it all for a chance at a second term. And I would've thought that Democratic leadership would be smart enough to pressure him to bow out, but then again this is the same party that would rather wheel in Feinstein to the Senate instead of getting her to resign a decade ago. And this is after letting RBG stay on the SCOTUS despite being in her 80s with multiple previous experiences with cancer...

The odd thing about this election is that if either side decided to just run a generic representative of their own party then they'd certainly win. Anyone else but Trump would certainly win against Biden and anyone but Biden would certainly win against Trump. But instead we're getting the rematch nobody wanted.

Latest polls on the general election:

Biden 44% Trump 43% (yougove, 10th Jan)
Biden 41% Trump 43% (morning consult, 14th Jan)
Biden 37% Trump 45% (The Atlanta Journal)

I think Biden was way ahead in the polls prior to the last elections, wasn't he? — ssu

He was, and the funny thing is that I think alot of the current polls show a generic democrat leading by the same amount that Biden did in 2020. It's not that Trump is particularly strong, it's just that the Democrats are insisting on running someone who's just as weak, which would be baffling in retrospect if they end up losing this year because the path to victory seems pretty clear at this point.

No one is getting out of bed to vote for Joe, not even Joe. — Hanover

To be fair I don't think anybody did that in 2020 either.

The good news is that I imagine most voters don't like Trump and believe he's a danger to democracy. The bad news is that I don't know how much that will drive them out to vote in November. The Democrats aren't really doing a great job of convincing them, particularly since they're running a candidate who's arguably as unpopular.

The impeachment inquiry into Biden has begun. — NOS4A2

In other news, the government is about to shutdown due to House Republican shenanigans.

We live in interesting times, for better or worse. — T Clark

Indeed, but I'm just trying to hold on to whatever bit of realism is left nowadays.

That seems like a pretty short-sighted view. I can't imagine there won't be significant advancements in the near future. AI as a real thing has only really been out in public for a year or so. — T Clark

It would be a short sighted view if I said it in early 2022 when alot of the immediate advancements were made in AI art on a monthly basis as people explored what technologies like DALLE-2 can do. The better part of a year has passed since then and it doesn't seem like the exponential growth of the past year has carried over which suggests that we've reached a limit to what current AI image generative technologies can do. Even if we can get Midjourney to produce proper hands more often, it's never truly "taught" how to depict them properly every time, and my suspicion is that the same is gonna be involved with text generation (as some of the ones I've tested out mess it up a good portion of the time).

Now of course I'm not saying that some significant advancement will certainly not come soon. We can never accurately predict technological progress and when it will come. However it seems like that would involve some sort of breakthrough in the technology itself, and isn't just a matter of feeding models more data like we've been doing. As for when that breakthrough will come it's not really clear but I don't expect it to come in the near term.