Comments

  • Can anyone speak any languages other than English/What are the best ways to learn a second language?
    Right. My self-frenchification program isn't making a whole lot of progress, but one of the best parts of what French I have learned has been by listening to "older" french songs, like 1930s - 1950s.Bitter Crank

    A bit newer, but I've always loved Monsieur de Thomas Fersen



    Les passants sur son chemin
    Soulèvent leurs galures,
    Le chien lui lèche les mains
    Sa présence rassure.
    Voyer cet enfant qui beugle,
    Par lui secouru,
    Et comme il aide l'aveugle
    A traverser la rue.
    Dans la paix de son jardin
    Il cultive ses roses;
    Monsieurs est un assassin
    Quand il est morose.

    Il étrangle son semblable
    Dans le bois d'Meudon
    Quand il est inconsolable,
    Quand il a l'bourdon.
    A la barbe des voisins
    Qui le trouve sympathique,
    Monsieur est un assassin,
    Je suis son domestique,
    Et je classe ce dossier
    Sous les églantines,
    Je suis un peu jardinier
    Je fais la cuisine.

    Il étrangle son prochain
    Quand il a le cafard,
    Allez hop! Dans le bassin
    Sous les nénuphars.
    Et je donne un coup de balai
    Sur les lieux du crime
    Où il ne revient jamais,
    Même pas pour la frime.
    Sans éveiller les soupçons,
    Aux petites heures
    Nous rentrons à la maison.
    (Je suis son chauffeur).

    Car sous son air anodin,
    C'est un lunatique,
    Monsieur est un assassin,
    Chez lui c'est chronique.
    Il étrangle son semblable
    Lorsque minuit sonne,
    Et moi je pousse le diable,
    Dans le bois d'boulogne.
    Le client dans une valise
    Avec son chapeau,
    Prendra le train pour Venise
    Et un peu de repos.

    Il étrangle son semblable
    Dans le bois d'Meudon
    Quand il est inconsolable
    Quand il a le bourdon.
    A la barbe des voisins
    Qui le trouve sympathique,
    Monsieur est un assassin.
    Je suis son domestique.

    Vous allez pendre monsieur,
    Je vais perdre ma place,
    Vous allez pendre monsieur,
    Hélas! Trois fois Hélas!
    Mais il fallait s'y attendre
    Et je prie Votre Honneur,
    Humblement, de me reprendre
    Comme serviteur,
    Et je classerais ce dossier
    Sous les églantines,
    Je suis un peu jardinier
    Et je fais la cuisine.
  • Can anyone speak any languages other than English/What are the best ways to learn a second language?
    I've just moved to a Spanish speaking country and I need to learn Spanish.

    What are the best methods to learn a second language? Spanish or otherwise

    What are the benefits of speaking another language (other than ease of communication)?
    JJJJS

    French is my mother-tongue.
    Me, and almost everyone I know who speaks English learned through a combination of listening to music, watching television and surfing the Internet. School courses are useful to kickstart your oral understanding of the language, but I find that unless you are learning in context, your capacity to apply your knowledge is incredibly limited. French-canadians, especially those from my birthplace, who did not immerse themselves for a long time tend to have a very pronounced accent.

    One obvious benefit, in regards to where we are posting, is that knowing other languages allow you to read philosophical works in their mother tongue. I can read Descartes in the original, you cannot. A German speaker can read Brentano in the orinigal, and I cannot. It opens access to domains of interpretation that you could otherwise miss. Hoffmann mentionned something to the effect that Nietzsche in the anglophone world had been misrepresented throughout the last century because the anglophone reading was based on the French translations of the works, and not the originals. When I read French authors on Wittgenstein, they seem to be speaking about a completely different individual then when I'm reading American authors. So on and so on.
  • Is sexual harassment a product of a sexually repressive environment?
    individuals should be encouraged to take complete ownership of their sexuality; and they should take that complete ownership at as early an age as possible.WISDOMfromPO-MO

    Well, individuals should have complete ownership of their sexuality. I take that to mean, in a social vacuum, that individuals should be free to engage in whatever sexual arrangement they wish to engage, on the terms that they decide to engage them on. When I say "in a social vacuum", I mean that this is something that simply cannot be attained in a social context where sexuality is viewed with the gravitas it currently has.

    In a sense, you are correct in saying that sexuality is, from a liberal point of view, something that belongs in the private domain. When the Liberal government of Canada removed all notions of illegality surrounding homosexuality, sodomy and etc, they did so by saying famously "the Canadian Government doesn't belong in Canada's bedrooms".

    Liberals tend to say practically nothing about the age people should start engaging in sexual activities. Or, more accurately, just about everyone will have an opinion on when someone should start having sexual encounters. Deriding 40 years-old virgins didn't start yesterday.

    Social scientists studying human sexuality try to produce objective inquiries, I am sure. But the social sciences do not have the precision of physics, chemistry, etc. and, therefore, we may never know how people really, honestly--honest with themselves, not just others--feel about sex. There is a lot to gain politically by filling that void, and liberals/progressives, not just conservatives, aggressively work to make their ideology fill it and dominate every person's life.WISDOMfromPO-MO

    Sexuality can be studied scientifically as a domain of psychology, or as a domain of social interactions. The very ambiguity you refer to, the fact that people aren't honest about their own sexuality, can be quantified. It's been done already. There is something like 5 times more claimed protected sexual encounters in the U.S. than there are means of protection sold every year.

    Obviously, tho, that people claim having sex about 5 times as much as they really do (in the States anyways) is not at all an indication that sexuality isn't really important. You don't consistently lie about something you don't care about, after all.
  • Is the concept of 'the present' ambiguous?
    Is the concept of the present ambiguous?bloodninja

    Yes, although I would only refer to 1 and 2 and 5 as 'present'.
    3 folds back into 2, 'specious time', and other considerations about tasks or lack-thereof.
    4 doesn't refer to 'present' as time, but to 'present as context. Context and present will always be deeply associated, because a context can be said to define a present, but I think that's only due to that correspondance, and not because context necessarily refers to a present.
  • Is sexual harassment a product of a sexually repressive environment?
    If people do not have a healthy, safe, legal, free outlet then the result is unhealthy outlets, the thinking goes.WISDOMfromPO-MO

    That's not the lib/prog view, whatever that could be. For crying out loud that's what Saint-Augustin used to think. If anything could constitute The Lib/Prog view is that, in weird terms, self-objectification is a form of empowerement, in the sense that the commodification of a subject's performance, if the choice and dynamics of this commodification remains mostly in the hands of the subject, is a form of liberation. Baudrillard put this in very eloquent words in The system of objects.
  • Is sexual harassment a product of a sexually repressive environment?
    The liberals/progressives will probably say that they have science on their side.

    The scientific evidence shows, they will probably say, that sexually liberated people have healthier relationships, lower rates of unplanned pregnancies, better mental health, etc. than sexually repressed people.

    "To limit human sexuality in any way other than consent is harmful!", they will probably tell you. "All of the scientific evidence says so!", they will probably tell you.

    If you present scientific evidence of harmful effects of pornography they will probably counter with, oh, "Sexually repressed evangelicals in the Bible Belt consume the most pornography".
    WISDOMfromPO-MO

    Feminists in the 70s were mostly deeply anti-porn. A good number of feminists I've met still are today, and I certainly wouldn't be caught calling any of them "conservative".

    Anyway, the conservatives could make the same recourse to science, and they certainly did for the longest time. "Don't masturbate or you'll go deaf!" If you think this is a joke, my big sister was actually taught that in her Sex Ed course (by a freaking nun, of all bloody inept they could've chosen). It was just shitty science.
  • Is sexual harassment a product of a sexually repressive environment?
    The body is still number one.Buxtebuddha

    In a sense, yes. But the reason why human sexuality is totes different then normal mammalian sexuality is, in large part, because primates are increasingly communicative animals. We don't need obvious markers like presenting positions. Sexual intercourses are negotiations, not overt coercions (well, hopefully)
  • Is sexual harassment a product of a sexually repressive environment?
    Stupid! I was talking about nature in the wider sense, and was a quip in response to the silly statement "Sexual assault can be about sex".
    I've never assaulted anyone at anytime for any reason.
    charleton

    Again, I was replying to someone applying the Duluth model to something to which it is already considered external.

    But you are reducing nature to just an ejaculatory reflex, when I've made clear, had you read the whole of my post that violence and power-over is also closely linked to the male sex drive.
    Wanking is not enough it's what chimps have to do when in captivity.
    charleton

    Your post is an exemple of everything I deem wrong with the understanding of sexual relations nowadays. As if it was relevant to note that, in nature, consent doesn't exist. That most events of sexual intercourse are violent (which happens to be b.s., every female mammalian has a set of signaling method she uses to draw the attention of potential mates).

    Human evolution has deleted the main sexual signaling methods from human behaviour because we have no use for them. Language is where the sexual game is now located.
  • Is sexual harassment a product of a sexually repressive environment?
    I think we might need to have a few weekly prizes awarded on the Forum.
    This one gets my vote for "Bleeding Obvious Comment of the Week".
    charleton

    My point, and I guess this might have gone over your head, is that the Duluth Model doesn't explain or apply to #MeToo. Weinstein doesn't need to force sex on the women in his surroundings to find a way to assert power, it's that he has power that he can get away with forcing sex on women.

    As i said above, every man wakes up every morning and has to deny his natural sexuality.charleton

    Nope he doesn't. What you are doing right now, that is part the problem. Framing the situation in terms of repression of normal drives. Unspent libido is easy as fuck to channel away into something productive, and it could always be masturbated away. Sexual violence and domination can be sublimated in any number of ways, or framed as an accceptable game within willing partners.

    If one truly wake up every morning feeling that you must somewhat adjust your behaviour in order not to assault someone today, sexually or otherwise, then I can only suggest that one seeks professional help.
  • Is sexual harassment a product of a sexually repressive environment?
    Sexual assault, we are told, is not about sex. It is about power, we are told.

    On the other hand, the recent tidal wave of sexual harassment accusations involves only the most powerful men in society. They already have power over most of the people in their lives, and that power is respected. It seems more like abusing power than asserting power.

    Power is not enough, maybe?

    The sexual rules, mores, beliefs, attitudes, etc. of conservative traditions make even the highest political and economic power useless, maybe?
    WISDOMfromPO-MO

    Sexual assault can be about sex. It's the type of dynamics of sexual exploitation, violence and repression that grows in an abusive couple that is generally refered to "not being about sex, but about power", as in asserting power in a manner that is, after all, proven to work most of the time.

    The recent events in regards to sexual misconduct is notable because it aims at men in power. Men who until now could use their power and influence to silence the victims. The recent narrative that is springing out, where every men must now watch their every moves to make sure that nothing will be interpreted as misconduct is pure interwebs hogwash. Unless you previously had the power and influence necessary to convince, often by doing nothing whatsoever, often over a dozen of women that nothing good could come out of reporting what was clearly misconduct, then nothing has changed.

    In other regards, I think the simplest way I can formulate what I see to be the problem underlying current sexual mores is that men need to stop thinking in terms of seeking to convince their sexual interest into having intercourses. In thinking that seeing an attractive women is in itself an invitation into flirtation. My personal experience is that male attraction signaling is very very obvious, while female signaling is much more subtle. Yet every man act as if they have to lay it incredibly thick or else the woman won't notice he's interested.
  • Transubstantiation
    Your comments misstated the Catholic position by stating that transubstantiation exists because the Catholic church said it did. That has nothing to do with the new issue you've raised, which is that you believe my rejection of transubstantiation arises due to my wholesale rejection of the spiritual realm. That statement is incorrect and non-responsive to anything previously discussed.Hanover

    You are right, the stated position of the Church is that, during the Last Supper, Christ stated that he was truly sharing his flesh and blood. The Eucharist is founded on the belief that the Last Supper was in fact an act of endowement from Christ to the nascent Church. Amongst this endowement was the power to perform the Eucharist and transubstantiation.

    Every position stems from a history of interpretations of interpretations of the holy texts. God forbid the Church has the power to make decisions on the spot about dogma. That would make the backwardness of certain beliefs of Catholicism (and I was Catholic for a long time, I'm allowed to say this :P ) absolutely, totally inexcusable. While now they are simply regrettable and faulty.
  • Is a fish wet in water?
    Almost relevant :

    https://theconversation.com/answering-the-question-that-won-me-the-ig-nobel-prize-are-cats-liquid-86589

    If cats are a form of liquid, then when a cat sits on you, you are wet.
  • Transubstantiation
    Why are the Catholics the ones who ought be given the authority to render the decree as to what it is. Are they more learned and knowledgable?Hanover

    Well, apart from the primitive Church, theirs was the 1st interpretation of the question. Not that this means theirs is the best. It was also the most prevalent until Protestantism.
  • How 'big' is our present time?


    Specious time, that is, the minimal unit of conscious time in which an event can be said to be perceived naturally as present, is between 2 to 5 milliseconds. This is associated with the oscillatory movements of cells in the upper cortex.
  • Transubstantiation
    Also, since this subject seems to stick, here are the relevant portions from the official Catechism of the Vatican ;

    1376 The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation."206

    1377 The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moment of the consecration and endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsist. Christ is present whole and entire in each of the species and whole and entire in each of their parts, in such a way that the breaking of the bread does not divide Christ.

    1380 It is highly fitting that Christ should have wanted to remain present to his Church in this unique way. Since Christ was about to take his departure from his own in his visible form, he wanted to give us his sacramental presence; since he was about to offer himself on the cross to save us, he wanted us to have the memorial of the love with which he loved us "to the end,"209 even to the giving of his life. In his Eucharistic presence he remains mysteriously in our midst as the one who loved us and gave himself up for us, 210 and he remains under signs that express and communicate this love

    1381 "That in this sacrament are the true Body of Christ and his true Blood is something that 'cannot be apprehended by the senses,' says St. Thomas, 'but only by faith, which relies on divine authority.' For this reason, in a commentary on Luke 22:19 ('This is my body which is given for you.'), St. Cyril says: 'Do not doubt whether this is true, but rather receive the words of the Savior in faith, for since he is the truth, he cannot lie.'"212

    Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore
    Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,
    See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart
    Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

    Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived;
    How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
    What God's Son has told me, take for truth I do;
    Truth himself speaks truly or there's nothing true.213
  • Why would anybody want to think of him/herself as "designed"?
    I was speaking him holistically, since taking things appear always creates something new. In this regard, God and Natural Evolution are equivalent in that they are both used by their adherents as an appeal to some supernatural force guiding the universe, while the individual letters making up each if these words are not.Rich

    I do not understand what you mean. Could you rephrase?
  • Why would anybody want to think of him/herself as "designed"?
    It would be like arguing over the differences between H2O and water. Which word do you prefer? The more "scientific" or the more colloquial? Is there something to argue about?Rich

    Can you learn the same thing from understanding why water is represented physically as H2O as you can by learning that linguistically it is called water? No. "H" stands for something else and something more in H2O than "wa-" stands for in 'water'. That is because the first one is a model, and not a name, while the second is a name and not a model.
  • Transubstantiation
    Then Google is wrong?Sapientia

    Your meaning is rarely clear, and that's a problem. If you're saying that, according to Catholicism, it's metaphorical, rather than literal, then I think you're mistaken, since the sources where I've got my information about Catholicism from state otherwise. Moreover, T. Clark's wife is Catholic, and she thinks likewise.

    And what I was actually requesting was an explanation regarding your comments about logical necessity and a priori truth, which you haven't given. I might just resign myself to my suspicion that you were talking rubbish, whilst, in the same breath, accusing us of being silly.
    Sapientia

    Ah, I see the confusion. Generally, when someone says that they are doing a literal interpretation of the Bible, it goes further than saying that some of the mysteries aren't metaphorical and symbolic. Everything is literally to be taken to the word. If the Apocalypse state that during the breaking of the 3rd Seal all angels will be dancing laciviously La Macarena, then you can expect that to happen.

    Catholicism doesn't teach a literal interpretation of the texts in this way. I was told in Catechism that the Apocalypse and the Rapture was much more symbolic than anything factual. At the same time, the priest would be unmovable on certain other issues. Mary was a virgin. He felt almost insulted at the question. Sacraments are holy and mystical. Transubstantiation is a thing. Resurrection did happen.

    Obviously, its very akward having to naviguate this system of belief. Once you start admitting some of it is symbolic, why not just say it all is? Why is it so important that Mary really was a virgin if it doesn't really matter if only 400 000 people will or won't be selected for admittance into Heaven? That is why, I think, so many other Christian sects decide to go the literalist way. That way, you don't have to deal with figuring which part of the text are the important ones, because it's all important, all the time.
  • Why would anybody want to think of him/herself as "designed"?
    No difference between a belief in Natural Evolution as the Almighty Force or God.Rich

    That's a statement of position, not an argument. Do you not see that between 1) and 2) there is a world of difference in validity as an hypothesis? That's about the world of difference that exist beween an explanation in terms of evolution and one in terms of intelligent design. If you do not, you are more than welcome to argue for it. Stating your position once again does not help anyone.
  • Transubstantiation


    I have taken it up with him. The Catechism is clear on the issue. ;) C'est la vie!
  • Transubstantiation
    If you proportion belief to the available evidence, then no, they're not comparable. There's a lot of evidence for particle-wave duality. There's not a lot of evidence for transubstantiation, unless you lower the bar and allow for hearsay and funny feelings, which I'm not willing to do.Sapientia

    Just hearsay, no funny feelings.
    Anyway, any decent Catholic imho should admit that he believes certain things on very strenuous premisses. That's going to be a part of the existential malaise that is essential to Catholicism.
  • Transubstantiation
    Yes, I agree with the absurdity of expecting people to believe in a literal interpretation, and that there's special pleading involved. If I were a Christian, I would definitely not be a Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox Christian. I would be a Protestant.Sapientia

    The Catholic Chuch never argues for a literal interpretation of the Bible. The whole idea of hermeneutics was developped by Catholicism as a field to discuss the relative values of biblical interpretations.

    There are many mysteries to a Catholic that will never find a rational explanation. These are not taken to express a subjective truth about our connection to God. This is because they aren't presented as such in the holy texts. The Holy Trinity is not presented either in the Bible as a mystical objective fact, it's just that there are precise passages that discuss the unicity of God in the Ancient Testament, and that this would conflict with the New Testament claims that both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are divine too.

    A bit like how God only became King of the Universe after he decided to incarnate himself in Jesus Christ (Doctrine of the Royalty of Jesus Christ).
  • Transubstantiation


    I guess I'll take the word of a East Orthodox over that of the Petit Catéchisme à l'usage du Diocèse de Genève. :-}
  • Transubstantiation
    Yeah, mystical experiences are real, people experience them, you knowAgustino

    No Catholic has ever experienced transubstantiation. The substance of the bread and wine leaves and is replaced by that of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, the only thing that remains is the 'species' ("espèces" in french), which is specifically everything that can be experienced by experiencing bread and wine.

    For a Catholic it isn't symbolic either (according to the Cathechism anyway). The substance of the flesh and blood of Christ is truly there, and there is truly nothing left of the bread and wine except for everything that makes us feel about it that it is bread and wine.
  • Why would anybody want to think of him/herself as "designed"?
    There is always goal oriented reasoning whether it be God-based or Natural Evolution based. They are equivalent.Rich

    Equivalence of goal isn't equivalence of proof isn't equivalence of belief.

    take :

    1) I want to eat. I know there is food in my fridge because I put it there and have no reason to think someone else might have taken it. I hold the belief that the food that I believe to be in the fridge will satisfy my goal of wanting to eat.

    2) I want to eat. I know that food is something that happens from time to time in the world (i.e. I hold the belief that food is). I hold the belief that if I remain immobile and do nothing, I will likely obtain food, because I believe that food is just a statistical occurence of the world, and that this food will satisfy my goal of wanting to eat.

    I, in both 1) and 2), expresses the same goal. The whole object of both these reasonnings is to arrive to the point where I have formulated what is necessary for me to formulate in trying to satisfy my goal of eating. But it is however evident that 2), even tho it might be tangentially a valid reasonning, does not share the same a priori plausibility in formulating what is necessary to arrive to our goal. See H. Putnam for the necessity to thematize a priori plausibility in the comparison of the worth of theories, Philosophy of Logic, p. 56-69
  • Cryptocurrency
    Okay, so how does this translate into economic value? Who exactly, in what industry, would be helped?Agustino

    Anyone who would want to set up regulations on their funds without having to pay banking or wiring fees. It doesn't specifically helps an industrial domain, it just empowers you to do what you ask your bank to do. More or less.
  • Why would anybody want to think of him/herself as "designed"?
    1) Explaining human existence as the result of God's Design is no different than explaining human existence by Natural Evolution. Both explanations are based upon faith that such forces exist.Rich

    Both are belief, theories, expressed in a set of propositions. Stating this does not help anyone. The reason one is prefered is not that it is not constituted by beliefs, but because of the reasonnings one goes through in justifying those beliefs.

    2) In so far as the evolution of the human body and mind is concerned, it is no different than anything else, it is the result of a process of creative experimentation. In other words, just like art, it is a continuous process of learning and change.Rich

    Evolution is not art. Nature is not art. Art, as artefact, is opposed to Nature, and as creativity it is opposed to science. Art is a form of pursuit of knowledge, even if it is a knowledge in its purest form, and a pursuit without designs.

    I don't think arguments from design are valid.Cuthbert

    Do you mean 'valid', or 'true'? Because I don't readily see why all arguments from design would be a priori invalid. It could be the case that something such as an intelligence had a hand in our creation. It's just that it seem like little evidence could ever be brought forward to support this.
  • Cryptocurrency
    Trading of fictive commodities without much underlying value is always a zero-sum game.Agustino

    There could be a lot of real, down-to-earth value to algo mining, if it was applied to other domains of research. Cryptocurrencies that allow smart contracts writing, like Ethereum, also technically empowers those that can write them to somewhat organise a self-containted legal system, creating settings where the funds are only accessible on certain dates, past a minimum balance, if only a number of the currency ownership group agrees to the spending, and only to be spent on certain things. The ability of the miner to determine the range of use of the currency is, in a way, a sort of value.
  • The exploration of AI safety ideas.
    Can't and will not happen, nothing can stop killer robots from happening, and the smarter they get the worst the danger to humanity.

    The military does not like sending death notes to parents, wives, children. The only ones to get notified when a robot bites the dust is the supply officer.
    Cavacava

    The U.S. Army have already tried a motorised land combat drone system in Afghanistan. Took a few days for the Taliban to figure out and start sending kids with spraypaints to the drones and cover the lenses of the cameras. The military scrapped that model after losing a few hundreds of millions of dollars in dev money to prepubescents with access to a hardware store.

    There are legitimate concerns about the developments of swarm drones and semi-autonomous drones with kill capacity. Killer AIs overtaking the planet should not be one of them.
  • Why would anybody want to think of him/herself as "designed"?
    Who says that things that exist--organized or not; complex or not--must be the result of a process?WISDOMfromPO-MO

    Complexity studies categorises two types of complexity; organized and disorganized. Disorganised complex systems are like large scale social phenomenon, they are studied mainly through the lenses of statistics. Organised complex systems are, specifically, living beings, machines, and some rare forms of mineral and chemical reactions.

    A system, organised or not, is always a process. In system theory, a description of this process is accepted as a valid definition of the system.

    Intentionality is, here, a false flag. Evolution theory now has a pretty good grasp on the idea of attractors, which somewhat validate the use of design as an analogy (with strong restrictions), but intentionality goes beyond the bounds of this analogy. Especially since intentionality is rather nebulous, and it's pretty certain neither Brentano nor Husserl would've admitted to the validity of its usage here.
  • Cryptocurrency
    Once again I ask, which came first the Cryptolock or the Cryptocurrency? Cryptocurrency became the vogue way of paying off the ransom to those who Cryptolocked their systems. I am pretty sure that the very lock I am speaking of was attempted at PF but there was no money to be had, so they unlocked it and moved on but not before making financial requests of Paul while holding the forum hostage.ArguingWAristotleTiff

    Depends on how precise about it you want to be. Programs like Cryptolocker became popular around 2012, when hackers started mass producing ready-for-use hacking suites like Nanocore and the Burp suites. But Cryptolocker is really no different (except in complexity and range) from most ransomware programs, and ransomware dates back to 1989, the PC Cyborg Trojan from J. Popp, which forced programs to lock and show a new license agreement fee which had to be agreed to to unlock them, looking legit enough, and sent the money directly to Popp.
  • Why would anybody want to think of him/herself as "designed"?
    Jackson Pollock paintings are not random,they just use different methods for applying pigment and if they were not pleasing, Pollock rejected them and tried again.That is not random.Jan Sand

    'Nature' doesn't reject and retry, tho. Talking about design in evolution is a metaphorical use.
  • What are facts?
    Pissing competitions. Meh.Banno

    Oh, come on, be a sport. You asked me a question without specifying what it was about. What do you want me to tell you about?
  • What are facts?
    Tell me more.Banno

    About what? Like, how I wish Adolf Reinach hadn't died so young, and should've been the 1880-ish intellectual to come to proeminence out of the german intellectual world?
  • What are facts?
    Except Wittgenstein??Banno

    Well, yeah, I guess. Depending on the reading. I know of no other philosopher who spent so much effort building an ontology just to show that ontologies shouldn't be built.
  • What are facts?
    Why? A child can tell what is true from what is false. It takes a philosopher to doubt such things.Banno

    Using language is second nature to almost every human beings. Within language, the use of terms like 'true' and 'false' is relatively simple, because we rely on well-established parameters to guide us through this usage. But what we do here is, as philosophers, when we question what are 'facts' and how we structure our understanding of them, is locate ourselves somewhat 'outside' of language (even if it is quite literally inescapable). We locate ourselves within 'epistemology' or 'ontology' and try to work out a framework.

    But then, I guess anyone is free to deny this distinction, or its possibility, and simply say that we are overcomplicating things. That's an argument from the ages, and I'm sure it's never really convinced any philosopher who was tempted by the ontological or epistemological path.
  • The exploration of AI safety ideas.


    By making it lazy.
    You shouldn't fear the red button scenario anymore than a mother should fear her kid stabbing her when she denies her cookies. Anyway, if the AI is structured in a lazy, predictive processing modeling format, running multiple strategies at the same time and eliminating them based on warning triggers and overcomplexity.