Comment Re:Modalities (Score 1) 243
Visually? Zero. That's not how my mind works.
Visually? Zero. That's not how my mind works.
Interesting link/video. Thank you.
I'm an EE, and visualizing things is a really important tool for my work. Circuit diagrams, circuit board layout / routing, how a board fits in an enclosure, transformer design, etc.
That's fine, and no doubt it's powerful, but it doesn't mean there aren't other ways to approach the same kinds of work. I've been doing hardware design for a bit over 50 years now, and have quite a collection of successful original projects, many quite complex. I've been writing software since the early 1970's as well, and again, lots of completed projects in that domain. For some systems, I did both the hardware design and the supporting software.
WRT schematics and other diagrams, I'm comfortable and effective on a drafting table at putting together complex ones; but, being lazy, I've also written both schematic capture and PCB layout software, including auto-routing and auto-placement. In assembler.
I'm a "5" — I can't visualize anything at all. But I can juggle concepts as both words and abstractions just fine, and I find it a comfortable process to realize them as concrete products.
Likely related, I really enjoy photography; it serves as visual memory for me. It's how I can "know" how my mother and father looked, old flames, places, pets, etc. I also take pictures of my hardware projects both under development and at completion. There's definitely a worthy aspect to being able to access that information. Also, some of my most complex software products have been image manipulation systems.
The bottom line is there are definitely multiple highly functional modalities to dealing with most creative tasks.
Fatal error: temporal decoherence: User has never been born. Quit to press any key.
"It would end up like the crypto thing," is a better analogy. Encryption was classified as a "munition" until 1996, and restricted for export. Technically there are still export controls for new encryption schemes today, but it's a paper tiger at this point. It's likely that any enforcement attempts would be successfully met with free speech challenges, as with DeCSS (although who knows what the SCOTUS would decide on anything these days).
The barrier to entry for AI (generative or otherwise) is incredibly low, and mostly consists of harvesting large quantities of training data (which China should excel at, TBH) as well as access to sufficient processing power to process that data. OpenAI doesn't have any magical insight into how a trained model will behave compared to anyone else in the field -- anyone with money could be up to speed in a month or two, tops. The algorithms themselves are well-established at this point, and the "secret sauce" is not very secret either: increase the resolution of your data and add more processing power.
I suspect the reason we don't see the field flooded with more startups (if you don't consider it saturated anyway) is because the business case is just not there. Let OpenAI and others take the risk that there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If an opportunity presents itself, it would be easy enough to start competing; at least no more difficult than starting today, but certainly cheaper to wait.
An embryo is an organism in and of itself. It is alive and it is human in a very scientific sense of the word.
It's not human until it has a functional nervous system with a brain capable of, you know, humanity. Up to that point, it's a clump of cells, not "a human." In fact, short of that level of development, it's no more "a human" than any similarly sized clump of native cells in any person's body.
Humanity does not arise because some muscles contract or a bone develops. Early stage pregnancy does not involve a human. Later on, sure. But to pretend otherwise is anything but scientific.
Likewise, arguing that an early stage pregnancy is an organism is irrelevant; so is a blade of grass. Same for life: grass is alive. These are completely inadequate — in fact, irrelevant — metrics.
Humanity is actually the thing that is reasonable to consider; and if you try to use "humanity" when describing an early stage pregnancy, you are promoting superstition. No functional brain defines that the organism is not capable of humanity. That's a fundamental scientific truth. Consequently, if you claim otherwise, you're either being disingenuous, demonstrating that you have had a completely inadequate science education — or are stupid.
A physical fact? What, exactly, is the physical evidence of people-ness that these embryos lack?
A functional nervous system incorporating a brain capable of, you know, any aspect of humanity.
You're welcome.
All criminal law is the imposition of somebody's morality
Nonsense. A great deal of law is the result of objective determination of harm reduction — the axiom that gives rise to that is that "harm is inherently bad and therefore should be avoided when possible." Not "harm is immoral." Or "harm is un-Christian" (because as we know, Christians have a rich and storied history of causing harm, which path they continue to follow to this day.)
Although I'll grant you that legislating an early stage pregnancy is in any way equivalent to a child is definitely not an objective determination of anything. Because it's bullshit, y'see.
But yes — too much of Christian superstition and Jewish superstition has failed to admit their debt to their actual roots in a myriad of preceding superstitions. Because they're too busy pretending their imaginary friend is real and nothing else matters.
FTFY
Thus the persistence of slavery in almost all societies...
...Christianity took a long time to get to a rejection of slavery
Christianity has done no such thing, at least in the USA. To wit (emphasis mine):
13th Amendment:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Where are the majority of Christians rejecting the 13th amendment's direct endorsement of slavery? It's okay, I'll wait. I actually like the sound of crickets.
It's also important to note how Christian morals have generally influenced what is acceptable
It's also important to note how Christianity is (a) pure superstition and (b) hardly the only source of determining and/or resolving "what is acceptable" and (c) a rich source of decidedly dubious positions and associated action:
For instance, crusades are not acceptable; blood libel is not acceptable; burning people at the stake is not acceptable; subjugation of women is not acceptable; brainwashing is not acceptable; inquisitions are not acceptable; pretending superstition trumps science is not acceptable... although, you know, we certainly can look to Christianity for promoting and performing all of these particular exercises in influencing people to think it's okay to go about them. So... yes. Christianity certainly has been influential in these matters. Point to you, Bruce66423.
The prevalence of NAT causes almost all consumer cameras to be cloud based, otherwise users have no other way to reach them.
Nonsense. Unless by "consumer cameras" you mean webcams, which are definitively not security cameras, regardless of the associated marketing drivel.
Well, congrats on making it to Feb 2024. Here's to another month.
Exactly. If you want to beat the market, you need to do it the old fashioned way: insider trading.
high vehicle prices
Aside from products that are perceived as absolutely required (which EVs are largely not), the higher the price, the narrower and shorter-term the market. But there's always greed and next-quarter thinking driving these decisions on the "let's make a vehicle" end of things. TL;DR: foot-shooting.
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce