No. All I need is me. Do I want to be killed? Do I want to be molested? Do I want do be robbed? Do I want to be lied to?

As I don't want those things happen to me, I don't do them to others, because I only can expect others not to do them to me, if they can be assured I don't do it to them. I don't need pre-existing values. I just have to accept everyone else to be like me.

(This is just the simple version. The more elaborate version of the rule is Kant's Categorical Imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." We could also go into Existentialism and postulate that personal freedom, individual responsibility, and deliberate choice are essential to the pursuit of self-discovery and the determination of life's meaning.)

Did it have a declaration that the nation is or must be Christian?

""The solar surge does little to address the most pressing social and economic problems of developing countries like South Africa, the need to generate new jobs for millions of young citizens," reports the NYT. "Installation labor is local, but the panels and batteries are almost all made in China.""

Last I checked; the overwhelming majority of jobs in some way related to electricity have nothing to do with manufacturing the equipment that produces and distributes the electricity; but with all the various things that are easier to do when you have electricity.

It may be that they'll deem solar cells and batteries to be either profitable manufacturing opportunities or strategically critical in ways that make one unwilling to rely on being able to buy them abroad; but in the meantime a lot of people are now not sitting in the dark or sucking diesel fumes, which seems like a handy start to whatever further economic activity they wish to get up to.

The Golden Rule is quite sufficient as an universal value. Another one is the universal dignity of everybody. Both answer your questions sufficiently.

You don't kill the poor and the sick, because you don't want to be killed if you get poor and sick. You tell the truth because you don't want to be lied to. You want to give people making bad decisions a chance of redemption, because you want the chance of redemption if you fail. No God needed.

I subscribe to H.L.Mencken's attitude though:

"Because I don't like the result, I redefine 'No Religion' to an arbitrary meaning and come to a result of 95% Christian."

Exactly. That's why the separation of State and Church is important. And it had to be forced upon Christianity which was used to 1500 years of being a state religion.

There are some books, such as Dungeon Crawler Carl, which are absolutely not the same experiences when read as compared to the performances put on by the narrators. Audiobooks aren't just "read" anymore - they're performed.

Given the persistent difficulties people have encountered in getting bots to perform well enough that they don't require near constant expert supervision when doing anything that actually matters or where errors are a problem; it sounds like cutting off the pipeline that has historically turned entry level people into experts through relevant experience may be the bold way forward in improving the (relative) quality of bots vs. humans. Sure, this improvement will occur by dragging down the quality of the available humans; but that's just some lucrative consulting gigs for anyone who is already experienced and "fuck you; I've got mine" is how you handle problems that may arise in the future, so it's all good!

Religious tolerance was forced upon Christianity by the horrors of the 30years War, when Christians murdered Christians for being the wrong kind of Christian, and when the Puritans did the same in Great Britain with everyone who only slightly diverted from their idea of Christianity.

That's why in the U.S. constitution, it is clearly stated that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; [...]", because of the horrors of Christian intolerance. That's why one of the central ideas of the Enlightenment was the Freedom of Religion, the freedom to chose whatever you want to believe in. Grudgingly, Christian communities agreed, but needed another 150 years to do so.

Religious tolerance is not a feature of modern Christianity. It only exists because of exterior forces.

"A fine is a price."

You want compliance, try telling them that climbers who bring at least 8kg of waste with them get to come back down. Vastly more exciting than a $4k discount on a trip where the ultra-budget options are ~$35k and going north of $50k is pretty common and past 100k hardly unheard of.

I suspect that parts of the transition will not go smoothly, especially for the people who end up winging it without the opportunity to observe prior cases; but the widespread recognition that, frankly, what we do mostly isn't worth it and absolutely isn't worth dooming endless batches of fresh meat to seems like a noble change from millennia of throwing fresh meat at problems that only remain problems because you keep throwing fresh meat at them.

There are all sorts of purposes that will loudly proclaim that it's imperative that they have people; but they tend to offer pretty thin compensation for showing up beyond appeals to the fact that they've chewed up the last batch who showed up and if they don't get more we won't be able to do whatever it is we've always done for the important reason that we've always done it so we'd better keep doing it.

It's too late for the already extant, they've got bills to pay; but there's no higher form of thinking of the children than ensuring that it will never be their problem.

AI took my job.

Art. 11. "As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

note: Official records show that after President John Adams sent the treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification in May 1797, the entire treaty was read aloud on the Senate floor, and copies were printed for every senator. A committee considered the treaty and recommended ratification. Twenty-three of the thirty-two sitting senators were present for the June 7 vote that unanimously approved the ratification recommendation.

China is recruiting biotech talent from the US? Like they're saying go work in China and save up money? I wouldn't recommend anyone do it unless the offer was so great that you'd have enough money to outright buy a US home at the end of it. As in, be able to save like $700k within 7 years (which in 7 years should get you a "todays" $500k home in the US). That means you'd have to get paid around like $180k (after China taxes if they make you pay that). I blindly assume China comfortable expat living expenses are like 80k.

As for "you're helping China advance" .. well don't on any circumstances tell them how to do anything that would give them a national security advantage .. but if it's something like a rare disease or cancer cure that all humanity could benefit from and your own country isn't offering you shit then why not. When you get back you can always make that cure in the US.

No, I don't think we disagree. I was just (trying, I think I wasn't as clear as I wanted) to emphasize the very, very, important limitation to his claim about creativity and uniqueness being the only path forward.

It's likely true in the sense that the impending flood tide of mechanized me-too derivative slop content will be bad for people currently producing me-too derivative slop content by hand, so the uncreative will, more or less incidentally, feel the squeeze; but only because what they do now happens in much greater volume and much more rapidly which will not exactly be good news for the people trying to stand out by being original, especially the ones people haven't already heard of.

There is unlikely to be anything about the bot slop that is good for the creative and unique; it will just be even worse for those who are not.