ahthat

Ah yes, tricky tricky AI! You shan’t fool us

A fascinating and hilarious conversation:

SS: I know, but this is a problem for me because "porno" has no meaning, it's an empty gesture. This is the whole problem today. Okay, so tell me, what would it be like to have sex with a robot? Because in a way you are already having cybersex if you log on onto the Internet and watch all these movies of people screwing and so on. Now obviously you don't get the real thing, so you are totally abstracted but I think that for some men it is a new form of sexual enjoyment. So, again, we will encounter new problems: What are the limits? Will it be accepted that in a relationship with a human being, you can have sex with another person who is not there and so on?

WH: I don't know. There's something I want to say to you first. We are both filmmakers, so we are working with images and with what lies beyond them. But you are more of a philosopher, so you are more abstracted than I am. In my films there is always something that lies beyond the images. Yes, there are always new difficulties, in particular with sexuality. I'm not saying this because of the invention of new media like the Internet but we are heading in that direction anyway.

SS: I hate movies, but I love to watch porno. I cannot resist it. Yes, why not? It's far more interesting than these old-fashioned procedures.

WH: I don't want to be too abstracted, so let me ask you a question: Is it good that young people are watching so much porno on the Internet?

SS: No, it's terrible. This is my problem with the Internet: it delays my work. I don't have any time because, you know, as soon as I sit down to write a book I just open a window, and there are all these amazing things. So the problem with the Internet is not that it's too tempting. It's the opposite, I don't work. I have a problem avoiding opening windows. Yes, this is my big problem. Anyone who wants to learn something about the history of philosophy should watch porno. This would be a great way to get rid of all this bullshit.

WH: I totally agree, because the more abstracted the physical contact between people becomes the more the inner life comes to the fore, especially in terms of eroticism. Sitting in front of a computer, you don't have physical contact with anything, it's all virtual. And yet, the eroticism that appears is enormous. It's parallel to the disappearance of physical contact. Yes, I think you're right.

Location: Seattle/Arizona/Remote

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, Javascript, Java, Bash, Django, React, PostgreSQL, REST APIs, Automation

Resume/CV: wbshields.com/resume, wbshields.com

Email: williambenjaminshields@gmail.com

  Location: Seattle, WA/Phoenix, AZ
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Technologies: Python, Django, PostgreSQL, REST APIs, AWS, Git, Bash, Javascript
  Résumé/CV: https://wbshields.com
  Github: https://github.com/wb-s
  Email: bshields23 at gmail.com

https://wbshields.com

https://github.com/wb-s

"The big picture: This points to a conundrum. The Fed is raising rates to cool inflation. But rate hikes are driving higher rents, which are fueling inflation."

Methinks this... might not end well.

Hilarious!!!

Absolutely

Get them while they’re young

Stalin lived a long life and died the tyrant of Russia, same with Lenin, and Peter the Great

Official NATO stance, as President Biden has repeatedly said, its to defend EVERY INCH of NATO territory - so if Russia parked one tank inside of the Polish border, all of NATO is at war with Russia.

If NATO does not respond with force, or escalate and withdraws because of MAD, then it loses all credibility.

The question is: Can belligerent nuclear armed nations really hold the rest of the world hostage? At some point, it's unacceptable, and we would all pay the consequences.

Anything by The Hoover Institution

Really great, conservative, and academic stuff. Highly regarded by many.

Excellent publications, and whole video series on YouTube are free to watch

Towels work just as well as sound proof material and are a cheap alternative. Here are some other ideas: https://soundproofliving.com/soundproof-room-cheap-free-idea...

Towels work pretty well apparently (sometimes better than foam acoustic panels): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKwb58vvFI

https://youtube.com/c/Ottawalks Hours of footage here

I’m a Seattlelite, my perception from amongst friends was that the Capitol Hill experiment was very supportive, at least initially

Hours of footage https://youtube.com/c/Ottawalks

https://youtube.com/c/Ottawalks Hours of footage

Media coverage of these protests is vastly negative. I remember only a few years ago (2020) when protests were undoubtedly violent across the United States. Video evidence of this violence as well as mass crowd driven theft was widely documented and distributed. I have yet to see video evidence of any violence from freedom convoys, and the ground based video evidence I have seen appears vastly peaceful. This does not mean there isn’t violence. Indeed, blockading roads could be construed as violence based on an argument for different definitions of the word. Yet, from my personal observations, it seems that the protests are essentially peaceful, citizens living in these cities are in support in large numbers, and this is running counter to the narrative being espoused in mainstream media sources, with the possible exception of Fox News. More or less it seems as though media sources are mischaracterizing these protests overall. Furthermore, it can be effectively argued that forcing workers to get vaccinated or lose their jobs is inherently discriminatory and perhaps even anti-freedom. But these are only my personal observations and conclusions, be what they are, a single individuals insight into the times occurring around him, debate as you will.

Where is this data coming from? What is the dataset? Just curious

Interesting. I like Hacker News because its community is so great compared to nearly every other platform I know. Too bad that we can't talk about stuff like this.

What Hobbes appears to want is Free Speech, but only for the greatest denominator. That is not Free Speech. Free Speech is the open forum, where we trust in our fellow men and women to observe the voices of others, make up their minds, come to their own conclusions in good faith, and contribute where they can. If certain voices are louder than others, that is something we have to live with. It is not Free Speech to shut them up.

I'm disinclined to think that a world in which we do not speak against the consolidation of the arbitration of truth to small groups of individuals is a good one, and its a particularly icy form of irony where such groups of individuals gained power on the back of the wave of freedom of information.

They're doing nothing illegal, I'll still speak out what I observe to be sad unfolding of events.

Indeed those are altogether terrible. Truly, utterly bad things have happened. The United States has not always been that paragon, for how could it? No one person is without fault, how could any country or people not have committed inexcusable actions? It' deplorable.

But today, where it is in my power, I'll take up the mantle of the good if I can, as well as I can, with the best arguments I can muster, to argue reasonably what I think is correct. Free speech, with its ups and downs, if its a thing we cherish today, let it be a thing we today cherish, and let us who cherish it do what we can to ensure that those who inherit the world we today create have greater access to the cherishable thing.

That's a good idea. I'm not for the socialization of internet companies. What Youtube and other companies are doing is not illegal and well within their rights as the law is currently.

But it is a betrayal. It is a betrayal of the promise of the internet as a forum of open discourse, and signifies a loss of faith in humankind's ability to discern truth, in humankind's ability to reason, for individual's to make up their own minds.

Indeed we need some censorship for things like what you described, it's a matter of what is reasonable, and what is reasonable is to be determined collectively in the discourses of society. Again, what Youtube and other companies are doing is not illegal, but it runs counter to every notion of what the open forum is meant to be. It's a sad sign. A line is being tiptoed across, and it is important that we openly argue the points and consequences.

Indeed they do.

The problem is their betrayal of the spirit of the internet. We built the internet with a vision of optimism, but now that the vision is in danger. When things become difficult for only a moment, we abandon that spirit altogether. For shame. It'd be much better if their service didn't abandon it. The Internet has been the great social experiment of our time. I'll take any opportunity to speak out against actions that diminish free and open discourse.

The problem is that the mouthpiece is assuming a monopoly over truth. It is utterly arrogant for any entity to do so. Let the talking heads debate, and the minds of men and women in the world decide. If we abandon faith in each other to discern for each his or her own self what truth is to be, we run the risk of traveling down the path whereon Free Thought and discourse is no longer celebrated but discouraged by ever-present and ever-domineering structures of power, damning future generations to totalitarianism.

Very sad. The internet was crafted and promoted in a spirit of radical social experimentation, where all kinds of ideas could be shared at light-speed all over the world, each man could have a mouthpiece, and we'd have access to the greatest library of unfiltered information ever devised.

These internet companies have ridden the crest of this wave of revolution in human thinking, many glorifying their interest in human revolutions along the way.

As private enterprises these companies have the right to police their platforms, but they betray the spirit that gave wind to this experiment in human Idea.

And now we are seeing the grand experiment failing.

The last 245 years have seen a great experiment in society and freedom, with the society to speak freely, and that the Market of Ideas might itself guide truth, arbitration by the few kept to a minimum. The Internet has been the culmination of this experiment. We are in danger of failing it today.

I say WE, because it is ultimately us today collectively, with however much influence we can afford to effect, many Americans and also citizens of the world, that hold within our power to determine for good or for ill the course of our time in the span of the generations. It is US: We are the ones who are fated to determine whether a world society can truly withstand free discourse or crumble utterly beneath it, that the individual of society today might have in his ability in the greater average to discern Truth where the matter is up to his faculties, and that this Truth may will out from the collective good minds and hearts of all men upon this Earth. This is the moment in history, let us not fail this chance to today together continue to craft the free societies of tomorrow with good faith in the heart of mankind. If enough of us do our part honestly, there is a good chance that the generations of tomorrow might look on this moment and say, "In this time, the goodness of humanity prevailed." WBS

It’s too far to say that “”wage gains aren’t good”, but he makes a good point about wage increase, inflation, and tax brackets I hadn’t thought of before

A good majority of people do derive satisfaction from cooperating and pursuing goals together. Yet, we must always consider the fact that the human population contains a not insignificant number of psychopaths capable of severe damage. For these reasons it is important that society be organized to be both robust and flexible.

I feel the author is forgetting that anything made out of plastic comes from oil derivatives. Another reason oil is an incredible resource. Can anyone comment on this?