maarsen
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Posts posted by maarsen
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9 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:
That's a nice piece. However, it's worth noting that while FEM may explain the reason for why consciousness first evolved, it doesn't explain how that evolution has proceeded since.
My brain may indeed be on autopilot while driving a familiar route. Yet it often is not on autopilot when I'm stationary in my even more familiar couch, and thinking about writing a story, or picturing the next watercolor I want to work on.
I'm surely engaging conscious processes in those moments, but nothing external has changed. My brain is not at the minimal energy consumption rest state, despite no sensory input that would disturb it.
I could meditate and take it there, but often, I don't. Nor is this failure goal directed, or optimal strategy, because whether spending time thinking up a story or water color is worth the energy consumed is not something we can predict well, especially if we are not published authors or famed watercolorists (or insert art/skill here that we spend time cogitating on).
Yet, this kind of cognition is critical for all the external facing success stories of human beings, at least. I definitely don't think this is unique to us, but we're somehow wired for this kind of hoped for future-state driven non-minimization of energy use in our brains, which must have had different evolutionary drivers than what first evolved consciousness, if FEM is true.
It's the "useless" cogitating that we need to explain it we want to figure out consciousness. And AI today doesn't run unprompted. The servers for LLMs do not draw power when no prompts are entered. So whatever argument can be made for their consciousness, that consciousness does not exist when they're on but not given any external prompts.
If brains like to be in state of low energy consumption, the how do we explain gambling, drugs, following topics on a forum, reading books compulsively, and watching sports or TV or movies? And the there is the appeal of horror in books, movies, and real life.
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On 3/18/2024 at 4:46 AM, Liffguard said:
It's a genuine problem. Digitial storage does not actually appear to be all that durable long-term, contrary to the idea that something is effectively permanent once it's on the internet.
I would suggest that if you've already paid for the tracks once and now lost them, there's nothing unethical in just pirating them now to restore them. But of course, in the age of streaming, there's significantly less demand for pirated music and therefore no guarantee that you'd actually be able to find the same tracks again anyway.
In essence, in the digital age it's apparently suprisingly easy for a particular piece of art or culture to just...disappear.
This is why I like film photography as opposed to digital. Negatives have a much longer shelf life than a computer file. Just ask the guy still trying to retrieve his old hard drive from a landfill because it has a few hundred million dollars worth of bitcoins saved on it.
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1 hour ago, Zorral said:
Long piece detailing the shocking fax that billionaires are mean to, backstab, and cheat their fellow cheating billionaires too!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/21/truth-social-trump-merger-lawsuits/
Twitter never made much money which is why it ended up in Musk's hands. Why would supposedly smart billionaires invest money in Truth Social, which will probably have a tenth of the subscribers that Twitter had and even less than that in the way of advertising? Somebody here is scamming some others. Is the fake billionaire smarter than the real ones? If they really want a platform, buy X off of Musk. I am sure he is a motivated seller.
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2 hours ago, Zorral said:
What happened is the engineers who ran the firm were replaced with guys who were CEOs etc. of other kinds of corporations. It now was about the dividends for shareholders and the salaries and bonuses for the Officers, and cutting corners, getting rid of the most highly paid, experienced engineers, etc.
Before my brother's section got bought out by Airbus and China, these bozos just told him, when a part that was essential to the electrical system that keeps planes in the air had bee been manufactured a millimeter too large to fit where it was supposed to go, they ordered him to file it down instead of ordering new ones with the correct measurement. He spent months convincing them that this cannot work.
As a millwright I have seen so much of this in every workplace I have been in. And yes I have been asked to do this kind of stuff. There is always someone who knows nothing of engineering or millwrighting but by dint of authority thinks the laws of physics don't apply to them. I always asked them to put that request in writing so when the inevitable happens, we have a paper trail that leads to reason for the failure. Or as one millwright friend would say ''are you f'ing stupid!??" when given such a request.
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On 3/16/2024 at 11:17 AM, IFR said:
Clarke absolutely did this in 2001, and to an even greater extent in Childhood's End. The technology and science of the advanced species were examples of this - just like with Three Body Problem. The space magic approach tends to be common even among proficient writers of science fiction when attempting to predict highly advanced technology or science.
Just a reminder of the timeline of 2001 book and movie. The movie was based on Clarke's story The Sentinel. Kubrick liked the story and wanted to make it into a movie. Clarke and Kubrick wrote the screenplay and began to film it. Clarke then took the script and novelized it to come out with the movie but Kubrick was slow in filming all the bits and the book came out before the movie, leading everyone to assume Kubrick adapted the book.
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29 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:
Depends on your definition of rich.
If we take accounting and estimations at face value, then he could take that hit. It would hurt. But his assets are supposedly above the 1 billion threshold (to call him a billionaire)*. Which is more than 500m. Would he still be a billionaire afterwards? that is a better question.
In addition, this nonsense anti-social is about to go public, so there he might get a very big cash infusion down the line (his shares are estimated to be worth another 2-3 bn, which he can't sell/access now for legal reasons. That's finance law/SEC stuff, so something zabz could probably say a thing or two in general terms, which is far better founded than what I could recall having read/heard.
And I am not sure how to evaluate/factor in those JaVanka middle East business deals. Fair assumption they wouldn't exist without her daddy's Presidency. As that's pretty blatant pay-to-play get into the ear of the GOP nominee. But would she actually bail out diaper Don?
*I've seen his assets (real estate mainly) to be worth in the region $ 1.5bn+. If that gets seized and acutioned off piece by piece, bits by bits. It might get sold at a knock off price/Trump name discount. Even if that market (bidders) will take a 30% discount rate, that would still be $ 1bn+. But for the sake of the argument, let's say 1bn. 1bn - 500m = 500m. By my standard, I'd still call that filthy rich.
All the above assumes he holds all those properties without mortgages or liens. There is more evidence that he is underwater with his assets than that he is free and clear. Remember he had trouble posting the $5 million bond in the defamation case when all he needed to do was have $500,000 on hand. All the grifting he has been doing since losing the election is not the sign of a billionaire but the sign of a nearly broke and desperate man.
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Well our latest dog, a Puli, is approaching 13 years of age, and while still very active, she is slowing down. My wife has been talking about getting another and on Friday she came home with a 8 week old Puli puppy. She is all black, just like her older sister. except for a white spot on her chest. Like our first she is very affectionate and loves being close to people. She is just adorable.
- JGP, Spockydog, Which Tyler and 1 other
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2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:
Im definitely the only person that read music of the primes who didn't know that 1 wasn't a prime number.
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Just now, BigFatCoward said:
The way we were taught was 'any number only divisible by itself or 1. So it qualified.
Which makes 2 divisors. 1 has only itself.
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4 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:
At school i was always taught that 1 was a prime number, now im being told its not. When did that happen?
When working with prime numbers in mathematics, having 1 as a prime causes problems. Also every prime has 1 and itself as divisors. 1 only has1 as a divisor. Without 2 divisors it isn't prime.
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15 hours ago, mormont said:
Next in the 'novel legal theories tried by Donald Trump':
In the New York hush money trial, Trump intends to rely on an 'advice of counsel' defence. But he won't be waiving privilege, because it's not a formal 'advice of counsel' defence, so he won't telling us what his counsel actually advised. Instead, he'll be advancing the argument, and I kid not, that he
So it's actually a 'general sense that counsel of some sort were involved at some point' defence. If a lawyer has been involved in any way, you naturally assume everything that follows is entirely legal, without question. Due diligence completed. What's the problem?
The old "I'm so stupid I hired stupid lawyers" defense. Considering how well it worked when he really did hire a stupid lawyer I have high hopes for a conviction.
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1 hour ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:
Fair enough. I wasn't trying to say he was a mass murderer like Stalin or Pol Pot. But his revolutionary uprising led to the curtailment on freedom of expression and protest among the people of Cuba, something that Pete Seeger likely had to actively ignore.
Curtailment of expression? Cuba was run by a fascist dictator for the benefit of the American businesses and Mafia there before Castro.
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10 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:
The Pneumonic for racially aggravatèd is CORN (colour, origin, race, nationality) so this is definitely racially aggravated.
Pneumonic? Did you mean Mnemonic?
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On 3/5/2024 at 10:40 AM, SeanF said:
I’m not sure I agree. Genghis Khan believed he’d been appointed to rule by Eternal Heaven. But, he still planned his campaigns meticulously.
I think you fall flat on your face when you think being chosen by God, or being racially superior, means that you don’t have to put in hard thinking and hard work.
Napoleon once said that god is on the side with the heaviest artillery. What one says to the masses and what one truly thinks are two different things.
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On 2/24/2024 at 12:56 PM, SeanF said:
It seems to go hand in hand with his pieces on Sparta. Granted, Sparta was not terrible at war, simply distinctly average. But like fascists, they had great PR.
Fascists believe that wars are won by will, racial superiority, and unrestrained violence, rather than by making sure that your soldiers get food, petrol, and ammunition in the quantities they need.
It’s similar to Rhett Butler, commenting about the North’s technological advantage over the South, but “we’ve got cotton, and slaves ….and arrogance.”
Every leader who believes he is appointed by a God to lead the lesser beings is truly guilty of delusional behaviour. No surprise they fail, and badly.
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3 hours ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:
I’m so envious of you guys. Watching a total solar eclipse is one of my lifelong dreams. I saw a partial one in Sweden 10 years ago and watched it through double 1.44” floppy disks (it works! You pull the cover aside to reveal the disk itself and watch the sun through it). I remember running around showing it to random people at the beach. They must’ve thought I was crazy.
It won’t happen where I live for another 100 years, but the cool thing is it happens almost every year somewhere in the world. One day I’ll book a trip to a country where it happens and see one.
It happens at least once a year but as most of the surface of Earth is water, most eclipses are only visible over water.
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General Motors went the same way. Sometime in the 80s the CEO of GM rather than being an engineer, was a marketing guy. I remember all this because an automotive columnist in a newspaper commented on it and predicted GM's downfall from this decision.
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3 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:
everything is foldable if you are strong enough.
That was a steel pan not cast iron. Cast iron doesn't fold or twist when subjected to stress. It cracks.
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14 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:
It does matter. If frankly both sides are honest in that they don't really have an interest in one that can lead to real peace what's the point?
LBJ lost his job because of opposition to the war. And here's a list of charities that had way more positive impact than a person committing suicide:
If antiwar protests killed Johnson's election hopes, McGovern did run on a strong antiwar basis and lost really badly. To Nixon. Tricky Dick.
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6 minutes ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:
It's a ludicrous ask. I'd also assume it means he's not very liquid.
And now the SC is taking the immunity case. JFC indeed.
I mentioned before that his properties are mortgaged to the hilt and cannot be used as collateral. As for s loan of any kind, one would have to be stupid as paying that fine is not going to generate the income needed to pay back the loan.
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Here in Guardalavaca Cuba, we had rain a few times yesterday snd a rainstorm that woke me up at 5 am. Right now about 30 C and sunny. Just a beautiful day
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6 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:
I don’t know what you guys have in the US, but there are no “watch repair shops” that I’ve ever seen in Canada. You go to a good jeweler, the kind that sells watches. They usually have a repair person on staff.
Birds, I once lived across the street from the most annoying jeweler ever. Yes that guy. At the time he did do watch repair at his shop.
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17 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:
Trump is famous for being the first president in a hundred years who didn’t have a dog.
I thought Eric was the dog.
- Martell Spy, Bironic, Jace, Extat and 3 others
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US Politics: Losing Appeals
in General Chatter
Posted
I would love to have that list of investors. So much moose pasture, so little time.