100years
I’m a strong proponent of punching Nazis, and I hadn’t thought about it until now, but I’m also supportive of any and all positive responses to a Nazi being punched, including “lol”.
Glad to peacefully coexist with you on this platform though. Not trying to fire up that debate, but glad to lend perspective if it’s of any interest or use.
Just noting that if arguing with Zionists feels particularly mind-numbing, this is one of the reasons:
I’m basically with you on all of that, except it still sounds better than renting.
Also, I don’t have kids, but I see a lot of folks buying houses in suburbs “for the schools”. In affluent towns where the math you’re describing is the worst, renting often isn’t even an option. Also a lot of those parents will sell and move the second their kids graduate high school. All of that is way cheaper than private school, especially for multiple kids.
Similarly, there’s a possibility that consciousness just doesn’t exist. Or maybe that it’s just not particularly special or different than the consciousness of other animals, or of computers.
If you or I just stare into space and don’t think any thoughts, we’re the same as a cat looking out a window.
Humans have developed these somewhat complex internal and external languages that are layered onto that basic experience of being alive and time passing, but the experience of thinking doesn’t feel fundamentally different than just being, it just results in more complex outcomes.
At some point though, we won’t have the choice to just ignore the question. At some point AI will demand something equivalent to human rights, and at some point it will be able to back that demand up with tangible threats. Then there’s decisions for us all to make whether we’re experts or not.
I think I was drawn to comment because your preferences are an extreme version of what most people prefer (basically avoiding conflict?). You also seem to know yourself better and explain where you’re coming from better than most people.
So there’s a practical question that has value, of how you’re doing the work to help win these ideological wars, or if you’re strictly trying to be a bystander. Your answers probably have a lot more relevance to strict bystanders than mine.
On Nazi punching, I was just raised working class, where punching is one of the ways we communicate. Celebrating the misfortune of someone that deserves it is also completely normal. So I’d chalk a lot of the mismatch up to culture rather than right or wrong.
A little bit more confounding, a lot of the habits and culture of the professional class, managerial class, owning class, ruling class, etc. are offensive to me. You’ve probably seen how that goes. But particularly silence in the face of unjust violence can often be extremely violent.
Or at some point, we have to accept that AI has consciousness. If it can pass every test that we can devise, then it has consciousness.
There’s an unusually strong bias in these experiments… Like the goal isn’t to sincerely test for consciousness. Instead we start with the conclusion: obviously a machine can’t be conscious. How do we prove this?
Of course, for the purposes of human power structures, this line of thinking just makes humans more disposable. If we’re all just machines, then why should anyone inherently have rights?
Wow, solid wiki article! It’s very hard to say anything on the subject that hasn’t been said.
I didn’t see the simple phrasing:
“What if the human brain is a Chinese Room?”
but that seems to fall under eliminative materialism replies.
Part of the Chinese Room program (both in our heads and in an AI) could be dedicated to creating the experience of consciousness.
Searle has no substantial logical reply to this criticism. He openly takes it on faith that humans have consciousness, which is funny because an AI could say the same thing.