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Artificial Intelligence Is Killing the Uncanny Valley and Our Grasp On Reality (wired.com)
rickih02 writes: In 2018, we will enter a new era of machine learning -- one in which AI-generated media looks and sounds completely real. The technologies underlying this shift will push us into new creative realms. But this boom will have a dark side, too. For Backchannel's 2018 predictions edition, Sandra Upson delves into the future of artificial intelligence and the double edged sword its increasing sophistication will present. "A world awash in AI-generated content is a classic case of a utopia that is also a dystopia," she writes. "It's messy, it's beautiful, and it's already here."
"The algorithms powering style transfer are gaining precision, signalling the end of the Uncanny Valley -- the sense of unease that realistic computer-generated humans typically elicit..." the article argues.
"But it's not hard to see how this creative explosion could all go very wrong."
"The algorithms powering style transfer are gaining precision, signalling the end of the Uncanny Valley -- the sense of unease that realistic computer-generated humans typically elicit..." the article argues.
"But it's not hard to see how this creative explosion could all go very wrong."
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They're not signalling the end of it, they might well be crossing it.
The uncanny vally will stil lexist even if we're capable of doing more than hitting the bottom of it square on.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I think they just mean that you can't tell the difference between reality and fakery.
If you can't tell it's AI generated just train another AI to recognize that it was generated.
Using Hill-Climbing to escape the Uncanny Valley... it's such a bad play on words I can't look at it as ingenious.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
As most people seem to have a SEVERELY tenuous grasp on reality as it is. So what?
As I see it, if there are any dangerous repercussions, it'll simply act as chlorination of the gene pool.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
State of the art machine intelligence is "machine intuition". Bots copy and remix the corpus matched to context, but we're still miles away from an observable thread of thought. It will just mimic and more or less randomly remix the corpus - basically replay thoughts of somebody else. In a crude sense, it's just very sophisticated markov model, to the point it will reasonably past turing test on a youtube comment level
This is not limited to text, a fashion or food instagram is even more trivial with current tools. Good example of this is Spiderman Elsa (which I suspect is made with good old honest-to-god sweatshop labor, not a bot), but the model of social spam has shown an immense profitability potential already in a format far more sophisticated than appealing to lowest sexual urges.
The good thing about this is that this will spell an early end to shallow internet memetics once advertising world discovers chatbots and context-aware media remix bots. No more need to bribe lowkey ecelebs to astroturf your product, when you can just unleash fake users in number. Even if the quality on average will be sub-par, statistically some will always get a traction if you spawn population large enough.
It's a post-scarcity scenario for internet drivel in a cost model where people engaged in drivel for social bond and validation, both points being moot when it's a machine on the other end.
This can lead to two possible outcomes:
1. The cancer spreads, remember the south park episode about living ads? This is it. People will literally lose grasp on reality and will feel about adverts as if they were people..
2. It's a chemo which will bring us back to 1993. Folks will recognize low effort posts lost all of its shreds of utility for validation, pushing the bar for social network posts a lot higher (low effort posts being implicitly assumed a bot when it becomes a common case).
In either case, there will be constant market pressure for "better ads" as users adapt, there will be this arms race for ever better "living ad" until the bots start having so much grasp of context we'll enter a very weak GAI era.
Yeah, I've been high before, who hasn't?
People who claim "thaaaa AI is gunna keeell us all" should be laughed at, instantly, and mocked until they leave the community at large.
The problem with that is that the idea that AI will kill us all is perfectly legitimate. It's not the only possible outcome, but it is a possible outcome. History is full of examples of technically superior nations becoming dominant. What happens when it's not a nation on attack, but a pervasive technology that can self-replicate?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"A world awash in AI-generated content is a classic case of a utopia that is also a dystopia," she writes. "It's messy, it's beautiful, and it's already here."
It's called FoxNews.
Damn, sorry, that one is done with Artificial Stupidity, my bad.
There are 2 types of advertising.
1. To get the word out that a product exists, or a special price is in effect. This is fact based, here's the product, here's an honest depiction of what it does, here's the real price with no catches, etc.
2. To maximize the number of buyers, everything else be damned (whether that be usefulness of the product to the buyer, ethical boundaries, everything). This is usually all lies. Lies about specs, lies about special hidden terms, lies about quality, lies about everything.
When you realize this, the method does not really matter. An AI that's actually helpful to the buyer, finding deals is a great thing. One that lies and says buy from Jeff Bezos' fiefdom because it's the best deal vs. one that lies and says buy from Eric Schmidt's fiefdom because it's the best deal, all the while pretending to be looking out for the buyer's interests, is obviously not good.
"But it's not hard to see how this creative explosion could all go very wrong."
No. It is VERY HARD to see how this could go wrong.
You mean, computer can generate an entire movie without having to hire real actors? So Hollywood movie stars can't make millions anymore? Cry me a river.
This would be just as bad, which is to say not at all, as computers able to generate the sound of musical instruments which normal person cannot distinguish from real recordings. (Gee! Computer can generate a "fake" recording of an orchestra playing Bach symphonies! Aren't you afraid now?) It allowed music writers to compose and create music recordings (and put on YouTube) even though he cannot play any of the instruments in the score, including synthetic singers singing the song that goes with it. Is that bad?
In the future, there could be many more solo "movie creators" who would, by his/her own effort, create an entire movie. Much like writers writing up a whole novel. It will take out all the middle man like the movie studio. This can only be good for humanity.
Oliver.
Most people have never been able to do that. I mean, just look at how popular religion is.
What if you're working for a big company, and your boss Skypes you from his house, and says it somewhat irregular, but there's an important invoice that needs to be paid right now. He's e-mailing you the invoice right now, and he assures you it's legit and urgent.
Well, it's not your boss but a foreign hacker who used a couple of facebook photos to fake a live conversation.
I am sick and tired of these bullshit announcements. Usually, you just find somebody that wants to get rich without actually contribution to society or some "journalist: that wants a cheap story. Basically nothing of these predictions comes true in the time-frame announced, if ever.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
We live in a world where Warner Bros. just spent millions trying to shop out Superman's mustache to spectacular failure. Disney's Grand Moff Tarkin was even worse. If these titans of the entertainment industry can't pull off a canny reproduction with their hand-crafted flagship products then I really think we'll have to worry about defeating Skynet before we'll have to worry about 'AI' defeating the uncanny valley.
No different than your boss sending you an email asking you to do the same thing. Except the email is spoofed and coming from a hacker.
People who claim "thaaaa AI is gunna keeell us all" should be laughed at, instantly, and mocked until they leave the community at large. "We cannot predict what will happen -- but here's my obviously accurate prediction!". Total bullshit.
You're right. We cannot predict what will happen. That includes you too. Perhaps you should remember that before mocking those who may in fact be accurately predicting a dystopian future. The worst-case scenario is still defined as a valid scenario.
I find it rather ironic that we're watching the future that George Orwell prophesied over half a century ago come to fruition more and more each day, but for some fucking reason people still firmly believe that James Cameron's Terminator could never become a reality. Have you not seen what humanity often does with technology? The first fucking thing out of a governments mouth is usually "yeah it's cool, but can we weaponize it?"
Total bullshit? The four most expensive words in history will likely be our epitaph; I Told You So.
woke af
Autistic Singularity is best Singularity.
The number of people that would trust a video call with someone they know is substantially larger than people who believe a random e-mail, especially if both are coming from a home address.
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None of the examples from the article are very convincing, even at these poststamp resolutions with massive compression artifacts. The whole point of the uncanny valley is that the last mile is very hard. I'm sure that it's all very impressive, but it's a bit early to say that they've crossed the uncanny valley. They better get close to the valley first.
...mostly our craving for more and more entertainment.
We're getting increasingly bored with our lives, we've never had it this good before in any century, we have all the luxuries of the modern world. From birth we're literally given a tablet computer where we can interact with whatever is crawling around on the screen, we're constantly connected to everything and everyone around us on an smartphone or similar devices - and it's addictive, and it's not necessarily in a good way.
A.I. can indeed create wonderful alternate realities - but even before that, we have had so many creative artists already creating those alternate realities for us in video games, this isn't going to decrease - this will only increase, and our demand for new content has never been bigger than it is now.
With the growing advances in technology, we're seeing more and more jobs replaced by both automation and A.I. This means we're going to have a LOT more spare time on our hands, and what to do with all of that time? The world has never seen such luxury, but - is it really good for us?
We all know that videogames can keep us mentally active, so in a way there's an upside to that, especially for elderly people. But all this sitting in front of a smartphone screen, computer screen - even at work, has some serious physical health implications (hence why many game dev. studios actually demand a fitness program for their employees) that it's not heading anywhere good, but we can change this, we just need to realize what it does to our bodies and our evolution.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
All of the claims about "fake news" could come to a head here really soon with more extreme left and right news sites/blogs putting out fake speeches and audio bites that have been created using this new technology. This tech is really going to muddy the waters on social media and will be utilized by movements and countries to spread disinformation. The more legitimate news outlets will spend more time fighting this disinformation instead of reporting on the actual events that are going on.
I think ultimately what we'll see is that other companies will come along offering services that archive and perform various match tests against sound bites and recorded speeches. You'll be able to confirm if the video clip you just saw actually happened and if so, when and where it occurred. Without something like this, we all will be lost in a see of fake speeches and events. I expect the government will get involved in this and the Library of Congress will be tangentially involved in the collection, storage, and verification; but I don't think any of this will be taken seriously until politicians on both sides of the aisle get burned by fake creations.
The giveaway will be that the boss is actually Spiderman, and a pregnant Elsa is in the background being menaced by the Incredible Hulk.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Currently, not a lot of people are used to put doubt into video (or even real-time face-to-face video) because the technology to fake it realistically enough has only started very recently to become cheap enough to be a worthy try for an attacker: And it will still be a little bit more time until it start getting used in real-time (basically once " ${price of renting cloud GPU time to run the neural net} ${money that can be made in such attempts}" ).
Once awareness is raised, society will eventually adapt and only the most gullible will fall for the tricks while our successor on /. will wonder why not more people are using whatever authentication is the most common for video chatting.
A bit like how a couple of decades ago, every body was aware of signature forging and wouldn't trust a simply hand written note, but would fall for attempt at phone-calls social engineering (i.e.: impersonating a general role by being a good actor, back at a time where the phone quality would barely let you recognise a voice reliably).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So now things that look like photographs and video clips are really cartoons... so what?
We we foolish to believe them in the first place because we never new when pictures were staged.
So photographs and video aren't evidence anymore and never should have been.
It is 2017 and the Uncanny Valley is very much still alive. AI isn't real.
Or it might be the end of comments sections. Consider this scenario:
Someone develops and publishes a comment-bot AI. It's not a general-purpose AI, but you can configure it with a position to promote and point it to a site, and it will then start posting unique comments promoting the view, and posting rebuttals to anyone who opposes the view. It's not going to pass for human in a conversation, but in single posts it'll appear human most of the time.
First thing that happens? Joe's Pizza unleashes a hundred instances to tell the world how great their pizza is. AI spam. But this is hard spam to get rid of, because it's constantly changing: This AI learns how anti-spam measures work. CAPTCHA tests get even more annoying for a while. But that's ok: The internet is used to spam. Joe's Pizza gets a lot of hate.
Then an election rolls around. Say, a US presidential election.
Suddenly, millions of instances appear - half of them promoting the Republicans, and half the Democrats. Comment threads all over the internet become fifty-pages of almost fully automatically generated text, flooding out any human voice. Both parties deny such underhanded techniques, of course - and perhaps even truthfully, as fingers are pointed to independent pressure groups or the governments of other countries as a possible source.
Meanwhile, the Church of the Easily Offended gets their running. They set a few thousand running - their job is to identify 'inappropriate' material - anything that offends their religion, or standards of decency or of clean language - and submit reports or write angry letters to site operators. In an amusing irony, the church website shortly has to close their own comments section because of the millions of bots now searching the internet for church comments pages and posting about why Islam is the true religion.
In the end the only option is to drop anonymous comments entirely, and tie any comments into verified accounts established with proof of identity.
What if your boss, his house, the company, the invoice, the foreign hacker, and Facebook are all fake computer-generated simulations?
Whoa!
My bet would be on internet social groups shrinking instead. The wider world becomes less coherent as people are more likely to find their particular insular bubble and stick to it. Like recent generations unable to fathom parents making their kids play outside all day, it'll be hard to understand why anyone would want to deal with the spam, the scams, and the infuriatingly opinionated.
The most annoying thing for me is when I'm having to do some particular task (like moving house, changing apartments, looking for a new job), LinkedIn starts providing "helpful" articles like "now is not the time to move house" or "now is not time time to look for a new job" or "why you shouldn't accept a job unless you see where you are going to work"
I've also had messages appear to be from people I know, but sound completely out of context for what they would say, and after confirming with them, those message were fake. As far as I'm concerned now, I regard any kind of advice from social media to be as reliable as that from an Ouija board or a carnival fair fortune teller.
Then I would start meditating on Cartesian Doubt, then decide to explode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
When it arrives without his digital signature, the message ID gets forwarded to IA as a spearfishing attack and they pull it off the server and dissect it to find out where it came from. And even if it does arrive with his digital signature, the message ID gets forwarded to IA as a spearfishing attack, because invoices never come to me, and my boss knows that.
because invoices never come to me, and my boss knows that.
Obviously, they're going to target the person that deals with the invoices. It was an example. Feel free to come up with better examples that relate to your own life. E.g. wife calling up that she forgot the alarm code.
Um, look at voters in the US. Facebook's algorithms helped influence the election...isn't that AI running the country?
Being able to make their biblical canon truths appear realistic using state of the art computer technology, while convincing their flocks of sheep to live lives making them easy marks for fleecing or political manipulation.
For someone with a regional view of the universe, it would be very easy to convince them of the flat earth theory, or the possibility of praying to god to open a path through the sea thanks to computer generated video footage that makes it seem completely real. And people who don't understand that computers can simulate realities that don't and can't exist according to observed and tested physics of the real universe will believe that if they can see it, it is true, even while their same scripture asks them to be wary of being lead astray by (insert boogeyman here), even though the most likely place for an evil agent to lead them astray would be in a desecrated church, by perverting their own god's words, or most likely, by impersonating a well respected priest, pastor, or preacher and swaying them with their silver tongue.
But hey, as long as they feel favored in this life, they don't really care if the contract involved signing with blood, now do they? I wonder if anyone every considered that the contracted signed with blood might have been a metaphor for not committing violence against others in order to improve your own lot in life...
Captcha: 'torches'.
Comment threads all over the internet become fifty-pages of almost fully automatically generated text, flooding out any human voice.
You didn't need AI for that, without CAPTCHAs most comment fields would be overrun by bots already, even though it would be junk posts. And the nuclear arms race there continues.
In the end the only option is to drop anonymous comments entirely, and tie any comments into verified accounts established with proof of identity.
Maybe, but that alone doesn't make the public debate great. Very often it's taken over by extremists on both sides that aren't interested in a debate and are willing to post dozens of replies on a single issue. I've seen way too many comment fields essentially turn into a shouting match between the same dozen people or so. You still need some sort of system to promote the quality posts that actually reflect some thought so the debate doesn't drown. And if you have that, AI pot shots wouldn't matter that much since they'd be very thin on substance.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's not KILLING anything.
Killing means terminating the life of a living organism.
#DeleteFacebook
It's easy, really. We all learned that between 1993 and 2002.
Trust no one.
#DeleteFacebook
We have been able to fake documents and books for centuries now. Intensive scrutiny by dozens of experts still hasn't resolved the authenticity of the Voynich manuscript. Photographs have been manipulated for decades. We are now automating the process and can manipulate video. Other than an explosion of possible fakes, this issue isn't new.
Hard atheists who claim to have all the answers (outright deny any alternative) are super rare. Hard theist seems to be the default position. You insist you cannot possibly wrong, since your 'clearly' right, having thought about it for a bit.
Show some humility and people might begin to take you seriously.
Godel assures us machines cannot post "unique" content ... assuming promotionally unique subsumes on meaningful. What remains? Instantiated noise ?? Or knock yoself out on copy-me-2 !
If you took 10 minutes to think about philosophy (translated: the love of knowledge) you'd stumble upon the fact that the universe was clearly created.
If you took a fee years to study and really understand logic, reason, and the scientific method, you'd stumble upon the fact that all claimed "evidence" for a "created universe" is in fact nothing more than a gargantuan argument from ignorance.
If you reject religion you should also reject theists like Newton and LeMaitre and start from scratch.
Only theists think this way. Once you classify someone as a heathen, you must automatically reject anything they've ever done or said. Rational people do not think that way. I am perfectly fine with accepting Newtons contributions to mathematics and physics without also having to accept his musings on alchemy and religion. I don't subscribe to your absurd absolutism.
I'd say atheism is the hallmark of the uneducated.
That must be why scientists are far more likely to be atheists than the general public, and why elite scientists are more likely to be atheists than scientists as a whole. Because scientists are clearly far less educated than Jim Bob the plumber, and elite scientists are obviously the most uneducated of all.
As soon as I hear someone is an atheist I know they're still on the bottom rung of the thinking ladder. Science and religion do not conflict despite what an edgy meme on Reddit may have led you to believe. God bless.
What you know and what you think you know are obviously two very different things.
May the FSM embrace you with his noodly love.
So I guess you're addressing yourself in your last line, too.
Um, look at voters in the US. Facebook's algorithms helped influence the election...isn't that AI running the country?
You mean Gore? Nah, he invented the internet but has delegated the day-to-day operations of the country to his inferiors.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Hi. Welcome to the internet. You must be new here.
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What about when you go outside? You know, that place with trees and grass and dirt and stuff.
Or the holographic principle:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
Most people have never been able to do that. I mean, just look at how popular religion is.
And atheism, for that matter ....
Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas...for it is the assertion of a universal negative. - G. K. Chesterton
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Hard atheists who claim to have the answers are rare. The problem are the ones that don't claim to have the answer, they just assert that your answer is wrong.
Atheism is not an assertion, it is the rejection of the theist assertion.
Personally I would think the 'real' god would be more pissed about the people belonging to the other 80% of religions in the world (and therefore worshiping someone other than him) as opposed to the people that did not choose to participate.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
So their tech for eliminating The Uncanny Valley, and turning a horse in to a zebra, is to set the video quality to "potato"? Sorry, but anything looks real when filmed at 100x100 resolution and upscaled.
When my boss -- Sally Johnson (from Atlanta) --
asks me to "kindly do the needful and remit the payment", I'll take a screenshot, laugh, and ignore it.
People who dismiss religion so easily display a total lack of discernment and intelligence. If you took 10 minutes to think about philosophy (translated: the love of knowledge) you'd stumble upon the fact that the universe was clearly created. After that you're automatically a theist and just spending your time trying to describe the Creator.
If you took another 10 minutes to think about philosophy, you'd stumble upon the "Noble Lie" - a myth propogated to promote peace or harmony. Thus religion was born - a pious fiction created to calm man's terror of the unknown, and prevent divisive clash over questions like, "What is my purpose" and "What is the meaning of life" and "Where did we come from?"
You claim that atheism is the hallmark of the uneducated - I'd claim that sweeping generalizations utilizing logical fallacies are the hallmark of the uneducated.
The greatest lie ever foisted upon this world was getting people to admit Satan doesn't exist.
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by belief in a higher power.
Thankfully, demographics agree with me and eventually you will be purged as the muslims will most likely off fools like yourself.
No, it the only possibility given a rational consideration of reality. All religions are delusional, and many are dangerous and deadly.
It looks like the author has a hard time with reality, short sightedness is both a blessing and a curse; like supporting child acused molesters that run for political office.
Nonsense, it is the rational viewpoint that imaginary beings only exist in the imagination of deluded people.
A near majority of a population can be engineered out of reality ALREADY and it's been going on in the USA since Ronald Reagan -- the 1st big proof of success. It has just progressing further since. Eventually, election fraud will not be required... especially if you weaken opposition resources enough. If the two corrupt parties combine you would easily have a large majority of people out of touch with reality.
China is doing some-- but the true pioneers are the Americans who are showing how to control the masses openly. Hacking around the free press "firewall" to authoritarian control.
And he manages to say that with a straight face, with you know who in office!
If you're suspicious and want to confirm it, you'd turn around and call him back, wouldn't you? Right now, it's a lot easier to spoof a call to you than to intercept calls going to your boss's house, but how long will that remain the case? Once the spoofers can spoof the confirmation too, it's all over.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Atheism is a null hypothesis. If you do not understand that, you do not understand science.
More speculative nonsense from the tech community which has a tendency to label its own misconceptions and delusions as universal truth. Yaaawn. You will be so happy when you finally leave puberty.
Imagine the bullshit election propoganda of fake âhidden camerasâ(TM) published by the zealots on both sides so obsessed with winning at all costs thet they dont care about eviscerating and disenfanchising the voters. Eventually with all the accusations, denials, lawsuits for defamation; in the end we will be no better off than one run by big brother. And that will be double plus ungood.
Shared alarm codes can be procedurally generated. If the procedure incorporates a time element (such as the current month), then it will automatically change as well. Sure it's security by obscurity, but it does mean that in this case you'd just have to say "It's December now, remember?" or something along those lines. To an attacker, that just indicates you change your codes every month, and won't directly give them entry. If she still "can't remember" something you've been doing for years, then I'd have to reach her by other channels before I'd transmit that information (unless she used the "panic phrase").
Panic phrases have to be changed after any publicly observable use, of course. For the "pay a bill right now" case, a panic phrase would be a good step as well. If the "boss" doesn't say it, don't perform the request.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I wanted the studio version of a song. As an experiment, I tried to get Alexa to play this song, and Alexa would only play the live version. ... A friend tells me his Tesla model X insists he's on the access road, randomly, while he's on the express lane, so the X keeps slamming on the brakes as the access road speed limit is 35, vs 55...
It's gonna be a looong time till AI ... they'll look like the mustache scene on silicon valley ...
Governments, corporations and others who want to manipulate the public certainly have good reasons to develop AI's that pass the Uncanny Valley test.
For a lot of average people, though, I suspect a supremely uncomplicated use: make me a robot I enjoy fucking, maybe conversing with once in a while if I'm lonely, and that doesn't kick up a fuss when it gets turned off and put away in the cupboard.
Human relationships are complex and difficult. They usually require two very different individuals to compromise on what they will tolerate to make the other person happy. It's hard work, and inevitably, there's drama.
There is going to be a huge, profitable market for a "sexbot" that would allow a person to meet a "dumbed down" version of their social and physical needs without the necessity of involving another person in their situation.
Let me put it this way: Just about anybody who has ever had an Italian grandmother's lasagna will agree there's nothing better. A good Italian restaurant might come close, but not the store-bought frozen ones. Even so, add a little Parmesan and maybe throw a little red wine into the pan while it's cooking, and the store-bought version isn't all that bad. And it only takes two minutes of effort and 20 minutes in the microwave, versus hours of making the sauce, making the pasta, combining the fillings and all the rest. Not a bad trade-off when all you really want is a nice hot meal without any fuss and bother.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
And if you have that, AI pot shots wouldn't matter that much since they'd be very thin on substance.
Except that you're replying to someone who postulated
It's not going to pass for human in a conversation, but in single posts it'll appear human most of the time.
And therein lies the problem. Once bots can reasonably approximate the median person on a forum, I think humans chatting in forums will rapidly disappear. Bots will be able to post far faster than humans, and once you have a couple of competing bots, the bots will have hashed the point out and will have moved on before the human gets done pecking at the keyboard.
Now, I don't know if this is a bad thing or a good thing, to be honest.There are few places like /. (and even here it's got some issues) where reasonable long-form discussion happens on the internet. Most of the time, as you note, it's taken over by extremists on both side. And most of the time, they don't have a lot of quality in their posts. It stands to reason that when we have AI able to carry on a reasonable conversation that we'll also have AI able to determine when non-reasonable conversation is happening. (I.E. bot or human just trying to shout down others.) In that case, we'll finally have a somewhat fair moderation system for once.
Assuming moderately functional AI posting, and moderately functional AI moderating, and you end up in a situation where you'll be able to tune the AI to have somewhat deep and interesting conversations. Humans can participate, but more than likely most humans will just consume that. Add in animation crossing the uncanny valley, and suddenly you have emergent talking heads for every subject in the universe. And while you can poison the underlying data, if you don't, suddenly the quality of what's being discussed goes up, as compared to the current human debaters.
And while this can (and will) be used for ill, I can't help but be optimistic that exposing millions more people to reasonable and factual debate might be a good thing. Of course, if the current state of TV is any indication, what people want is their tribe shouting down the other tribe, so maybe I shouldn't be so optimistic. Although if this comes to pass, we'll at least be able to make AI able to enjoy watching the good stuff, so that's something.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Considering that many phone calls are now voip, I would not wonder about vulnerabilities in your router that can be exploited to reroute your calls elsewhere.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I rather would prefer that all religious people agree that there is only one god, and that he/she walks in many avatars and names.
There is no need to hunt or convert other people to other religions.
Bottom line they are all the same anyway: worship your parents, love your kids, live a righteous life.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
They tried. Or at least the businesses that profit from ads on fake news sites did. What they found was that anything they tried got debunked in a matter of hours. It just didn't work. There's lots of theories why, you can Google the discussion. It's too controversial and this post is already likely to start a troll storm. But the fact remains fake news just doesn't work for the left.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Sometimes I don't even know why Slashdot exists.
The whole point of "the future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed" is that "miles away" is not a viable unit of measure.
Generative adversarial networks are the Ajax of DNN 1.0.
I was reading O'Reilly's new book the other day, and he was talking about how little use was made of XMLHttpRequest because people were suffering from the last-cognitive-mile problem, until suddenly it was everywhere (with a cynical conference branding cherry on top).
Just wait. The GANs are already here—and they are coming soon.
DNN = deep neural networks.
About 10 years ago a programmer friend showed me a program he wrote. he scanned in part of a book then showed me a movie of it So you can take your favorite book and turn it in to a movie.Put in your picture and you are the hero
Why is that a problem? If you tell me that the distance between the earth and the moon is 5 miles, do I have to know the actual distance in order to tell you that you're wrong? Why do you think that "I don't know, and you don't either" is "a problem"?
If you dumb down a populace enough, they can't tell the difference anyway.
The claims of anyone possesing a fully functional AI are laughable already, but I suppose if we keep telling folks we have them, they'll eventually believe it.
While true, humans are a visual species, so pictures are much more convincing than words.
OTOH, it's my understanding that handling things like faces and hair properly in a video is still so expensive that it will see minimal use...this year. Of course, it's already December.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The best thing about your religion (whatever it may be) is that it will die out someday, even if it lasts until the heat death of the universe.
..and we're the sheep. The singularity will arrive not with a bang but with the soft sound of us ceding little bits of volition and self-determination to AI because they "know best" - and likely truly will. What scares me most is the blind human faith in algorithmic certainty, where "certainty" is far from certain.
Organization? You must be joking..
That explains AmiMoJo
Sally Johnson
Sounds like appropriate slang for "chick with a dick" - going to start using that.
One barely needs to be awake to the present day to see how this can go wrong, because we're already living it.
Next to Samoa and Saudi Arabia (and one or two others), America is pretty much the most obese country in human history. Did the bariatric hover-chairs in WALL-E seem altogether implausible? No, they didn't. (Well, not unless unless you think too much about the hovering part.)
Evolution equipped us with a survival heuristic: pursue sugar.
And then, practically overnight, what had been a scarce resource for a hundred million years became almost too cheap to meter.
Evolution equipped us with a social survival heuristic: monitor the other person's facial expression when you flap your gums. In traditional social settings, communities with fewer than 200 core members, you can guarantee that what goes around, comes around. Elephants have long memories, but they don't hold a candle to tribal grievance.
And then, practically overnight, society's primary discourse setting turns into an adolescent fucktard's wildest wet dream.
Meanwhile, back at Gradient HQ, Facebook invents algorithms to prioritize outrage sugar. ("Sugar!" is the reported to be the strongest expletive ever uttered by Ernest Orlando Lawrence, even when he dropped the priming mechanism of a hydrogen bomb on his own toes, not counting that one time Leslie Groves put his military boot up Orlando's ass over the contaminated cooling oil in the first edition magnets installed at Y12.)
You don't think it launches a whole new can of worms when Pretty Woman raises the curtain on three different degrees of Revelations: one for the early evening show, one for the late evening show, and one for the xtra-late night show (that squeaking sound when you walk out of the theatre?—this time it's not sugar)? Bonus: if you bring your VR goggles, you can complete the Terminator fantasy questionnaire before the movie begins, and with the SQUID hairnet accessory, it can be auto-calibrated to your exact mental response pattern throughout.
First truly sentient thought of human technological matrix: be damn careful what you wish for, because no concerted counter-offensive against sugar has ever gone well for the first hundred years.
And how is that going?
So, in summary, I completely agree with you, with only one proviso: that more of what we want proves to be worth having.
Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas.
Atheism is a belief based on an unsubstantiated claim and as such is no different than religion.
Agnosticism: being smart and sane enough to admit that you don't fucking know.
No, the biggest lie is that Satan as an external, independent evil exists. This is false, there is nothing as evil as what resides in the human heart. It is through constant vigilance and discipline that every one keeps their ill ways & thoughts in check.
There's that but it doesn't even have to go that far; machine logic (I refuse to say "AI") guided by people will be bad enough. The machines don't need to "wake up" or develop their "own" agenda to be a threat to the human race; the humans controlling them can ensure that easily enough.
> Atheism is a belief based on an unsubstantiated claim
Atheism is just about belief. What it's based on is irrelevant.
> and as such is no different than religion.
What's different is that to an atheist, God's existence is no more important a question than the existence of any other thing.
A-bigfootism, a-leprechaunism and a-unicornism are all no different than religion.
I think the real problem here is that we're on the verge of being able to "manufacture fake news" that is indistinguishable from real news, in both visuals and writing.
Like, think for a moment where an AI can write a press release, given nothing but a subject, verb and object. EG "Donald Trump, handjob, Horse", and not only can it create a video of this, it can write a press release. The only way we'll be able to debunk AI manufactured fake news content is by actually having living people present live press releases that the AI can not manufacture in real time.
If it's just AI creating "childrens videos", that's another monster, one that is easily solved by removing the motivation (eg no ads on childrens content.)
But the flip of that is also slipperly slope, videos about children being hurt, assulted, etc, may be a good way for AI to deflect attention from serious abuse to real children.
Atheism is a belief based on an unsubstantiated claim and as such is no different than religion.
No, atheism is the lack of a belief. The prefix "a" means "without". A-theism. Literally "without theism".
Agnosticism: being smart and sane enough to admit that you don't fucking know.
And in this case, the prefix "a" still means "without". A-gnosticism. Literally " without knowledge".
Ironically enough, the term "gnosticism" itself refers to religious ideas. Both gnosticism and theism effectively describe the same thing - religious beliefs and religious knowledge. So saying you're an atheist is saying you have no religious beliefs, and saying you're agnostic is saying that you have no religious knowledge.
Unfortunately you don't get to be a smug holier-than-thou douche if you acknowledge that the terms are essentially identical, so many people like to pretend that atheism is some strong antireligious ideology, while agnosticism is a middle-of-the-road kind of "open mindedness".
They also like to ignore the fact that atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. One can have belief but not knowledge, or have no belief and no knowledge.
> No, atheism is the lack of a belief. The prefix "a" means "without". A-theism. Literally "without theism".
Well, without bickering about the various definitions of "atheism" (whole books have been written about it), historically is has meant denial of the existence of God, up until around the Enlightenment.
The root is "a-theos" ("without God") with an -ism attached to it.
I'm all for considering different viewpoints and nuances, but the upshot is the same, in that if you ask a small-a atheist (lacking belief) or "strong" (explicit) Atheist "do you believe in God?" they will both answer "no."
Saying "no I don't believe in god" is not the same as saying "I believe there is no god". They are two completely different statements.
The vast majority of people who call themselves "agnostic" also do not believe in any gods.
You sound like real fun at parties, what with all the repressed standing around envying others ability to enjoy themselves.
You sound really fucked up.
I thought we learned this in the 1980s in the BBS scene!
The logical problem with it is that you only can know that you don't know, you can't know what anybody else knows.
Proving negatives isn't possible.
Which means the recipient will be familiar with the ways their company actually handles invoices.
Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas.
Atheism is a belief based on an unsubstantiated claim and as such is no different than religion.
Agnosticism: being smart and sane enough to admit that you don't fucking know.
This is why Atheists are generally disgruntled Theists who are simply against what they used to be a member of, and probably still believe much of. Often they're actually cryptotheists who simply believe that the churches are full of liars, but actually do believe in the root metaphysics.
Atheist as a word would seem to mean "non-Theist," but it really means anti-theist, and agnostic means non-theist. Unfortunately this confuses many people. But it isn't actually very complicated.
I'm pretty sure this is already well under way.
The only refinement I'd add to your model is: trollbots. Assuming your goal is to influence actual humans (who get to vote), then good trolling is a far more effective method than just rehashing party talking points. Have you noticed how the Russians put out posts and ads ostensibly backing BLM and Hillary with the aim of confirming peoples' prejudices against them? Those posts were significantly more powerful than anything positive exhorting the other side.
Sure I can. I may not know how far away the moon is, but I know it's not 5 miles. If he claims that it is 5 miles, then I know that he's wrong, and that he also doesn't know how far it is.
Unless he does know the real distance but is just lying to me when he says it's 5 miles. In which case he's still wrong, and also a liar.
Some people have a vast amount of knowledge about Magic: The Gathering. Doesn't mean the knowledge is proof of anything. Same with your philosophical conclusions.
> Saying "no I don't believe in god" is not the same as saying "I believe there is no god".
Sure, in pedantic logical philosophical/theological terms, they are not the same. That's why all those books have been written on the topic, not leastwise to try to get a solid grasp on the slippery definition of "believe."
However, in practical layman's terms, they are equivalent. Nobody who says "I don't believe in god" is simultaneously going to claim "I believe there's (at least one) god," which would be the contradiction of "I believe there is no god."
That's pretty much what was posted.
This is why Atheists are generally disgruntled Theists who are simply against what they used to be a member of, and probably still believe much of. Often they're actually cryptotheists who simply believe that the churches are full of liars, but actually do believe in the root metaphysics.
[Citation needed]
Atheist as a word would seem to mean "non-Theist," but it really means anti-theist, and agnostic means non-theist. Unfortunately this confuses many people. But it isn't actually very complicated.
Apple as a word would seem to mean apple, but it really means banana, and orange means pineapple. Unfortunately this confuses many people. But it isn't actually very complicated.
Based on the false premise they deserve worshiping.
Worship: the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity:
Don't think so.
You're arguing for the metaphor to be literally true, instead of arguing that the thing it is a metaphor for is true.
That's why you don't comprehend your own argument; you bait-and-switched yourself.
Hard atheists who claim to have the answers are rare. The problem are the ones that don't claim to have the answer, they just assert that your answer is wrong.
Your metaphor regarding the distance to the moon is irrelevant to the discussion of Atheists. If the moon is 5 miles away is measurable; you don't have to prove a negative there. You can prove a positive to show the claim is false! Arguments regarding religion, however, are not falsifiable. You can't prove negatives. You don't understand, but it is a real thing. Take just one science class in your life, please.
[Citation needed]
No, man, we're not on wikipedia, and claiming that personal observations and opinions require citation is idiotic; the citation would point to the thing you replied to, it was the primary document!
Fuck an A, man. Fuck an A.
No seriously, why are there so many upvoted comments about technology wanting to kill us or enslave us or people using it for malicious gains on this site? Like, what do you expect us to do anyway? Just pray that our all merciful and all knowing machine gods will take us to the digital promised land? Like has Nerddom literally become a cult now?
I do believe visual acuity is far less a mark of distinction for our species than verbal acuity.
Bullshit. Someone is shilling though...
Your primary document is your ass?
Neat.
I'm not arguing for any metaphor to be true; I'm pointing out that I do not need to have the answer in order to know that someone else's answer is wrong.
I don't know why you've got such a hardon for proving negatives, either. I'm well aware that you can't prove a negative. That has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion. You seem horribly confused.
Sure, in pedantic logical philosophical/theological terms, they are not the same.
No, in very real terms. I don't believe that there is life on Mars. But I also do not believe that there isn't life on Mars. I don't believe that your real name is John. But I also don't believe that your real name isn't John.
In the absence of sufficient evidence, the default position is a lack of belief. And "lack of belief" is not the same as "believing the opposite to be true".
Nobody who says "I don't believe in god" is simultaneously going to claim "I believe there's (at least one) god," which would be the contradiction of "I believe there is no god."
Of course not, that would be contradictory. But many people will say "I don't believe there is a god" as well as "I don't believe there aren't any gods", and those two positions are NOT contradictory.
Okay, but then you're not talking about atheists anymore, you're talking about agnostics or 'non-theists.'
Okay, but then you're not talking about atheists anymore, you're talking about agnostics or 'non-theists.'
And we have come full circle. As I said earlier, "atheist" and "agnostic" are not mutually exclusive. And "non-theist" is the same as "atheist".
I think you're confused because you don't realize that the two terms answer different questions. As I said earlier, "theism" refers to belief, "gnosticism" refers to knowledge. If I ask you "do you believe there's a god" and you answer "I'm agnostic", you haven't actually answered the question. I didn't ask what you know, I asked what you believe.
It's nonsensical for you to say "you're not talking about atheists, you're talking about agnostics". A person can be both, or neither, or some combination of the two. Examples:
1. Don't believe in a god, don't know if there are any gods - atheist agnostic.
2. Do believe in gods, don't know there are gods - theist agnostic.
3. Do believe in a god, know there's a god - theist gnostic.
4. Don't believe in gods, know there are no gods - atheist with a very loose definition of the word "know".
Most people whom I've spoken to who identify as "agnostic" are both atheist and agnostic. They just don't like the word "atheist" because it has negative connotations due to centuries of demonization by various religions.
Verbal is more unique to our species, but we have a history of trusting our eyes, and being skeptical about what we're told that predates our appearance as humans. Having believable pictures lie to us is something that we haven't evolved to deal with. Logically we know it can happen, but we have to stop an think before we don't just believe. And when we take our mind off it we start believing again.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Oh, I know they're not mutually exclusive because they're orthogonal.
Atheism is about belief, agnosticism addresses knowledge.
So to say "I don't know" in answer to the question of whether god exists says nothing about your beliefs, as you pointed out.
To lack a belief tells says nothing about what you do believe, and unless you play semantic games, "atheism" means either you do not believe in god or you believe there is no god.
I only disagree that the statement "I do not believe in god" is equivalent to lacking a belief in god(s). In order to make the statement you have to have at least considered the concept, whereas a newborn baby or heathen may be entirely unfamiliar with the concept.
Of course if everyone agreed on these points, there'd be no debate. Yet there is, even after millennia of argument on the topic.
To lack a belief tells says nothing about what you do believe, and unless you play semantic games, "atheism" means either you do not believe in god or you believe there is no god.
Correct! "Atheist" is not a statement of belief. It is a statement of the lack of a belief.
Those who have a belief that no gods exist are also atheists, but only because they must inherently lack a belief in gods. That doesn't make their additional belief a part of atheism, though, just like gnosticism is not a requirement of theism.
I only disagree that the statement "I do not believe in god" is equivalent to lacking a belief in god(s). In order to make the statement you have to have at least considered the concept, whereas a newborn baby or heathen may be entirely unfamiliar with the concept.
Why you lack the belief isn't relevant to whether or not you believe, though. A newborn baby is an atheist. So is a "heathen unfamiliar with the concept". The reason they're atheists may be different than mine, but they are still atheists. Just like two theists might have different reasons for being theists, but they're both still theists.
Of course if everyone agreed on these points, there'd be no debate. Yet there is, even after millennia of argument on the topic.
With 7 billion people on this planet it would be a goddamn miracle if we all agreed on pretty much anything. I mean, there are still people who believe the earth is flat.
> Correct! "Atheist" is not a statement of belief. It is a statement of the lack of a belief.
Not quite. Put simply, you have to know whether you believe or not in order to answer the question. It's a subtle distinction, but an atheist can say "I do not believe" whereas a non-theist might not be able to say that.
How can you possibly not know if you believe something? If you believed it, you would know that you believe it. You can't believe something and not realise that you believe it.
In the end the only option is to drop anonymous comments entirely, and tie any comments into verified accounts established with proof of identity.
Only to get hacked and account info stolen from website. The only way we can win this is by not playing. So it is the end of comments sections when that happens.
watch and believe!
No. It is VERY HARD to see how this could go wrong.
You might want to look at your example again.
Your example is music writers can "compose and create music recordings (and put on YouTube) even though he cannot play any of the instruments", but what if youtubers can now click one button and the computer can compose and create music recordings even though he cannot play any instruments at all?
See what I did there? This is what we are doing with machine learning (the media calls them AI).
Imagine one day, no one will ever create/upload a video for youtube, instead the youtubers simply click one button to generate a video. So "solo movie creators", "writers" would no long exist, just algorithms and meat potatoes left.
That, the concept of taking out everyone and it's effect, is very wrong, at least for the existing system. Unfortunately, it is already happening. But real assure, regular robots and simple computer generators will take over before any real AI is completed.
Whether it's "good for humanity" however is a different question, as you could still prove that it is good for humanity even when it is wrong.
> How can you possibly not know if you believe something?
Do you believe in perifolgatrons?
No.
That's some hardcore "number of angels who can dance on a pinhead" stuff right there.
You sound like an agnostic. All the dedicated atheists I've known - I used to be in their club - believed with great certainty that there is no God.
Yeah, just a rhetorical question -- which of you, here, has 'lost your grasp on reality' due to any tech being produced, anywhere?
You don't think that Facebook has caused people to lose their grasp of reality?
Don't want to feed the troll here, but why is this BS on every post. Whoever is posting this needs to realize that a shoe-string (or any string) with a loop tied on each end can do the same thing a "bump stock" can do. Should we ban shoe strings, or lengths of normal string too? Do you even know what a bump stock is? The reason the DOJ & BATFE didn't ban them originally is because they do not alter the fire mechanism of the fire arm in any way, or change the rate of fire.
Drippy hippy twaddle.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This isn't science. It's speculation. You want 12A, just along the corridor.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The prefix "a" means "without". A-theism. Literally "without theism".
Aside from what the AC said - etymology is not the end of word knowledge. (A-theos)ism is an ism that is about a without-ness of god. A(theos-ism) is a lack of an ism about existence of god. Word coiners didn't consider scopes of their prefix a- or suffix -ism : so it can be used in both senses. If you want to be clear, be clear instead of harping on a single word. Not only can it be used in both senses, it is, if you read the literature.
Both gnosticism and theism effectively describe the same thing - religious beliefs and religious knowledge
Highly mistaken. In as much as gnosticism refers to religious ideas, God (and similar entities in different religions) is neither sufficient nor necessary for a religion. Original Buddhism was an atheistic religion. Clearly it was not agnostic, because it had religious ideas. On the other hand, belief that there is a God but doesn't ask you really to do anything particular is a largely held belief. This is a theism mixed with agnosticism.
Gnosticism has also referred to spiritual knowledge, not just religious ideas. In that sense too, it is compatible but not inseparable with theism.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Notice how ALL CGI in films looks unrealistic? As soon as something moves, you can see it isn't real, because the inertia and/or gravity models are incorrect. Look at all the movements of the apes in the recent Planet of the Apes movies, look at Gollum as he jumps down off a rock in Lord of the Rings - it is IMMEDIATELY obvious that what you are watching is fake, even though still frames look completely realistic.
Why are they doing this? Why are million dollar CGI companies producing CGI that is obviously fake, instead of CGI that looks like real life when it moves?
For any question there are an infinite number of possible answers. It's common to not know which is correct, but still be able to identify lots and lots of them that are clearly wrong. It would be really rare to have a question where you couldn't rule out anything at all.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by belief in a higher power.
Nothing to lose? Most religious systems come with restrictions. Depending on your religion, you could be losing bacon, caffeine, or alcohol, and that's just starting with the consumables.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Atheism is a belief based on an unsubstantiated claim and as such is no different than religion.
Aw, come on. This is a total straw man, and if you've seen even a single discussion on Slashdot before you should know that. Very few atheists are hard atheists who insist they know there is not. Almost all are soft atheists who say they do not believe. Lack of belief then tends to lead toward thinking and behavior which occurs as if God doesn't exist, because that's only logical. The only reason I've seen anyone insist on using the hard definition of atheism is so they can lump in all the soft atheists and use it as an excuse to call them all foolish and illogical. It's not constructive.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Losing your grasp on reality isn't something that could be observed within. ;-)
Not to mention you could lose your soul if you bet on the wrong higher power. What if the one real God is a jealous God?
Look at those millions of Hindus going to hell, just for believing in the religion their parents brought them up in...
I think it's highly likely that no gods exist, but anyone who claims complete certainty on the subject is delusional. And yes, there certainly are delusional atheists out there. Theists don't have the monopoly on it.
If you could define "spiritual" in any meaningful way, that might be an interesting discussion. You would be the first.
I kind of like the idea of an omnipotent but non-omniscient creator. Didn't really know what he was doing; wanted to see what happens.
After all, nobody's perfect, right? :)
All this artificial intelligence is driving me crazy!
"Whatever you can let be will let you be."
Maybe you should realize that perfect is not the enemy of good. Of course people can improvise ad hoc methods. That doesnâ(TM)t mean we shouldnâ(TM)t make it harder.
By the way, if bump stocks donâ(TM)t âoedo anythingâ, I.e. alter the rate of fire or change the mechanism, why are so many people adamant about not restricting them?
Like a 13 year old playing The Sims.
That would explain a lot!
Which higher power? God as defined by the Christians? Muslims? Jews? Jupiter? the Tao? the Buddha? the Flying Spaghetti Monster? the US Supreme Court (I'm fairly certain that exists, actually)?
Suppose there is a God, and God values intellectual honesty. Everyone who mostly tries to believe what is true goes to Heaven, and everyone who deliberately distorts their beliefs for possible gain goes to Hell?
If we go back to Pascal (you're echoing Pascal's Wager), we find that he did not believe there was a proof of God's existence, and therefore had respect for atheists. He believed that, once you admit God exists, it logically follows that his particular brand of Catholicism is true, for no reason I've ever found, so he didn't respect the Orthodox or the Jews or the Muslims or heretics. The wager only makes sense with a dichotomy like that.
Seriously, if you convince yourself that there is a God just in order to reap possible benefits, you're screwing up your karma and your following reincarnations. Or something.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
A look at a few statistics shows that the majority of the world population is seriously wrong about religion. Divide the population into Christians, Muslims, and others. None of these three is a majority of the population. Christians and Muslims have distinct beliefs that conflict.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Many people seem to think that saying "I don't believe in God." marks one as an atheist, and that's just a declaration of a lack of belief.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
This is not the case for any atheist I've known, heard about, or read about. People who believe in God but not churches or organized religions or whatever are not atheists in any sense of the word I've seen. Most atheists want to be left alone to not practice religion in peace, and only get outspoken and militant when that's not an option.
Now, Bertrand Russell claimed to find a difference between the thinking of ex-Catholic atheists and ex-Protestant atheists, but in neither case were they cryptotheists.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You've gotta watch out though. There's a really bright thing that you don't want to look directly at. There's other dangers, also, like wolverines and pigeons.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
A she-God is unacceptable. I'd be adversarial to it, case it existed.
If they know what a god is, it's a declaration of disbelief.
No, I let existing literature and dictionaries take the lead in defining existing words. I define only completely new words I coin, which is rare. If I start to define existing words, it creates too much confusion in an already confused discussion.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Worse, many people seem to think one word can have only one meaning.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Yeah, that's about what I figured. Like everyone else, you have no useful definition of the word; you just like the way it sounds.
An atheist is, by definition, one who lacks belief in gods. What about this is confusing you?
How do you define "useful definition" ?
For dictionaries, a definition is useful if it can help users understand some text they would not have understood as well without the dictionary definition. Assuming a definition that is useful falls under "useful definition", various dictionaries have a useful definition of the word.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Yes.
And by other definitions, it means something else.
1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki...
2. http://www.dictionary.com/brow...
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Not necessarily. I neither believe nor disbelieve that there's silicon-based life in the Universe, and I do know what that means (close enough, anyway). I need some sort of phrase to say that.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you say "I don't believe in silicon-based life," the common (informal) meaning is taken to be that you disbelieve in it, not that you "lack a belief."
If you don't know, you say something like "I don't necessarily believe in silicon-based life."
A useful definition would be one that points to a distinct, tangible concept. If you look up "spirituality" the definition is basically "belief in god and the soul and stuff". Earlier you made a distinction between spirituality and religion, but the dictionary definition doesn't give any basis for such a distinction. So, in the context of this discussion, a useful definition would be one which explains what you think spirituality is and how it differs from religion.
Wow, you didn't even come across "spiritual but not religious" in your extensive research ? This phrase is being used for decades to describe the distinction you seek. One of the specific language Wikipedia offered to redirect me from "spirituality" page to the page for "spiritual but not religious" : so i know it must have been hard for you to avoid. Google auto complete suggestions also shows it quickly enough.
I see that you are easily confused into thinking that one word can mean only one thing : that phrase is "popular culture" enough for your level of thinking. There are other ways of distinction i point to for advanced learners.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I came across it plenty of times, but nobody can tell me what it means. Just like you, here, are going on about how "spiritual but not religious" is this magical unicorn thing which is like all kinds of wow, but you can't actually explain what it is.
The fact that you can string some words together and act all superior about it doesn't mean that those words are meaningful in any way. I, too, can make up a bunch of words and then rant about how you just don't understand them. It's all meaningless if you can't explain them.
I came across it plenty of times, but nobody can tell me what it means
... And you write many other sentences to describe your lack of understanding of "spiritual but not religious". Fair enough.
"Nobody can tell me" means you asked a few people , went to a few webpages which try to describe it ? Do you have any specific questions / concerns about their treatment of this subject ?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
If you reject religion you should also reject theists like Newton and LeMaitre and start from scratch.
Only theists think this way. Once you classify someone as a heathen, you must automatically reject anything they've ever done or said. Rational people do not think that way. I am perfectly fine with accepting Newtons contributions to mathematics and physics without also having to accept his musings on alchemy and religion. I don't subscribe to your absurd absolutism.
Unfortunately the trend for topics in general, especially for the perpetually offended class, is that if a person commits a single faux pas then they should be banned for life from everything. It's a dumb approach I agree, and I push against it as much as possible.
Citations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... http://nymag.com/daily/intelli...
It means that pretty much every time anyone had ever said to me "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual", or "I don't believe in god but I'm spiritual", I have asked them "what do you mean by spiritual?"
And every time the only response has been either a blank stare, or the same kind of dancing around that you're doing now. Not a single person has ever given any kind of meaningful answer to that question. Which is why I said, multiple comments back, that if you did so you would be the first.
Now, this conversation is getting rather pointless, so I think I'm done with it. Unless your next response actually answers the question of what you think spirituality is and how it differs from religion, in which case I would be more than happy to discuss it with you.
Your call.
A huge amount of fake news has been created and will be created by people anyway. Not by AI and regardless of its existence. AI is only a tool that both can help us create malicious content, so it can be used to recognize and combat it.
It's been a while since I taught in kindergarten.
I already demonstrated how religion and theism are independent. Further :
1. Anything one is devoted to, could be a religion . http://www.dictionary.com/brow..., definition 6.
2. spiritual : definition 2 from http://www.dictionary.com/brow..., to some extent definition 1 too :
An attitude that one's body, or the physical reality is not as important as one's spirit, in, say, fighting a serious disease. Since one may not be devoted to this attitude , it may or may not be religious.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Ah, so now I understand. YOUR response has been a blank stare , like it has been here, because you didn't understand their answer to "what do you mean by spiritual".
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
You didn't understand what I said.
People who believe in God but not churches or organized religions or whatever are not atheists in any sense of the word I've seen.
Atheists are usually people who left the Church for reasons. They then adopt the dogma of their new anti-church group. Everything about their views is still in reference to that Church. That is why they want, as you say, "to be left alone to not practice religion in peace." That's their claim. But in the western world, none of these people are being denied that. And yet, they are in fact outspoken.
A person who is a Theist who is not disgruntled, who simply stops believing, doesn't turn into an "atheist." They turn into an "agnostic."
Atheists are bound to their purportedly-former religion by their opposition to it. They only thing that holds them "against" it is their cognitive dissonance; they have an internal struggle, and they're trying to resolve that by explicitly rejecting one side. But if they had succeeded in mastering their own thoughts, if they had succeeded at simply not believing in God, the struggle would have instantly stopped and they would have become unconflicted agnostics.
The valid scientific conclusion is that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven, and this non-answerability is the problem with the question. That is not at all the same as believing that the negative can be proven! Theists and Atheists share completely in their non-scientific insistence on claiming to have the answer to something not answerable. And it is easy to observe that the vast majority of Atheists are former Theists; and I would say, current Theists, because they still cling to the same cognitive dissonance that they learned from their religion.
Instead of assuming my words were nonsensical and replying anyways, consider parsing them until they make sense and that is the point at which you can start to even ask if you agree or not. If my words sound to you like they disagree withg everything you've known, heard about, or read about, you've either never read anything at all, or else you didn't understand me yet. Do better.
if bump stocks donâ(TM)t âoedo anythingâ, I.e. alter the rate of fire or change the mechanism, why are so many people adamant about not restricting them?
Because of the way they work, and what part of the firearm it is. If they are banned, it would set a bad precedent on being able to ban other cosmetic portions of firearms later on.
First, bump stocks are a specific shoulder-stock, which is not related to the firing mechanism or action of the firearm. There are already rules and laws restricting modifying the action, and firing mechanisms (trigger, sear, and some other parts) that cause the firearm to fire more than one cartridge per trigger pull and/or modifying the 'rate of fire' of the firearm.
Secondly, "bump fire stocks" still require, and maintain the 'fire a single cartridge per trigger pull' rule. They do not bypass this rule in any way, therefore should not be banned. The trigger is still being pulled once for each cartridge fired from said firearm.
If a ban were to be created for them, it would not be able to be written like other limitations already on the books, by restricting the firing alteration, or rate of fire alteration. They would literally have to ban a shoulder stock, and use some description of what that does (like sliding or some other feature). However, as these types of laws go, the wording chosen would also end up banning other items that do not function the same, but may meet one of the criteria that is used to define them, (for example, an adjustable stock also slides back and forth). Lawmakers seem to always get the gun laws wrong, because the things they try to ban (here in California all the time), are cosmetic and appearance items, meaning they ban features or looks of something, and end up being too specific, that another manufacturer will work around the description --or-- they write the law so vauge that is causes unrelated items and parts to also become illegal in addition to the specific thing they were targeting, and this almost always causes large swaths of gun owners to suddenly fall into an illegal category overnight (legally complient one day, and the next day felony possession).
This is why, not that I should have even answered an AC posted question anyway...
Sounds like you haven't met many atheists.
Incidentally, what is this "atheist dogma"? You could define an infinite number of new religions based on things you don't believe.