ace
6d ago
Snope's explanation of why the rumor is mixed is hilarious:
What's True
Harris did date former San Francisco Mayor and State Assembly Speaker Willie Brown for a period of time between 1994 to 1995. In his capacity as speaker, Brown appointed her to two political posts — first to the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, and then to the Medical Assistance Commission.
What's False
Although Brown was technically still married during the time period that he dated Harris, he had been estranged from his wife Blanche Brown for more than a decade. Harris' first, successful run for office in 2003 happened well after the relationship ended, and Harris sought to distance herself from Brown.
So it's half true because Brown was estranged from his wife. LOL. The offensive part was trading sex for favors. The adultery is nobody's business but Mr. and Mrs. Brown.
ace
5d ago
I admit I had not heard of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki before.
Two U.S. officials said the intended target of the Oct. 14 airstrike was Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian who was a senior operative in Yemen’s al-Qaeda affiliate.
One administration official described the younger Awlaki as a bystander, in the wrong place at the wrong time. “The U.S. government did not know that Mr. Awlaki’s son was there” before the order to launch the missile was given, the official said.
Is that actually the best example you can come up with? I think it proves my point.
ace
5d ago
Fair enough. But you're the one who brought up the Obama administration by specifically claiming it used "torture and executions" (plural) as methods of political repression. To me "political" implies intra-country, not extra-national, but maybe you meant a more expansive definition of that word?
You talk abstractly about vague notions of 'political repression', but I have no idea who, concretely, you're talking about.
ace
5d ago
Yudkowsky believes:
- Human-value-aligned AIs make up a miniscule spec of the vast space of all possible minds, and we currently have no clue how to find one.
- We have to get the alignment of a super human intelligence AI right on the first try or all humans will die.
- Coordinating enough governments to enforce a worldwide ban on threat of violence of AI development until we learn how to build friendly AIs would be nice, but it's not politically tenable in our world.
- The people who are currently building AIs don't appreciate how dangerous the situation we're in is and don't understand how hard it is to get an aligned super human artificial intelligence aligned on the first try.
Given these propositions, his plan is to attempt to build an aligned super-intelligent AI before anybody else can build a non-aligned super-intelligent AI -- or at least it was. Given his recent public appearances, I get the impression he's more or less given up hope.
ace
2d ago
I was following your thought process until this:
Jews do not want white people behaving like Jews, and they will flex enormous political, economic, and cultural power to stop it from happening.
This is a wild statement that you need to proportionally support with citations.
This comment is unhinged. I'm reminded of the quote (paraphrasing) "You condemn a black-and-white morality as having only two colors; but you replace it with grey, which is only one."
To my knowledge, the Obama administration only sought the torture and execution of one US citizen on political grounds (Snowden). I'm quite happy to deny "moral community" to the nation's enemies, which is why I drew the line at US citizens.
Putin's Russia is wildly different. Take for instance Trump's election while Obama was in power. How does that fit into "Power suffers no competitors"?
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