felis-parenthesis
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User ID: 660
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
Agreed. And that highlights a contradiction in the original post
General artificial intelligence could be capable of synthesizing the perspectives and contexts of every place and time into one universal viewpoint. Mapping out the elephant of the world with more objectivity seems more plausible than ever before.
The second sentence, with its "than ever before", is a nod to LLMs. But while LLMs are obviously intelligent, it is not the kind of intelligence that we were hoping for. LLMs flip between the different narratives that the blind men have written about the elephant. The LLMs do not have their own perspective on the elephant. They haven't felt it. They don't have hands. They don't even know that there is an elephant, or that what people say about the elephant ought to agree (because it is an elephant (real), not a unicorn(fictional). They just know that there are lots of words about elephants and how to generate more of the same.
There is a least one big breakthrough still to come before General Artificial Intelligence. If there are two big breakthroughs needed, the period in between them, will be fascinating/fraught. Half the world will believe AI's uncritically, half the world will notice that AI still isn't quite here yet,...
I left it to others to reply to your comment with the heart condition Myocarditis.
TTS is the unusual, rare blood clot syndrome.
Traditional standards of efficacy for vaccines make taking the vaccine an individual decision. If Alfred gets vaccinated, Alfred is protected and so doesn't care that Boris refused the vaccine. Boris can notice that the death toll was concentrated among the frail elderly. Deaths among the young were exclusively due to vulnerability caused by pre-existing serious health conditions. If Boris is a healthy young person, statistical sense is to notice that he is not personally at risk, and to be deterred from taking the vaccine by even rare vaccine side effects, if they hit the young and healthy.
One systematic problem is that one knows the intended effect of the vaccine. If people are still coming down with the disease, then it is clear that the vaccine has low efficacy. But one does not know ahead of time what the side effects are going to be. They are easy to miss or ignore especially in the context of for-profit drug discovery. The decision about whether to take a new vaccine involves a judgement call about the appropriate safety factor. One needs to multiply the dangers of acknowledged side effects by this safety factor to adjust for the systematic under reporting inherent in the researchers not knowing what to look out for.
A second systematic problem is that societies that mandate vaccines are counting down to corruption of the approvals process. An informed choice about getting vaccinated depends on knowing how long is left in the count down, and that information is a closely guarded secret.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, sometimes abbreviated to TTS
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
I don't have a good link on Egregores, but this back and forth has one participant attempting to articulate a mechanistic and materialist conception of egregore, while the other says Nah, that is just culture and "... egregores are, if they exist, psychic or supernatural, not computer bits and not cultures"
I think that is interesting even though the link contains nothing definitive or agreed.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
Racism is effectively the rejection of individual variance/merit in favor of group variance/merit.
"Racism" has changed so much over the past fifty years that the "Racist" and "Anti-racist" positions have swapped. It used to be that teachers were racist and didn't let the Black children into the Advanced Placement classes because "Blacks are stupid". Back then the anti-racist position emphasized individual variance/merit. The clever children go in the top stream and the stupid children go in the bottom stream. Ideally the stupid children benefit from being kept out of the top stream; it is miserable and harmful to be in a class for which you are unprepared and which leaves you behind.
But one notices that the top streams are White or East Asian or Brahmin. That drives a re-alignment. Accepting individual variance/merit is the new racist position. Modern anti-racism looks to the statistics for groups, and expects all groups to be represented according to head count, regardless of individual merit. (and there is the extra, weird twist where Black under-representation is the fault of Whites, because Whites are bad (and, if they object to this condemnation, fragile (which oddly enough, earns them mockery not gentle handling)))
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
You should read patriots.win. I'm guessing that it is peak MAGA. And yet they engage in lively debates, with comments calling out Donald when he makes mistakes, and getting upvotes.
Unfortunately, bad appointments has been one of Trump's glaring weak points. 28 upvotes, 12 hours ago
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
Have I misunderstood the over-turning of Roe-versus-Wade? I thought that it was over-turned on the basis that abortion was a matter for States, not the Federal Government. So a Federal abortion ban would be struck down by the Supreme Court; no point voting for one.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
Luévano v. Campbell turned civil service appointments into a racial spoils system in 1981. America has already gone back to a spoils system.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
One obtains a stronger rebuttal by pointing to the dynamics.
Stage one: Politicians seek out and appoint competent administrators to civil service jobs
This isn't formalized and the incentives for politicians are to game the system, leading to stage two
Stage two: A spoils system where government appointments are cycled in and out with every new administration as payoffs to supporters.
The disadvantages of this become increasingly apparent, creating pressure for reform and eventually the Pendleton Act
Stage three: A permanent civil service. This provides a reservoir of experience, damping down swings of the political pendulum. But it is also a source of inertia (perhaps I mean viscosity?) which leads to stagnation. Which tendency will grow with time, leading to the downfall of the Pendleton Act?
Neither. Ambitious men are always seeking power. Traditionally by standing for election. If they win, they have limited time to do something before standing for election again. Ugh! Perhaps there is more power to be had as a member of the permanent bureaucracy. Ambitious men game the new system created by the Pendleton Act.
Stage four: The civil service the fourth branch of the Federal Government, and answers to on-one.
A new President is elected to change the course of the nation, away from the iceberg, towards the rocks :-) But he finds that the fourth branch insists on steering towards the iceberg, and the Pendleton Act gives them real power.
Stage five: err, I don't know
The point is that we should expect bad reforms to fail because they are bad. And we should expect good reforms to fail because of the passage of time. Good reforms work well, curing the problems caused by people gaming the old system; that is what we mean by a good reform. But a good reform changes the system. It may take a generation before people work out how to game the new system, but game it they will. We should expect that no reforms withstand erosion by human cunning.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
I like piano music. If a professional is playing it, then Scriabin, such as Fantasie Opus 28. If I'm playing it for myself, then it needs to be within my technical ability, for example Clementi, Opus 36 no 3 which has an impressively high ratio of happiness&fun to technical difficulty.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
I'm more interested in what happens when there is a change of government. The link about the Államvédelmi Osztály was interesting because of who Arrow Cross was.
Arrow Cross were right-wing thugs. After the left come to power, were they taken out and shot? No, they got demoted to junior thugs. They beat up the people that the new left wing government told them to beat up. Only if they were disobedient would they face harsh punishment.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
Repeating myself
They may win power, but not have the numbers to hold on to it.
Think about what happens after the Kronstadt rebellion. The soldiers mutiny, and overthrow the Tsar. The Bolsheviks take power. The infighting starts. Where do they find the men to stab their colleagues in the back on their behalf?
It is not about the overthrow of the old regime, it is about the worst people rising to the top of revolution and needing henchmen to do deeds that are repugnant to the earlier idealistic revolutionaries.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
I’m very much in favour of anything that limits a government’s power
That cuts both ways. Do you limit government power by permitting the government to accumulate a reserve army of brutal thugs, or by preventing this by murdering the nascent reserve army in its crib?
I've mentioned Communist revolutionaries. See https://theworthyhouse.com/2024/11/19/on-the-1956-hungarian-revolution/ for an interesting, horse-shoe twist
The chief instrument of this terror was the secret police—the ÁVO, an acronym for Államvédelmi Osztály, Department of State Protection.
It filled its ranks primarily with two disparate types of people—hardcore Communists, many or mostly Jews resentful towards non-Jewish Hungarians (again of which more later), and former Arrow Cross toughs, usually from the countryside, whose past could be held over them and whose predilections toward violence were of use to the new regime.
But one could read about Oskar Dirlewanger and where he found the men to staff the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirlewanger_Brigade
Coming up to date,
The Wagner Group has been recruiting large numbers of prisoners for Putin's war in Ukraine.
https://www.newsweek.com/inside-wagner-group-criminals-contractors-putins-war-1770392
I must stop writing this comment before I sink too deeply into despair, both about where government power comes from, and the level of counter-ruthlessness needed to oppose it.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
The dark meaning of mercy for the villain is the same as the dark meaning of opposition to the death penalty. Brutal thugs are not executed, but given long prison terms. Warehoused. Saved for later. This reserve army of brutal thugs is a valuable resource for avant-garde revolutionaries. Think 1917 Russian revolution. Its was a close run thing with a brutal civil war. Typically the avant-garde don't have the numbers. They may win power, but not have the numbers to hold on to it. They need to put boots on the necks of counter-revolutionaries. Since their tests for counter-revolutionariness have too many false negatives, they have to go large and put boots on the necks of the general population. Where do they find the feet to fill the boots? They release brutal thugs from prison to provide the muscle for the NKVD, KGB, Stasi, etc.
It is a very dangerous game. The avant-garde revolutionaries need to retain control of their brutal thugs. The thugs need to be kept divided. If some get ideas above their station, others are sent to kill them. But the Russian revolution and the French revolution both ate themselves. One faction within the revolutionary avant-garde sends their tame thugs to kill a rival faction within the avant-garde. The death toll rises and Stalin or Napoleon comes out on top.
I'm unclear on the causal connections here. Perhaps opposition to the death penalty is all high minded mercy. When the revolution comes, it is an unfortunate accident that the revolutionaries are gifted a reserve army of brutal thugs to help them consolidate their power. Or perhaps there are some strategic thinkers covertly funding the merciful people naturally inclined to oppose the death penalty. The money boosts the opposition to the death penalty, enough for mercy to defeat prudence.
It is not just domestic revolutionaries that one has to worry about. When the USSR took over Eastern Europe at the end of WWII, releasing brutal thugs from prison, to provide the muscle for the secret police, was one of the techniques used to impose the new communist governments.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
I've already seen how this goes. President Trump signed an executive order banning men from women's sports. He made the signing into political theater by having girls crowd round his desk as he signed, giving away the pens that he used, and making a show of making the signature extra special.
He will do the same with his own pardons, giving a little speech about each pardon, condemning the corrupt legal system, and boasting of putting things right by exercising his power of pardon.
Then what? There may be a precedent of voiding pardons that were (a) auto-penned (b) President Biden doesn't step up to say "I commanded that, it is not a case of some-one else borrowing the auto-pen to create a fake pardon behind my back." Such a precedent cannot be used to void a pardon personally signed by President Trump as part of broadcast political theater.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
My Kodak DC220 sits unused on my bookcase, only barely hidden by my untidiness :-)
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
Ahah! Search terms, which lets me find https://np.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/comments/1ixtk0y/am_i_the_only_one_feeling_uncomfy_with_posts_of/ which works on my machine :-)
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
I cannot get the link to work. I'm expecting something formatted like
I'm seeing
https://old.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/s/2Ax2KXHCWr
which takes me to a submission page. Guessing that the "s" is for submission, I hand edit the "s" to "comments"
https://old.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/comments/2Ax2KXHCWr
but that just gets me "PAGE NOT FOUND"
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
If Woodrow Wilson were drawing up a new Fourteen points for today, he would emphasize the right to self-determination of the people of Crimea. Western war aims include conquering Crimea to annex it into a Ukrainian land empire, perhaps as some kind of successor to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Wilson would denounce that as immoral.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
The most interesting questions arise from the idea of the memetic immune system. What pressures does natural selection exert on the memetic immune system?
An egregore is in competition for minds with other egregores, much as a fox is in competition for rabbits with other foxes, but with a twist. Human minds are not its food, but its substrate. Call an egregore fertile if it encourages the women it occupies (cordyceps?) to have many children. Call an egregore barren if it discourages this. Natural selection works on egregores to improve their own reproduction, we might call this their infectivity, but also to be fertile rather than barren so that they have more substrate to infect. Meanwhile natural selection works on the human genome, hoping to generate subtle memetic immune systems that are vulnerable to fertile egregores, but resistant to barren egregores.
You could go all in on reductionism and say it is just natural selection, but this will be an obstacle to understanding the tangled mess when people and egregores are evolving a subtle mutualism.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
Knowing that there is a real world, out there, beyond language.
Are the moon landings a hoax? Large Language Models can say what people say, perhaps rather more fluently and persuasively. If one is open to the possibility that there is more than one kind of intelligence, then LLM's have one of those kinds of intelligence, and in greater degree than an average human. But LLM's are rather stuck on giving their own opinion of whether the moon landings are a hoax, because they don't know whether the moon is real or fictional. Nor do the know whether the Earth is real or fictional. The whole "ground truth" thing is missing.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
The USA blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines was an act of war against Germany.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
I imagine that filing a lawsuit to overturn an executive order is a delicate business. If an ordinary lawyer tries it, their case will be promptly dismissed. Only the top, expensive lawyers get hearings for fancy legal theories leading to restraining orders against government actions.
Expensive lawyers. These lawsuits may become rare if the dark money from USAID and elsewhere dries up.
felis-parenthesis
1yr ago
Writing in 1844, Karl Marx describes the power of money sardonically
The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet.
Time has concealed the meaning of twenty-four feet, but Marx has already quoted from Goethe's Faust
“Six stallions, say, I can afford,
Is not their strength my property?
I tear along, a sporting lord,
As if their legs belonged to me.”
so we know what he is getting at. He needs young men to join his anti-capitalist revolution, so he makes it clear that Capitalism involves the young man standing in the gutter while his girlfriend rides by in a six horse carriage, being pawed by the ugly rich old man who owns it/her. Such powerful rabble rousing! Marx knew human nature and how love could be used to harness young men to his cause.
But 1844 is a long time ago. Would Marx use the same trick today? I doubt it would work. He talks to red-pilled young men and they tell Marx the received wisdom of today's youth: "She's not yours, its just your turn." In today's hook up culture, there is lust, but not love. Marx hoped that young men would die for love. But nobody dies for lust.
My analysis of this kind of proposal is based on what I call the riddle of the flute children. The ordinary concern is that power is abused. The riddle of the flute children is that power is fought for. The optimum amount of Government power is less than you think, because it is only the survivors of the fighting that live to suffer the abuse.
The idea that you mention takes the lid off a power honey pot of such extraordinary sweetness that opening it will attract more hornets than wasps and lead to fighting on the scale of the Thirty Years War. I think that the Thirty Years War is the appropriate comparison because it too was about which value system, Protestant or Catholic, was to be the sole value system, regardless of parental wishes.
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