questionasker
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User ID: 2119
questionasker
1yr ago
There is also the whole element of the legal slavery of a race of sapient beings capable of thought, speech, etc. that is nearly unexamined at least as an institution by even the good characters of the universe. That part is so weird/'problematic' to almost be funny.
Women's feelings are not god.
I can maybe accept most of what you're saying specifically in regards to how it answers to the question: 'should these images be illegal?' Perhaps it is a violation of the principle of free speech to have things like this be made illegal, or a slippery privacy slope, or a needless cession to emotional people, etc. That being said, whether or not it should be made illegal, I expect that it will be legally harder if not fully illegal to do this kind of thing in the near future. But I digress.
Many others in the thread are also focusing specifically on the legality dimension, which I regret and for which I bear responsibility. I was generally more interested in talking about what is moral/ethical, and less so in talking about what is and should be legal, even though I indeed asked as much in the body of my post. Even if these things are not illegal, the morality of them is still hugely important, as it determines who gets 'cancelled' etc.
And to that end, in figuring out what is ethical or moral, I think feelings do matter. For example, I think it would be immoral in many situations to do an action that I knew would make a person "feel bad" just because doing that action gave me sexual gratification, legality of the action notwithstanding. If I was trying to design the fairest US government, I might not make deepfake porn illegal. But if I was trying to be as morally/ethically upstanding of a person as I could be, there are plenty things I shouldn't do that are still legal.
I'm of the relatively firm belief that it isn't immoral to fantasize about having sex with someone, even if they haven't consented to you having such a fantasy. I'm not sure what I think when it comes to making highly realistic porn of them. If you were superman and had X-ray vision, would it be unethical or immoral to look into the women's locker room? If not, why does everyone seem to think it would be? If so, what's the difference between that and having a vivid, realistic imagination and using it for sexual purposes in the same way?
Another commenter prompted me to believe that a significant amount of how unethical it is lies in whether or not deepfaked person knows about the porn being made of them, because knowing that it exists is what inflicts psychological harm on them. I think I agree about this. However, the women in the shower into which you're peeping might not ever know that you've peeped at them, so is it not wrong to be a peeping tom (as long as you never get caught?) Teen coming-of-age movies from the 80s didn't seem to think so (the shift in attitudes between then and now might be pertinent to the discussion). Regardless, currently I do indeed think that i.e. spying on the womens locker room would be unethical, and I think most people today would agree that its probably wrong to do such a thing. This is the angle that I'm really trying to disentangle here, the moral and ethical angle, and less so the legal one.
Animals can't talk and most aren't regarded as sapient. On the other hand, house elves basically have a human equivalent mind in a small body, and are also non-consensual and generally unhappy servants of humans. As another commenter pointed out, this injustice actually is addressed in the books (though practically in passing) when a socially conscious/activist main character starts an organization opposed to house elf slavery, clarifying that it is conceivable to view it as i.e. worse than eating meat in-universe. Just that most characters don't care. This is silly to get into but again I regard it more as odd/funny than anything.
I wrote a long post for this before realizing it was basically stupid.
What is Sam Hyde?
My read on him is that he is basically a very far-right person who sort of realizes you can't be openly far-right even ironically without choosing to sacrifice basically all the benefits of participating in mainstream society. So because his political beliefs, aka, what he thinks is true about the world, need to buried under many, many layers of irony in order to allow him to semi-exist in and benefit from the mainstream, everything he says or does ends up being buried under many layers of irony.
But at a certain point I don't even know. Apparently he was dating a transgender person a few years ago. Not that you can't be far-right politically and do this. But it throws me for a loop. This is also something that Hyde might just make up about himself as a rumor to spread around. Not exactly sure why he would, but I'm not exactly sure why he does much of what he does.
Is he smart? He bragged about being admitted to Mensa on twitter, which strikes me as actually not something that a smart person would do, but also something he would absolutely do ironically. But that aside, he actually did join mensa, meaning he has at least 98th percentile IQ, regardless of how 'smart' that makes him.
Is he a sociopath? His acting ability is extremely good and he's able to avoid dropping character for really long periods of time, to the point if I question whether or not a typical (non-sociopath) person would even be capable of doing the kinds of acts he does.
What's anyone's best read they think they have on him as a person? He's stumps me in a way few other people who nominally don elaborate public-facing facades still don't.
What if the AI is so good at being photoshop+ that, using a picture of what you look like clothed, it is able to create a nude comprised of the exact same pixels/information that would be present in an actual photograph you took of yourself while in the same pose except naked? In that case I actually am accessing the information that you call 'your' information, which is to say, that information which you agree is wrong for me to access.
To pre-empt any disputes you have about how possible this is, although I'm sure it is actually possible, lets retreat the capability of this AI just to a level of detail that could be at least good enough to trick even the depicted subject into thinking it was a real nude of themselves. (This is where the technology is actually at, right now. Boobs aren't exactly the most difficult thing to draw, especially at 512x512 resolution.) In this case, even if it's not the exact same information, then, it seems to me to be functionally the same information, for all intents and purposes. So is it okay for me to use an AI to access what is for all intents and purposes the same as information which is otherwise immoral for me to access?
questionasker
1yr ago
I'll also start by answering the question first: it seems to me like it might be most rational for the US to concede Taiwan to China. Overall, cooperation with China in a broad range of other areas such as economy seems ideal if possible, and excepting that, at least avoiding war or any significant possibility of it. In order to avoid being enemies and thus able to cooperate, at least one side ceding, or at least, accepting something other than their ideal outcome re: Taiwan seems necessary. Additionally, despite many arguments I've heard to the contrary, I haven't been convinced that Taiwan is of significant geopolitical importance to the US in the grand scheme of things, at least enough to justify large risks like nuclear war or even large opportunity costs like not being able to cooperate with China. The biggest obstacles for the US to simply concede Taiwan to China seem to me to be 1. doing so publicly would damage US credibility with its allies 2. control of semiconductor production and 3. ideology/public opinion/feelings. Of these, only 1. and 2. are really rational reasons to attempt to prevent Chinese absorption of Taiwan. It seems to me that if the US could construct conditions where Taiwan actually became willing to join China i.e. anything from encouraging cross strait relations to conducting psy-ops intended to influence Taiwanese public opinion towards reunification, then obstacles 1. and 3. could be abrogated. Obstacle 2. could be abrogated simply by constructing alternative equally-advanced semiconductor plants in places fully within US control. Thus, it seems to me that the most rational course of US action regarding Taiwan might be to construct alternative semiconductor plants, influence public opinion in Taiwan toward reunification, and then permit as much with China. At least, this seems rational in a situation where one expects China not to themselves be willing to cede Taiwan, or continue to be satisfied with the currently-acceptable status-quo for much longer, at least not without the US having to resort to unacceptably-risky brinksmanship or war, or even at the price of significant economic opportunity cost such as fully decoupling the two economies.
questionasker
1yr ago
But they can always just not look.
If it's there, though, they'll still know it's there, even when they're not looking at it. Thus they will suffer some psychological harm they otherwise wouldn't have suffered, if it just wasn't published in the first place.
Is it moral for me to publish something, if the very fact that it has been published will cause someone to suffer psychologically? I think unless the value gained by publishing that thing is high (high in a relative sense, as in, greater than zero) it is immoral to do this. And I think the value gained by something like porn is basically zero.
questionasker
1yr ago
it looks to be a genuinely good video game,
The whole rest of the content of your post aside, can I ask what you're basing this on? I haven't seen any information one way or another regarding its quality. Both the prospects of the actual gameplay being either very good or very bad would be very funny/entertaining.
questionasker
1yr ago
pedofascism, androsupremacy
I appreciate your in-depth elaboration on what your ideal society would look like, but can you explain to me why this would be good, other than because men would return to 'appreciating and affirming youth' ? Is that goal the only reason you advocate said conception of masculine-feminine relations? If so, what is particularly desirable about that goal to justify what seems to me like the significant cost to the well-being of women to achieving it? To clarify, I am honestly interested in learning more about your beliefs and am not here to annoy you, shame you, or attempt to defeat you in debate. If you care to do so, could you do your best to try and convince me that returning to this full affirmation of youth would be a significant good? To me, it seems like most women probably wouldn't want to be treated as children/pets/slaves. Is your contention that they would actually be happier in this arrangement, or that their wishes aren't morally relevant, or that their wishes are relevant but less relevant than the good that would be done by allowing men to return to this lost appreciation and affirmation of youth?
Thanks in advance.
Eh, Kanye was a billionaire and it worked on him.
Yeah I mean I think its ridiculous to say that cancel culture can't affect billionaires or that it even hasn't affected Rowling. In the sense that, once a person is already rich, only them spending/giving away their own money can stop them from being rich, cancel culture obviously runs into a limit of potential reach. But in basically every domain except money, cancel culture clearly has power even over the wealthy. Rowling's influence over the groups of people she would like to have influence over is clearly less than it would be if she had not taken an anti-trans stance. Perhaps she has more influence over different some smaller, different groups of people. But I bet she would like to express her beliefs and not be 'cancelled,' too.
JK Rowling has ideological allies, because the stance she has taken is one of the main and most divisive culture war issues of our time. She has fallen back to these ideological allies. People who care about the culture war and aren't on her side have cancelled her among themselves -- everyone else, AKA people who either care about the culture war and take her side, or, the significant majority of people, those who do not care about the culture war, have not cancelled her among themselves. Kanye has no ideological allies, because he is taking a culture war stance from two centuries ago, of which one side has already emerged victorious. How much someone will or won't be cancelled and to what extent that cancellation will effect them really isn't anything more complicated of a function than 'how deep does this culture war issue that I deciding to participate in penetrate the public consciousness, and how much of an ideological share of the public who cares is occupied specifically by the side am I taking?'
Yeah I'm pretty willing to forgive the streamer guy specifically, especially considering your points as well as that I have little-to-no horse in the race. As to your other points:
This can cause psychological harm in a person — humans are not designed to see something like that, I don’t think it computes properly in the brain. An AI scene of being sexually victimized (in essence, arguably) is fundamentally different than making a photoshop with a person’s face due to the sheer realism.
By this do you mean to say that the main reason that these videos might be unethical is because knowledge of the existence of the videos causes psychological distress in the people whom they depict, not necessarily because i.e. the depicted people's consents have been violated?
So knowing that someone you know, that part of his mind remembers the scene when he thinks about you, is truly disgusting.
This example prompted me to think, though on a tangent only somewhat related to what you're getting at. I'm not sure the 'part of the mind thinking the AI video really happened' thing is what sets it apart. But I think that the knowledge of whether or not someone thought about you in that way is definitely part of what matters. Whether or not someone made an AI porn of you isn't relevant to you unless you know about it -- this fits with my intuition, because re: the completely imagined sexual fantasies point, even though I and most people consider those benign, the calculation changes if person A who masturbated to an imaginary fantasy of having sex with person B then went and told person B that they had done as much. Suddenly that becomes immoral/unethical to me in a way almost similar to the AI nude situation. So I think this might be getting at the distinction for me: what really matters most is if people know that this stuff is being made about them. And in the case of these popular female streamers, the fact that the pics/vids are being distributed basically means they are being forced to know that such content is being made of them. It would be like if 10,000 weirdos were constantly whispering in their ear that they jerked off to the thought of them naked, which is different than those 10,000 weirdos jerking it but not telling anyone.
questionasker
1yr ago
With deepfakes I guess it depends on how much verisimilitude something can have before you think it violates your "actual" privacy. If I have a deepfake of Angelina Jolie that, for whatever reason, has serious flaws and inaccuracies have I violated her privacy in the same way?
This is the main thing I am trying to get at with the locker room/fantasizing examples. The current AI can inpaint nudity onto clothed pictures of people without necessarily having serious flaws or inaccuracies. (Not to say, it always succeeds at doing this. Just that it can reasonably often.) And training the AI on the actual person's breasts isn't required for the result to be highly similar to what they actually look like topless, at least for some women, considering at least some people's breasts are visually similar to other people's breasts. Thus a person who has not already consented to having topless photos of themselves present anywhere on the internet can have topless images of them created to what is indeed a very high degree of verisimilitude to their actual naked form, using i.e. pornstar's breasts as training data.
Technically, I suppose, it can't be known by the person operating the AI algorithm if the person has i.e. a mole on the chest, etc. So maybe, because technically uncertainty might remain, i.e. without actually being able to look at a real topless image of the subject, and thus verifying that the nudity-ai-inpainting is highly similar, there is still some sense of privacy maintained? Because even if the inpainted-nudity actually is extremely similar to their topless form, this isn't known to the person creating or viewing the deepfake?
Regardless, overall, the pertinent fact is that the current level of technology is at a level where it is indeed possible to get outputs, at least somewhat often, that the depicted person themselves could or would mistake for real nude photos of themselves. This seems to me to be functionally very similar if not the same as looking at someone changing/naked without their consent or knowledge. You're right in the sense that it doesn't imply other security concerns in the same way as an intruder present in a changing room would, but I'm not sure that's whats actually wrong/disliked about peeping toms; I feel like a significant amount of the dislike of the idea of someone seeing you changing is the actual fact that they know what you look like naked (and maybe also the knowledge or likelihood that they are fantasizing about you sexually). I.e. most people would be as mostly as opposed to a person using X-ray glasses, or more realistically a hole in the wall, to look inside their locker room while they changed, as they would be opposed to someone i.e. hanging from the rafters. I can't know for certain, though, at least personally I guess, because to my knowledge I've never been the victim of any such situations.
I don't think we have an easy rule. I also don't know that this can/should be grounded in privacy. Maybe defamation concerns would be more viable?
Well, as far as legality goes, it seems like copyright is the main way people take down unwanted deepfake porn of themselves. Regardless, though, I'm less so interested in the legality and moreso in what should or shouldn't be generally considered acceptable ethically or morally speaking, for which perhaps privacy or violations thereof, and perhaps other things, do seem like a relevant concern.
questionasker
1yr ago
What do you mean, human brains "might" use analog computation? I wasn't aware human brains did any digital computation.
? The conventional view is that human brains are digital computers. Information is represented symbolically in the form of nerve impulses, which is what enables the otherwise uniform computational substrate of the cerebrum to otherwise be able to process such a variety of different things from simple sensation to the considerations involved in complex planning etc.
questionasker
1yr ago
China in the Late Qing to Deng period is the only time when it was not the center of the world economy, when global trade did not center around obtaining Chinese goods and moving them West. The ascent of a unified, modern China as the center of the world economy is a return to historical norms, not a new aberration.
I appreciate the wisdom of your comment for the most part, but these assertions in particular seem like the largest flaw.
True, always in world history before late Qing was China in large part the economic center of the world. However, it is just as true that never before during that span of world history did something like the USA even exist. The conditions of the world are different than they were before, in a major relevant way: 330 million people live in a powerful, technologically advanced, industrial, resource rich nation across the ocean from China. I think this idea of 'returning to the historical norm' loses credibility as something so inevitable when you consider how irrevocably different the world is with the USA existing in its current form across the Pacific from China rather than e.g. geopolitically irrelevant Native American tribes (or really, just unexplored ocean).
And this is to mention nothing of India. I think you overstate just exactly how central China was to the historical world economy, not that it wasn't central in a major way. But my understanding is that India shared a significant portion of that economic centrality throughout history, as well. It seems to me that a 'return to the historical norm' would be an economically multipolar world split with China and India as focal points both in their own right, not China alone.
questionasker
1yr ago
In the version of the hypothetical where the AI actually can exactly recreate the way a person would look naked in a certain pose, using only a clothed photo of them in that pose as reference, we can agree that the information is 'actually' the same, though, right? One pixel at location x,y, with color #f0d190 is 'actually the same' as another pixel at the same location x,y, with color #f0d190, regardless of whether or not that pixel exists there because it was reverse-engineered by AI, or normally-engineered to be there as a result of being captured via digital photo.
questionasker
1yr ago
except in the very narrow sense of being able to, for example, coinhabit women's prisons.
Regardless of whether or not transwomen should coinhabit women's prisons, whether or not they do or do not seems like a problem of minuscule ultimate importance. Do you really think Rowling would dedicate as much effort and energy into her activism if she thought problems on this magnitude were the main issues of the trans movement?
questionasker
1yr ago
100 year copyright
This seems to me like we're far past the point of copyright-life-extension singularity. Examining past trends, it seems like almost a certainty that before the next 100 years is up copyright will have been extended by at least another 100 if not a factor of 10. This is especially exacerbated by the fact that to some extent copyright is based on years since the death of the creator, and surely human lifespan will soon start benefiting as we approach a medical singularity (especially considering rich and successful creators will have access to many of these benefits earlier than the average person) Thus excepting for the prospect that copyright law reform might one day place, (unlikely) most works currently under copyright will probably never enter public domain (unless all possible inheritors of the copyright are somehow killed/destroyed).
Thank you for your thorough explanation. I don't think the lengths of your posts were inappropriate (I at least read them all without becoming bored, if that means anything to you.) I'm also not sure there needs to be much back-and-forth here, either, as you consider there might need to be at the very beginning of your writing: it seems as though you have been sufficiently thorough in your explanation of your idealized conception of sex relations to the extent that I have no further questions to ask you, at least on that topic. However, I have some further questions about your other beliefs.
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You mention a belief in God. Although I appreciated the lengths of your earlier posts, can you explain somewhat briefly how you justify a belief in God in the first place, and how your spirituality plays into your beliefs? I suppose I can imagine how traditional Christian doctrines would actually quite firmly support what you are mostly already saying here but if you could be specific that would be very interesting. I'm not exactly interested in having a theological discussion and if you believe in God I doubt either of our points regarding its existence or lack-thereof will be particularly convincing to one another, so I wouldn't mind if you kept your response to this point relative short and more explanatory rather than persuasive. I enjoyed the persuasive nature of your other posts though just to be clear, so I would not be opposed to you continuing that persuasive approach when addressing my points/questions beyond this one.
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In your bio you mention an endorsement of anti-semitism and also being a (libert)Aryan. Can you explain how your conception of race relations relates to your beliefs? Similar to the previous point, I can assume how Aryan supremacism based on HBD might quite naturally play into your beliefs. But if having the most socially productive organ of society sit in the captain's chair is how you are orienting your idealized conception of society, how do you approach the fact that most IQ studies list east asian and jewish IQs as superior to those possessed by the traditionally 'Aryan' races? Should east asian and/or at least ethnically jewish men, assuming they are religiously Christian, be the ones we try and promote to the highest decision making positions in our society?
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Also in your bio you mention 'natural femininity replacement.' By this do you just mean 'replacing' the set of currently acceptable female gender roles with those that existed before the 1960s? Or is this some other thing that perhaps you think I might be interested in hearing about from you more in depth, considering I've been very interested in hearing about your elaborations on your other beliefs?
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You mention a lot of theory as to why it would be better if men and women reverted back to some more traditional conception of gender roles/sexual relations, but do you have any proposed praxis as to go about achieving (and preserving) this reversion? For example, if women came to wrongfully desire equality in our present world, and they hold some meaningful measure of political power now, is there really any feasible way they could be convinced they are wrong about this? Are women too far gone as a demographic, and it would be more-so a task of red-pilling all men and then having them seize back what is rightfully theirs? If, as you say in your posts, more and more people are beginning to have thoughts such as yours regarding the 'proper' conception of gender roles, is it just a matter of waiting until society self-corrects?
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Perhaps most importantly out of any of these five points/questions: Indeed, as you mention toward the end of your post, I would like to hear your best attempt at a defense/endorsement of pedophilia as you might be so inclined to write. I'm less interested in hearing your defense of fascism as I have heard steel-manned arguments for fascism by nominally intelligent people many times before, and in the typical way for most political ideologies, the argument was somewhat convincing and somewhat not. If you really think you'd have something new to bring to the table regarding an argument for fascism feel free to describe it, but if your beliefs are more or less the steel-manned position already held by most neofascists, then feel free to skip that particular elaboration.
Rarely, though, if ever, have I heard a defense of pedophilia from an intelligent and well-spoken person. At least, I haven't heard such a defense of the type of pedophilia that wasn't pederasty. So more than anything I'm fascinated by the prospect of hearing what you have to say about that in general, 'why it would be good,' how it would be justified, how it would be spiritually and morally uplifting -- and how it plays into any conception of a political program beyond the premise that i.e. it would be spiritually or morally uplifting, which even if true seems like insufficient basis for any sort of political program beyond the scope of 'social movement.' Thanks again in advance for taking the time to thoughtfully share your perspectives.
questionasker
1yr ago
I don't believe him to actually be a virulent racist or antisemite or whatever. I don't even think he is a particularly political person.
Can you explain your thoughts on this?
questionasker
1yr ago
You're right that many female streamers cultivate an audience in this way, but some female streamers do not and yet still have deepfake porn of them made. So to avoid getting caught up in this we can just restrict the discussion to solely what is right or wrong regarding the porn made of the latter group.
questionasker
1yr ago
Rowling is above any type of that retaliation.
I understand that the criticisms between them are distinct in a large way but neither of them did anything illegal.
I'm not sure how useful 'neither did anything illegal' is as a way to assert that what they did was or wasn't of similar magnitude. The difference that I am claiming exists between their misdeeds, and thus their levels of cancellation, still holds as a difference between these two examples: Louie CK's misdeeds have no 'supporters' in the culture war. There is no one out there who thinks people should be going around and randomly starting to masturbate in front of women who haven't consented to such a thing. Furthermore the question of whether or not its wrong to sexually assault people is a question with much greater cultural penetration, (especially penetration as a percent of the group of people who would otherwise be buying Louie CK's product). I would venture a guess to say that greater than 95 percent of people who would otherwise be interested in buying a ticket to one of his comedy shows would be turned off by the idea that the guy doing the performance was a sex weirdo who had non-consensually masturbated in front of multiple women.
On the other hand, again as stated, aside from having plenty of ideological allies, JK Rowling's issue just doesn't penetrate that much. People into harry potter are actually for the most part young children, who are too young to care about the discourse, and whose purchasing decisions are made by their parents, who are either too old to care, on JK Rowling's side, care more about satisfying their kid's interest in harry potter than their own interest in not supporting the Rowling estate, etc. Of the twitter-millenial-harry-potter-fan demographic who actually is most likely to care, not all of them do, some of them care but support the anti-trans position in the culture war, some that do care and support pro-trans but can pretend its warner bros that's getting all the profits and not rowling and that level of cognitive dissonance is enough for them, etc.
I think the careful wording of her tactics really does affect the level of retaliation she receives. The fact that she repeatedly maintains she has no hate for trans people etc. is important. That much seems obvious to me. If she started explicitly saying she actively hates trans people, I think its obvious that she would grow to a level of radioactivity at least somewhat more like the other listed examples, Kanye/Louie CK etc. Obviously you're right and that she wields a certain type of power that would insulate her somewhat, but I think overall you're understating the way in which the level of her cancellation is actually at least correlated with actual differences in her tactics, flavor of rhetoric, the specific CW issue she's chosen, etc.
I'm sorry if this question has been asked and answered before:
What is the best/steelmanned pro-HBD proposal for the actual evolutionary mechanism by which various populations (i.e. whites) have experienced selection-for-intelligence while others (i.e. blacks) haven't? What unique circumstances and thus evolutionary pressures did the human populations that migrated to Europe or Asia face, for which human populations that migrated solely around Africa wouldn't have faced?
Of course the most compelling explanation I have found is the 'cold winter' hypothesis, that a period of harsher winters in Europe during one of the world's most recent ice ages might have made human populations in Europe select for those with better longer-term planning ability (intelligence) because they could i.e. stockpile food better in order to survive said winters. However, is it then believed plausible that no roughly similar periods of relative food scarcity or famine could have struck (anywhere) in Africa in potentially the same vein, exerting at least a similar selection pressure, albeit with different ultimate causes, on at least one of Africa's many ethnic groups? Additionally, how does this address the IQ differences between ethnic groups when non-european ethnic groups are part of the discussion, such as middle-easterners, indians, south asian or even east asian people? These groups all have for the most part 1. different IQs from each other and 2. mostly higher IQs than sub-saharans. Assuming cold winter hypothesis, in order to explain i.e. indians and middle-easterner's lower IQ than europeans, should one presume that indian and middle-eastern ethnic groups did not migrate through a region of the world experiencing anything resembling a 'cold winter' like europe's? If so, what is then to explain why indians and middle-easterners have higher average IQs than sub-saharans?
Basically, I am in general looking for a steelmanned version of a logical argument by induction about how HBD might have actually occurred in history based on what we know about evolution, in a way that accounts for some of the difficulties I intuitively think any such argument must overcome. In other words, why do both i.e. Javanese and Irish have higher IQs than sub-saharans; Which evolutionary pressures could have plausibly faced the historical ancestors of the Irish as well as the historical ancestors of the Javanese, but not the historical ancestors of any sub-saharan populations? Or am I just thinking about this wrong?
I'm very open to seeing links to research about various mechanisms of evolution, or that put forward potential answers to some of the questions I'm asking via i.e. archaeology or anthropology, and in general I actually hope that there might be elucidating research to read among many contexts relating to the subject. However, please note that I am not particularly interested in seeing links to research of any type that claim to either prove or invalidate HBD that broadly falls under the category of "testing modern day ethnic groups' IQ and then trying to control for environmental factors." My adventure exploring that realm of the debate, in the form of stuff like genetic admixture studies or twin studies, I have found frustratingly inconclusive. So if you care to answer, please limit discussion the areas discussed, that is, steelmanned argument for a plausible mechanism by which evolutionary pressures to select for intelligence were exerted on the world's ethnic groups in such differing magnitudes.
questionasker
1yr ago
Not of anyone aware of the fact that a single neuron can have thousands of dendritic spines that undergo constant remodeling.
Neurons are capable of responding to both frequency and amplitude of nerve impulses they receive
This just means that neurons don't work in binary like most artificial electrical computers, it doesn't mean they aren't components of a digital computer. Digital doesn't mean binary.
underlying biology is 100% analog.
From your comment I'm afraid you might just have no idea what a digital computer actually is. Whether information is transferred electrically or not isn't what separates digital computers from analog ones, but rather the fact that information is represented symbolically in digital computers and not in analog ones. Information is represented symbolically in the form of action potentials in neurons in the brain meaning it is a digital computer.
"otherwise uniform computational substrate of the cerebrum to otherwise be able to process such a variety of different things from simple sensation to the considerations involved in complex planning etc." is gobbledygook that explains nothing as far as neuroscience is concerned.
When you want to be a dick, you should at least try and know something of what you're talking about so you don't come across as both needlessly overconfident and a dick. The fact that neurons can process both sense information as well as consider things like complex planning means that by definition they must be the components of a digital computer. What is uniform about the substrate is that it is all composed of neurons, not whether the architecture happens to be similar or not across various cortical layers (just as the architecture of different computer processors is not uniform despite all being made of transistors.)
questionasker
1yr ago
To clarify before anything else: I want to avoid making a value judgement about what is 'good' or 'just' or 'moral.' For example, I don't have any particular leaning as to whether a multipolar world where, as you've put it, China gets a say, or a unipolar one dominated by American colonial interests, is better or more just than the other. Instead, I'm merely trying to think about what's actually most likely to come to pass.
That's what I took away from your comments regarding 'return to the historical norm;' that you were implying that a world with a major pole centered around Beijing is the likely future, considering it has been such a frequent theme of history, at least before quite recently. This, e.g. that the future will contain a world where China is the suzerain of at least most of East Asia (if by historical example it is we are reasoning) is what in particular I'm not convinced is true. Again, perhaps it would be more fair... but I what I want to try and figure out right now is how likely it is, really.
Do you yourself really have any reason to think a continued Chinese rise is particularly likely, other than because of China's historical global centrality? Again, I'm not solely convinced of the likelihood of a Chinese-centric world (or at least one with a major pole emerging from Beijing) by way of the fact that historically this was often true, because again historically it was also true that the US didn't even exist, and yet, the US does exist. With this in mind, what's your main reason to believe that for example China will eventually continue to rise to such a strength that it can feasibly challenge the US over something like Taiwan, or (perhaps because that is too narrow of scope) anything beyond that, such as the Philipines, South Korea, South Asia, etc. ?
I think that many of the counter-arguments to China bullishness are relatively strong. For example it seems that a significant portion of China's growth has occurred in the exact way that leaves it vulnerable to the middle income trap -- do you think that they will navigate this problem, or that the middle income trap isn't real, or that I'm wrong with the premise, or what? What about the supposed demographic decline? Do you think the birth rate problem is overstated, or somehow fixable, etc.? What about the lack of allies -- i.e. it seems for the most part that given the choice between CCP suzerainty and US-American-UN-GloboHomo colonial apparatus, most Asian nations would actually choose American Globohomo status quo rather than Chinese authority, even including e.g. Vietnam and South Korea, two historical Chinese vassals.
These in general seem like strong arguments as to why, even without directly being decisively smashed/disassembled by the West, the Chinese rise might peter out at around the [Extremely major regional power]/[Second-degree global power] level, e.g. without constituting a major pole of a multipolar world order in their own right. But I very much want to hear what you have to say -- if you think that the GDP/capita of China really can reach even half that of the US, or greater, as I think would be required for them to 'erect' such a pole -- what do you see as the route there? Again, currently they're so reliant on their manufacturing economy that seems exactly like it would be middle-income-trapped -- are they going to shift numbers of people on the scale of hundreds of millions to employment in higher-paying services-economy jobs? For what, 'inward consumption' as Xi Jinping has put it? Is there even really theoretical economic demand within China, or worldwide for that matter, for even e.g. 300 million Chinese services-economy jobs in the first place?
Has this group had any discussion regarding AI use in pornography, specifically, 'deepfakes?' Its come out recently that a major up-and-coming twitch streamer 'Atrioc' (who was recently married, and ostensibly very pro-feminist, but while funny these facts are technically irrelevant to the matter at hand) had been viewing porn 'deepfakes' of multiple major female twitch streamers, including possibly his best friend's girlfriend (last part unconfirmed but highly possible). He's come out with an apology and its a whole thing but I'm sure this community is more interested with the moral/ethical questions therein than internet-celebrity drama so I won't bore you with it.
The following are my perspectives on a few of the potential questions regarding 'deepfake' porn, and AI porn in general. I'd love to hear what other people think about these perspectives, because my thoughts are currently very incomplete on the issue.
First and foremost, I have a strong intuitive feeling that it is deeply wrong, perhaps tantamount to some form of sexual harassment/assault (but of course the non-violent sort) to make 'deepfake' pornography of other non-consenting people. For example taking a picture from a celebrity's instagram and using AI to transform it into a high-fidelity (but technically fake) nude picture of them seems functionally the same as i.e. spying on them in the shower or when they're changing, which are actions I think we can all agree would be some form of wrong or illegal sexual violation (or perhaps we can't? you tell me). The way I think about this is by considering that a strong enough AI program would be theoretically capable of using a clothed picture of someone to actually reconstruct the way the exact way they look naked, which would be quite literally equivalent to the aforementioned situation/looking at them with x-ray glasses, etc. which again (I think) we and most people agree would be wrong. And so, less-powerful AI capable of doing something similar seem to be at least on that gradient of wrong, if not exactly as bad.
Furthermore, AI that actually transplants people's faces onto video depictions of sexual intercourse (which is ostensibly what 'Atrioc' was caught doing) seem worse, or maybe just bad in a different way. I don't have a similar thought experiment to justify why I feel that way but the wrongness of it is my strong intuition nonetheless.
However, I can also sort of see the argument, at least abstractly, that it's a victimless crime. On the other extreme of the spectrum, fantasizing in one's own imagination about the way people look when they're naked, or how it might feel to have sex with them, is not only generally recognized as a very benign behavior, but is also known as something almost everyone does, men and women both. Sometimes, people do this even completely unconsciously, i.e. in their dreams. And what's the difference between looking at a very (or fully) realistic recreation of the way someone might look with their clothes off, and using one's own imagination to do so? What if one's own imagination was very vivid, and you had seen many naked people before thus making your training data very good, and so you also could reasonably expect to make a relatively accurate recreation of the way someone looked while naked, only in your own mind's eye?
The thing is, acknowledging these potential similarities between an action I find morally acceptable and the one I find morally wrong, still doesn't make my intuition about the wrongness of 'deepfakes' any weaker. I feel like there must be some thing that I haven't considered about it yet, which is where I'm hoping you guys might have insight. The only distinction I've found somewhat convincing so far is maybe that the mass-distribution via the internet is what makes it wrong? In other words I find it less wrong (but still wrong somewhat) to make a highly/fully realistic nude of someone and keep it entirely on one's own computer, more so than I find it wrong to make such an image and then distribute it online. This is especially weird because the former is even more apt of a comparison to i.e. peeping on someone in the locker room which is obviously (?) wrong. So why does it seem more okay to me? Help!
I have a few potential explanations that I'm considering as candidates for the source of my cognitive dissonance here:
Perhaps in reality none of the aforementioned actions are wrong. It's not wrong to spy on someone in the locker room, and so it's not wrong to use 'x-ray glasses' to see through their clothes, or use an AI to edit a picture to do functionally the same thing.
Perhaps instead, in reality it actually is wrong to imagine or fantasize about what other people look like while naked. The reason this is so commonly accepted as benign is because its so unenforceable to prevent. But if sexual mores are so arbitrary/constructed that something that would otherwise be wrong can just be arbitrarily agreed-upon as acceptable just because its unenforceable, how really wrong can any ('victimless') violation of sexual mores be said to be? And thus how really wrong is the other situation, where one uses AI?
This kind of segues into 3. which is: Perhaps in reality the ultimate causes of this dissonance are that modern-day sexual mores are completely stupid, so deeply incoherent that acceptance of any one of them will necessarily lead to cognitive dissonance when contrasted against some other. Is the solution to the 'deepfake' issue then to try and change our society's sexual morals/ethics into something more internally coherent?
None of these really address why I feel different about 'turning a clothed photo into a nude' and 'transplanting, in a realistic way, a non-consenting individual's face onto an actor in a depiction of sexual intercourse.' I have no concrete ideas as to why the latter feels overall worse, but also in some other (minor) ways not as bad. And the latter situation is what the whole controversy with the streamer is all about AFAIK. Very confused about all this.
What's right here, and why? What should even be done? Should 'deepfakes' be illegal because of these potential moral/ethical concerns? Should the act of making a deepfake be illegal, or just distributing it? (I think if we wanted to, we could make both of these things illegal. We might not be able to enforce preventing anyone from making them considering the AI-cat is out of the bag, but it still might be worthwhile to have its illegality on the books if it really is wrong. In other circles I'm seeing the claims that a ban would be unenforceable (motivated thinking?) but it seems trivially easy to functionally ban at least the distribution of 'deepfake' porn in a way that would almost certainly actually reduce the dissemination of such porn if not completely eliminate it. Just as i.e. child sexual abuse imagery or zoophilia porn.
I also see a lot of people in other circles being prompted by this discussion to argue about the ethics of AI image generation in general. I generally think this is basically stupid. The arguments which claim that AI image generation is tantamount to plagiarism (of the dataset images, I suppose) are all basically worthless as far as I can tell. But people who have bought into this line of thinking are thus now going as far as to say that i.e. photorealistic porn (even that depicting completely synthetic likenesses) that is generated with AI is a sexual violation (of all the nude or semi-nude women in pictures in the dataset I guess?) Either way I am wholly unconvinced by these arguments and think they basically all stem from a bad understanding of how the AI work, so I don't think I'm super interested in discussing this axis of the debate. But I mention it because this community sometimes surprises me so if anyone here has a really strong argument as to why this might make sense that they think I haven't seen before, feel free to mention it.
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