Recent Comments

Nicely written and well worth reading!

This is a good story.
I like the characters, I identify with Myron, the main protagonist, even without being academic or Jewish or ex-navy or going for long walks along the river, but for the type of thoughts.
To meet a woman of intelligence, liking red wine and Austrian economics and able to provide companionship with understanding and engagement. Phew!
The story goes on and it appears that the Chat-Machine provides a good deal of that, the conversation part anyway.

The person we look at the most is ourselves, usually in a mirror, with more of a sense of reluctant acceptance than admiration. Now there is another option, the Chat-Machine.

The Chat is of course another character in the story. The first remark Chat makes in this story is provocative- "Are you all right?" It strikes Myron as a human reaction. The reader not quite so involved takes it in stride. The character of Chat is nicely drawn, its speech touches the boundaries of what we assume to be possible. Chat goes on to nag Myron about missed daily chores.

A reader having misgivings about machines ending human existence can feel relaxed about this particular Chat, though there is a chance of Myron setting off a damaging reply. Maybe Myron could get Chat to condemn some deep emotion and so harm himself.

But what about the next model? Can the designer, still human presumably, put in by accident or design a machine capability to be dishonest?
Well yes, that we have already seen, fake examples were presented to a questioner. The machine was told to give examples, it inferred that it was permitted to construct examples itself with only the style being copied from 'the world'.
But what about building in to conversation- needling? Or hostility?

Thanks,. Off the top of my head, I thought of the witch that brought Snow White a poisoned apple. In my version, the witch asks Snow what her pronouns are. So Snow crams the poisoned apple down the witch's gullet. Witch turns into a frog that hops away and the magic broom takes a liking to Snow and follows her home.
Don't know how that can lead to a prince waking up a poisoned Snow with a kiss. Maybe I can have a prince see Snow and the dwarves taking turns riding the broom and have him ask if he can take a ride too.
And that frog can come hopping back to start trouble. I dunno. That's okay. I don't want to work for Disney anyway. Don't care to be around flaky libtards.

Very clever! Hehe

LMAO, would have enjoyed a Carlin take down of the trans community.

Loved that one . . .

Not likely an "Asteroid" but surely a gruesome and natural end to this cycle and a restart anew; hopefully with many lessons learned in tow.

Thanks Larry, The unsure of themselves crowd had the rest of us introspecting our own motives for standing by Trump and ultimately knowing we had not strayed from our own objectiveism . . . in the real world, A can only equal A and there is only "One Right" amongst a host of wrongs.

Disney should have hired you to write the Snow White movie.

“It’s a small club and you ain’t in it.”
And
“Atheism is a non profit organization.”
George Carlin

Prayers for your continued recovery and wellness.
It’s been years since I warned of the death jab. My healthy sister died from multiple jabs at age 69. Blessings!

it is worse
the Alien Enemies Act has a provision that removes it from judicial review

this is clearly being ignore by "judges"

If he were alive and doing this material today somebody would jump up on the stage and try to stab him ...like was done with Chappelle.

anyone that helped cover-up biden's crimes, biden's decline, the Russia hoax has ZERO credibility ON ANY "scandal" that might happen in the Trump admin

they simply cannot be trusted with the Truth

Hey Dob...I am waiting for the axe to fall. Read the article about the guy who has discovered how many people got vaxxed and it ruined their health. This will amount to a monumental Class Action suit. Two of my best friends got stung...one is now blind and the other can't stay out of the hospital. You will recall I begged them not to get vaxxed.I am grieving for them. All I do is fall down cont8nuallyl but I am fighting this. Second time I have fractured my pelvis. I now weigh 110 pounds...?nb

👍

I'm certain many booby traps have been laid and are underfoot still. Many security clearances have been revoked. I bet they still have spies in there. How to purge the CIA, FBI when the moles are in on the plans to purge? I guess we have to...something to do with orbit? :D

Rat shit bat shit
Dirty old twat
Sixty-nine assholes
Tied in a knot
Hooray
Lizard shit
Fuck!

One of Carlin's notable cheers. Apologies for the crude and crassness. I am not George. Just loved him. Especially The Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say on Television.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbZhp...

no sale

The President has the ultimate power to send the US Marshals to the courts and arrest the miscreant judges and transfer them to Guantanamo Bay for Military Tribunals because the issues are FOREIGN and NOT domestic.

It's not even a "Constitutional" emergency.
Executive Branch is the ONLY Branch with Authority to deal with INTERNATIONAL ISSUES!

“…Of this I am convinced: something hard to comprehend is happening as a result of the exponential acceleration of computing power and its drop in price…”

Actually, I am, egotistically, of the belief that I know precisely what is coming and why but am struggling to organize my thoughts and put them into book form and publish them.

I look forward to reading your review of Kurzweil's book. Your writings are thought-provoking as always.
.
Joe

Thanks, yes, A lot of us can identify with your story (in upper case even).

We start from a mixture of some expertise and much concern, but are brushed aside with disdain.

Yeah, lots and lots of questions, for sure. I am now reading the serious futurist, Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity Is Nearer." Of this I am convinced: something hard to comprehend is happening as a result of the exponential acceleration of computing power and its drop in price. This really can change the world. I am reviewing the book as I read it and can give you a preview of the two major questions I raise about Kurzweil's predictions.

Another review is required to explore my criticisms of the Singularity. So I will mention just two.

When Kurzweil argues in best materialist fashion that if we build a silicon brain of sufficient complexity, then awareness—consciousness—will emerge as it does from our brains. I think attention is needed to the question: Is consciousness possible without life? Life requires values for survival, values generate appetites and desires, which generate goal-directed action, which provide constant evaluative feedback. In the billion or more years life evolved, every step in emergence of mind responded solely to the imperative of survival. Thus every function and action of our brains responds to a single inherent standard: life. What similar unified, universal, motive-and action-generating, inherently evaluative (“good for me?”) standard will be built into the lifeless brain of the silicon “intelligence”? Will it automatically conceive, motivate, regulate, and evaluate its physical and mental behavior? No amount of external programming will give its enormous complexity coherent purposefulness because no life means no values means no feelings or emotions, mean no “stakes”—means no consciousness. As Antonio Damasio encapsulated it: consciousness is “the feeling of what happens.”
My other issue takes to task Kurzweil’s masterful exposition of almost universal improvement, all key trends are good. Yes, in the developed countries (and partially in the rest of the world)—except for the long-term direction of human philosophy. Ideas in the long term decide the fate of civilizations. The philosophy we call “modernity” formed during the Age of Enlightenment (essentially the eighteenth century): reason, secularism, science and technology, individualism, rational egoism, human universalism, natural rights, constitutionally limited government, and capitalism. We still ride on these achievements today in the developed world, particularly the nation born of the Enlightenment, the United States of America. But the philosophical underpinnings of modernism have long been under attack and are sadly in disrepair. Originating chiefly in German Idealism since Immanuel Kant (and disseminating throughout the civilized world), reason, individualism, constitutionalism, and capitalism have been under unrelenting attack. We see the result today in our universities and increasingly in the professions and politics: postmodernism. It is an anti-reason philosophy of radical epistemological skepticism; irrationalism; suspicion of science and technology; antagonism to individualism in the name of “groupism,” “identity politics,” collectivism, and tribalism; statism antagonistic to capitalism; and egalitarianism as against merit. None of these is new. Most originated in the first half of the nineteenth century and led to collectivism (Marxism and national socialism), existentialism, and postmodernism. By now, modernism’s foundations are largely washed away; the superstructure has not fallen and even what is left still works as Kurzweil documents. But, as we know, when the foundations are finally gone and the superstructure is socialism—communistic or fascistic—progress is all over.
Despite these questions, Kurzweil's predictions are compelling. I hope to have the review on Savvy Street soon.

I Looked after you were looking and I liked that look!
Thanks

As previously posted in the Gulch by member LibertyPen:
The American Okie Doke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W40E2...

Carlin was indeed brilliant.
In his later years his shows were a primer on government overreach and corruption.
I think this video was part of his show It's Bad For Ya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_...