Politics & Stuff

[cosmicway 1,333]

1 hour ago, robsblubot said:

There is no AI "thing." Ai may bring paradigm changes to a number of different areas.

My skepticism is regarding the self-awareness bit, which I think is just a "fun" clickbait doomsday scenario based more on sci-fi ideas than science.

There is no evidence whatsoever that self-awareness may be just around the corner; I've been hearing that that's the case for decades.
It is very likely the probabilistic ML engines in use today will indeed disrupt a lot of industries, services, life in general.
It's also likely that they are completely incapable of achieving self-awareness and we are still a breakthrough away from seeing that. We don't even grok what it would take to get self-awareness in artificial systems.
Of course it can, and perhaps should be discussed, but my take remains that this specific issue is a potential concern, not an urgent concern like other aspects around AI and automation.

There are good points made in the video linked above, and a lot of speculation too.

We are mainly talking about problem solving.
I don't know if AI can do the Putnam exam paper, but I assume it is feasible.

But self awareness is of course a different philosophy.
It's ok to solve a problem when someone else gives it to us and says "solve this problem" and quite another to think of the problem and then proceed to attempt to solve it.
In this context when I say a problem it can be anything, hard or easy.
Who makes better spare ribs ? Al downtown or Joe uptown ? I have to go there and decide for myself - it's a "problem".
What do I say to that blonde I keep seeing in the supermaraket ? She looks the part but conversation opener ?
Those are the issues and again they exist because a) I like spare ribs, b) I like blondes.
Why I like spare ribs ? I like them because when I was small my mom took me to a restaurant.
Why I like blondes ? Because they are nice looking blondes.
All these things are related to of self awareness and libidinous drive, unchecked so far in the field of AI.
But nevertheless it looks like the story has began.


 

Edited April 25, 2024 by cosmicway

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,920]

On 23/04/2024 at 04:40, Vesper said:

3 main things worry me to core atm in terms of existential threats to the future of humankind

in no order (and at some levels all are interconnected)

Nuclear Weapons

AI

Global Climate Change

 

at a more immediate level:

the possible re-election of Trump and then the Republicans retaining control the US House of Representatives and gaining back the US Senate (wherein a christo-fascistic minority would hold the whip hand over all 3 branches of the most powerful nation in human history's 3 branches of its federal government (Executive, Judicial (the US Supreme Court especially), and Legislative)

Trump is a POS who can't win, but I can't say he's any more of a threat than the guy who watches his police forces rough up students and teachers peacefully protesting on campus and call them "Antisemites" for opposing our tax dollars funding a literal genocide😂

I held my nose and voted for Biden 4 years ago....he's making it really hard to repeat that choice today though.

[robsblubot 3,595]

2 hours ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

Trump is a POS who can't win, but I can't say he's any more of a threat than the guy who watches his police forces rough up students and teachers peacefully protesting on campus and call them "Antisemites" for opposing our tax dollars funding a literal genocide😂

I held my nose and voted for Biden 4 years ago....he's making it really hard to repeat that choice today though.

It's not "his" police is it? I mean he can certainly apply pressure, which I presume is what you want him to do, or perhaps show some support, but ultimately it's city's and state's call.

Was reading about their (protestor's) demands today: good luck with that. Like it or not, the reality here is that any, and I mean any, elected president would support Israel the same way Biden is doing (perhaps even more unapologetically so).

The argument, which I happen to not find crazy, is that if you don't want to US to support Israel it would cease to exist. So, these universities are in a bind: they can either take a stance against Israel and appear (which is enough) antisemite, or stand against the protestors, which seems unpopular esp in the liberal media. My money is on that nothing will happen. Kinda "occupy wall street redux."

Regarding Trump vs Biden, I think it goes way deeper than politics or whether you agree with specific policies or not. The whole pardoning for favors alone is already a huge red flag to me. How that shit isn't illegal is beyond me. Then again he asked for votes to be "found" in a recorded phone call, so. 🤷‍♂️

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,920]

23 minutes ago, robsblubot said:

It's not "his" police is it? I mean he can certainly apply pressure, which I presume is what you want him to do, or perhaps show some support, but ultimately it's city's and state's call.

Was reading about their (protestor's) demands today: good luck with that. Like it or not, the reality here is that any, and I mean any, elected president would support Israel the same way Biden is doing (perhaps even more unapologetically so).

The argument, which I happen to not find crazy, is that if you don't want to US to support Israel it would cease to exist. So, these universities are in a bind: they can either take a stance against Israel and appear (which is enough) antisemite, or stand against the protestors, which seems unpopular esp in the liberal media. My money is on that nothing will happen. Kinda "occupy wall street redux."

Regarding Trump vs Biden, I think it goes way deeper than politics or whether you agree with specific policies or not. The whole pardoning for favors alone is already a huge red flag to me. How that shit isn't illegal is beyond me. Then again he asked for votes to be "found" in a recorded phone call, so. 🤷‍♂️

I mean its a matter of leadership.

Im from, and live in the south. A president applying pressure on the police and pulling rank is the reason why our states function at all today. I do agree the universities are in a bind, but really they should just let the protests happen.

I think he could get an easy win by saying he respects the right for peaceful protest, and leave it there. Calling them antisemites is weak sauce.

[Vesper 30,100]

On 27/04/2024 at 00:40, Sir Mikel OBE said:

Trump is a POS who can't win, but I can't say he's any more of a threat than the guy who watches his police forces rough up students and teachers peacefully protesting on campus and call them "Antisemites" for opposing our tax dollars funding a literal genocide😂

I held my nose and voted for Biden 4 years ago....he's making it really hard to repeat that choice today though.

the US is a federal system, Biden has no direct control over local coppers other thanusing the bully pulpit and perhaps a federal prosecution if they break serious laws

[Vesper 30,100]

Britain’s Conservative Party faces a fight for its very survival.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/britains-conservative-party-facing-up-to-the-threat-of-total-extinction

LONDON—A crucial difference between the dinosaurs and Britain’s ruling Conservative Party is that the dinosaurs had no way of knowing the asteroid was coming. For the Tories, portents of doom abound, with some polls suggesting that an extinction-level event of catastrophic political losses could be on the way in the next general election. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has signaled that he’ll call the election in the second half of the year, and it can legally come no later than January 2025.

With his party trailing the opposition Labour Party by over 20 points, most pundits expect the election will be the end of Tory rule. But will it be the end of the Conservative Party altogether?

Lawmakers will get an early, if imperfect, indication of whether a Tory Götterdämmerung is in the making on Thursday, when local elections are held across England and Wales. The complex and varied ballots—which include elections for thousands of local council seats, several regional mayors, and law enforcement officials—will not affect the makeup of the British parliament or pose a direct threat to Sunak’s grip on power. But some Tories fear this could be where the unraveling of the world’s oldest operating—and electorally most successful—political party begins.

“This is the first of two stages of Conservative annihilation,” one former Conservative minister told The Daily Beast, the second being the general election when it arrives. “People have completely switched off and have become unpersuadable. They’ve made up their mind and they just want the nightmare to be over.”

Even those who think reports of the Conservative Party’s impending political death are greatly exaggerated still expect the Tories to get smoked in the May 2 local elections, with some experts suggesting that the party could lose as many as half of its council seats.

Part of the problem is that the Tories did so well three years ago when many of the seats currently up for grabs were last contested. “May 2021 is when Boris Johnson was prime minister—remember him?” Sir John Curtice, Britain’s leading political scientist and professor at the University of Strathclyde, told The Daily Beast. At the time the Tories were well ahead of Labour in the national polls and enjoying a surge in popularity after the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. “A completely, completely different world,” Curtice said. “And the problem that the Tories therefore face is that they are defending a good year against the backdrop of an opinion poll situation where they’re 20 points behind.”

“I think nationally the Tories will be trounced as you would expect in a midterm,” another ex-Tory minister told The Daily Beast, while a current Conservative member of parliament (MP) said, “We’re obviously going to lose” many races given the successes of 2021.

The MP instead said the “interesting” aspect of next week’s elections will be the re-election bids of two incumbent Tory mayors—Andy Street in the West Midlands and Ben Houchen in the northeastern Tees Valley. Both politicians enjoy personal popularity in their local areas, so bad results in their races could be interpreted by some Tory lawmakers as unignorable warning signs about the intensity of sentiment against their party throughout the country.

“If both of them were to go, there would be considerable concern,” the Tory lawmaker said. “But what Conservative MPs would do about it, I don’t know.” The MP added that because a general election is potentially just months away, they’re not convinced “anybody is actually going to do anything completely mad”—by which they mean a move to topple Sunak and replace him with a new leader before the national ballot arrives. “We’ll have to see—I can never predict what my colleagues do,” the MP said. “It would be ridiculous.”

Ridiculous indeed. Since returning to power in 2010 after 13 years in opposition, the Conservatives have treated Britain to no fewer than five different prime ministers. Of those, just two (David Cameron and Boris Johnson) decisively won national elections, while a third (Theresa May) came out of an election with no clear majority, and needed the support of another party to govern. Liz Truss was installed as the leader of a country of 68 million people on the basis that a little over 81,000 Conservative Party members voted for her in a contest triggered by Johnson’s scandal-riddled downfall. And Sunak—the fifth Tory prime minister in just six years—came to power because a grand total of 193 people chose him to be the man to mop up the history-making mess of Truss’ unprecedentedly brief stint in Downing Street.

Curtice, the polling guru, estimated that the Labour party now has a “99 percent chance” of forming the next British government when the general election comes. “The Tories do face the not inconsiderable risk of turning up with their worst ever result in modern parliamentary history,” Curtice said. “But it may not be quite as bad as the fate of the Tories in Canada.”

That’s a reference to the cataclysmic performance of the Progressive Conservatives in Canada in 1993. After nine years in power, the PC lost all but two of its federal seats in one of the worst electoral defeats for a governing party ever seen in the Western world. The crushing result, which precipitated the party’s eventual dissolution, has been invoked by some British media reports on the upcoming U.K. general election owing to certain parallels between the circumstances the Canadian conservatives faced then and those which British Tories are navigating now.

If not a complete wipeout, how bad could it get for Britain’s Tories? As bad as 1997, perhaps, when John Major led the party into its worst defeat in a century? Some in the party seem to be taking comfort in the perception that the current Labour leader, Keir Starmer, is not as charismatic a figure as his 1997-landslide-winning predecessor Tony Blair. As one former Tory minister put it: “Mother Teresa couldn’t have beaten Blair.” Polling on Sunak’s personal popularity, though, also makes for pretty bleak reading from the Tory standpoint.

There is also another existential threat to the Conservative Party: itself. The party is riven by factional infighting which has already created major headaches for Sunak. One alliance from five rebellious, rightwing factions dubbed the “five families” has given him hell over migration policy. Liz Truss even launched a new “Popular Conservatism” faction in February which quickly set about giving Sunak’s policies a kicking, and promised to be part of the battle against “left-wing extremists.” Even if the Tories avoid total wipe-out in the general election, a heavy defeat could turn bitter factional divisions into an outright breakup of the Conservative Party.

Conservative MPs are now simply left to wait and ponder their own fate. Many doubtless already feel endangered—and are thinking about who’s to blame for their current predicament.

“We’ve had eight years of turmoil, total division, intellectual bankruptcy, a collapse in party discipline, and MPs who just don’t know how to behave,” one former Tory minister said. “They think they matter. And people now think they don’t.”

[Fulham Broadway 17,306]

US doctor describes witnessing starvation in northern Gaza

Another mother whose 10-year-old son had just died.

"The mom just told me with just a blank numb stare on her face that he had just died five minutes prior. The staff had been trying to cover up his body with blankets but she just refused to let them. She wanted to spend more time with him. She was grieving, she was sobbing, and stayed that way for about a good 20 minutes, she just didn't want to leave his side."

Then there was the man in his 50s, forgotten in a room, having had both legs amputated.

"He had lost his kids, his grandkids, his home," Sam recalls, "and he's alone in the corner of this dark hospital, maggots going out of his wounds and he was screaming: 'The worms are eating me alive please help me.' That was just one just one out of… I don't know, I just I stopped counting. But those are the people I still think of because they're still there."

Sam is a sensitive, thoughtful man in his 40s, the son of two doctors, who was born and raised in Chicago and who works as a surgeon at Northwestern hospital in the city. While in Gaza he kept video diaries and filmed his experiences.

 

IMAGE SOURCE,ALAMY

Image caption,

Seven-year-old Jenna Ayyad was severely traumatised - she has since been transferred to southern Gaza where she is receiving treatment

There was the little girl, Jenna Ayyad, aged seven, "just skeleton and bone" whose mother hoped to get to the south where better medical facilities were available.

 

Over 34 000 murdered thousands more buried under rubble, maimed suffocating.

66 women and children  in the last 24 hours. Imagine if they were US, Israeli or British

Empathy turns to Apathy when its Palestinians. Racism. Apartheid. They dont matter

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,920]

3 hours ago, Vesper said:

the US is a federal system, Biden has no direct control over local coppers other thanusing the bully pulpit and perhaps a federal prosecution if they break serious laws

Presidents have literally sent in federal forces to stop local coppers from infringing on Federal rights.

[Vesper 30,100]

10 hours ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

Presidents have literally sent in federal forces to stop local coppers from infringing on Federal rights.

non sequitur

I was responding to this part of what you said:

Quote

than the guy who watches his police forces rough up students and teachers peacefully protesting on campus

 

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,920]

1 hour ago, Vesper said:

non sequitur

I was responding to this part of what you said:

 

Eh Fair enough there.

[Fulham Broadway 17,306]

Democrats, Republicans, US and UK politicians, their billionaire corporate media backers, AI bots, -all are trying to frame the growing protests and global demonstrations as Hate Marches, and anti Semitism. 

eg The Daily Nail has pictures of holocaust memorials covered up with tarpaulin ''in case of anti semitic vandalism' from the ''hate marchers''. Complete bollocks of course, as they are always covered up when there is any demonstration - this has been confirmed by the administrators. Its lie after lie after lie....

Reality is under 1st amendment the hundreds of US campuses and Universities have the right to free speech. Students and academics are being brutalised for the simple act of sitting down, for the simple act of demanding a ceasefire to the daily slaughter.

A new movement is being formed of anti war - comparable to 1968 when the mindless slaughter in Vietnam was occurring. Today there are far more cameras to record the events on campuses, and could well backfire on the Draconian measures being enforced by Democrat and Republicans - Dont fall into their bi partisan divide and rule trap whereby one party is better than the other - they both love selling weapons and endorsing the butcher Netanyahu

[Fulham Broadway 17,306]

 

If I was American and pro peace - I would consider voting Jill Stein for the 2024 presidency. 

[Vesper 30,100]

1 hour ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Democrats, Republicans, US and UK politicians, their billionaire corporate media backers, AI bots, -all are trying to frame the growing protests and global demonstrations as Hate Marches, and anti Semitism. 

eg The Daily Nail has pictures of holocaust memorials covered up with tarpaulin ''in case of anti semitic vandalism' from the ''hate marchers''. Complete bollocks of course, as they are always covered up when there is any demonstration - this has been confirmed by the administrators. Its lie after lie after lie....

Reality is under 1st amendment the hundreds of US campuses and Universities have the right to free speech. Students and academics are being brutalised for the simple act of sitting down, for the simple act of demanding a ceasefire to the daily slaughter.

A new movement is being formed of anti war - comparable to 1968 when the mindless slaughter in Vietnam was occurring. Today there are far more cameras to record the events on campuses, and could well backfire on the Draconian measures being enforced by Democrat and Republicans - Dont fall into their bi partisan divide and rule trap whereby one party is better than the other - they both love selling weapons and endorsing the butcher Netanyahu

the Israeli/Jewish multinationally aided hasbara machine is the most ferocious in the world (at least for small nation states)

they have lied and gaslighted since the 1897 Zionist conference kicked off the whole modern 'grab Israel for Jews only' thing

besides the biblical based 'blood libel for the killing of Jeebus' bollocks (Jesus was a hardcore radical zealot Jewish freedom fighter against the Romans, who Paul took and falsely turned him into a god, see the Habakkuk Commentary (Wicked Priests and the Liar, aka the Pharisees and Paul), from the Dead Sea scrolls, the main contemporaneous account (ALL of the Christan Gosåel were written 60 to 100 plus years later) of Jesus and his Qumran base of operations, 20 clicks outside of Jerusalem, THAT is the Damascus that the Romans sent Paul/Saul to wipe out, not the Syrian Damascus, which was far outside the remit of Pontius Pilate based on how the Roman governance geographical power structures were set up)

the main reasons for historical hatred of jews is simple

1. The whole 'chosen ones' thing

and more importantly

2. The whole 'Jews as money changers and especially bankers' motif, which was caused by the Catholic Church banning money lending (usury is a sin) when done for profit, BUT then, as the Church was only propped up by the power of the Kings/Queens/nobilty's swords, they gave the OK for those non secualr, temporal entites (and sometimes the Church itself) to go ahead and borrow money and finance their military adventurism by borrowing from non Christians (aka mainly the Jews)

Even after the rise of the proto giant banks in Italy (which were well connected at all levels with the Church, with some of the bankers even becoming Popes), the great Jewish banking families (like the Rothschilds) married into that Italian (and other nationalities eventually) banking structure, and eventually took it over on either a direct or indirected basis, plus were given titles of nobilty

The jewish bankers financed both sides of most of the huge Euro wars of the past multiple centuries (the UK still has not paid off certain parts of the war debts to the Rotthschild system from the Napoleanic Wars and from WWI, for instance)

The whole Breton Woods (post WWII international banking system, including the BIS, The World Bank, the IMF, etc etc) structure is interlocked with the jewish banker originated models (the BIS, Bank for International Settlements, the global central bank for all national and supranational central banks, including the Fed, the BoE, Bank of China, ECB, etc etc) was based off a House of Rothschild and Warburg family model, with many of its founders being in either alliance or the direct employ (covert in some cases) of those entities).

Edited April 29, 2024 by Vesper

[Fulham Broadway 17,306]

Funny how Israeli spokespeople think we're all thick or something.  -283 corpses found in mass grave Khan Younnis hospital - women, children, patients with catheters and drips still attached, hands tied with cable ties, shot in the head. Many show signs of being tortured

Deputy mayor of Jerusalem said ''maybe they were fighting back, they must have been terrorists'' She said there would be an investigation, but maybe the patients who had their hands cable tied behind their backs, who also show signs of being tortured ''had thrown rockets or grenades''

Israel has the right to defend itself from terminally ill hospital patients with their hands tied behind their backs living in a cage from which no one can leave. 

[Vesper 30,100]

4 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Funny how Israeli spokespeople think we're all thick or something.  -283 corpses found in mass grave Khan Younnis hospital - women, children, patients with catheters and drips still attached, hands tied with cable ties, shot in the head. Many show signs of being tortured

Deputy mayor of Jerusalem said ''maybe they were fighting back, they must have been terrorists'' She said there would be an investigation, but maybe the patients who had their hands cable tied behind their backs, who also show signs of being tortured ''had thrown rockets or grenades''

Israel has the right to defend itself from terminally ill hospital patients with their hands tied behind their backs living in a cage from which no one can leave. 

The entire jewish power structure in the Levant has a 125 plus year history of outright lying and gaslighting there, and taken to far larger global levels and the long sweep of history, the same can be said for the entire group. They were always a tiny minority, so had to play hyper sophisticated disinfo games for millenia.