I don’t think you understand. Your consciousness is just one process amid a myriad of processes that your brain runs. It’s that continuity that matters. You’re correct that I don’t know if my current consciousness is the same as prior consciousnesses, however what matters is that my brain has never shut off, giving me the feeling as though I am the same person; and it is because of that thread that I am the same person (though perhaps with a different consciousness).

Furthermore, you can’t achieve immortality through digital consciousness if you just copy the whole thing and throw out the original. Again, it’s the continuity. It honestly confuses me why people think that’s a rational idea when the very obvious problem is, “what if something goes wrong and human me wakes up?”

That’s why you have people, like me, who get frustrated when people start getting philosophical about this shit because they think you can “just make a perfect copy” of a person to achieve immortality.

Seriously?

No.

You just killed yourself and made a copy of yourself. You didn’t achieve shit. Your new self might be happy, but your old self is dead. You’re not suddenly going to wake up as a digital clone. You’re not waking up at all, it’s your clone that’s waking up.

And hey, if that’s good enough for you, then so be it. Just don’t pretend you’ve achieved immortality; it was your digital clone that did. You’re still going to die.

It also confuses me that so many people seem to believe that you’re literally brain-dead while you sleep. If you were literally brain-dead then there’d be no way for you to wake up. Sleep seems to be when the brain processes memories too, so if your brain fully shut off, then it wouldn’t be able to processes memories while you’re asleep. Finally, afaik, once the brain shuts off, it can’t turn back on; evolution didn’t plan for a situation in which someone’s been dead long enough for brain activity to cease before their heart starts pumping again. So why does everyone insist that you go brain-dead the moment your head touches the pillow?

She fucked a chimp, didn’t she?

Okay, and? What are you trying to say?

Why would money become worthless if AGI is invented? Best case scenario is a benevolent AGI which would likely use its power to phase out capitalism, worst case scenario is that the AGI goes apeshit and, for one reason or another, decides that humanity just has to go. Either way, your money is gonna be worthless.

The only way your money would retain its value is if the AGI is roped into suppressing the masses. However, I think capitalists would struggle to keep a true AGI reigned in; so imo, it’s questionable as to whether or not the middle road would be “true” AGI or just a very competent computer program (the former being capable of coming to its own conclusions from the information it’s given, the latter being nothing more than pre-programmed conclusions).

I’ll throw you a bone and say that, if/when AGI rolls around, I’ll be more than happy to extend concepts like creativity and artistic ability to it. I’ll throw you another bone and say you’re technically not wrong either.

The question I’ve come to is less about what is “original vs remix”, and instead, “sapience vs machine intelligence”. If sentience is the ability for an individual to say, “I think, therefore I am”, then sapience is the ability for an individual to figure out that “I think, therefore I am”. Furthermore, in this context I define “machine intelligence” as something artificially created which demonstrates elements of sentience or even sapience but fails to meet all the criteria that we would consider necessary for human intelligence (basically machine intelligence is “fake” intelligence).

AI at its current state appears to be nothing more than machine intelligence. It looks cool, it can fool you pretty good, however, in the end it appears to be about as conscious and self-aware as a jellyfish or siphonophore.

Furthermore, the AI doesn’t have the ability to create unique experiences. It doesn’t have the ability to walk out the door, drive down the street, walk into a surf shop and buy a surfboard. Even if we say, “putting it in a robot is too hard, we’ll just put it in VRChat instead”, I still have strong doubts about whether or not the AI is actually experiencing anything.

I mean, it can’t even learn from itself without human intervention ffs. Unlike a human, you can’t train an AI while it’s running. Unlike an AI, humans don’t ever fully shut off until we’re dead (no, your brain doesn’t turn off when you sleep; if it did then you’d literally be dead).

So you’re not technically wrong, but at the same time AI brings nothing new to the table. It doesn’t have new experiences it can mix in with the artwork it was trained on, nor is there evidence that it’d be able to control or shape what it experiences. While I hesitate to attach the physical act of creation to the concept of creativity (I consider creativity to be separate from artistic skill), a large part of creativity is coming up with something new based on a combination of your own experience and the experiences of others. Whether or not you act on your creativity and how well you execute your idea is immaterial.

Nfts legitimately confuse me.

“Why can’t you put the whole image in an nft?”

“It’s too big”

“Why is it too big?”

“It’d take too long to generate.”

“Okay, but why?”

“Because nfts can’t hold that much information.”

“Okay, but why?”

“Because it’d take too long to generate.”

“Okay, but why would it take too long to generate???”

“Fuck you, stop wasting my time.”

“Oooookay. I really don’t understand but okay, fuck you too I guess.”

Does anyone know why nfts are so small? Everything I’ve read says that they’re fucking tiny, but nothing explains why they can’t be larger, why being larger would be too slow, and so on. They honestly seem like a decent answer to the digital ownership problem of “I want to resell this game like I could 20yrs ago but I can’t because it didn’t come on a disc”, however I get sent in a circle whenever I try to figure out what makes nfts so unwieldy and impractical.

(Not that I think anyone should be able to own a digital good; I pay for digital things because I want to support people, not because I think digital ownership is a legitimate concept. Imo, because digital things can be copied as many times as you want, you can’t truly own a digital item, and nor should anyone be allowed to try and revoke said item unless said item is illegal for other reasons. However… As long as we live in a capitalist society hell-bent on applying the concept of ownership to a system that’s only limited by your hardware, I think people should have the ability to actually “own” their digital goods (in a traditional sense), which includes things like the right to not have a company take them away whenever it feels like it and the ability to sell digital goods like an IRL market.)

Everyone’s trying to recapture the dotcom bubble; but they don’t realize tech is gonna need considerably more money than they already have to do something that crazy again. Furthermore, when it comes to AI specifically, if you give them the money they need to actually achieve AGI, then there’s a very real chance your investments will be worthless the moment they succeed.

My therapist when he realizes my brain demons are too strong and they’re dragging him down with me.

I see reality slightly sideways.

For anyone who’s never seen the show, please do. It’s fucking amazing. It’s so bad it’s good.

Is an EULA presented this way considered binding? That seems really exploitable, like making people click hundreds of links to get to the real EULA so they don’t actually read it.

What the fuck is this and where do I buy one? How do I set it on people? Does it need their scent or does it have a little slot where I can insert someone’s picture and it’ll automatically home in on them?

“I’m old” vs “I MOLD”

I like the latter more, said like Dr. Weird.

Something I’ve been starting to wonder has to do with Israel’s possible nuke(s). I’m wondering if the reason why Biden keeps bowing to Israel is that Biden calls Netanyahu, tells him to stop or he’ll restrict weapons, and then Netanyahu tells him that if Israel doesn’t get US weapons, then they’ll feel backed into a corner with no other options. Biden gets the implication and backs down. As such, if Israel does indeed have a nuke or nuke(s), they may not need the US to attack Iran’s facilities, but are giving the US a chance to do it for them to avoid nuclear weapons coming into play.

I hope I’m wrong. I’d honestly rather have a president who is spineless than a president who’s being forced into a corner by a supposed ally because they’re threatening to nuke everyone. The latter is extremely scary because it means that calling their bluff could end in a nuclear war.

I mean, the plaque might still have an effect; it’s possible that exposure to the viruses described in the article could lead to higher levels of amyloid beta plaque, or cause the plaque to be more harmful. Kinda like how a broken leg might be caused by a fall, but the actual problem wasn’t the fall, it’s the fact your leg is broken.

If you want to copyright the prompt, go right ahead. As far as I’m concerned that’s fair game; though I still think you’re a dumbass for getting mad about it.

As for the image? Fuck off. You can convince people that AI is capable of original works, or you can convince people that AI is nothing but a tool to remix and mashup other people’s artwork.

If you do the former, then the AI is the one that should receive copyright, not you. If the AI wants to then sell or transfer the copyright to you, then it’s free to do that… Except AI can’t hold copyright because there’s no evidence that it is intelligent enough to do so.

As for the latter? You’d better start going through your training set to make sure none of the trained images exist in the final image in a large enough capacity to be considered infringing. Otherwise, you may be liable for copyright infringement.

Either way, go fuck yourself.

I still can’t believe that the Clinton administration thought that it was a good idea to resolve the suez canal crisis that way. And the ADA too… What the fuck? I’m so embarrassed to be an American.

I saw a perfect response for that recently: The bar was so low it was a tripping hazard in Hell; yet here you are, limbo dancing with the devil.

I think that’s who they believe is running the world’s governments.

Edit: I wish they were right, then half the stuff they talk about might actually work.

Rachel’s looks like she’s about to tell me about Mr. Rockafeller’s special Christmas tree.

I wonder how many people will get the reference

dog soldiers

You piqued my interest

OH NO HE’S HOT

you know I’d be rooting for the werewolves, right?