AI and robotics are quite conservative, and that's it's weakness.
Even now, AI is impressive but once you get off the beaten path it quickly shows it's limitations, it can give you something that's already been found, but higher level reasoning, creativity, and dealing with stuff it was never trained on show quickly the limits of even the best AI. It's a very well built demo, but anyone who has ever worked in the real world knows how well built demos don't automatically produce good real world results.
Robotics have multiple issues. You get the robotics you build, for the purposes you build those robots for. Anyone who has tried to use AI for troubleshooting quickly realizes that it only knows what it's been told, so it isn't terribly useful once things aren't as expected. It's also quite rigid, so while well read it often has problems letting go of ideas it likes. Besides that, humans are still more dexterous than general purpose robots and stronger than most of them too. There's a reason why so much industrial work is still done by humans despite machines being good enough for much of the work for decades. Humans are more flexible in numerous ways.
The dream of a society where nobody works has been on the menu for quite a few years. I remember seeing an article from the 1960s that could have been written in 2023, but while authors can dream and produce with nothing else, at some point somebody somewhere actually needs to accomplish something so you have to stop dreaming and actually do. Then all the constraints of the real world reveal such tools to be useful and important, but not all encompassing. The limitations of our tools don't seem to matter in abstract, but in practice they are the most important thing.
Even now, AI is impressive but once you get off the beaten path it quickly shows it's limitations, it can give you something that's already been found, but higher level reasoning, creativity, and dealing with stuff it was never trained on show quickly the limits of even the best AI. It's a very well built demo, but anyone who has ever worked in the real world knows how well built demos don't automatically produce good real world results.
Robotics have multiple issues. You get the robotics you build, for the purposes you build those robots for. Anyone who has tried to use AI for troubleshooting quickly realizes that it only knows what it's been told, so it isn't terribly useful once things aren't as expected. It's also quite rigid, so while well read it often has problems letting go of ideas it likes. Besides that, humans are still more dexterous than general purpose robots and stronger than most of them too. There's a reason why so much industrial work is still done by humans despite machines being good enough for much of the work for decades. Humans are more flexible in numerous ways.
The dream of a society where nobody works has been on the menu for quite a few years. I remember seeing an article from the 1960s that could have been written in 2023, but while authors can dream and produce with nothing else, at some point somebody somewhere actually needs to accomplish something so you have to stop dreaming and actually do. Then all the constraints of the real world reveal such tools to be useful and important, but not all encompassing. The limitations of our tools don't seem to matter in abstract, but in practice they are the most important thing.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-yellen-idUSKBN19I2I5
The same people trying to manage the financial crisis claimed there would never be a other financial crisis again just a few years ago! Just a reminder!
The same people trying to manage the financial crisis claimed there would never be a other financial crisis again just a few years ago! Just a reminder!
We are in an age of unprecedented intellectual cowardice and weakness. Doesn't matter that process is such as science and reason are allegedly elevated, people just turn them into religions making them useless.
The current intellectual establishment wouldn't have given Socrates the option to drink the hemlock, they would have just forced it down his throat before he said anything.
The current intellectual establishment wouldn't have given Socrates the option to drink the hemlock, they would have just forced it down his throat before he said anything.
https://thepostmillennial.com/trudeau-government-could-crumble-as-ndp-leader-demands-answers-on-china-election-scandal-intentional-delay-in-release-of-2-michaels
Der Fuhrer's pomeranian lapdog in a turban will yip and yip and come dutifully when the dinner bowl is shaken.
Der Fuhrer's pomeranian lapdog in a turban will yip and yip and come dutifully when the dinner bowl is shaken.
Despite the claims that the site would be down in a week, it sure looks like the answer is not much!
internet job-search platform Indeed plans to lay off approximately 2,200 employees, representing 15% of its workforce.
Which leads to the natural question: What exactly is a job website doing that requires 15,000 employees?
Which leads to the natural question: What exactly is a job website doing that requires 15,000 employees?
https://timcast.com/news/north-carolina-teacher-reportedly-stripped-of-her-visa-after-taping-11-year-old-boys-mouth-shut-for-talking-during-class/
"What do you mean you can't even tape a LOUD child's mouth shut in this country? This is like living in Nazi Germany!"
"What do you mean you can't even tape a LOUD child's mouth shut in this country? This is like living in Nazi Germany!"
Parenting is a marathon, not a sprint, and as a society we stopped believing that things that are marathons are worth doing since you don't get a trophy 10 meters in.
"We were trying to get him arrested and put him in jail by any means possible, but can you believe that monster would actually think we're trying to put him in jail and tell people about it?!"
There's a problem that there's so much corruption that in previous eras would be career ending, but at some point they just realized they can just keep doing shit time and time again and there's literally no consequences.
I usually hate getting reports because our TOS specifically states that I'm not their dad, but this would be a funny report to get.
lol nihon will be like the arabs bringing back curated greek manuscripts to europe after the dark ages.
Depending where you are, there's lots of people who got the jab because the choice was bleak. In my neck of the woods, 85% of eligible people got it.
People had to choose between jab or job in a lot of cases, and it's easy to say "just quit!", but for someone with a good job and a family relying on them to bring in money, the choice wasn't so simple.
In my case, I took it because I'm a man, and my job is to take risks to provide for my family, but my wife and child thankfully never had to. (For all fat good it did, I got covid anyway!)
People had to choose between jab or job in a lot of cases, and it's easy to say "just quit!", but for someone with a good job and a family relying on them to bring in money, the choice wasn't so simple.
In my case, I took it because I'm a man, and my job is to take risks to provide for my family, but my wife and child thankfully never had to. (For all fat good it did, I got covid anyway!)
In general, you can change the way you read it from being theistic to atheistic just by reading each story as an allegory for following the prescribed morality, and seeing it through the lens of a being God who is above the kings in terms of hierarchy ends up being an allegory saying that morality is more important than whoever happens to be in charge at the time.
In grounded terms, Moses left a privileged upbringing in Egypt (and slavery was a major institution at the time, it didn't go away when Moses left Egypt and I'm sure the Israelites would have practiced it once they settled, so our modern interpretation of the story through the lens of abhorring slavery probably isn't quite accurate) for wandering the desert for 40 years and barely subsisting off of water from rocks and manna, making a major sacrifice for a long time to build a better future for his people. He had to figure out how to rule his people so they would be moral people, and it was challenging. They were off looking for a promised land where they could settle, which is a universal theme that's particularly relevant today as people search for a place to belong.
The story speaks to human dignity, where the God of the Israelites saved a bunch of slaves from a king, which is contrary to many of the moral systems of the era which would have been highly aristocratic and would have considered those of a higher social station to be more human. Instead, even these slaves are treated as humans worthy of basic dignity.
There's lots of stories where the people are losing faith, and they start to waver, and sometimes the people who lost faith faced big punishments, such as when the earth opened up and swallowed up many of the people who opposed Moses, the prophet of God (and thus the deliverer of morality to the people). Again, you can interpret this directly as big man God doing stuff, or you can interpret it as allegory that losing faith in acting in a moral manner will result in cataclysmic consequences.
I found some parallels between the story of Moses and the Israelites leaving Egypt and wandering the desert and my struggles going to college. I didn't get fancy scholarships or big fat student loans, especially at first. I had to work for years at a terrible job to save enough for tuition and living expenses, I had to take a huge risk and leave the home of my parents to live in a strange city and I didn't have that much money so I had to work really hard in school, and then sometimes I'd work Saturday for 16 hours, and Sunday for 12 hours and then go back to school Monday morning bright and early. I was sacrificing a lot, and I was working really hard, and it took a powerful faith that I was doing the right thing to keep doing it. I'd ride home many miles in the cold on my bicycle from work, and I'd pass by one street where prostitutes would hang out trying to get work, and then I'd pass by the main streets in the city where at that time of night the bars would have huge lines to get in, and all this represented a lifestyle I was completely cut off from because everything I had was being dedicated to this future I didn't have any guarantees I would get, but if I gave up, if I pulled a NEET and stopped going to class and spend my book money on booze and women and spent my time playing video games then losing faith like that would mean the earth would open up and swallow me whole because I'd have no future.
In the end I found success, but if I get arrogant and start to believe my success came because of my inherent superiority then I'll inevitably fail because what really helped me get to where I am today is by acting with moral virtue over a long time, of keeping my promises and maintaining my commitments, of making sacrifices and continuing to do so. I feel like this has parallels in the end of the story of Moses, where he got arrogant and didn't give proper due to the thing he had faith in that had helped him get so far, and the price of his hubris was ultimately never being allowed to set foot in the promised land.
In grounded terms, Moses left a privileged upbringing in Egypt (and slavery was a major institution at the time, it didn't go away when Moses left Egypt and I'm sure the Israelites would have practiced it once they settled, so our modern interpretation of the story through the lens of abhorring slavery probably isn't quite accurate) for wandering the desert for 40 years and barely subsisting off of water from rocks and manna, making a major sacrifice for a long time to build a better future for his people. He had to figure out how to rule his people so they would be moral people, and it was challenging. They were off looking for a promised land where they could settle, which is a universal theme that's particularly relevant today as people search for a place to belong.
The story speaks to human dignity, where the God of the Israelites saved a bunch of slaves from a king, which is contrary to many of the moral systems of the era which would have been highly aristocratic and would have considered those of a higher social station to be more human. Instead, even these slaves are treated as humans worthy of basic dignity.
There's lots of stories where the people are losing faith, and they start to waver, and sometimes the people who lost faith faced big punishments, such as when the earth opened up and swallowed up many of the people who opposed Moses, the prophet of God (and thus the deliverer of morality to the people). Again, you can interpret this directly as big man God doing stuff, or you can interpret it as allegory that losing faith in acting in a moral manner will result in cataclysmic consequences.
I found some parallels between the story of Moses and the Israelites leaving Egypt and wandering the desert and my struggles going to college. I didn't get fancy scholarships or big fat student loans, especially at first. I had to work for years at a terrible job to save enough for tuition and living expenses, I had to take a huge risk and leave the home of my parents to live in a strange city and I didn't have that much money so I had to work really hard in school, and then sometimes I'd work Saturday for 16 hours, and Sunday for 12 hours and then go back to school Monday morning bright and early. I was sacrificing a lot, and I was working really hard, and it took a powerful faith that I was doing the right thing to keep doing it. I'd ride home many miles in the cold on my bicycle from work, and I'd pass by one street where prostitutes would hang out trying to get work, and then I'd pass by the main streets in the city where at that time of night the bars would have huge lines to get in, and all this represented a lifestyle I was completely cut off from because everything I had was being dedicated to this future I didn't have any guarantees I would get, but if I gave up, if I pulled a NEET and stopped going to class and spend my book money on booze and women and spent my time playing video games then losing faith like that would mean the earth would open up and swallow me whole because I'd have no future.
In the end I found success, but if I get arrogant and start to believe my success came because of my inherent superiority then I'll inevitably fail because what really helped me get to where I am today is by acting with moral virtue over a long time, of keeping my promises and maintaining my commitments, of making sacrifices and continuing to do so. I feel like this has parallels in the end of the story of Moses, where he got arrogant and didn't give proper due to the thing he had faith in that had helped him get so far, and the price of his hubris was ultimately never being allowed to set foot in the promised land.
There's a lot of different stories with lots of different lessons, but from an atheistic perspective you can see a few recurring themes emerge.
One is to act in a moral way and that there are rewards for acting morally and punishments for acting immorally.
Related to that, those rewards and punishments may not happen right away, and the punishment for acting in an immoral manner may manifest in future generations.
Another is that even though times will be tough sometimes, you need to have faith that doing the right thing will pay off in the end.
Some of the recurring moral themes are justice, loyalty, humility, courage in the face of adversity, and wisdom.
A good example of the stories that mean a lot from an atheist perspective is the story of Mephibosheth. King David swore to Jonathan that he would support his kin for generations in recognition of their friendship. Mephibosheth was a cripple, and he was a direct descendant of Saul, who hated him, but he kept his oath and treated Mephibosheth like his own son, always having a seat for him at his own table. That sort of story of keeping to your vows and loyalty to your friends would be accepted as a good moral tale anywhere in the world.
One is to act in a moral way and that there are rewards for acting morally and punishments for acting immorally.
Related to that, those rewards and punishments may not happen right away, and the punishment for acting in an immoral manner may manifest in future generations.
Another is that even though times will be tough sometimes, you need to have faith that doing the right thing will pay off in the end.
Some of the recurring moral themes are justice, loyalty, humility, courage in the face of adversity, and wisdom.
A good example of the stories that mean a lot from an atheist perspective is the story of Mephibosheth. King David swore to Jonathan that he would support his kin for generations in recognition of their friendship. Mephibosheth was a cripple, and he was a direct descendant of Saul, who hated him, but he kept his oath and treated Mephibosheth like his own son, always having a seat for him at his own table. That sort of story of keeping to your vows and loyalty to your friends would be accepted as a good moral tale anywhere in the world.