Quote from: BeardFisher-King on January 01, 2018, 03:01:14 pm

Quote from: TLEILAXU on December 31, 2017, 04:29:56 am

Necromancy initiated:
I was 98% sure Thorsten was lying his ass off until I clicked the link leading to his website. In any case, it's a good lesson that despite how brilliant and eloquent some brains are, that doesn't guarantee that they will be able to see themselves as what they are.

1. "98%"? Why the bogus precision? Are you trying to "science up" your claim?

2. Brilliance and eloquence don't "guarantee" anything, but those are good qualities to bet on.

@1: No, it's just the way he e.g. said he had a background in quantum mechanics that looked like a tactic I feel I've seen before.
@2: Right. Being a physicist obviously requires a big brain, but having a big brain does not necessarily mean you will realize e.g. the illusion of volition.

Claiming expertise falsely is egregious behavior. I never considered the possibility in Thorsten's case, probably because I don't address issues like volition, self-consciousness, intentionality and the first-person perspective from a physicalist stance.

What I find telling in your brief remark was the "98% sure" qualification. Instead of using vague descriptive adjectives such as "very", "almost completely", "pretty damn", etc., you couldn't resist the false precision of "98%". There's an interesting tactic, if you think about it.

Necromancy initiated:
I was 98% sure Thorsten was lying his ass off until I clicked the link leading to his website. In any case, it's a good lesson that despite how brilliant and eloquent some brains are, that doesn't guarantee that they will be able to see themselves as what they are.

1. "98%"? Why the bogus precision? Are you trying to "science up" your claim?

2. Brilliance and eloquence don't "guarantee" anything, but those are good qualities to bet on.

Bakker mentioned (again) it as something he might pursue in the nearish future on the recent Stuff To Blow Your Mind podcast.

Short-term profitability will decide this over any cultural resistance to the ideas. Just as we stand on the precipice of the death of meaning and purpose, so we witness, in our meager ways, the final days of human relevance to the only system that still matters (perpetual economic growth). Once algorithms and machines cross the point of no return in terms of outperforming humanity at sufficient tasks, our humanist ideologies will crash beneath their monetary weight. AI with their core code set to the accumulation of wealth and dominance of their market will make the vast majority of purchases (from a GDP perspective if not by number of individual transactions), largely removing even the need for human customers.

(Side note: that would make a nice story idea, a futuristic Earth where a handful of extremely powerful economic algorithms/AI viciously attempt to outcompete each other, a never-ending game of ruthless seven-dimensional economic chess, with products produced at ever-increasing scale, bartered back and forth, with no humans left who actually need or desire them. One AI corners the market on disposing of all the useless junk, gradually achieves total monopoly over all industries, wins the war. Begins attempting to eliminate itself as a competitor.)

The free world has shown repeatedly that economic reward will trump humanist notions most of the time. This is aided by relative reaction speed difference, as governmental and social institutions are much slower to reach consensus/make decisions than purely economically driven ones. Thus will all humanist institutions and reservations eventually fail, if only because all those holding them are far easier to starve out than those playing along.

Not since that last post link from Madness. AFAIK he's still finishing it and shopping it around, which doesn't mean much unfortunately.

2018 Update: Yeah it got lost in another hard drive crash. Its my assumption that this will never be published.

... Another dead place.