AI can be a force multiplier for doctors. The catch is it needs to be doctor led. It’s quite trivial for a doctor to dismiss the obvious hallucinations. If it also points them towards more subtle signs they would potentially miss, then that’s a net win.

It’s a very British style protest. Farage tried to turn an investigation/resignation/bielection into a media circus. The larger parties instead stepped aside to let the clown in to deal with him.

Mexico had a wrestler run (and win!).

I think it was in relation to having private tutors.

The rich had a private education, with a few years at “public school” to make contacts and learn to socialise with their peers.

It predated universal education systems.

Didn’t Mexico have a similar issue a year or so ago?

Someone ran and was elected under his mexican wrestling persona. He attended parliament with his mask on. He insisted, since he was elected under his masked persona, he would attend parliament under it.

He originally did it because cartels had targeted MPs, and he ran on an anti cartel manifesto.

The free masons originally grew as a support and trust network.

It used to be that traveling was FAR less common. Consequently, travellers were seen as suspect. One of the major exceptions was masons. They would have to relocate to big projects e.g. a castle. They would stay long enough that the lack of trust was a problem, but not long enough to properly overcome it.

End result, they started vouching for each other. A local groups would vouch for the newcomers. They would introduce them and stop them getting ripped off.

Furthermore, stonemasonry was a dangerous trade. It was easy for a mason to be killed far from home. They clubbed together to support the families of members, as well as the disabled.

Wrap this up in Christianity based traditions and you have the masonic free masons. An early cooperative support and social networking group.

I have an internal mindscape. It’s closer to a layered interactive data stream than anything else.

One of the ‘nodes’ on that is my speech center. Unless I block it, it tries to turn the data stream into a word stream. They then loops into the auditory ‘node’. That then tries to process it the same as someone else talking to me. It lets me use all the filters and processing tools I built up as a child. It is excellent at finding holes in my ideas, the same way I would mentally pull apart what I was being told by someone else. It also lets me crystallise ideas into a form that can be passed to someone else.

I can suppress my inner monologue (unless I actively require it, e.g. for writing this message) but generally I don’t. It’s useful when I need to deep dive a problem. My brain can outrun my word stream, and dropping it can let me attack problems without the limitations of language caging me.

Given that they are scrabbling around like drug addicts looking for anything they’ve split, including checking the cracks in the floorboards…

For some models, it’s obvious they’ve long scrapped the erotic fan fic sites!

I’ve found an ebike was a good investment. I personally use it to keep up with my over energetic minion.

The key advantage is that you can tailor your exercise easily. No running into a mental wall, and still having 2 miles uphill to get home. The power assist means you can back off to a comfortable level whenever you want.

It also gets you outside and moving, which helps with mental health a lot, independently.

I personally found these guys remarkably good for the price.

Aairsk

It’s definitely a cheap bike, but does all the basics fine.

I’m in 2 minds on this. It reads (and looks) like the police were dealing with deliberate civil disobedience, against a legal event. (Yes I feel dirty describing it like that, but it’s true).

Looking at the video, it looks like a twitch response that they reigned in immediately. The police officer had protestors all around him and was likely feeling defensive. It shouldn’t have happened, but it was a quick human/training failure.

As for the police stopping them at all. The best we can hope for now, is for the police being neutral. I would hope that the police would step in, if it was a bunch of right wingers trying to invade a gay pride event. It’s hard to argue the reverse, when the shoe is on the other foot.

And just to clarify, I’m well on the side of the protestors here. It’s just one of the things you need to accept if you’re pushing the law. I’ve played run-around with the police at protests myself before (years back now, unfortunately). I knew the police had to oppose us, and accepted that fact.

Outside is better, but inside is often a lot easier and almost as effective. Most glass blocks IR (heat). If you reflect it back out before it gets converted, it will exit fine. In practice it’s a few % difference, depending on the foil.

Margaret Thatcher was an absolute bitch. However, at least she had a spine.

Apparently, after the Falklands war, she personally wrote a personalised apology letter to the family of every UK soldier killed.

There are arsehole leaders who I can at least respect. Trump is not one of them.

That is pretty much my view on things. I don’t like it, but it’s what the evidence suggests. However, my internal thoughts still assume I have free will. It’s a useful lie.

Discworld’s Death put it quite well, in Hogfather.

All right," said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”

MY POINT EXACTLY.

It’s a case of running out of terms. I was using it here as apparent, but not a “real” thing.

It’s a bit like a lot of visual illusions, we can often all see them consistently, but they don’t exist in the image itself.

In this case, consciousness is likely related to keeping our own mind functioning coherently. Providing a common virtual ground for the various parts of our brain to interact. There is no seat of consciousness, it’s akin to the operating system on a computer. Not required, but makes a lot of tasks massively easier.

I’m not expecting anything any time soon either. Though I can see someone like musk pumping far too much money into it at some point.

My point was however that the difference is just one of scale. We don’t need to predict the firings, just run it and compare it to nature. From what I’ve read, it behaves like a fly, including walking and grooming itself. This means there is no magic mystical difference between a real fly’s brain and a virtualized one.

Projecting further, there is no difference, other than scale, between our brain and the fly. Implying there is nothing mystical about consciousness.

If a human brain can be conscious, then a virtualized human brain can be conscious. If a virtualized brain can be conscious, then so can the computer it runs on.

The question then becomes do we WANT consciousness in an AI, what would it look like, and how can we detect/measure it?

There’s fundamentally not much difference between our brain and a fly’s, at the cellular level. We have fully simulated a fly’s brain already. When given a virtual body, it promptly started acting like a fly.

I don’t think LLMs are conscious or sentient. However, consciousness is likely just an internal illusion. There’s no obvious reason we can’t scale up from a fly to a human brain, other than difficulty. At that point you have a fully virtual brain that believes itself to be conscious, and can demonstrate sentience.

One of the goals is to minimise them. Most of those left are blindingly obvious, but unprovable. They are technically there, but just part of the base assumptions of the models.

E.g. we couldn’t do science if an all powerful being was deliberately messing with our results. We also can’t prove the universe isn’t a computer program, only rendering what a “conscious” entity is looking at, while back calculating the required history on the fly.

Object permanence is technically an axiom. The idea that things exist even when we aren’t observing them.

There’s also a problem with terms, particularly related to quantum mechanics. It uses the term observer. To a layman, that’s a person watching. To a scientist its any collection of atoms/fundamental particles that can cause the quantum waveform to collapse.

The results of the axiom are that things do exist when we are not observing them. Our observations don’t back propagate to retroactively bring them into existence. We can’t prove that however, though it’s fundamental to a lot of science making sense (quantum mechanics being the oddball).

European budget airlines split it in 3. Checked luggage (in the hold), Cabin bag (in the overhead locker) and personal bag (under the seat, with your legs). Everything other than personal is charged for. They also make it difficult it just get the bag, not a whole package.

It’s gotten to the point it’s pissed off the EU and they are cracking down on it

The problem is they end up built into specialised boards with ridiculous requirements, but no good for most tasks.

A few people might get one working, but I can’t afford the power bill to keep one running full tilt 24/7

Think about it like trying to use mining vehicles as a car.