Starfield is the latest game to be boycotted by conservatives. This time because of pronouns
Other-phobic
Honestly, the "cosmic horror" or the mere fear of the unknown kind of plays into that as well.
One could argue there's something inherently racist in sci-fi horror that depicts aliens as monsters when in fact they might just simply be different intelligent lifeforms with their own set of needs...
There might be sometimes problems among intelligent lifeforms to properly understand / communicate, or conflicts in our goals. But painting everything alien/unknown as inherently scary is kind of racist, even if in some situations it might be written in our instincts to not trust that which is unfamiliar.
I mean, it would technically be possible to build a computer out or organic and biological live tissue. It wouldn't be very practical but it's technically possible.
I just don't think it would be very reasonable to consider that the one thing making it intelligent is that they are made of proteins and living cells instead of silicates and diodes. I'd argue that such a claim would, on itself, be a strong claim too.
Note that "real world truth" is something you can never accurately map with just your senses.
No model of the "real world" is accurate, and not everyone maps the "real world truth" they personally experience through their senses in the same way.. or even necessarily in a way that's really truly "correct", since the senses are often deceiving.
A person who is blind experiences the "real world truth" by mapping it to a different set of models than someone who has additional visual information to mix into that model.
However, that doesn't mean that the blind person can "never understand" the "real world truth" ....it just means that the extent at which they experience that truth is different, since they need to rely in other senses to form their model.
Of course, the more different the senses and experiences between two intelligent beings, the harder it will be for them to communicate with each other in a way they can truly empathize. At the end of the day, when we say we "understand" someone, what we mean is that we have found enough evidence to hold the belief that some aspects of our models are similar enough. It doesn't really mean that what we modeled is truly accurate, nor that if we didn't understand them then our model (or theirs) is somehow invalid. Sometimes people are both technically referring to the same "real world truth", they simply don't understand each other and focus on different aspects/perceptions of it.
Someone (or something) not understanding an idea you hold doesn't mean that they (or you) aren't intelligent. It just means you both perceive/model reality in different ways.
Step 1. Analize what's the possible consequence / event that you find undesirable
Step 2. Determine whether there's something you can do to prevent it: if there is, go to step 3, if there's not go to step 4
Step 3. Do it, do that thing that you believe can prevent it. And after you've done it, go back to step 2 and reevaluate if there's something else.
Step 4. Since there's nothing else you can do to prevent it, accept the fact that this consequence might happen and adapt to it... you already did all you could do given the circumstances and your current state/ability, you can't do anything about it anymore, so why worry? just accept it. Try and make it less "undesirable".
Step 5. Wait. Entertain yourself some other way.. you did your part.
Step 6. Either the event doesn't happen, or it happens but you already prepared to accept the consequences.
Step 7. Analyze what (not) happened and how it happened (or didn't). Try to understand it better so in the future you can better predict / adapt under similar circumstances, and go back to step 1.
sea, sir, its, if, all, ball, car, sent
Politics != Politicians
:x? Real Programmers use ZZ.
Just like building up your muscle, it takes time. Which is why you don't see memes/people saying: "So weak that you can't lift 100kg? just say no, raise your arms while holding a 100kg weight. It can't legally fall if you don't drop it."
I mean, logically stopping depressive thoughts is the only way to stop depression, the same way as how lowering the caloric intake is how you get rid of obesity, or lowering the resistance to insulin is how you stop being diabetic type 2. Or how the only way to be someone who lifts 100kg is to actually lift a 100kg weight.
But that's so obvious that it's not helpful. It's not like people don't know what makes them depressed... or obese.. or weak.. what they want is advice in how to train themselves, not someone telling them they should "just" stop being the way they are (which is probably something they already keep reminding themselves about! ...most of the time, that's the one thing they don't need help with).
You mean saying "no" to depressive thoughts?
I feel that if you can combat depression that way, then you are not really having clinical depression.
It's like asking a type 2 diabetic to stop being so resistant to insuline. If your body can stop resisting insuline, then it's not diabetic.
Yep, this is akin to: "Depressed? Just say no." "Depressive thoughts cannot legally enter your mind if you don't have them."
People don't realize that overfeeding is not the real cause of the problem, but rather a consequence.
It's a low bar in the sense that a show can be misogynistic and yet pass the test.
But the show can also be a strong case for equality and fail it (ie. have both males and females involved in all conversations).
If a movie has only 2 characters, a man and a woman, and the movie is all about their relationship, then passing the Bechdel test will be a high bar for that movie.
The article mentions how many episodes in Voyager were very Janeway-centric, and yet didn't pass the test because in all the conversations there was one way or another one male involved, even though the focus was on Kathryn.
I feel that it's not a very good test in general. There are also shows/movies that don't pass the reverse Bechdel test (having 2 males talk about something not involving a female) and yet I wouldn't say those shows are sexist.
1 on this. Kobos actually use Linux under the hood. And although the default UI is proprietary, it's super easy to install KOReader.
You don't even need to hack into it some custom firmware, just a sideloader, which normally doesn't break even if you actually updated the base firmware.
Here the official tutorial on how to do it: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Installation-on-Kobo-devices
Leaving a lithium battery charging for a long time, even when it's already 100% can degrade it.
Most devices have failsafes against this, but I still always try to not leave a device charging if its already mostly full... perhaps it's just me being paranoid, but what I rather do is set up rules so that the phone automatically goes into airplane/battery saving mode at night.
I liked how, when you had an alarm set up, you could even switch off the phone and it'd still turn itself on automatically in the morning and ring to wake you up. It was actually more reliable than dedicated alarm clocks, since those needed manual time adjustment when there was a winter/summer time change, or when there was a power outage.
Nowadays, I always have to double check the phone has enough charge before going to sleep.
The AI can only judge by having a neural network trained on what's a human and what's an AI (and btw, for that training you need humans)... which means you can break that test by making an AI that also accesses that same neural network and uses it to self-test the responses before outputting them, providing only exactly the kind of output the other AI would give a "human" verdict on.
So I don't think that would work very well, it'll just be a cat & mouse race between the AIs.
It could still be bayesian reasoning, but a much more complex one, underlaid by a lot of preconceptions (which could have also been acquired in a bayesian way).
Even if the result is random, a highly pre-trained bayessian network that has the experience of seeing many puzzles or tests before that do follow non-random patterns might expect a non-random pattern... so those people might have learned to not expect true randomness, since most things aren't random.
Yes... the chinese experiment misses the point, because the Turing test was never really about figuring out whether or not an algorithm has "conscience" (what is that even?)... but about determining if an algorithm can exhibit inteligent behavior that's equivalent/indistinguishable from a human.
The chinese room is useless because the only thing it proves is that people don't know what conscience is, or what are they even are trying to test.
A test that didn't require a human could theoretically be tested automatically by the machine preemptively and solved easily.
I can't imagine how would you test this in a way that wouldn't require a human.
Earl grey, dry.
Yes, his relationship with the idea of "Others" is strange... like a love/hate relationship. In fact, the cat which you mentioned (named after a racial slur, though it seems it was not him who named it) was deeply loved by him... he using his cat's name in one of his works was more of a way to honor it rather than anything else, there's letters from him claiming he was still mourning even though it was more than 20 years since it vanished.