Lucky for you the linked article explains the acronym!

Wait, you’re not one of those people who only reads headlines, are you?

Unfortunately not:

Here’s a more in-depth article about what happened.

That is very frustrating, to be sure.

However, the ways we’ve begun to think about sapience are so intriguing, as well. We’re beginning to move away from the anthropocentric view that humans are the only sapient creatures. Corvids, elephants, and dolphins probably already make the cut (among other vertebrates) according to the current definition of sapience.

Ants, too, which makes me wonder about the potential for deepening our understand of group/swarm sapience, as well. True “hive minds”, etc. Fascinating stuff!

So much of our understanding of the natural world comes from comparing creatures to ourselves through surface level observation. The more we can relate to an organism, as we perceive it, the more likely we are to elevate its status or “worthiness”, it seems. Now, in the presence of modern technology, we’re discovering how little we actually knew about how the world around us works.

This all ties strongly into historic religious world-views, and elevation of humans to god-like (or god’s chosen) status. So much to unpack!

Haven’t we moved into the belief that many/most multicellular organisms are sentient?

Sentience is the ability to experience feelings and sensations. It may not necessarily imply higher cognitive functions such as awareness, reasoning, or complex thought processes. ^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience}

The studies on plant ‘cognition’ and their ‘nervous system’ are not for naught. They have produced doubt. Some researchers are suddenly unsure about the status of plants and this doubt is necessary to get researchers engaged in and to acquire funding for research into plant sentience. The question of plant sentience is one of those fascinating question where, whichever answer is true we will all be in awe. If plants are sentient, then we need to rethink much of our current understanding in neuroscience. How could such a vascular system, different in so many ways from our own nervous system, give rise to consciousness? If plants are not sentient, then we are witness to a self-maintaining entity capable of complex cognitive behaviour without the presence of consciousness. ^{https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-024-09953-1}

This topic fascinates me. I’m not trying to be confrontational or argumentative, sorry if it comes off that way.

You’re not being a jerk, you’re being pedantic.

Ignorant is absolutely the better word, and I should have used it.

I think, however, that people are far more capable of gaining intelligence than we give them credit for. I don’t believe that IQ is assigned at birth, and it’s been shown that the entire idea of IQ testing is extremely flawed.

There are people born with learning disabilities, of course, but that’s a whole other conversation.

As much as I love these quotes, I think it’s important to qualify them:

Everyone is born stupid, but people can be educated. If we want an educated populace, we must put in the work to create functional systems of education, and celebrate intelligence as a society. It’ll be hard work, and there are plenty of people out there who would prefer to see the masses remain stupid.

“The way Americans regard sports heroes versus intellectuals speaks volumes” An article by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ― Isaac Asimov

Sorry to be a bummer, but that’s the truth.

I hope you do read it! It’s not the most brilliant prose ever written, but it’s a nice bit of techno-optimism (once you get through the first half) that really impacted me, and my beliefs about what the future could be, when I first read it a couple of decades ago.

Marshall Brain’s “Manna” fits this bill, in my opinion. You can read the whole novella on his website, but I don’t know how long it’ll be available, as Marshall killed himself last November.

Rest In Peace, Marshall.

It becomes wrong immediately, but wrong is not a binary state.

“Once a cop is responsible for 1 murder he may as well continue to kill because 1 murder is the same as 30,000 murders.”

Plenty of the east coast is high CoL. Not as much as in the west, but plenty.

Why?

1 person being held with no due process is as bad as 30000.

Please explain this one to me, because I’m not understanding your math.

"To understand revolutionary suicide it is first necessary to have an idea of reactionary suicide, for the two are very different. Reactionary suicide: the reaction of a man who takes his own life in response to social conditions that overwhelm him and condemn him to helplessness.”

“I do not think that life will change for the better without an assault on the Establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolutionary suicide. Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions.”

“But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.”

– Dr. Huey P. Newton

I tend to think that information should be free, generally, so I would probably be fine with “OpenAI the non-profit” taking copyrighted data under fair-use, but I don’t extend that thinking to “OpenAI the for-profit company”.

Any word on Beepy V2? Migicovsky’s been pretty quiet on that lately.

How about you spread information about everything the current administration does wrong to sway the public opinion. There is ton of material already and its been day 1. You jerking off to mass murder is working against your goals of a better society.

When we do that it gets hand-waved away as “TDS” or some equally trite nonsense.

I’m not a communist or a socialist, nor did I write the quote.

ETA:

After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified, and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[717][718] around 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[719][720][721] some 390,000[722] deaths during the dekulakisation forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[723] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[724] According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were “purposive” while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility.[725] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Death_toll

The population of the USSR in 1924 was ~124m. The population of the USSR in 1952 was ~186m. This gives us a percentage of 2%-1% of the population.

The revolutionary war saw ~1% of the colonies’ population dying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War

There was a 58% population decline from 1800 to 1890 of natives in what is now the United States of America. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_the_United_States

What a ridiculous position. You honestly believe that all socialists and/or communists want to kill the rich and the landlords?

Or is that just a convenient strawman you’ve created?

Communism commits evil when it goes wrong; fascism commits evil when all goes to plan. No one, not even Stalin, ever became a communist in order to do evil, whereas that’s the whole point in becoming a fascist. - Julie Burchill