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Comment Re:It's got to be Trump's fault - somehow... (Score 1) 70

Mod parent funny-not-really-funny.

But the SCOTUS disagreed with you by creating absolute presidential immunity out of nothing.

I know it's silly to contemplate solutions in the context of Slashdot, whatever it has devolved into, but I keep thinking about that new recusal thing: "A nonpartisan Justice may compel two junior partisan Justices to recuse themselves." I think that could create the incentive to go upstream in fixing the problem, whereas every other solution proposal I've seen simply accepts the underlying problem as incurable.

Clarifications in response to polite requests, though I'd actually prefer to see a better solution approach that has a better chance of being implemented. (I think the most likely path to the recusal rule would basically require an escalation of political threats... I'm not saying "That trick never works", but it's always a dangerous path.)

Comment Re:Freedom to screw weaklings (Score 1) 119

I suppose my main point about AI would be that people want oracles and AI is just the latest version of that. I'm saying (or trying and failing to say) that's a bad idea, but don't feel like it's writing another summary of my latest experiment with Pearl Harbor and Midway... However, the AIs are changing so rapidly and one of the main objectives is to make them appear to be better oracles.

On slashdot.jp I could sort of read most of it, especially since it was largely echoing this website, but I can't write decently in Japanese so I lost interest without the interactivity.

Comment Re:Only two? (Score 1) 67

I think you'd be better off to write more briefly and with tighter focus. I put some effort into trying to figure it out, but decided some of it doesn't make sense and some of it is just talking about evolutionary modules. Just now halfway through What is Thought? where he is taking the position that much of human intelligence is encoded in DNA in the form of modules that worked for certain kinds of evolutionary challenges.

Comment Re: But the AI is using you (Score 1) 164

My friends had trouble believing it when I did it, especially since I was basically jumping without knowing where or how I was going to land. I remember at the little quasi-garage (no garage involved) sale where I was disposing of the last of my stuff that one of my programmer friends bought my toolbox because he thought I would want it again when I returned... Never say Dave or his partner Frank again... (But it bothers me I can't remember the name of the woman who was really the key to keeping Omega in business... After she got married and left the company...)

Comment Excess love is no excuse? (Score 1) 178

Too early in the discussion to hope for Funny, but usually there are some shallow comments marked as Insightful for reasons that escape my analytic vision... But I'm going for Interesting this time around, which may produce Funny as a side effect.

But I have to start by digging back to the Fermi Paradox? Maybe there are no "long-lived" evolved species out there to talk with us because all such species encounter a fundamental reproductive crisis when their technology reaches some critical threshold--and we're crossing it now. I'm not sure if sexual reproduction is crucial for evolution, but as it works for us, the outlook seems bleak. As Ma Nature sees sustainable equilibrium, each couple needs four or more descendants, but only two are allowed to survive to reproduce. Rinse the random gene-pool shuffle and repeat, ad infinitum, except that the species will still go extinct at some point in geologic time. (It's a human delusion to define that as progress?)

We have two human problems with this situation. I think the big one is that we have to love all the randomly shuffled genes equally because we can't tell the good ones from the bad ones, and even the best shuffles produce completely helpless babies who will die without LOTS of love. I have a solution approach, but I'm sure you won't like it. One of those utilitarian things.

The lesser problem (as I see it) is that women get most of their "marginal satisfaction" from the first child, but the pains of the reproductive process don't get smaller per child. I'm having trouble imagining why a sane woman would want four (or more) children, especially if the "sustainable" expectation is that only two of them will live long enough to reproduce. Then there's the distortions of modern medicine such that "bad shuffles" are "reasonably" expected to survive anyway... Some of the religious loonies have solutions, but I don't like their approaches even before the logical inconsistencies and impossibilities interfere.

Comment Re:How about fruit (Score 1) 159

I think the tomatoes are the worst (and they did get mentioned in some of the comments). They have actually bred them, including genetic manipulation, for nice even color on the outside, but the insides... You don't want to look inside today's tomatoes.

On the original banana topic, I would prefer to know when the bananas are too old. For that reason I respect the browning of bananas. Don't welcome it, but I prefer it to fake immortality.

Comment Re: But the AI is using you (Score 1) 164

These months I prefer to think of them as orange-nosing Rumplican cowards versus the Dumbocrats who chase flying elephants. However I left the States a long time ago. The future is always inscrutable and I can't pretend that I knew any details about what was going to happen, but I just felt the direction was wrong and it has only gotten worse and faster. Finally decided the only thing to do is to try harder to stop caring. NOT any sort of constructive solution approach.

I'll go ahead an add a little AI joke since the story is about the AI chatbots. I just had the wild idea of asking this question: "What percentage of the Japanese pilots who attacked Pearl Harbor died at Midway?" Both genAIs instantly provided their definitive answers, along with historical data and explanations of their analyses. But one said more than 90% and the other said less than 25%. But they both sounded completely confident about their answers.

Comment Re:How about an AC "Kill" switch? But no intellige (Score 1) 64

Thanks for clarifying. I hadn't heard it that way, but usually some form with a J, such as Jina or Jhina. Yet I could have picked up your intention from the repetition. The YOB may have an additional delusion about saying any lie three times to make it true?

I'm no longer looking forward to his disappearance. Rather I'm expecting the next version to be worse. Too many cases over the decades of "Surely the next one can't be worse..." Dan Quayle looks so quaintly harmless now.

Comment Re:Bankers are vultures (Score 1) 90

Stop insulting the poor but honest and hard-working vultures.

(Low hanging joke I was looking for, but a pretty good FP anyway.)

Funny anecdote time. I once worked for a lawyer, at least technically. He had the degree and passed the bar, but never practiced law. He also had an MBA and had spent some years working for a major bank before taking over his father's real estate company (where I was the database programmer). Also a drinking buddy, and he really surprised me with some of the negative things he said about lawyers and real estate people, but especially about bankers.

Comment How about an AC "Kill" switch? But no intelligence (Score 0) 64

So before the character limit cut my Subject, the joke was going to be:

How about an AC "Kill" switch? But no intelligence involved in AC, even the ACs that are just AI sock puppets.

(Yes, I know about the Slashdot settings to minimize my exposure to AC, but troll feeders are still visible and when they provoke questions, that sometimes involves invoking AC in search of context. Adding a setting for reducing the visibility of replies to AC would be a cumbersome solution approach, but (1) Slashdot lacks the resources to implement solutions and (2) A real solution needs to go upstream, not farther downstream. (Had you noticed that Slashdot seems to be down to its last editor? But apparently working no harder than before, so the story and discussion lifetime has increased to three days?)

However the real reason to reply is to ask what is the meaning of "ginar"? Are you trying to drive me to Bing? You already drove me to the google, and these days I always hate those driving diversions.

Speaking of "hate", I actually think rsilvergun deserves some sort of credit, but I'm not sure what sort or how to build a good joke around it. I actually think it's a good thing to make the right sort of enemy, and it is clear that some instantiations of AC regard themselves as enemies of rsilvergun, but does any AC have enough significance to count as a "right sort of enemy"? (This paragraph/joke should cite Profiles in Courage by JFK. Just read a 2003 reprinting with a new foreword by Caroline...)

Oh, and on the YOB's attempted rebranding of AI, he should read Bostrom's book. I don't think the YOB is up to it, but at least he might have understood that superintelligence is the bad guy. Renaming AI as SI is sort of like a wannabe politician changing his name to Adolf Stalin to get the maximum amount of instant name recognition. The joke would be the appropriate middle name, but I'm coming up blank and I don't feel like asking any of the AIs for suggestions, even though it would be an interesting comparative test...

Okay, a light bulb went on: Adolf Hirohito Stalin. But any mention of a light bulb makes me lament the LED-driven death of light bulb changing jokes...

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It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. - W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876

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