Intelligence is the ability to comprehend a state of affairs. The input and the output are secondary. What LLMs do is take the input and the output as primary and skip over the middle part, which is the important bit.
So? Lack of evidence is not proof positive of the contrary position. Even if you accept that there is no evidence, which is doubtful in itself since the fact that only humans seem to be able to think the way humans think could be considered evidence.
It's pretty strong evidence! We understand the basics of how humans (or living things in general) are constructed, and in that framework, built out of physics and chemistry, there's no space for special magic stuff; anything biology can make is made of atoms and could in principle be replicated. Even if there's some exotic whatsit we have somehow not been able to detect thus far, something that lives outside of our existing scientific theories, that would simply require updating those theories, and then figuring out how to follow the same steps biological systems do. Thus, the idea that there is some other "non-physical" thing intrinsically inaccessible to us is an extraordinary claim.
You similarly have no direct evidence that there isn't a bottle A&W root bear on Europa, but our understanding of the history of humanity (and root beer and space travel) makes it very unlikely. It is reasonable to conclude that there is no such bottle, and wildly unreasonable to posit that there is.
Edit: added the word "direct" + minor clarifications
> Even if there's some exotic whatsit we have somehow not been able to detect thus far, something that lives outside of our existing scientific theories, that would simply require updating those theories, and then figuring out how to follow the same steps biological systems do.
Assuming the whatsit could fit into the materialistic/mechanistic framework. But that's not necessarily the case.
> You similarly have no direct evidence that there isn't a bottle A&W root bear on Europa, but our understanding of the history of humanity (and root beer and space travel) makes it very unlikely.
I didn't make a claim, I asked you how you can be so sure of your claim.
Ever rescued an abused dog?
My dog absolutely predicts what I will do based on past events in a high anxiety state.
Sometimes she predicts incorrectly (but definitely based on my previous actions) and does weird stuff, but in the context of an animal based prediction of the future from previous events it makes perfect sense.
How about corvids that can build tools and predict indirect actions? (displacement etc)
The guys who've blown up a billion dollars of tax payer money because rather than carefully design it to work the first time, they slap something together and let it fail to 'iterate'? It sounds like it's same guys working at both companies.
I'm not sure if SpaceX's approach to development is a problem. We don't have to like it, but they develop faster and cheaper than the competition... and as proven by Falcon 9, Dragon, etc, it works. The competitors designing it "carefully" are often slow and still have failures[0] while costing more.
I'm not going to say that the SpaceX approach doesn't have disadvantages or that everyone should use it because I don't believe that, but it works for them, even if you get to see more failures (and I understand that many have a fear of public failure, but not everyone is like that).
Their money comes from the same sources as the other space companies: public and private investment/contracts. If a different company takes twice as long and charges twice as much for the service and SpaceX does it faster while charging less for the same service, then if I was a tax payer, I wouldn't care much about the way they develop and test their rockets.
It's important to not allow our views about Musk to cloud our view about what some of his companies are doing. Cybertruck seems to be a bad product. Falcon 9, Starlink, etc, are good products. It is what it is.
Loath as I am to say, but the SLS has a program cost over $20 billion and has launched only once to date (it did work, to be fair). Every single one they launch will be a one-way trip, so it's going to be a long time, if ever, until they can even get the per-launch cost down to under a billion.
Starship/Super Heavy "only" cost 5 billion as a program and also has 1 successful flight (and two Earth-shattering kabooms). So far, they're the economical ones by quite some margin.
It's not like Northrop Grumman and Boeing are known for being parsimonious with their money.
Because I'm very much not the type to simp after people like Elon Musk and put them on some pedestal of genius, which is what, due to the wierd meme shit surrounding him, praise tends to sound like. Also it is sad that NASA is being worn like a meat-suit by the MIC, but that really isn't a new thing, and its almost its true purpose really.
But the engineers and even the managers at SpaceX really have done something very special.
And the engineers at NASA too, for that matter - nailing it on the first go is bloody hard and a great technical feat. It's also extremely expensive, but the spec is the spec.
James Webb alone cost NASA $10 billion, with $4.5 billion in overruns. It took 30 years to design and construct. Carefully designing things to work the first time is expensive and slow; blowing up a billion dollars is the more effective use of money here.
Their point is that if you "waste" $1B as many as nine times with exploding rockets and it leads to working, good rockets, then its economically better than spending $10B to get it right the first time with no explosions.
Of course there's also environmental harm from exploded rockets, and the potential to never find success before running out of money, but as long as they succeed in getting it working perfectly before they've spent as much as it would cost to be confident of it working on the first launch, they'll be happy.
They're just completely different projects that are not comparable. The Webb telescope had no choice but to work.
The SpaceX team has a choice, and they choose "fail fast". There's a gradient that SpaceX can sit on for their development, and for a suite of companies owned by Musk, people would like to see less fail fast and often.
If I have agency over the spending of course I won't complain, when tax money is allocated then I'm feel pretty free to complain :) I don't live in the USA though so don't have a horse in the race.
I'd suggest more any familial units with manners and respect - regardless of wealth or race. Lots of white kids who act poorly in rich & poor neighborhoods the teachers don't want to deal with but have to.
In my county they banned the collection of any recycling that was bagged. So if you put your recycling in a bag to contain it, the garbage man won't pick it up. So now what happens is everyone puts their recycling loose in a blue bin and the wind blows all the bins over and scatters the recycling all over the neighborhood and eventually into the nearby ponds and ravines.
If you complain about the policy they tell you that it's because the recycling plant can't deal with the bags, it clogs up their machines. So in an age of automated assembly plants and advanced robotics the entire county here is at the mercy of a recycling plant that can't obtain a machine that can cut a bag open.
It just goes to show what a farce the whole program is. Now they're talking about making the rules even more restrictive, like using clear garbage bags so people won't put recycling in the garbage, even though that is going to increase the trash accumulating in the environment. It's a bureaucratic box-ticking and back-patting scheme.
> If you complain about the policy they tell you that it's because the recycling plant can't deal with the bags, it clogs up their machines[...]
Machines?! Most press photos that show the inside of plastic recycling sorting plants show a surprising number of Mk I human beings standing at a conveyor belt helping sort out the, err, rubbish.
Yeah, they could just hire some people for minimum wage to do it, but apparently that's too much to ask too, they would rather focus on vanity measures that will make things worse for the environment and more difficult for people to comply with, but will look good in a press release. This is the natural product of environmentalism and bureaucracy.
No, there is no crisis, kids are posing like they always have and having anxiety is cool now because the jocks aren't allowed to clown on the nerds anymore and it makes you different, even though everyone is doing it. TV writers knew better than the eggheads a decade ago, watching 22 jump Street would tell you more than this article.
Why would Ukraine and Georgia belong in NATO for any reason other than to piss off the Russians? Should we put Uganda and Congo in NATO? I hear Rwanda has territorial ambitions. Why don't we just stick to places we belong instead of trying to control every part of the world. Would you like to fight in Ukraine? Because I hear they take volunteers.
Guaranteeing the security of volatile third rate countries you don't really care about is a sure fire way of avoiding war, as we saw in WW1.
> Why would Ukraine and Georgia belong in NATO for any reason other than to piss off the Russians?
For mutual defense against outside aggressors and to coordinate regional security efforts, same as every other NATO member.
The fact that the Russians were clearly in 2008 (and have demonstrated that even more clearly since) the most likely and dangerous outside aggressors facing Georgia and Ukraine doesn't mean the purpose is to piss off Russia, though, to be fair, pissing off someone who w is inclined to aggression against you because you've made that less easy is not a bad thing.
> Should we put Uganda and Congo in NATO?
Uganda and the DRC have expressed no interest, that I know of, in NATO membership or partnership, and are rather distant from the explicit geographic focus of NATO as specified in the treaty (Europe and North America) [0], as well as having political issues (like Russia when it tried to jump ahead of the readiness process and join) that would require, at best, a long onramp leaving geography aside. They'd probably be better candidates for NATO global partner status if they decidedto pursue a NATO affiliation than membership any time in the forseeable future.
[0] Hence the language in Article 9 that, beyond the founding members which notably include some North American states, “The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty.”
Yeah, thanks for the boilerplate. Exactly what mutual defense of the United States or Western Europe is Ukraine or Georgia going to provide? Western Europe and the United States is not under any outside threat, let alone one that these countries could meaningfully assist with. This is nothing more than "containment" policy, an attempt to restrict another power's freedom of action, which only works as long as they're weak enough to be imposed on. When they're strong enough to contest it, you're going to be over there fighting for Ukranian soil, and if you care that much, you should just volunteer and leave the rest of us out of it.
We literally still have Russian nuclear weapons pointed at us. That seems like a serious threat.
Containment as a policy worked well enough during the Cold War as the least bad alternative. There's no reason to stop it and allow Russia to reconquer Eastern Europe, which they absolutely would do absent a strong containment policy. The historical record shows that isolationism and appeasement never works in the long run.
The Ukrainians are still willing to fight for their own soil so your point is illogical and irrelevant. They're just asking for weapons, logistics, and intelligence. The more Russian soldiers that they can kill, the less threat that Russia will pose in other areas. It's sad the situation has come to this point and I take no delight in those deaths but there is no realistic alternative.
How the heck is putting Ukraine or Georgia in NATO going to protect us from Russia's nucleus weapons?? If anything it will make the threat more immediate.
> The Ukrainians are still willing to fight for their own soil so your point is illogical and irrelevant.
This thread is about bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which means we would be obligated to fight on the ground to defend those countries. I don't know what you're arguing against, but it seems you didn't read the thread.
> This thread is about bringing Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which means we would be obligated to fight on the ground to defend those countries
Strictly speaking, it obligates the US (like any other NATO member), in the event of an attack on any other member, to “individually and in concert with the other [NATO members], such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
It’s quite plausible the US could do that without deciding to “fight on the ground”.
I read it, but you apparently don't understand what's actually happening. While NATO had some preliminary discussions with Ukraine they are not actively moving through the accession process. Every major NATO leader has been clear that the territorial dispute with Russia will have to be settled one way or another before Ukraine can officially join. So, you're being ignorant or disingenuous by bringing up an obligation to fight in the ground in Ukraine.
As for Georgia, they are a sovereign state and can make their own decisions. If they want to join and meet the criteria then let them join. How is Georgia any different from Finland in that regard?
A policy of aggressive containment keeps us safer by wasting Russian resources. When we surround them with hostile powers they have to spend more on defending their homeland and have less for building nuclear weapons or launching invasions. Keep them poor.
And anyway you haven't even proposed a viable alternative. There's no point in negotiating with Putin: he doesn't negotiate in good faith. Even if we gave him huge concessions now he would just come back and demand more in a few years. Nor are we in a position to be able to offer the type of concessions that Russia seems to want. Ukrainian territory and Georgian sovereign freedom of action aren't ours to give away. The citizens of those countries will have to decide for themselves.
> How is Georgia any different from Finland in that regard?
Basically there's isn't a difference, Finland shouldn't be in NATO either. Americans have no business defending Finland of all places. Georgia is even less of a concern, it might as well be on the moon for all the national interest we have in Georgia.
> When we surround them with hostile powers they have to spend more on defending their homeland and have less for building nuclear weapons or launching invasions.
Right, the cornered dog theory. Maybe he'll bark himself to sleep before he bites you.
> And anyway you haven't even proposed a viable alternative.
The alternative is that countries negotiate with regional powers and try to maintain friendly relations. The US is not world policeman and we can't afford to play one on TV, because it invites situations like the Ukrainian one.
> Americans have no business defending Finland of all places.
A very shortsighted view. Norway, Sweden and Finland are currently setting up a joint air force command so that in case of war, they could deliver a fatal blow to the Russian Northern Fleet at Murmansk. The Northern Fleet operates in the Atlantic and is the largest threat to shipping between North America and Europe. They represent the U-boats of the 21st century. Americans get incredible value from closer cooperation with Finland and Sweden.
> The alternative is that countries negotiate with regional powers and try to maintain friendly relations.
And what if it doesn't work out and instead a fascist regime first rolls over the entire Europe again and then starts to threaten rest of the world?
You are not proposing anything new.[1] This line of thought had wide support between the two world wars. The current system of international organizations and alliances is a "lesson learned" from that period.
> Exactly what mutual defense of the United States or Western Europe is Ukraine or Georgia going to provide?
(1) Other NATO members aren't only in Western Europe. Ukraine borders several NATO members and its Black Sea location positions it to provide support to even more. And it pretty clearly has a lot to offer its neighbors when it comes to mutual defense.
(2) NATO's single deployment under the mutual defense provision (Article 5) included Georgian and Ukrainian troops, even though they were only non-member partners at the time, and Ukraine has greatly increased its capacity in the intervening period, due to grim necessity imposed by Russia.
> This is nothing more than "containment" policy, an attempt to restrict another power's freedom of action, which only works as long as they're weak enough to be imposed on.
Containment worked with the Soviet Union — it can work again with Putin's Russia.
It can work, or it might not, in which case you or your children will be dying for some town in Eastern Ukraine you've never heard of and you can't pronounce.
Yeah, and the one lesson we should certainly take from the past is that taking a pass on containment to appease powerful, aggressive states never leads to those doing so (including, but limited to, Americans) paying a very high, avoidable price in blood and treasure overseas as a consequence when not trying to contain aggression surprisingly does not contain the aggression.
I can see this conversation is leading to Hitler. But sometimes containment leads to a stupid quagmire which you should never have been in in the first place, like Vietnam, and security guarantees to backwards unstable countries leads to larger, more all consuming wars like WW1. Ukraine and Georgia are Russia's back yard, we have no business there.
Well then if it might not work, I suppose we should just let Tsar Vladimir — abetted by his kleptocratic henchmen and his millions of state-media-deluded followers — do whatever TF seems good to His Imperial Majesty. Because heaven forbid we should take any risks to try to preserve a rules-based world order.
Trudeau embodies the kindergarten Kumbaya view that so many Canadians of his generation were raised on, and he was voted in for it, and these are the consequences of that. Why complain? This is what we deserve.
To be fair, I think a lot of Canadians would vote for a different party if the election were held anytime in the last few years, but this in democratic coalition the NDP entered into has delayed an election. Now I think both the Liberals and the NDP will get burned in the next election.
You don't really remember a childhood memory unless you can bring back the feeling you had at the time, and that only happens sometimes, on its own. If you could remember your childhood as it really was you'd think adult life is hollow and fake by comparison.
