My simple heuristic for "is it conscious?" questions is: 1) Take the set of beings that you're confident are conscious. 2) Identify what all those beings have in common. 3) Ask whether the thing you're asking about share those commonalities. 4) If not, then answer "not conscious."
Highly recommend this pod on AI where @chrislhayes.bsky.social interviews Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of a big recent New Yorker piece on the subject. Tons of interestng discussion, especially for us ex-philosophy geeks.
Forthwith, a short 🧵
Ok, since I’ve gotten a few “you don’t know for sure it’s not true!” let’s briefly say why. In a hyper-strict Cartesian sense of “know,” you can’t really “know” whether anything or anyone is conscious except yourself. But in the everyday sense, outside the dorm room…
I think he's moved on to enthusiasm for Bitchat.
All his crypto pals were on Nostr. That felt better to him.
We’re dying because of overpriced dinosaur juice while China wins the future.
1/5
Atif Mian's article in F&D Magazine summarizes his related academic pieces in which he refutes the claim that because the rich save a higher share of their income than the non-rich, rising income inequality leads to rising saving.
www.imf.org/en/publicati...
Russians.
it’s not his fault
he is under the control of a small rat that hates poor people
For years on my old blog I published the names of servicemembers who died in Iraq & Afghanistan. No other outlets were.
These are the first 4 Americans to die in the Iran War.
Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35
Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42
Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39
Sgt. Declan J. Coady, 20
Larry Bartels made this point awhile back, about the Great Depression
www.washingtonpost.com/business/eco...
Another big reason obsessive poll-sniffing is silly: “Public opinion” on most issues quite literally does not exist. It is an ephemeral artifact of the process of polling itself. Ask again a day later with slightly different wording & the numbers change radically.
I guess what I’m saying that the space show is somewhat lacking in verisimilitude.
Maybe there’s some bigoted subtext in the fact that the floating psychic space squids or whatever aren’t ever in starfleet. Humanoids only!
Let me flip the quarks in the subspace mitochondria and get back to you.
I’m also vexed by lack of the lack of interplanetary cultural synthesis. It’s like everyone is intensely chauvinistic about their own culture yet tolerant and curious about others. Doesn’t compute, unless it’s like how polite resistance to cultural appropriation functions as a mask for xenophobia.
I mean, I try not to think about it and just take the ride but sometimes I trip and forget to be a brain dead receptacle of incoherent rubbish
Been watching recent Star Trek shows and it’s neat how every other episode they come up with some astonishing technological innovation in the heat of the moment to save the universe or whatnot and then, instead of it becoming ubiquitous and transformative, you sorta never hear about it again. Cool.
My opinion: Jamelle Bouie is the best national political columnist in America. This doesn’t mean he is always right or you always need to agree with him. But he consistently elevates the form. Conservatives and liberals who make deranged personal attacks on him just make themselves look bad.
if she wins, its total victory for left yimbys happy to say
Honestly, a relief
Lol
Its true. I would like to transition peaceably to oblivion in, say, three decades.
Personally, I don’t think we should bring about Armageddon.
This is a good piece not only on Block but on AI, including the term AI washing. If you read anything on the topic read this
I dunno, might have been fun.
I guess I’m relieved that my application a year ago for a government affairs job at Anthropic went nowhere.
New, in which I go hard tankie on the viral Citrinis essay. (That is I approach it with a Two-Agent New Keynesian model.)
There were two predictions from it that sounded true. But only one survived putting it under a model during this learning exercise. /1
newsletter.mikekonczal.com/p/sending-in...
This is the correct answer.
Michael, That’s amazing! Huge congrats! Well deserved.
