Like, is there anything wrong with what I said? We’re not talking about gods and angels here. We’re talking about real material reality. You focused my opening statement and ignored the heart of my argument.

There’s nothing in the laws of physics that prevents us from building machines for capable and intelligent than humans. In fact, we have a lot of good reasons to believe that human minds are not the peak of what thought engines this universe allows.

It would be pretty unscientific and irrational to claim that AI won’t exceed human intelligence.

Now, the current companies and their LLMs are not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about AI systems in general, not the LLMs of today. But from first principles, it seems guaranteed that we will be able to create superhuman artificial intelligences.

But there’s nothing magical about the human brain. In fact, it’s processes are molasses slow compared to silicon circuits. And even if we can’t reproduce it now, the facts remain. The brain is a physical thing. It’s made of atoms. Its processes can be duplicated or simulated. And the materials we can make artificial minds with are not limited by the materials biology has to work with. Our thought engines also aren’t limited by the need to be capable of physical growth and reproduction. And even if the only way to produce a true intelligence was through biology, you could make a superhuman intelligence by growing artificial biological brains larger than human ones.

Intelligence isn’t magical. Unless you believe in an immaterial soul, there’s nothing special about biology. I

Thank you!

I propose we name them something silly-sounding, in the spirit of Walkie-Talkie.

I don’t think there is any such malice intended. Corporate media conglomerates tend to be focused primarily on how to offend as few people as possible. Insulting potential customers isn’t profitable.

I don’t see it as disingenuous. It seems like the audience just wanting the characters to look like them. And this is how media has always been done. Look how Disney took classic and violent Germanic fairy tails and then morphed them into sanitized Americanized versions of the characters. Should we abandon Disney’s Sleeping Beauty because the prince doesn’t stay faithful to the source material by raping the princess to awaken her?

Tales get reinterpreted. Stories get retold. New versions of old stories are made and retold through the lens of new times and places. Welcome to human culture. This is how we do things. This is how we always do things. This is how you end up with a white Jesus or a Chinese Jesus.

I hate to break this to you, but the US is no longer a white nation. It’s a multi-racial, multi-ethnic melting pot. The majority of newborns in the country are not white. Audiences want characters that represent them. And sometimes that means retelling classic characters through a new lens. Sometimes that lens is racial. Consider it from a few perspectives.

Think of the people actually making this art. These films are the work of actual human beings! Don’t forget that. Especially in works of fiction, where everything is fantasy anyway, why shouldn’t the characters in a work not look like the human beings actually creating that work?

Or think of the people viewing it. Let’s say you’re a 5 year old black girl in the US, and you’re really into fairy tale princesses. You want to imagine yourself as a princess in a classic fairy-tale castle, something out of a fantastical version of Medieval Europe.

Is a young black girl allowed to have such dreams? Or must she have historically-accurate dreams? Must she dream of being a princess in Great Zimbabwe?

Or is she allowed to dream of being a princess at all? Must she dream of much lower social strata?

Must her dreams be so confined? Must a child dream of historical accuracy? Are we policing the dreams of our children based on race? If she wants, why can’t she imagine a classic fairy tale castle where everyone looks like her? Or as diverse as the world around her?

By your rule, she could never have her dream realized on screen. Little white girls get to have that vision fulfilled, little black girls do not. Being a fairy tale princess is only something white girls are allowed to really do.

Children will have the dreams they have. And it’s not healthy for children to grow up only idolizing people and characters that do not resemble them. It is incredibly valuable to have real and fictional examples of people of your race, gender, etc. doing the things and living the lives you dream of living. And fictional characters often are role models. Hell, most fairy tales have an explicit moral to them. They’re designed to be role models!

By your rules, we couldn’t make an Asian Cinderella that a young Asian girl could look up to. We couldn’t create an black Rapunzel a young black girl could identify with. Etc. We would just always have to tell them with white characters. Even though these are completely fantastical stories in literal magical worlds. But because their original authors would have assumed white characters, we just have to keep doing that forever. Hopes and dreams of children be damned.

You know what that really results in? That results in these old works being abandoned and forgotten. Again, the country’s future is majority-minority. Viewers want to see themselves in the art they view. Artists want to represent themselves in their art. If we adopt the rule that you have to respect the original author’s ethnicity choices, that will simply result in classic stories being abandoned. If we had some rule that we couldn’t remove the rape from Sleeping Beauty, Disney never would have made that movie. All the stories you grew up with as a kid, where all the characters are just assumed white? Those will never be retold. They’ll just be remembered as “those old racist stories.”

Is that really the future you want? I don’t think so. I grew up with stories where most of the characters were assumed white. And you know what, if casting a multi-ethnic cast for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory means the story gets retold down the generations, then I’m all for it. Works need to remain relevant to the times they are in. Otherwise they will not be retold.

We’re not deleting the old copies. You’ll always be able to go and rewatch the original versions of these works. But if we’re talking new works? New versions of old stories? It needs to remain relevant to both the people making it and viewing it. And ultimately, more inclusive works are simply more popular with audiences and thus, more profitable. Hamilton made bank.

I’m talking works of fiction. Even Hamilton is not meant to be a faithful documentary accurately predicting historical events.

What’s wrong with doing something just for the sake of inclusiveness? That is a moral good in and of itself. Really, inclusiveness is limp-wristed weak term. The better term would be “correcting historical exclusion.”

We used to find it acceptable to only write white characters. Characters were written white not for any important narrative reason, but just due to a racist ideal of white as default. Then when people try to correct this historical exclusion, fragile white men lose their god damn minds.

When you’re used to privilege equality feels like discrimination.

Exactly. It’s best for problems that both:

1. Have a vast possible space of potential solutions.
2. Can be quickly checked for accuracy.
3. Has more than one right answer.

You want to come up with a new chemical to do a thing? Have an AI run through billions of permutations to find the one compound that can do that thing best. Then test that compound. See if it’s more effective than current solutions. Maybe it missed a better compound somewhere in the universe of potential compounds. But if what it found is still better than the current solution, that’s still progress and has real value to the world.

For an example, think of an AI built to search for high temperature superconductors. There’s an endless variety of possible compounds that might lead to this. But the time to test any individual compound isn’t that large. At a basic level you just need to synthesize it, confirm it’s a superconductor, and measure its critical temperature. Simple stuff (apart from maybe the synthesis.) Testing one compound for superconductivity isn’t hard. Trying to screen through trillions of candidate high temperature superconductors is. So you let the AI churn through the vast universe of possible options. Have it spit out the top ten candidates. Then you go to the lab, synthesize them, and try them out. If it hallucinates and is wrong? Very little cost beyond some lab time. If it misses one? Oh well, maybe we’ll find it later. Say the current record for a superconductor is 151K. The AI predicts a compound with a transition temperature of 155K. Maybe it misses one that could do it at 157K. But oh well, a better high temperature superconductor is still a better high temperature superconductor!

This is where AI shines. When incremental progress is acceptable and when the solution is easily verifiable.

Because the only difference between a terrorist group and an army is the size of their budget.

The only way this kind of massive facility can be profitable is if its builders expect to use it to steal the jobs of legions of white collar workers. That’s literally the only way this is profitable.

“No. Your kindle doesn’t count! You don’t own any of that shit.”

Yeah I’m clearly imagining it. When are they going to release the autopsy report again?

If there is ever an economic crisis that results in housing prices dropping, the banks get bailed out.

For me the biggest reason to buy is simply quality of life. On paper, sure, renting comes with ease of mind. You don’t have to do maintenance and the landlord takes care of everything. However, the responsible landlord is the personal finance analog of the physicist’s spherical cow. Landlords are in the business to make a buck. They never do any maintenance unless absolutely forced to do so by either the law or market conditions. If the city isn’t going to condemn the property, and as long as they can keep it rented, they don’t give a damn. However, when something at the landlord’s house needs fixing, it’s undoubtedly fixed quickly and properly.

I like owning a house because it ensures that I can actually have a pleasant place to live. Landlords have no incentive so keep their properties actually livable rather than just inhabitatable.

That’s not how fractional banking works. You’re confusing the economic concept of money supply with outright fraud.

They don’t “create” money. Someone deposits $100. They take $80 or $90 of that and use it to make loans. This increases the overall supply of money in the economy. But there’s no printing press in the back office turning out notes. And they don’t do the same thing digitally. The only bank that’s allowed to literally poof money into existence is the Federal Reserve.

What’s your loan:value ratio on your mortgage?

White men elected Donald Trump. I’m not sure how this is news to you.

Please stop trying to hurt Democrats in elections. You are a Republican operative trying to divide the left.

Sorry you’re getting downvoted. There’s this sickness among many liberals that think they can manifest their way to election victories. There’s this sick impulse to immediately deny any criticism or negative news about Democrats, even if acknowledging those failures is exactly what is needed for Democrats to win future elections. It’s the Blue MAGA gene, see no evil hear no evil speak no evil.

Can you provide any evidence at all that the death toll is higher under Trump than it was under Biden? Or is this just a vibes-based assessment?