You’re a weirdo.

No. Nothing so crude. It’s public art. This is just making a contribution to the artist.

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A computer.

There’s all sorts of problems with Roko’s Basilisk. I’m not a part of or referencing the “Rationalist” community. I’m just saying you’re being irrational.

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 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.

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

There is simply no safe way to use a laser to destroy these things. Human eyes are more delicate than any electronic component. If the laser is powerful enough to destroy any component in the camera, random reflections will be a risk for any other person that happens to be in the area. All surfaces are both reflective and absorptive to some degree. All surfaces will reflect some of the laser light. Unless you’re pointing one of these high-powered lasers directly at an empty sky, there’s simply no way to use one of these lasers safely in public. Maybe if you were on some giant deserted ranch out in a rural area it would be fine. But forget about using one of these outdoors in any urban area.

I mean, fuck flock. But really, truly, do not do this.

I don’t give a damn about the Flock cameras. Set them on fire or steal them and sell them for scrap for all I care. But a laser powerful enough to quickly fry a camera sensor is going to be an extreme danger to human eyes. These type of lasers can be acquired fairly easily, but you don’t want to be using them in public outdoor spaces. At these power levels, even reflections of laser light can be damaging to human eyes. And when you shine laser light on a solar panel or camera lens, some is going to be scattered in random directions. Sure, you can make sure to wear laser safety goggles while doing this. But random bystanders won’t have that luxury.

Hopefully that’s the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

They’ve embraced open-source by sequencing the virus’s DNA and providing detailed and simple instructions for anyone to reproduce it at home!

There are plenty of known viruses that we don’t worry about simply because we’ve been lucky enough to keep them contained in very localized areas. But an epidemiologist could rattle off a whole series of viruses that they would say, “if this ever gets out and blows up, we are fucked.”

Much like with the AIDS epidemic or the Ebola outbreak, Hauntavirus has a slower rate of spread and avoidable vector for transmission, but a significantly higher mortality rate.

You sure you’re not talking about regular hantavirus? Most strains can’t transmit from person to person; they require vectors such as mice and other rodents. But the variant people are worried about is capable of spreading directly from person to person. Cruise ships and plains may make it easy to transmit viruses that require close personal contact. But they’re not exactly known for their rodent infestations.

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