↪Pantagruel Why not a Scandinavian country instead? If you want a better and working socialistic environment, then England doesn't seem like the best choice? — Christoffer

As a member of the Commonwealth my pensions and benefits are more straightforward than some other places, for one. My grandfather was born in England. I speak the language.

Interesting, possibly a romantic view. From an Australian perspective, everyone I know who wants to emigrate, wants to go to Canada - England being regarded as dysfunctional and a broken ruin, — Tom Storm

Yes, and I had a feeling that some of that was coming, and a few different degrees of it already have. But here's a suggestion in return. Do you think you can know too much and become jaded about something? Because, likewise, Canada has equally dire problems and drawbacks, as I see them, and live them. And maybe bringing a romantic optimism to a new context will succeed in injecting some positive energy into that context and changing it for the better?

South Germany near the French border is the way to go then or even France itself. Great summers (I studied there in Strassbourg, French side). Think Karslruhe, Frankfurt am Main, maybe as far as Stuttgart. Houses are affordable, — Benkei

:chin:

where the hazards of climate change are, and will be for the foreseeable future, minimal. — 180 Proof

I'm not so sure about that.

Normally it's about -5 here this time of year. Last couple of days it got up around 15 and all the snow melted. Now, the temperature is plummeting, going down to -10 and we are getting up to 35 cm of snow in the next 24 hours. Then it is going back up to 8 on Friday.

edit: forgot to mention the 80 kph winds....

True. Geologic time-scale events become less foreboding as one's lifespan dwindles however. I wouldn't want to be 30.

Hadn't considered New Zealand. Quite a hike! BC is so expensive and seems like climate change might be more of a problem there. My wife lived and taught english in Puerto Vallarta for years and we also considered that, but the summer heat is already crazy and then you have to factor climate change in again....

We will look into New Zealand though. As long as it isn't as burning hot as Australia!

Thanks for the suggestion :)

:up:

We are going to take some short trips to England soon, possibly one later this year, to get a feel for things and check out different regions.

A very beautiful area. — Jamal

Which is high on our requirements list. It seems like everywhere has its major flaws. I suspect that happiness is mostly about the motivation and energy you bring with you.

We are also considering the Wye Valley.....

My wife has German citizenship so we have talked about Germany also. Cold is something we are trying to avoid though!

Wow. Thanks for all the information guys. This is why we ask.

I'm not sure that the critical reviews aren't just a symptom of global decline though. I would have thought Canada was the place to be, but we are reeling under crippling inflation and we lack the deep cultural foundation to combat the malaise that is modern man. At least the UK (and Europe) has that. Moreover, we are just too close to the US for comfort. We don't want to go there, we don't want to hear about the awful shit that's going down there.

Lots of food for thought though. I'm concerned about the availability of healthcare for sure. Mind you, this is a serious problem in Canada also. The only upside for me is I just retired from the healthcare industry, so I know all of the family doctors in our region, and their staff, which can help.

It also appears that the price of a house has reached the point where it is almost impossible for a single salary family to buy. — Sir2u

It's absolutely impossible in Canada. Home prices here are sky-high. Home prices in England are at least 10-15% lower. Plus we would be moving to a more rural location, definitely not a city.

Are you from Banos de la Encina?

Thanks for replying Javi! We are mainly going by climate, a little drier and sunnier, so the southwest, or northeast, like Suffolk. We are pretty flexible and hoping to find something nice since we are free to resettle where we want!

I'm just reducing faith down to its main part, I understand it's not a black and white concept that you can't have some uncertainty in a judgement, what do you think military intelligence is? — Vaskane

Exactly. Only the most trivial and mundane of things can be known without doubt. The volume of water in that glass is 300 ml. As soon as you begin to contextualize a fact, uncertainties begin to accrue. Will 300 ml quench my thirst? I have to do a long drive, will I have to take a bathroom break? The notion that "science" eliminates uncertainty is ludicrous. Human contexts are rife with uncertainty, which means that there must always be a certain element of trust in our own beliefs demanded of us in living our lives. So what some people derisively call faith is obviously both real and crucial.

I think your example of courage is also an excellent one.

If you're referencing Chomsky's preference of language for thought over language for communication, I agree with your assessment. If there's anything essentially inter-personal and essentially communicative, its language, isn't it? Also, I'm guessing the infant learns to hear words and repeat them (or see visual patterns and connect them with ends) before forming intentional thoughts within a linguistic medium, whether verbal or visual. — ucarr

:100:

If anything, I'm more inclined to view thought as fundamentally social-collective than to view language as fundamentally idiomatic.

This hypothesis doesn't seem valid to me even on its face, due to the fact that the individual has no existence independent of the collective (species). It's interesting insofar as individuality is created and defined within and through the mechanisms of thought and language. To me, this is yet another example of the dialectical nature of the universe, an ongoing balancing act between contrary forces.

I don't understand: could you please elaborate? — Bob Ross

Well your theory is about conduciveness to harmony as a kind of ideal. Kant's theory about the inherent morality of duty is expressed eloquently through his categorical imperative, "act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." The content and meaning of the theory and its expression are synonymous.

So how does your theory contribute and conduce to what the theory describes? As I've observed, judging by the responses in this thread, it falls far short of producing any kind of harmony. If it doesn't either reflect or contribute to what it describes, of what value is it?

Just to clarify, I am not claiming that morality is just about ‘what is morally good’: this is, indeed, an invalid oversimplification. — Bob Ross

Indeed it is not, it is the essence of morality to be prescriptive.

However, as a final note, I will say that, if your theory is accurate, it ought to be conducive to harmony (otherwise what is the point?) In fact, it appears to have had the exact opposite effect. Which tends to testify against its validity.

I mean the peaceful congruence of all parts of a thing, when I say a thing is in 100% self-harmony. This is not equivocal to being the synthesis of two extremes. — Bob Ross

Yes, that's not the least bit abstract....

Natural systems do not exist in a state of "peaceful congruence." Natural systems if anything exist in a state of far from equilibrium meta-stability governed by non-linear dynamics.

I don't disagree with your desire to promote and investigate the idea of "harmony," and if that is all you are claiming, ok. But you need to step back from the many expansions and reductions and focus on one thing. What comes across is an attempt to foist a common-sense, naturalized umbrella encompassing everything that you feel aligns in some way with the notion of goodness, that does not in any way do justice to the notion of morality.

You cannot weld the objective quality of fitness for a purpose onto morality through the mere fact that we refer to both using the term goodness. They are not equivalent. Furthermore, the quality of being "harmonious" does not serve as a good identifier. How are we supposed to understand the meaning, by analogy with music (it's primary definition and origin)? How does that work for people who are tone-deaf? I think you need to re-think what you think it is you are proving, and to what end.

Morality is and always has been about human actions, it is the essence of morality:

The domain of morality is the domain of duty. Duty is prescribed behaviour. (Durkheim, Moral Education).

I'll go with Emile Durkheim lecturing at the Sorbonne any day as one of my authoritative views on the basic nature of morality:

(Moral) authority does not reside in some external, objective fact....it consists entirely in the conception that men have of such a fact; it is a matter of opinion, and opinion is a collective thing.

Any and every virtue ever considered in a serious manner by people, especially experts in the field of study (even prior to there being a formal field of study for it), is virtuous in virtue of cultivating a character that habitually strives towards universal harmony and unity. — Bob Ross

I literally just gave you the virtue of duty, including the sense in which actions can be considered deontologically virtuous meaning they are intrinsically valued, independent of their consequences.

The fact that you can ex post facto provide an explanation for something as being "harmonious" is not surprising, is it? With your penchant for creative definition your ability to explain almost anything would not surprise me.

Is virtue (arete) unrelated to perfection? — Leontiskos

Not at all. However I believe the more literal interpretation is "to excel", which certainly aligns with the fact that moral value aligns with actions.

Yes, we aspire to live in a human world of hopes and fears and joys and sorrows. You can't simplify that. People do good because they are or aspire to be good. Sincere actions can and do have value, regardless of their relative success, that is the tragi-comedy of the human existence, the disparity between what we expect and what happens, between what we deserve and what we get.

Goodness has two historical meanings: hypothetical and actual perfection. — Bob Ross

Your entire OP is based upon a false definition followed by an unending stream of equivocation between goodness and perfection, which are manifestly not the same thing, as pretty much everyone has agreed, except for you. Trying to further equivocate with harmony only makes your reasoning more precarious.

The primary historical meaning of goodness is not perfection, it is virtue, which is understood to be independent of pragmatic concerns. This is why it is possible to do good, to do the right thing, even in the face of overwhelming odds, even when the right or good actions fail. This is the entire significance of deontological ethics. Indeed, many philosophers believe (and I agree) that actions which are done out of pragmatism do not qualify as moral; rather, only those actions which are done out of the sense of duty.

I just do not see any examples of perfection in real life, and this makes me think that they do not exist, which I don't think is unreasonable. Now of course, I could be wrong. But so could you. Which person would i prefer to be wrong? — Beverley

And also, this whole notion that there is some kind of behaviour-transcending "perfection" can be utilized to justify any action that the believer believes is consonant with it. ie. it is a rationality which is conducive to the abuses of extremism. Very dangerous.

New Arabian Nights
by Robert Louis Stevenson

The human race, being capable of the greatest capacities of rational behavior, are not more anti-thetical to universal harmony; in fact, they are essential to upholding and enacting such a world. — Bob Ross

So you are assuming that rationality has a universal value. Ok. What about aesthetics? What about sentimentality? What about the inherent value of free-will? Perhaps the inherent value of free-will is the culmination of "harmonious value" - qua the material product of the evolutionary process. In which case, the most harmonious universe is actually the one filled with the greatest degree freedom.

All else not being equal, a nuclear weapon is not something that would be in the best of possible worlds because it is anti-thetical to universal harmony — Bob Ross

As I put it, however, it is not clear that this is anti-thetical to universal harmony. The human race is arguably more anti-thetical to universal harmony than would be its elimination.

This is really the point, your position is absolutely rife with assumptions, which are value-laden. Which is the larger point. So even from a pragmatic standpoint, we require guidelines to conduct that are thought to be valid, hence moral normativity.

The problem is that there will always be holes in philosophical ideas, some more than others. — Beverley

I think some people feel they can avoid such pitfalls if their logic is stringent enough (without being aware that extreme-logicism can itself constitute one of the "holes" of which you speak).

That is precisely where I was going. You took the words right out of my mouth ;) — Beverley

Yes, I kind of figured. It was only a matter of time.

Moral Education
by Émile Durkheim

Ontology if it gives as the list of basic categories is not a result of metaphysics too. — Johnnie

Ontology is the heart of metaphysics. And this is its traditional accepted definition, the nature of being, contrary to your assertion.

It is really difficult to have a productive conversation if you cannot contend with my responses. I am not sure how to proceed from here, but, then again, it seems like you aren't interested in having any conversation about it (and if that is the case, then we can end our conversation here: no problem). — Bob Ross

Ok Bob. How does the perfect nuclear weapon fit into your schema? Since human beings are arguably impairing the perfect balance of our eco-sphere, utilizing the perfect nuclear weapon to erase humanity would seem to be an ideal example of goodness.

What is Pattern Recognition?
Pattern recognition is a process of finding regularities and similarities in data using machine learning data. Now, these similarities can be found based on statistical analysis, historical data, or the already gained knowledge by the machine itself.

A pattern is a regularity in the world or in abstract notions. If we discuss sports, a description of a type would be a pattern. If a person keeps watching videos related to cricket, YouTube wouldn’t recommend them chess tutorials videos.


Examples: Speech recognition, speaker identification, multimedia document recognition (MDR), automatic medical diagnosis.

Before searching for a pattern there are some certain steps and the first one is to collect the data from the real world. The collected data needs to be filtered and pre-processed so that its system can extract the features from the data. Then based on the type of the data system will choose the appropriate algorithm among Classification, Regression, and Regression to recognize the pattern.

https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/blog/2020/12/an-overview-of-neural-approach-on-pattern-recognition/


Filtering and pre-processing means identifying exactly how the training data fits the data-categories for which the neural network is to be trained.

I'll ask it one more time: How do you think the computer system gains the initial information that a certain picture represents a certain thing? It does not possess innate knowledge. It only knows what it has been told specifically. I know how it's done, its done by training up the system using a training dataset in which the data is identified. The classic example is the mine-rock discriminator. Sonar profiles of "known mines" are fed into the system. Along with sonar profiles of "known rocks". These are pre-categorized by the developers. After that, the neural network is fed novel data, which it then attempts to categorize. If it is wrong, the error is "back-propagated" across the network to correct the "weights" of the hidden-architecture neurons. And this back-propagation is ALSO a manual function, since the computer does not know that it is making an error.

Training an Artificial Neural Network.In the training phase, the correct class for each record is known (this is termed supervised training), and the output nodes can therefore be assigned

Yes, supplied by external sources, not by the researchers. There, the fourth time. — Lionino

The people developing the neural net (aka the developers) are the external sources. Who else do you think, the neural-net police? The bureau of neural net standards? Jeez. Here's wikipedia on Labeled_data

Labeled data is a group of samples that have been tagged with one or more labels. Labeling typically takes a set of unlabeled data and augments each piece of it with informative tags. For example, a data label might indicate whether a photo contains a horse or a cow, which words were uttered in an audio recording, what type of action is being performed in a video, what the topic of a news article is, what the overall sentiment of a tweet is, or whether a dot in an X-ray is a tumor.
Labels can be obtained by asking humans to make judgments about a given piece of unlabeled data. Labeled data is significantly more expensive to obtain than the raw unlabeled data.


Anyway, to the OP in general, I think I've conclusively and exhaustively demonstrated my point. And illustrated the very real dangers of a naive techno-optimism. If anything, we should be constantly tempering ourselves with a healthy and ongoing attitude of informed techno-skepticism.

One final cautionary. I worked as a technical expert in the health-care industry until this year, so I've seen a couple of these studies circulated on "baked-in" AI bias.

For example, if historical patient visits are going to be used as the data source, an analysis to understand if there are any pre-existing biases will help to avoid baking them into the system,

The article you linked sets out to show that humans may inherit the biased information given to them by an AI (duh), not that AI inherits human bias. :meh: — Lionino

Which bias originally derived from the biased input data, as is in the article.

Like I said, it's a fact. Do some reading. "Training up" a neural net. Categorization is supplied, it's not intrinsic to the nature of a picture Copernicus.

It’s not necessary that a metaphysical outlook be identically shared among members of a community. Each of those diverse humans you have encountered has an interpretive system for construing events which is partially unique to themselves. — Joshs

Indeed. And there are limits both to the extent that it is actually "shared" (different degrees of understanding of the same thing (ability and specialization) and different aspects of the same thing (complexity) being some limitations. And there are similar limits constraining the extent that an individual can diverge, social pressures and norms, as well as the inherent need for one's core metaphysic to meet whatever constitutes its conditions of "adequacy" to be one's core metaphysic.

We should never have invented agriculture. — bert1

The Dawn of Everything evaluates this position, and also explores the unique power of the indigenous world view through some historical analysis informed by native sources and details.

In any case, I still have not seen any proof that programmers are categorising their own data by hand. — Lionino

I'm sorry, perhaps you just do not understand the way neural networks function. Do you think that the data categorizes itself? This isn't a subject of debate, it is how they work. I've provided excellent, on-point information. Beyond that, I suggest studying the "training up phase" of neural network design:

Usually, an artificial neural network’s initial training involvesbeing fed large amounts of data. In its most basic form, this training provides input and tells the network what the desired output should be. For instance, if we wanted to build a network that identifies bird species, the initial training could be a series of pictures, including birds, animals that aren’t birds, planes, and flying objects.

Each input would be accompanied by a matching identification such as the bird’s name or “not bird” or “not animal” information. The answers should allow the model to adjust its internal weightings to learn how to get the bird species right as accurately as possible.

https://blog.invgate.com/what-is-neural-network

I've been studying neural networks since the 1990's, long before they were popular, or even commonly known.

There is no "AI" my friend. All there is is "pattern-matching" software, that has been trained based on pre-selected data, which selection has been made by biased human beings. The "Big-AI" players are all commercial enterprises. Do you not think that there are massive agendas (aka biases) skewing that data? Come on.

the AI system trained with such historical data will simply inherit this bias

This study shows that a bias (error) originally inherited by the AI from its source data in turn is inherited as a habit by students who learned a diagnostic skill from the AI.

So technology is actually amplifying an error, and the confidence which people have in it only exacerbates the extent to which this is a problem. Which is what I originally suggested.

I hope that I am slightly less ignorant than two decades ago, If that is true, it is because I feel and do things differently. — Paine

This is how I feel.