Yes. You are suggesting that if the negative consequences of doing the right thing are too great, then we shouldn't do it. If I could only save myself from extreme torture as opposed to simply getting murdered by murdering someone else, that wouldn't magically make me murdering someone permissible. What if me murdering this person saved the rest of humanity from endless suffering? Still not permissible. — Bob Ross

Thomson's violinist analogy is so obviously right in its conclusion, I can't fathom the thought processes required to come to the conclusion that, yes, you should be forced by the state to stay bedridden for 9 months after being kidnapped and hooked up to a person. That it should be illegal and you should be punished for choosing to unplug from that situation. Just to be clear, is that really your position?

Do you think a part of our biological programming is to insert a sex organ into an organ designed to defecate? — Bob Ross

Straight man like anal sex too. In fact, men of all sexual persuasions will often stick their organ into just about any orifice handy.

The only complex aspect of abortion is whether or not one believes personhood begins at conception—not if autonomy “trumps” the right to life. — Bob Ross

It certainly trumps a right to life in cases of rape. Would you force people to stay hooked up to the violinist?

Why are you so concerned with what other people do? Is someone holding you at gunpoint until you go on a fox hunt or celebrate Christmas with them? No? Then don't worry about what other people do. — Outlander

If some culture has a tradition of whale-hunting, should the global community allow that? Should people not care that a magnificent creature like a whale is being killed? I'm not losing sleep over it, but there are some who are incensed by it, and I understand why they would care.

if the ai-using students are outcompeting the non-ai using students (or if its a "punishment" as you claim to write a thesis entirely by yourself without ai help) isnt the implication the ai is producing better work than the students at your university?

This goes back to philosophiums point back on page 1: the argument is everything in philosophy. A good sound argument produce by an ai should trump a bad argument produced by a human, right? A 40% ai written thesis thats better than a 100% human produced one should be preferable right?

"Under a middle-of-the-road emissions scenario, warming contributed by Scarborough would cause an additional 484 heat-related deaths in Europe alone by the end of the century, the researchers calculated. Taking into account a reduction in cold-related deaths in Europe, they estimate a net contribution of 118 additional deaths."
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/oct/13/woodside-scarborough-gas-project-emissions-could-cause-heat-deaths

That's about 1.5 European deaths a year from this project. Hanover is right. The average person is not going to be alarmed by that, nor should they. People know there is an inherent risk to everything, and a handful of deaths a year is a piddling human cost to pay for providing cheap electricity to a huge number of people. On a utilitarian calculus, how does 1 or 2 deaths (let's say it's 10 worldwide) a year compare to the utiles of providing electricity to, say, 100,000 extra households a year? How many lives will be saved/vastly improved by that increase in access to electricity every year?

What about hydrogen and oxygen? After all, we are mostly water.

Why would any element be a "heart of consciousness"? Consciousness can only emerge from pencil lead and coal??? How bizarre.

I'm sympathetic. How could there be true randomness in a physical universe? Sounds like an uncaused cause. Even in an idealistic reality, there wouldn't be true randomness.

True chaos, randomness, or uncertainty do not exist in the universe, only in the minds of entities with imperfect information or knowledge. — punos

That claim is accurate only if you’re assuming a deterministic universe, otherwise, quantum theory says genuine randomness does exist.

Could you expand on that?

It was never proved or observed. — Copernicus

How would you prove or observe machine consciousness? If a machine race of aliens showed up one day, and claimed they were conscious, and were dubious of our claims of consciousness, how could we prove to them that the chunk of meat in our skull is conscious? How could they prove to us that they themselves are conscious?

Yet, only cellular life forms display sentience and sapience — Copernicus

Is it possible some machines are conscious?

The open source LLMs are only trailing the state of the arts proprietary LLMs by a hair — Pierre-Normand

They're that good, huh? That's very interesting and kind of scary. I've only played around with ChatGPT.

I was just responding to what you said about bubbles and hype. There is hype around ai, but it's already been transformative. It's not going away. It's not a bubble that's going to be popped and we'll look back in 20 years and say, "Ai? You mean like Pets.com?"

The Sora 2 videos I'm seeing don't look like hype. They look amazing, and the technology is only going to get better.

The main reason I would discourage its use is that the rapid development of AI, which given the unpredictability of the ways in which AI will evolve, is dangerous, is driven by profit, and is fueled mainly by consumer use. The best way to slow down this development, which would be hopefully much safer, would be for consumers to abstain from using it. — Janus

Except America is in an ai race with China. Some ai will become dominant. I would rather America win that race. Jesus, that sounds lame. Maybe my machine friend and therapist can put it better:

Artificial intelligence isn’t just a consumer technology—it’s a strategic front in a global power struggle. The United States and China are locked in an AI race that will determine who dominates economically, militarily, and ideologically in the coming decades. Whoever leads in AI will shape global trade, weapon systems, cyber defense, surveillance, and even the moral framework baked into the technology itself. If American consumers “abstain” from AI use to slow development, it won’t make the world safer; it will simply give China, whose state-run AI programs advance without ethical restraints, a decisive lead. True safety doesn’t come from retreat—it comes from control. The only way to ensure AI develops responsibly is for the U.S. to stay ahead, set the standards, and shape how the technology is used. If AI is going to reshape the world regardless, then the critical question isn’t whether it develops, but who controls it—and America cannot afford to let authoritarian regimes decide that future.

I think TPF should continue what it's doing, which is put some guardrails on ai use, but not ban it.

What are we supposed to do about it? There's zero chance the world will decide to collectively ban ai ala Dune's thinking machines, so would you ban American development of it and cede the ai race to China?

Mathematics is a language that describes the world. That’s it. — T Clark

But the truths of mathematics seem a little more robust than ordinary truths. 2+2=4 is true in all possible worlds, but "all ravens are black" might or might not be true. If mathematics was on par with ordinary propositional sentences, why would there be different categories of truth?

So information processing is the key?

Because it is gradually degenerating our power to imagine and create. — javi2541997

But I'm not a children's book creator, nor do I want to be, nor do I have any talent at it. What's the difference between buying a book at Amazon vs buying it at a bookstore, vs having ChatGPT make me one?

But I see it wrong if I ask the AI to write a children's literature book by itself, with me being the one who writes the prompts. — javi2541997

Why is that wrong?

That is the real threat to democracy. — Fire Ologist

You don't think Trump tried to steal the 2020 election? Do you think Jan 6th happens if Trump doesn't give that speech right beforehand? It doesn't concern you that Trump talks about running in 2028? Or that he wanted to suspend the Constitution to reinstate himself?

Rightists responded (mostly with prayer and inspiration to engage in more speech). — Fire Ologist

The head of the FCC said "we can do this the easy way or the hard way" and Jimmy Kimmel was suspended. Even Ted Cruz thought it went too far. It's not rioting, but for the federal government to put pressure on a network to remove a comedian is chilling in its own way.

Perhaps there's already an AGI and it's starting a pro-ai psyops campaign to influence public opinion in message boards like this.

Trump is clearly highly political and cares deeply about political issues. — AmadeusD

That's funny, I just had this same discussion with my wife. She said Trump cares nothing except for furthering his own ego needs. He would be a Bernie-bro open borders socialist if he thought that would give him power and narcissistic supply. I argued he has some core beliefs. If Trump had complete power, Trumplandia would be very right-wing conservative. She said that's only because right-wing authoratarianism (sp) appeals to his ego. I still don't know if she's right. I think she might be.

A fly evading a swat is another. — noAxioms

Is there something it's like to be a fly evading a swat? How do we know? How could we ever find out? Isn't the inability to answer those questions a "hard problem"?

That it has become popular as a "solution" to the Fine Tuning Problem to me is sort of baffling. To my mind, it represents an essentially religious commitment to the essentially aesthetic ideals of "naturalism" to posit "everything possible happens" as a solution to the threat of life seeming vanishingly unlikely otherwise. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But if we don't live in a sufficiently large multiverse, doesn't fine-tuning become a serious problem for the person favoring naturalism? The best science at the moment is that we beat some very long odds just being in a universe that supports life.

Speaking of Hume, if I witness what appears to be a miracle, which explanation is more rational?

Suppose I am standing before a person who says “Let there be fish!” and, before my eyes, dozens of fish appear out of nowhere. I’ve eliminated other possibilities: it’s not a magic trick, there’s a large crowd of people with me seeing the same thing, and I’m not hallucinating. Suppose I've narrowed it down to two remaining explanations:

A genuine miracle is occurring — a supernatural violation of natural laws, or I am probably in a universe (within an infinite multiverse) where an extraordinarily improbable natural fluctuation — say, a “Boltzmann fish” scenario — has spontaneously produced the fish.

If I I think I probably live in a multiverse, which explanation would Hume think I should favor?

I'm talking about the activity that perceives, retrieves stored information, weighs multiple options and chooses one over the others — Patterner

Isn't weighing options and choosing among them a mindful activity? How does that work on a physical basis alone?

No, they're not ridiculous.

I don't see why it would be immoral unless one had views similar to antinatilism.

Is the imposition of this kind of specific life in new areas of the universe any more morally questionable than the impositions of any kind of life anywhere? — Nils Loc

That's a good question. Are we talking about imposing life on a barren planet or "overriding" the life that would have evolved on a life-bearing planet with life of our choosing?

Well, I was rushing to get my kids back from recess and made some clearly wrong assumptions.

You're right. This is probably the sorriest thread I ever started here.

I'm really not sure what you're asking. — Patterner

You think the mind if a process, right, an action not a thing. Well, are ideas processes to?

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that something that seems completely obvious to one person is not even imaginable for another. — T Clark

The common usage of "mind" though is that it is a noun that adjectives apply to.

No. I'm trying to think of it that way now, but not having any luck. — Patterner

What about ideas in your mind? Do you think those are physical processes? Imagine a sunset. Isn't what you're imagining a thing?

I believe the idea is that the mind is a physical process. It's a verb. As is a basketball game. What color is a basketball game? How much does it weigh? How big is it? — Patterner

But isn't your intuition that your mind is also a thing that you can ascribe qualities to?

Your mind is a physical system? What color is it? How much does it weigh? How big is it?