That and the sign is probably not real too.

Isn’t this a very reasonable rule? I really would prefer that you did not wash your balls in the Baja Blast.

He’s the man the voters chose - if they didn’t trust his judgement, they could have chosen someone else. His moral character represents American moral character.

It’s fairly straightforward to give a child no opportunity to lie about the things important to the parents, if the parents put in the effort. They can watch the kid come home right after school and sit in the living room doing homework all evening, and the school will tell them his grades and whether or not he’s behaving well.

Reminds me of “Ninja parade slips through town unnoticed” from the Onion.

Depends on what you mean by “strict”. I think the meme is about the parents who get angry over little things but don’t actually pay attention to their kids much - the ones who just assume that their kids would not dare to misbehave. However when I was in high school, I also saw plenty of kids (often immigrants) who had successfully been taught to work pretty much non-stop. I think their parents watched them (or at least their grades) closely enough that they couldn’t have gotten away with anything. It seemed to work well - they got straight A’s, never got in trouble, and went to prestigious universities. I can’t think of a single one I knew who burned out or rebelled (while in high school - I don’t know what happened to them afterwards). However, the ones I got to meet were already filtered, with the low- and medium-achievers not admitted to that school.

I think that then we actually agree.

I haven’t noticed this behavior coming from scientists particularly frequently - the ones I’ve talked to generally accept that consciousness is somehow the product of the human brain, the human brain is performing computation and obeys physical law, and therefore every aspect of the human brain, including the currently unknown mechanism that creates consciousness, can in principle be modeled arbitrarily accurately using a computer. They see this as fairly straightforward, but they have no desire to convince the public of it.

This does lead to some counterintuitive results. If you have a digital AI, does a stored copy of it have subjective experience despite the fact that its state is not changing over time? If not, does a series of stored copies representing, losslessly, a series of consecutive states of that AI? If not, does a computer currently in one of those states and awaiting an instruction to either compute the next state or load it from the series of stored copies? If not (or if the answer depends on whether it computes the state or loads it) then is the presence or absence of subjective experience determined by factors outside the simulation, e.g. something supernatural from the perspective of the AI? I don’t think such speculation is useful except as entertainment - we simply don’t know enough yet to even ask the right questions, let alone answer them.

This isn’t the Cthulhu universe. There isn’t some horrible truth ChatGPT can reveal to you which will literally drive you insane. Some people use ChatGPT a lot, some people have psychotic episodes, and there’s going to be enough overlap to write sensationalist stories even if there’s no causative relationship.

I suppose ChatGPT might be harmful to someone who is already delusional by (after pressure) expressing agreement, but I’m not sure about that because as far as I know, you can’t talk a person into or out of psychosis.

Yes, the first step to determining that AI has no capability for cognition is apparently to admit that neither you nor anyone else has any real understanding of what cognition* is or how it can possibly arise from purely mechanistic computation (either with carbon or with silicon).

Given the paramount importance of the human senses and emotion for consciousness to “happen”

Given? Given by what? Fiction in which robots can’t comprehend the human concept called “love”?

*Or “sentience” or whatever other term is used to describe the same concept.

That advertisement had no effect on me whatsoever.

I’m not expecting prominent muscles. I just don’t want my stomach protruding like an inflated balloon even when the rest of me is bony.

I think posture does have something to do with it, because when I stand up straight and tense my stomach muscles, I look a lot better. I suspect that the problem isn’t so much that I have excess fat on my stomach (although I do have some) but rather that my stomach muscles aren’t preventing my stomach from bulging out unless I’m deliberately focusing on keeping them tense. I think better posture can be made subconscious (or else why have adults always told children to stand up straight) but I don’t think there’s a way to keep the muscles tense subconsciously. Or is there?

Speaking of posture, my new office chair has a significant forward curve at my lower back which I find uncomfortable. (I used to sit in an old-timey banker’s chair with a back that sloped smoothly backwards.) Is that because my posture is bad? Am I supposed to be sitting in a way that conforms to that curve? I know some people who strap cushions to their car seats in order to add that curve. I find those cushions really uncomfortable too, but are those people actually on to something or are their backs just different from mine?

I’m skinny everywhere except on my stomach. My body thinks that when I diet to lose weight it’s because I want to look like Skeletor, so the first place I lose fat from is my face and it becomes gaunt and looks unhealthy.

The idea that Trump can start wars as he sees fit is a frightening one, but I’m not sure that in practice Congress is capable of making these decisions (especially with regard to unconventional military actions as opposed to traditional wars). It is simply too dysfunctional an institution, although I suppose institutional paralysis would lead to the outcome that isolationists and pacifists want.

In this thread: Americans supporting “Death to America!”

But 500 km (or rather 310 miles since I’m in the USA) is at the upper end of the distance I’d drive. There isn’t a distance for which a train is better than both flying and driving.

Nah if I’m going to shill for any Manhattan grocery store, it will be Fairway. It’s also really expensive but it feels like being in the sort of store you’d go to if you were rich, not like being ripped off. Their cheese counter has prices per 1/4 pound for some of the cheeses but then if you get some $15 per 1/4 pound cheese it will taste so good that you’ll think it was worth it. I haven’t been there in years but I still long for that cheese.

I don’t think that’s actually an unusual conversation for people who live in Manhattan to have. The comments about relative prices are accurate in my experience - I live on the same block as a Gristides and I still never shop there because of how expensive it is, even compared to Whole Foods. I get most of my groceries in Brooklyn on the weekends.

I also know a woman with a whole stack of different credit cards, so she always has the one that gives her the most rewards for whatever specific thing she’s buying. I’m sure she has one for grocery shopping.

I fly because it’s fast, not because I like airplanes. Even the fastest train is way too slow to replace a plane for a long-distance trip. Then for shorter distances cars win out because of how convenient they are. There’s no niche for passenger trains except for commuting into urban areas with no parking.

It doesn’t help that in the USA train tickets seem to cost more than plane tickets. I think I’d still usually fly even if the train was free, so I’m certainly not going to pay extra for a slower method of transportation even if it is a little more comfortable.