This, too, is a coin trick. Extending rights to *nature* reliably makes the world better, but extending rights to *constructs* makes the world *far* worse (Exhibit A is corporate personhood) (obviously). 36/

Take this argument: "Every time we extend rights to the nonhuman world - watersheds, endangered animals, ecosystems - the world gets better. Let's extend rights to AI - whether or not we think it's a 'person' and so reap those benefits." 35/

*Other* billionaires are cynics who think that bosses can be sold defective worker-replacing chatbots because they're credulous suckers for that pitch. 30/

For example, *some* of the billionaires who put up the first several hundred million for AI are solipsists who just don't believe other people are entirely real and therefore find it easy to believe that AI can do their jobs. 29/

The AI bubble is (seemingly) full of contradictions, but - like those baffling coin-tricks - these contradictions often resolve themselves very neatly once you realize that the "contradiction" is actually just *two things* that appear to be one. 28/

"Understanding" and "statistical extrapolation" *can* often lead to the same place, but when they *don't*, "understanding" provides a way forward, while "extrapolation" founders. 18/

But *we* manage the trick by *understanding each other* (and by exploiting the fact of repetition). When my wife says something surprising - because she is angry or delighted, sad or happy - I can make a reliable guess about what caused my prediction to misfire. 16/

My wife and I have been together for 23 years now, and there's plenty of times that we can finish each other's sentences - and so can the autocomplete on our phones. The autocomplete manages the trick by exploiting the fact that we often repeat ourselves. 15/

"Predicting what you'll say through an understanding based on a theory of your mind" and "predicting what you'll say based on a statistical analysis of your utterances" might produce the same *outputs*, but they are *not* the same trick. You can tell by what happens when the trick fails. 14/

"Therefore, we're both doing the same conscious work - and therefore the chatbot will eventually be as conscious as I am." 13/

In support of this (outlandish) proposition, the interviewer performed a kind of cognitive coin-trick: "I can often predict what my wife is going to say, and so can a chatbot that's been trained on her words. 12/

His point was that teaching more words to the word-guessing program would produce consciousness, an argument I always liken to "breeding horses to run faster and faster until one of them foals a locomotive." 11/

I recently found myself arguing with an interviewer about whether AI is, or could be, conscious. We weren't arguing about whether it might someday be possible to make an artificial consciousness. 8/

The greatest magic trick of them all is *lying*. The reason you can't figure out that coin vanish even after the conjurer performs it three times in a row is that they *didn't* do the same trick three times in a row! 1/

"don't make enough money" is a fig leaf All those degree programs--social work, art, etc.--have disproportionately female student bodies. This is designed to make it harder for women to attend college--college education being a key factor in women's autonomy from men & left-leaning voting pattern.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

The October Daye series is the best Urban Fantasy series I've read, completely exploding what you can do with the genre. Also, if she wins, maybe we will be able to get them published in the UK too and not rely on American imports?

Seanan McGuire@seananmcguire.bsky.social · 4d ago

As we enter the last week of Hugo voting, a reminder that October Daye is up for Best Series, and winning would be made SO MUCH SWEETER by the fact that I could take my trophy and inform the room "I'm going to Disneyland," then ACTUALLY DO IT, since Disneyland will be less than a mile away. WOW!

The biggest technological revolution of our lifetime and it has nothing to do with AI, crypto, metaverse, robots or any of the other massively hyped "tech" the media always talks about instead

Sarah Taber@sarahtaber.bsky.social · 2d ago

Absolutely unbelievable how solar power has taken off worldwide during the Hormuz oil crisis. You don't have to hand it to him, but Trump may have done more to finally kick off a global civilization of effete librul solar users than anyone else in the West

They’re calling it the most theater kid story of all time

Pixie Casey@pixiecasey.bsky.social · yesterday

in insane local news, the 26 year old director of a rocky horror production was arrested for sending threatening messages to himself in order to get the play shut down bc he didn’t want to deal with cast drama www.mynbc5.com/article/rock...

The same people who have been telling us "we can't stop climate change, instead we must adapt" have been hammering our capacity to adapt, through their promotion of austerity. What they're really saying is "keep burning fossil fuels for the sake of our donors". www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Sevilla this summer — amazing how comfortable the streets are even on hot afternoons

Brent Toderian@brenttoderian.bsky.social · 3d ago

Almost every city in the world needs to urgently understand the need to get really good at planning and designing for shade. #UrbanHeat

Approval of east London datacentre labelled ‘slap in the face’ for local democracy. Datacentre prioritised over building affordable homes. Little attention to environmental issues. Govt overturning local council refusal is not devolution or democracy. Big business always wins.

Approval of east London datacentre labelled ‘slap in the face’ for local democracy

Campaigners decry Angela Rayner’s backing for Brick Lane project that has only 11 affordable homes

theguardian.com

Day 3 of not working because my therapist said so. I feel like I'm going insane. I feel like I'm turning into mush. Most days I have off streaming I spend at least doing, like, other work. Management. Emails. Writing. Side projects. Freelance work. Just doing nothing is. against my nature. Help meee

Less jack ports. Cables that must be "official'. Warranties that are in months, not years. EULAs that change constantly, regardless of if you want the terms of your contract changed. Technology these days is poisoned, and badly designed and disposable and you MUST not forget this.

...is technically more sophisticated. But faster charging battery technology is useless if you cannot replace said battery, and the device has, essentiallt, a kill switch when they want to sell you a new one.

I never wanted to be a "in my day things were better" old lady... but I need to categorically state that technology actually WAS better. You are currently in the peak of designed obsolence, enshittification, personal intrusion and forced acceptance by lack of choice. Sure, the underlying tech...

genuinely, this is a huge missing link I the development of Japanese adventure games and the whole visual novel genre its influence is felt in so many of the most popular works even today I wrote a huge piece on it and the way it's influenced the genre canonfire.net/post/7022178...

024: Kamaitachi no Yoru  かまいたちの夜 (Night of the Sickle Weasel/Banshee’s Last Cry)

CANON FIRE is made possible by the generous contributions of readers like you. Support more writing like this on Patreon. Thank you! Chunsoft may have one of the biggest discrepancies in reputation...

canonfire.net

Game Vecanti@gamevecanti.bsky.social · 2d ago

An English fan translation of "Kamaitachi no Yoru" for SFC has been released by "ButThouMust": github.com/ButThouMust/...

I don’t have kids but I am glad that my taxes pay for public education so that there will be good doctors when I am old. I’m glad that my taxes will make sure people who are struggling to make ends meet can feed themselves and their kids so they can grow up healthy.

The effective federal corporate income tax rate: 1950: 50% 1990: 25% 2020: 13% Stop asking "but how we will pay for it?" Restore the corporate tax rate. That is how we will pay for it.

Bluesky oldheads will remember that brief period of time when the conservative trolls tried to storm the place and were flummoxed by the idea they would have to organically grow an audience and that someone who didn't want to talk to them could nuke every interaction they ever had from orbit

I will keep bringing it back to this, because it's wild not to. British journalists are wildly right wing because they are selected by a system overwhelmingly run by wild right wingers. Their conception of normal is horrifically skewed.

The Dacre dynasty: how Britain’s rightwing press was radicalised

The long read: Paul Dacre broke new ground in selling readers an angry rightwing perspective. Today, most of Fleet Street is run by his disciples

theguardian.com