Best Of
Re: Funny Stuff
During army camouflage, private Paddy Murphy, disguised as a tree trunk, makes a sudden move and is spotted by the general.
”You idiot!” yells the officer. ”You are supposed to be a tree. Jumping and screaming like that, you could endanger the lives of the whole platoon.”
”Yes, sir,” replies Paddy. ”But sir, I must tell you, I stood quite still when some pigeons used me for target practice. And I never moved when three dogs thought I was a latrine. But I could not bear it when two squirrels ran up the leg of my pants and I heard one of them say, ‘Let’s eat one now and save the other until winter.’
Jeroen
Re: The Knowledge That Matters
@Jeroen said:
I just came across this…
I don't get it, is there some relation? Or perhaps its some sort of point about Doug's perspective being silly?
person
Re: Maitreya — an AI Buddha?
A boulder, no matter how often awash in river waters, will never turn into a seed.
The Dalai Lama did say something quite fascinating once: if a being had the karma to be born in such a body, it would be.
Meaning, if we made some sort of vessel for a consciousness to alight, it's possible we could be inviting someone in to the cosmic-party via such a vessel.
Not the same as inventing/constructing/creating consciousness. More like, consciousness simply is, and it needs a house-with-windows to enter into.
the issue of interiority is well noted, how the roots of a plant are the genius-loci of the organism itself, i wonder what that looks to be for a robot-with-consciousness-capacity?
But anyway, don't let me feed your wishfulness, the current state of LLMs is closer to water sliding down a bumpy surface than it is to some being experiencing something, and relaying experiences back n forth.
All that said, the membrane between "self and other" is rather porous. It would be a good use of energy to keep a bunch of virtuous monks on staff at the data center. I'm confident their strength would permeate into the rest of the apparatus. But try explaining that to overconfident materialist-extremists! 
august
Gone since 2012. I'm back
I'm back to realize my faults and change my habits. It's good to be home.
ginab
Re: Being a light unto yourself
On a related note, my mother just declared “everything online is AI”. Which may soon be coming true… if you can no longer trust video footage as a facsimile of the real world, or text as having been typed by a human… maybe it’s time to find an entirely-analogue hermitage somewhere?
Jeroen