Zalack

joined 1 year ago
[–] Zalack@startrek.website 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

My experience has often been the opposite. Programmers will do a lot to avoid the ethical implications of their works being used maliciously and discussions of what responsibility we bear for how our work gets used and how much effort we should be obligated to make towards defending against malicious use.

It's why I kind of wish that "engineer" was a regulated title in America like it is in other countries, and getting certified as a programming engineer required some amount of training in programming ethics and standards.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

IMO it's a good feature and it's a good thing it's required. I remember the days when I would boot up a game and never be sure if my system crashed or not.

This requires the game to start giving you feedback before you start wondering if you should do a power cycle.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We'll always DRR DRR !

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I actually think the radio signal is an apt comparison. Let's say someone was trying to argue that the signal itself was a fundamental force.

Well then you could make the argument that if you pour a drink into it, the water shorts the electronics and the signal stops playing as the electromagnetic force stops working on the pieces of the radio. This would lead you to believe, through the same logic in my post, that the signal itself is not a fundamental force, but is somehow created through the electromagnetic force interacting with the components, which... It is! The observer might not understand how the signal worked, but they could rule it out as being its own discreet thing.

In the same way, we might not know exactly how our brain produces consciousness, but because the components we can see must be involved, it isn't a discreet phenomenon. Fundamental forces can't have parts or components, they must be completely discreet.

Your example is a really really good one.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 24 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Self driving cars could actually be kind of a good stepping stone to better public transit while making more efficient use of existing roadways. You hit a button to request a car, it drives you to wherever, you need to go, and then gets tasked to pick up the next person. Where you used to need 10 cars for 10 people, you now need one.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Is !lostlemmings a thing anywhere?

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago

American here.

Did we just become best friends!???

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

At a sketch:

  • We know that when the brain chemistry is disrupted, our consciousness is disrupted

  • You can test this yourself. Drink some alcohol and your consciousness will be disrupted. Similarly I am on Gabapentin for nerve pain, which works by inhibiting the electrical signals my nerves use to fire, and in turn makes me groggy.

  • While we don't know exactly how consciousness works, we have a VERY good understanding of chemistry, which is to say, the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism (fundamental forces). Literally millions of repeatable experiments that have validated these forces exist and we understand the way they behave.

  • Drugs like Gabapentin and Alcohol interact with our brain using these forces.

  • If the interaction of these forces being disrupted disrupts our consciousness, it's reasonable to conclude that our consciousness is built on top of, or is an emergent property of, these forces' interactions.

  • If our consciousness is made up of these forces, then it cannot be a fundamental force as, by definition, fundamental forces must be the basic building blocks of physics and not derived from other forces.

There are no real assumptions here. It's all a line of logical reasoning based on observations you can do yourself.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 11 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Why would you assume consciousness is a fundamental force rather than an emergent property of complex systems built on the forces?

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think the problem is that there is less often something to be said if you agree. Every now and then you might have something to add that fleshes out the idea or adds additional context, but generally if I totally agree with a comment I just upvote it.

On the other hand, when you disagree with something your response will, by logical necessity, be different from the parent comment.

So if you want to prioritize "adding something novel" there's a logical bias towards comments that disagree since only some percentage of agreement will tick that box.

Otherwise you end up with a bunch of comments that literally or figuratively add up to "this".

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 6 points 1 year ago

More good options is always a good thing.

[–] Zalack@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago

The FBI and regular police have very different standards. I definitely think this should be fully investigated like any use is force, but I have more faith that the FBI handled this appropriately than of it had been a local PD department.

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