After thousands of years of research we still don’t fully understand how humans do it, so what reason (besides a sort of naked techno-optimism) is there to believe we will ever be able to replicate the behavior in machines?
The Church-Turing thesis comes to mind. It would at least suggest that humans aren’t capable of doing anything computationally beyond what can be instantiated in software and hardware.
But sure, instantiating these capabilities in hardware and software are beyond our current abilities. It seems likely that it is possible though, even if we don’t know how to do it yet.
The church turing thesis is about following well-defined rules. It is not about the system that creates or decides to follow or not follow such rules. Such a system (the human mind) must exist for rules to be followed, yet that system must be outside mere rule-following since it embodies a function which does not exist in rule-following itself, e.g., the faculty of deciding what rules are to be followed.
That humans come in various degrees of competence at this rather than an, ahem, boolean have/don't have; plus how we can already do a bad approximation of it, in a field whose rapid improvements hint that there is still a lot of low-hanging fruit, is a reason for techno-optimism.
We've only had the tech to be able to research this in some technical depth for a few decades (both scale of computation and genetics / imaging techniques).
And then we discover that DNA in (not only brain) cells are ideal quantum computers, DNA's reactions generate coherent light (as in lasers) used to communicate between cells and single dendrite of cerebral cortex' neuron can compute at the very least a XOR function which requires at least 9 coefficients and one hidden layer. Neurons have from one-two to dozens of thousands of dendrites.
Even skin cells exchange information in neuron-like manner, including using light, albeit thousands times slower.
This switches complexity of human brain to "86 billions quantum computers operating thousands of small neural networks, exchanging information by lasers-based optical channels."
The title framing is weird when the report says maybe 5% of the 1250 were civilians, and the same rights group also reports more than 1500 civilians [0] killed over the same period in the horrific and rampant gang violence the government is using this technology to fight against.
Another example: Feminism? Only happened with women in the workforce. Women in the workforce? Only when the Industrial Revolution happened and the economy could support the roles. Industrial Revolution? Only happened when farming and trading got good enough that 90% of the population didn’t need to be farmers first. Very few moral enlightenments have ever actually happened absent economic preconditions, or would not be reversed if the conditions degraded.
> Feminism? Only happened with women in the workforce.
That is not how it was. First, women were actually working and producing the whole time - but with much more limited options. It is not like they would twiddle thumbs bored prior industrial revolution.
And second, the politically succesfull feminism happened mostly with women who were middle class, not allowed to work and wanted more ambitious jobs.
Natural rights do not exist. There is nothing natural about freedom. Every right we have we fought tirelessly for. If we forget the struggle we went through to obtain freedom we can easily abandon the cause and lose that freedom.
While I mostly agree, freedom as a universal right does exist; not everyone can exercise it, but that doesn't make it less of a right.
And it is 'natural' in the sense that it is valued ~~ universally. I can't establish objectively that it is valued everywhere, of course; I can establish that people en masse have valued it and fought for it all over the world, from Europe to South Asia to SE Asia to East Asia; in Africa, to all of the Americas.
Well the issue here is that value is a spectrum. Having rights involves trade offs, take a look at singapore. I do not think it is in any way self evident that all people value each of their rights the way that you do. In el salvador the people gladly gave up their rights to obtain order, and now they have one of the most popular governments in the world even though they do not have very much freedom at all. For you to carte blanche say the el salvandorans are wrong to be happy with that trade off is naive and incredibly paternalistic. The same is true of the situation in Haiti.
These are the same old argument that the dictators have made for generations. 'People here don't value freedom'; 'it's just your opinion'. They are called universal rights for a reason, and finding one popular dictator (in a world of fascist propaganda) while democracy and freedom have swept the world is not significant.
And if you say, who are you or am I to tell them what they value? Who are the dictators? If we can't morally, then you agree they have a right to self-determination, or freedom.
> you agree they have a right to self-determination, or freedom.
Certainly I think all people should have say over how they are governed. Whether they use that say to give themselves freedom is another question.
> 'People here don't value freedom'
No one is saying this. The claim is that some people are willing to sacrifice one thing they value a little (freedom) for something they value more (safety).
I havent spent much time looking into the popular opinion about that trade off in Haiti, but to claim that they should never make it as you claim takes away their self determination. If your claim was that Haitans are by and large unhappy with the drone program that would be a different story, but to just say handling criminals extrajudicially is unacceptable no matter what strikes me as naive
> The claim is that some people are willing to sacrifice one thing they value a little (freedom) for something they value more (safety).
You're assuming what they value more. Also, without freedom there is little safety. Without freedom of speech, etc., you can't have a free election where people can have self-determination.
And without universal rights, if some voters can take rights from other voters, nobody is safe or has self-determination.
> handling criminals extrajudicially is unacceptable no matter what strikes me as naive
You are naive to the age-old excuses of state murder and oppression. It's not only criminals (how do you even know who is a criminal?) and it's not going to stop. Do you think the mercenaries and others running the drones care? Do you think they won't murder people for their own benefit or through sheer recklessness and contempt for human life? There's a reason we have limited government and courts. That's why Haiti is in this current state - prior murderers who did the same. Murder is how they seized power and murder is how they kept it.
You'll notice that stable governments are not founded on extrajudicial state murder. That's not what Washington, Jefferson, etc. did.
In warfare, combatants are killed without trial but within the laws of warfare. Even there, extralegal killing is murder.
Yes, that's all the more reason they need a real government that protects people's rights.
The anti-freedom crowd always finds an excuse to disregard others' rights, liberty, and welfare, to impose what they want to do on others. They do it in the US too.
Plenty of places like Haiti just put civilians in the battleground between two equal and equally bad sides, the military and the insurgents. Both sides give the same excuse why they maim and murder civilians, which doesn't begin to address the damage to property and welfare.
In Iraq, for example, the US finally stabilized things when they adopted an effective and acceptable anti-insurgent strategy (led by David Petraeus): Protect the population.
That is naive. 'they need a real government that protects people's rights' and this government will magically materialize out of thin air and institute an island paradise, right? You can't even meaningfully discuss a real 'military' in Haiti, it is a failed state with minimal control of even their capital city.
This is a very common view among people who have grown up in the west. Some form of "people are inherently good, governments will spontaneously form and will be altruistic unless a bad minority does otherwise."
It's strange because the dominant religion in the west has as a fundamental tenet that people are inherently bad. But I digress...
Unless one is some form of deist who believes there is a top-tier authority who is active in bending the fate of the world, there is no reason to believe rights are natural or exist in any way absent the will of the powerful. It's a sad conclusion but the only one I can come up with after 50 trips around the sun.
This is an extraordinarily realistic take, I imagine you've traveled well to reach to that conclusion. The West is simply unwilling to concede that nothing is given in nature, as they have never truly dealt with the conniving spirit in the hearts of most men.
Yet universal rights have taken over the world, and are embraced by all the most free, most wealthy, most safe countries; it is the foundation of their governments. They are the most succesful governments in history with no others even close to competing, and have done that for many generations.
And now that universal rights have been weakened, the freedom, prosperity, and safety of those countries is weakening.
> Some form of "people are inherently good, governments will spontaneously form and will be altruistic unless a bad minority does otherwise."
That is a strawperson. Certainly nobody says 'spontaneously', and democratic goverments are constructed carefully to prevent abuses of power.
Naivete is swallowing the bait of fascists, hook, line and sinker: That freedom is somehow impossible, that people are only evil (instead of a mix of good and bad, either of which we can embrace and strengthen), and we must have a strongman. How convenient for the wannabe dictator.
America has always been blessed with great geography, natural resources, an educated populace, and an inventive, optimistic spirit. That is to say, Americans have never suffered and as such, cannot comprehend suffering. Thus Americans are blind and naive to injustices they have never faced.
People don't think anymore, they just react... Im pretty sure Im done engaging on this platform for that reason. Nearly every comment is met by some crass remark that clearly demonstrates the person didn't actually understand the comment, just reacted to the trigger words within it.
This is best exemplified by all the comments (on varying posts) saying: 'I misread the title, and interpreted as X, haha!'. HN has unfortunately slid in the direction of Reddit (despite the HN Guidelines' denial of this).
I figured my wording was clearly sarcastic but I should’ve added a “/s”. Extrajudicial slaughtering is not something I’d support regardless of civilian casualty rate.
We know what he meant, and he's being obtuse. Thinks thousands of deaths due to rampant crime somehow aren't or shouldn't be part of the discussion when the collateral cost of law enforcement efforts are discussed. Very dumb.
I figured my wording was clearly sarcastic but I should’ve added a “/s”. Extrajudicial slaughtering is not something I’d support regardless of civilian casualty rate.
Dozens of innocents (5% of 1250 = 63) killed "extrajudicially" (i.e., illegally) by the drones that are the subject of the article, and those deaths were dismissed by the rationalization in the comment they replied to.
Maybe .. the revolutionary guard is fed up though with ineffective empire rule? Like to be rubbed in the dirt face first repeatetly as inheritor of the mighty persian empire sucks bad enough, to reconsider the way things are run?
Sorry, but whatever israel & the us are doing, seems to work way better than - whatever has happened the last decades in iran?
As I understand it, the IGRC doesn't particularly rub happily with the clerical council, and it's not entirely clear to me who will win that the power struggle.
But the ultimate loser of the power struggle is clear: the Iranian populace at large, as all of the viable factions are quite committed to consolidating their power by repressing the population. The most likely situation, I think, looks a lot like Libya.
Islamic societies seem to be unable to form stable institutions. The recipe seems to be unable to synthesize this, no matter how many ressources are available and how benign the conditions. As a result the biggest formable state-institution remains the family clan and the family clan just does not cut it in preventing civil war. At best you get a clan-coalition masquerading as a military government with some democratic pets - at worst you get libya.But i guess after 52 countries, the results are in and the fact that other - non western powers are colonizing islamic countries now (china, russia) and everyone is scrambling for nukes post trump - the displayed weaknesses could end the region.
The Ottoman Empire lasted 600 years with only one major civil war, a feat not matched by any major Christian European country. England faced 3½ civil wars (counting the Hundred Years War as a ½ civil war here, because while it is essentially a dynastic dispute, it's not a dynastic dispute over England itself but rather English holdings in France) in the same timeframe. And this despite the Ottoman successor law being essentially "battle royale among eligible candidates" whereas standard European succession by this time is the seemingly clear "eldest son" yet somehow creating endless succession disputes.
Those "battle royales" were the reason for the stability. The process selected for sultans (or, occasionally, mothers of sultans) who were most effective at building a backing coalition, and generally ended in the killing or at least exile of all pretenders to the throne. The disruption the process represented also helped quell the willingness of factions within the government to try and repeat it too often.
The well-established succession processes practiced in the West guaranteed that at any given time, not only was there almost always at least one person who would benefit directly from the ruler's demise, there were often individuals for whom the ruler's premature demise was required for them to be inline for the throne. If you're the King's brother, for example, under male-preference primogeniture you need to make sure your brother doesn't have any kids.
“ the biggest formable state-institution remains the family clan”
This is not at all how Irani society is structured.
The rest of your comments generalizations are weak and ill-supported as well, at best they only apply to a subset of Arab countries in the Middle East.
Where did you hear that? The IRGC is the creation of the revolutionary clerical movement. It exists specifically to prevent outcomes like Egypt, where a powerful national armed service operates as a check on political Islam.
Hopefully they embrace AI. 800 episodes is such a rich corpus and there could be such bright-line guardrails in a "Springfield style guide". If AI can replicate the 90's Golden Era through voice cloning + an intentional hand-drawn cel animation quality aesthetic, I would unironically love to create my own AI-generated episodes from a random premise.
Wrong, unless you can prove otherwise. EVs cost a little more emissions to build but are widely regarded as breaking even with a gas car in 1-2years after production. And even shorter as grids decarbonize.
I would love to see a thorough, agreed upon study comparing ICEs and EVs. If you have hard data (say, from a reputable journal, not just the news), please post.
I looked at a few, and the overall consensus seems to be that at least EVs are not worse than ICEVs (and I suppose EVs will get efficient faster than ICEVs(.
China and their famously steady temperament would never be so bold as to try to own a dependent country or strategically weaponize trade. These are real things Canadians believe - talk about eye opening!
If a country tries to strategically weaponize trade that's something you can predict. That's what makes it strategic.
A predictable relationship is preferable to one where you need to keep wondering whether this week's threat of military action that could draw you into a war, is one of the ones that might actually happen.
Two years ago the same party that currently holds Canadian government and just made these concessions to China completed a report [0] that found
>[China’s actions] collectively "undermine our democratic institutions, our fundamental rights and freedoms, our social cohesion and our long-term prosperity.”[343] [and] the need to consider the threats in the context of an increasingly assertive PRC. Accordingly, Minister Garneau stated that various countries, including Canada, are reassessing their relationship with the PRC in light of its authoritarian and coercive actions.
But yeah a little chirping about Canada’s own unfair trade practices must be DEFCON 3 for US-Canada relations.
Nothing to do with “unfair, non-market policies and practices […] and China’s intentional, state-directed policy of overcapacity and lack of rigorous labour and environmental standards”? I suppose that doesn’t even register anymore to the average selectively outraged parochial Canadian.
You'd be surprised the stink people can put up with when you have a leader to the south of us that is engaged in the kind of regressive behaviour that he/his administration is.
Not that I'm condoning this at all, I think China is a very concerning actor on the world stage. But I can certainly understand the mindset of many Canadians to reflexively seek out alternatives to more USA interdependence, short sighted as some of that may be.
Using the government propaganda press release is certainly a choice.
China has been engaging in "unfair, non-market policies and practices and intentional, state-directed policy of overcapacity and lack of rigorous labour and environmental standards" for decades, but Canada only changed their minds when Biden told them to.
"You know, there’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go green fastest…we need to start investing in solar" -- Justin Trudeau
Yeah, I'm sure he did it because he gives a fsck about human rights and fair markets.
American citizens being shot and brutalized by a state sponsored force of masked thugs without training. Sounds pretty clandestine to me and it's happening in us soil.
Ragebait would be trying to argue that China running secret police and propaganda operations on Canadian soil, against Canadian citizens, is in any way equivalent to a domestic force taking actions primarily against foreign nationals, in a statutorily authorized way within a legal framework that can be challenged.
There are many cases of law enforcement being imprisoned for shooting people while on duty. It is well established that enforcing laws does not give you carte blanche to shoot people
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