On the one hand, you can read it as a parody of late 20th century life - like, haha imagine a caveman clocking into work
but on the other hand, Flinstones and its far future counterpart Jestsons kinda suggest an inability to imagine anything different. Automobile-ized suburban development frequently gets presented an the human 'default'. As though we just default to this, rather than it being one of many ways cities and society could be organized.
Living, growing, changing cells are pretty damn dissimilar to static circuitry. Neural networks are based on an oversimplified model of neuron cells. The model ignores the fact neurons are constantly growing, shifting, and breaking connections with one another, and flat out does not consider structures and interactions within the cells.
Metaphysics is not required to make the observation that computer programmes are magnitudes less complex than a brain.
I like to think by the time Kirk gets the enterprise, all those spacious crew quarters we see in Strange New Worlds have been eaten up by retrofits and upgrades.
The trouble with phrases like 'neural structures' and 'language parsing' is that these descriptions still play into the "AI" narrative that's been used to oversell large language models.
Fundamentally, these are statistical weights randomly wired up to other statistical weights, tested and pruned against a huge database. That isn't language parsing, it's still just brute-force calculation. The understanding comes from us, from people assigning linguistic meaning to patterns in binary.
You might as well refer to the Kardashian as a crime family. Donald Trump represents the fusion of reality television and spectator politics -- of course sycophants show up, how else are they supposed to get air time?
Isn't "the state" just cultural mechanisms extended beyond familial or interpersonal ties? There's a threshold where the group becomes too numerous for a member to form social ties with all other members. At that stage, culture becomes a force unto itself, propagating further than the members that comprise it. That point, more than money, seems to be where exploitative behavior becomes more likely to take hold.
Like, feudal aristocracies were plenty exploitative, plenty domineering. But they didn't necessarily need money for it; a lot of them operated on barter economies. They just needed a knife-point and a cultural belief to justify the domination. Money is just an innovation on a much older process.
You're getting surveillance regardless of walkablity. Amazon is happy enough to hand Ring camera footage over to authorities no questions asked.
You worship the stock market and private property like a golden calf.
Hamas agreed to a ceasefire that would have released the remaining hostages. Israel turned it down.
Ah, I see, you just meant that other species don't share our capacity for learning and adapting. Although, why do you continue to describe exploitative behavior as an instinct if you agree that it is a learned trait?
neuroplasticity is limited to what our genetics will allow
sorry, what do you mean by this? Surely the benefit of a learning and growing brain is that it can respond and adapt to situations faster than germ-line genetics ever could. Why would there be a genetic limiter, what purpose would that serve?
It's kinda annoying how quickly he's been forgotten. If we're just looking at policy, Trump was a bog standard Republican. Dubba redefined national and international policy for every administration to follow.
All hardware becomes legacy hardware in time. Even if we assume they're eventually able to deliver on all those great big shiny promises, I'd rather not have to schedule an outpatient surgery just to keep up on emails. Pocket touchscreens being practically mandatory is bad enough...
From further up the thread
A liberal is someone who:
- Upholds the modern nation state and is thus against monarchy (against whom the first liberals rebelled against)
- Upholds capitalism and market economies, and with it property rights
- Upholds electoral parliamentary systems of governance
- Usually believes in some version of the social contract or similar theory from which the legitimacy of the nation state and capitalism is derived.
This describes the bulk of the Democrat and Republican parties. US politics doesn't have a left-wing as it is understood in the rest of the world, our center is between two right-wing ideologies.
I never said I wasn't voting, or that others shouldn't.
Or maybe because they obstruct fucking everything. JFC. And then they can stack the courts.
Or maybe because the Dems still try to reach across the aisle. While the GOP doesn’t.
This is what I'm saying! Democrats keep trying to meet Republicans in the middle, and Republicans just push further and further to the right. That is, regardless of intention, enabling! I feel like you are asking the world of voters, when the party itself won't even play hardball with the fascist nutjobs they're supposed to be opposing
Biden isn't running against an incumbent, he is the incumbent. You want him to run from the center against an incumbent, OK. But then what? Run from the center again? That doesn't make sense.
Again, "consistent, overwhelming" victory is a fantasy. Control of the executive and legislative branch exchanges hands every few terms. That's just how this rule-set and this electorate play out.
The meme oversimplifies what is happening. Our politics has been drifting further to the right with each election and the people in power are fine with that, regardless of whatever party they're a part of.
there you go
Why is it that you claim Democrats need "consistent and overwhelming" victory, when Republicans have managed to shift the Overton window without that?
If this were a parliamentary system, sure. But our constitutional framework does not produce overwhelming, consistent victory. Like, ever, in its history.
May I remind you after the Bush administration, Obama won both the primaries and the overall election by campaigning from the left, not the center. And he won by a very wide margin.
Which part is the baseless claim?