[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 2 points 5 hours ago

I think your question is equally poorly defined regardless of where the zero point is placed. Enough for what? What is this threshold for?

There are often things in nature that have natural "division points" along some particular spectrum, where conditions abruptly change (phase changes in chemicals when they pass through transition temperatures, for example) or where you have natural gaps where you don't find many examples because of dynamic feedback effects (the gap between planets and dwarf planets when it comes to their ability to clear their orbital neighborhoods, for example). It's possible that once we can actually measure consciousness and put a number to it we'll find that there are similar gaps, for whatever reason. That would be a very interesting and useful thing to know about. But that's putting the cart before the horse, we don't know how to measure consciousness in a numeric way yet. So any such patterns in the results are purely hypothetical.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 9 points 12 hours ago

If you'd like to go all the way down this rabbit hole there's panpsychism, which posits that consciousness is a continuous scale with "zero" literally being down in the elementary particles. So even a single molecule is not quite zero on the scale, having an extremely minuscule degree of consciousness to it.

I actually kind of like this because it means we don't have to try to put that zero point at some other arbitrary location.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 3 points 22 hours ago

Most of them won't be welcome. They don't send their best.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 0 points 1 day ago

Trump got 32% of the vote in Massachusetts. I'm sure you can easily rustle up some far-right voters there.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 40 points 1 day ago

How in the hell is this not the Onion? I just can't even.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 9 points 1 day ago

That's a bingo!

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 21 points 2 days ago

So, a ton more developers for the GrapheneOS ecosystem.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 4 points 2 days ago

Because it's not just about him. It's about the fact that nobody is reining him in. There were supposed to be all sorts of checks and balances in the American system of government but apparently they either don't work at all or congress is okay with the president threatening to forcibly annex former allies because he wants their territory.

That tells us a lot about America and gives us plenty of things to think about long after Trump's dead and buried.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 25 points 2 days ago

I recall reading that obsessions are a common symptom of dementia.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 5 points 2 days ago

Even though most of the things he says will never happen it's still worth noting that this is where American discourse has reached. Their president can freely threaten to forcibly annex former allies simply because he wants their territory, and yet for some reason this isn't an impeachable action. It's not even a top headline.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 6 points 3 days ago

"How dare AI companies pirate books to train their AIs! They should be paying for their training data!"

...

"Not like that!"

This bit of clickbait outrage has been making the rounds for weeks now. They're using the standard approach to bulk scanning books. The "rare editions" they're scanning are rare because nobody is interested in them. It's stuff like old guidebooks from a particular town fair in 1970 or a book on crochet in early colonial Kansas or whatever, they were sitting in warehouses and would have eventually been pulped if not bought in bulk. This is their one shot at preservation, frankly. And they're doing this because the law requires them to do it.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 78 points 4 days ago

DRM is suddenly popular and people think it will work this time.

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FaceDeer

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