• 19 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I agree, there are two consistent points of view with regards to conciousness IMO: either it is an emergent property of systems regardless of what they are made of, so there is no reasons machines couldnt be concious even if none now are; or that conciousness is a supernatural quantity that isnt a property of mater and energy that can be studied by science.

    I dissagree with the later but it is far more consistent than people who claim to be materialist but insist there is something magicial about the matter in brains that can not be replicated by other forms of matter.





  • 10% to 80% seems like too wide a range for your range of “how many are on the largest instance” 10% means only 1 in ten users are on the largest instance and 9/10 are spread out on the rest, If anything that seems overly fragmented. On the other end 80% means 4/5 users are on the largest instance and 1/5 are shared between all other instances which is incredibly concentrated.

    I’d sugest narrowing the range to 20% to 66%, 1 in 5 on the largest instance is still plenty dispersed to ensure that there is competition/variety and 2 in 3 users on the largest instance is already well into monopoly territory.



  • If we tell people in as many numbers to coffee a pro EU party as we tell people about tactical voting then I bet the electoral calculus would be a lot different.

    I honestly cant parse that sentence. For most people whether or not we join the EU is not the be all and end all of how they vote, and for large parts of England in particular +80% of the voters choose Labour or the Tories. In one of those places trying to persuade people that they should vote for a candidate who clearly doesnt have a chance based on your hobby horse issue isnt going to get very far.

    Rather than that it would be far better to put your efforts into voting reform so that small parties with diffuse support actually get the representation they should. Which practically means pushing Labour towards accepting it, and trying to get parliament in a position where Labour need Lib Dem MPs to form a government.










  • We also didnt understand how the internet would change the world, still went ahead with it. We didnt understand how computers would change the world, still went ahead with it, we didnt understand how the steam engine would change the world… etc etc.

    No one can know how a new invention will change things, but you are not going to be able to crush human’s innate creativity and drive to try new things. Sometimes those things are going to be a net negative and that’s bad, but the alternative is to insist nothing new is tried and thats A bad and B not possible.