21

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Liz Truss

« on: September 07, 2022, 07:34:06 PM »

I value integrity and honestly far more than charisma.

You're in for a disappointment either way.

22

Technology & Information / Re: The Flat Earth Society official IRC chat

« on: September 07, 2022, 05:04:12 PM »

"We couldn't connect to that server
Unknown error"

This is a Kiwi IRC problem, nothing to do with us. Hopefully they will fix it soon. You can work around it for the time being by connecting with Mibbit if you like.

23

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Question re. EA

« on: September 01, 2022, 11:55:19 PM »

Been thinking of a few things we observe and had a quick question for the EA crowd.  Does the effect of EA lessen as you get farther from the surface or the earth.  In other words, does horizontal light begin to straighten as you get farther from the earth?

Not as far as we know, but it is not very convenient to make long-distance observations of horizontal light far from the surface of the Earth, so we don't have a huge amount of data to draw conclusions from. Intuitively, though, it would be strange for a universal law to depend on the position of the Earth at any given moment in time.

Were such variance to be detected, we would probably need to rename the Bishop constant to the Bishop parameter.

24

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: We are saved by faith alone, and the evidence of faith is works.

« on: August 31, 2022, 05:44:41 PM »

It can, it all depends.  As made famous by Carl Sagan "“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” and you still have not provided any evidence, extraordinary or otherwise.

I do hope not, if I'd provided any evidence that would have been an enormous failure on my part.

25

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: We are saved by faith alone, and the evidence of faith is works.

« on: August 31, 2022, 04:54:07 PM »

I thought "data collected" made it clear I am talking about scientific data, not tales of tales etc.

You are the only one who seems to think that eyewitness accounts do not constitute scientific data.

26

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: We are saved by faith alone, and the evidence of faith is works.

« on: August 31, 2022, 08:46:05 AM »

I stated (and still do) that no data collected (note this is not tales of hearsay but actual collected data)

Ah, so now you are cherry-picking which evidence qualifies as "evidence" to you. Once again, this is not how science works, nor is it what you initially claimed.

But instead you insist that I prove a negative.

I am simply suggesting that you should be able to back up claims you make, but thank you for admitting that your claim is indefensible.

27

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: We are saved by faith alone, and the evidence of faith is works.

« on: August 30, 2022, 09:41:29 PM »

You can make the case for that if you like

It is neither relevant to the discussion at hand, despite you doing your utmost to derail the thread with your pseudo-intellectual ramblings, nor necessary, since you have provided zero justification for your own claim.

28

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: We are saved by faith alone, and the evidence of faith is works.

« on: August 30, 2022, 08:29:47 PM »

All the data humans have collected shows no evidence of miracles or gods or devils or angels, etc.

That is patently false, but par for the course for your brand of "science".

29

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: We are saved by faith alone, and the evidence of faith is works.

« on: August 30, 2022, 05:26:21 PM »

As I've said before, I think that if there is a God, he would want us to use our free will and ability to think critically in interpreting the Bible. Accepting that the Bible just means what someone else tells you it means defeats the whole point of giving us free will and providing us with a holy book to read. Faith, then, is not the goal, but rather personal development and independent thought.

Anyone who tells you you are going to Hell for your interpretation of the Bible is not speaking on behalf of God.

30

Technology & Information / Re: machine-generated art (DALL-E, Imagen, Midjourney, etc.)

« on: August 26, 2022, 10:54:36 AM »

What I've learned from observing the latest in machine-generated music is that a machine can only (fail to) reproduce what already exists, it can't truly create anything new in the way that a human being can. What I've seen of DALL-E and other visual arts AIs is much the same, it can be prompted to create an amalgamation of known things, but it can't produce something unknown. Granted we live in an era in the arts where we are "out in the ocean", and there is no identifiable progress* as such other than technological. Perhaps progress in art is now, rather than new material, new efficiency in reproduction of old material, but nonetheless personal style remains unquantifiable.

The very concept of art being "new" is a human abstraction, and has to do with the expression of ideas rather than any concrete definition. All art is, after all, a combination of existing colours and shapes in some way. I don't think it makes any sense to say that an algorithm can't create new things because a computer simply isn't aware of that distinction.

What is probably going on is that, given that the vast majority of art in general is highly derivative, you are experiencing sampling bias due to the relatively small quantity of AI-generated art, and the fact that most people using it are just noodling around and not really trying to create anything groundbreaking.

31

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: We are saved by faith alone, and the evidence of faith is works.

« on: August 26, 2022, 10:24:57 AM »

“[incomprehensible gibberish]” (James 2:14-26)

Or, for those of you who speak English:

"My brothers and sisters, what good is it for people to say that they have faith if their actions do not prove it? Can that faith save them? Suppose there are brothers or sisters who need clothes and don't have enough to eat. What good is there in your saying to them, “God bless you! Keep warm and eat well!” — if you don't give them the necessities of life? So it is with faith: if it is alone and includes no actions, then it is dead.

"But someone will say, “One person has faith, another has actions.” My answer is, “Show me how anyone can have faith without actions. I will show you my faith by my actions.” Do you believe that there is only one God? Good! The demons also believe — and tremble with fear. You fool! Do you want to be shown that faith without actions is useless? How was our ancestor Abraham put right with God? It was through his actions, when he offered his son Isaac on the altar. Can't you see? His faith and his actions worked together; his faith was made perfect through his actions.

"And the scripture came true that said, “Abraham believed God, and because of his faith God accepted him as righteous.” And so Abraham was called God's friend. You see, then, that it is by people's actions that they are put right with God, and not by their faith alone.

"It was the same with the prostitute Rahab. She was put right with God through her actions, by welcoming the Israelite spies and helping them to escape by a different road.

"So then, as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without actions is dead."

32

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Biden is using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans

« on: August 25, 2022, 03:35:34 PM »

Who exactly wants to regulate them in America? If I vote for the Democrats, they give universities what amounts to free infinite money. If I vote for Republicans, they do literally nothing. Seems like two very bad options to me.

The fact that your current political system is too crippled to do anything useful does not prevent us from discussing what a good solution might look like.

33

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Biden is using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans

« on: August 25, 2022, 02:45:29 PM »

I generally approve of the policy, but the cut off is ludicrously high.

Or save the administrative costs of checking whether people qualify and eliminate the cutoff entirely at that point.

34

Technology & Information / Re: machine-generated art (DALL-E, Imagen, Midjourney, etc.)

« on: August 17, 2022, 09:23:13 PM »

And with automation already taking away non-artistic jobs, then what will be left in the future?

Maybe automation taking away all our jobs is the sign we need to stop having a job being the basis of our entire civilisation.

35

Technology & Information / Re: machine-generated art (DALL-E, Imagen, Midjourney, etc.)

« on: August 17, 2022, 05:56:53 PM »

given that these models are trained on art from living artists, is it fucked up for people to use them to generate art for commercial purposes?

Human art has always been influenced and taken form based on art made by someone else (or nature itself). I think it's fine for an AI to be influenced by human art since we're fine with humans being influenced by human art.

According to copyright law, inspiration is acceptable, but blatant copying is unacceptable. The distinction between inspiration and copying is a human one with no strict definition, which raises the question of whether it is possible for a computer to understand the difference, let alone apply it in practice.

So, should an AI that is capable of copying existing art itself be considered a copyright violation? Is only some of its output a copyright violation, while other output isn't? Who is civilly and criminally liable in case of a violation, the creator of the AI or the user who provided the input?

You can't pretend that established precedent can answer these questions because they are questions nobody has ever had to answer before. Copyright law as it exists today is not some moral absolute, it is a solution to problems that existed in the past, and it does not adequately cover the technology of today.

36

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: August 10, 2022, 09:53:53 PM »

Here is how I was explained Prayer:
If enough people pray for something, and God is ok on changing his mind on that thing, he will. 

Like: if little Jimmy is dying of cancer and enough people pray hard enough, God might allow Jimmy to live instead of killing him.  But you can't know how many people is needed or if God is willing to change his mind.  So its a crap shoot.

Isn't God supposed to know what everyone is going to do before they do it? In which case he should already know whether they would pray and make the situation different from the start so they don't need to.

37

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: August 10, 2022, 09:27:19 PM »

Carney's organisation works with an evangelical law firm called ADF International whose London spokesperson Lois McLatchie has been interviewed by Scottish media saying the buffer zones "ban legitimate offers of help and silent prayer."

"Women have the right to hear about these options at the point of need and it is patronising of the government saying women don't want to hear this," McLatchie told BBC Scotland in a recent interview.

Excuse me, what? "Legitimate offers of help and silent prayer"? How exactly are these protests "helping" women?

38

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Old Politicians

« on: August 04, 2022, 05:01:57 AM »

The nature of population growth means there's (almost) always more young people than old

The developed world has had net population decline (if you discount immigration) for about half a century. The global population is growing due to high birth rates in developing countries, but they don't get to vote in the USA.

39

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: August 03, 2022, 04:21:15 PM »

I think the point is that a very Red state doesn't appear to be entirely aligned with the GOP platform.

Indeed — in a two-party system, it only needs to find the GOP's platform very slightly less abhorrent than the Democrats'.

40

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Automatic Logout while submitting a post

« on: August 03, 2022, 03:57:54 PM »

I do that to.  It also helps with spell check, which I don't think Is a feature here? 

Why would it need to be? Your browser can already spell-check text input fields.