slimboyfat

Joined 21 years ago

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Posts by slimboyfat

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  54

  Is AI going to change the world?

  by Reasonfirst in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  2 years ago

  had lunch with a friend, whose a lecturer in the accounting dept.

  of one of australia's best universities.

  he told me he expects to lose his job at some point in the next 5 years, as the accounting dept, will disappear, as all accounting will be done by ai programs, so why teach it.. if his fears are correct, that means that any profession that involves the mind, may one day face the same future.

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  a year ago
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  slimboyfat 2 years ago

  Saying that AI will not learn how to cope with the social aspects of driving on the basis of current driverless cars is a bit like saying planes will never cross the Atlantic on the basis of the early flights by Orville and Wilbur Wright.

  We are at early days and the progress is phenomenally fast. Experts such as Geoffrey Hinton are saying the latest AI models are doing things they didn’t expect to see for decades. My own experience of ChatGPT is that it is both astonishingly brilliant and fantastically stupid at the same time. It’s been likened to the best read 10 year old there has ever been who still doesn’t understand basic aspects of the real world. But for how much longer? Nobody is saying ChatGPT will change the world, or endanger it, it’s the trajectory of the progress which is the amazing and/or alarming thing. And GPT 4 is already here.

  AI is now better at diagnosing patients than human doctors. And a recent study shows AI interactions are perceived as more empathetic than human doctors too.

  https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2023/06/27/when-the-ai-is-more-compassionate-than-the-doctor/?sh=7239d8ea102a
  

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  7

  What Did the Following People Have in Common?

  by no-zombie in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  2 years ago

  what did the following people have in common?.

  1 job2 the widow of zaraphath3 naaman4 the samaritan leper (one of the 10 lepers)5 the roman army officer of capernaum6 cornelius and his guestsnone were ...israelitesjewish convertspart of the abrahamic covenantchristianspart of a christian congregationin a dedicated relationship with godorbaptizedhowever ...all were directly given holy spirit or individually blessed by god ... even though, they were not part of 'jehovah's organization'.take time to think what this really means.luke 4:24-29acts 10:34-35.

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  2 years ago
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  slimboyfat 2 years ago

  A Jehovah’s Witness might say: what do Korah, Dathan, Abiram, Ananias and Sapphira have in common? They disobeyed God’s channel. Jehovah has worked through an organisation throughout history, especially in these last days when he works through the faithful slave.

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  54

  Is AI going to change the world?

  by Reasonfirst in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  2 years ago

  had lunch with a friend, whose a lecturer in the accounting dept.

  of one of australia's best universities.

  he told me he expects to lose his job at some point in the next 5 years, as the accounting dept, will disappear, as all accounting will be done by ai programs, so why teach it.. if his fears are correct, that means that any profession that involves the mind, may one day face the same future.

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  a year ago
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  slimboyfat 2 years ago

  Excellent long discussion of the short to medium term impacts of AI assuming that it doesn’t result in extinction in short order. Even if this more optimistic assessment is correct then human society is in for a very rough ride indeed.

  Major job losses from late 2024 onward. The 2024 presidential election highly disrupted by new technology and the inability to tell fact from fiction. People withdrawing from society either as a rejection of new technology (older people in general) or being utterly absorbed into it. (Younger people in general)

  
  

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  54

  Is AI going to change the world?

  by Reasonfirst in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  2 years ago

  had lunch with a friend, whose a lecturer in the accounting dept.

  of one of australia's best universities.

  he told me he expects to lose his job at some point in the next 5 years, as the accounting dept, will disappear, as all accounting will be done by ai programs, so why teach it.. if his fears are correct, that means that any profession that involves the mind, may one day face the same future.

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  a year ago
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  slimboyfat 2 years ago

  Douglas Hofstadter reflecting on being wrong about the pace of development of artificial intelligence (he previously thought that super intelligent artificial intelligence was hundreds of years away):

  
  

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  39

  Only baptised JWs will make it?

  by ExBethelitenowPIMA in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  2 years ago

  i think it was a john cedars video or someone else’s where the point was brought up that only baptised jws will be saved?

  then one talk about kids of baptised jws hope they will make it but even them don’t know.

  most jws probably think that some good people who are not baptised may make it through, but this is not official teaching?.

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  2 years ago
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  slimboyfat 2 years ago

  I’ve encountered a whole spectrum of views among JWs on this. Some think you need to get baptised to be sure of being saved. This was sometimes used to pressure people young people or Bible studies who were delaying baptism. Others think interested ones will be saved if not yet baptised. Others think that “honest hearted” ones who haven’t heard the good news (such as in China) might be saved by Jehovah.

  On the flip side I’ve heard others assume that only JWs will make it, but that only a proportion of JWs will be judged worthy and make it into the new system - maybe a half, two thirds, or one third, depending on the view of their fellow brothers and sisters. One sister used to say “half of us are here to try the other half”, meaning that only around half of JWs will be saved at Armageddon, and the function of the other half who won’t make it is to serve as a test of faith, presumably by their behaviour and antics, for the other faithful half.

  In terms of official Watchtower teaching, they are all over the place too. Some Watchtowers imply that baptism is required for salvation. Others say that Jehovah is the judge and it is not for us to say. They have also flip-flopped on the issue of whether unbaptised children of JWs will survive Armageddon, at times implying that they might not, and and other times implying that they would. I don’t think they currently have a firm ruling on the issue in print, but certain talks in recent years have revisited a hardline attitude.

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  11530

  It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

  by Newly Enlightened in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  3 years ago

  original reddit post (removed).

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  2 years ago
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  slimboyfat 2 years ago

  It could be a jurisdictional matter, or it could be something way worse and they told him he was reading the law wrong.

  Or worse than that. If anybody in the process caught sight of his livestream, didn’t he confess to actual crimes in Croatian law in that video, because prostitution is illegal in Croatia? Might he not face legal consequences himself?

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  54

  Is AI going to change the world?

  by Reasonfirst in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  2 years ago

  had lunch with a friend, whose a lecturer in the accounting dept.

  of one of australia's best universities.

  he told me he expects to lose his job at some point in the next 5 years, as the accounting dept, will disappear, as all accounting will be done by ai programs, so why teach it.. if his fears are correct, that means that any profession that involves the mind, may one day face the same future.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 

  a year ago
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  slimboyfat 2 years ago

  I don’t see how AI won’t develop beyond human intelligence at some point.

  AI experts such as Geoffrey Hinton say they have been surprised how fast AI has developed in recent years and expect to see superhuman level intelligence in years rather than decades.

  Many who who have studied it for a long time such as Max Tegmark say that humans are not ready for superhuman AI and it will probably lead to extinction. He says he has a new son and wonders how old he will live to be before this happens.

  I’ve read quite a bit about this over the past few months and I don’t see much ground for optimism. Every answer you can think of, such as “we can just turn it off”, or “why would AI want to kill us anyway?” unfortunately have good counter arguments.

  In conclusion humans may go extinct because of AI within 10 years or so. The only ways I can see to avoid this include:

  1) humans voluntarily and unanimously agree worldwide not to develop AI with no exceptions anywhere

  2) there is a God who steps in and saves humans from themselves (as he reportedly did in the past at Babel)

  3) aliens with ability to control super intelligent AI save us

  4) there is a devastating worldwide war before AI reaches super intelligence and human technology is knocked back centuries

  5) the majority of experts in AI have are mistaken about how close we are to super intelligence

  6) super intelligence turns out unexpectedly to be automatically aligned to human goals and wellbeing

  In short I think humans are probably doomed in the short to medium term.

  Max Tegmark below tries to put a brave face on it saying that regulation may solve the problem. He has elsewhere acknowledged how hard that will be in practice and the trajectory so far of releasing AI is not encouraging. It needs to succeed everywhere and always. Any instance of super human intelligence surfacing is likely to lead to extinction. People have likened it to handing everyone on the planet a nuclear bomb and then relying on regulation and persuasion so that no one uses them.

  
  

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  11530

  It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

  by Newly Enlightened in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  3 years ago

  original reddit post (removed).

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  2 years ago
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  slimboyfat 2 years ago

  Called back like the doctor from Voyager if somebody needs him? Like who? How? He could be waiting a long time.

  He had a family who needed a father and a husband, and I suppose, way down the list, online followers who needed someone with a bare minimum of ethics to be a front man for the cause. Instead he booked the girlfriend experience and beamed off to the other side of the planet. The idea that people will be calling on him in their hour of need in future is another of his outlandish fantasies. I like Star Trek and sci-fi too but this guy lives in his own dream world.

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  11530

  It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

  by Newly Enlightened in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  3 years ago

  original reddit post (removed).

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  2 years ago
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  slimboyfat 2 years ago

  Hi Lloyd 👋

  Your self pity post on Twitter didn’t get much response huh? 😢

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  11

  John 5:27 and Harners thesis

  by Blotty in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  2 years ago

  conclusion to harners thesis: https://digilander.libero.it/domingo7/h7.jpg.

  in 1973 a scholar by the name of philip b harner published an article in the journal of biblical literature that would be "revolutionary" he concluded that anarthorous predicate nouns preceeding the verb were primarily qualitative in nature.. in my view harner was correct, though he didn't agree with the "a god" rendering he also disliked the "god" rendering in john 1:1c providing an alternative which bibles like the net have paraphrased (to my knowledge).

  one he didn't cover in his thesis was john 5:27 i would say this "authoratative" why?

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  2 years ago
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  slimboyfat 2 years ago

  The Jewish Philo of Alexandria did not believe in such a secondary god, and Justin and Origen did not believe either

  I guess I’m mildly curious, but not in any doubt that you’ll find a way to contradict the clear statements of Philo, Justin Martyr, and Origen that the Word is a second god inferior to God.

  Very appropriately and without any falsehood was this oracular sentence uttered by God, for no mortal thing could have been formed on the similitude of the supreme Father of the universe, but only after the pattern of the second deity, who is the Word of the supreme Being; since it is fitting that the rational soul of man should bear it the type of the divine Word; since in his first Word God is superior to the most rational possible nature. But he who is superior to the Word holds his rank in a better and most singular pre-eminence, and how could the creature possibly exhibit a likeness of him in himself? Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis II, 62

  http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book42.html
  

  
  

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