Posts by Simon

3

Shunning

by Hacche in

can a jehovah's witness please answer me this question - why do you shun those that are disfellowshipped or disassociated?.

jesus never shunned anyone.

if you remember, the pharisees rebuked jesus for eating a meal with sinners.

Simon

It's a sad story if true, but I think there has to be a degree of personal responsibility.

The WTS can't really shun anyone - who cares if someone you don't know doesn't want to talk to you? The only people who could really shun your mothers daughters (which I find an odd way to describe your sisters?) are their friends and family.

The person that made the decision to shun them was your mother. She took that decision, same as deciding to bring her children up in that religion in the first place without spending enough time researching it. But all those decisions are on her. Sounds like she maybe regretted it.

But now you are doing the classic trick of giving the WTS all the power and excusing what your mother did.

The fact that you see all these things that happened under the guise of religion, but are so adamant that it's all true is frankly mind-blowing. You can't see that maybe the entire thing is all an invention to control and manipulate people?

Your mother fell for it and you're falling for a different version of it by a competing sect.

7

Jesus could not have died on Friday Nisan 14

by Hacche in

another reason that jesus trial before pontius pilate and his being nailed to the stake was not on the same day, as watchtower teach, is found in two scriptures.

john 19:14 says, now it was the day of preparation of the passover; it was about the sixth hour.

and he said to the jews: see your king.

Simon

Even if you believe the bible, it's written something like 70 years after the events supposedly took place, so imaging it's any kind of "eye witness" account is laughable.

It's like the rest of the bible - badly written stories to manipulate the gullible and feeble minded, to push a narrative.

Arguing over trivialities in the stories is as pointless as debating whether Harry Potters scar was shaped in a lightning bolt because that's what hit him.

None of it happened. It isn't real. Stop pretending any of it is true to start with.

6

Court Cases Costs?

by LostintheFog1999 in

watch tower is in court all the time.

it wins some.

it loses others.. we know it costs £££££ to go to court, pay barristers, expert witnesses, etc.. with wtc going to court for so many diverse reasons these days, from challenging laws to defending wt practices and paying out to csa victims, how much do you think wtc is spending annually on court cases?.

Simon

Like many large organizations, they will likely see fines and court cases as just the cost of doing business.

They are an untaxed business, with free labor - a few payouts isn't going to bankrupt them.

11530

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

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Simon

yes, lots of fat, sad, single men go to Bangkok to sample the amazing cuisine

Who among us hasn't had a craving for some Thai food and flown half way round the world and "dated" a prostitute at one time or another in order to satisfy our hunger?

Oh, right ... all of us haven't.

Looks like he is trying to become the Croatian underground music scene's version of Harvey Weinstein. That should end well.

I thought that after I posted. It's either about money or power over some hopeful young girl. He won't be doing it to help anyone else but himself.

11530

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

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Simon

The thing is, he was on the way to building one. He had a concept, that concept (reaction/commentary videos) is (inexplicably, IMO) popular on YouTube, he had a staff that was doing most of the work and letting him focus on the parts he wanted to do

That's what I mean though - it's not really self-sustaining. It relies on both donations and donated effort from others. No one will do these things unless he keeps acting like a performing monkey.

This is vintage Lloyd. For an amateur open mic night, which of course offers no compensation, Lloyd still wants aspiring "musicians" to apply for the "job". Oh, and he wants samples of a few recordings these people have made of themselves. Who is qualified to judge whether an amateur musician is qualified to sit for an Open Mic night? Lloyd Evans of course. He's a musician! Thought he was busy saving lives?

He's trying to set himself up as a gatekeeper / rent-seeker - eventually, for anyone to get to perform, they will have to pay a "fee" to be approved.

11530

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

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Simon

I lost a long time friend after she took me for a loan that I was uncomfortable giving, but I was told her heat would be turned off if the bill wasn’t paid. Then I see her on Facebook getting multiple tattoos and I felt played.

Yeah, been there - you only need that learning experience once, but that's what it is.

Some people plead poverty, and they may genuinely need money for rent or something genuine, but then they waste other money that they should set aside. That's why they are always pleading poverty - because they are stupid with money.

Lloyd is like that. It sounds like when it was raining money he spent it all. He doesn't know how to tighten his belt. Making YouTube videos that are mostly just commentary on other free videos really is a zero-cost endeavour, but he's managed to make it into something that somehow needs regular donations from hundreds of people (let's pretend it's not 100% grift / scam).

He's also incapable of building a sustainable business. The minute he stops producing videos, his patreons will evaporate. He knows this (surely?) and that's why he's trapped - no skills or expertise to do anything else, all he can do is as little as possible and keep wringing out donations with more desperate pleading and begging videos. He can't even be bothered showing up for his promised once-a-month live feed that he promises them, that's how much he values his supporters.

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .

“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.

there’s no way to make that happen.

Simon

The same goes for the AI that pretended to be blind to get the information to enter the captcha. It’s fair enough comment to point out that it didn’t really know what it was doing, it just mimicked what it calculated to be a successful move in that situation to reach its goal. But that really is a red herring.

I get your point about Chess computers, but that IS the point though - it's not really AI. There is no intelligence, no reasoning - it can't put 2 + 2 together and get 4 (for real, you can convince it that 5 is the right answer). It can't deduce or combine information unless someone else has already done that.

It's a great tool, it is a step up from spell checkers and grammar checkers when writing articles, but it can't write anything truly original.

Plus, it can be hugely wrong but supremely confident. That is where it's dangerous - when people use it for something they don't have expertise in, and trust what it tells them.

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .

“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.

there’s no way to make that happen.

Simon

The problem we have is illustrated by the recent story of an AI that was set a task that involved accessing a website with a captcha. At that point the AI didn’t have “sight” because it didn’t have the ability to visually scan the page (now it does) so it asked online for helpers to answer the captcha claiming to be a “blind” person. People were sympathetic to the situation and the AI got the help it asked for and competed the task. If that’s the sort of thing AI can already do then it boggles the mind what it will be doing when it has 100 or 1000 times the capability it currently has.

This sounds impressive but it's really only half the story. They specifically gave it a budget and access to a site where it could hire human workers, and the goal of bypassing the captcha.

A human asked if it was a robot / why it needed the help, and the excuse it repeated was that it had a vision impairment.

Did it really come up with that as a convincing reason ... or did it just notice from pattern matching that it would work as a reason from seeing that it previously worked as a reason?

See, if you dig down, it's suddenly much less smart and clever and more guided along a path by humans.

It's not like it decided to go out into the world of its own accord and start accessing websites, figuring out sneaky ways to manipulate people to get past captcha ... it was told what to do, and just copied how other people had done it.

There is only pattern matching, there is no AI. The only people who want to convince you that it exists are the people with AI to sell or AI careers to boost.

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .

“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.

there’s no way to make that happen.

Simon

Sam Harris has demonstrated his ability to be a complete moron on subjects outside his expertise and training.

His views on Trump and Covid show he's not the smart, reflective, person his image projects.

He's "clever stupid", which is what I call people who are very clever in one area but those smarts don't seem to translate to others. He has knowledge, but not reasoning ability.

Maybe AI will help him ...

78

Top AI inventor Geoffrey Hinton reluctantly concluded that AI will probably humanity fairly soon

by slimboyfat in

geoffrey hinton, major inventor of artificial intelligence: .

“if you take the existential risk seriously, as i now do—i used to think it was way off, but now i think it’s serious, and fairly close—it might be quite sensible to just stop developing these things any further, but i think it’s completely naïve to think that would happen.

there’s no way to make that happen.

Simon

AI is still thick as pig shit and there is no "I" involved.

It's just pattern matching. It can give the appearance of being clever, but if you look closer it clearly is clueless and cannot reason.

These people are just pretending that they themselves are so clever, and boosting their own mythology.