True. It does happen
Marion can be either a French diminutive of Marie (Feminine) or a Latin derivative of Marianus (Masculine)
Naming a male child Judy goes contrary to the name's origin.
Posts by TD
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44New GB member Judy Jedele critizing Job's "humility" while wearing $20,000 Rolex, gold cuff links, coloured suit. Incredible!
by WingCommander ini swear, you can't make this shit up!
for years and years growing up in this cult, i had to constantly hear from my parents, from the stage, in the literature, about "keeping your eye simple", not being "materialistic", not "having a showy display of one's wealth.
" of course, this never seemed to apply to the wealthy business owning elduhzzzz who ran and lorded it out over the congregations, but i digress.
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Using GROK 3 (Artificial Intelligence) to fact check UKRAINE theories/conspiracies, et al
by Terry into dig deep into what has taken place in ukraine both pro and con.
i tasked a.i.
with a pro vs con proposition.
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TD
I can't agree with the Jury analogy. Courtrooms are presided over by judges who do not permit incompetent opinion as testimony; have it stricken from the transcript when it occurs and give jurors strict instructions on what they may and may not take into consideration. Current AI models have no such restrictions and will happily repeat back complete nonsense as fact.
I don't want to hijack Terry's thread, but being a "suspenders and belt" man, I'm going to flesh out my other observation with an actual example:
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About four years ago, I ditched Windows for Linux, but quickly found out that the OS is evolving so rapidly that articles just two years old can be partially or even completely wrong.
A good example is the free Foxit pdf reader. There was a native Linux version but it was discontinued years ago. The last supported version of Ubuntu (...and by extension Mint, Zorin, Kubuntu and others) was version 16. We are now at version 24. (I found this out the hard way. It took me nearly an hour to clean up the mess caused by a failed install.)
With that in mind, let's ask AI if you can install the Foxit Reader on Linux:
Microsoft Copilot gives virtually the same wrong answer and the same dead install links that Foxit took down years ago.
Grok3 qualifies the answer, which makes it substantially more accurate:
You can go through the 25 cited web pages and the only source for the "important considerations" are responses given by me, where I paraphrase an email from Foxit's tech support.
So, yes. It is entirely possible to influence the answer of AI with your own input. It is entirely possibly to have it quote your own words back to you, provided the question is esoteric enough. As Anony Mous points out, it doesn't happen overnight, but it can happen.
--And for the record, I do not have a "bias against AI" I'm the lead engineer at a manufacturing facility and use it daily for mathematical formulas and CNC programs.
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Using GROK 3 (Artificial Intelligence) to fact check UKRAINE theories/conspiracies, et al
by Terry into dig deep into what has taken place in ukraine both pro and con.
i tasked a.i.
with a pro vs con proposition.
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TD
With respect to both of you (Cuz I like you both) you are using AI for that which it is least suited for.
None of the free AIs can separate human opinion and conjecture from verifiable fact.
--Hell....I've found that I can influence the answer I will receive just by posting about the subject on Reddit.
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When JW's say they are 'In the truth'...
by Ron.W. inwhere did this phrase 'in the truth' come from?.
it's been around as long as i can remember.
is it from the time they were promoting 'the truth shall make you free' book back in 1943?
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TD
I've read similar expressions in SDA and LDS writings.
"Truth" is the state of being true. It is not a tangible object that you can "have or "be in" and referring to it in that way is cult speak.
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The Greeks had a word for it, but the Watchtower didn't
by Nathan Natas ini recall as though it was only 60 years ago, sitting in the kingdom hall on those horrible chairs, learning of the four forms of love: agape, philia, storge and eros.. the watchtower never mentioned pragma.. pragma: this is a committed, compassionate love that often grows as two partners continue to cherish and care for each other.
this type of love is associated with being together for a long time.
in some cases, the passion of eros can grow into pragma over time, this forging a lasting bond.. i think i know why; the watchtower isn't into committed, compassionate, cherishing and caring, are they?.
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TD
Agape = unconditional love
That definition is more theological than linguistic, I'm afraid.
The JW claim, (which I heard a gazillion times as a teenager) was that ἀγάπη was a "principled love", as in a higher, more pure form of the emotion.
The word actually means love as a general principle, which can be used in any number of ways.
Pederasty, for example, was common in Ancient Greece and ἀγάπη was the word used to describe affection within those relationships.
So maybe it's better that the JW's no longer frame entire arguments around preferential definitions.
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22
Join JW's or DIE - soon!!!
by BoogerMan inw72 10/1 p. 607 - "they (jw's) know that soon now all who are not true worshipers of jehovah (jw's) will be destroyed.".
how quickly half a century passes by!
2 peter 3:8 - "...one day is with jehovah jw.borg as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.
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TD
---Struggling to think of a single adult I knew in 1972 that has not passed away...
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TD
I'd point out that Freemasonry borrowed it's symbols from Christianity and not the other way around.
It's child's play to show that every Christian religion has used the symbols that xJWs identify as Masonic and that some still use them today
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TD
There's some very good information about the JW's online.
There's also a lot of garbage that no scholar who has ever studied the movement accepts.
The alleged connection to Freemasonry has been debated here a time or two over the years.
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John 13:35 Mistranslated?
by KerryKing indisclaimer!
i am not a bible translator not do i speak ancient greek or hebrew.. john 13: 35 nwt : 'by this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love among yourselves '.. (curiously, this verse is not listed in the nwt index under the word 'disciples'.).
the biblehub interlinear reads : ' by this will know all that to me disciples you are if love you have among yourselves '.. could it actually mean, contrary to all bible translations, that it is jesus himself, and not people in general, who identifies his disciples because they show love among each other?.
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TD
Perhaps it's the dative possessive that's throwing you off KerryKing?
(Or more precisely, the generic way it's indicated in English interlinear text.)
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70s Cartoons
by NotFormer inthere're the obvious ones, like the smurfs.
although why still escapes me.
was it because of the magic, that they were "magical creatures", that there were wizards, etc?.
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TD
The "Satanic Panics" of the 1960's and 80's didn't actually originate with the JW's themselves
The 1960's belief that unclean spirits could be brought into your home via inanimate objects seems to have been triggered by a 1957 book by a French Monsignor on the dangers of the spirit world. The idea spread across denominational lines and even into pop culture via movies like Rosemary's Baby. The JW's were more enthusiastic in spreading these "Demon stories" than most, but they were hardly alone.
The hysteria of the 1980's was very similar, only in this case the trigger was a book by a Canadian psychiatrist entitled, Michelle Remembers. This book told the story of a woman's childhood abuse at the hands of a satanic cult using the discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy. As a consequence, the idea that an organized conspiracy of satanists were targeting children via cartoons like The Smurfs also crossed denominational lines and found fertile soil among the JW's.