Maybe it’s not.

Ah I see, pretty far from a shill then lol

Or maybe they’re just genuinely a fan?

No, that wasn’t my implication (not quite as strong as that, anyway), nor did you change my mind. I still think it would be better to be reading better art, made by better people. Doesn’t mean I’m trying to, like, ban Harry Potter books.

I never said discussing LLMs was itself philosophical. I said that as soon as you ask the question “but does it really know?” then you are immediately entering the territory of the theory of knowledge, whether you’re talking about humans, about dogs, about bees, or, yes, about AI.

I’ll preface by saying I agree that AI doesn’t really “know” anything and is just a randomised Chinese Room. However…

Acting like the entire history of the philosophy of knowledge is just some attempt make “knowing” seem more nuanced is extremely arrogant. The question of what knowledge is is not just relevant to the discussion of AI, but is fundamental in understanding how our own minds work. When you form arguments about how AI doesn’t know things, you’re basing it purely on the human experience of knowing things. But that calls into question how you can be sure you even know anything at all. We can’t just take it for granted that our perceptions are a perfect example of knowledge, we have to interrogate that and see what it is that we can do that AIs can’t- or worse, discover that our assumptions about knowledge, and perhaps even of our own abilities, are flawed.

When you debate whether a being truly knows something or not, you are, in fact, engaging in the philosophy of epistemology. You can no more avoid epistemology when discussing knowledge than you can avoid discussing physics when describing the flight of a baseball.

The theory of knowledge (epistemology) is a distinct and storied area of philosophy, not a debate about semantics.

There remains to this day strong philosophical debate on how we can be sure we really “know” anything at all, and thought experiments such as the Chinese Room illustrate that “knowing” is far, far more complex than we might believe.

For instance, is it simply following a set path like a river in a gorge? Is it ever actually “considering” anything, or just doing what it’s told?

Not even remotely.

I’m not American, nor was that my logic. Please don’t resort to strawmen as dumb as “different form of democracy = dictatorship”.

Aha! Yes, I like that :D

This doesn’t really relate to what I said whatsoever, because I never said her books or pointless or that we should erase her. I also didn’t even say you’re not allowed to read to books to your kid. Just that its content isnt great, and perhaps there are much better books for kids to read, such as the ones she lifted from, like the Earthsea Cycle.

Not sure i get that one

Omg I’m so sorry 😭

Man, you’re probably right!

Her work may not have “changed”, but many elements in retrospect have obvious bigoted undertones, whether she intended them or not. We simply weren’t looking for them as children, and didn’t notice or understand.

If you’re interested in what some of these things are, Youtuber Shaun has an excellent video going over some of them.

Also, the Hitler point was merely a reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate that “separating the art from the artist” is pure luxury.

You’ve given me a hell of a lot to think about, dude. I heard someone say recently, “why would the same media that lies about Gaza tell the truth about Ukraine?” And the seed had been planted. But, like I said earlier, I hadn’t seen any contrary opinions other than obvious bloodthirsty fascists who just have no sympathy for Ukraine’s citizens and like the idea of massive conflict.

If the picture you paint is true - that the West had essentially been building a military presence in Eastern Europe to deliberately threaten Russia, and that Eastern Ukraine genuinely considered themselves part of Russia - then I find it had to argue with what happened.

But, i have to admit, something is making it hard for me to truly accept. Somehow it’s harder to accept than accepting the truth that Israel is genociding Palestinians.

I’ll have to do some thinking and research. Thanks for putting up with me.

Me and my friend were once making weed puns out of country names. Examples:

Kush-ia

Ting-land

Pot-land

Scales

G-gypt

Slizz-rael

Gyal-estine

High-na

Blur-many

Grow-land

Bar-gentina

Blue-kraine

Spliff-uania

You get the idea.

Well, we had a third friend who hadn’t joined in yet. We asked him if he had any ideas. Bro didn’t get the assignment. His contribution?

WeedSpain

Yeah, you’re a bit late to the party of telling me that it’s all about defending the country. “Young and inexperienced in geopolitics” is also a bit of an assumption and just a character assessment rather than a response to my point. It’s a bit hard to look past what is essentially an insult and a dismissal.

Also, you spend a lot of time explaining that the USSR was just like everyone else in their lack of LGBT acceptance. Yes, I know. Conservative. Like I said. And obviously they were ahead in terms of worker’s rights. Socialism, yknow? I never stated that the USSR was entirely conservative, just that they had some conservative elements, and used LGBT non-acceptance as an example of that conservatism.

This is starting to devolve into nothing more than a fight, and it’s stressing me out, so I’d rather not continue and just accept that you were right about their acceptance of Putin.

When you put it like that, it makes a lot of sense. Thanks for having the patience to put up with my ignorance.