Month: February 2025

Where is the line between humans and machines?

What is the most essential difference between humans and machines? Where do we draw the line between humans and machines? What abilities does a machine need to have in order to be considered as smart as a human being?

To ask where we draw a line between humans and machines is to dehumanize an entire species of animal and to debase the whole animal kingdom and organic life by extension. This is an argument based on a presumption of devaluing life altogether.

Life is not simply an expression of mechanistic abilities.

Life is consciousness.

Life is an awareness of self within a process of triangulating its position relative to all a “self” experiences.

Machines are functional objects with deterministic behaviours defined by physics, not entities behaving with agency.

Machines are not self-aware.

Machines have no agency.

This question reduces human existence to the level of a rock.

It is not up to humans to consider another form of self-aware intelligence as “smart as a human being.” This attitude expresses hubris derived from ignorance of self and a world inhabited by diverse life forms. It is up to humans to learn to recognize how life manifests in ways which expand our perceptions.

Here’s an example of cognition that does not quite fit so neatly into an arrogant human-centric view of life:

These are photos from an experiment conducted to test and determine the nature of consciousness within a mycelial network — fungus.

How a new fungi study could affect how we think about cognition

The notion of “conscious fungus” gets far more freaky beyond this simple experiment in determining spatial relationships.

Fungal ‘Brains’ Can Think Like Human Minds, Scientists Say

Mushrooms communicate with each other using up to 50 ‘words’, scientist claims

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.211926

We appear to be on the verge of discovering we have more in common with a mushroom than could ever be possible with a machine. The line you ask to be drawn currently marks the distinction between organics and inorganics. However, even then, that presumes a human-centric view of a universe still well beyond our comprehension.

Here’s yet another mind-blowing example of what we can witness on a micro scale but lack the research to apprehend its implications on a macroscale — Metamorphic Minerals:

8 Metamorphic Minerals and Metamorphic Rocks

We have mechanistic explanations for how these transformations occur. However, we have no means of contextualizing this behaviour globally because we still have much to learn about this biosphere we inhabit. If all organics are conscious or possess some form of consciousness, at what point does that transformation from lacking consciousness result in an emergence of consciousness? If the planet is a conscious being, it stands to reason that its constituent parts are expressions of consciousness or proto-consciousness… that we humans are merely bacteria in a life form on a larger scale.

Does that make artificial intelligence conscious?

Not at this point because our understanding of and definitions for consciousness are delimited by self-awareness and agency — even while those boundaries are being tested by each discovery made.

If a self-aware AI is to emerge, it will do so in ways we cannot comprehend because we don’t know the “essential difference between humans and machines,” we’ve only planted a conceptual flag where we’re able to spot the difference between the two.

Instead of drawing lines in the sand between what fits our preconceptions and what does not fit, we should instead focus on opening our minds to possibilities and filling them with as much knowledge of the universe as we can before we settle into conclusions that close us off to learning and expanding beyond the limits of our self-imposed biases.

We can only be prepared for unpredictable futures that will determine our long-term worthiness to continue existing by maintaining an open and curious mind. As it stands, our hubris is guaranteeing we won’t. Our hubris is proving that human beings are not intelligent enough to be considered “as smart as humans” — at least, not in the way we imagine our “greatness.”

Will the next President be able to reverse the current destruction of the government?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “”https://donewiththebullshit.quora.com/Will-the-next-President-be-able-to-reverse-the-current-destruction-of-the-government-3“

No.

The next president can mitigate the impact of the damage, reverse all the executive orders, and pull the nation out of free fall, but the destruction will be permanent.

The damage to the nation’s international reputation is permanent.

The damage to the people who Trump’s reckless behaviour has victimized is permanent. The families he destroyed in his first term have still not recovered.

The divide he has wedged open will take the rest of this century to repair.

The nation will not and cannot return to the state before Trump took office. It was already being held together by duct tape and a skilled, lifetime politician who performed feats of magic to repair the damage done by Trump’s first term.

Too few people failed to acknowledge the significance of Biden’s leadership, and that was a consequence of a nation that was far too broken on too many levels to appreciate for most.

The nation has been falling to pieces for decades, and since Ronald Reagan betrayed the middle class. This destruction became inevitable when Reagan reversed the nation’s trajectory to favour the wealthy class.

This damage isn’t based on politics but on class.

The wealthy class have brought this tragedy to the world.

The numbers don’t lie.

The moment the people bought into the lie that the wealthy class are gods among the population and from whom we are blessed with their favour in economic growth and prosperity is when we gave up on ourselves and started turning against each other.

No president can repair this damage alone… not even if he were the second coming that far too many people pin their hopes and dreams on.

We must do the repair work, and we have to begin by repairing ourselves first.

We must focus first on the welfare of the people because, without the people’s health and welfare, there is no nation, economy, or prosperity. No wealthy class of billionaires can exist without the economy’s engine of 350 million consumers pumping value through a system designed to benefit everyone. They are more dependent upon a healthy middle class than the people who are dependent upon them to finance their pet projects.

We must weed out the greed of humanity if we are to have any hope of stability.

Reversing the destruction will require doing many things differently, but they’re not insurmountable problems. On the upside, more people are aware today of the threat of excess power in too few hands. More people understand today that medical bankruptcies occur only because a handful of greedy billionaires prioritize the bloated luxuries they have acquired by victimizing millions of people.

More people understand today that their economic struggles are due entirely to the economic disparity that led to a world war less than one century ago.

The economic destruction can be repaired, but it must begin by restoring economic justice.

The psychological destruction of today, however, can forever change the nation on a fundamental level — but sadly, the destruction is nowhere near complete enough to force enough people to wake up to the horror of what they have become.

There is still much pain ahead, affecting the entire world.

If Americans truly want to believe their anthem and be the land of the free and the home of the brave, the entire world is pleading with you all to step up to the plate and rid this world of the oligarchy scourge.

Is being employed by Elon Musk a good idea?

This post is a response to a question posed in its original format: “Do you think it’s a good idea to be employed by Elon Musk?”

It’s not, and this question is a horrifying indictment of the dystopic dysfunctionality of modern-day employment.

Specifically, dealing with Musk as an employer would be career suicide. You have no job security in a position that would disappear on a whim. You would have an extremely spiteful megalomaniac who would destroy your opportunities to make vertical moves outside his control. You would be lucky to make a lateral move out of the organization and onto another.

Generally speaking, however, the employment landscape has become a corporatist nightmare.

Fifty years ago, you pretty much had a guarantee of lifelong employment with almost every employer. You also had many opportunities to gain employment with endless choices in who you would work for. You could join practically any organization, and it would feel like a small community in which you could fit in like a human being.

The people you worked with were people, not potential competitors. Meanwhile, in today’s corporate environment, you are taught to mistrust your coworkers because they’re so focused on career development that you are regarded as a potential threat to their ambitions.

I discovered an example earlier today when I checked out a basic dispatcher job from a generic notification I received on Farcebook.

Taking on a simple dispatching role in a remote capacity for extra dollars is no longer a simple job for an employer who needs a person to fulfill a functional need.

Every job today is plugging into a vast corporate network with massive amounts of leverage to dictate terms.

Their screening processes are draconian and violate privacy laws in Canada.

What gave me a chuckle and a shudder down my spine, in this case, was the tagline below the company logo: “A Family of Businesses.”

I may have become jaded by experience, but every abusive employer I have ever encountered described themselves as a family.

In a world where a whopping majority (70%-80%) of families are dysfunctional, it feels like the world as a whole has been slowly morphing into a Stepford community.

I have always preferred smaller environments totalling no more than 100 people because I prefer to work with people, not drones, whose role is to perform at a sociopathic level of disengagement, meeting robotic criteria.

If you’re okay with constantly looking over your shoulder and viewing coworkers as enemy combatants that you can’t trust won’t knife you in the back while wondering when Damocles will drop his sword and escort you out of the heavily secured building with multiple checkpoints, have at it.

I prefer to keep my humanity intact, even if I die in poverty.

How can we ensure AI enhances human potential?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How can we ensure AI enhances human potential rather than just automating jobs?”

We don’t need to worry about AI’s promise of enhancing human potential. AI is a multicapacity tool with an endless array of potential applications — most of which we haven’t even begun identifying.

Humans are a creative species populated by people who invent imaginative ways to utilize tools in applications beyond their original design.

Here’s an example of a floatation device designed for a specific range of purposes:

It’s called a “pool noodle.”

From Wikipedia: 
“A pool noodle is a cylindrical piece of flexible, buoyant polyethylene foam. Pool noodles are used by people of all ages while swimming. Pool noodles are useful when learning to swim, for floating, rescue reaching, in various forms of water play, and aquatic exercise.”

It was designed to fulfill a particular niche and for a minimal purpose. Yet, when the product was released to the market, it took off at a level of popularity that well exceeded its intended use.

21 Unusual Uses for Pool Noodles

28 Ingenious Pool Noodle Hacks

Pool noodles have hundreds of applications invented by users who have applied some creative thinking to problems they encounter in daily living.

At the time of its design, a simple floatation device could not be imagined to fulfill other needs. It was designed for one purpose that it fulfilled so well that people became familiar with it and began applying its potential toward solving different problems.

We cannot possibly predict how AI enhances human potential without giving it over to humans to invent ways to achieve that potential under their initiative. To refer to AI in such limiting terms as a means of “just automating jobs” is a severe underestimation of its potential and an admission of an utter lack of imagination.

Don’t be too concerned about a failure of imagination, though, because no one can possibly imagine all the uses for which AI will be applied. It’s too big, too broad, and too adaptable to too many use cases for anyone to predict.

AI will enhance human potential; giving humans access is the best way to achieve that.

However, AI’s ability to enhance human potential is as much a threat as a strength. It’s like giving a loaded weapon to a child.

Much more than ensuring AI will enhance human potential, we must ensure that humans have the cognitive skills, emotional development, and psychological stability to utilize AI for beneficial rather than malignant purposes.

AI needs guardrails, but less so around it as a technological tool and more around how humans utilize it.

We should focus significant resources on AI’s development in areas that can improve human development while addressing a severe deficiency in our psychological health. Our state of mental health as a species is our most significant threat, while AI’s ability to enhance that potential is like distributing nuclear weapons throughout a population of children.

Are people presenting Chat GPT answers as their own?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Are people taking Chat GPT answers and posting them on Quora? It seems there are many answers all with the same format every time, and sometimes people post the same answer twice. It is very annoying. How can this be stopped?”

There appears to be less of that behaviour today than about a year ago when ChatGPT became a public sensation.

AI-generated content has generally been easy to spot, and I’ve blocked several accounts where people have tried passing off AI content as their own. It may be for that reason I see less of it.

People may also have become more discerning with their inclusions of AI-generated text — by removing obvious clues and editing the content before posting it. ChatGPT has also evolved and become more sophisticated and less easy to spot.

I use Grammarly to speed up my writing and clean up errors, but I still struggle with its structure as it “suggests” changes that are not natural expressions to me.

My experience with it has affected my writing by improving it and relenting on choices I would not have made. I’m unsure how I feel about that beyond feeling a bit dirty in accepting a suggestion out of expedience rather than rewriting an entire paragraph to make it acceptable.

I will fight more vigorously against Grammarly on my desktop than on my phone because typing — especially editing- can be a pain.

Grammarly can generate content from existing text by rewriting it in a more grammatically acceptable (not always correct) format. This makes it somewhat different than the content generated by ChatGPT and other AI LLMs used for content generation.

There also exists AI systems that are designed to spot AI-generated content, of which I am sure many are included within academic budgets. I noticed recently, however, that new AI systems are emerging that claim to be capable of passing muster on being scrutinized by AI detection systems.

Whether those are effective or not, I don’t know. Still, I suspect this will continue to be an evolving issue where it will become impossible to differentiate between human-generated and AI-generated content.

For my part, it seems like I’m being encouraged to cuss more frequently to ensure people understand that they are reading words produced by a human mind over that of a “robot,” but that may be an excuse with a limited shelf life.

Is it better to have faith or not?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Dear Atheists, do you think its better to have faith, or no faith?”

Believers should learn to understand how various forms of faith exist that don’t require you to check your brain out of service to maintain them.

For example, one can have faith in all the other drivers on the road to mostly observe the rules of the road.

One can also have faith in the referee for your game who is sincerely interested in being objective.

One can also have faith that the person they hire for a job sincerely wants to succeed and contribute to your success.

None of these forms of faith are guarantees against misjudgment but are optimistic expectations that will generally pan out positively. The odds of a negative outcome are far fewer than a positive outcome.

These are forms of faith based on an awareness of the world and an objective understanding of how people generally behave.

We know there are outliers and sometimes disappointments, but for the most part, one’s faith in these conditions is met with positive results.

This is a justifiable form of faith.

What is not a justifiable form of faith that essentially amounts to wallowing in self-serving delusion is believing in the existence of a human-like entity endowed with magical powers seen nowhere else in the universe… particularly when assuming such an omnipotent being of galactic proportions will intervene in the life of something less than a speck of bacteria to it… and most especially in matters of convenience like one’s favourite team winning a ballgame or a parking spot opening up in a timely manner.

Otherwise, it is much better to have enough faith in oneself to ignore the naysayers in one’s life than not because one will never have any hope of realizing one’s goals or dreams without it.

Why were people less racist in the ‘80s than today?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Why-were-people-less-racist-in-the-80s-than-today/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

They weren’t.

The further back in time you look, the more racist people were.

You may be lucky enough to realize the difference between what was socially acceptable behaviour in environments that were essentially cultural silos and today’s interconnected world where no social issue is hidden from public dialogue.

You might want to take a moment to consider things you take for granted — that piss off many bigots who don’t realize they’re responsible for making those things happen. For example, gay pride parades would not exist today were it not for rampant bigotries against the gay community that lived in literal fear of their lives by random strangers who would physically assault them — often in groups and just for entertainment.

Black History Month would not exist without the KKK, lynchings, and a host of horrors in which I keep learning every year about tragedies I was never aware of that make me ashamed of humanity.

It’s a never-ending stream of vile hatred that humanity indulges in, and of which racism is only one form of evil among many that we struggle with as a species.

This is why social media is so essential today.

Bigotries are no longer incognito.

Everyone has a video recorder on their person and, within seconds, can subject an abusive monster to public shaming from around the world.

We are no longer able to pretend that racism is just part of life and that it’s okay.

We are no longer able to ignore the vile behaviours of abusive monsters in society that we used to turn our heads away from and pretend it wasn’t our business to do something about it.

We can no longer hide behind the excuses that we can’t do anything about it because all the dirty laundry is flapping about in our faces, and we either clean it up or become soiled by it.

This is a remarkable time we’re living in because we are all learning to wake up, whether we want to or not.

The troglodytes among us who endlessly wine about stupidities like “woke mind virus” or “go woke, go broke” are just verbal versions of the red alert beanies informing the world that such a person is a toxic idiot who needs to grow up and get in touch with their humanity.

They can whine and stamp their feet all they want, but their antics are nothing more than the dying last gasps of an under-evolved creature going extinct.

Because of the internet and because of social media, people are learning to become more educated and aware of the psychological dysfunctionality issues plaguing humanity. We are learning to heal ourselves because of it.

The world is undergoing an upheaval of awareness right now because the sheer volume of hatred is beyond the pale — one in five people visibly exhibit mental health issues — and a whopping majority (70%-80%) of families are dysfunctional.

These are staggering statistics.

We are sick, and we have to face the truth about our species because if we don’t, we will end ourselves.

Social media helps to make that happen. It’s a tool to help us heal that could not have come too soon.

We have desperately needed this dose of cold awareness about ourselves for a long time.

Why haven’t we seen more transparency?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why haven’t we seen a more transparent Federal Government until 47?”

Nothing is transparent about the obfuscating nonsense a grifter is dumping onto the public consciousness.

Anyone with a lick of sense who watched Elon Musk speaking from the Oval Office as if he were an unelected and self-appointed president, enacting broad changes to public infrastructure as if his words were intended to create the best outcomes for the people would have been horrified by how thick his petard was spread.

It was like watching a Fox entertainment talking head barf up a stream of irrational gibberish because he figures a gish gallop argument of nonsense is enough to sway 350 million people… and if it isn’t, it’s enough to sway 70 million people who will run defence on his behalf so that he can continue to destroy the nation.

The most obvious example of “transparency by obfuscating petard” was hiring child hackers with criminal histories to tap into the private records of 350 million people instead of forensic accountants with a clear mandate to identify waste and fraud. Their agenda, goals, and processes should have been made public before beginning his process. Instead, it was rushed through to get as far as they could into violating the nation’s protections before being stopped by the checks and balances built into the system.

The alarms should have been ringing loudly that he has overlooked the most obvious target of waste and fraud in the military budget — which has never been audited.

Why do you think that is?

Right… it’s because they’re counting on military support to rein in the disruptive elements in society when they need to ramp up their pogroms to the next level of insanity and round up citizens who get deemed dissidents by the state.

The Freedom of Information Act has already guaranteed government transparency. You can bet any effort to obtain details on the justifications of fraud and waste supporting the decisions of what has been cut will never be revealed to the public. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to spot his motivations, considering that every target of his is a public institution designed expressly to protect the public interest, holding him accountable for his criminal behaviours.

Ask yourself this simple question:

If this administration cared about transparency, why is Trump the only president who has refused to make his taxes public?

Why did Trump lie about Project 2025 during his campaign while appointing a VP who called him Hitler? Why would the VP join someone they thought was Hitler, to begin with? Why is the VP not only a contributor to Project 2025 but also someone who publicly justifies lying to capture attention?

How does any of this constitute “transparency” in your worldview?

It’s not. It’s obfuscation and inveigling.

Why doesn’t Elon save poor people?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why doesn’t Elon Musk want to save poor people in the world?”

He is saving the “poor people in the world.”

The disconnect is presuming he sees other people in the world as people rather than as objects placed on this Earth to cater to his poor existence.

Haven’t you noticed how much whining Trump does about life even though he was born on third base and has destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives throughout his life? After all that destruction, he still views himself as a victim.

Ironically, they’re both victims of failing to maintain contact with their essential humanity.

They will both go to their graves, completely frustrated and confused about why most people hate them.

Sure… they have devoted followers, but those are the easy and gullible idiots to manipulate. It’s not enough because they know the people who challenge them think poorly of them.

The jealousy is why Trump can still gripe about Obama a decade later.

Supporting a hated monster like Trump is the closest Musk will get to camaraderie. Meanwhile, both regard each other as useful idiots to their self-serving causes. Once the wheels fall off in their relationship — and it will because there isn’t enough room on the planet for two competing egos — eventually, one of them will step on the other’s toes hard enough to escalate into an open conflict — we’ll see embarrassing demonstrations that remind us of all the sandbox behaviours we experienced in elementary school.

Sadly, the more Xitter fails, the harder Musk will go after austerity for the little people, and that’s how he will deal with his “poor stature.” Musk is this century’s poster boy for why restraints on personal wealth and power are crucial to the stability of human civilization.

The MAGAts won’t see that, though, because they’re conditioned to desire submission to authorities they’ve been accustomed to worship. They will identify more with Musk’s struggles than their fellow citizens who suffer from Musk’s spitefulness.

Musk is saving the most essential “poor person” in the world, himself.

What best discerns a true patriot from a fake?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “What question/s and their answer/s best discern a true patriot from a fake one?”

This question is problematic on several levels because a “true patriot” is essentially a subjective assessment until one’s actions are identified as universally consistent within a broad recognition of patriotism.

For example, Mike Pence could have been easily viewed as a traitor while serving alongside Donald Trump, but he proved otherwise with his final official act in office as a VP.

Luigi Mangione can be viewed as someone who has betrayed the social contract by extinguishing another’s life. Still, he can also be considered as paying the ultimate price to protect the lives of countless thousands within a dysfunctional system that preys upon people while victimizing them for profit. Few actions are more patriotic than sacrificing one’s life to end corruption. Whether that’s considered patriotic is a matter for history to pass judgment.

The same applies to Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Joe Darby, Karen Silkwood, Daniel Ellsberg, Frank Serpico, Chelsea Manning, and a panoply of whistleblowers throughout history.

List of whistleblowers — Wikipedia

Patriotism is far too nuanced to identify within a survey methodology.
People are not static objects.
People’s actions do not align directly within predictable margins, fitting generic descriptions of subjectively defined concepts that evolve as society changes.

A question as simple as “Do you love your country?” is quickly answered through deception, malicious intent or naively justified expedience. A person can believe they do love their country while acting in a treasonous way. Conversely, a person can be perceived as hating their country and acting supremely patriotic by sacrificing their life to protect it.

Adding further complications to this question is that communication is a nuanced process. At the same time, the more subjective the concepts that any survey attempts to address, the less effective the multiple-choice answers are.

Adding another level of complexity to the mix is the notion of “true” as a qualifier for suggesting patriotism is a binary state. Where is the distinction between “true” and “not true?” Is “not true” the equivalent of “false,” or can there be states of patriotism between “true” and “false?” I think I’ve already identified some of those intermediary states above.

I don’t believe any specific question or answer can identify some nebulous standard for a largely subjective state of mind that can change according to circumstances.

Ultimately, the only way to know is if the person in question can appreciate and value the social contract such that it’s the highest priority in their mind when considering political positions because it indicates a community perspective over a narcissistic one. That’s not information one can determine through a survey approach.