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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Jun 5, 2024 00:11
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- misdirectomy
- Feb 19, 2008
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This is an elegant metaphor
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Mar 4, 2017 22:17
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- Sir Tonk
- Apr 18, 2006
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Young Orc
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no body pillow
5/10
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Mar 4, 2017 22:18
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- Sir Tonk
- Apr 18, 2006
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Young Orc
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You invest so much in it, don't you? It's what elevates you above the beasts of the field, it's what makes you special. Homo sapiens, you call yourself. Wise Man. Do you even know what it is, this consciousness you cite in your own exaltation? Do you even know what it's for?
Maybe you think it gives you free will. Maybe you've forgotten that sleepwalkers converse, drive vehicles, commit crimes and clean up afterwards, unconscious the whole time. Maybe nobody's told you that even waking souls are only slaves in denial.
Make a conscious choice. Decide to move your index finger. Too late! The electricity's already halfway down your arm. Your body began to act a full half-second before your conscious self 'chose' to, for the self chose nothing; something else set your body in motion, sent an executive summary—almost an afterthought— to the homunculus behind your eyes. That little man, that arrogant subroutine that thinks of itself as the person, mistakes correlation for causality: it reads the summary and it sees the hand move, and it thinks that one drove the other.
But it's not in charge. You're not in charge. If free will even exists, it doesn't share living space with the likes of you.
Insight, then. Wisdom. The quest for knowledge, the derivation of theorems, science and technology and all those exclusively human pursuits that must surely rest on a conscious foundation. Maybe that's what sentience would be for— if scientific breakthroughs didn't spring fully-formed from the subconscious mind, manifest themselves in dreams, as full-blown insights after a deep night's sleep. It's the most basic rule of the stymied researcher: stop thinking about the problem. Do something else. It will come to you if you just stop being conscious of it.
Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and acrobat knows enough to let the mind go, let the body run itself. Every driver of any manual vehicle arrives at destinations with no recollection of the stops and turns and roads traveled in getting there. You are all sleepwalkers, whether climbing creative peaks or slogging through some mundane routine for the thousandth time. You are all sleepwalkers.
Don't even try to talk about the learning curve. Don't bother citing the months of deliberate practice that precede the unconscious performance, or the years of study and experiment leading up to the gift-wrapped Eureka moment. So what if your lessons are all learned consciously? Do you think that proves there's no other way? Heuristic software's been learning from experience for over a hundred years. Machines master chess, cars learn to drive themselves, statistical programs face problems and design the experiments to solve them and you think that the only path to learning leads through sentience? You're Stone-age nomads, eking out some marginal existence on the veldt—denying even the possibility of agriculture, because hunting and gathering was good enough for your parents.
Do you want to know what consciousness is for? Do you want to know the only real purpose it serves? Training wheels. You can't see both aspects of the Necker Cube at once, so it lets you focus on one and dismiss the other. That's a pretty half-assed way to parse reality. You're always better off looking at more than one side of anything. Go on, try. Defocus. It's the next logical step.
Oh, but you can't. There's something in the way.
And it's fighting back.
*
Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains—cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes ever-more computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.
I'll have the Arby's Meat Mountain thank you.
McRib is back?
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Mar 4, 2017 22:19
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- Agrajag
- Jan 21, 2006
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gat dang thats hot
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You sure complain a lot that activists arent putting in enough of effort while posting on these forums.
lol is complaining? huh.
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Mar 4, 2017 22:20
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- Mayor Dave
- Feb 20, 2009
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Bernie the Snow Clown
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I'm the Climate Change guy saying "Pay me!" for some reason
it's al gore, profiting off hysteria and fear-mongering
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Mar 4, 2017 22:20
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- Lastgirl
- Sep 7, 1997
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Good Morning!
Sunday Morning!
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You invest so much in it, don't you? It's what elevates you above the beasts of the field, it's what makes you special. Homo sapiens, you call yourself. Wise Man. Do you even know what it is, this consciousness you cite in your own exaltation? Do you even know what it's for?
Maybe you think it gives you free will. Maybe you've forgotten that sleepwalkers converse, drive vehicles, commit crimes and clean up afterwards, unconscious the whole time. Maybe nobody's told you that even waking souls are only slaves in denial.
Make a conscious choice. Decide to move your index finger. Too late! The electricity's already halfway down your arm. Your body began to act a full half-second before your conscious self 'chose' to, for the self chose nothing; something else set your body in motion, sent an executive summary—almost an afterthought— to the homunculus behind your eyes. That little man, that arrogant subroutine that thinks of itself as the person, mistakes correlation for causality: it reads the summary and it sees the hand move, and it thinks that one drove the other.
But it's not in charge. You're not in charge. If free will even exists, it doesn't share living space with the likes of you.
Insight, then. Wisdom. The quest for knowledge, the derivation of theorems, science and technology and all those exclusively human pursuits that must surely rest on a conscious foundation. Maybe that's what sentience would be for— if scientific breakthroughs didn't spring fully-formed from the subconscious mind, manifest themselves in dreams, as full-blown insights after a deep night's sleep. It's the most basic rule of the stymied researcher: stop thinking about the problem. Do something else. It will come to you if you just stop being conscious of it.
Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and acrobat knows enough to let the mind go, let the body run itself. Every driver of any manual vehicle arrives at destinations with no recollection of the stops and turns and roads traveled in getting there. You are all sleepwalkers, whether climbing creative peaks or slogging through some mundane routine for the thousandth time. You are all sleepwalkers.
Don't even try to talk about the learning curve. Don't bother citing the months of deliberate practice that precede the unconscious performance, or the years of study and experiment leading up to the gift-wrapped Eureka moment. So what if your lessons are all learned consciously? Do you think that proves there's no other way? Heuristic software's been learning from experience for over a hundred years. Machines master chess, cars learn to drive themselves, statistical programs face problems and design the experiments to solve them and you think that the only path to learning leads through sentience? You're Stone-age nomads, eking out some marginal existence on the veldt—denying even the possibility of agriculture, because hunting and gathering was good enough for your parents.
Do you want to know what consciousness is for? Do you want to know the only real purpose it serves? Training wheels. You can't see both aspects of the Necker Cube at once, so it lets you focus on one and dismiss the other. That's a pretty half-assed way to parse reality. You're always better off looking at more than one side of anything. Go on, try. Defocus. It's the next logical step.
Oh, but you can't. There's something in the way.
And it's fighting back.
*
Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains—cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes ever-more computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.
I'll have the Arby's Meat Mountain thank you.
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Mar 4, 2017 22:23
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- Hodgepodge
- Jan 29, 2006
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Can't post for 205 days!
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there is yet hope for the intelligence of the american people
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Mar 4, 2017 22:23
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- Mayor Dave
- Feb 20, 2009
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Bernie the Snow Clown
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also i just read the last 10 pages and there were several posts i wanted to emptyquote at the time
lol chris cilliza is one of the most worthless human beings alive
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Mar 4, 2017 22:24
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- Sir Tonk
- Apr 18, 2006
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Young Orc
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yah that johnny quest edit is pro as gently caress
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Mar 4, 2017 22:25
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- Fuckt Tupp
- Apr 19, 2007
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Science
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trump's staff should know by now that he doesn't plan anything just does it
lol lindsey graham voted for evan mcmullen
is that news? did we know that?
doing something that sounds reasonable but is actually useless? sounds like a classic lindsay graham move
punch em all and let god sort it out
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Mar 4, 2017 22:26
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- Solarin
- Nov 15, 2007
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You poster before that something along the lines of that there where not enough anti Trump protesters in NY.
But whatever.
Who is that dude in your AV? He seems punchable
Chris Roberts noted snake oil salesman of Star Citizen fame. He is a massive immature oval office with a very punchable thumb-like head
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Mar 4, 2017 22:26
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- nachos
- Jun 27, 2004
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Wario Chalmers! WAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
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When is this not the case?
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Mar 4, 2017 22:27
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- Agrajag
- Jan 21, 2006
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gat dang thats hot
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there is no precedent at all for that in this country so i really don't know what'd happen. the implications of that reality would prolly lead to a weird case like an interim president or like a group of people acting as a "president" while we held emergency elections
or there's always complete breakdown and collapse of our government
nothing will happen is my guess. i doubt they will put any effort into investigating trump and his russian entanglements. also doesnt the potus have immunity or some bullcrap? i seem to recals trump saying as long as the president does it it isnt illegal when it came to his conflicts of interests and poo poo.
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Mar 4, 2017 22:28
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- Sir Tonk
- Apr 18, 2006
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Young Orc
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Mar 4, 2017 22:28
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- Jazerus
- May 24, 2011
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You invest so much in it, don't you? It's what elevates you above the beasts of the field, it's what makes you special. Homo sapiens, you call yourself. Wise Man. Do you even know what it is, this consciousness you cite in your own exaltation? Do you even know what it's for?
Maybe you think it gives you free will. Maybe you've forgotten that sleepwalkers converse, drive vehicles, commit crimes and clean up afterwards, unconscious the whole time. Maybe nobody's told you that even waking souls are only slaves in denial.
Make a conscious choice. Decide to move your index finger. Too late! The electricity's already halfway down your arm. Your body began to act a full half-second before your conscious self 'chose' to, for the self chose nothing; something else set your body in motion, sent an executive summary—almost an afterthought— to the homunculus behind your eyes. That little man, that arrogant subroutine that thinks of itself as the person, mistakes correlation for causality: it reads the summary and it sees the hand move, and it thinks that one drove the other.
But it's not in charge. You're not in charge. If free will even exists, it doesn't share living space with the likes of you.
Insight, then. Wisdom. The quest for knowledge, the derivation of theorems, science and technology and all those exclusively human pursuits that must surely rest on a conscious foundation. Maybe that's what sentience would be for— if scientific breakthroughs didn't spring fully-formed from the subconscious mind, manifest themselves in dreams, as full-blown insights after a deep night's sleep. It's the most basic rule of the stymied researcher: stop thinking about the problem. Do something else. It will come to you if you just stop being conscious of it.
Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and acrobat knows enough to let the mind go, let the body run itself. Every driver of any manual vehicle arrives at destinations with no recollection of the stops and turns and roads traveled in getting there. You are all sleepwalkers, whether climbing creative peaks or slogging through some mundane routine for the thousandth time. You are all sleepwalkers.
Don't even try to talk about the learning curve. Don't bother citing the months of deliberate practice that precede the unconscious performance, or the years of study and experiment leading up to the gift-wrapped Eureka moment. So what if your lessons are all learned consciously? Do you think that proves there's no other way? Heuristic software's been learning from experience for over a hundred years. Machines master chess, cars learn to drive themselves, statistical programs face problems and design the experiments to solve them and you think that the only path to learning leads through sentience? You're Stone-age nomads, eking out some marginal existence on the veldt—denying even the possibility of agriculture, because hunting and gathering was good enough for your parents.
Do you want to know what consciousness is for? Do you want to know the only real purpose it serves? Training wheels. You can't see both aspects of the Necker Cube at once, so it lets you focus on one and dismiss the other. That's a pretty half-assed way to parse reality. You're always better off looking at more than one side of anything. Go on, try. Defocus. It's the next logical step.
Oh, but you can't. There's something in the way.
And it's fighting back.
*
Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains—cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes ever-more computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.
I'll have the Arby's Meat Mountain thank you.
hell, same
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Mar 4, 2017 22:29
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- Fuckt Tupp
- Apr 19, 2007
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Science
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trump thrusts his fists against the rock and still insists he sees barack
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Mar 4, 2017 22:29
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- Agrajag
- Jan 21, 2006
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gat dang thats hot
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"they" don't even need to put any effort into it considering everything that is coming out on a nearly constant basis
they meaning fbi/comey/senate committees/doj
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Mar 4, 2017 22:29
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- MaxxBot
- Oct 6, 2003
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you could have clapped
you should have clapped!!
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WTF
https://twitter.com/sparksjls/status/838139185525587968
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Mar 4, 2017 22:32
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- Bip Roberts
- Mar 29, 2005
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no body pillow
5/10
I'm the cleverly "hidden" siegrune.
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Mar 4, 2017 22:32
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- Solarin
- Nov 15, 2007
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nothing will happen is my guess. i doubt they will put any effort into investigating trump and his russian entanglements. also doesnt the potus have immunity or some bullcrap? i seem to recals trump saying as long as the president does it it isnt illegal when it came to his conflicts of interests and poo poo.
lol at accepting this world view
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Mar 4, 2017 22:32
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Jun 5, 2024 00:11
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Mar 4, 2017 22:17
