This is all forest for trees. Despite utility for coding, anyone can spot AI poems, songs, writing a mile away. But that isn't the point. The point is what is happening in economic terms, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIXd3PEbsNk
And what is happening in subversion of criminal justice for profits and control over allegedly democratic voting populations and people in authoritarian states: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lYsO4k7OIY Yeah, I know these videos are long but that's what depth and nuance on such complex topics require. The optimism around AI is baffling when those themes are considered in depth. And yes, those videos are produced by a computer gamer and not NYT or some liberal darling outlet. But at this point, the frustration of someone just wanting to play affordable games, being prevented from doing so in in the foreseeable future because of AI, the companies that exploit it, economic considerations, and their implications on self-determination; turn any singularity simply into dominion of a few insecure folks requiring therapy. Pronouns don't kill, have not hurt anybody physically, robbed anyone's chance to make a living, and searched homes without discernible justification. Secret police, fed by allegedly beneficial AI that will create this utopian progress narrative future, already perform all these tasks daily. On Tuesday, February 10, 2026 at 2:46:30 AM UTC+1 Brent Meeker wrote: > > > On 2/9/2026 3:36 AM, John Clark wrote: > > On Sun, Feb 8, 2026 at 10:30 AM Stefano Ticozzi <[email protected]> > wrote: > > *> The article you linked here appeared to refer to a convergence toward a >> Platonic concept of the Idea; it therefore seemed relevant to recall that >> Platonic Ideas have been extensively demonstrated to be “false” by science.* >> > > *No. You can't use a tape measure to prove that a poem is "false". Science > deals with what you can see, hear, feel, taste and smell, Plato was dealing > with the metaphysical, the underlying nature of being. However, far from > disproving it, in the 20th century Quantum Mechanics actually gave some > support to Plato's ideas. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave we can only see > the "shadows" of the fundamental underlying reality, and in a similar way > modern physics says we can only observe reality through a probability (not > a certainty) obtained by the Quantum Wavefunction. * > > * > human language has grown and developed around images, driven almost >> exclusively by the need to emulate the sense of sight.* >> > > *We may not be able to directly observe fundamental underlying reality but > we are certainly affected by it, and over the eons human language has been > optimized to maximize the probability that one's genes get into the next > generation. So although words are not the fundamental reality they must be > congruent with it. That has been known for a long time but very recently AI > has taught us that the connection is much deeper and far more subtle than > previously suspected. * > > *Just a few years ago many people (including me) were saying that words > were not enough and that for a machine to be truly intelligent it would > need a body, or at least sense organs that can interact with the real > physical world. But we now know that is untrue. It is still not entirely > clear, at least not to me, exactly how it is possible for words alone to do > that, but it is an undeniable fact that somehow it is.* > > > > *Isn't it just a matter of bandwidth. An image contains a lot more > information than a paragraph taking up the same space on a page. So in > theory it provides a lot more bandwidth. But a lot of that is not > available to us because we don't process to the finest degree of our vision > (hence the possibility of "hidden" messages in pictures). So I don't think > it's because words convey more information than we thought; it's because > images convey less, and part of the reason they convey less is we don't see > everything in an image, also we don't necessarily have the connections with > other concepts that would help us remember details of an image, except when > we have words or a name for the detail Brent* > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/18e3b482-44f0-4fb8-9edd-dc9534b4ae6en%40googlegroups.com.
