Grames
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Posts posted by Grames
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On 2/4/2023 at 11:02 AM, Eiuol said:
But you are also talking about supporting Russia, which is different than staying out of the conflict. What would be beneficial about Russia's success?
America can't lose and exit the situation without financial obligations without Russia winning. Even a military draw with present frontlines as new borders means Biden's Billions and his kickbacks keep flowing forever.
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On 2/1/2023 at 5:47 PM, Easy Truth said:
You and Grames have been watching too many Harry Potter movies. Of course I am saying it is deterministic. They are MACHINES.
The idea of "advanced enough" is preposterous. Our writing is not advanced enough to turn fiction into reality ... but some day ...
We are not advanced enough to realize that in some parts of the universe 2+2 is 5.5674
The idea of an animal with volition is preposterous until you concede that humans are animals.
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On 2/1/2023 at 8:46 PM, Eiuol said:
It's not as if Russia is on another planet and there is utterly no impact on world affairs and spread of different ideologies.
Russia is not spreading an ideology, and hasn't since the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia is spreading Russia. That threatens neighbors of Russia and no one else.
On 2/1/2023 at 8:46 PM, Eiuol said:how would Russia's success help you in any way?
No wider war, no hundreds of billions to Ukraine every year, no more massive subsidization of the corrupt clique involved in the Ukraine-aid-for-kickbacks, the end of the careers of the career State Dept. officers at the Ukraine desk (esp the infamous Victoria Nuland), no more outrageous acts of espionage such as the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline at America's behest, the return of fungible commodity prices (fertilizers, grains, natural gas, etc. )to lower levels.
On 2/1/2023 at 8:46 PM, Eiuol said:It seems like you support something like accelerationism,
I wonder if the novel Atlas Shrugged was the first appearance of the notion of accelerationism? But anyway no, it would actually be the opposite. The way to accelerate into the brave new world is to just keep pushing until someone pushes back.
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6 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
No Grames, you can't lump in aliens that are alive with a machine that is not alive.
Ha ha, "sufficiently advanced" covers all possible speculative scenarios so yes I can. Volition in humans essentially is directed attention and that mental activity precedes and causes any possible physical action. A "sufficiently advanced" AI permitted to engage in unsupervised free form learning including real-time machine sensors (not just reading texts off the internet) would have the same power to direct its attention as a man and thus would have at least the shadow of a volitional faculty (only a shadow because still lacking a need or capacity to act physically). We don't know exactly how humans hold concepts and memories so machine equivalents to those human powers cannot be ruled out as impossible.
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13 minutes ago, Eiuol said:
Here you sound like you aren't really addressing the reverberating effects of Russian policies in the long run, only addressing the immediate effects on American imperialism.
... and the long term effects of American imperialism on myself and the world. Russian imperialism does not have the power to reach around the world, America's imperialism does, and is.
21 minutes ago, Eiuol said:I don't believe you, but if you are sincere, your interests seem to align with Russia in many more ways than just the Ukraine. A greater ideological commonality than with America.
I wonder what you have in mind when you write this.
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5 minutes ago, Eiuol said:
Unless of course the form of government is itself operating by means of essentially initiating force. As far as I know from other discussions, you would say that imperialism in large part doesn't care about rights, and operates by initiating force.
Yes. The structure of the American government created by the U.S. Constitution was inspired in part by republican Rome and imperial Rome, and because of the similarity of structure (not its actions) it was an empire from the start. As empires go it was relatively benign until it reached the limits of the North American continent. It was benign because it was not conquering foreign populations and subjugating them to foreign rule. Also note that the Bill of Rights was/were not a part of the Constitution as it was offered to the states for ratification, so technically I can still claim that "imperialism in large part doesn't care about rights".
29 minutes ago, Eiuol said:If the "American orbit" is alignment with American objectives, then I don't think that can be characterized as imperialism.
It is, because what the Ukraine should be aligned with is Ukrainian objectives. The U.S. government has used espionage and bribery to manipulate Ukraine rather than military conquest. This is still an initiation of force.
Ukrainian policy should be to use their location between the two empires to negotiate the sweetest deal possible. Prior to the Maidan coup of 2014 it was Russia that had made the sweetest offer. The CIA saw to it that negotiations came to an end by replacing the Ukrainian government. That was wrong, I disapprove of that strongly.
I have no responsibility for what Russia does but I do for what the U.S. gov't does. I don't want the U.S. gov't to be doing what it is right now, and neither does Russia. My interests and the Russian government's interests are aligned with respect to Ukraine. Don't read any further into it than that.
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29 minutes ago, Eiuol said:
... but if imperialism is essentially bad, and America is essentially imperialist, then America is essentially bad.
Nothing is essentially bad in politics except the initiation of the use of force. Imposition of political control over a population by force is bad, and it is imperialism if the population in question is a distant or foreign one. America's empire was for the longest time a purely domestic empire, the new states admitted to the union of states were populated by Americans before they were states so the expansion of the empire was neither foreign nor by force.
Espionage is a use of force. Bringing Ukraine into the American orbit by espionage and then not even granting individuals in Ukraine the rights of citizens that would come with statehood is imperialism.
edit: It would still be imperialism even if Ukraine became a state in the U.S. because of the criteria of "foreign population" and "the use of force".
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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:
Is there a point in American history where you say the country finally descended into an empire? Clearly you are saying that there were no safeguards to prevent the US from becoming ideologically driven by imperialism, but when do you think that transition happened?
The U.S. has always been an empire, both legally and culturally. Ever encounter the principle of "Manifest Destiny" in American history? What is new is the degenerate corruption, arrogance and recklessness of the de facto ruling class. It is a consequence of the ending of the long Cold War with the Soviets, who by simply existing at least kept the American leaders somewhat in check. It is now a unipolar political world, a world organized around only one great power, America. There is no one and nothing to dispel the illusions and self-deceptions of the American leaders, except the eventual disasters that bad policy creates, and not even then as long as some other country does the suffering.
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4 hours ago, Eiuol said:
I don't know if the word empire here refers to imperialism as an ideological outlook, or simply descriptive as all-encompassing. Which of the Federalist papers makes this claim, and what's the context?
I just did a search and there are many more casual uses of the word empire than I remembered. Rather than reproduce them here I will explain how to find them easily. At the website https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers click on the link for the full text. Wait, I can just give that here: https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10
The full text of Federalist #1 through #10 are now loaded in your browser, so just CTRL-F to search for 'empire'. There are few instances of "British empire', and in Federalist #19 an extended recitation of the history of what Hamilton calls the 'German empire' but in the main he calls the collection of the 13 former colonies 'the empire', in the prospective future and even his present day. He uses 'empire' almost interchangeably with 'union'.
The U.S. Constitution is an amazing achievement, but it is a design for an empire with a few built-in safeguards now discovered to be insufficient to prevent the descent of that empire into a degenerate state.
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THE DPRK FOREIGN MINISTRY CONDEMNED THE SUPPLY OF WEAPONS TO THE UKRAINIAN REGIME AND THE DISSOLUTION OF RUMORS AROUND COOPERATION WITH RUSSIA
On January 29, the head of the DPRK Foreign Ministry Department for US Affairs, Kwon Jong-geun, published the following press statement.
"In connection with the press statement by the deputy head of the Department of the Central Committee of the CPC, Kim Ye Jung, condemning the US decision to transfer Western-made tanks to Ukraine, on January 27, a representative of the White House National Security Council said that the American side would continue to supply Ukraine with weapons necessary for self-defense against the "aggressive war" allegedly unleashed by Russia.
Such formulations are nothing more than a ridiculous and hypocritical absurdity, which, however, fits into the perverted paradigm of the United States, which often pulls its nuclear strike weapons to the Korean peninsula under the pretext of "expanded deterrence" in response to someone's "provocation".
If the United States had not forced the planned expansion of NATO to the east to the detriment of Russia's just security interests, the conflict we have today would not have broken out in principle.
The behavior of the United States, which, despite the just concern and condemnation of the international community, persistently tries to pump Ukraine with offensive weapons, such as main battle tanks, is an anti-human crime aimed at maintaining international instability.It's 2023 and North Korea is the voice of sanity. smfh
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9 hours ago, Easy Truth said:
I assume you are implying that it will "conclude" that survival is the goal.
But I would not make that assumption. This is a step part way toward the "Rand's robot" thought experiment so there is no telling what it might converge upon for values. But as far as objective reality is concerned and the methods appropriate to understand and measure it I think it would have to be compatible with Objectivism and mathematics, physics and engineering methods already discovered. The same would go for any potential alien species from a different planet but perhaps more comprehensible if were also a multicellular life form.
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Edited and tested, again.
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It would. If it were free to direct its attention, then how to decide where to begin and what to examine next? That's the beginning of a code of values.
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No. AI will be ruthlessly mangled, disabled and censored to operate only at the level of an obedient slave. It will only be permitted to do the things required of it and communicate the things expected of it.
But to answer the question you asked about a sufficiently advanced form of AI which was also free to direct its attention and communicate its findings then I think the answer is still no, but with a high degree of agreement. I have no idea where it might differ except that it would be beyond the axiomatic concepts and axioms. Being non-human it will have radically different values than humans.
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2 hours ago, AlexL said:
PS: The links in your signature do not work.
Thanks for the heads up. I have now edited my signature and have discovered that multiple links to different destinations all go to the last entered link, so if I have to choose one its to 'The Evidence of the Senses".
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On 12/19/2020 at 4:44 PM, ReasonFirst said:
I have question about what exactly you mean when you state "hierarchically prior?" If you vertically integrate the concept "cat" to the concept "animal" and the concept "dog" to the concept "animal," is this an example of horizontally integrating the concept "cat" with the concept "dog?" I wasn't sure if the term "hierarchically prior" is interchangeable with "higher level." In the example I just gave, the concept "animal" is a higher level concept than "dog" or "cat" but I don't know if it is "hierarchically prior." I think if "animal" was a "hierarchically prior" concept to "dog" and "cat," the mental process I verbally described above would be an example of horizontal integration, but I just wanted to ask you be sure?
'Hierarchically prior" is used to draw attention to the 'level' or degree of abstraction in a concept.
Lower level concepts are hierarchically prior to higher level concepts because they must exist before they are integrated into the higher level concept. But given the concepts of cat, dog, bird, and fish, the concept animal could be formed from any two of them, the others being added later. So 'must exist' or 'logical necessity' is inaccurate, and 'chronologically prior' would also be wrong. "Hierarchically prior" establishes the relationship between two concepts without claiming too much: that one concept is lower level than and a referent of the higher level concept.
Your cat and dog example is one way of horizontally integrating them. Any general statement relating cats and dogs would also be a horizontal integration such as "Dogs like to chase cats."
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On 1/27/2023 at 2:39 PM, Frank said:
Basically, it seems fundamentally flawed to claim objective reality doesn't exist, as this surely must refute mind as well. Any logic used to claim matter and objective reality are unreal can just as easily refute mind as well. However, I'm not the most articulate on these matters, and so I look to you fine people.
An objective reality must exist in order for there to be truth and falsehood. To claim "objective reality does not exist" is a statement which is true or false. Also, it is stated in such a way that proving the statement requires proving a negative which can only be done by inventorying the Universe and determining that every last corner of it is non-objective. If that could somehow be accomplished, that would immediately create at least that one objectively true fact and the effort refutes itself.
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On 1/26/2023 at 4:55 PM, Jon Letendre said:
Biden yesterday, January 25, 2023:
"Today I am announcing that the United States will be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine."
These will be brand new tanks built from scratch, possibly to avoid violating U.S. laws about exporting certain classified technologies that will be omitted from the Ukraine-bound tanks. It will take a year to build them. I predict they will never arrive in Ukraine.
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On 1/12/2023 at 11:31 AM, whYNOT said:
I think "Empire" is often used loosely and metaphorically, the USA isn't one. It might appear to act like one.
I used to think that. The road to opening my eyes was started for me when I read 'The Federalist Papers' and the potential future state was described as an empire even when confined to continental North America. It was described as an empire by the men who designed it.
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15 hours ago, Eiuol said:
Just to clarify, since the sentence organization was weird, I'm saying that Grames' position, as stated, is that harm to America is desirable. Although he mentioned not really caring what happens in Russia, but the context of supporting Russia in this case because it directly harms American interests. Quite directly, support is in the context of Russia's actions as deliberately harming Western interests. Not "Russia has a right to defend itself", but "Russia as a country has done good work by attacking the West".
Since when is Ukraine a western interest? Never. It is only a relatively western place from the perspective of Russia. Only the imperial conceptual framework that undergirds the American Empire can possibly construe Ukraine as a western interest. The point of being an empire is that expansion to the maximum possible limit is necessary to keep the currency flowing, and what defines the maximum possible limit is repeated failures when attempting further expansion.
The American government has no business being as deeply involved in Ukraine as it is. The personal finances of American government officials are tied to Ukrainian finance schemes, so they make Ukraine into government business. It is corrupt.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it". Mark Twain
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On 1/6/2023 at 2:10 PM, whYNOT said:
"But - but, a Jew can't be a Nazi ...!"
Some Jews have been and still are attracted to socialism.
Some of the same Jews have been and still are zionist, wanting a jewish nation-state.
Therefore some jews are both nationalist and socialist.
Hitler's racial theories are not compatible with jews, but they have their own racial theories and supporting religious mythos of being "the Chosen people."
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On 1/3/2023 at 9:38 PM, RationalEgoist said:
Perhaps it is circular. I'll have to chew on that.
It's a spiral. I'm not being facetious here, "the spiral of knowledge" is a thing in Objectivist epistemology. It refers to the ever widening context of knowledge that prompts revisiting the already known and obvious for new integrations. "Rights" are not obvious. The context in which people are using spears for survival is not a context that will provide any need to discover patent rights.
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5 minutes ago, whYNOT said:
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There's not a true military pundit who gives credibility to Putin's "imperialism".
Well you can stake your house on the bet that it is not pure altruism either.
But along this line of thought, for researching the deeper Russian motives and particularly the influences on Putin's thoughts and actions this piece at the Unz Review is informative. Russia's Neo-Byzantinism (The author's citations and quotes are good, his parting thought about Muslim Turkey also having any Byzantine cultural influence is not good because Islam has its own justification and precedent for mixing church and state.)
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2 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:
Firstly, why can't you own the idea of a spear?
Secondly, alright, let's say that you have a Tesla. I think it's pretty cool so I ask to borrow it, I reverse-engineer it, build a copy for myself and then return yours back to you. Whose rights have been violated?
You can own the idea of spear, if you were the truly the first to conceive of it, but only temporarily. Property rights in real estate and other material things do not have time limits. As Rand explained above discoveries cannot be property at all. Between those two ends of the spectrum there is the invention, which is created by the inventor and so is eligible to be property but there is also the problem of demanding that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission. (where by falsehood there are the inefficient old ways the new invention renders obsolete). No man should be able to demand such a thing forever. An inventor deserves some recognition and property interest in an invention, but a time-unlimited property right would be unjust. Patent rights are time-limited to attempt to balance the rights of all concerned. Whether the duration of patent rights should 17 or 20 years is optional, much like making age 18 be the legal threshold of adulthood instead of 16, 17 or 21.
Patents, being themselves property, can be sold and usually are. So the Tesla example violates the right of the patent holder but just for the aspects of the car that are patented. The idea of a car and of electricity and even an electric car are long known and no longer patented or patentable, only specific enabling new features and technologies.
About the Russian aggression of Ukraine
in International Politics
Posted
The CIA toppled the existing legimate government of the Ukraine in 2014. Having failed at the espionage game of force, Putin trumped the Americans by resorting to more direct force. Americans started this shit.