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Two of the biggest advances in scientific history were announced today

No, not the subject I am disallowed from talking about

This:

"Nobody wants to hear this but it needs to be said.

> Scientists just copied a fruit fly's brain into a computer. Neuron by neuron. No training data. No machine learning.

> It woke up and started walking. No one taught it to walk. No one trained it. No gradient descent. It just... knew what to do...."

https://x.com/MAstronomers/status/2030294901695361444?s=20

This means your brain, any brain, a totally blank new humam brain. can now - or soon - be copied to a machine (it's just scaling from here). Or it can be copied to a machine in virtual reality. Maybe it already is, and we are in The Sim

ON THE SAME DAY WE LEARNED THIS:


"A petri dish of human brain cells just learned to play DOOM


https://x.com/ChronosIntelX/status/2030319275991515411?s=20

"Let me explain what just happened, because I don’t think people realize how INSANE this is.

> Cortical Labs put 200,000 real human brain cells onto a silicon chip and trained them to play Doom in just one week.

> Each CL1 system costs $35,000.

> A rack of 30 units consumes only 850–1,000 watts combined.

> The human brain operates on 20 watts....

> Cortical Labs is selling “Wetware as a Service” through Cortical Cloud, letting developers deploy code remotely to living human neurons with no lab required,

> priced like a software subscription but powered by real brain cells grown from adult skin and blood samples.

> it isn’t about gaming, it’s about biological computing that could eventually outperform traditional silicon in energy efficiency and adaptability.

This is getting really scary and we’re still at the very beginning."

Has anyone asked the guy trapped in the petri dish if he's OK with all this? Does he actually enjoy Doom?

I think if we combine the two we get Iain M. Banks' Surface Detail which basically features people trapped in computer simulated versions of hell.

Well done Kyf. A couple of posts from then heart. Worth all of the anodyne rubbish put together. I would like to try to answer your first question but I have no answer. Some people like the subject and want to be prescriptive is the best I can do. I hope you weren't too offended.

Aww, thanks. I met the then to be Mrs. Kyf long before I ever posted on PB, and it never occurred to me that her existence might one day be a debated topic here. Theresa May as PM advocated self-ID. Anne Widdecombe, of all people, has written in GB news, of all places, that trans women should be treated as women.

Hence: I don't think it's a left/right issue - it's one of common decency. Regrettably, it's both fascinating and noteworthy that the people whose views on the topic (e.g. barty favouring carpet bombing the middle east) seem to treat others as subhuman as well.

Instructive as always: https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

Very entertaining article. I actually agree with the thrust. I hadn't come across it before

Starmer and Trump have phone call and look forward to co-operating going forward

Sensible to dial down the rhetoric

He phoned him and begged for a bone. A throwaway tweet about 'British support'
Our humiliation is almost complere

Not at all. Unless Starmer does capitulate, in which case you would have a point. For the moment at least you don't.

Not for the first time i may be wrong or i may be right
May the road rise with me

Do you frequently find yourself energised by a general sense of anger? I get the sense that you do.

I saw the Top of the Pops performance of that song the other day. I absolutely loved TOTP as a kid, and remember seeing the video to Rise on it at the time, but there isn’t a programme that has aged as badly. The conceit of grown ups miming and acting that way just looks so stupid nowadays

Yes, not the music but the cheesy, rather patronising presentation. Miss it though.

I'll say it again, if you disagree with Cyclefree's headers or indeed any other headers including mine. I am happy to publish threads by you that disagree with a header, send me a Vanilla message with your pieces.

I'd be happy to contribute, but is PB really the best forum for it?

Things that interest me: Digital ID, the Online "Safety" Act, trial by jury (as noted above) leasehold reform, income tax, UBI.

I reply to Cyclefree's guff simply because nobody else on this forum bothers to point out that other views, and lived experiences, are available. It's not a topic I'd care to drone on about while literal drones are blowing up oil fields. It's almost like there are more important things going on.

It genuinely mortifies me that my partner's mere existence was something to be debated or argued about. Something that Max the Fash and Richard "Libertarian" Tindall might pontificate on.

I have never said that their 'existence' is something to be debated or argued about. As usual when you find your rather extremist views challenged you fall back on simple smears and lies. The argument, as it has always been in Cyclefree's pieces, is about the where the competing boundaries between rights should be set. Should Trans rights trump Women's rights? Should the laws we have governing the way we treat children be modified simply to satisfy an extremist Trans lobby? You continue to make clear with your TERF references that you oppose anyone who might suggest that the Trans lived experience and rights have to balanced with the the lived experience and rights of other groups. That is extremism and it serves both your arguments and the Trans community very badly.

Kyf's not on the extreme end. Eg he doesn't support self-ID (which several countries have btw). Cyclefree's position is actually the more extreme of the two.

I'll say it again, if you disagree with Cyclefree's headers or indeed any other headers including mine. I am happy to publish threads by you that disagree with a header, send me a Vanilla message with your pieces.

I'd be happy to contribute, but is PB really the best forum for it?

Things that interest me: Digital ID, the Online "Safety" Act, trial by jury (as noted above) leasehold reform, income tax, UBI.

I reply to Cyclefree's guff simply because nobody else on this forum bothers to point out that other views, and lived experiences, are available. It's not a topic I'd care to drone on about while literal drones are blowing up oil fields. It's almost like there are more important things going on.

It genuinely mortifies me that my partner's mere existence was something to be debated or argued about. Something that Max the Fash and Richard "Libertarian" Tindall might pontificate on.

I have never said that their 'existence' is something to be debated or argued about. As usual when you find your rather extremist views challenged you fall back on simple smears and lies. The argument, as it has always been in Cyclefree's pieces, is about the where the competing boundaries between rights should be set. Should Trans rights trump Women's rights? Should the laws we have governing the way we treat children be modified simply to satisfy an extremist Trans lobby? You continue to make clear with your TERF references that you oppose anyone who might suggest that the Trans lived experience and rights have to balanced with the the lived experience and rights of other groups. That is extremism and it serves both your arguments and the Trans community very badly.

If we went back to the era of transgender people actually trying to pass as their chosen gender, having the sex change operation, not trying to push their ideology on kids and generally just living low key lives nobody would give a fuck and they'd anonymously use women's facilities without either the women or society at large even realising other than the odd case here or there. Instead today we have men with cocks putting on dresses and demanding access to single sex women's spaces making absolutely zero effort to even pretend that they actually have gender dysphoria. The clap back is always "it's a spectrum" and not all transgender people are the same and some don't want to have the operation or even try and pass as their chosen gender but if that's the case then why does society indulge them. If they don't have gender dysphoria then what exactly is the reason then "need" access to single sex spaces?

But apparently that's a fascist perspective so what do I know.