A robot painted a fairy. The computers are now deep into Uncanny Valley, and maybe coming out the other side
That is bloody horrible. Not looking forward to AI overlords who can produce that shit.
Yes. Genuinely disturbing, and in an inexplicable way. Uncanny…
A few friends and I were messing around with a Magic the Gathering card generator, which produced some plausible results. The issue is that it doesn’t have the contextual reasoning ability to tell if a card is sensible, bonkers or overpowered. You can train it to do things, but I don’t think we’re at the point where we’re educating it.
Is a virus sentient? A wasp? Protozoa? A 15 week fetus? A 25 week fetus? A dog? A raven? A woman in a deep coma?
Right now I’d say AI is exhibiting sentience on the same level as a superbly gifted 20 week old human fetus in utero
What is being touted as AI is little more than one of those memes that will generate Daily Mail headlines, but with a very large training database. That's useful, and interesting in its way, but it's a long way from exhibiting sentience as we see it in animals and children.
The Turing Test has a lot to answer for as it's a superficially appealing answer to the question of how to determine if something is intelligent, but it leaves a lot to be desired.
That is a misunderstanding of the test (I think). While it ostensibly tests for intelligence it is really a thought experiment showing the limitations on the evidence available to us. You don't know if I am sentient or not; there are posters here and I hope I am not one of them who could be replaced by a GPT3 engine trained on their output to date, and no one would know the difference. Even for more original and intelligent thinkers one can't know for certain that they are not just better written GPT3s with more and better training material.
There's an interesting side to this: take a paragraph of many posters' output, without timestamp or username, and we will be able to detect *who* the poster was from the style.
For instance, here are two segment from a thread three years ago, by two posters who are still active:
"The fundamentals - that Britain has no idea about what its relationship with the EU should be - has not been resolved. It is this failure which lies at the heart of the Tory party’s agonies and the agonies of whichever leader it has at the time."
and
"Widdecombe stands ready to serve the nation. She could pass for Brenda hurling herself out of an AW-189. I'll volunteer to pack her parachute."
I'd argue it's possible to guess who posted those from just those short segments, though the first is harder.
“When I began having such exchanges with the latest generation of neural net-based language models last year, I felt the ground shift under my feet. I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.”
I’ve been reading around AI this morning. AI is basically here already
You can teach a parrot to say "Help, they've turned me into a parrot", but that doesn't make it a person.
No, it would be a parrot. An intelligent being, but not a human
That’s just some computer nerd. Wtf does he know about the intense mystery of consciousness? It’s like asking a nurse in the brain surgery ward how the mind creates love
Sorry about that. I thought you might actually want to listen to someone who does AI stuff for a living, but I forgot your primary goal appears to be trying to pass for sentient.......
I watched it. He’s a nerd. A techie. Expecting him to have an insightful answer is a category error
Do you ask the guy at Kwikfit whether cars are bad for the planet?
It’s the same reason why some of the computer nerds on here are totally clueless on the PHILOSOPHICAL subject of AI
I have a book that knows the entire works of Shakespeare and a tree that can grow apples. Despite this they don't have AI.
Interesting observation from @DavidL earlier claiming devolution had distanced the Scottish people from the UK Parliament. It begs the question of the extent to which any centralised state is undermined by decentralisation and /or devolution.
The second part if it is or are the perceived or actual inequities of different regions being treated differently. There's a patchwork quilt of that across England from the complexities of London (Boroughs vs The Mayor) to the two-tier levels of local Government still in existence.
The whole thing needs rationalising and bringing into line - should Glasgow City Council have the same rights, responsibilities, obligations and powers as Birmingham, Cardiff or Sheffield? If not, why not?
That then opens the door to an English Parliament as the next step up from the network of unitary councils having similar powers to the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament (perhaps) before you get to the UK level of Government.
Decision making is one thing - serious fiscal autonomy/independence. UK Government continues to prove unwilling to allow councils of any stripe too much financial power but to what extent does that undermine or preserve the unitary state?
Interesting observation from @DavidL earlier claiming devolution had distanced the Scottish people from the UK Parliament. It begs the question of the extent to which any centralised state is undermined by decentralisation and /or devolution.
The second part if it is or are the perceived or actual inequities of different regions being treated differently. There's a patchwork quilt of that across England from the complexities of London (Boroughs vs The Mayor) to the two-tier levels of local Government still in existence.
The whole thing needs rationalising and bringing into line - should Glasgow City Council have the same rights, responsibilities, obligations and powers as Birmingham, Cardiff or Sheffield? If not, why not?
That then opens the door to an English Parliament as the next step up from the network of unitary councils having similar powers to the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament (perhaps) before you get to the UK level of Government.
Decision making is one thing - serious fiscal autonomy/independence. UK Government continues to prove unwilling to allow councils of any stripe too much financial power but to what extent does that undermine or preserve the unitary state?
It will take a very bold mainstream politician to campaign for an English Parliament. The strong preference (despite leaving the EU) still seems to be to balkanise England as much as possible.
“When I began having such exchanges with the latest generation of neural net-based language models last year, I felt the ground shift under my feet. I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.”
I’ve been reading around AI this morning. AI is basically here already
You can teach a parrot to say "Help, they've turned me into a parrot", but that doesn't make it a person.
No, it would be a parrot. An intelligent being, but not a human
That’s just some computer nerd. Wtf does he know about the intense mystery of consciousness? It’s like asking a nurse in the brain surgery ward how the mind creates love
Sorry about that. I thought you might actually want to listen to someone who does AI stuff for a living, but I forgot your primary goal appears to be trying to pass for sentient.......
I watched it. He’s a nerd. A techie. Expecting him to have an insightful answer is a category error
Do you ask the guy at Kwikfit whether cars are bad for the planet?
It’s the same reason why some of the computer nerds on here are totally clueless on the PHILOSOPHICAL subject of AI
I have a book that knows the entire works of Shakespeare and a tree that can grow apples. Despite this they don't have AI.
It’s an interesting debate: whether plants such as trees are in some ways intelligent or sentient
They have life and purpose. They grow and reproduce. They sicken and die
Interesting observation from @DavidL earlier claiming devolution had distanced the Scottish people from the UK Parliament. It begs the question of the extent to which any centralised state is undermined by decentralisation and /or devolution.
The second part if it is or are the perceived or actual inequities of different regions being treated differently. There's a patchwork quilt of that across England from the complexities of London (Boroughs vs The Mayor) to the two-tier levels of local Government still in existence.
The whole thing needs rationalising and bringing into line - should Glasgow City Council have the same rights, responsibilities, obligations and powers as Birmingham, Cardiff or Sheffield? If not, why not?
That then opens the door to an English Parliament as the next step up from the network of unitary councils having similar powers to the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament (perhaps) before you get to the UK level of Government.
Decision making is one thing - serious fiscal autonomy/independence. UK Government continues to prove unwilling to allow councils of any stripe too much financial power but to what extent does that undermine or preserve the unitary state?
It will take a very bold mainstream politician to campaign for an English Parliament. The strong preference (despite leaving the EU) still seems to be to balkanise England as much as possible.
An English Parliament castrates the UK Parliament. The English First Minister will become more powerful than the UK Prime Minister.
We could do it - but it would fundamentally change this country.
Interesting observation from @DavidL earlier claiming devolution had distanced the Scottish people from the UK Parliament. It begs the question of the extent to which any centralised state is undermined by decentralisation and /or devolution.
The second part if it is or are the perceived or actual inequities of different regions being treated differently. There's a patchwork quilt of that across England from the complexities of London (Boroughs vs The Mayor) to the two-tier levels of local Government still in existence.
The whole thing needs rationalising and bringing into line - should Glasgow City Council have the same rights, responsibilities, obligations and powers as Birmingham, Cardiff or Sheffield? If not, why not?
That then opens the door to an English Parliament as the next step up from the network of unitary councils having similar powers to the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament (perhaps) before you get to the UK level of Government.
Decision making is one thing - serious fiscal autonomy/independence. UK Government continues to prove unwilling to allow councils of any stripe too much financial power but to what extent does that undermine or preserve the unitary state?
It will take a very bold mainstream politician to campaign for an English Parliament. The strong preference (despite leaving the EU) still seems to be to balkanise England as much as possible.
The English Democrats stand at local and national elections on a platform of an English Parliament
Interesting observation from @DavidL earlier claiming devolution had distanced the Scottish people from the UK Parliament. It begs the question of the extent to which any centralised state is undermined by decentralisation and /or devolution.
The second part if it is or are the perceived or actual inequities of different regions being treated differently. There's a patchwork quilt of that across England from the complexities of London (Boroughs vs The Mayor) to the two-tier levels of local Government still in existence.
The whole thing needs rationalising and bringing into line - should Glasgow City Council have the same rights, responsibilities, obligations and powers as Birmingham, Cardiff or Sheffield? If not, why not?
That then opens the door to an English Parliament as the next step up from the network of unitary councils having similar powers to the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament (perhaps) before you get to the UK level of Government.
Decision making is one thing - serious fiscal autonomy/independence. UK Government continues to prove unwilling to allow councils of any stripe too much financial power but to what extent does that undermine or preserve the unitary state?
It will take a very bold mainstream politician to campaign for an English Parliament. The strong preference (despite leaving the EU) still seems to be to balkanise England as much as possible.
I'm not sure that's the answer either - I've never been that keen. The problem with the current mess is it's a mess though one could argue it recognises disparities and there's no "one size fits all" solution.
An example - do you accept Portsmouth or Southampton are big enough and ugly enough to govern themselves? If so, what about the rural hinterland and small towns beyond so you end up with a patchwork of small councils and a couple of big city councils? The other approach is to simply say all of Hampshire is one council (including Portsmouth and Southampton)? In effect, the counties become your "balkanised" structure - large if not very large power structures doing everything - efficiencies of scale? Maybe but does that create a sense of identity? It may do for Yorkshire, Cornwall and other places but everywhere?
“When I began having such exchanges with the latest generation of neural net-based language models last year, I felt the ground shift under my feet. I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.”
I’ve been reading around AI this morning. AI is basically here already
You can teach a parrot to say "Help, they've turned me into a parrot", but that doesn't make it a person.
No, it would be a parrot. An intelligent being, but not a human
That’s just some computer nerd. Wtf does he know about the intense mystery of consciousness? It’s like asking a nurse in the brain surgery ward how the mind creates love
Sorry about that. I thought you might actually want to listen to someone who does AI stuff for a living, but I forgot your primary goal appears to be trying to pass for sentient.......
I watched it. He’s a nerd. A techie. Expecting him to have an insightful answer is a category error
Do you ask the guy at Kwikfit whether cars are bad for the planet?
It’s the same reason why some of the computer nerds on here are totally clueless on the PHILOSOPHICAL subject of AI
I have a book that knows the entire works of Shakespeare and a tree that can grow apples. Despite this they don't have AI.
It’s an interesting debate: whether plants such as trees are in some ways intelligent or sentient
They have life and purpose. They grow and reproduce. They sicken and die
Interesting observation from @DavidL earlier claiming devolution had distanced the Scottish people from the UK Parliament. It begs the question of the extent to which any centralised state is undermined by decentralisation and /or devolution.
The second part if it is or are the perceived or actual inequities of different regions being treated differently. There's a patchwork quilt of that across England from the complexities of London (Boroughs vs The Mayor) to the two-tier levels of local Government still in existence.
The whole thing needs rationalising and bringing into line - should Glasgow City Council have the same rights, responsibilities, obligations and powers as Birmingham, Cardiff or Sheffield? If not, why not?
That then opens the door to an English Parliament as the next step up from the network of unitary councils having similar powers to the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament (perhaps) before you get to the UK level of Government.
Decision making is one thing - serious fiscal autonomy/independence. UK Government continues to prove unwilling to allow councils of any stripe too much financial power but to what extent does that undermine or preserve the unitary state?
It will take a very bold mainstream politician to campaign for an English Parliament. The strong preference (despite leaving the EU) still seems to be to balkanise England as much as possible.
An English Parliament castrates the UK Parliament. The English First Minister will become more powerful than the UK Prime Minister.
We could do it - but it would fundamentally change this country.
'The real trick of McKinsey is being everywhere. If you are a corporate strategist, you can try to do the best you can with what your analysts tell you and your own data. But if you hire McKinsey you are sure their advice will be at least as good as the one they are giving your competitors. Of course they don’t make it obvious. They have internal shielding, privacy protection, the whole shebang. But you might get invited to be part of the benchmark which matters and their internal documentation pulls cleverly from all their cases. It’s subtle but hiring them is the closest you can get to a cartel without crossing the line. That’s why they are so expensive.'
Would any PBer care to elaborate?
That’s sounds like the “negative but positive “ pitch that McKinsey and the other big consultancies would like you to believe.
Personally I think their advice is a bit like AI. Sounds awesome and produces some funky art (PowerPoint) but when you give it a real problem like fully autonomous driving, it fails.
Their mind set seems to run on tram lines - all about outsourcing, turning your business into a hedge fund that owns IP. Despite that model having failed many, many times. Works for a bit - until you need new IP. And all your knowledge creators have been outsourced…
Interesting observation from @DavidL earlier claiming devolution had distanced the Scottish people from the UK Parliament. It begs the question of the extent to which any centralised state is undermined by decentralisation and /or devolution.
The second part if it is or are the perceived or actual inequities of different regions being treated differently. There's a patchwork quilt of that across England from the complexities of London (Boroughs vs The Mayor) to the two-tier levels of local Government still in existence.
The whole thing needs rationalising and bringing into line - should Glasgow City Council have the same rights, responsibilities, obligations and powers as Birmingham, Cardiff or Sheffield? If not, why not?
That then opens the door to an English Parliament as the next step up from the network of unitary councils having similar powers to the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament (perhaps) before you get to the UK level of Government.
Decision making is one thing - serious fiscal autonomy/independence. UK Government continues to prove unwilling to allow councils of any stripe too much financial power but to what extent does that undermine or preserve the unitary state?
It will take a very bold mainstream politician to campaign for an English Parliament. The strong preference (despite leaving the EU) still seems to be to balkanise England as much as possible.
An English Parliament castrates the UK Parliament. The English First Minister will become more powerful than the UK Prime Minister.
We could do it - but it would fundamentally change this country.
Only in terms of English domestic policy, in Scotland, Wales and NI the UK PM would have powers, the English FM none at all
“When I began having such exchanges with the latest generation of neural net-based language models last year, I felt the ground shift under my feet. I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.”
I’ve been reading around AI this morning. AI is basically here already
You can teach a parrot to say "Help, they've turned me into a parrot", but that doesn't make it a person.
No, it would be a parrot. An intelligent being, but not a human
That’s just some computer nerd. Wtf does he know about the intense mystery of consciousness? It’s like asking a nurse in the brain surgery ward how the mind creates love
Sorry about that. I thought you might actually want to listen to someone who does AI stuff for a living, but I forgot your primary goal appears to be trying to pass for sentient.......
I watched it. He’s a nerd. A techie. Expecting him to have an insightful answer is a category error
Do you ask the guy at Kwikfit whether cars are bad for the planet?
It’s the same reason why some of the computer nerds on here are totally clueless on the PHILOSOPHICAL subject of AI
I have a book that knows the entire works of Shakespeare and a tree that can grow apples. Despite this they don't have AI.
Trees is interesting, pre-Darwin they were taken as strong evidence of conscious intelligence (the watchmaker argument). Post Darwin the consensus is that unthinking evolution can produce conscious beings (us) which improves the odds that we can do so.
A lot of the attacks on the possibility of AI are brute reductionism - "that's not consciousness, that just an algorithm..." which discounts the possibility that consciousness is just a stack of algorithms. It's like helicopters - the fact that they fly is magic to primitive hunter gatherers, and to me, whereas to a normal human being they are explicable as It's just the petrol exploding in the cylinders which turns the crank which turns the blades which... Reducing it to that may prove that it's not magic. It doesn't prove that helicopters don't really fly.
Interesting observation from @DavidL earlier claiming devolution had distanced the Scottish people from the UK Parliament. It begs the question of the extent to which any centralised state is undermined by decentralisation and /or devolution.
The second part if it is or are the perceived or actual inequities of different regions being treated differently. There's a patchwork quilt of that across England from the complexities of London (Boroughs vs The Mayor) to the two-tier levels of local Government still in existence.
The whole thing needs rationalising and bringing into line - should Glasgow City Council have the same rights, responsibilities, obligations and powers as Birmingham, Cardiff or Sheffield? If not, why not?
That then opens the door to an English Parliament as the next step up from the network of unitary councils having similar powers to the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament (perhaps) before you get to the UK level of Government.
Decision making is one thing - serious fiscal autonomy/independence. UK Government continues to prove unwilling to allow councils of any stripe too much financial power but to what extent does that undermine or preserve the unitary state?
You didn't even get into the City Mayors. Some coterminous with the Police force. Others with their own PPC's.
“When I began having such exchanges with the latest generation of neural net-based language models last year, I felt the ground shift under my feet. I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.”
I’ve been reading around AI this morning. AI is basically here already
You can teach a parrot to say "Help, they've turned me into a parrot", but that doesn't make it a person.
No, it would be a parrot. An intelligent being, but not a human
That’s just some computer nerd. Wtf does he know about the intense mystery of consciousness? It’s like asking a nurse in the brain surgery ward how the mind creates love
Sorry about that. I thought you might actually want to listen to someone who does AI stuff for a living, but I forgot your primary goal appears to be trying to pass for sentient.......
I watched it. He’s a nerd. A techie. Expecting him to have an insightful answer is a category error
Do you ask the guy at Kwikfit whether cars are bad for the planet?
It’s the same reason why some of the computer nerds on here are totally clueless on the PHILOSOPHICAL subject of AI
I have a book that knows the entire works of Shakespeare and a tree that can grow apples. Despite this they don't have AI.
It’s an interesting debate: whether plants such as trees are in some ways intelligent or sentient
They have life and purpose. They grow and reproduce. They sicken and die
“When I began having such exchanges with the latest generation of neural net-based language models last year, I felt the ground shift under my feet. I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.”
I’ve been reading around AI this morning. AI is basically here already
You can teach a parrot to say "Help, they've turned me into a parrot", but that doesn't make it a person.
No, it would be a parrot. An intelligent being, but not a human
That’s just some computer nerd. Wtf does he know about the intense mystery of consciousness? It’s like asking a nurse in the brain surgery ward how the mind creates love
Sorry about that. I thought you might actually want to listen to someone who does AI stuff for a living, but I forgot your primary goal appears to be trying to pass for sentient.......
I watched it. He’s a nerd. A techie. Expecting him to have an insightful answer is a category error
Do you ask the guy at Kwikfit whether cars are bad for the planet?
It’s the same reason why some of the computer nerds on here are totally clueless on the PHILOSOPHICAL subject of AI
I have a book that knows the entire works of Shakespeare and a tree that can grow apples. Despite this they don't have AI.
It’s an interesting debate: whether plants such as trees are in some ways intelligent or sentient
They have life and purpose. They grow and reproduce. They sicken and die
“When I began having such exchanges with the latest generation of neural net-based language models last year, I felt the ground shift under my feet. I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.”
I’ve been reading around AI this morning. AI is basically here already
You can teach a parrot to say "Help, they've turned me into a parrot", but that doesn't make it a person.
No, it would be a parrot. An intelligent being, but not a human
That’s just some computer nerd. Wtf does he know about the intense mystery of consciousness? It’s like asking a nurse in the brain surgery ward how the mind creates love
Sorry about that. I thought you might actually want to listen to someone who does AI stuff for a living, but I forgot your primary goal appears to be trying to pass for sentient.......
I watched it. He’s a nerd. A techie. Expecting him to have an insightful answer is a category error
Do you ask the guy at Kwikfit whether cars are bad for the planet?
It’s the same reason why some of the computer nerds on here are totally clueless on the PHILOSOPHICAL subject of AI
I have a book that knows the entire works of Shakespeare and a tree that can grow apples. Despite this they don't have AI.
It’s an interesting debate: whether plants such as trees are in some ways intelligent or sentient
They have life and purpose. They grow and reproduce. They sicken and die
Is a tree intelligent? I’m hesitant to say Yes or No. But if they are intelligent it is very different to human intelligence. Ditto AI?
They have purpose? That is not an objective fact but an opinion. What do you mean by they have purpose?
I remember my uncle asking what the purpose of moss was. He was quite religious and of the 'everything has a purpose' mindset. "Why did God put it on the Earth?" was the implication.
After considering the contribution of the moss in question to the ecosystem, and the service it provides to humans, I don't think he quite appreciated the final summary.
“When I began having such exchanges with the latest generation of neural net-based language models last year, I felt the ground shift under my feet. I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.”
I’ve been reading around AI this morning. AI is basically here already
You can teach a parrot to say "Help, they've turned me into a parrot", but that doesn't make it a person.
No, it would be a parrot. An intelligent being, but not a human
That’s just some computer nerd. Wtf does he know about the intense mystery of consciousness? It’s like asking a nurse in the brain surgery ward how the mind creates love
Sorry about that. I thought you might actually want to listen to someone who does AI stuff for a living, but I forgot your primary goal appears to be trying to pass for sentient.......
I watched it. He’s a nerd. A techie. Expecting him to have an insightful answer is a category error
Do you ask the guy at Kwikfit whether cars are bad for the planet?
It’s the same reason why some of the computer nerds on here are totally clueless on the PHILOSOPHICAL subject of AI
I have a book that knows the entire works of Shakespeare and a tree that can grow apples. Despite this they don't have AI.
Trees is interesting, pre-Darwin they were taken as strong evidence of conscious intelligence (the watchmaker argument). Post Darwin the consensus is that unthinking evolution can produce conscious beings (us) which improves the odds that we can do so.
A lot of the attacks on the possibility of AI are brute reductionism - "that's not consciousness, that just an algorithm..." which discounts the possibility that consciousness is just a stack of algorithms. It's like helicopters - the fact that they fly is magic to primitive hunter gatherers, and to me, whereas to a normal human being they are explicable as It's just the petrol exploding in the cylinders which turns the crank which turns the blades which... Reducing it to that may prove that it's not magic. It doesn't prove that helicopters don't really fly.
There is definitely a difference between reactive behaviour to a stimuli - beavers plastering over speakers playing the sound of running water - vs evidence of applying prior learner experience to a different problem. Which apes and some other higher intelligence animals seem to do.
A robot painted a fairy. The computers are now deep into Uncanny Valley, and maybe coming out the other side
That is bloody horrible. Not looking forward to AI overlords who can produce that shit.
Yes. Genuinely disturbing, and in an inexplicable way. Uncanny…
A few friends and I were messing around with a Magic the Gathering card generator, which produced some plausible results. The issue is that it doesn’t have the contextual reasoning ability to tell if a card is sensible, bonkers or overpowered. You can train it to do things, but I don’t think we’re at the point where we’re educating it.
Is a virus sentient? A wasp? Protozoa? A 15 week fetus? A 25 week fetus? A dog? A raven? A woman in a deep coma?
Right now I’d say AI is exhibiting sentience on the same level as a superbly gifted 20 week old human fetus in utero
Most humans I speak to at call centres don't appear to be sentient to be honest, so I guess it is getting difficult to tell these days.
Had my first 'bank scam' call the other day. Not much "I" on display, "A" or otherwise. Chap on the line told me my account had been hacked and I needed to bla bla bla urgently to protect it. I asked him what bank he was calling from and he said in a thick accent, "The mother of all banks, the bank of innerland."
Interesting observation from @DavidL earlier claiming devolution had distanced the Scottish people from the UK Parliament. It begs the question of the extent to which any centralised state is undermined by decentralisation and /or devolution.
The second part if it is or are the perceived or actual inequities of different regions being treated differently. There's a patchwork quilt of that across England from the complexities of London (Boroughs vs The Mayor) to the two-tier levels of local Government still in existence.
The whole thing needs rationalising and bringing into line - should Glasgow City Council have the same rights, responsibilities, obligations and powers as Birmingham, Cardiff or Sheffield? If not, why not?
That then opens the door to an English Parliament as the next step up from the network of unitary councils having similar powers to the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament (perhaps) before you get to the UK level of Government.
Decision making is one thing - serious fiscal autonomy/independence. UK Government continues to prove unwilling to allow councils of any stripe too much financial power but to what extent does that undermine or preserve the unitary state?
You didn't even get into the City Mayors. Some coterminous with the Police force. Others with their own PPC's.
It’s utter bullshit.
Everything - police, fire, health, education, etc - should have the same boundaries.
20 odd metros 38 counties (Middlesex having been subsumed into London).
Really surprised by Venice. Just coming out the train station was amazing, and it's so much bigger than I expected. Feels like it would take weeks to understand how it all works.
Not particularly busy either. Nor expensive (took the advice from last night, but only the immediate centre was pricey).
Made me reflect on Edinburgh and what a rubbish job we've done with it.
I remember the first time I went to Venice. The greatest joy for me after the initial rush of 'holy cow, this is *really* pretty' was just wandering and wandering and wandering. Every so often coming across yet another pretty square, another delightful little cafe/bar, then onwards down yet more side streets to see what awaited.
Really is a delightful place.
I also am very fond of it in the depths of winter. Not sure if it's the place itself or my memories of watching the freezing cold Venice of "Don't Look Now" - but either way, it's a very nice experience.
Interesting observation from @DavidL earlier claiming devolution had distanced the Scottish people from the UK Parliament. It begs the question of the extent to which any centralised state is undermined by decentralisation and /or devolution.
The second part if it is or are the perceived or actual inequities of different regions being treated differently. There's a patchwork quilt of that across England from the complexities of London (Boroughs vs The Mayor) to the two-tier levels of local Government still in existence.
The whole thing needs rationalising and bringing into line - should Glasgow City Council have the same rights, responsibilities, obligations and powers as Birmingham, Cardiff or Sheffield? If not, why not?
That then opens the door to an English Parliament as the next step up from the network of unitary councils having similar powers to the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament (perhaps) before you get to the UK level of Government.
Decision making is one thing - serious fiscal autonomy/independence. UK Government continues to prove unwilling to allow councils of any stripe too much financial power but to what extent does that undermine or preserve the unitary state?
It will take a very bold mainstream politician to campaign for an English Parliament. The strong preference (despite leaving the EU) still seems to be to balkanise England as much as possible.
An English Parliament castrates the UK Parliament. The English First Minister will become more powerful than the UK Prime Minister.
We could do it - but it would fundamentally change this country.
Only in terms of English domestic policy, in Scotland, Wales and NI the UK PM would have powers, the English FM none at all
Nonsense. The UK PM would have the same powers in England as in Scotland, Wales and NI.
Comments
44% oppose indyref2 and 56% don't oppose it and therefore there should be one?
Have I misunderstood your argument the other day at all?
Interesting observation from @DavidL earlier claiming devolution had distanced the Scottish people from the UK Parliament. It begs the question of the extent to which any centralised state is undermined by decentralisation and /or devolution.
The second part if it is or are the perceived or actual inequities of different regions being treated differently. There's a patchwork quilt of that across England from the complexities of London (Boroughs vs The Mayor) to the two-tier levels of local Government still in existence.
The whole thing needs rationalising and bringing into line - should Glasgow City Council have the same rights, responsibilities, obligations and powers as Birmingham, Cardiff or Sheffield? If not, why not?
That then opens the door to an English Parliament as the next step up from the network of unitary councils having similar powers to the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament (perhaps) before you get to the UK level of Government.
Decision making is one thing - serious fiscal autonomy/independence. UK Government continues to prove unwilling to allow councils of any stripe too much financial power but to what extent does that undermine or preserve the unitary state?
They have life and purpose. They grow and reproduce. They sicken and die
It is also possible they communicate
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/
Is a tree intelligent? I’m hesitant to say Yes or No. But if they are intelligent it is very different to human intelligence. Ditto AI?
We could do it - but it would fundamentally change this country.
An example - do you accept Portsmouth or Southampton are big enough and ugly enough to govern themselves? If so, what about the rural hinterland and small towns beyond so you end up with a patchwork of small councils and a couple of big city councils? The other approach is to simply say all of Hampshire is one council (including Portsmouth and Southampton)? In effect, the counties become your "balkanised" structure - large if not very large power structures doing everything - efficiencies of scale? Maybe but does that create a sense of identity? It may do for Yorkshire, Cornwall and other places but everywhere?
Personally I think their advice is a bit like AI. Sounds awesome and produces some funky art (PowerPoint) but when you give it a real problem like fully autonomous driving, it fails.
Their mind set seems to run on tram lines - all about outsourcing, turning your business into a hedge fund that owns IP. Despite that model having failed many, many times. Works for a bit - until you need new IP. And all your knowledge creators have been outsourced…
A lot of the attacks on the possibility of AI are brute reductionism - "that's not consciousness, that just an algorithm..." which discounts the possibility that consciousness is just a stack of algorithms. It's like helicopters - the fact that they fly is magic to primitive hunter gatherers, and to me, whereas to a normal human being they are explicable as It's just the petrol exploding in the cylinders which turns the crank which turns the blades which... Reducing it to that may prove that it's not magic. It doesn't prove that helicopters don't really fly.
NEW THREAD
After considering the contribution of the moss in question to the ecosystem, and the service it provides to humans, I don't think he quite appreciated the final summary.
To make more moss.
The purpose of a tree is to make more trees.
https://twitter.com/patrickclair/status/1543398538150756352?s=21&t=JglWOmidv01r7cg1N5S_PA
Really poor show.
Everything - police, fire, health, education, etc - should have the same boundaries.
20 odd metros
38 counties (Middlesex having been subsumed into London).
End of.
(This is for England).
Really is a delightful place.
I also am very fond of it in the depths of winter. Not sure if it's the place itself or my memories of watching the freezing cold Venice of "Don't Look Now" - but either way, it's a very nice experience.