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I find this kind of thinking almost as threatening as the notion of so-called "brainwashing" itself. The "brainwashee" refuses to believe he's been "brainwashed", which of course is exactly what a "brainwashed" person would say. And so I, the one who is aware of the "brainwashing" and of course am one of the chosen few who has never been susceptible to it, who can see The Matrix, will completely ignore anyone who doesn't agree with me -- because they must be "brainwashed".

Well, it might end with some kind of "harmony" but I wouldn't call it satisfying..

I believe that there are 2 ways for human society to shift into a harmonious and satisfying state (if it's possible/likely at all). One: traditional evolution, over more millions of years, sees us turn into creatures of actual logic and sense. Two: we create machines that are more logical and sensible than us and have them make the important decisions. The first option is far more likely and far nearer in the future. So I say we choose that one.

I think MIchael80 refers to Tacitus's Annals? I believe he did exist. His existence is more readily verifiable than that of Gautama or Laozi, or many other figures people believe existed with zero evidence.... Assuming Jesus the man of the stories did exist, and going by the stories of the Bible and apocrypha: From biography.com: "The Gospel of Luke (2:41-52) recounts that a 12-year-old Jesus had accompanied his parents on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and became separated. He was found several days later in a temple, discussing affairs with some of Jerusalem’s elders. Throughout the New Testament, there are trace references of Jesus working as a carpenter while a young adult. It is believed that he began his ministry at age 30" In order to study Taoism to any serious degree he would have had to travel to China, spend some years there, and return. Unless there was a Daoist master wandering around Rome/Israel. Which is possible, I suppose. (I write that in a doubtful tone). So... I doubt it.

I missed something along the way...! Wasn't aware what the stated intention of these threads was -- based on responses, assumed that it was just a fresh go at discussing the text chapter by chapter. But yes, even now I'm aware that the idea is to seek differences between translations (something my pedantic and argumentative nature usually jumps to!), I don't have much to say. The primary/explicit meaning is pretty clear. Though I'm sure some bums have some neigong-based and other esoteric interpretations. And Marblehead's version, applying the advice to oneself, also works as decent advice, perhaps.

I used to read it as "Empty your mind and fill your belly", as if it was referring to me, the reader. A simple bit of advice from a self-help book. But I was (bizarrely) ignoring very clear terms like "governing the people". Foremost it's (explicitly) referring to the people, the masses. Keep the people stupid, ignorant, unambitious, and they won't cause trouble. Everyone/everything will be peaceful. Good advice. Until widespread democracy and the internet. Now the people are ignorant and think we're capable of making sensible political decisions.

I am continually baffled at how many members here are essentially variations on Xenophilius Lovegood -- they will only believe something as long as there is no evidence of it, and the crazier the belief the more vehemently they'll defend it. Climate change is not a discussion. Stop being so silly. http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

We don't see the irony in this?

You won't like the source of this video (TYT -- I don't like it!) but the footage can be taken on its own merit to an extent. It shows footage of an O'Keefe associate, Allison Maass, talking to Ryan Clayton of American Action, plus interview footage with Clayton explaining his side of it. One still has to choose who to believe, I suppose, but it's relatively solid evidence that there are those on "the right" who are engaged in fairly subversive, if pathetic, crime (whether she's attempting to either lure Clayton into actually doing the crime or just saying he will on video). The next few years are going to be a treat.

Right. I'm sure that some of these from the last few days are truly vicious people. There are vicious people everywhere. Perhaps some really think they will further their political agenda by smashing windows... and they could be defined as terrorists if so. But the same has happened in the face of many presidents and other leaders around the world, including Obama. And there are always violent people around ready to use something as an excuse to be violent. No good excuse for smashing windows. Or hitting people, or throwing things that could hurt others. But most were peaceful. Not sure that there's any way to 'prove' it but I think the Comet thing was a joke -- they knew there was a 'mole' and were having fun with it by taking him to a place they knew hardcore Trump supporters would have heard about for certain reasons... There's also video evidence that James O'Keefe tried to pay 'progressives' a lot of money to cause a riot, in the hope that this would show 'progressives' as dangerous terrorists. It's all very silly. It's my current belief that the majority of people on any side of a political debate are morons. Including me and you...and everyone else in here..

You're now aware, I assume, that the whole thing was bull shit? I hope you and everyone else sees how silly it was to take it seriously. Comet Ping Pong? Really? Aside from that, this holier-than-thou attitude of Trump supporters really doesn't work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_threats_against_Barack_Obama Not to mention the wave of racist and violent abuse throughout the country throughout Obama's presidency, beginning with his election.

No no no. "Evidence" is an invention of the Left, and anyone who disagrees with Trump or the Right is brainwashed or being paid by evil leftist globalist cucks. Everyone on the Left is engaged in a global socialist conspiracy to impose Sharia Law, make everyone change their gender, trick everyone into believing in global warming for some reason, and eventually kill everyone with "vaccinations".

I don't expect you to care all that much about this one man in particular, but in the interest of fairness I'd encourage you to learn a bit more about him before labeling him "ultra"-anything -- he attempts to approach subjects of interest with caution, with an apparent desire to learn from others and acknowledge when he's made a mistake. He does make mistakes, and there are various things I disagree with him on, but generally I think he wanders between "left" and "right" politics pretty equally and makes some very good arguments. As far as "ultra liberal"... where are you getting that? And what does it mean? He describes himself as liberal, but why "ultra"?? He's pro-gay marriage and taxing the wealthy, but he's also pro-gun and vocally anti-Islam. That's not ultra-liberal to me. Aside from that, he doesn't talk of being a fervent Clinton supporter, only that she is the lesser of two evils. And I think he makes the point well. Well you probably know how I feel about the Trump/Clinton debate by now.

What?

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/blondehaired-moth-with-small-genitals-named-after-donald-trump/

Recently I posted an article in Off Topic about how robots are continuing to take the place of workers in various areas and how we might need to start thinking about what the future holds in terms of jobs, income, the economy etc when eventually there's not much essential (food, clothes, medicine) left for humans to do. So that's something to think about. But the main question that people have been concerned with for such a long time is that of AI's potential to turn on humanity -- out of fear, or apathy, or desire for efficiency, or something -- and decide that we are a threat, or an obstacle, or a useless appendage, and get rid of us. It seems that we are at once intent on creating ever-more intelligent and humanoid types of machine and scared that the machines we're intent on creating will eventually decide to kill us. I want to start this topic off with something we don't encounter very often in the mainstream media: the notion that this future AI will likely not threaten us. That, as it will be of our own design and imbued with an essentially human culture / set of values to proceed from, it will not necessarily simply be a Matrix or Terminator bent on human enslavement or annihilation, but will almost certainly be able to help us solve various problems with society, poverty, disease, the environment, etc. So far, the most intelligent machines/algorithms we have are either useless or positively helpful: DeepMind's AlphaGo can win at Go, which is pretty useless, but DeepMind are also partnering in various medical initiatives in the UK including research into blindness and cancer -- which is hopefully going to be very positive. Though there have been controversies about data/medical information. Anyway, the following discussion between David Deutsch and Sam Harris is interesting and quite thought-provoking, and hopefully sets the tone for a balanced discussion. It's only 20 mins. I think there are a lot of spiritual questions to be encountered here, including questions concerning human behaviour and the nature of consciousness and the ethics of human augmentation... so it's in General Discussion. edit: See also this talk with Elon Musk, starting at 11:04: https://youtu.be/ycJeht-Mfus?t=11m4s

The comic is brilliant Will have a look at the book What social impact exactly?

I'm glad to see some of you obviously know your stuff (and a damn sight more than me!) and in differing areas (and with differing opinions!). All I know of AI tech itself is what I've read online in the last few days, so nothing at all really. I'm about to read about memristors but have a feeling it'll be as beyond me as when I tried reading about convolutional neural networks. Quantum computing in this area is also promising things, no?

I'd like to discuss things by using facts and figures. I'd like to learn more and 'improve' my perspective by limiting discussion to hard info. There are a lot of potential topics, but to start with there are some things I'd like to clear up, or try to, about the UK. I'll start that off in the next post. First, there are 3 rules: 1. Topic of conversation can change, but change must be 'organic' -- sudden topic changes, non sequiturs, etc, are prohibited. Reply to a previous post, and if the topic changes naturally that's OK. 2. Try to forget what you think you know or believe. In fact, try to either (a) simply lay out the facts/figures and reserve judgement or ( argue against what you currently believe. 3. Most importantly, do not post an argument without relying on (and citing) actual data. By this I mean not 'facts' from some anonymous blog, or unsourced numbers plucked from Wikipedia, but data from organizations such as national government, UN, WHO; from major surveys; from peer-reviewed journal articles; etc. We should be looking at a lot of spreadsheets, graphs, studies, and other boring shit. Basically, if you want to argue a point but you can't find hard numbers or similar verifiable information to back up a claim, stay away from that 'Reply' button. We are, of course, entitled to opinions on the data, and to discuss the veracity of claims etc, but there is a point at which individual opinion ('I like the colour blue') becomes biased nonsense ('black people are violent') -- this is what we want to avoid.

But, of course, nobody wants to hear that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x4SjSRSySk

Perhaps I know something of this sense. Not sentience, but certainly a sense of awe and connectedness. And not really 'artificial'

Well... there are people sincerely trying to create more and more complex machines, and even if the limit is an imitational intelligence, there is still the question of what that might entail. And some just find it interesting! Thanks for the article. People have believed lots of things to be impossible... There is another thing in this article mentioned in the interview, and something I'd hoped to discuss -- the assimilation of machines. Any thoughts on the ethics of this?

Nobody's English is perfect..that was an easy misunderstanding to make. He should have used 'will' instead of 'can'. I suppose 'ground-breaking' is a subjective term.. perhaps there hasn't been a complete reexamination of how to approach building these machines, but who's to say that a single groundbreaking invention will be the key? Maybe it's just a matter of time, of consistent development. I dunno. Anyway, the speed of discovery doesn't deny that the discovery will likely be made, eventually... Yah