Yeah I think you’re right and it’s sort of the result of a long game of telephone. Soy is a complete protein but it’s a lower quality protein. For example whey protein, which comes from milk and therefore an animal product, is much easier for your body to process and use.

Studies have shown that while both are complete proteins, whey’s amino acid profile for example is superior for muscle growth. A few of the amino acids in soy your body can’t really use that well.

This simple fact slowly becomes “soy is dangerous” as one person tells another and shares a link on Facebook and so on.

People really need to learn to just search up research articles and read a few studies. It’s not that hard to do and it’s generally the most reliable way to learn about something.

That’s a noble sentiment, truly.

So, let’s consider taking a stand by eliminating our use of products like lithium-ion batteries, laptops, electric cars, and all the myriad of devices that make our lives more convenient and connected. If we really want to inspire change, locally and globally, we should start by examining our own consumption habits, right?

I trust you’ll lead the way by taking the first steps to eliminate your reliance on these technologies. It’s a tall order, but change has to start somewhere, doesn’t it?

No, they still will. And we will still buy the lithium to run our phones and laptops.

It’s just we will export the damage to 3rd world countries instead.

If the mining company doesn’t make enough $$$ they won’t do it and will just go somewhere else that makes $$$. You cut out 50% profit and it makes it a pretty easy decision to avoid US mines and go to other countries.

Ultimately they are for profit businesses that will focus their investment on where they can make the most profit. It’s sort of like how fracking for oil is only done once it reaches a certain price per barrel. Before a price point, it’s not profitable. After, it is.

50% profit reduction is a huge decrease. Would make virtually any other mine in the world more profitable.

However, I’m quite concerned about firearms being used for their primary purpose: killing people

Killing someone is not immediately against the law, though. It depends on your state laws and the context of the killing. In most states you can kill someone to defend yourself from a reasonable threat to your life.

The “primary purpose” is not murder. It’s to kill someone. I would perhaps agree with you depending on the weapon. Like if a company was selling a grenade that explodes with cyanide gas or something. I think they should be held liable for that.

It certainly doesn’t hurt! lol I’m headed to the kava bar soon

I don’t let external events impact my personal life. Only stress about things you can control. If the world blows up in nuclear war, so be it. Until then, I’m chugging along, enjoying the ride.

I’m hopeful that with the advance of technology there comes significant societal and political changes that will result in a more equitable society. It might get better before it gets worse, if history is any teacher, but there’s potential for great things.

That’s why psychological torture is preferred by a lot of “advanced interrogators”.

Keep someone locked in the same uncomfortable position for days while you’re blasting aggressive disorienting sounds and randomly flashing blinding lights in a room with mirrors.

Once in a while, take them and do a few hours of water boarding. Make sure they’re constantly sleep deprived and can never get more than a few minutes of sleep.

Then when you do want to inflict physical pain, focus on the feet very slowly. Feet is one of the most sensitive areas. Slowly start peeling the skin or stick nails through the toes, or practice some electroshock therapy.

Honestly torture is terrifying. I recently read a long form article about it. Worst part is, our “civilized” governments still do this with some amount of regularity. Would be more civilized to put a bullet in the head.

Then think about near future where we can read thoughts (like 1984 where the “advanced interrogator” reads the protagonists mind to figure out what his greatest fear is) or even worse implant thoughts. They could implant images of you murdering your family or something. There’s a lot of potential for some horrifying stuff.

Ok let’s say I’m poor. I have a job that pays very little. I could choose to work more hours to get more money OR I could choose to take night classes and get a degree in something.

In the second case, I’m giving up temporary income for more long term income. Just because I’m giving up income does not mean I’m making the wrong decision.

This is a similar thing in India. They are not wasting very much money on these space projects. But if it could kick start a space industry, it’ll more than pay for itself in the long term. Space is only going to get increasingly important and if India is left behind they will lose more money (and therefore more hungry people) in the long term.

It’s not black and white like you are trying to make it.

$10k is not very much money to live on where rent alone is $2000~2500. I think if I had $100k I would be very picky. Or better yet, I would try to start my own business.

I hate the term whataboutism

It’s OK to point out hypocrisy. In fact, I think it should be forefront on everyone’s mind when your government is criticizing some other government for things they do themselves

It’s not like they could have taken this money and made any significant impact on the problem. Plus space programs have indirect long term benefits that are hard to calculate.

More scientists and high tech industries is a good thing for a country.

we are talking about guerilla warfare so I imagine something like a group of rebels hiding in a cave on the outskirts of a town or city and using these AI camouflages to travel through the forest without getting spotted by patrolling drones

obviously if we advance to such a robust surveillance state the act of using this type of camouflage will become illegal very quickly and you couldn’t just walk around the city in open with it

i’m not sure. maybe you’re right but there are a lot of dedicated hackers out there who do some amazing things and bypass very complex security systems.

the person creating a system needs to be correct 100% of the time - the person trying to break it just needs to be correct once. there’s an infinite multitude of things that can go wrong with something and any one of those is an opening to somebody perceptive enough.

and remember advance of technology goes both ways. military gets access to advanced AI, so do their enemies. it’s a game of cat and mouse we’ve been playing for a long time

Yeah presumably in a military setting it would have these things. But there are ways to mess with infrared and lidar.

For example by using lasers (lidar is essentially just laser radar) pointed at the lidar sensor, you can mess with the sensors see here

and for example using a space blanket blocks infrared.

i think this is going to become sort of like cops and robbers. one side comes up with something and the other comes up with a counter and it keeps advancing forward. an eternal arms race

for whatever system exists, there is a way to break it. guerilla warfare will still be possible, although it will have to start using advanced technologies to beat the advanced technologies

Gonna need to start painting strange patterns onto your clothes so the drones can’t recognize you as human. Something like this

At the end of the day these are machine learning models so if you can trick it into thinking you’re a tree or a wild animal it would presumably ignore you.

And the way AIs work it’s possible to make it think you’re a zebra by having zebra stripes on your clothing for example.

For that, you need the human artist

Art isn’t defined by the creator, but the observer. I can run a line through a piece of paper and call it art as a joke, but perhaps someone sees some form of message in the line and it impacts them. The meaningless becomes meaningful only because it is viewed through a being that can assign meaning to nonsense.

And even then, you can still make images that aren’t trees which will fool an ML model into saying they are

You can make an image that isn’t a tree that will fool humans into saying they are. So what?

They work nothing like humans. The similarities are superficial, at best We do not shuffle our neurons around until we get it right.

Please explain to me how these two things are different.

a) human goes through and studies the more than 20,000 works of andy warhol. he is inspired and creates various different artworks in a similar style.

b) AI goes through and parses the same 20,000 works on andy warhol. it uses a statistical algorithm to pump out various different artworks in a similar style.

What is the difference? Because a) isn’t copyright infringement. You are allowed to take a style and copy it. Only specific works can be copyrighted.

You are trying to claim the AI and human learning is different - and it IS different because we are biological and machines are statistical models. You can find a million similarities and a million differences. But specifically, in the context of using copyrighted works to make novel content - what is the difference? To me, it looks identical

1- take in data 2- use data to create new things

Why should a) be allowed and b) not be allowed?

AI can brute force its way to solutions in ways humans cannot beat

It’s not brute force. It seems like brute force because trying something millions of times seems impossible to us. But they identify patterns and then use those patterns to create output. It’s learning. It’s why we call it “machine learning”. The mechanics are different than how humans do it, but fundamentally it’s the same.

The only reason you know what a tree looks like is because you’ve seen a million different trees. Trees in person, trees in movies, trees in cartoons, trees in drawings, etc. Your brain has taken all of these different trees and merged them together in your brain to create an “ideal” of the tree. Sort of like Plato’s “world of forms”

AI can recognize a tree through the same process. It views millions of trees and creates an “ideal” tree. It can then compare any image it sees against this ideal and determine the probability that it is or isn’t a tree. Combine this with something that randomly pumps out images and you can now compare these generated images with the internal model of a tree and all of a sudden you have an AI that can create novel images of trees.

It’s fundamentally the same thing we do. It’s creating pictures of trees that didn’t exist before. The only difference is it happens in a statistical model and it happens at a larger and faster scale than humans are capable of.

This is why the question of AI models having to pay copyright for content it parses is not obvious at all.

Art does not have a “solution”. Every answer is valid.

If every answer is valid then you would be sitting here saying that AI art is just as valid as anything else.

If a human does art without input, you still get “something”.

Ok, take a human being that has never had any other interactions with any other human and has never consumed any content created by humans. Give him finger paint and have him paint something on a blank canvas. I think it wouldn’t look any different than a chimpanzee doing finger paint.

it can’t train itself on its own data

In theory, it could. You would just need a way to quantify the “fitness” of a drawing. They do this by comparing to actual content. But you don’t need actual content in some circumstances. For example, look at Alphazero - Deepmind’s AI from a few years back for playing chess. All the AI knew was the rules of the game. It did not have access to any database of games. No data. The way it learned is it played millions of games against itself.

It trained itself on its own data. And that AI, at the time, beat the leading chess engine that has access to databases and other pre-built algorithms.

With art this gets trickier because art is subjective. You can quantify clearly whether you won or lost a chess game. How do you quantify if something is a good piece of art? If we can somehow quantify this, you could in theory create AI that generates art with no input.

We’re in the infancy stages of this technology.

Humans can draw stuff, build structures, and make tools, in a way that improves upon the previous iteration. Each artists adds something, or combines things in a way that makes for something greater.

AI can do all of the same. I know it’s scary but it’s here and it isn’t going away. AI designed systems are becoming more and more commonplace. Solar panels, medical devices, computer hardware, aircraft wings, potential drug compounds, etc. Certain things AI can be really good at, and designing things and testing it in a million different simulations is something that AI can do a lot better than humans.

AI art has NEVER made me feel like it’s greater than the sum of its parts

What is art? If I make something that means nothing and you find a meaning in it, is it meaningful? AI is a cold calculated mathematical model that produces meaningless output. But humans love finding patterns in noise.

Trust me, you will eventually see some sort of AI art that makes an impact on you. Math doesn’t lie. If statistics can turn art into data and find the hidden patterns that make something impactful, then it can recreate it in a way that is impactful.

What I think is dangerous is terrorists or mass killers getting dozens or hundreds of small drones and installing explosives on them. Install these cameras and CPUs you mentioned that can recognize human faces and have them fly into someone’s face and then explode.

You could kill many people and unless we start installing AA turrets all over our populated cities, there seems to be little we can do to stop it.