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Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


(1)
Message 1 of 83 (891386)
01-28-2022 12:44 PM


Hangdawg13 here... anyone still here that I used to know? Haven't posted here since I was in college about 18 years ago.
A big thanks to EvC forum and posters here for being instrumental in my intellectual development and helping me talk through some ideas that eventually helped me to break free from fundamentalist Christianity.
Randomly reading some of my old angsty posts here from 2004... (cringe!)
Edited by Hangdawg13, : No reason given.

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by AZPaul3, posted 01-28-2022 1:16 PM Hangdawg13 has replied
 Message 4 by Percy, posted 01-28-2022 3:56 PM Hangdawg13 has not replied
 Message 7 by Tanypteryx, posted 01-28-2022 6:24 PM Hangdawg13 has not replied
 Message 18 by ringo, posted 01-31-2022 11:29 AM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


(2)
Message 6 of 83 (891393)
01-28-2022 6:20 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by AZPaul3
01-28-2022 1:16 PM


Hi Paul
When I started posting here at age 18 I had just started college at a Christian university and just read Walt Brown's book that related some anomalous things in geology to the Biblical flood.
At that time my faith was what I was raised to believe and hadn't been tested really.
After only a few weeks or so of debating the evidence here with some good folks here, I encountered enough evidence (e.g. endogenous retroviruses, pseudogenes, and a better understanding of radiometric dating) to shake my faith in YECism.
My worldview at that age was of course very fragile and untested, so this threw everything into doubt. I ended up spending most of my time here debating in the faith and belief section rather than about evolution. And as is often the case when a person's worldview is under attack, defense mechanisms kick in and I was probably very angry and rude at times trying to cling to what had provided me a sense of stability and direction and meaning.
Over the next year, I sort of took a rapid journey through all the philosophical schools of thought... experienced existential nihilism for a few months and being hopelessly depressed and uncertain of any truth at all, I returned to Christianity simply because the stories in the Gospels felt good and right. But the seeds of doubt were sewn and I spent the next 7-8 years at a fundamentalist church hoping to see some kind of miracle to validate my faith.
Eventually, I decided my map of reality wasn't matching up with reality and I needed to expand my sources for spiritual and metaphysical understanding beyond just the Bible, and beginning with a Skeptiko Podcast interview of Eben Alexander I ventured into NDE research, and parapsychology, which eventually helped me sort of find a third way to have a spiritual world view without being forced into the false dichotomy of EITHER fundy Christianity OR existential nihilism.
I still agree with a lot of values of Christianity and can see some esoteric archetypal truths in the stories in the Bible, but don't really consider myself to be a Christian any more.
My metaphysics is probably closer to the simulation analogy than anything. I do still believe in a kind of afterlife. A component of Consciousness is a feedback loop - comparing goals with outcomes to adjust input and get better at attaining those goals. Many NDE's have a sort of life review which is a kind of feedback... so if there is feedback, it likely serves the purpose of getting better next time around.
From the simulation analogy, we put an agent in an environment with a set of goals and we run the simulation again and again with the intent to improve the agent. And I think reality has this nested fractal holographic type of structure to it, so things rhyme and repeat at various scales. Our efforts to create AGI are probably a repetition of a pattern that spawned us.
I generally agree with the hermetic principles... As above, so below, etc.
So I see "the soul" as kind of like the AI agent being trained by this environment and this soul has goals and this life is but one of many attempts to achieve those goals.
If we are going to play the game of Monism where we assume a fundamental reality and we assign a label to that fundamental reality, then the label we choose should be linked as closely as possible to everything else.
The two major competing Monisms are Materialism and Idealism. These result in "The Hard Problem of Consciousness."
My preferred label for the Monism is "Pattern" because this resolves the hard problem of consciousness. A pattern cannot exist without both objective similarities and differences as well as subjective choices about where to place boundaries that define the pattern. Subject/object united in one term. It sounds objective so it is appealing to the materialists, but sneaking in the back door is the antithesis to materialism: free will.
Anyway... another big impact on my thinking was "The Trickster and the Paranormal" by George P. Hansen as well as reading about the studies by Dean Radin, Hal Puthoff, Russel Targ, etc.
Science is a tool for discovering that which reliably repeats. Mechanisms reliably repeat. Therefore science can only see mechanisms and anyone who explores solely through the lens of science will see everything as a mechanism. Anything that can be explained mechanistically can therefore be folded under the tent of Materialism by expanding the known laws to include it. But the idea that we are mechanisms with merely an illusion of free will I think is what was depressing to me as a college student and partly what kept me wanting to believe in something magical and miraculous and is what kept me locked into fundamentalist Christianity far longer than was beneficial to me.
Now, I believe that there is a mechanistic aspect to the universe, but at the boundary between mechanisms is an opportunity for the "something Other" or "Will" to interact with the mechanism. A boundary IS a choice.
Choices are arbitrary without a goal. A goal implies a lack of attainment of the goal which implies a frustration. Pure Will where goals manifest instantly would obviously be chaos. Pure mechanism would result in nothing new. We exist then on the boundary between order and chaos, mechanism and will, Logos and Abyss, Known and Unknown, computable and non-computable spaces. We are an expression or an exploration of novelty and an the result of some attempt to achieve some goal. Meaning only exists within the context of an attempt to achieve a goal.
I have a utilitarian view of truth. Truth is a symbolic representation that cannot be dissociated from a goal. The more "true" something is the more efficiently it aids in achieving a goal. Truth is a tool.
Anyway, I have a world view now that I believe to be internally self-consistent and helps me make sense of the world and experience meaning and deal with suffering in a positive way without feeling the need to convert anyone or get anyone to believe a particular interpretation of a myth.
I have a great engineering job working fully remote from Austin TX, an amazing wife and 2-year old son who is incredibly smart and wonderful and healthy.. and a 2nd baby girl is on the way soon.
I'm still very contrarian in many ways. I believe in science... rocket science for example, because you can't lie or the rocket blows up... or the type of engineering I do... I can't lie or the equipment will fail... but when the effect sizes are small, when the effect is delayed and must be teased out after the fact with statistics (How to Lie with Statistics?), and when the opportunity for profits are high, and billions in government contracts are involved I am going to be extremely skeptical of "the science". You can guess where that puts me on things like COVID or climate change... I'm very much a conspiracy therapist.
And although I am long over the YEC flood stuff, I am still intrigued by catastrophism... particularly the idea that our Sun has periodic micro-nova coinciding with Earth's magnetic pole excursions that are the source of many creation and flood myths as well as some of the anomalous things that YEC's like Walt Brown pointed out.
Anyway... that's where I am now, Cheers!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2 by AZPaul3, posted 01-28-2022 1:16 PM AZPaul3 has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 9 by nwr, posted 01-28-2022 6:50 PM Hangdawg13 has replied
 Message 12 by Tangle, posted 01-29-2022 3:27 AM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


(1)
Message 10 of 83 (891398)
01-28-2022 7:06 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by nwr
01-28-2022 6:34 PM


I see religion as a kind of memetic lifeform... a symbiont / parasite / mind worm. It would not continue to reproduce itself in the minds of people if it did not also provide some benefits to its host, providing a mirror in myths which help us become more self-aware, but it also can sacrifice its host in painful ways.. it can also be ruthless in its attempt to reproduce itself or defend itself. And the utility of religion is diminished when there are other means of passing along similar useful information.
That said, I think some fruit can come out of analyzing religious myths from a Jungian type of psychoanalysis as well as considering there are kernels of historical truth around which the myth is built up.
Also, religion is a bit like government bureaucracy... it can be painfully inefficient and cumbersome, but if you destroy it haphazardly, something worse might step into its place to fill the power vacuum.
We have considered going to a church again just to make connections with people who have some decent values as well as to introduce our children to the religion we knew growing up, but honestly the thought of returning to church now and trying to fit in kind of turns my stomach a bit. We'll see how it goes.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by nwr, posted 01-28-2022 6:34 PM nwr has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by AZPaul3, posted 01-28-2022 7:55 PM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


(1)
Message 13 of 83 (891464)
01-31-2022 10:11 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by nwr
01-28-2022 6:50 PM


quote:
Thanks for that update on your history and current philosophy.
That description fits me pretty well, too. Welcome to the club.
Yes, that seems about right.
That's a good way of putting it (in my opinion).
You're welcome and thank you. Where's the "like" button for a post on this forum?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by nwr, posted 01-28-2022 6:50 PM nwr has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 19 by nwr, posted 01-31-2022 12:26 PM Hangdawg13 has not replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 14 of 83 (891465)
01-31-2022 10:16 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by Tangle
01-29-2022 3:27 AM


quote:
Welcome back!
Thanks!
quote:
It sounds like you've had a difficult journey but have managed to dump the most egregious garbage of YEC upbringing.
But it does seem like you've got a way to go yet. A metaphysical hole that big sucks in all sorts pseudo-philosophical/conspiracy theory bunkum.
Yes, it does. It is a metaphysical hole that basically permits anything to happen (though not everything is LIKELY to happen)... kind of like quantum non-locality... your atoms may spontaneously jump through a wall, but not likely.
Do you prefer to view reality as a singular mechanism... a block universe with fixed past and future? Or what is a superior metaphysics that I should graduate to... in your opinion?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Tangle, posted 01-29-2022 3:27 AM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by jar, posted 01-31-2022 10:42 AM Hangdawg13 has replied
 Message 17 by Tangle, posted 01-31-2022 11:04 AM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 16 of 83 (891469)
01-31-2022 10:55 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by AZPaul3
01-28-2022 7:55 PM


Re: EEEEK!! Help!! Help!!
quote:
No, please no. You have come all this way to rid yourself of such a fantasy world, to let your mind be free to know life in all its pains and glories, to know reality. Seems you still have fond thoughts from being poisoned. Vestiges of your acculturation in irrationality remain. Fight it, Brother! We're with you!
For the love of god, Hangdawg, please do not expose your children to church. They are going to get saturated with religious symbology and irrational thought all too soon and all too often. Give them a fighting chance to escape the woo of religious thought. The thought that supermajik is somehow real will ruin their minds forever. Please spare them this abuse by the priests.
I've never been catholic so never had a priest or been abused...
I see my religious upbringing has having a lot of negative effects but with an overall slight net positive, and I think it would be useful for my kids to have a basic knowledge of Christianity without being brainwashed into the cult.
When we first moved to Austin we tried a church mainly to try and give our boy some socialization with other kids during the pandemic when no one would come out to play. We met a few nice people, but the main couple we liked moved back to California, and there were some other weirdos leading the group so we quit going.
The part that turns my stomach is recalling the constant angst at worrying the person you were talking to wasn't "saved" or that you should try to do something about that by pushing the conversation onto "the really important stuff" like spiritual stuff or that you weren't doing the right thing or weren't hearing God right or what is it God wants you to do... and all the Christianese, the jargon, the cultishenss, the fake non-real people putting on a good front, blech...
As far as the "magic".. I still believe in "magic" so to speak. And by that I mean, non-local interactions of intention or emotion upon material systems... the domain of Psi or Parapsychology.
...for example, the federal government's remote viewing program employing psychic spies to spy on the Russians (with documented success). Or some interesting studies like one where the interference pattern in an interferometer (like the double slit experiment) was influenced by a meditator in a remote location, or presentiment experiments where a person's brain began registering an emotional response to emotional pictures before the picture was randomly selected from a bank of mixed content; or the ganzfeld experiments that show any random person can perceive non-local information if you put them in a certain state. I also have a few personal experiences to add to the parapsychology studies that inform my thinking on it.
Anyway... if you think it's all bunkum, that's ok.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by AZPaul3, posted 01-28-2022 7:55 PM AZPaul3 has not replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 20 of 83 (891478)
01-31-2022 2:40 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by Tangle
01-31-2022 11:04 AM


quote:
Introducing quantum theory into threads like these is a bit like introducing Hitler. I feel an eye roll coming on;
haha... yes I knew I was committing a sin by bringing in QM so soon.
quote:
We don't live in a quantum world we live in a big world were big things don't disappear randomly.
I would reduce your statement to: we live in a world of mechanisms - unbroken causal chains - computable spaces.
To which I would reply: there could be domains of physics as-yet undiscovered that make a mechanism out of what you call "woo". And also, if something truly new happened, a prime cause, an insertion of a new causal chain, you could not see it looking through the lens of science, because science requires something to be repeatable and testable. Something truly new has not happened before and is either unique or has not been repeated enough to be seen by science.
IMO, moment by moment experience is "new" and that is why we find ourselves here - to explore the boundary between computable (mechanistic) and non-computable spaces.
quote:
It seems to me that you're searching very, very hard for some kind of meaning so you're likely to find it in all sorts of woo. I find meaning in family, friends, fishing, work, scotch, log fires etc etc. Just day-to-day reality.
I find meaning in all of those things too... except fishing... never been much of a fisherman.
Meaning is a symbolic representation of a goal. All the things you mentioned are good and pleasing things... things many of us have as goals. The fulfillment of a goal brings satisfaction or we might say it is meaningful. Goals that are achieved over longer timespans or with more effort are generally more meaningful.
We can probably agree on that much. Where we might disagree is that you probably see goal origination/fulfilment as limited to your present consciousness and span of life, whereas I see an individual life as embedded within a larger structure of goal origination/fulfillment such that what we accomplish and learn in this life is informing a larger entity that has goals spanning more than one life... we might call this entity a soul.
I think really the two competing worldviews here are one of hardness / fixedness / immutability, and one of softness / flexibility / malleability. Materialism is an extrapolation of the sensory experience of hardness and idealism is an extrapolation of softness or fluidity.
When you use the word "woo" the sound of the word implies a lack of rigidity... it is like goo... malleable, unable to hold a particular shape... or it is a sound like that made by the theramin which is unstable, not holding a particular note, but sliding up and down freely.
These are all ways of contrasting structure and anti-structure. Structure is composed of boundaries. Some people prefer rigid boundaries and some people prefer fuzzy fluid boundaries.
We have mental structures or maps of the world and it is important that these mental structures have some rigidity because this is how we stay sane. If a person's mental structure is dissolved or too fluid, they cannot function... they don't have capacity to form goals and devise plans to achieve them and respond to reality in a meaningful way.
So it is understandable to be fearful of "woo" or magical thinking because it could potentially wreck a person's ability to function in the real world.
Many people have an experience of boundary dissolution and come back changed but some never recover.
An experience of boundary dissolution or "non-symbolic experience" can come in all sorts of ways... the more harmless ways might be merely enjoying a sunset and feeling as though you and nature are one, or it could come through meditation where the wordy monkey-mind is silenced, or it could come through psychedelics, or rhythmic chanting/drumming... all sorts of ways to induce it.
When we look around in our ordinary mode of consciousness our brains are pre-processing everything for us and identifying things according to use. We see edges that could be sharp or blunt, hard or soft, handles, seats, tables, knobs... grass that needs to be mowed and weeds that need to be pulled, etc.
But there is another mode of consciousness that diminishes this categorization and boundary creation and in this type of experience boundaries like self/other disappear and one experiences a sea of color and sound rather than edges and symbols.
IMO, this type of experience is one of the kernels of religion. It is useful to have this experience from time to time, but it can lead to complete breakdown and inability to function. Why is it useful? Structures bear stress. Mental structures are stressful and this is hard on our bodies. If we can come and go from this state at will, we can greatly reduce stress and that is healthy. Another side benefit is that we can be open to intuition rather than being in the focused goal-oriented mode of consciousness which filters almost everything not related to our present goal.
You could think of these two modes of consciousness as Predator mode and Prey mode. A predator is often focused on a specific point and goal - catching the prey - and might tune everything out that is not related to that goal. A prey animal on the other hand doesn't know where the danger might be coming from and so focusing on a point to exclusion of all others is dangerous. A prey animal needs to be sensing in all directions and open to information from any source.
Anyway... back to work!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 17 by Tangle, posted 01-31-2022 11:04 AM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 25 by Tangle, posted 01-31-2022 4:47 PM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 21 of 83 (891479)
01-31-2022 2:42 PM
Reply to: Message 18 by ringo
01-31-2022 11:29 AM


Hah, I forgot that I came back a bit in 2010...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 18 by ringo, posted 01-31-2022 11:29 AM ringo has seen this message but not replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 22 of 83 (891480)
01-31-2022 2:48 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by jar
01-31-2022 10:42 AM


quote:
The past is fixed. The future not yet recorded.
Where and how is the past recorded? And is it recorded for ever? No deletions?
Is there any compression?
If upon my death bed I have a life review and see my dog running through the yard is every blade of grass in the same place or did God's GAN upscale a blank patch labeled "grass" into freshly created grass because the location of the blades of grass doesn't matter?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by jar, posted 01-31-2022 10:42 AM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 23 by jar, posted 01-31-2022 3:20 PM Hangdawg13 has replied
 Message 24 by dwise1, posted 01-31-2022 4:29 PM Hangdawg13 has not replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 26 of 83 (891485)
01-31-2022 4:50 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by jar
01-31-2022 3:20 PM


quote:
The past is.
What we record as the past is as fluid and conflicting as what is recorded in the Bibles. But the narrative is simply the narrative, it does not change the reality of what happened.
Okay so you're contrasting unreliable personal memories of the past with the actual past which is fixed immutable accurate and real.
I've no problem with that, but its not really an answer to the question. If the past exists in the present, how does it exist? Where is it stored? How is it accessed?
These are genuine questions of mine and not meant to lead you into a particular line of thinking.
Everything in the present moment is in flux. We see relative rates of change. The slow rates of change we perceive as fixed, but we know nothing is really fixed forever.
Recording everything becomes boring and redundant. Many types of creation involve subtracting that which detracts from the goal. So could deletion or compression be used upon that part of reality we call "the past"?
quote:
What you experience is simply a fantasy and will be whatever you create within your personal fantasy.
I strongly disagree with this sentiment.
Whenever I hear "is just" or "is simply", I see boundaries shifting around the definition of that which is serious and meaningful to that which is not serious or meaningful.
To say experience is simply fantasy is to diminish it and it diminishes the reality of the consequences of your actions upon others. That might feel nice for a while if the stresses and pressures of life are difficult to handle, but I don't think it is the best default position to take.
I take the position that felt meaning is real and important. Life is a game, yes, but what makes the game serious is threat of pain or loss. What makes the game meaningful is achieving goals with effort over time.
quote:
It is a GAN, nothing more.
While I am fascinated by the idea that physical reality could be generated by something analogous to a GAN, I don't see that this leads to the need to diminish or reduce.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by jar, posted 01-31-2022 3:20 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 28 by jar, posted 01-31-2022 4:59 PM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 27 of 83 (891486)
01-31-2022 4:57 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by Tangle
01-31-2022 4:47 PM


quote:
Please don't, if you want to know what I think just ask.
Okay what do you think?
quote:
Serious point - please don't tell other people what their meaning is. It's theirs not yours. Fishing is not "a symbolic representation of a goal". It's fishing. Some things are exactly as they are. Most things actually..
Well I'm not forcing you to have a philosophical intellectual conversation which usually involves defining terms...
I'm not telling you what is meaningful to you... I'm just saying that for anything to be meaningful to anyone it involves a goal, a desire, an intention.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by Tangle, posted 01-31-2022 4:47 PM Tangle has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 30 by Tangle, posted 01-31-2022 5:13 PM Hangdawg13 has not replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 31 of 83 (891490)
01-31-2022 5:16 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by AZPaul3
01-31-2022 5:02 PM


quote:
OK, for those of us who may have been napping what is GAN?
Where in this thread was the acromion first used and defined?
Generative Adversarial Network (GAN)
Using two neural networks - one trained to be the discriminator and one that will be trained by the discriminator to be a generator.
So you train a neural network on something like say... images of cats. Then you feed this neural network images generated by another one that are initially random noise, but the discriminator provides feedback to the generator on whether the image it created is more or less like a cat, and eventually the discriminator trains the generator to generate very realistic images of cats.
There is some ambiguity in what the generator will produce... in other words outcomes are probabilistic.
This fits nicely with physical reality where outcomes are probabilistic and possibly generated on demand for the observer.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by AZPaul3, posted 01-31-2022 5:02 PM AZPaul3 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 34 by AZPaul3, posted 01-31-2022 7:36 PM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 32 of 83 (891491)
01-31-2022 5:22 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by jar
01-31-2022 4:59 PM


quote:
HINT.
It's called "the past".
You said "The past is."
That implies it exists in the present.
You also indicated it was real and immutable...
but your dismissal of these questions now implies the past is gone and irretrievable.
Which is it?
quote:
YAWN.
Experience has absolutely no meaning or reality beyond the individuals' fantasies.
Your behavior though does have reality.
So you're saying our impacts on physical material reality are the only thing real and recorded in "the past", but our experiences are not real or recorded in "the past"?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by jar, posted 01-31-2022 4:59 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 33 by jar, posted 01-31-2022 6:38 PM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


(1)
Message 35 of 83 (891495)
01-31-2022 8:27 PM
Reply to: Message 33 by jar
01-31-2022 6:38 PM


quote:
Still thinking like a third year middleschooler there DAWG.
Well yeah and you're still kind of being a bit of a dick, but that's ok Yeah, kids often take an interest in ontology and my curiosity in that department never ceased.
quote:
No, "The past is" does not imply it exists in the present.
Isn't "is" a present tense verb?
quote:
It is real and immutable because it did happen, and we cannot now change what did happen.
If it is not recorded or retrievable somehow - if it is truly gone forever - then the past is not fixed because there are an infinite number of pasts that could have led to this particular present.
quote:
I also went on to try to explain to you that there is a difference between what actually happened and what is recorded, and, in many cases, what is believed.
Sure, a person's memory can be an unreliable record of their past experience and should not be equated with the admin's copy of what actually happened. We're in agreement there.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 33 by jar, posted 01-31-2022 6:38 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 39 by jar, posted 02-01-2022 7:12 AM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
Hangdawg13
Member (Idle past 751 days)
Posts: 1189
From: Texas
Joined: 05-30-2004


Message 36 of 83 (891496)
01-31-2022 8:48 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by AZPaul3
01-31-2022 7:36 PM


Re: Green Pill
quote:
So, adaptive neural nets. The advances continue.
Yes... the story about how a GAN was invented is kind of funny... a programmer was chatting with buddies at a bar one evening and the idea for a GAN came to him and he immediately went home and coded it up before bed... a very simple idea with the potential to revolutionize a lot of things.
I recommend this YouTube channel, Two Minute Papers for a brief overview of lots of interesting developments in AI:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfYPyITQ-7l4upoX8nvctg
Anyway, yes, I'm positing something like the simulation hypothesis. This environment is generated for the purpose of developing skills of agents just as we do for AI agents in simulated realities like this one:
OpenAI Plays Hide and Seekā€¦and Breaks The Game!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 34 by AZPaul3, posted 01-31-2022 7:36 PM AZPaul3 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 38 by AZPaul3, posted 01-31-2022 11:35 PM Hangdawg13 has replied

  
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