At the least it would be nice if there were a swing in consumerism towards AI-free simple products that just do that one thing we bought them for. And are advertised as such. Somehow I doubt it though. Looking at Lemmy it looks like that’s what people want, but I fear that may be a small bubble in a big sea of idiocy.

Some of the narrative in the gospels is concerned with fulfilling the prophesies of Isaiah, since that would build a case for Jesus being the Messiah, which was something people were interested in at the time.

Isaiah didn’t clearly prophesy a virgin birth, but the writers of Matthew and Luke were probably working from the Septuagint, a greek [mis-]translation which turns the prophecy into one of a virgin birth. So, thinking that a virgin birth was required, they wrote it into the story.

The question of whether someone claiming to be made pregnant by God is making a plausible claim, is fairly moot when the whole episode was probably made up anyway.

It’s an important part of fascism. The idea of objective truth is devalued, so that truth comes from authority. It doesn’t matter what evidence exists, or if this week’s reality is consistent with last week or even itself. The point is to sell the narrative on an emotional level.

What I’m saying is that this isn’t some cultural phenomenon that just happened. It’s organised and intentional.

When you’ve eliminated all other possibilities, it must be the user that’s at fault

You sound like you consider all linguistic evolution to be a bad thing. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be opposition to change, indeed opposition helps to filter out pointless change, while worthwhile change will tend to overcome that opposition. So go ahead and be that opposition if you will, but it just seems like a limited perspective to me.

It reminds me of my English teachers at school who impressed upon me that it’s incorrect to use the pronouns “they/them” in a singular, non-gender-specific context. So you had to go with the traditional but sexist “he” or an awkwardly pseudo-random distribution of “he” and “she”, despite the fact that “they” was in common use colloquially. Perhaps my teachers’ fervent opposition was only fueled by the fact that it was a language problem which popular usage had already solved. They were fighting a valiant rearguard action against common sense, and I’m glad they lost.

So I can outnumber my enemies

I just don’t think this is a problem in the current stage of technological development. Modern AI is a cute little magic act, but humans (collectively) are very good at piercing the veil and then spreading around the discrepancies they’ve discovered.

In its current stage, no. But it’s come a long way in a short time, and I don’t think we’re so far from having machines that pass the Turing test 100%. But rather than being a proof of consciousness, all this really shows is that you can’t judge consciousness from the outside looking in. We know it’s a big illusion just because its entire development has been focused on building that illusion. When it says it feels something, or cares deeply about something, it’s saying that because that’s the kind of thing a human would say.

Because all the development has been focused on fakery rather than understanding and replicating consciousness, we’re close to the point where we can have a fake consciousness that would fool anyone. It’s a worrying prospect, and not just because I won’t become immortal by having a machine imitate my behaviour. There’s bad actors working to exploit this situation. Elon Musk’s attempts to turn Grok into his own personally controlled overseer of truth and narrative seem to backfire in the most comical ways, but that’s teething troubles, and in time this will turn into a very subtle and pervasive problem for humankind. The intrinsic fakeness of it is a concerning aspect. It’s like we’re getting a puppet show version of what AI could have been.

Well, that’s why we need clones with mind transfer, and to be unconscious during the process. When you wake up you won’t know whether you’re the original or the copy so why worry

People used to talk about the idea of uploading your consciousness to a computer to achieve immortality. But nowadays I don’t think anyone would trust it. You could tell me my consciousness was uploaded and show me a version of me that was indistinguishable from myself in every way, but I still wouldn’t believe it experiences or feels anything as I do, even though it claims to do so. Especially if it’s based on an LLM, since they are superficial imitations by design.

You know, maybe that’s not so bad, there would be real world links between users rather than the random collection of absolute strangers you get now. Oh wait no that’s just facebook again

Femicide is a type of murder. Not a different crime. Just a subset of the many possible motives there could be for murder. Unless there is some substantial difference in establishing guilt or sentencing, inventing a “new crime” of femicide doesn’t change anything. Culpability is an important factor in murder cases, that doesn’t change here. What I’m trying to argue is that this isn’t functional legislation, it’s empty virtue signalling, from a government that is actively reversing social progress and making matters worse for women.

OK, bye. Love you! _shit

Yes, I really don’t understand why killing a woman is not murder, partly because you have failed to make any case for it. It makes sense to frame such murders in the context of a hate crime, to ensure severe sentencing, but saying it’s a different crime from murder, but with the same sentence, makes no sense to me. The proposition that killing a woman is different from murder implies that women are somehow different from human beings, which is the kind of thinking that’s causing femicide to be a significant trend in the first place.

To pick up on something you said eariler:

Yes, the system also should and is focusing on education.

The Italian government is indeed focusing on education. They are actively working to oppose sexual and emotional education in schools, proposing a law to require explicit parental consent for such education, while banning it altogether in elementary school, thus ensuring it does not reach the children who need it the most. The new crime of “femicide” provides a token gesture which accomplishes nothing, while effective and easily available measures to reduce violence against women are being obstructed.

Infanticide law is generally used to reduce what might otherwise be a murder charge, to make allowance for the mental stress of recent childbirth. It typically carries a lesser sentence. So it has a purpose and an effect.

But that’s not the case with femicide. I’m not convinced that this law has any purpose other than making an empty gesture. Do you think anyone contemplating the killing of a woman is going to think twice because they might be tried for femicide instead of plain old murder? If not, it won’t prevent a single killing.

It’s a law dealing with a real world problem and it makes it less likely for perpetrators to escape culpability.

That I don’t understand. How does this help to stop a murderer from escaping culpability? Maybe you mean it’s a question of intent and the recognition of femicide avoids someone pleading a lesser charge due to heightened emotional state, but still I don’t see how that isn’t covered by just recognizing gender based violence/killing as a hate crime.

To me this looks like a pointless law which doesn’t change anything much in a practical sense, to create the appearance of doing something about a problem which really requires a serious social and educational approach. I recognize that femicide is a real and gender specific problem, but the law shouldn’t be, because justice should always be even handed. I believe the reason this law is gender specific is because they are pretending it’s a solution to the problem, which it isn’t.

It’s kind of like AI enhanced photos that can create scenes that never actually happened. I mean, yeah, it looks nice, but you’re substituting bullshit for reality.

“O great warrior dolphin, who only speaks the truth, what tidings do you bring?”

“I’m gonna rape you”

They said you need it. They didn’t say you could have it.

Looks like 12 to me

Maybe. Or maybe she likes to collect spare bits of furniture that might come in handy one day. I’ve got several legs.

Although, I don’t know how to use them. Yeah, all things considered, she’s probably just Quelaag