DHL suspends high value US deliveries over tariffs

a prefrontal cortex, the administrative center of the brain and generally host to human consciousness.

That’s an interesting take. The prefrontal cortex in humans is proportionately larger than in other mammals. Is it implied that animals are not conscious on account of this difference?

If so, what about people who never develop an identifiable prefrontal cortex? I guess, we could assume that a sufficient cortex is still there, though not identifiable. But what about people who suffer extensive damage to that part of the brain. Can one lose consciousness without, as it were, losing consciousness (ie becoming comatose in some way)?

a dedicated module for consciousness would bridge the gap

What functions would such a module need to perform? What tests would verify that the module works correctly and actually provides consciousness to the system?

In fairness, the word “conscious” has a range of meanings. For some, it is synonymous with certain religious ideas. They would be alarmed by the “heresy”. For others, it is synonymous to claiming that some entity is entitled to the same fundamental rights as a human being. Those would be quite alarmed by the social implications. Few people use the term in a strictly empiricist sense.

Good question. Over the years, I’ve read a number of arguments about consciousness, or more precisely against machine consciousness. One thing that’s striking is that the authors never apply the same logic to themselves or humans in general. It’s like they completely lack self-awareness. If I took the whole “p-zombie” idea seriously, I’d look for such p-zombies. And these philosophers would be my first candidates.

secret sauce

What would such a secret sauce look like? Like, what is it in humans, for example?

Yes, that’s the point. You’d think they could have, at least, looked into a dictionary at some point in the last 2 years. But nope, everyone else is wrong. A round of applause for the paragons of human intelligence.

Not sure what’s alarming about that. It’s a bit early to worry about an AI Dred Scott, no?

In short: BONK

It probably thought you were Elon Musk.

On a possibly related note:

https://github.com/rauchg/doom-captcha

(via https://canitrundoom.org/ )

That took me way too long.

No. Not imagery and not intimate as defined.

For the lulz!

There’s a few billionaire numptie

Like who?

That would certainly be quite surprising. The expression of Trump being right is flexible enough to be interpreted in various ways.

The only plausible way would be if he achieves some largely meaningless concessions and the media spins it as a win. But if the American electorate gets the idea that the US can get free stuff by throwing a fit, then any agreement is not worth the paper it is written on.

Well, I guess that’s the answer. If Trump achieves anything positive with this, then the reaction with be self-destructive.

Do you have any particular scenario in mind that ends with Trump being vindicated?

I don’t think you have the choice. Products that aren’t imported are made with parts that are imported. In fact, there will be products that have several layers of products tariffs in them, for example cars. Parts are made, assembled into bigger parts and ever bigger parts, and may cross the Mexican or Canadian border each time.

These tariffs are a monumental act of economic self harm. That’s what the stock market is saying. Stocks have (rational) value because you are entitled to a share of future profits. The stock market crashing tells you that the pros expects that a lot of value is not going to be created. Trillions of dollars will not be paid out to stock-owners, and further trillions will not be paid out as wages. The real wealth that is the other side of that money - all these new goods, cars, phones, TVs, dishwashers … - will not exist in the USA.

So, don’t worry about hitting them in the wallet.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on an American ball sack—for ever.

Maybe watch out for products from Russia and Belarus, as they are not included in the tariffs. This may start a new era of economic cooperation; putting the US in USSR. Ironically, Russia is still hit hard because of oil taking a nosedive.

That’s a lot of parameters. Wow. I didn’t know they’d go this big.

Look again. The explanation is that these images simply don’t look like any kind of CSAM. The whole story looks like some sort of scam to me.

When I saw this, 2 questions came to mind: How come that this isn’t immediately reported? Why would anyone upload illegal material to a platform that tracks as thoroughly as Meta’s do?

The answer is:

All of those accounts followed the same visual pattern: blonde characters with voluptuous bodies and ample breasts, blue eyes, and childlike faces.

The 1 question that came to mind upon reading this is: What?

Yeah, that’s another one of the deliberately deceptive talking points being spread.

First of all, average people did this. The dataset Books3 was created by a jobless individual named Shawn Presser using one of Aaron’s scripts. Later he shared it with Meta. What makes the difference for Shawn is that the legal department of Meta stands between him and the copyright industry. As far as I can tell, Shawn is way more average than Aaron in that he doesn’t rub shoulders with the likes of Sam Altman.

It’s interesting how this talking point works. Someone shills for the copyright industry against the interests of the average person. And the justification is that the copyright industry persecuted Aaron Swartz. That doesn’t make sense, does it?

I don’t see how this fair use case is different from those in the past. There’s a tech company defending. Organizations like the EFF or the Internet Archive issue supporting statements.

I don’t see the hypocrisy. The content industry is suing tech companies now just like they have in the past, and just like they sue individuals now and in the past.

If I had to guess at the cause of the difference, I’d say that there is a lot of money being spent on social media PR. But perhaps it also is a result of the right-ward shift of society. I wonder how much that has to do with propaganda by the content industry.