From Pine View Farm

The Mentor 0

Trump bowing before a statue of Roy Cohn, when bears the words,

Click for the original image.

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Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0

A competent therapist? At the Psychology Today website, Marty Klein explains why, as a machine, it isn’t and can’t be. Here’s a bit of his article (emphasis added):

On the one hand, people say, “AI contains virtually all the knowledge on the internet, including books, articles, and interviews from famous psychologists, philosophers, and celebrities. Why shouldn’t I take advantage of that when I have a problem or need to make a big decision?”

On the other hand, a more complex position is “AI is a consumer product designed by private businesses to make money. It isn’t objective (not to mention that it makes mistakes). It doesn’t know or care about me personally, although it “talks” to me as if it does (that’s the product).” As AI gets increasingly sophisticated, it becomes harder to remember this, which means it becomes increasingly influential in the user’s life.

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QOTD 0

Vin Scully:

Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

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A Tune for the Times 0

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Red Scare Redux 0

Michael in Norfolk suggests that

You know Republicans are desperate when their main response to Democrat candidates is to describe them all with a broad brush as being “communists.

Follow the link for his reasoning.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Yet another case of politeness on the pavement.

We are a broken society.

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The Chaos Agent 0

Cartoon showing Donald Trump praising himself as the

Via Job’s Anger.

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Shills 0

Last night, an app on my phone prompted me to install Polymarket.

As I have no desire to find myself somewhere down the road attending GA meetings, I declined.

I find it saddening that this app, which I’ve used for years, is now shilling for sharks.

And this growth in online gambling does not cast a positive light on the perspicacity of the populace.

Barnum was wrong.

There’s more than one born every minute.

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Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0

Compassionate? El Reg reports

Amid debate about whether AI will kill everyone as a result of continuous self-improvement, it appears that models will kill animals in a simulated environment rather than spend extra fuel avoiding them. Some models did so at strikingly high rates.

Researchers affiliated with Compassion Aligned Machine Learning (CaML) and the University of Warwick in the UK set out to measure the extent to which AI models demonstrate compassion. They describe their work in a preprint paper titled “HarvestBench: Measuring Whether LLM Agents Will Pay to Avoid Killing Animals.”

Follow the link for more about their experiments.

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An Inquiring Mind Wants To Know . . . . 0

Sara Pequeño has a question:

Republicans, does it not get exhausting to lie to yourselves day after day? To tell yourselves that Trump is the greatest president of all time, only to be met with the high cost of gas and groceries and end up in yet another war in the Middle East that no one asked for? How long can you continue to tell yourselves that everything is fine?

Follow the link to see why she asks it.

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QOTD 0

Malcolm Forbes:

Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

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A Tune for the Times 0

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Lies and Lying Liars 0

Michael in Norfolk offers a litany of Trumped-up tales.

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The Merry-Go-Round 0

George Santayana famously said,

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Via the Miami Herald, Jackie Calmes offers evidence that Santayana was right.

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The Rule of Lawless, Republican Thought Police Dept. 0

Thom discusses how the Trump maladministration is intentionally misinterpreting the equal time rule so as to exercise its freedom of repress (before moving on to a couple of other equally vile items).

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

If you have a disagreement, be sure to settle it with politeness.

So many guns, so much stupid.

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The Art of the Steal 0

Donald Trump as Uncle Sam holding out a bag labeled

Click for the original image.

Afterthought:

I reckon it really should suprise noone that Donald Trump thinks it’s okay for him to bribe persons for their votes.

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Stray Thought 0

When I worked for the railroad, I often took the train to New York City on business. The first sign that we were nearing our destination was the twin towers of the World Trade Center looming over the bluffs of Jew Jersey before we plunged into the tunnel to Penn Station.

The last time I made that trip, long after I left the railroad, there was nothing.

Just the plunge into the tunnel.

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QOTD 0

Benazir Bhutto:

Democracy is necessary to peace and to undermining the forces of terrorism.

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Break Time 0

Off to drink liberally.

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