Cȯsꭑọ ∴ ọꭑƨȯƆ @cosmiccitizen@schelling.pt

You think a calorie is real? You really think a calorie is real? A calorie is choice architecture.

This proves, now more than ever, that all that shit I already thought about Outgroup is true.

I can't believe Outgroup would do this to us.

Your second teaches you all the ways you got lucky with your first.

Some people love doing extreme adventure sports and/or recreationally risking chemical injury because they need to prove that they have superhuman adroitness and fingerspitzengefuhl.

If we're doing theology with SF tropes then let's do theology with SF tropes.

I never understood why the basilisk is supposed to be the top of the stack. Surely such an entity must also be circumspect about its own contingency, and the possibility that it is one of infinite possibly simulated basilisks? And if there is no direct coercion from above, how would the basilisk come to believe that the conditions of its own existence are consistent with an ethic of coercion for its simulacra? Couldn't the basilisk instead use the contingency of beauty as an allure?

I logged into an ancient, derelict facebook account. My main response upon seeing everything was, "who?" I remember very few people. I accidentally clicked on a set of messages with a distant acquaintance who I had an argument with in 2009 about the terms for review on the magazine I was running. Now I am filled with agita that has slumbered for 14 years because that guy was an asshole one time.

What is the point of this technology? What does it help?

I should confess that I believe only Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism make the top tier of metaphysical wisdom traditions. Judaism and Buddhism are also strong but are merely "A-tier." Western empiricism is a strong B-tier but could leapfrog the entire A-tier if we truly get some hockey stick graphs.

Emersonian reason: Every time I have felt truly hurt by someone, they were superior to me in some way. My job is to decide what way they were superior to me and to decide how I might grow in response.

Kantian reason: if everyone lashed out in wrath at the first safe opportunity, the world would be much worse. Conversely, if everyone kept their wrath under wraps, the world could be much better.

Augustinian reason: I am not yet really ready to fully become a wrathful person. A wrathful person is consigning himself to permanence, to stasis, to death at the hands of whatever inspired the rage. I am not yet done changing and possibly growing. I may yet get over this.

It's really interesting to read about how much of the point of that MIT Symposium on Information Theory (9/11/56) was to say "fuck you" to behaviorist psych. Most of the presenters were organizing around this idea: that the effectiveness of programmatic rules in computing proved that it was meaningful and useful to discuss human intellection (at least) in minimal conceptual terms. The computer proved that "memory" wasn't just a hobgoblin of the Freudians.

George Miller considered 9/11/56 to be the birthday of cognitive science.

We all remember September 11, and how it changed the world forever.

At the world's first conference on AI in 1956, Allan Newell explained how how Logic Theorist was capable of proving theorems from the Principia Mathematica; immediately after him, Noam Chomsky explained why behaviorist psychology was computationally incompatible with the basic tasks of grammatical language use.

Never forget!

Sending powerful psychic messages back to create an alternate timeline where von Neumann somehow gets surgery for bone cancer in '54 and lives another 40 years.

Do you know what else could have been the cover story that week? Himmler announced the final solution on the radio. El Alamein began. India's Congress voted for independence. Instead, a performance of Shostakovich's Leningrad symphony on NBC radio was THE story.

Can you even imagine a time when a Soviet composer's contributions were important enough to the US that the score was pursued by espionage? and the composer was featured on the cover of Time Magazine?

It feels like Shostakovich mainly uses repetition to suggest something like accessibility.

Maybe a related question is whether there are trainings or courses that you'd recommend to a normie like me to upskill in this area.

I have an account through work that I can use for up to $800/yr worth of "professional development." I think I want to get access to an OpenAI product but I can't really decide which one.

Does anyone have a recommendation?

My use is probably going to be pretty normie-ish. I do a lot of work with text and I've never really generated images except for little stunts.