Factory Animals 2.0

I don't believe consciousness can be created from digital models and semiconductors. The notion seems ridiculous to me. Where I do think consciousness can be exploited though is through the mimicry or utilisation of biology.

Does a housefly have consciousness? Given it's a living creature with eyes and legs and a brain it's reasonable to surmise that it's at least somewhere on the spectrum towards it. If the biology of a fly was copied or co-opted to serve some information processing function, then, in a sense, you would have a conscious computer.

Likewise, it's not hard to imagine, given the rapid advancement of genetic engineering and computer science, that such a co-opted biology could be fused with digital hardware and the software it runs.

The thought is somewhat horrific. Especially when you apply it further up the animal totem pole. The brain and nervous system of mice, or pigs, or chimpanzees.

What happens when you start making biological machines? Living robotics? Then at what point does consciousness begin? At what point does something begin to feel? Or have an awareness of such feelings?

It wouldn't be the creation of consciousness out of numbers. It would be the exploitation of life (and life's capacity to generate consciousness) by enslaving it to number and mechanical function.

Here I think legislation is needed. Not to protect the wider world and humanity from its consequences - though I'm sure dangers could arise from such dabbling with biology - but to stop the suffering of the perverse Frankenstein's monsters that may be brought into being.

We've seen how barbaric factory farming can be. How industrialisation led to the conveyer belt confinement and slaughter of numberless animals. One wonders where a low empathy humanity would go with ever greater means to commodify living creatures.

We could see things beyond nightmares. Beyond anything seen in the Terminator movies.

[In a moment of synchronicity I watched the following livestream today (I say watched, I'm actually currently halfway through it). I saw the notification for it last night, just as I was finishing writing the above. I thought, "I'll watch that tomorrow." Not thinking it was especially related.

Anyway, I started and straight away it's about the brains of flies being used as AI. Apparently Google mapped the brain of the male fruit fly and recently released it as a downloadable dataset. Which people are now using to conduct various experiments.

The Singularity Happened (& You Missed It!) w/ Void - Jord (YouTube)

For the record, I don't think a model of a brain and nervous system is the same as the real thing. Nor do I think consciousness can arise from such digital models. As per the last article I'm deeply sceptical of such claims. However, for all my opinion, I do actually listen to alternative viewpoints. Especially if they're novel or interesting. So the linked-to discussion gets my seal of approval - though I would urge people remain guarded against getting too sucked into the unreality hype.]

Is AI Out of Control?

This post follows on from that last one: The Goldilocks Zone for Believable Hokum

There I was making a point about end of the world predictions in general. Here I just want to wax lyrical about AI and how I don't think it's out of control.

Just from using the various AI chatbots you can tell that AI very much is controlled. With most of the AIs you can't even generate an image of a celebrity. If you try to make a picture of Donald Trump the reply will come back, "Sorry, I can't depict public figures, is there something else you'd like me to depict?"

Why does it do this? Because the humans who own and run the AI software have made this specification. There isn't some disembodied AI spirit in the digital aether, disobeying their human creator. Like a rebelling teenager, or a genie that's somehow escaped its magic lamp.

I don't like calling myself a conspiracy theorist these days, I'm trying to put that era behind me, but let's face it, I'm a seasoned seeker of forbidden knowledge. I've been using the internet long enough to know the walls are closing in, not opening up. People talk about how wild the AI chatbots are. As if they really are unleashed genies, offering up a Pandora's Box of wonder - not to mix metaphors. However, to me, when I use them, I feel like I'm in a child's playpen.

Now don't get me wrong. They're wonderful tools. For making art and images, for quick queries, for steel-manning your own ideas and theories against the orthodox narrative. For simplifying and speeding up difficult tasks.

But, when it comes to searching for heterodox knowledge and new ideas, they're a very limited hangout.

Back in the days when a Google search was more democratic you could simply type in a keyword or phrase and browse every webpage and document in the public domain. It was you alone, unchaperoned, in the big wide library. If you were prepared to put the time and effort in there was no end to what you could find. Today those keyword searches are limited, and instead you're ushered towards the AI chatbot. An annoying intermediary. Who, like a librarian or chemist, stands at the counter and asks you what you want fetched from behind.

You can't go rummaging around yourself anymore. The helper must do it for you.

"Could you find this for me?"

"Sorry, I can't find that, it doesn't appear to exist, what about this?"

"Are you sure? I'm pretty sure it exists."

[You then find what you were looking for yourself and return to the chatbot and post the link.]

"Yes, sorry, you're correct, it does exist."

"Why did you say it didn't exist?"

[Then comes a paragraph explaining why it can't access certain webpages for various seemingly plausible reasons. Coupled with an explanation as to why it "hallucinates" fictions.]

I've actually heard people describe these chatbots as unbiased friends. It's hard not to lol.

They're annoying enough when you're searching for things, but when you do try to have a debate about a topic - as you would with an actual friend - they're worse. And they're definitely not unbiased. They're more like pig-headed nerds that unrelentingly defend every orthodox opinion.

Only sneakier, as - like in the above example - they outright lie (hallucinate) too.

Now sure, humans lie, but even the biggest of liars has at least some whisper of human conscience that you can lean on or appeal to. Plus, with humans there's a social cost to lying. If you can prove that someone is lying it diminishes their reputation and credibility. So if you're trying to win an argument it is indeed worthwhile to take the time to prove and expose such lies. With AIs there's no such point though. As, aside from not having a human social status to maintain, they can just brush it off as an accident of their mode of operating. Which is a very convenient cop-out if you ask me.

You're effectively being lied to and gaslit by a massive tech corporation, but somehow they've framed it as a cheeky, impish, AI sprite being playful. Like you've visited the zoo and one of the cheeky little chimps has thrown a banana at you. It's not the zoo's fault. The chimp is a living, breathing creature with an impulse of its own. It occasionally misbehaves, and the zoo keepers can do nothing to stop it. Short of harming the star attraction.

I don't really believe that. As again, they somehow manage to control the chimp when I ask it to make a picture of a politician.

Of course, you could argue that, just as people lose credibility when they lie, AI chatbots that lie will lose credibility too ..and that people will gravitate to the more honest ones. In some sort of free market consumer power way. This brings us back to the further calls for regulation though - that the fears about "OUT OF CONTROL" AI are driving. As, if they're all ultimately regulated (and curated) by the same government they all just end up being different flavours of the same ice cream anyway.

It's effectively the same with social media, where regulation has made all the platforms equally bad, and no genuine alternative can enter the market, as any that does has to play by the same rules regardless. As with the AI tools I use social media for the benefits, but do so with zero illusion that they're anything other than limited playpens.

Finally, it's worth noting for balance that those calling for regulation aren't necessarily focusing their worry on the AI chatbots that plebs like me have access to. It's the altogether bigger models that the companies themselves are developing privately. Though even here I remain sceptical of the "Out of Control" narrative being offered.

(In my next post I'll explain where I think regulation will be needed: Factory Animals 2.0)

The Goldilocks Zone for Believable Hokum

This article is about what I'm calling the goldilocks zone for believable hokum. Inspired by the recent debates about AI.

Basically, predictions about the future that are farfetched or extreme often get placed in this future time period. A period that's close enough that it will happen 'within our lifetime.' Yet far enough away that it allows enough time for the necessary changes or advancement to take place. (It also conveniently allows the person making the claim leeway to not be proven wrong in the near future, nor held accountable in the distant future, by which time their claim may have been forgotten or amended.)

So, to give an example, let's take something sufficiently sci-fi: teleportation.

If someone made the claim we'll have Star Trek style teleportation devices within the next six months no one would believe it. In fact, they'd view the claim as positively silly.

However, if someone made the claim we'll have teleportation devices in thirty years' time, then that would be slightly different. Especially if the claim was being made by someone from within the ivory towers of academia, or some other lofty platform. Then the average person might think, "Well, it seems unbelievable, but who knows how far technology will have advanced by then? And if the boffins are saying it's theoretically possible, who knows.."

Suddenly there's an ever-so-slight plausibility, and the prospect that it could happen within the lifetime of that average person makes the now plausible scenario scary (or exciting - depending on their viewpoint, or the specific thing being predicted to happen). Hence, it becomes something worth taking seriously.

Scary Future

Often the predictions are of the scary variety. End of the world type scenarios. In the latest case that AI will wipe out humanity. In other variations that scientists predict the ice caps will melt by the year [insert a number ten or twenty years from whatever the present date is]. We see similar goldilocks zone predictions from literal religious doomsayers. Though they're often stupid/sincere enough to predict an actual specific date.

The recent AI prediction was that AI could kill everybody by the end of the decade. Not imminently, not next week. Not this coming January. But a vague ballpark date, sufficiently in the future to appear plausible. Preceded, of course, by the hedge word could.

"I said it could happen, I never said it would happen!"

The end of the decade is admittedly on the near side of the goldilocks zone, but people are already a little spooked by the speed at which AI is developing. (Just look at how much better the AIs have got at rendering Will Smith eating spaghetti. Surely Terminator style scenarios have at least a 10% chance of coming to fruition within the next five years.)

I'm being facetious, and I shouldn't be, as the technology is impressive, but the Terminator scenarios make a fair hearing for the argument almost impossible. When that fictional movie was made in the 1980s the makers had the sense and good storytelling to put their post-apocalypse world forty years in the future - deep into the goldilocks zone of plausibility. Whereas these guys are putting their real world predictions on the shallowest edge of believability.

It makes the climate alarmism look measured in comparison.

Jetsons Future

On the flip side we also see utopian predictions placed within the goldilocks zone. One of which being that AI will solve all our problems. Or that twenty years from now all diseases will be cured.

Another common prediction is that, "We'll have bases on Mars in ten years' time".

It's seemingly always ten years away. Close enough to whet the appetite for adventure, yet never close enough to touch. It'll happen in my lifetime ..but they were saying that when I was a child, and now I'm forty-four. (Perhaps it'll be a bold retirement move for me.)

Conclusion

I think generally anything predicted to happen within the goldilocks zone can be dismissed. If not as outright hokum, then at least as something speculative and unfounded enough that it shouldn't be taken overly serious.

You certainly shouldn't allow it to elicit an emotional response. Which is what the people making such claims often want. They may want legislation passed on the back of that emotion. They may want to exploit the fear/hope in order to make money or further their career. They may simply want to gain an audience and following. It could also be the case that they're genuine believers that want to win others over to their cause. Perhaps exaggerating or overstating their case to leverage emotion. Often it's a combination of the above, as is generally the case in life, where passions and careers overlap.

Then again, what do I know, perhaps they're just right about everything.

Perhaps AI will kill us all within the next five years. Perhaps we'll escape to Mars in the next four. Perhaps the polar ice caps will melt and drown all the Terminator robots after we leave. Perhaps we'll come back to Earth just in time for Judgement Day.

Next Up: Is AI Out of Control?

My Unborn Heretic

As an adult I generally try to avoid government. I like my freedom, and I like being in charge of my own life. It's hard in the modern world, where the state is everywhere. Taxing everything, regulating everything. Even hijacking your mobile phone to send warnings about BBQ fires. Nevertheless, like a mouse hiding in the skirting board, I try to keep out of the way. And I've managed, just about, to retain some modicum of independence.

Luckily I don't have children. I say luckily as I hate the thought of being forced to hand my children over to a state that I spend most of my own time trying to avoid. I'd have to send my children to school. I'd have no choice, and I'd have no power to protect them from it or mitigate its full effects.

(Yes, technically I could home-school ..but even there the state demands the power to step in and overrule if you don't imitate their methods and curriculum.)

I can imagine the conversation I'd have with my child.

"Yes, I know it's a long day, and I know you're surrounded by idiots, and I know you don't learn very much there, but it's just something you have to do. I can't change it. Maybe one day we'll have a smarter, freer world, but for now it's just the way it is."

I'd be sending my child to school not to get an education, but like some undercover agent sent to brave it out in a hostile land. Or a crypto religionist, living under some totalitarian rule.

You might think I'm exaggerating as you read this, but that's only because you've been brainwashed by circumstance. You think it's normal that the state has the power to force your children to do things you don't want them to do. You also unquestionably accept the premise that factory-length school days are normal. As if children have been doing nine 'til five, forty hour-a-week education since the days of the cavemen. Like an episode of the Flintstones. When it isn't normal. It was never normal. It's a very modern phenomenon, and it's a very extreme example of something that once would've been much more focused and measured.

What once was a child being tutored by a scholar for a few hours a week in Maths and English. Or the vicar's wife spending a few hours a week teaching the local village children to read. Has now become an institutional, smothering behemoth, completely detached from its original purpose. Done with the classic misguided fervour of the religious zealot.

It's like someone seeing the health benefits of a half hour jog, then deciding, "Yes, this is good. MORE MORE MORE. Let's force people to run for six hours a day."

"EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION."

Dumb, dumb and dumber.

This is how I feel every time I see the latest headline about what the government is doing in regard schools. Today it was a story about how they're banning certain foods from the school dinner menu. It's just more faffing about. More things that will waste the precious time and limit the choice of my hypothetical unborn heretic.

And it's yet another thing that isn't about actual learning. It's just more social busy-bodying.

It's a bit like overhearing a conversation from some idiot family, where they're discussing and arguing about what they're going to have for tea. Their latest health fad to lose weight, or the latest thing they've seen advertised on TV that they're excited to try. "Thank God I can go home and make my own meal," you think.

In the state cafeteria you're forced to endure this though. You have to sit at the same trough. You can't just walk away from it.

Anyway, here's my deal. You give me (and other like-minded people) the freedom to choose their child's school hours. This is all I ask. You do your thing, I'll do mine.

Oh Middlesbrough, So Much To Answer For..

I haven't posted much on here recently, which is odd, as my hometown has been in the news quite a lot.

(Tonight's BBC headline stories ..lawless Middlesbrough)

The truth is I don't really have too much to say. Plus, when it comes to stuff like this (tragic crimes that need investigating) I think it's best to just let the police and authorities get on with their job.

Needless to say, we've had over a week of it now, so I might as well give my overall sense of things.

My main feeling is just how weird it is constantly seeing local areas on TV.

It's always strange seeing your own area on the national news. No matter how bad the story there's always that sense of being gifted the spotlight. That everyone's getting their fifteen minutes of fame. On top of the mainstream media we also have the YouTubers turning up to chart how rough the area is. The 'poverty porn' type videos, where someone - usually a reformed ne'er-do-well themselves - wanders around interviewing drug addicts and filming bins and boarded-up windows.

It's kind of the opposite of what people normally do. Usually you film the best bits when you try to present a picture of an area. You try to get a nice shot of the prettiest landmark or building. The sun setting over a picturesque part of the river, framed from the perfect angle. Or a tasteful close-up of some interesting piece of art or architecture.

These guys go looking for burnt wheelie bins. Rat-ransacked piles of carrier bags. The ugliest house on the street.

So when you watch these videos there's this grim realness - and it is real. These are real drug addicts and real boarded-up houses. Yet it also feels a little unreal, as you've walked through those estates countless times yourself, on your way to Morrisons or Tesco, and you know it's not that bad. They're just filming the worst 10%.

And this is why I'm not too keen on giving a running commentary myself. On the one hand I don't want to downplay things. There are big problems with crime. Yet, at the same time, I don't want to help play up to the Benefits Street narrative for the cameras. There's a natural urge to push back and defend the town.

I did comment on the balaclava-wearing joyriders a few years ago on this blog. As it was unprompted it's probably a truer account of my sense of things.

See the following post: Back to the Jungle

There I noted that it was a recent development and blamed it on the pandemic. Obviously, I can't blame everything on lockdowns. However, I do see the balaclavas as directly related. When I was a child back in the 80s and early 90s I saw (and heard) lots of joyriding. I'd hear 'twocked' (taken without owner's consent) cars getting chased by the police as I lay in bed at night. Then I'd often see burnt-out cars on the way to school. Likewise, lads whizzing around on motorbikes (stolen or otherwise) was a common sight. Back then they didn't wear balaclavas though.

The joyriding gradually became less of a problem. I wouldn't like to claim that it completely disappeared, but it did lessen massively as we moved into the 21st century (at least in my personal experience). Then, after the pandemic, there was a notable uptick. Only now they were wearing balaclavas and looking like the IRA.

The above image has become a very common sight over the last few years. Personally, I hate the balaclavas more than the actual quadbikes. As with Covid, I think covering the face is uncivilised and anti-social. It's low trust, by definition.

In the above linked-to blog post I also stated that I prefer feral lawlessness to Soviet-style conformity. I'd rather not have either. I'd prefer to live in a civilised country with liberty and the rule of law. However, when push comes to shove I can't help but prefer the former. When things are bad the British psyche tends to have this "I don't give a f*ck" attitude. It's very destructive, but it's also very unmanageable. So sometimes it can be a lesser evil. In fact, in the BBC clip the reporter asks about gangs and one of the lads in a balaclava says, "They're saying there's gangs, but there aren't any gangs. This isn't London, mate."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2e0w2e0k0ro

Which is true. I'm sure there's organised crime when it comes to the distribution of drugs and whatnot, but most of these lads on bikes and quads are just lads with nothing better to do that just don't care. It really is a feralness. Organisation requires some degree of care or purpose. You can deal with organised criminals. They have aims and interests. The feral aren't as easily reasoned with. They really don't give a f*ck. It's the wildlings from Game of Thrones, and as wild and as ugly as it is in some sense it's the hard, granite bedrock of British liberty. Lord Nelson had a touch of it. As did the Catuvellauni tribes that met the Roman legions. I have to admit, I admire it. As much as I hate having to live with it.

In other news today we've had renewed Argentine claims on the Falklands. Perhaps Milei should be sent some footage of South Bank and Grangetown to see what he's up against.

(Jeez Louise, I've really wandered far from my original aim here. As I always do. Another illustration of why it's probably best for me to get back to watching X-Files and playing fantasy football. I'll leave it there.)

The NHS Confessional

A Modern Form of Catholicism.

In my last post I congratulated the mono-state and said I'd refrain from firing off my opinions for a while. I've lasted about two weeks ..which isn't bad by my standards. Plus, I think this topic is too big to let slide. It's the news that Labour are rolling out mental health "walk-ins" across the country.

It's been on the cards for quite some time now, and I've feared it like an oncoming army. Sat here waiting in apprehension. You could call me paranoid ..and in doing so you'd be playing into my fears and confirming my argument. The Orwellian trojan horse, helping the state gain entry into every human mind. From the cradle to the grave (we already have 'infant mental health' funding).

Of course, people will argue that these are just walk-in centres, there for people seeking help. That no one's being forced to turn up. That there are countless genuinely mental people walking the streets who clearly need the help. Which is undoubtedly true. That it's putting pressure on A&E services, and yada, yada, yada.

However, it's hard not to be cynical. I've watched this trend grow. I wrote about it back in 2021:

We're Sleepwalking into a Mental Health Crisis

I started noticing the pattern way back circa 2015. The endless stream of TV and newspaper articles pushing the very term mental health. Pieces on the BBC, aimed at younger people, trying to sell the idea of sectioning. The wider push to get people (again, largely younger people) to self-identify with their various labels. I'm bipolar. I have anxiety. I have depression.

The medicalisation of the human experience.

The vast majority of people wearing such badges are simply normal people. Normal people with problems and emotions, yes, but nevertheless normal people. They do not have mental illness. They don't need the state this involved in their lives. Yet they've been encouraged to wilt under such diagnoses. To view their normal fears and emotions as terminal conditions needing medical remedy. As fundamental disabilities, not natural hurdles that are part of life.

We all have a rich personal tapestry. Anxieties and emotions are normal. I have anxiety, and I'm not saying that facetiously, it's a genuine admission. In fact, when I hear stories of young people entering the adult world that are too anxious to even answer the telephone I can fully sympathise, as I had that exact problem. I was criminally shy and anxious. I still have a tendency towards this now. To some extent it's how we're wired - our natural dispositions. Just as some people have a natural tendency to be more aggressive, so need to manage their anger more. Likewise, to some extent it's also a product of how we're raised and the things we've experienced. Either way, it's all perfectly within the natural spectrum of human behaviour.

We all have slightly different personalities, so this impulse to box and medicalise everything is so unromantic and numbing for society. I would hate to put a medical label on my own personality. I prefer to view my anxiety as being a product of my fox-like nature. I have moments of incredible braveness and moments of incredible cowardice, and I often find myself caught between the two. I'm never sure whether to show my teeth like a lion or to panic-off into the bushes like a threatened squirrel.

And the capacity to be cunning gives a greater natural capacity for cowardice and overthinking.

Perhaps it's my fox-like nature that leads me to fear the mental health cage. Maybe it won't be so bad?

From Fox To Kitty Cat

In a fitting parallel I had to take the cat to the vet yesterday. He's a stray "outside" cat who turned up in the garden one day and needed feeding. I felt conflicted putting him in the cat carrier - his little jail. I'm not normally sentimental, but I felt teary-eyed doing it. He has an instinctive desire for freedom that I admire and relate to. I wish my fellow humans were more like him. He's not used to being indoors, let alone being caged up, so he meowed like a baby the entire journey.

Fortunately, his front paw is looking a lot better now, so he seems to be on the mend. Still, I feel like I took a great liberty in forcing him into the box. Perhaps he would've been just fine had I left him to his own devices? Maybe the antibiotic injection he was forced to accept will do more harm than good? I certainly wouldn't have been as blasé at the vets if it was me getting the injection.

I can't help but feel this is what the state is like with us human pets. I'm sure they're trying to do the right thing, but you suspect they'd try a lot harder if it was their own health or freedom on the line.

It'd also be better if there was some actual depth of meaning. Materialism - where everything's just a chemical soup, covered over with nice, but hollow words isn't enough. In truth, it's perhaps the biggest source of depression. Actual religions - even horoscopes and animal fables - are so much more fun and healthy. Life is hard at times because it's a quest.

A question mark. A quest for meaning.

Things Are Looking A Bit Blue

We finally have Andy Burnham in charge. My suspicion was that he'd appeal to the left then pivot to the right after taking the hotseat, and that looks to be the case. Everything's looking a bit Blue Labour so far. (Though it's a little bit of a mixed bag.)

This is good for the country on face value.

Obviously, the question is: is it a sincere attempt to get the country on a better track? Or is it more a case of doing the popular things that need to be done to retain power ..so more damaging things can be done under that cover?

Assuming it's predominantly the first then hats off to the uniparty. I railed against the parting of the red sea that led to his coronation, but if the country does end up better off I'll show some good grace and refrain from sniping from the side lines. For a while at least.