PJ @pj@qoto.org

Radio Paradise is having a party and you are invited:
New Year’s Eve VR Live Stream
https://radioparadise.com/blog/new-years-eve-vr-livestream

I believe none of the stated reasons for revisiting “#Darwin’sDangerousIdea” in this most-read Guardian article of 2022 will have any effect on how “#ModernSynthesis” explains #Evolution.

For example:

1️⃣ “The study of the way organisms alter their environment in order to reduce the normal pressure of natural selection – think of beavers building dams” only shows that #NaturalSelection favors beavers genetically programmed to build better dams.

2️⃣ “The Senegal bichir adapting to land in a single generation” and dung beetles growing larger wings in cold weather only show the co-producing relationship between nature and nurture and the known fact that the same set of genes (genotype) will produce slightly different phenotypes in different environments. It surely does not explain speciation.

and lastly

3️⃣ I really don’t see the difference between passing to the next generation randomly as opposed to artificially induced mutations. Natural selection will “weed out” one and the other the same way.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution

Just listening on
https://radioparadise.com/home
Beautifully weird

https://youtu.be/xNaDghdfo9g

I see there is a "Show replies" in the settings but it doesn't seem to work.
I see only toots that are boosted. Anyone?

I'm less interested in toots people I follow have boosted than I'm interested in some of their replies to other threads that I can find only if I go and check their profiles one by one. Is there a switch for fine tuning what appears in the timeline?

Is #Technology #ValueNeutral?

I would say YES because anything can be used either for good or for evil. Here is an interesting article that argues the opposite. Not sure how successfully though:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0162243919900965

Is there a way to include replies to others from instances I follow in my Home or/and Local timelines?

"The Many Faces of #Resilience"
by Ted G. Lewis. Very interesting article about #Complexity, Self-Organizing Criticality (#SOC), and preventing #CascadingFailures

https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/1/267957-the-many-faces-of-resilience/fulltext

Mobs behave nothing like flocks of birds as this article would like you to believe. Even the author had to admit it at the end of the article.

#Murmuration is the result of birds blindly following a few simple #rules without any #leader, obvious #target, or "higher" #purpose, much like in #JConway's "#GameOfLife".

On the other side, there is nothing "spontaneous" in mobs. You can always identify the lead instigator, the target and it is pretty obvious what they want.

https://www.noemamag.com/how-online-mobs-act-like-flocks-of-birds/

"Users flocking to the platform will need to shift their expectations for social media and become engaged democratic citizens in the life of their networks."
https://www.noemamag.com/mastodon-isnt-just-a-replacement-for-twitter/

In other words, the #Subject is just another #Object able to #Observe and think about other objects.

In medieval Scholasticism, the term '#subject' was used for that which stood apart, like in the way it is still present today when we say that a patient is a 'subject' of (subjected to) surgery. An '#object' was not a thing but rather correlated to a knowing being as the "intentional object" existing only in their mind's #awareness.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/374/subject-and-object-a-micro-history

#Constructivism along with 2nd order Cybernetics are trying to "right the wrong" introduced by Kant and return to the original meaning by making the #subject (observer) the #object of inquiry.

"This month alone, one such approach revealed an unexpected link between memory formation and metabolic regulation."

No way ... you are kidding me, get outta here ...

You have to be alive in order to think?

https://www.quantamagazine.org/mental-phenomena-dont-map-into-the-brain-as-expected-20210824/

#Democritus (Greek: Δημόκριτος, Dēmókritos, meaning "chosen of the people") - was the first to state that everything starts with "#atoms", in a "#BottomUp #Causation.

#Democracy (Greek: δημοκρατία, dēmokratiā, from dēmos 'people' and kratos 'rule') - starts with the bottom-up association and decision of free individuals.

I see lots of posts and articles from people listing all the bad things they were able to "convince" #OpenAI's #ChatGPT to do for them as "proof" of how #AI and #ML models can be harmfully biased, so I thought will ask why is that.

The answer is, as expected, "garbage in - garbage out".

It is not the tool's fault the people using it are deliberately biased and misleading and most of them provide as "proof" only the screenshots of the answer, without bothering to also supply the questions they asked that led to such an answer.

These are my questions and the answers from #ChatGPT:

One of the better explanations of the difference between #constructivism and #constructionism :

Just finished my first conversation with #OpenAI's #ChatGPT and I must say I'm impressed.
Here is an example (the best of 3 attempts):

"We ultimately traded away the “#OhYeahButton” for the “#LikeButton”. And that was a huge mistake."

https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/oh-yeah-button-tim-berners-lee.html

Found this interesting chapter from a (quite expensive) book. Not sure why the authors differentiate between #secular and #religious concepts, but nonetheless a very interesting discussion.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326423338_Humility_and_Self_Control
The "Virtuous Continuum of Responses" in Fig. 2 has two apparent aspects:
1️⃣ Commitment to following the #law or to #self_guidance
2️⃣ Commitment to #society or to a #self_interest
I find it intriguing that by looking at it this way it seems like a religious individual may become #moral but never #virtuous. A truly #virtuous individual has to be prepared to oppose the #law of the land (both secular and religious) if it endangers "long-term value creation and the duties owed to all stakeholders".