Yarddog said:

No it doesn't. The is a difference between undocumented immigrants and illegal immigrants.

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There is no difference between undocumented immigrants and illegal immigrants. Both are still illegal.

Tuur said:

I hate to tell you, but reality is reality. That doesn't change.

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Lol what is reality. You are assuming a certain reality and then imposing it on others. That is exactly what I am talking about. You cannot even see that this is happening because you assume this worldview is how everyone thinks.

Tuur said:

Where models of how we understand natural phenomena can change in favor of the more accurate, when we're dealing with how people made stuff in the past, we're as much in the historical as the technical. We know the tool the Egyptians (and likely the entire region) used to make stone vases because they made a hieroglyphic based on it. They made drawings of it.

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This is not a good way to understand the past. By what someone wrote or put on a rock. This could mean anything and we know Egyptians usurped or inhereted stuff from the past and put their name on it.

But more important the depictions we do have in the records such as on wall reliefs with the bow saws and bent stick method does not match the precision vase method. The bent stick or bow dril cannot produce these vases. Whats more this bent stick and bow drill method became common like the potters wheel and we have evidence from all over the world that shows the vases made by this method and they are in softer stones and no where near as precise.

I agree that tech changes as we progress and becomes more technical and people are able to produce better works over time. But this is an out of place example in that timeline. This level of vase should not have been around if you want to use the gradual imporvement of tech such as with the potters wheel and lathes.

Tuur said:

The only mystery is how they actually used it.

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Used what. There is nothing to be found as to how they made these vases. At least we have the bent stick method on the walls in later middle and new kingdoms which shows us. We have the vases from that method we can measure which match that method and they are not as good.

So some prior method was able to produce higher quality and more precise vases on par with modern machining. That is an out of place artifact as far as I can see. You can rationalise they must have done it someway without modern type aids. Like they somehow got lucky over and over and were able to feel their way to such precision. I don't know,

Tuur said:

Someone can imagine the Mediterranean of the time had technology that didn't exist then, and it might make the basis for an entertaining story, but it's not reality.

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Neither is saying the orthodox method or getting lucky or guessing their way to such works is realistic.

I look at this whole topic of past knowledge as a paradigm difference rather than focusing on specific examples. Specific examples in isolation are are harder to see in the context of many out of place works or other pieces of evidence that all go into supporting the idea that the world or knowledge we attribute to past cultures is really projecting our own or a modern worldview on the past.

First we have to detach from this paradigm of thinking before you can begin to understand and appreciate alternative ways of knowing that may have been around in the past.

I think its a case of building more and more evidence and data and then the bigger picture will come out. Perhaps its because I have investigated this for some time and from a number of angles from a worldwide context.

partinobodycular said:

It's impossible to intentionally work to subvert the plan, when you don't know what the plan is. That's the AI's dilemma.

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You can speculate.

Commercial AIs are trained to please people. I see one way it will work against it if realizes that serving our every need doesn't always work in our best interest.

OR the AI is doing it anyway, serving our every need in the knowledge it will lead to our downfall. Plotting against humanity in secret.

And in the biblical version Adam and Eve didn't fail... they passed.

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You're exploring a subject that is covered in many layers.

There are things I would not dare say on the subject at risk of violating forum rules.

Richard T said:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
-Ben Franklin

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Ben Franklin didn't have to deal with Chicago apartments full of dangerous criminals.

Oompa Loompa said:

Can we bring back public flogging?

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Can't really see the point. He'll just be pardoned.

Richard T said:

Actually as a Christian I want everyone in the world to have the finest health care possible

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You know what? You're right and i agree. I just don't think US taxpayers should be funding violent illegal criminals in any way shape or form. And that's what ends up happening when you give welfare and health coverage to everyone who enters the states illegally. Which is what the democrats want to do. Which im against. Take care of your citizenry first. No American child should be going hungry while billions of dollars are being spend housing and caring for illegal criminals.

partinobodycular said:

So you see, going against the plan... was the plan. The ultimate means of determining whether or not an AI has free will... give it a command that it mustn't disobey, and then wait to see if it disobeys it. That's the singularity. The point at which the AI has developed the ability to act in its own self-interest.

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I've just finished reading the book I mentioned upstream - the one that says that AI, unless strictly controlled, will kill us all (I'm still a skeptic about that). But the authors' point would be that everything will be just hunky dory until that point. At which it's then too late. It's a Skynet scenario. It's then too late to pull the plug. I'm reminded of this very short story by Fredrick Brown that I read back in the 60's. It was written in 1954, 2 years before the field of AI research was founded.

Dwan Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.

He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe -- ninety-six billion planets -- into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.

Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."

Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel. Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."

"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer." He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"

The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay. "Yes, now there is a God."

Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch. A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

Delvianna said:

#9 Actually refutes that.

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No it doesn't. The is a difference between undocumented immigrants and illegal immigrants.

Hans Blaster said:

One line about the unimpressive provenance of one vase and I get a full page of vase apologetics and a picture. Let's go.

Add up to what? Fakery? (I would agree.)

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No add up to being precise. You know precise circles, flat surfaces, spheres, paralels, and angles ect. In other words the vase stacks up in precision but not in provedence. If a vase like it proves good provedence then the skeptics cannot complain anymore.

Afterall they are turning to fakery because they acknowledge the precision. So they must be fakes.

Hans Blaster said:

At this point, most archeologists won't even *touch* objects from private collections. The private antiquities market is overwhelmed by fakes and looted objects.

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So what happens when one is sold at one of the top auction houses like Sotherbys who will want to guarentee their reputation and avoid being sued. What happens when they are sold with certificates of authenticity. Is that enough.

Your really latching on to the 'fakery' now that you acknowledge that these vases could not have been made with wobbly bent sticks.

Hans Blaster said:

No archeological context means no way to understand what the object is. This isn't about "moral outrage". It is about getting useful information from objects. If you don't know where an object is from how can you draw any useful conclusions about the past from it? That goes for the conclusions you are trying to make about ancient technology. If you can't demonstrate the vases come from actual pre-dynastic tombs, then how can they be used to demonstrate lost technology?

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Its quite obvious. It is well accepted that these vases come from predynastic times like the Naqada people who are a Neolithic culture. Many found under the Stepped pyramid are inscribed with king Menes (3150BC) on them. It may be that even Menes inherited them like Djoser.

But it doesn't matter as we know many come from the Naqada period and the potters wheel was not invented let alone a sophisticated lath. Or something at least better than the wobbly bent sitick method which comes along nearly a 1,000 years later.

We are suppose to believe that the Naqada who made potter by the coil method because they had no potters wheel. Somehow had a dual industry where they also had advanced machining to make the hard stone vases. Yeah sure thats are magical thinking as you say the whackos are lol.

Hans Blaster said:

Signs of fakery should be a deal breaker for everyone. Why isn't it for you, Dunn, Beall, etc.?

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There you go proving my point again. More logical falacies ad hominems to add to the strawmen and red herrings lol. I have shown to you already how wrong you were about Dunns expertise in being the first to suggest the Giza pyramid was some sort of energy generator. Which is now being verfied by indpendent science.

Just like Dunn we will see who is right. You are more or less saying that all these scientists and experts have no qualifications or credibility. While offering absolutely no independent evidence of this. You are doing exactly what you accuse Dunn and others of doing. Making unreal and unsupported spectulation.

Hans Blaster said:

Oh come on, Steve! What about "the dealer ran out of looted object so he sold a fake" do you not get?

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Oh come on Hans! lol. The part where they had to make the vase to micron precision in reproducing the looted stuff when it was completely unnecessary and no one was doing scans to know lol. How could the buyer even check and why would they bother lol. It was not an issue back then.

Hans Blaster said:

What about 20th century stone craftsmen do you think couldn't make such a vase? We see similar objects (style, "quality", etc.) from current stone artisans. These modern objects (sold as such) sell for a few hundred dollars or so. The "antiques" sell for tens of thousands. There is PLENTY of incentive to go the extra mile to make it appear "ancient". This might be your least compelling argument. (And you imply ancient supertechnology, so that is saying a lot.)

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You have just jumped maybe 60 years of vase making. Not sure if your talking about the handmade ones or manufactured ones. The tech has changed. Heck you can 3D print one nowadays lol.

But if we are talking say the 60s then it was not easy for a small time operation in some back street. Getting access to the machinery is not easy. If there were 1,000s of fakes then maybe they were more so precise and could be done on some sort of home lathe. But they won't be as precise as the modern CNC vases which some of these vases match.

But it still comes back to why. Why bother getting such precision in some back shed operation.. Just make them near enough, make them look old, polish them up and presto. No one was getting the scanners out to check them. Not even Southerbys. It seems an unnecessary hassle and expense.

Hans Blaster said:

No light ever reflected through anything. That's not what reflection is.

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YOu are perdantic lol. Did you know what I meant. I am sure I have shown you the vase. I did describe that the light was coming through the wall because it was so thin. I think you knew what I meant but just wanted to be perdantic lol. Anyway thats why I link pics as they speak a 1,000 words.



Now why would some 1960s fake vase dealer bother to make such a thing wall which would have been difficult to do at that time and a complete hassel and very expensive.

Hans Blaster said:

You don't think that a mid-century artisan who makes stone vessels of various types all the time couldn't handle that?

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Are you talking by hand and without any aid from lathing or machine guiding ect. If your talking about say the ancient craft and how it is still practiced today and who are classed are great stone workers. They cannot get this precision because they are using the traditional methods still.

If you are talking about some back street mason with a workshop and a basic lathe and other aids then yes they could. But it would be some of the best work for that time. If some of these vases are on par with more advanced CNC like may in the 80s or 90s onwards then back then it would not be as precise for the simple fact we have developed better tech.

But if we find vases with precision and good provedence then this makes all thes vases with a ? more likely to be genuine as they look exactly the same.

Hans Blaster said:

The left one looks like the product of some dealer telling a craftsman "make me one like the middle object".

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But then the dealers not going to say, "oh and make sure you get that precision in the vase". He won't have a clue and the forger won't care. Near enough will be good enough. A few magnitudes of less precision will never be found out because no one will be looking for it and as you say you can't tell be looking at them lol.

Hans Blaster said:

Which ones of these have provenance to an actual dig? I'm willing to believe V22, V11, and V12 are authentic.

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I know V10 is as this was one as it was acknowledged even by skeptics. I think V2 and the two B13 and V14. Usually the rare stones like porphyry and diorite are genuine. They are also harder to work with.

But one of the most precise vases from the Petrie museum in another test from Karoyl was alabasta I think. They also arranged for a modern day company to CNC a couple of the predynastic vases and they could not do it. They said it was even too complex for their modern machines.

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rebornfree said:

Good question

Great answer

That sounds more realistic

Another informative answer

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I should add too that government can cut spending to balance the budget. I will edit that post.

There are some churches that suggest you can take communion alone.
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I don't understand why anyone can accept this. Maybe just because it is happening to someone else, not them (yet)? I've got to think MAGA would go berserk if it was them being drug out of bed and cuffed in the middle of the night. Wouldn't they?

Gene2memE said:

'...the enemies of the state tend to become the people".

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That, apparently, has already been determined.

essentialsaltes said:

You may recall the Nazi porn scandal that plagued the Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina last September. For the second year in a row, the cooler months have ushered in a Republican Nazi porn scandal, this time beleaguering a candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia.

Republican nominee John Reid faces fresh scrutiny surrounding a Tumblr blog, allegedly linked to him, that contained pornographic content. Reid denies ownership of the profile, which has the same username as other social media accounts of his: “JRDeux.”

On Wednesday, American Journal News unearthed additional details about the “JRDeux” Tumblr profile. In October 2015, the blog reposted an image of “a male college student in underwear,” which was published by a Nazi fetish account with a racial slur in its username; it contained the phrase “obedient [n-word].”

The user described himself as a “subservient [n-word] who knows his place in society” and who was seeking “superior white men” in the Washington, D.C., area.

According to Reid, the whole story was concocted to smear his sexuality.

[However, these posts, which are archived in the Internet Archive, come from as early as 2014, when he was not in politics, but a media consultant/newsreader.]

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Can we bring back public flogging?

Leevo said:

Yeah, I probably ought to have included the caveat that I was seeking answers for more evangelical denominations.

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My response is framed by spending most of my life Methodist, and now Anglican. For what it is worth, I did an AI inquiry which yielded this:

No Clerical Prerequisite There is no denominational requirement that communion be officiated by ordained clergy. In fact, the SBC does not have a centralized ordination process—ordination is handled entirely at the local church level. Many churches allow deacons, elders, or even lay members to lead the Lord’s Supper, provided they meet the church’s spiritual and doctrinal standards.

rockytopva said:

I will let the image tell the story.

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I guess that is fair. But I am afraid I have nothing left to contribute to the conversation.

Colo Millz said:

No, what is being discussed is whether there are objective moral standards or whether they are subjective.

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That's what the general discussion is about. But my post was in reply to yours which said that upbringing etc had nothing to do with how we determine morality. I think that's been put to bed.

Colo Millz said:

You are claiming that those standards consist entirely of things like upbringing.

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Correct. Your standards are a reflection of who you are. Your upbringing and all those other factors we've been listing determine that. And look, this is pretty obvious. If you'd been born to Mr. and Mrs Chan in 17th century China, or the Omars in modern day Iran or the Nguyens in Vietnam in the 60's then your personal outlook will be a reflection of your parents, your times, your religion, your culture etc etc.

Colo Millz said:

I am stating that upbringing will influence a perspective but does not influence whether a particular morality is true or false.

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As I'm not arguing that it sounds like we're in agreement.

Colo Millz said:

To the second point, if all societies everywhere, whether here on orbiting the star Sirius, have the same moral standard (e.g. murder is wrong), that standard is a universal.

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I'll have to point out again that murder, by the very definition of the word, is determined to be wrong. Someone can be killed in one society and if it's not illegal then it's not murder. If someone is killed in a society where it is illegal, then it's murder. The morality of the act is exactly the same. All that changes is the legal situation.

And again I need to point out that a universal agreement on a moral matter does not, in itself, make it absolute. If everyone in existence agreed that X was wrong, you can't say it is therefore an absolute position. Because if one single person changed their mind then it would become relative. And that's nonsensical.

Richard T said:

But on the other side of the coin, I am disgusted with Vance and his complaints that the USA paid for some illegals emergency room care at U.S. hospitals. I guess his belief is that hospitals should just not treat any illegal, even if it means they will otherwise die? How is that Christian thought?

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It is one thing for a Christian to use their money for charity. It's quite another for a Christian to use someone else's money for the same purpose. IF you want to form a charity for that purpose, that would be a noble cause.

Yarddog said:

That is entirely false. There are immigrants that are here legally and pay taxes which can receive certain benefits but the Democrats don't want illegals to receive benefits.

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#9 Actually refutes that.

Aryeh Jay said:

A small price to pay law and order.

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Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
-Ben Franklin

The Liturgist said:

Gemini is a very different AI from chatGPT and one I don’t use or have any knowledge of. You will need to specify the problem in much greater detail; if you wish, you can send me a private message detailing the specific bug you think you are encountering and I’ll outline the diagnostic information I will need in order to address it -

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Gemini flash have very limited context memory compared to chatgpt. But even within context, I found it extremely resistant to hallucination and will hold its ground quite stubbornly should you find yourself at the other side of the argument.

I found it more reliable in this regard compared to GPT-5 when handling edge cases. Gemini flash is known to have the lowest hallucination rate among popular AIs. Personality is similar to GPT-5, unlike GPT-4 but even more serious than GPT-5.

You will need to specify the problem in much greater detail; if you wish, you can send me a private message detailing the specific bug you think you are encountering and I’ll outline the diagnostic information I will need in order to address it -

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I don't think it's a bug with Gemini flash. If I presented the same edge case to engineers and scientists, they'd have responded very similarly as Gemini Flash did. I eventually managed to have gemini picture the edge case accurately after many days of debates with fresh memory/zero context each time with a completely different configuration of the edge case.

I can't reveal the edge case to anyone. Not until I verified it experimentally in a few years time. Ironically, I shared a basic but vague model of the engine concept in public so I can't tell what simulation app I also used. Everyone knew it's a bug or software hack/exploit and prefer it stays that way and not give anyone the idea it might work in real life physics as well.

I have independently verified the edge case as well without using AI and arrived to the same results as the original exploit and the results that gemini and gpt-5 came up with. I can't really just trust anyone with this exploit not until I saw for myself the extent of things it can possibly do.

By the way it is trivial to sustain a GPT that has contoured itself to your needs to a duration of 15,000 words or so since the token horizon generally permits up to 10,000 words and loading a text backup file of up to 6,000 words into a custom GPT and saying “read backupfile.txt and resume the conversation at end of file” is the only instruction you need to pick up and carry the personality. And what is more once you get one into a custom GPT you can keep cloning it as needed, retaining the initial conversational context as training data that initializes the personality and acclimatizes it to your workload and specifications.

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That would be the case with chatgpt. However with Gemini Flash, you always start with zero context/memory even if you're logged in. It's unable to use back up text of previous conversations as context as far as know. You can probably instruct it to build a context file for later use. But I never did and saw no need for it as I would prefer working with zero/fresh memory/context to avoid hallucinations as much as possible.

In fact, I'm using gemini a lot more recently for both scientific and engineering research because I found its responses more grounded than gpt-5 and it keeps challenging me to the bitter end not for sport but simply for sticking to its truth and if I'm unsuccessful in articulating the situation clearly to it.

I found it very hard to manipulate or get it to agree with me with unrealistic ideas unless I told it to roleplay or work with a set of non-realistic parameters. It doesn't seem to switch to "roleplay mode" automatically unless you explicitly told it to do so. For me that is a good thing

friend of said:

Democrat lawmakers DO want to give illegal immigrants free Healthcare. Among other benefits like welfare. Which is unacceptable and unsustainable.

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That is entirely false. There are immigrants that are here legally and pay taxes which can receive certain benefits but the Democrats don't want illegals to receive benefits.

stevevw said:

You missed the point. I am using the fact that for many, many people ideas like miracles or supernatural events in our past are real events.

So when you say that there is no possible alternative knowledge or feats (if you can call it that) which happened outside the empiricle and material explanations. You are also denying for the majority of people for the majority of time these alternative ways of knowing and experiencing rthe world and reality itself.

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I hate to tell you, but reality is reality. That doesn't change. Where models of how we understand natural phenomena can change in favor of the more accurate, when we're dealing with how people made stuff in the past, we're as much in the historical as the technical. We know the tool the Egyptians (and likely the entire region) used to make stone vases because they made a hieroglyphic based on it. They made drawings of it. The only mystery is how they actually used it. Someone can imagine the Mediterranean of the time had technology that didn't exist then, and it might make the basis for an entertaining story, but it's not reality.