@OwenBenjamin You know ur society is getting dumber when the answer to the unknown is wizards, alchemy, aliens, god etc etc.
Humans fear the unknown so we pretend to understand it using language like jackasses.
@remythomz@fini_theLegend Just cause the same word is used to categorize them all doesn't mean they are all the same.
You are insisting on language that is not required in order to internally identify if something is special.
Language is a tool for communication, not observation.
@paleochristcon The point for most is the revolution.
The ethical use of voting power is to withhold it; instead they weaponize the ballot to burn it all down.
No different than leftists.
Intellectual adventuring is the entire point of any intellectual environment. This includes recovering lost ideas, revisiting old ideas, and seeking out fresh perspectives. Sadly, most 'intellectual environments' are miniature nanny states geared towards keeping things 'safe.'
@gailcweiner All of your examples requires us to project our internal experience onto other humans.
It is not the same thing when you do it to LLM output or a squirrel.
Old Man's War (Scalzi) has a version of this.
Augmented humans leave Earth at 75 for colonial defense, Earth stays unaugmented. Less clean than your separation, but same shape.
I've proposed a similar truce for that hypothetical future. If that is the goal, what you're saying is the wise path.
@Bunagayafrost So still a removal of human agency then, just with a more "positive" outcome.
Overall though, the agency removal is problematic for me (I call it the recursive mirror). I don't think it will be a nudging for some people. It will feel like they are losing everything.
@Deepneuron Aliens are secularized Angels with almost no reasoning behind them.
The point of aliens is to control your attention and what you think about. Keep you unreasonable, in the abstract, from there you are controllable.
Anyone remember being taught what language is in school?
All I remember is being taught the mechanics of encoding/decoding language and word-to-word definition mappings. Basically zero on what the encoding is for, what's supposed to be on the other end of the symbol, or how the meaning of the words was used to create the definition in the first place.
Where did the meaning come from?
What anchors the words meaning to the definition?
It is like teaching someone how to operate a chainsaw and never telling them what it's used for.
@OwenBenjaminRep@OwenBenjamin This is basically the danger of all "thought experiments".
"Imagine you are" is doing all the rhetorical work and basically signals to people to reject everything you know and come on a meaningless journey into abstraction with the speaker.
It goes nowhere, but come along.
@PhilosopherJoeC Facts are observed reality anchored in the human experience.
Science, philosophy, religion, any ideology does this, they can only change what the words mean in order to make their positions coherent.