The New Coffee Room

"But let's say the study again finds no link between vaccines and autism."

https://clip.cafe/family-guy-1999/coming-up-next-can-bees-think/

Also since once upon time this was a music forum, when I was figuring out the motor controllers I spent a day in order to do this: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/y2ltshr9px5px69ahy5mo/PXL_20240702_221257789.TS.mp4?rlkey=cn1vem7aclbo3k7zd5g42zl45&st=w82plzqi&dl=0

I confess I did find it quite fun.

Thanks all,

This is a picture of my gizmo as requested.:

@89th said in Dewey wrote a book!:

Understood, which is why I try to emphasize that my use of disorder does not have the intent to be insulting but a way of classifying behavior... if a man is unable to produce sperm, or a woman unable to ovulate, or a person attracted to the same sex, these are all forms of procreative defections, even if some can be mitigated by science. And the blunt purpose of sex is to procreate, although we know there are other benefits as well...

Ok so it seems like from what you wrote (not just this quoted section) that you accept that the perspective you articulate has some explicitly religious character (because from the secular perspective the notion of 'purpose' is metaphorical and so loses significance, while notions of physical/mental health 'ideal' are subjective). I also understand you don't mean it to be insulting, and I completely believe you when say you don't have any ill-intentions. I guess the reason the youth will pick up battle axes about this stuff is because ultimately calling people inferior is unavoidably stigmatising because the word is intrinsically value-laden.

I do see this won't move you because yeah you have a religious component which means in some ways you think there really is a purpose that some creator had in mind and that you ultimately lay claim to know what it is, and so to you the statements are truth claims... I think probably we can't really move beyond this point without examining the components of our respective world views and I'm quite sure since I failed to convince you 15 years ago, when i was far sharper on the topic I would have little chance now :).

@Tom-K said in Dewey wrote a book!:

@Moonbat said in Dewey wrote a book!:

@Tom-K said in Dewey wrote a book!:

@Moonbat said in Dewey wrote a book!:

Oh man i have not argued on the internet for so long. What political disagreement i have tend to be in person discussions with my wife's circle of friends where my wife is forever worried they will think i'm a Nazi. A rather different set of circumstances than 2007.

Moonbat, your wife's friends must be right out of the 4th International Trotskyists to think you are a Nazi. Good you're back.

It's a funny thing, but I think it's because the battle lines in the culture war have moved on. If I come here, ....

That is a very interesting point you make. Here in America the culture war really hasn't moved on...or at least very much. As a matter of fact where I live in Florida, things have become must less progressive than they were 10 years ago. for an example they used to have PRIDE banners hanging off of the light poles in town during PRIDE month. They abolished that. Little things, but they add up. Something like Jolly's point on view on gays, while not quite perfect in the more trendy establishments in New York or Los Angeles resonates quite well in the American heartland. I take it things are different in Europe. Most of the supporters of the gay(ish) agenda here are European, Klaus, and you seem sanguine with that whole worldview and Phibes seems to be vigorous projecting the view that you can't be a proper British toff if you haven't been a Lancer in the Punjab. All good, but our continents seem to be sailing away from each other.

It's funny you say in America things haven't moved on because from my perspective the zeitgeist topics and some of the crazier progressive attitudes around them i.e. the 'woke' stuff that all seems to come from you guys - though we seem to be importing it.

I guess this is still compatible with your statement i guess it just means everyone is becoming more polarised which i suppose we already know. Kind of sucks though.

@Copper said in Dewey wrote a book!:

@Jolly said in Dewey wrote a book!:

Are they fine?

They spread disease.

@Tom-K said in Dewey wrote a book!:

@Moonbat said in Dewey wrote a book!:

Oh man i have not argued on the internet for so long. What political disagreement i have tend to be in person discussions with my wife's circle of friends where my wife is forever worried they will think i'm a Nazi. A rather different set of circumstances than 2007.

Moonbat, your wife's friends must be right out of the 4th International Trotskyists to think you are a Nazi. Good you're back.

It's a funny thing, but I think it's because the battle lines in the culture war have moved on. If I come here, I can have the kinds of discussion that i'm having in this thread, but i would just never have them anywhere else. If you go back 20 years, to me atleast these kinds of discussion felt broadly culturally relevant in a way that they no longer do.

By contrast the current political zeitgeist that i get exposed to revolves around trans-rights, racial/minority equality stuff, gender/patriachy stuff, capitalism's intrinsic evils and the rising tide of inequality, freedom of speech vs. deplatforming negative ideas, Israel-Palestine. And on most issues whilst I don't really have views that align with the tradditional conservatives, i absolutely do not at all align with the liberal zetigeist.

I should say that all my wife's friends are very intelligent knowledgeable wonderfull people (and none of them think i'm a Nazi) but they are the European left wing types with a background in the humanities and social sciences and i have very interesting discussions with them but where they are the one arguing for what i think you would call the popular 'progressive' view and i am arguing against. Hence her fears.

I do wonder whether i've become more conservative, they say that's what happens when you get older. But then again I don't think my views have changed much. Instead i think that popular progressive movements have gone nuts. Then again maybe that's what you guys thought 20 years ago.

@Jolly said in Dewey wrote a book!:

@Moonbat said in Dewey wrote a book!:

Oh man i have not argued on the internet for so long. What political disagreement i have tend to be in person discussions with my wife's circle of friends where my wife is forever worried they will think i'm a Nazi. A rather different set of circumstances than 2007.

But for old times sake..

@89th said in Dewey wrote a book!:

I guess we should start with a base. I'd assert that it is the fundamental wiring of human sexuality to be attracted to the opposite sex for the purpose of procreating. It's why we have a penis and women have a vagina. It's why our hormones increase earlier in life, to begin the procreation process, and why the urges decrease over time as the need to procreate diminishes. Forget the meaning of "normal" but in the pragmatic sense, it is the norm for humans to be attracted to the opposite sex.

If you disagree with this, then ok... probably aren't going to do anything but argue in circles.

But if you agree with this, then to answer your question it's an impairment or whatever as an attraction to the opposite sex is on the spectrum of sexual attraction deviation. By default does this make it wrong? No. Religiously, sure... Culturally, some say yes, some say no... depends where values are at the moment, something that is always changing. Laws are just codified morality, after all. So if there is a sexual impairment or disorder, it is similar to other mental (or physical) malformations... biological diversity, to @Doctor-Phibes 's point, which I can see.

So i think you perceive structure and function in the anatomical and behavioural differences between the sexes - one that has a clear evolutionary origin. Consequently you classify deviations from this structure/function as impairment/disorder/etc.

So from a secular perspecttive the problem is that this attaches ethical significant to blind forces of evolutionary biology. Just because we are fashioned by natural selection does not automatically mean that we should classify about humans using an evolutionary perspective. This is particularly true when the words have some normative significance to them. Evolution by natural selection is a blind force it's crucial for understand how things are but totally inconsequential when deciding whether some aspect of human behaviour is good or bad. As there is no intention to evolution by natural selection there is no "fundamental" wiring, there is only wiring. There is no intrinsic order, there is just whatever emerges. To talk about homosexuality being an impairment is a bit like talking about a moon that rotates in the opposite direction to the planet that it orbits as an 'impaired' moon because the usual explanation for how planetary bodies form means they all rotate in the same direction. We don't speak like this because we aren't seduced into the idea that there is some intention that all planetary bodies are 'supposed' to rotate the same way, while the fact natural selection can look like design means people are seduced into talking as if it is design and that the designer has a specific purpose.

So to recap - from a secular perspective it doesn't really make sense to talk about some putative fundamental order that is being violated by X human behaviour.

Secondly if you were to be consistent you would have to call alot of behaviours that will seem normal or even desireable to be impairments or disorders. Use of birth control is the mother of all behavioural disorders (as an aside it is an amazing fact, and one that AI doomers are quick to point out, that evolution by natural seelction has continuously selected genes for their reproductive fitness for the best part of 4 billion years. Yet just doing that, just picking the best replicator again and again and again, ultimately built a machine that subverts it's own replication). Now you may be happy with that but how about acts of altruism - if you put yourself at risk to safe the life of a stranger, you are engaging in a behaviour that very clearly opposed to evolutionary drives.

Given the above two points and since people who are gay are totally fine living their lives provided they are treated like everyone else and crucially, absent religious indocrination do not view themselves as defective in any way. I don't think there can be any justification in defining them as such. Particularly given that such language is intrinsically judgemental and almost always carries stigma.

Are they fine? Really?

Homosexuals have a higher rate of failed and transient relationships. Since they tend to have more sexual encounters, they tend to have less commitment.

And since they are more promiscuous, using body parts for things nature did not intend for such use, they are more prone for some diseases, such as HIV.

Therefore, there are both psychological and biological reasons while homosexuality is neither a preferred form of human or even a evolutionary equal one.

I mean they are fine in the sense that they don't intrinsically view themselves as defective. I mean the fact on average they may have a different risk profile is neither here nor there. Does the fact that the Ashkenazi Jews are more likely to suffer from Tay–Sachs disease mean we should consider them defective as a people?

Hey @Aqua-Letifer, i'm good dude - hope you are too.

Hi @Horace, @taiwan_girl

@Klaus yep still exist. Although i'm on my second bloody cold of the last 20 days. Respiratory viruses hate me. I'm moving South again so next time you're in the capital send me a bell.

Hello again to all.

I've been periodically checking in on you guys, sometimes to get the American perspective on some political event or other. But haven't really had the urge or time to jump in. Somehow that 2007 comment got me.

To give you all some kind of update: I got married last year - it was an amazing day. You know people say that the day they got married was the best day of their life, i just thought it was something people said because they were supposed to. I mean in this day an age you live with your partner for freaking ages beforehand, in my social circle marriage has no religious significance, and so.... i don't know, i didn't think it would be a big deal. But it was amazing! It was the best day. I wish i could relive it and spend more time with different sets of people during the day.

Then... what else I've been an researcher in a big-tech company for the last 6 years working mostly on ML. Jumping from academic life to industry was... interesting. Office politics.... suck. I was totally defenseless to manipulation from self-interested parties. A particular technical lead passed off everything i thought of and did as his own creations and deliberately sabbatoged me because he was scared if higher ups interacted with me it would be clear who was running the actual show. But i eventually figured it out, and gratifyingly he fucked so many people off that he eventually had to leave the company because no one would work with him.

Right now i'm on sabbatical as i decided in a moment of foolishness to try and help my father digitise his museum collection of 4000 items of fencing history. So for the last 6 months (minus the month i was obligated to spend on honeymoon) i've been building a a robotic digitisation booth where I can hang objects and have them rotate. Then i have a shelf that is able to move up and down via some ballscrews and motors, and then on the shelf there is a camera that is attached to a ring flash on a gimbal that allows the camera and flash to look up/down. So with this setup and the ability to control everything with software i'm building a pipeline that for any object you hang in the centre, the camera will take multiple pictures of the object with varying degrees of cross-polarised light, then the pictures will get fed into some other software that will build 3d assets of the objects. I've just been finishing this beast and will start the initial digitisation process in the next few months before rejoining the world of gainful employment.

Oh man i have not argued on the internet for so long. What political disagreement i have tend to be in person discussions with my wife's circle of friends where my wife is forever worried they will think i'm a Nazi. A rather different set of circumstances than 2007.

But for old times sake..

@89th said in Dewey wrote a book!:

I guess we should start with a base. I'd assert that it is the fundamental wiring of human sexuality to be attracted to the opposite sex for the purpose of procreating. It's why we have a penis and women have a vagina. It's why our hormones increase earlier in life, to begin the procreation process, and why the urges decrease over time as the need to procreate diminishes. Forget the meaning of "normal" but in the pragmatic sense, it is the norm for humans to be attracted to the opposite sex.

If you disagree with this, then ok... probably aren't going to do anything but argue in circles.

But if you agree with this, then to answer your question it's an impairment or whatever as an attraction to the opposite sex is on the spectrum of sexual attraction deviation. By default does this make it wrong? No. Religiously, sure... Culturally, some say yes, some say no... depends where values are at the moment, something that is always changing. Laws are just codified morality, after all. So if there is a sexual impairment or disorder, it is similar to other mental (or physical) malformations... biological diversity, to @Doctor-Phibes 's point, which I can see.

So i think you perceive structure and function in the anatomical and behavioural differences between the sexes - one that has a clear evolutionary origin. Consequently you classify deviations from this structure/function as impairment/disorder/etc.

So from a secular perspective the problem is that this attaches ethical significant to blind forces of evolutionary biology. Just because we are fashioned by natural selection does not automatically mean that in everyday speech we should classify humans using an evolutionary perspective. This is particularly true when the words have some normative significance to them. Evolution by natural selection is a blind force, it's crucial for understanding how things are but totally inconsequential when deciding whether some aspect of human behaviour is good or bad. As there is no intention to evolution by natural selection there is no "fundamental" wiring, there is only wiring. There is no intrinsic order, there is just whatever emerges. To talk about homosexuality being an impairment is a bit like talking about a moon that rotates in the opposite direction to the planet that it orbits as an 'impaired' moon because the usual explanation for how planetary bodies form means they all rotate in the same direction. We don't speak like this because we aren't seduced into the idea that there is some intention that all planetary bodies are 'supposed' to rotate the same way, while the fact natural selection can look like design means people are seduced into talking as if it is design and that the designer has a specific purpose.

So to recap - from a secular perspective it doesn't really make sense to talk about some putative fundamental order that is being violated by X human behaviour.

Secondly if you were to be consistent you would have to call alot of behaviours that will seem normal or even desireable to be impairments or disorders. Use of birth control is the mother of all behavioural disorders (as an aside it is an amazing fact, and one that AI doomers are quick to point out, that evolution by natural seelction has continuously selected genes for their reproductive fitness for the best part of 4 billion years. Yet just doing that, just picking the best replicator again and again and again, ultimately built a machine that subverts it's own replication). Now you may be happy with that but how about acts of altruism - if you put yourself at risk to safe the life of a stranger, you are engaging in a behaviour that is very clearly opposed to the evolutionary forces that shaped you - should we call it a behavioural disorder?

Given the above two points and since people who are gay are totally fine living their lives provided they are treated like everyone else and crucially, absent religious indoctrination, do not view themselves as defective in any way. I don't think there can be any justification in defining them as such. Particularly given that such language is intrinsically judgemental and almost always carries stigma.

@89th

Man this gives me deja vu from 2007 debates lol

That it does. (And you're still wrong :P)

(Hello all).

@Doctor-Phibes said in Hey Moonbat!:

@Moonbat said in Hey Moonbat!:

I'm still in Manchester, and still complaining about the rain to anyone who will listen.

God's own country! I didn't realise you'd moved out of the big smoke and into whatever that is in the Mancunian air (probably best not think about that too much).

Glad to hear you're doing well (Phibes is D'Oh by another name...)

Hey Doh, thanks for saying hi, hope life is treating you well.

@89th said in Hey Moonbat!:

Hey MB! Hope all is well man. I’m older, less flexible, have kids, and even less wise than I was 15 years ago. If that’s possible. I live in Minnesota now and, shocker, am on a week long vacation at lake cabin.

Hey 89th, nice to hear from you. I'm with you on the older and less flexible part, however, I am rather more dubious of your claims to be less wise. Hope you and the kids are doing well.

@Ivorythumper said in Hey Moonbat!:

Deaths and marriages tend to bring people back together.

Hope you're well, MB.

I am well, thank you Ivory, I hope you and MS are too. I think sometimes of our past philosophical battles and of all those armies of text we sent out into the ether. I wonder now how we had the time or energy. Though in truth if my hands had not decided typing was no longer an acceptable activity I would probably still be at it. In any case, it was always interesting talking with you.

@Horace said in Hey Moonbat!:

I am well, thank you for asking. Good to see you MB.

Glad you're doing well Horace

@Klaus said in Hey Moonbat!:

@Moonbat said in Hey Moonbat!:

Still working on machine learning problems

Give me all the details!

My impression is that pure statistical machine learning is running into an intellectual and practical dead end.

Just today I read a fascinating article of why deep learning doesn't suffer more from overfitting problems, although those deep neural network architectures have gazillions of parameters (see here).

I actually work more with the kernel machines that article talks about, or at least their Bayesian variants - Gaussian Processes. Though inevitably we also do some deep learning. Most of my time has been spent on Bayesian optimisation in various different settings hence my familiarity with GPs as they tend to be the model of choice if you want high quality uncertainties and you relatively little data.

Deep learning seems to be getting more expensive, which perhaps is the practical dead end you speak of but i'm not sure I would mark it dead yet. I think the surprising thing for me is that the most powerful models have pretty simple architectures - e.g. the transformers and quantised auto encoders that drive things like GPT3 or Dale-E.

@Klaus hey Klaus, I can't complain. I've been lucky during the pandemic in that I and those close to me have so far emerged relatively unscathed. I'm still in Manchester, and still complaining about the rain to anyone who will listen. Still working on machine learning problems, and trying to survive politics at work. Time seems to fly past.

I was sad to hear about Larry though I note his ability to cause dissent seems to be alive and well.

I hope life is treating you (and Jon, and Horace, and Aqua and 89th and Mik and George and everyone else here) well.

Just saw this. Condolences to his loved ones.

@george-k said in Six Dead:

@moonbat said in Six Dead:

If it's 99% of the air you breathe you die pretty quickly.

That's more than obvious.

I want to understand how such a high FiN2 occurred in the first place.

If a liquid nitrogen container suddenly depressurises then liquid nitrogen gets turned into nitrogen gas. A litre of liquid nitrogen at 90 Kelvin (roughly 50 moles) turns into 1200 litres of nitrogen gas at 298 Kelvin. If this happens
in an enclosed space people are in big trouble. It's why being in a lift with a cannister of liquid nitrogen is forbidden.

@george-k said in Six Dead:

@jolly said in Six Dead:

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/hall-county/hazmat-situation-prompts-major-road-closure-hall-county/PCIZ5F6CINFNNKJCSG7RRPYTQE/

I'm confused. There wasn't an explosion.

What happened?

Nitrogen is non-toxic, other than an excess will lower the oxygen concentration. After all, it's 78% of the air we breathe.

What leaked?

If it's 99% of the air you breathe you die pretty quickly.