Jodistrict

Wim Hof has been able to conquer the cold, and has used it as an ally for spiritual advancement.

You are confusing pain with suffering. Everyone feels pain. Pain is sensation generated by our bodies to help us survive. Even the Buddha had a painful death. Suffering is the mental resistance to what is which includes pain. Suffering = Pain x Resistance.

It’s unfortunate that this case didn’t go to trial. The public needed to see all the evidence layed out on how this corporate media entity intentionally lied to people for profit and ratings. That’s why Fox settled. It will now be quickly forgotten and the cash settlement really won’t hurt them in the long term.

Your confusion is in the erroneous assumption that the CCP is low consciousness. The US has two parties that follow the same foreign policy. The CCP has one party, but has demonstrated great flexibility in developing new policies. The US is aggressive and determined to be the hegemon of the world. The China policy, which is to be a regional power, is actually modest and reasonable for a country their size. China also has shown forward thinking in their development of trade agreements with Africa and Latin America, while the US spends trillions of dollars in senseless wars in the Middle East. China shows respect for the countries they deal with by keeping out of their politics.

The is an eye-opening documentary. It covers the history and background including the tests on Marshal Islands which caused significant environmental and health damage to the local population. From the description: The Coming War on China, from award winning journalist John Pilger, reveals what the news doesn’t – that the world’s greatest military power, the United States, and the world’s second economic power, China, both nuclear-armed, may well be on the road to war. Nuclear war is not only imaginable, but planned. The greatest build-up of NATO military forces since the Second World War is under way on the western borders of Russia. On the other side of the world, the rise of China is viewed in Washington as a threat to American dominance. To counter this, President Obama announced a ‘pivot to Asia’, which meant that almost two-thirds of all US naval forces would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific, their weapons aimed at China. A policy which has been taken up by his successor Donald Trump, who during his election campaign said “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country and that’s what they’re doing”. Filmed on five possible front-lines across Asia and the Pacific over two years, the story is told in chapters that connect a secret and ‘forgotten’ past to the rapacious actions of great power today and to a resistance, of which little is known in the West.

I find that psychedelics activate the imagination. Everything you experience is you. In that way, it is similar to a dream. But 5-meo is different. It reaches outside the mind to the present moment.

Yes, AI will just serve man.

The instinct for survival is a set of behaviors driven by emotions and feelings. When you fear, you flee or freeze. When you have rage, you fight. When you feel pain you withdraw. The feeling brain uses the left-brain like a tool to execute strategies in accordance with its will. A robot can be programmed to defend itself, but this is not an instinct for survival, it is an algorithm. The robot is no more sentient than a hammer.

Humans have a survival instinct, but millions die in wars, and the world is on the brink of nuclear destruction. It’s not the rational calculating part of the brain that causes that. It’s the reptilian – domination, greed, hate, fear. Think about it and you will see that you can’t have the motiviation for “manipulation” and “deception” without emotions. We have enough left-brain intelligence to solve our problems and enough resources if they are used wisely. That isn’t where the problem lies.

The main benefit of the ceremony is the group healing. You are interacting with the energies of the other people. There are places you can go alone, and there are places you can go as a group.

Alcohol would probably be more effective. It loosens inhibitions.

Finally, someone addressing the real dangers.

Since there is no feeling brain, the computers would have no fear, and, in particular, no fear of death. They also would have no desire for dominance which is reptillian. Thus, they could just flip a coin. A decision that would require a few ergs of energy.

Now you are arguing my position. The morality comes from the feeling part of the brain. We evolved feelings of compassion, because it is important for the mother/child bond and for group success. We also evolved the feelings that lead to conflict and domination. The rational part is just a simple resource allocation problem.

The problem of resource allocation is not that complex. Computers can easily take in to consideration all relevant variables and make the calculations. Even if an optimal solution couldn’t be found, they would agree to a suboptimal solution. It is a problem of computer algorithms. Whoever is more qualified would be assigned the task. Being “better than others”, and “deserving more than” are feelings generated in the lower survival brain. It takes more than neocortex computations to have these feelings. The earth has enough resources and people have enough intelligence, that everyone should be living a satisfied life if everyone cooperated. Instead there are billions of people in poverty, global warming, and the imminent threat of nuclear war. Leaders are willing to destroy the earth rather than having the other guy win. This is not rational. Rational computations in the neocortex can’t explain this. The real problem is the lower brain that generates hate, suspicion, fear, jealousy, pride, and so forth.

Put 10 computers on an island, and assume there are enough resources for everyone. The computers will logically divide the resources between them, since it is known that this way everyone will survive. Put 10 people on the same island. They will become suspicious, jealous and fearful, and end up killing each other. Eventually one person will dominate. This is the effect of the reptilian and mammalian brains.

The feelings and emotions are the deep part where all the problems lie. Computers are just manipulating bits of energy and have no malice. They don't hate, are not jealous, have no fear. They also don't have the positive parts, like love and compassion.

One key point to remember about computers is that they still don’t have emotions and can’t feel. At the most basic level, they are just manipulating bits of electrical charge. The human brain evolved in three stages: the reptilian brain evolved off the brain stem, followed by the mammalian brain which has emotions, followed by the neo cortex which thinks. The computers at their most sophisticated level can only simulate computations done by the neo cortex. What causes humans problems are the lower parts of the brain which can feel and have emotions. The feeling of self survival comes from these parts of the brains, along with fight or flight which is reptilian. If human beings only had a neocortex, we would think like a computer and there would be no wars or other problems. At best, AI can only simulate what is given to it by its human programmer. Thus a robot can be programmed to kill, but the evil intent is in the human that programmed the robot. The robot still is only processing ones and zeros at an electrical level. If researchers ever figure out how to create versions of the reptilian and mammalian brains, then we will have an AI device which can form an evil intent. The most immediate impact of the current AI technology is that it is able to take advantage of big data. It makes possible a surveillance state and authoritarian rule over mass populations. It magnifies the power of those who have access to it. Will this increase inequality ? Will it create an elite class and everyone else?

I have tried Chatgpt for a while, and I have been impressed by how it seems to understand language. Even when I give it long complex sentences, it comes up with a good response. So, I was wondering whether they have solved the natural language understanding part of AI. It seems to pass the Turing test. Then I asked Chatgpt: Joe: Do you understand language? Chatgpt: As an AI language model, I can understand language to a certain extent. I am trained on a massive corpus of written text, which has allowed me to learn the patterns and relationships between words, phrases, and sentences. This means that I can recognize and process words and sentences based on the patterns and structures I've learned. However, it's important to note that I don't truly "understand" language in the way that humans do. I don't have consciousness, emotions, or subjective experiences, and I don't have a personal history or cultural background that influences my understanding of language. Instead, I rely on statistical patterns and relationships in language to generate responses. This means that my responses may sometimes seem out of context or illogical, especially when dealing with ambiguous or complex language. Overall, while I can understand language to a certain extent, my understanding is based on statistical patterns rather than true comprehension. So, according to Chatgpt, it doesn't have a model of understanding. This is still a very long way from a computer that can think. However, it is a genuine advance in computer applications.

The military AI will have to be programmed for survival to be able to function in a battlefield environment. And, of course, it will be programmed to kill.

“The Development of a Society Can Never Be Subject to Rational Human Control” Theodore John Kaczynski. Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (Kindle Locations 186-187). Fitch & Madison. Kindle Edition.

Here is an informative video on the ban. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/3/29/julia_angwin_tiktok_china_big_tech

A deity isn’t predictable. I recently went to a ceremony where I took 1 cup of San Pedro, which for me would be a light to moderate dose. Instead, it took me on a deep 16 hour journey where I experienced both heaven and hell. I was way over my head and went to the brink of insanity. And that was on a moderate dose. The reasoned, well-ordered mind raised in a safe middle class environment with a scientific rationalist point of view says “well it’s been positive so far, I have got this figured out”.

Read “Faust”. It takes your power. In the Amazon, they treat these plants as deities. You approach a deity with humility and offer it a sacrifice. There are strings attached.