AI as tool, AI in war, AI and what it means to be human.
I use ChatGPT and Claude every day. Claude is better than ChatGPT – both are fascinating and powerful tools – but they both have serious, structural limitations. In its current incarnation, AI is like a very fast but very dumb research assistant with a peculiar set of cognitive biases (of which it’s perfectly aware when … Read more
“A society that has to coerce its population into compliance does not outcompete one whose people are choosing, daily, under fire, to stay and build.” Sometimes AI says something smart. This works in so many ways. Doesn’t change the immediate calculus of this war but it’s good and important to keep in mind.
I guess I still got #TDS. After much back and forth with ChatGPT, eliminating Eurocentric biases, ensuring it was operating from an updated knowledge base, and requesting elaboration on points raised, I found this to be a helpful taxonomy and summary of the uniquely American variant of fascism. There’s no hope for me, friends. It … Read more
Allahu Akbar. But also: “A strong atheistic explanation has to work without invoking chosenness, providence, metaphysics, or teleology, while still accounting for the extraordinary empirical fact-pattern: a tiny, dispersed, repeatedly targeted ethnocultural group not only survives but regenerates political autonomy, cultural creativity, and demographic continuity over multiple millennia. The best explanation in secular scholarship combines … Read more
Those of us who use AI daily are not worried about it taking over anything soon. 😂 We’re worried about the people who have already taken over using AI. 😬 This tech is DUMB. Like, it may be the best tech ever invented, but it’s still DUMB. And people make life or death, hire or … Read more
After I called out Grok for relying on “X sentiment” of Mamdani critics and anti-Mamdani propaganda, and asked for a “facts and figures” based approach to answering the question “Based on all known statistics and trends, is antisemitic vandalism, harassment, and violence – justified as anti-Zionism – likely to increase, decrease, or stay the same … Read more
Gold from the Guide for Us Perplexed Folk What is God? Do Rambam’s Neoaristotelian premises and arguments still hold water in light of the subsequent scientific revolutions? Background: After dispensing with the theologians’ arguments for and about God at the end of part one, Rambam begins part two with 25/6 premises of the philosophers that … Read more
Oh look MechaHitler got a new gig! “Driving the news: xAI said Monday that it secured the new contract with the Defense Department alongside its products being available to purchase. “This allows every federal government department, agency, or office, to access xAI’s frontier AI products,” the company said. Zoom in: Its flagship AI model, Grok, … Read more
And so – the summarization of my discussion with ChatGPT on the tension between and intersection of metaphysics and semiotics in divine communication… “Divine Communication as Relational Autobiography in Translation: A Semiotic-Semantic Framework for Embodied Hermeneutics” This article proposes a theory of divine communication that integrates semiotic structure, semantic content, and embodied interpretation. Building on … Read more
Rereading Golden Doves after almost twenty years, to see what I understand better and what ideas I still find persuasive. It’s a trip. Every page has an insight or claim that resonates deeply. The book is full of associations, parallels, and references that, for the careful reader, are mind-blowing to consider and transform one’s understanding … Read more