Just attention seeking. They think they must cry out as loud as possible to be heard, even if what they say isn’t exactly true.

Good findings but sensationalist wording.

Enjoyment of small random variations from harmony doesn’t mean harmony doesn’t exist, only that it’s not the whole picture.

Second, Indian music knows thousands of scales. They aren’t western harmonies, but they are still harmonies.

‘Don’t go to the US – not with Trump in charge’: the UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for six weeks Karen Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, i...

Why did ICE shackle a British tourist, a grandmother with no criminal record, who had all the correct papers, and lock her in a cell for SIX WEEKS??

Because ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone.

Eliminate this agency now.

Leonid Korogodski – Medium Read writing from Leonid Korogodski on Medium. An immigrant from Ukraine, now residing near Philadelphia. Software developer by day, science fiction author whenever time allows. PhD in Math from the M...

More on this is in my essays on Medium. medium.com/@leonidkorog...

All progress so far has been entirely due to humans. A purely digital society of purely digital AIs, if left alone, will necessarily decay. There is no preventing this. No software upgrades, versions in millions, will help—unless the systems become far from equilibrium.

Another law of nature is that systems near equilibrium can’t reduce entropy at all. It may appear plausible that a smart digital system may develop even smarter digital one. But if you take a long thermodynamic view, you’ll see that it fails from the first principles.

You may say that we decay as well, getting old and dying. True for every individual. But the total of all systems far from equilibrium still reduces entropy, because FFE systems reduce it on average. This is a law of nature. This is why evolution has a direction toward rising complexity.

Because otherwise a system will continuously decay because of entropy. For the same reason that our digital genetic code needs analog bodies as vessels in order to fight entropy, digital systems must either plug into a human framework (as tools) or become partly analog and far from equilibrium.

Predictable systems are near thermodynamic equilibrium (no butterfly effect). All living organisms are far from equilibrium. Complex adaptive systems FFE reduce their entropy on average. Systems NE always increase entropy. This is a fundamental distinction that AIs can’t cross until they are alive.

Even that, if achieved, wouldn’t be enough. New knowledge must be achieved when handling unpredictability, not deriving a theorem from a well-defined finite system of axioms while following well-defined finite rules of logic. That’s mechanical.

Technology: Organic or Machine? Opinion #8 in the Transgressive Science Fiction Series

Technology, including artificial minds, is often seen as mechanistic. But this is because we are still at an early stage. Discover why it must develop not through rigid programming but through free growth, integrating digital with analog in order to stay far from equilibrium.
tinyurl.com/mv5xmknc

The good news is the fuses must have stopped the heater from leaking all over the house or even blowing up. Could have been worse!

Good. Dems not backing down in the slightest in the face of Trump's call for their execution. Keep this up, Dems. Treat Trump like *he's* the violent criminal and the real threat to our Constitution order. Because he is.

Cool! Are you aware of the Philadelphia Writing Club discord, organized by Eric Smith?

Wait, do you also live in the Bucks County? And yes, we did flip it good!

US citizen, 67, ‘has six ribs broken’ by Border Patrol agents, his running club says The incident unfolded Saturday in Chicago’s Old Irving Park neighborhood, where residents say federal agents disrupted a children’s Halloween parade

these guys just love doing this. nothing like 8 storm troopers beating the absolute shit out of a defenseless old person www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

If I do minor revisions on an already drafted text, with perhaps minimal changes but going over an extended length of text, I divide that excerpt’s word count by 10.

My daily minimum is 100 (counting both added and deleted words). But I usually average about 300-400 a day.

Ethnic Nations or No-Majority? Opinion #7 in the Transgressive Science Fiction Series

Imagine a nation where no single group dominates, neither by race nor by faith nor by ethnicity. Would it be pulled in different directions? Or would it be more resilient and superior to ethnic states?

Read now and share with your community!

tinyurl.com/4bykzech

Ethnic Nations or No-Majority? Opinion #7 in the Transgressive Science Fiction Series

If you enjoy my opinion piece (here’s the link again), then spread the word. If you believe that it deserves to be discussed, then please do more than just repost and forget: bring it in front of your community. tinyurl.com/4bykzech 8/8

Like others in the series, it uses the same metaphor: 1,001 steps forward for 1,000 steps back—the property of all diverse, self-organizing systems—whereas all homogeneous, rationally planned ones (no matter how well) take 1,000 steps forward for 1,001 steps back. 7/8

It also shows why a “salad bowl” is much better than a “melting pot” as an immigration policy. Keeping the population as diverse as possible, rather than forcing immigrants into adopting the same culture is the only way to push back entropy. 6/8

But when that happens, it would be a good thing for the country in general. Not having anyone in absolute majority does NOT imply the lack of national identity. The post shows why such diverse nations are superior, on average, to those that have ethnic cores. 5/8

The most radical of Trumpists raise the specter of the Great Replacement theory—while others feel the changes at a subconscious level (“something’s wrong with our country”). Both fear the time when the immigrants turn the United States into a true crossroads of the world. 4/8

The United States has come the closest, yet it still has an Anglo-Saxon ethnic core, albeit not particularly well-defined. The driving force of Trumpism is the fear of being “replaced” by Others. 3/8

Some say such a nation would be pulled in different direction, but the same is true of our brain, whose neurons constantly inhibit one another. So, let’s see what far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics and science of emergence have to say. 2/8

Ethnic Nations or No-Majority? Opinion #7 in the Transgressive Science Fiction Series

The final post in my Transgressive Science Fiction series is more political in nature. Imagine a nation where no group has absolute majority—not by race, faith, nor ethnicity—and then compare it to ethnic states. Which is superior? tinyurl.com/4bykzech 1/8

Also, heads up! The last installment to my series is coming within days. It will compare ethnic states to nations where no group is in majority.

The Murderbot Diaries is, in fact, a rare thing in that it takes emotions in artificial minds as a necessity for granted (most of the time) and not as a surprise. But does it know why?

Artificial Minds: Emotional or Rational? Transgressive Science Fiction #2

Having finally read The Murderbot Diaries, I have added a section on the series to my opinion piece on whether artificial minds must be emotional or rational (see the link below), the essay #2 in my Transgressive Science Fiction series.

tinyurl.com/44x54shc