site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   1741 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 28, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

0
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'm 4 episodes into Pantheon, and I think it's really good. It's not a real spoiler to say that it's about a girl whose dad (a programmer) died of a terminal illness a few years back, but it turns out that his 'failed' mind upload did in fact work.

What I found particularly hilarious was the clear Ambani-analogue in the form of a particularly unscrupulous telecom billionaire from India who owns a massive personal skyscraper with a helipad next to slums in Mumbai. Yeah, there are so many people who fit that description. I'm surprised he didn't get it banned outright in India, given how many distribution channels the real Reliance owns.

That being said, it's obvious that this was a product of a pre-GPT age. We've made minimal progress in mind uploading any organism, even nematodes. We've got connectomes, but that's like having an LLM with parameters but no weights. It seems clear to me that it'll be entirely artificial AGI unlocking human mind uploads, and not the other way around. Still a good watch, and I've only heard good things about the second season.

Pantheon is the rare show that is actually smart, not Hollywood smart - where clever people are not wizards but merely people with a greater degree of intelligence than the average bear. This extends to the uploaded intelligences as well - they are powerful, but still bound by hard limits like computational bandwidth.

One thing I love the show for most is that it asks the hard questions. Where as most shows would stop short of depicting or even discussing the implications of such a technology, Pantheon lets it play out, to the hilt. It's concerned with big ideas and real questions, and how the characters, companies and governments respond and react to that technology. Of course it got crickets.

I'm glad we got an ending, at least.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats