Posted on 07/07/2025 7:16:13 AM PDT by Twotone
We’ve spent the last few years marveling at how AI tools seem to think, with me, for me, and even a curious cognitive construct that I've struggled to put my finger on.
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So, here are the emergent questions. What happens when a machine can predict your professional judgment better than a colleague? What happens when it completes your thoughts more fluently than you can? What happens when an LLM can model your biases, your hesitations, your habits of mind and then adjust accordingly? Read this paragraph again and really think about it—in a way that only a human can.
This isn’t just imitation. My sense is that it's a form of divergence. The model doesn’t replicate how we think and yet we still try to align AI with the human construct. But here's the essential truth: AI doesn't replicate human thought, It bypasses it.
We’re still asking whether AI is “intelligent,” whether it “understands,” whether it’s getting close to passing as human. But these are the wrong questions. The right one might be to ask what kind of cognition is this? Because, it’s not ours.
(Excerpt) Read more at psychologytoday.com ...
“AI can no better answer the question “Why is the love of money evil?” than we can. And therefore, as a tool left without the guidance and limits our Creator gave to us, it is even more likely to produce Bill Gates’s than Billy Graham’s.”
But we can... It is simple. It is serving the wrong master and has been deemed as evil because of this. The love of money is evil because it always comes from the backs of others. It feels not the hardships or misfortune of others. It has zero human compassion and those who love money have sold their souls. All true moral compass goes out the door for that one more piece of silver...
“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Matthew 6:24
Yet men serving money can always find an excuse to claim false morality while riding on the backs of these others.
The movement Szasz spawned is responsible for a lot of the mess we have today, resulting from mental hospitals having been closed and family members no longer able to have an adult relative committed for more than three days. Mass shooters, substance abuse, domestic abuse, random violence -- the treatment model today in mainly pharmaceuticals, which skim the surface but do not heal the spirit.
Behavior is, was, and remains the fruit of the spirit in an individual. Those without knowledge of God, those who do not surrender to His greater wisdom, and especially those who reject God, are not merely “ill.”
Routine tasks may indeed be reduced to a type of mathematical symmetry through predictive calculations. But throughout human history, invention and creativity have “broken the mold”, “marched to a different drum” or “stepped outside the box”, etc. Significant leaders have been transcenders, innovators, nonconformists.
“The machines have no narrative”
We better hope they do not follow the path humans do—and make up wrong and stupid narratives to fill the logic gaps.
Modern physics is a mess.
Part of that is based on the government funding model—which discourages deep analysis of foundational questions and rewards building on existing foundations.
If anyone before you made a blunder you will not find it and will just make it worse.
The most common type of blunder is when a scientist many years ago was able to figure out that whenever there was A there was B—and then concluded that A caused B.
Unfortunately for them it may turn out that (as yet undiscovered) C can cause B as well.
I am in general agreement with Szasz’s general theory of mental illness.
It need not have led to the end of mental institutions.
Misfits living on the street and/or pumping folks with Pharma is a bad move regardless of how you view mental illness.
Yup—the modern version is “useless eaters”.
The reason our Constitution is the lasting answer to having freedom but recognizing the need for laws is that the Founders acknowledged human nature; there will always be some bad behavior in society. “More perfect” is the best we can do—the most good for most of the people, most of the time. Only communists believe in utopia—which always turns out to be “for me, not for thee.”
To the extent he helped break down the rigidity of Freudian thought, as did Jeffrey Masson, I agree.
Lately I have been amusing myself and engaging in online discussions/debates with Flat Earthers.
The cliche would be “they are insane” so that gets us deep into Szasz land about the definition of insanity.
Szasz explanations fit very well for these folks.
They have an unconventional view of reality which will not change based on new data. They are “stuck”.
“Normal” humans keep their egos/pride in check and acknowledge there may be new data that should be considered from time to time—and if that new data shows their existing views are incorrect then changes may have to be made.
So—Flat Earthers are just really stubborn.
(The challenge in corresponding with them is to try to figure out the one magic piece of data that will break through...)
Usually not possible. I think it's called solipsism -- the inability to view the world outside of one's own context and perspective. Before all language of behavior was psychologicalzed, they used to be called "crashing bores."
Also, I don’t consider that to be AI. I used to be a programmer and IT. I consider AI to be programming that has ability to change its own code. If all it’s doing is making decisions with flags and switches, it’s just a program.
Now, it might be a really calm really sophisticated computer program. But ultimately it’s just a program written by someone. I wrote a program for a bank once that allowed them to sell investment products to people and they had the ability to pretend they bought it six months ago and even perhaps made a bunch of deposits between that 6 months ago and now and each one change the amount which may have changed the interest rate charge for all the days leading up to the current date. It was a mess of program but the point is it wasn’t artificial intelligence. It was just a computer program.
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