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#perception

4 posts2 participants0 posts today

#Conspiracy theorists don’t realize they’re on the #fringe

Belief in conspiracy theories is often attributed to some form of motivated reasoning: People want to believe a conspiracy because it reinforces their worldview, for example, or doing so meets some deep psychological need, like wanting to feel unique. However, it might also be driven by #overconfidence in their own cognitive abilities
#conspiracytheories #perception

arstechnica.com/science/2025/0

Ars Technica · Conspiracy theorists don’t realize they’re on the fringeBy Jennifer Ouellette

Ever wanted to see new colors you’ve never experienced before? Yes, it is possible. Mammals perceive colors based on evolutionary factors that in some cases restrict the number of colors we can see. But there *is* a workaround. Try it out for yourself. #perception #color #Colors #physiology #science dynomight.net/colors/ New colors without shooting lasers into your eyes…

DYNOMIGHT · New colors without shooting lasers into your eyesCan optical illusions take you outside the human color gamut?

A quotation from Marcus Aurelius

Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
 
[Οἷα ἂν πολλάκις φαντασθῇς, τοιαύτη σοι ἔσται ἡ διάνοια: βάπτεται γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν φαντασιῶν ἡ ψυχή.]

Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) Roman emperor (161-180), Stoic philosopher
Meditations [To Himself; Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν], Book 5, ch. 16 (2.5) (AD 161-180) [tr. Long (1862)]

Sourcing, notes, other translations: wist.info/marcus-aureleus/4304…

Okay, here it is. This is the unofficial official timeline of #AI. I'm going to tell you what to expect, and it's definitely not: this all goes away and we return to before.

Are you ready for this? Are you sure? Well, read on.

Before I continue, I'm going to lay out some AI #benchmarks that we'll use to define "how good / scary is this AI?" This is in rough order of difficulty.

#Lovelace #Test for #Emergence: "Can a system produce surprising and useful outputes that weren't explicitely programmed via weak emergence?"

#Loebner Test: "Can a computer fool casual human judges in text conversations?" ( #Modern #LLM AIs are close to this )

#Turing Test (Original Imitation Game): "A man or a computer and a woman are both answering text interrogations trying to convince them that they are the woman. Can the computer perform as well as the man?" (This was the actual orginial #TuringTest.)

Strengthened #Imitation Game: "A man or a #computer and a woman are both answering text interrogations. Can the computer perform as well as the woman?"

#Coffee Test: "Can a #system enter a strangers house with no prior infor and using #perception, imitation, and #reasoning figure out how to make a cup of coffee?"

#College #Student Test: "Can a robot enroll in college, attend classes like an actual student, learn from the instructions things it didn't know before, and graduate?"

#VoightKampff Test: "Can a machine withstand adversarial exper interrogation and still pass as #human?"

#Harnad's Total Turing Test: "Is the system indistinguishible from humans in every aspect?" (This is a #DuckTest.)

Non #Duck Test: "Even with full access to internals, can experts find no evidence that it isn't a genuine human mind?"