[ExI] More mailing lists of this calibre?

[efc at swisscows.email]

Hello Bill,

Well, my problem is that I have a tendency to have very broad taste... 
call me a dilettante I guess. ;)

Currently I'm thinking a lot about positive psychology and transpersonal 
psychology. Add to that, a dose of philosophical pragmatism and some 
thoughts around if it is in fact possible to combine religion based on a 
"what works" way of doing it, without losing the effects of religion.

I guess what lead me to that point is the increasing specialization of 
philosophy as well as psychology and the focus on curing the symptom but 
perhaps not the underlying cause. Philosophy as well, (and here I do have 
academicexperiencemyself) seems to have become increasingly less relevant 
to people, although there are of course some pop philosophy authors who 
try and bring it back to the masses.

I think that from a public health point of view, it is very understandable 
that CBT, pills and "quick fixes" is the only thing being focused on given 
a lack of resources (I'm currently based in europe where the majority of 
all healthcare is public or a mix of public and private).

Given your knowledge and experience, is that something you have thought 
about and worked on?

Best regards,
Daniel


On Fri, 7 Apr 2023, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat wrote:

> Daniel, I taught psych for many years and still read a lot of books on various psych subjects.  Just what are you interested in? 
> bill w
> 
> On Fri, Apr 7, 2023 at 10:35 AM efc--- via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>       >
>       > PB scale storage systems are not boring.  Or rather they wouldn't be, if the
>       > masses were to be more excited by it.  I have heard of silicon being used
>       > for storage, but never lead.  Lead would have its advantages, against
>       > radioactive particles and such.  Perhaps I misunderstand what you meant by
>       > PB storage.
>       >
>       > Oh wait, petabyte.  Retract all.
>       >
>
>       Haha, sorry, I got caught in my own associations. Yes petabyta and not
>       lead.
>
>       As far as the underlying storage goes, it doesn't get more exciting for me
>       (or didn't, rather) than finding the right combination of spinning disk,
>       solid state disk, tape, cache layer etc. So my job was more in selecting
>       and applying technology than inventing.
>
>       Before I moved on to my own business, the most interesting development I
>       was following was going from dedicated storage systems to software defined
>       storage systems being built on commodity servers instead of specialized
>       hardware. But I'll leave that for now, unless someone is interested of
>       course.
>
>       > What has been happening here in the past few weeks is as philosophical as it
>       > gets.  Debating whether ChatGPT is conscious feels like an echo of what the
>       > chess players were doing in the 1990s: asking if the software really
>       > understood chess or was it just calculating mindlessly.  What we eventually
>       > decided was that these were exactly the same thing.  It was quite the ego
>       > buster.
>       >
>       > Daniel as a newcomer, with little or no influence from what has been posted
>       > in the past here, do you have a favorite take on the hot topic of the month?
>       > I presume you have played with ChatGPT.
>       >
>
>       Not ChatGPT, but alpaca.cpp on my local laptop. And is it conscious or
>       not? I'm sorry that I have to be "that guy" but that would depend on the
>       definition of consciousness. ;)
>
>       But based on my own playing around and very much amateur opinion, I have
>       not detected any traces of an independent "will" or goals, but only
>       reactions to inputs.So based on a badly defined and very "day to day" definition of
>       consciousness I'd say no.
>
>       But, give me a definition, and I'll give you an answer. ;)
>
>       I have read some threads here as well, and what I'd like to see thrown
>       into the ChatGPT mix is memory or state, "will" or goals, an ability to
>       react to outside stimulus, and generation of new knowledge and not just
>       follow logical deductions. Right now, I see ChatGPT as a component or
>       some kind of "center of the brain" that could perhaps be glued together
>       with other systems and perhaps the system of systems would in a few years
>       time get closer to something I would view as consciousness.
>
>       Best regards,
>       Daniel
> 
>
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> 
>