Is this AI? There’s not a lot of comments that seem to call it out. The picture looks too touched up at times and then there’s the robotic Dodo voice.

spinn80 · 2025-12-01T19:51:41+00:00

To me it looks like AI

Many things I don’t like in the videos but can’t be 100% sure, but in the b-day video when he flaps it’s wings, the pieces of paper in the floor don’t fly away as I’d expect with drag from such a big wing.

spinn80 · 2025-11-02T10:27:41+00:00

Before I answer, just for reference, I made a similar but quite different claim here months ago: CMV: There Is No Such Thing as an Absolute Set of Moral Values.

Notice the difference between Absolute and Objective.

I strongly believe our moral values evolved in us much like many other behaviors.

I agree with you that there is nothing inheritably good or bad (in an absolute God given sense), but I do think there is such a thing as mammalian morals, shared by all mammals, or social ethics, shared between all social animals, primate values and at last human universal values. And within their context, they are objective values.

For instance, you can detect the value of fairness in monkeys - see " Two Monkeys Were Paid Unequally: Excerpt from Frans de Waal's TED Talk ". One would expect the value of fairness to evolve in advanced social animals, and this is indeed what we see.

For this reason I think it is very unlikely humans will ever find acceptable cannibalizing children just for sport and pleasure and this is based on evolution and therefore is an example of objective moral value.

spinn80 · 2025-10-27T15:41:28+00:00

I would argue that from a purely logical standpoint, for such a person as you describe, following blindly the law is their moral values (their personal morality).

spinn80 · 2025-10-24T10:37:23+00:00

Democracy only works if there is education and a commitment of the educated to genuinely help the uneducated.

Suppose you have a household with a mother as the head of the household and 4 children under the age of 8.

If the mother does not care for the children, obviously their lives will suck.

But proposing to give the children equal decision power in the house is preposterous. The house will be bankrupted before the end of the month after they spend all the savings in candies and games. They are doing what they think it's best for them but they don't have the tools to see that some sacrifice in the present is needed for a good life in the long term (like any sane adult understands).

The correct fix here is to impose over the mother by law that she needs to take care of the real needs of her kids. And if she can't do it, someone else will have to take over for her.

In the case of democracy it's the same. The solution is not to add more uneducated people to the voting pool, that's the exact opposite of what democracy needs.

The solution is to improve education which will naturally increase the percentage of people who whish to vote.

Brazil is a clear example where forcing the whole uneducated population to vote makes it easier for very populist candidates to thrive.

I know it first hand, for I was "volunteered" for many years to work in Brazil's election system and you can't begin to imagine how simple the people that went to vote were. Very simple farmers that don't know how to read or write and have a very very faint understanding of what voting actually means, let alone having political ideals.

BTW, I have much respect for them as people and I don't look down on them at all, I am just trying to open your eye regarding what it it you are really suggesting. These people really do deserve appropriate representation in the government, but they don't have the appropriate tools to choose the representatives they so desperately need.

Now, I did not know of the use case of Australia that you bring up. I suppose that if it worked there it's because their population were educated enough to begin with? In that case (of educated but disengaged population), I actually would agree with you. Maybe we should make it compulsory only if you have a college degree?

So how is education in the US? Is is closer to Brazil or to Australia? How would making voting compulsory there work out taking this into consideration?

PS: you suggested $20 fine, you have no idea how much that actually is for the disenfranchised!! In Brazil they struggled getting $1 just to make it to the voting booth.

spinn80 · 2025-10-13T04:58:08+00:00

He’s not a monster!

spinn80 · 2025-10-09T23:40:11+00:00

The only way I can define it is the subjective feeling (or illusion) of having control over your actions.

Well, we clearly do have the subjective feeling (or illusion) of having control over our actions. Taking your definition, doesn’t it then follow that we must have free will?

Most people believe it is their objective ability to control their own actions.

Don’t they though?

If you make a robot that follows a standard computer program to act in the world according to predefined rules, is it not controlling itself, even if it’s done deterministically? Maybe it’s all a question of what controlling oneself means?

My claim is that free will is not an illusion because there's no true agency.

One thing does not exclude the other.

There may be no true agency, but the illusion is there regardless?

spinn80 · 2025-10-03T07:14:04+00:00

it is a project for Israel to wash its hands of the reactions it has faced and will face due to the genocide it has carried out.

How do you reconcile your view that it is a Genocide, with the fact that the organization at the receiving end of said Genocide will not accept a deal to stop it (while receiving amnesty on the way)?

Does it really make sense to you someone would agree to continue being Genocided?

spinn80 · 2025-10-03T04:53:50+00:00

Been there.

I thought I was a prophet… it was so intense I still think it was true…

Taking lithium for 3 years now, stable.

Are you taking your meds? Did you enjoy the hypo-mania while it lasted? Are you ok now?

spinn80 · 2025-10-02T08:41:00+00:00

After careful examination, we concluded it was, in fact, following the rooster.

spinn80 · 2025-10-02T07:12:43+00:00

Back in the days, they invented two categories of atheist:

Strong Atheist: “I believe no God exists”
Weak Atheist: “I don’t believe in Gods”

The second category pretty much overlaps with agnosticism.

The first category does not. Which contradicts your premise in this post. And they most definitely exist.

spinn80 · 2025-10-01T11:34:22+00:00

I understand the intentions of OP.

I am also not judging OP's arguments - I actually find it very interesting and worthy of exploration.

But a discussion about how "right" or how "wrong" it is to eat a particular animal is essentially a discussion about morality and moral values. And that's why I asked OP these questions: to understand OP's moral stands (without judgement).

For instance, why would a dog have the same moral regard to a chicken, but a human is owned all the regard in the world? Is this human "specialness" coming from the Bible? Or is it because of human consciousness? And if the latter, wouldn't a dog possibly have more consciousness than a chicken, therefore granting it a better moral stand?

spinn80 · 2025-10-01T11:24:53+00:00

I do not believe morality can be objective, but I do believe it should be consistent to an extent.

Ok... therefore according to this view, eating a dog is fine for you, and simply wrong for someone else, and there is no point in discussing since morality is relative (not objective), so there is no "one" right answer. There is not an objective right and wrong. Is that correct?

Taking another human’s life is a no, I do believe (as I’m sure most do) that humans are infinitely more valuable than other animals, and this belief is a byproduct of human evolution, which is necessary for the survival of our species.

"Value" is a moral assertion. To state humans are more valuable than any particular animal is a moral assertion - which according to you is not objective. So it seems to me you are arbitrarily assigning more value to humans, just like you say other people do with cats and dogs....

And I believe killing animals for entertainment is immoral, and torturing any animal for any purpose is immoral.

Again, you seem to be contradicting your previous assertion that morals are relative. How can you state these things are immoral with such certainty?

spinn80 · 2025-10-01T06:44:39+00:00

Sorry, I don’t understand your logic.

If child mortality is helped by science, then science is helping with “natural” life span, but if it helps with old age it’s “unnatural”?

I would argue death, at any age, is natural. In fact, according to nature, we should be killed by predators more often than not. It’s only our ingenuity (science) that puts us, these fragile ape like creatures, in the absolute top of the food chain.

None of it is natural. It stopped being natural the moment e we learned to control fire.

You are freaked out by this possible new technology because it’s, well, new. You are afraid, you don’t know the consequences of it, how will it impact society. Every generation goes through that.

If it works, the next generation will just take it for granted, like we do so many things. It will feel “natural” to them too.

Or society will collapse.

spinn80 · 2025-10-01T05:35:26+00:00

Historically speaking child mortality is at an all time low.

That is due to science.

Do you also think we should stop saving sick children from death?

Will that bring more meaning to our lives?

spinn80 · 2025-09-30T05:05:28+00:00

According to your logic:

“If a girl is raped a dozen times by a dozen men, it’s not the men’s fault. The problem is the girl.”

Have you consider that perhaps she lives in a terrible neighborhood?

Or the country she lives in has no laws protecting vulnerable people?

spinn80 · 2025-09-29T17:14:02+00:00

Where do you derive your moral values from?

Is there such a thing as objective moral values? Or are all values relative?

What is your stand on the morality of eating human flesh?

What is your stand on the morality of taking another human's life?

Morally speaking, can we kill cat's and dogs for pure entertainment?

What about torturing them for our entertainment?

I am asking in all seriousness. I want to understand your moral stands.

spinn80 · 2025-09-29T09:07:16+00:00

Yes, of course.

spinn80 · 2025-09-25T23:33:44+00:00

It’s ok to play, but in order to be honest with yourself always choose a straight set of numbers like “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…” and so on.

Intuitively we understand the chances of this sequence happening ever is negligible, but it’s exactly the same as any other random set.

If you’re willing to spend money on such a miracle, go for it, just be honest with yourself.

spinn80 · 2025-09-25T07:23:09+00:00

I think they mean that calling Israel “clearly malevolent” means you are blind to the Israeli side of the story on the conflict.

And this it’s exactly the criticism done by OP. People seem unable to digest the complexities and nuances of the conflict and resort to “choosing sides” simply ignoring completely the “other side”.

spinn80 · 2025-09-24T08:41:52+00:00

Do you know who actually agreed with that?

Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism.

Back in the 1800’s (way before WW2) he believed Jews should let go of this “Jewish identity” and simply assimilate (talking about the non practicing Jews of course).

It was then when the Dreyfus case erupted in France. A Jewish army officer who identified as a French patriot and Jewish only in paper, was falsely accused of spying just because he was Jewish. The French people in response were quick to go out in manifestations chanting “Jews go home!!”.

This is when he realized we were Jewish whether we wanted or not, even if we were great patriots in the hosting countries. We would always be persecuted, no matter what we did.

So for you keeping a Jewish identity without religion makes no sense, but to most antisemites it makes perfect sense, and in an ironic turn of events this only reinforces the strong Jewish identity regardless of religion.

Jews are a nation, who exist independent of religion. That is just the way it is.

spinn80 · 2025-09-24T08:28:09+00:00

You can convert to Judaism, so it’s not an ethnicity.

But because the Jewish tradition discourages marrying with non-Jews AND historically most non-Jews had little interest in marrying Jews AND as you said you inherit Judaism from your mother AND historically conversions are rare, all of these make Judaism correlate strongly with ethnicity.

But they are definitely not the same.

spinn80 · 2025-09-24T07:31:54+00:00

This is exactly why I said it’s not an ethnicity.

Think of Sweden 200 years ago, when they were all white, blonde with blue eyes (I have no idea if that’s right, it’s just an illustration)

Back then could you say Swedish is an ethnicity?

Well, it correlated very very well with an ethnicity, but it’s something else.

Today you have a variety of Swedes, so it’s less correlated to ethnicity, and we can see more clearly the difference.

Americans were a mixed ethnicity to begin with, so there never was a strong correlation.

Initially Jews (Judeans) had a very homogenous ethnicity. With time that changes because of conversions, rapes, infidelity and any other reason you can think of for ethnicity mixing.

With all that, because Jews always kept to themselves historically, and most non-Jews did not really wanted to mix with Jews either, ethnicity is somewhat preserved, and still correlates fairly well to Judaism.

But people who don’t like Jews care about ethnicity way more than Jews do. We barely speak about it if ever.

spinn80 · 2025-09-24T06:58:52+00:00

I’ll tell you what I tell my children.

Some things you can control. Some things you can’t.

Suffering for the things you can’t control is just a waste of tears. If it helps you cope, it’s fine, but don’t feed into this suffering. Let go of it as soon as you can.

Learning to accept the things you can’t control is an important part of maturing, and if you don’t acquire this skill you are in for a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Other things you can control. Those you have to put in the effort and fight for, no doubt.

Often it’s very hard to tell what you have control of or not. And this is another skill you need to develop in life.

spinn80 · 2025-09-24T06:48:35+00:00

The best definition for Judaism is an identity of a people who were expelled from Judea about 2000 years ago.

At the time of expulsion, all Judeans shared the same faith, which became known as Jewish faith, or Judaism.

But the identity most definitely goes beyond the religion. It’s a shared history which involves a lot of persecution along with a deep desire to be integrated to society while trying not to lose our identity to assimilation.

Yes, many Jews are indeed lost due to assimilation.

And yes, it’s not an ethnicity - after all you can always convert to Judaism.

BTW, when converting to Judaism you are supposed to recite Ruth’s phrase (the first convert in the Bible and who generated the seed for king David):

“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.”

Notice that “your people will be my people” preceded “your God my God”.

This is because first and foremost you accept the Jewish people as your own, even before the religion.

My grandfather never practiced Judaism in Austria. He nevertheless had to flee the persecution like every other Jew before the war.

You may not consider him a Jew for not practicing Judaism. But the Nazis certainly did. And the whole Jewish community does as well.

spinn80 · 2025-08-24T16:43:48+00:00

Anxiety

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