Comment by bigbadfeline

Comment by bigbadfeline 6 hours ago

2 replies

> Social media has given me a rather dim view of the quality of people's thinking, long before AI. Outsourcing it could well be an improvement.

Cogito, ergo sum

The corollary is: absence of thinking equals non-existence. I don't see how that can be an improvement. Improvement can happen only when it's applied to the quality of people's thinking.

jfengel 5 hours ago

The converse need not hold. Cognition implies existence; it is sufficient but not necessary. Plenty of things exist without thinking.

(And that's not what the Cogito means in the first place. It's a statement about knowledge: I think therefore it is a fact that I am. Descartes is using it as the basis of epistemology; he has demonstrated from first principles that at least one thing exists.)

  • bigbadfeline 3 hours ago

    I know the trivialities. I didn't intend to make a general or formal statement, we're talking about people. In a competitive world, those who've been reduced to idiocracy won't survive, AI not only isn't going to help them, it will be used against them.

    > Plenty of things exist without thinking.

    Existence in an animal farm isn't human existence.