Home » Open thread 7/16/2025

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Open thread 7/16/2025 — 15 Comments

  1. Saw a brief thing that Trump’s poll numbers a down. I really can’t believe that.

  2. Claude is definitely superior to Grok when it comes to generating programing code. Giving them both identitical prompts with fairly sophisticated instuctions seemed to yield a more holistic result in Claude, taking into account things that I hadn’t even considered. The script Grok generated was certainly good though. I was skeptical of all the hype around Claude with regards to code generation, but I can see why people prefer it for those particular tasks.

  3. Documents are not “signed” by autopen. It is a forgery device. Rather obviously.

  4. Re: Christianity and transhumanism

    Kate:

    The other day I was a bit high-handed in claiming that immortality via AI was at hand. Given a long enough run, one will eventually be hit by some metaphorical bus. (I’m not interested in surviving in digital form).

    I don’t see the choice as binary — between Christianity, the true religion, and transhumanism, the false religion. I’d just like to live a few centuries or many centuries more.

    So in that context, the argument against AI-assisted longevity sounds like “if God had wanted man to fly, He would have given man wings.”

    If God wanted us to survive all cancers, He would have given us an immune system that would cure them. However, God didn’t and many people survive cancer because of our technology.

    I’m all for that.

    And if AI comes through to cure most diseases, most genetic conditions, and allows us to dial back aging, I’m all for that too.

    Personally I believe our advances in technology and improvements in human life are part of God’s plan.

  5. Oh, I’m in agreement, huxley, on AI as a powerful tool in service of improvements in human life. If I can carry on for another three decades or so in pretty good shape I’ll be very grateful. That’s not quite transhuman, however.

  6. Not sure about that. I always thought I was more of an analog type a’ guy….

    But who knows? Maybe I can be persuaded otherwise; after all…

    ”In the Beginning, God created heaven [0?] and earth [1?]…”

  7. TommyJay:

    Call me Ishmael, but my hunch is that, one way or another, Mamdani won’t make it to mayor.

  8. Corporate forces are beginning to come out against Mamdani. But with two independent candidates, both of them with significant negatives, I don’t see how this can be done. Maybe nobody gets a sufficient plurality, and Mamdani is eliminated from the runoff? I don’t know about NYC election rules.

  9. Barry, you and I both believe (in somewhat different ways, indeed) that God has stepped through the divide between heaven and earth on occasion. It’s not entirely 0 or 1.

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