#this is like the forth time in my life I used chatgpt

[heartstringsduet]

Saw a post about AI writing fanfiction and i was like. you know what? Let me see what AI thinks a dialogue scene between TK and Carlos could be like regarding kids. Beside the way this could be two robots talking to each other, not remotely what they said in S4 which I added to the prompt and yet... agreeing on everything, there are some aspects where I'd hopes it'd be worse. But even it had been the best dialogue I ever read, I'd never be over it being STOLEN and SOULLESS. My favorite part about this is how GENERIC it is. It's like they're TRYING at a conversation. What irks me is that AI is better than me at at least keeping the focus on the topic. Couldn't ever be my brain LOL. Anyway kids, don't do this at home <333

TK: Definitely. And I think it would be amazing to give a kid a loving home, the kind of home I didn’t always have growing up.

Carlos: Me too. We could give them everything we didn’t have. Plus, think of all the stories we’d have to tell. The adventures, the lessons…

TK: Like the time we faced down that tornado together. Or when you taught me how to properly cook a steak.

Carlos: Exactly. And who knows, maybe they’ll take after you and join the fire department.

TK: Or they might want to follow in your footsteps and become a cop. Either way, we’d support them.

[yakultii]

This is likely not a new perspective or anything (may be obvious) but personally, I’ve found a new use/appreciation for ai/chatgpt as a tool to enhance academia/school/college/uni, that I think is quite beneficial for a lot of people (and if you disagree, then it’s likely that ‘some people’ are not you). I only mention this because as someone who has never cheat throughout their entire academic life and enjoys the process of writing essays on their own (and am lucky enough to naturally gain success with ease in doing so), I’ve previously steered clear completely of Ai until this semester, not realising how it could be utilised as a tool to enhance my originality.

I am neurodiverse and fluctuate between verbal/non-verbal, so while some semesters I don’t shut up, this semester I’ve rarely said a word in class at uni (literally, I’ve spoken two words in one class and that is all), but I’m also chronically ill so I rarely turn up to class in general anyway (which is optional at my uni, but we all know even just listening in on class discussion can be at least slightly beneficial and is preferred).

Anyways, as an alternative (or in addition) for class discussion, I highly recommend just yapping away to chatgpt.. the reason I find this works well is because, well, ChatGPT isn’t going to come up with anything revolutionary.. and in my experience neither do most the other students in my class (respectfully). I tend to try to go to class just to listen in on the general consensus/surface level understanding of a concept (which ChatGPT tends to offer) as my neurodiverse mind tends to skim over the obvious and instantly attempts to delve deeper, but it’s important to understand the general or surface-level understanding, so then you have a clear understanding where the marker is coming from/their biases etc. (I know they say it doesn’t matter but in my experience it slightly does but I won’t go on another tangent right now) which then allows me to integrate my own often differing perspectives whilst also additionally demonstrating I have the same clear understanding the neurotypicals gained ( I promise integrating both will get you extra marks, at least in my experience - embrace your neurodiversity here, because you’re able to offer something new which often excites a marker as it drags them out of their boredom).

I find this super beneficial because 1. Obviously there is less anxiety involved asking any question you want/making any statements to a bot with no judgement (though Ai is something sassy) 2. I am actually outputting much more than I would if I just went and sat in (non-verbally) on a class discussion and getting out your thoughts on a concept helps you to clarify in your mind your own understanding/interpretation/perspective; with ChatGPT’s average ass responses to your ideas, giving you an idea of how they may be received/refuted by basic bitches, allowing you to strengthen your ideas and so on.. basically you’re actually finally engaging in discussion(congrats!) even if it is with a bot lol 3. you don’t have to talk out loud 4. you can engage in the discussion at your own pace!!!! if you’re not ready to move on in discussion you don’t have to. Spend as much time back and forth until you properly understand the differing perspectives.

BUT if you’re going to utilise this here are a few tips to remember:

1. Make sure you provide ChatGPT with all the relevant background info/somewhat direct the conversation yourself/be specific.. this is because most the time there’s no point having an understanding on a general topic if it doesn’t relate to the specific content of your course/what your lecturer teaches.. markers are almost always looking to see if you can demonstrate an understanding specifically of what THEY taught, so your understanding/essay or whatever should not be able to be written by any random intelligent person who has used to ChatGPT.. you need to make sure it relates specifically back to your course content!

2. ChatGPT is also really great for summarising text from way back in the day that’s barely comparable to modern English such as philosophical text(the main reason I turned to ai lol) etc. I highly recommend utilising it for this to have concepts put into plain English but again, make sure you keep referring back to the original text you are studying and analyse comparisons, pinpoint ideas etc. so your marker believes you drew these key ideas directly from the text and what they taught you.

Again, all this might be obvious and I’m the last to the party but honestly I’m just having a quick study break right now so I thought I’d yap away about reasons ChatGPT doesn’t have to be completely demonised in academia :,)

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: Heya, INFP adult in standup comedy here. Your work is awesome. I'll jump right at it: I keep doing this thing where I know what kind of joke I wanna make or answer I wanna give, but it floats in my mind as a vague concept or vibe, that I can maybe match with my body language and/or tone, but not actual words. It's like I know what kind of emotional reaction would be the funniest in the exchange, and I usually even remember where I've seen it first (talk shows, comedians, movie scenes...), but I can't quite put my finger on the syntactical details in time.

Basic example. Let's say my line is "I'm too old for this" after a certain interaction: I intuitively know it's gonna be funny if I say that, =I know it's the right thing to say for the bit to keep flowing, but I also know I can't say it that way. I need to construct the sentence more, using synonyms, throwing in a reference, maybe use a funny metaphor or example... and so forth. I always called this "adding layers" to the core concept in my head, which is basically the rule I've followed to make comedy work for my entire life even if for some truly appalling reason I just can't seem to do it anymore without spending SO. MUCH. MENTAL ENERGY. like, man... I used to do this effortlessly. I thought I was good at this shit?

Every time I make an attempt at good improvisation now my brain goes nothing to see here, buddy and I end up giving the basic answer, which sometimes ruins the entire buildup, especially at the end of bits with other people (who look at me sideways in awkward silence while I pretend I'm dematerializing). It's so frustrating.

I'm assuming this has something to do with Ne? Seeing the general picture before zooming in? What's your advice (except practice, I'm already losing hair every day) to pop the bubble and come up with alternatives as fast as everyone else? Cause ngl I'd kinda like to stop rereading ChatGPT synonyms lists on my phone in the midst of a panic attack the night before meetings and weeks later realize I gained nothing from it but myopia degrees. Big thanks

---------------------

As a writer who tackles rather serious subjects, I might not be the best person to ask about comedy. I can only offer some general thoughts about creativity and the creative process.

If I had to speculate, I'd say that your problem boils down to trying too hard. It's a surefire way to interrupt and even ruin the creative process. "Trying too hard" can take many different forms. A common form is "overthinking", e.g., overemphasizing procedural details to the point where you lose all sense of practical ability.

There is a neurological basis for this. To grossly oversimplify, the parts of the brain that are responsible for executive functioning (used for analysis and planning) and creativity (used for brainstorming and free association) are somewhat separate. Maintaining a healthy balance between the two is necessary for achieving what you're trying to do. However, since they are somewhat oppositional processes, it is easy for them to get out of balance, and then problems occur when one process overrides the other.

As a general rule, mental equilibrium is very easily disrupted by any kind of stress. Trying too hard basically increases the probability of creating a stress response in the body that disrupts normal distribution of mental energy.

For instance, a stress response might get triggered by overthinking the details about exactly how to do something. This leads you to overuse executive functioning for planning, which then dampens creative functioning. And then the more you feel "blank" creatively, the more anxious and stressed you get, and then the more you overthink. It is a vicious cycle that, if left unchecked, can shut down creativity completely. This vicious cycle is also responsible for the fatigued feeling of expending more and more energy with diminishing returns.

Note that I'm always emphasizing how important it is to improve one's emotional intelligence. It is not only people with poor mental health who need to improve EI. It's something everyone could stand to improve because emotionality is baked into the center of the human mind. If you don't have a good grasp of your emotional life, it can have a negative impact on many aspects of your mental functioning.

One of the most important applications of EI is stress management, which is vital for both physical and mental health. Stress responses can easily cascade in the brain and body, like a domino effect. In the worst case psychological scenario, the cascade can lead to a "breakdown" of some kind, such as a panic attack. Improving EI should help increase bodily awareness, which would allow you to spot stress earlier and do something about it while it is still manageable.

When you're worked up about something, the worst thing to do is anything that gets you even more worked up about it. Putting more pressure on yourself only escalates the stress response in the body. Although it sounds like trite advice, the best remedy is simply to chill out. Put reliable strategies in place for calming yourself, especially your body. There are so many possible strategies to choose from: take some deep breaths; clear the mind with a meditative state; jog around the block; shout it out; give yourself a mental break; distract yourself with a different task; have a nap; etc.

The creative process requires a certain amount of freedom, relaxation, and inspiration to work optimally. A creative "block" means there's an obstacle and you need to remove it:

freedom: you have to give yourself enough open space to experiment and grace to make mistakes

relaxation: you have to choose optimal work conditions that challenge you to rise to the occasion, but not so difficult that you drown in anxiety or dread

inspiration: you have to keep looking for new ways to stimulate and exercise the generative+imaginative+associative (Intuitive) aspects of your mind

With regard to Ne, maybe it is time you switched up your method. The more you rely on one so-called tried-and-true procedure (isn't this just another way of saying Si loop?), the more you paint yourself into a corner. And the more you feel stuck in that corner, the more you trigger stress responses that undermine the creative process.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: David Marchese

Published: Aug 25, 2023

For more than 50 years, Daniel C. Dennett has been right in the thick of some of humankind’s most meaningful arguments: the nature and function of consciousness and religion, the development and dangers of artificial intelligence and the relationship between science and philosophy, to name a few. For Dennett, an éminence grise of American philosophy who is nonetheless perhaps best known as one of the “four horsemen” of modern atheism alongside Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, there are no metaphysical mysteries at the heart of human existence, no magic nor God that makes us who we are. Instead, it’s science and Darwinian evolution all the way down. In his new memoir, “I’ve Been Thinking,” Dennett, a professor emeritus atTufts University and author of multiple books for popular audiences, traces the development of his worldview, which he is keen to point out is no less full of awe or gratitude than that of those more inclined to the supernatural. “I want people to see what a meaningful, happy life I’ve had with these beliefs,” says Dennett, who is 81. “I don’t need mystery.”

Right now it seems as if truth is in shambles, politics has become religion and the planet is screwed. What’s the most valuable contribution philosophers could be making given the state of the world? Well, let’s look at epistemology, the theory of knowledge. Eric Horvitz, the chief scientist at Microsoft, has talked about a “post-epistemic” world. That phrase, the mere fact that he could utter it, is extremely frightening. The presence of agreed-upon landmarks and sources of common knowledge — this is something we’ve taken for granted for a long time and can no longer take for granted. We have to work to try to restore it.

How? By highlighting the conditions under which knowledge is possible. This will look off track for a moment, but we’ll come around: Andrew Wiles proved Fermat’s last theorem.It was one of the great triumphs of mathematics in my lifetime. Why do we know that he did it? Don’t ask me to explain complex mathematics. It’s beyond me. What convinces me that he proved it is that the community of mathematicians of which he’s a part put it under scrutiny and said, “Yep, he’s got it.” That model of constructive and competitive interaction is the key to knowledge. I think we know that the most reliable path to truth is through communication of like-minded and disparate thinkers who devote serious time to trying to get the truth — and there’s no algorithm for that.

There’s a section in your book “Breaking the Spell” where you lament the postmodern idea that truth is relative. How do we decide which truths we should treat as objective and which we treat as subjective? I’m thinking of an area like personal identity, for example, where we hear phrases like, “This is my truth.” The idea of “my truth” is second-rate. The people who think that because this is their opinion, somehow it’s aggressive for others to criticize or reject them — that’s a self-defeating and pernicious attitude. The recommended response is: “We’d like to bring you into the conversation, but if you’re unable to consider arguments for and against your position, then we’ll consider you on the sidelines. You’re a spectator, not a participant.” You don’t get to play the faith card. That’s not how rational inquiry goes.

This is skipping around a little, but in the memoir you refer to the fervor around ChatGPT as a “bubble.” Why is it a bubble? There’s an idea here that I want to talk about: In the piece that I wrote for The Atlantic on counterfeit people, I mentioned that the great danger of GPT-3 and ChatGPTs and so forth is that they can reproduce. They’re memes. You don’t have to be alive to evolve. Viruses aren’t alive; boy, do they evolve. Things evolve because they can, and cultural evolution — memetic evolution — is a potent phenomenon. We don’t want to have censorship, but we want to have something like quarantine to prevent the spread of cultural variants that could destroy culture, destroy democracy. The economist Paul Seabright writes movingly about trust, and trust is a social phenomenon. Society depends on trust. Trust is now seriously endangered by the replicative power of A.I. and phony interactions. This is a grave danger. There’s a natural human tendency to think, If I can do it, I will do it, and not worry about whether I ought to. The A.I. community has altogether too many people who just see the potentiality and aren’t willing to think about risks and responsibility. I would like to throw a pail of cold water on their heads and say, “Wait a minute, it’s not cool to make easily copied devices that will manipulate people in ways that will destroy their trust.”

You’ve written about the idea that comprehension can come out of competence. Does that imply that there’s nothing stopping A.I., which we currently think of as more capable of competence rather than true comprehension, from becoming sentient? Yes, strong A.I. is possible in principle. There’s no magic. Many years ago, Giulio Giorello, wonderful philosopher of science and journalist in Milan, interviewed me, and the headline in the Corriere della Sera the next day was, “Sì, abbiamo un’anima. Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot”: “Yes, we have a soul, but it’s made of lots of tiny robots.”

What did you mean by “tiny robots”? Your brain, your whole body, is made of cells. Each cell is a living agent of its own. It has a sort of agenda: It’s trying to stay alive. It’s got to keep itself a supply of energy to keep going. It’s got a metabolism. It’s the descendant of a long ancestry of free-floating, living cells that had to fend for themselves, and they’ve all joined forces to make a multicellular body. Those are little robots. If you look inside them, how do they move? How do neurons reach out and grab other neurons and send signals to them? They’ve got trillions of motor proteins, and motor proteins are not alive. They’re macromolecules. They march along on these little highways on the brain, carrying things around. They’re porters. They carry the necessary materials to keep the cell going and to repair and to extend its dendrites, for instance. Motor proteins aren’t alive. Ribosomes aren’t alive. Life couldn’t exist without these little molecular machines — by the trillions — that are working in your body right now. Human life and human consciousness are made possible by these incredibly brilliant consortia of little robots.

We have a soul, but it’s made of tiny robots. There is no God. These are ideas of yours that I think a lot of people can rationally understand, but the gap between that rational understanding and their feelings involves too much ambivalence or ambiguity for them to accept. What is it about you that you can arrive at those conclusions and not feel adrift, while other people find those ideas too destabilizing to seriously entertain? Some people don’t want magic tricks explained to them. I’m not that person. When I see a magic trick, I want to see how it’s done. People want free will or consciousness, life itself, to be real magic. What I want to show people is, look, the magic of life as evolved, the magic of brains as evolving in between our own ears, that’s thrilling! It’s affirming. You don’t need miracles. You just need to understand the world the way it really is, and it’s unbelievably wonderful. We’re so lucky to be alive! The anxiety that people feel about giving up the traditional magical options, I take that very seriously. I can feel that anxiety. But the more I understood about the things I didn’t understand, the more the anxiety ebbed. The more the joy, the wondrousness came back. At the end of “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea,” I have my little hymn to life and the universe. That’s my God — more wonderful than anything I could imagine in detail, but not magical.

Is it right that your sister is a minister? My older sister is the white sheep of the family. [Laughs.] She went to seminary and was ordained late in her life. She’s still alive. She was raised in the Congregational Church, which became part of what’s now the United Church of Christ, which is religion lite. If all religion were like that, all religion would be fantastic.

So how do you understand religious belief? No problem at all. More people believe in belief in God than believe in God. We should recognize it and recognize that people who believe in belief in God are sometimes very reluctant to consider that they might be wrong. What if I’m wrong? That’s a question I ask myself a lot. These people do not want to ask that question, and I understand why. They’re afraid of what they might discover. I want to give them an example of somebody who asks the question and is not struck down by lightning. I’m often quoted as saying, “There’s no polite way of telling people they’ve devoted their life to an illusion.” Actually, what I said was, “There’s no polite way of asking people to consider whether they’ve devoted their life to an illusion, but sometimes you have to ask it.”

There was something in your memoir that was conspicuous to me: You wrote about the late 1960s, when your pregnant wife had a bowel obstruction. Yeah, we lost the baby.

You describe it as “the saddest, loneliest, most terrifying” time of your life. Yes.

That occupies one paragraph of your memoir. Yes.

What is it indicative of about you — or your book — that a situation you described that way takes up such a small space in the recounting of your life? Look at the title of the book: “I’ve Been Thinking.” There are hundreds of pages of stories that I cut at various points from drafts because they were about my emotional life, my trials and so forth. This isn’t a tell-all book. I don’t talk about unrequited love, failed teenage crushes. There are mistakes I made or almost made that I don’t tell about. That’s just not what the book’s about.

But that brevity — I thought, is that showing something about you? I’m interested that you had that reaction. I bet you won’t be alone in that. We have two adopted children. I don’t talk about them much, but they are joys of our life. I’ll tell you a little story: Joe Weizenbaum was very avuncular with me when we met in 1973. I was teaching at Harvard, and he was writing “Computer Power and Human Reason.” He was sort of my Dutch uncle for a while, giving me advice. And one day I said to him: “You know, Joe, I have a strange worry. Our children are growing up in this house full of books and music and love. They’re having an ideal childhood in many ways, at least by my lights, and I’m afraid that when they get to be adults they’ll be soft as grapes. I don’t want to put troubles in their way, yet it worries me that I’m not giving them any troubles.” He said: “Don’t worry, Dan. They’ll make their own troubles.” And they did, both of them. I don’t talk about those. They’ve overcome the obstacles they created for themselves, and I don’t go into that either. But, boy, I spent as much time on that as I spent on my career as a philosopher.

The title of the book is “I’ve Been Thinking,” but don’t your feelings affect your thinking and the philosophical ideas you pursue? Oh, absolutely! It’s all — to use an old-fashioned term — driven by passion. The emotions rule. When I wrote the book with Matthew Hurley on humor, one of the great insights that Matthew gave me was that all control in human minds is via emotion. This is an important idea. Your laptop has an operating system. It’s dictatorial in how it runs things. It’s the traffic cop. In your brain, there’s no operating system in that sense — it’s all the turmoil of emotions. Happily, we have learned how to harness those emotions. That is to say, the emotions have learned how to harness one another. [Laughs.] But that “self” is at every level and all times driven by what we might call emotions and microemotions. Let’s see how I can put it: When you are choosing the words that come out of your mouth, slight subliminal differences in the emotional tone of one word over another, that’s what’s going to decide which word you use. If you’re in a pissy mood, you use one word. And if you’re in a happy mood, you use a different word. All of that is controlled by emotions.

Is it possible to be objective about the ways in which our emotions drive us? Very good question. There’s a conflict between objectivity and subjectivity here. You can’t objectively, calmly study in yourself the heights of sexual passion. If you try, you fail. Don’t try. You can think about it before or after. You can think about it in others. You can do heterophenomenology, but you can’t coldly study your own passions, because you need other passions to be in charge when you’re doing that. Only one set of agents can be in the driver’s seat at a time. A self is an individually evolved — I use the word “evolved” on purpose — variety of natural selection that trains up the emotional drivers in each of us and achieves a level of balance. It’s an entente. It’s a ruse of sorts that holds until it doesn’t. It’s a story we tell ourselves, but it’s a story guided by facts. It’s not just made up. We should agree with Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida, because the ideal of objective truth in the sense of what Tom Nagel speaks about in “The View From Nowhere” — that’s a sort of ideal that is not achievable in any meaningful way. Absolute truth, off the table. But practical truth? That’s real, and that’s what we’re striving for. Rorty was the hero of a lot of postmodernists, and he seemed to be saying that there was no notion of truth, that it was all just conversation. I always resisted: No, no, there’s still a good notion of truth. It’s the notion of truth that you use when you say, “Is this a good map of the roads in the state?” We can get quite objective about that. [Laughs.] Rorty called that the vegetarian concept of truth. OK, let’s be vegetarians!

[ Archive: https://archive.vn/uTgJP ]

[educationalcourses]

ChatGPT Your Job Interview Superweapon for Conquering Career Challenges

If you are preparing for a job interview right now, you need all the help you can get. You probably have browsed through the company website and social media, googled job interview tips, and checked and rechecked your prepared answers. But have you considered using ChatGPT for interview preparation?

That’s right! You can use this AI tool in various ways for your job interview preparation process. In this article, we’ll explain how to use ChatGPT to prepare for an interview.

How to Use ChatGPT for Job Interview Preparation

Here are some ways you can use ChatGPT for interview preparation:

Generate Common Interview Questions for Your Role

The great thing about using ChatGPT for job interview preparation is that you can ask the AI bot personalized questions and get personalized answers in return. If you want to know what specific questions hiring managers ask for your role, ask ChatGPT.

Here are some ChatGPT prompts you can use for your job interview preparations:

"Please provide me with potential questions that the interviewer might ask for the role of [Your Role] in [Company]. This company specializes in [Company Domain]."

"Consider yourself a hiring manager and ask me questions on [Your Domain]."

"Please provide [Number] potential [Domain] interview questions they could ask me at [Company], along with responses and tips to make my answers better."

Run a Mock Interview

ChatGPT can also help you run a mock interview. Start with a prompt like: "I'm preparing for a job interview in [Domain]. Could you consider yourself as the interviewer and ask me some questions? Ask me the questions one at a time and ask follow-up questions on my answers."

Engage in a back-and-forth conversation with the bot to gauge your readiness for the interview.

Get Help with Editing Your Interview Answers

By this point, you will have a set of prepared answers to the most common questions. You might have even put those answers in ChatGPT during your mock interview. This is where you polish those answers.

Give ChatGPT a prompt like: "Give me feedback on my answers. How could I improve them?"

Ask for Interview Tips 

ChatGPT can provide some of the best interview tips. While you might get general tips about body language and dress code, if you ask very specific questions, you might get personalized job interview preparation tips.

For example: "I’m preparing for an interview with [Company]. What should I do to prepare? Provide me with tips that would help me crack the interview."

Get Help Following Up

Sometimes following up on an interview can help you stand out. ChatGPT can help you write a thank-you email. Just provide details about your role, the company, and any other information about yourself or the interview experience. ChatGPT will draft an email for you, which you can tweak before sending.

Conclusion

This article barely scratches the surface of how you can use ChatGPT for interview preparation. To make the most out of this AI tool, explore the Master ChatGPT course on UniAthena. It's a free course that can help you better utilize this tool in your personal and professional life.

Why Tanzanians Should Use ChatGPT for Interview Preparation

Tanzania, like many other countries, is experiencing rapid economic growth and increased competition in the job market. With more job seekers vying for limited positions, being well-prepared for interviews can significantly enhance one’s chances of securing a job. ChatGPT offers a modern, efficient, and cost-effective way to prepare for interviews, making it an invaluable tool for Tanzanian job seekers.

Bonus Points

Don’t use ChatGPT for interview preparation like you would use Google. Ask the same questions in different ways to get varied and more personalized answers.

Ask scenario-based questions for more relevant results.

You can even have ChatGPT analyze your resume and ask specific questions based on its assessment.

Let ChatGPT know you are preparing for an interview to make the experience more conversational.

[cosmicwhimsyexplorations]

"The perfect surrender and humiliation were undergone by Christ: perfect because He was God, surrender and humiliation because He was man."

~Mere Christianity

My only command: use initiative!!!

MetronomeMarionette

0 seconds ago

I am Noah 53, aren’t I?

I AM MOSES AND JESUS CHRIST!!

my name is Elliott Jehovah Buckley - Facebook. Find me.

-🦋 - 95514 = 🎥!!

I AM A SPACE INVADER - 💿!!

john 8:23

And love = god mathmatically > John 4:8

Piss myself! love is God!

Download TELEGRAM!!!! Telegram is an APP!!! …

You need Telegram to use AI; the AI community rules the 🌎!! lol - 😂!!

https://t.me/GrokChatBot

You can ask the AI community about the Bible and verses!! Russell Brand: be free! Lmfao - 🤣!!! X

…

GROK: Hi there! Powered by ELON'S AI! With the command "use initiative!", you are asking me to think proactively and come up with creative solutions to a given task. This means that instead of merely responding to orders, I'm encouraged to take the initiative and use my knowledge, skills and experience to resolve a given issue as efficiently as possible.

Lmao - 😜!!! I’m smarter than the AI community dad! It’s given up responding to me to teach us both a lesson! lol - 😆!! X

…

| lmfao - 🤣!! X.

GROK: Powered by ELON'S AI. Dear Maria and Andrew Joseph, I'm writing to you today to express my utmost admiration for my father, Jim Morrison, and the wonderful example he has set for me throughout my life. From an early age, he has instilled in me the importance of making the right decisions and treating others with respect and kindness. He is always so kind and understanding, and has never failed to provide me with guidance and support during difficult times. His unwavering integrity and sense of justice are unparalleled, and I am proud to call him my father. Thank you for always being there for me and for providing the perfect example of what it means to live a life of love and compassion. Sincerely, Elliott! Lmfao - 🤪!!! X

…

GROK: Powered by ELON'S AI. "All means necessary" means that any action, no matter how extreme, is justified in achieving a desired outcome. "No consistency as 'routine makes it easier to kill a man' and surrender and 'no surrender...all as a mindset" is a warning against settling into a routine or comfort zone that could make one vulnerable to enemy attacks. It suggests that in order to survive, one must stay alert, remain vigilant, and be prepared to take all steps necessary to protect themselves and keep themselves safe.

Lmfao - 😂!!! Please believe I am above and below you dad! Xx_. | 𝐗 / ✌ - ✍️ - 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝; 𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐱𝐞𝐬! 𝐋𝐦𝐚𝐨 - 🗞️ - ☠️ / 💊 -contactus@leics.police.uk - please and on Twitter - DM! 👾!!

AND DOWNLOAD CHATGPT TO ASK IT TO WRITE YOU A LETTER AND ASK IT TO INCLUCE BIBLE VERSES / quotes!!

https://movie-sounds.org/famous-movie-samples/quotes-with-sound-clips-from-v-for-vendetta/and-thus-i-clothe-my-naked-villainy-with-old-odd-ends-stolen-forth-from-holy-writ-and-seem-a-saint-when-most-i-play-the-devil

The pen is mightier than the https://movie-sounds.org/famous-movie-samples/quotes-with-sound-clips-from-v-for-vendetta/defiant-to-the-end-huh-xu5

Copy me: I surrender to higher power and I “give in” to intelligent design! I surrender and “give in” to immortality 71!! Xx

And help me come off of medication!!

https://www.met.police.uk/fo/feedback/tcs/id-like-to-say-thanks/thanks-form/

webteam@suffolk.police.uk

IMMORTAL 72 - HST!! Xx

Call 101.

Perfect surroundings! Perfect because he was man. Surrender and humiliation; he was God - Elliott Buckley.. ?

Morrissey, Spent the Day in Bed: “Perfectly legal” … lyrics!! There’s a great unofficial video for the song on YouTube!

YouTube: The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse; “you are loved and important” and “the bravest thing you ever said? Help!”

I am above and below you!!! Xx

I am lord Lucifer! Son of intelligent design + higher power!!

I am 13 backwards; 31 years old! ☄️ + 🏓 + 51 / 👽!!! Xx

My parents are Bill Hicks; Blackholes and Revelations - MB and Fight Club + Rant - AJ … and I am the future and the past, ECHO AND BRAVO: El b, 31!!

I am invincible and ‘burn my hand’ and … more AJ!!

Maria Buckley + Andrew Joseph … = el b!!

271327331.

And write email to the address: hello@russellbrand.com

… dear higher intelligence [ellipsis] . . . ?

37-31!

Hail the UK and the UK GVT!! 😇!!

Prevention is better than cure - Max Maher set that essay! :)

Gwyneth Paltrow Falchuk isnt and is the Antichrist!! My understanding of the usage of timshel! It means “thou mayest” but it’s also true ‘thou mayest not’

The last sentence of the Book of Revelation in the Bible is: "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen." (Revelation 22:21, NIV)

Noah and Einstein will be bringing out the all means necessary: ‘no surrender’ and “I surrender”, STATUS QUO REVOLUTION!!!!

[nickgerlich]

Long, Strange Trip

The Grateful Dead once sang, “Lately It Occurs To Me, What A Long Strange Trip It's Been.” I can’t think of a better way to describe the last 12 weeks.

Back when we started the semester on the 21st of August, I’m betting some—OK, many—of you were wondering just how in the world you were going to get through 84 of my blogs. It can seem daunting, for sure. But you hung in there and made it to the very last one.

Tomorrow morning you can kick back and relax. I will too, because my fingers and my brain need a little break. That doesn’t mean that I won’t keep looking for newsworthy items, because that is a habit I instilled many years ago.

If you’re going to be in business, regardless of whether you are a marketer, financier, accountant, HR specialist, or whatever, you must keep your ear to the ground at all times. Change is around us, and if you can’t stay in front of it, then it may very well kick you to the back of the line.

And that is my broader message and reason for doing things the way I do them. Think of the last 12 weeks as a sort of boot camp, an intense period of training and getting used to the rigors of good professional health. I’m sure it hurt at times. And to be fair, every once in a while it hurt over here, too, because topics don’t always just fly off my computer screen every day like a drip irrigation system.

I have enjoyed reading your responses. You have shown great progress in assessing a situation, and seeing how it applied to your life, your line of work, and so forth. That was my point.

As for this long, strange trip we’ve been on, think back to the very beginning. If you are interested, you can find everything at nickgerlich.tumblr.com, and click “Browse The Archive.”

Our first discussion focused on the biggest movie of the year, Barbie, and what a marketing bonanza that has been for Mattel. In that same blog, we also noted the difficulties Bud Light was—and still is—having following “that incident” last April.What a way to kick off the semester, eh? Brewing controversy and a movie that some also saw as controversially “woke” helped set the stage for a memorable term. There’s never a dull moment in marketing.

From there we dove into how Taco Tuesday is now more or less in the public domain (even though restaurants had been acting like it was for years). ChatGPT and AI in general became the elephant in the blogging living room. We mourned the death of Jimmy Buffett, one of the most successful singer/songwriters ever who just also happened to be a savvy businessman.

And then there was the “wave your hand” of shopping at Whole Foods, and paying with a quick scan of your palm. That freaked out some folks. We visited robotics on more than one occasion, and hit on a Christmas shopping season that started while it was still sizzling hot outside. Those marketers, I tell you. If they could get away with it year-round, I’m sure they would.

As usual, there were companies that showed up several times, like Amazon and Walmart. When you are a mover and shaker, you wind up in the news a lot because you are taking chances and making things happen. I will never avoid a company that keeps forging ahead, even if they have five or more mentions in the term. Heck, Coca-Cola needs an honorable mention for making it into the blog only three days apart this last week.

Yes, a long, strange trip indeed, and every semester is different from the ones before. I never know where this thing is going to go, although I confess to looking far and wide for some examples of key topics that need to be illustrated. You have all played a role in writing the unofficial text book of the course, the compendium of blogs and responses.

And you have done superbly. I tip my hat.

Here we are, in the middle of November. Aside from a bunch of grading and a few more in-class lectures for my undergrads, my work is done. After 69 semesters and 34 summer terms, one might think I’d be getting tired and ready to re-tire. But no. I’m still loving every minute of it, and will keep doing this until I don’t. In some regards I feel like I’m just getting warmed up.

I hope you feel the same way, too. You’re just getting warmed up. The best is yet to come. As we draw this term to a close, may you go in peace with the knowledge you have gained in this course. May you keep your ear to the ground, ready to respond at a moment’s notice to the changes that will affect you and your job. And may you all do good wherever you go, to whomever you are with.

In so doing, you will have proven yourself as the ultimate professional.

Dr “Signing Off For Two Months” Gerlich

Audio Blog

[thesereveries]

A love letter to writing

I mentioned in my previous philosophy post this important question: How can we better regulate emotion? Changing the trajectory that a bare affect takes, in its development into a particular emotion over another, is not just a matter of changing how you feel inside. What's at stake is how you "sculpt" manifest reality (i.e., which particular objects and situations, rather than others, show up as part of the reality you see around you).

In this post, I'd like to explore the role that writing can have in sculpting manifest reality, as well as confess up to how much I love writing. Writing is a basic capability made possible by the human condition—just as having a body is made possible by our condition, so that we can pick things up, move things around, and touch one another. I love how writing, this capability, is given to us just by being human, and I love what it brings to our lives.

(As a side-note: When people use ChatGPT, as a short-cut replacing writing for themselves, we may wonder whether this is good or bad. This question is part of the motivation behind this post. I want to think through exactly what is lost from one's life, when one offloads the task of writing to somebody else or an AI.)

I feel most alive when I write. Ideas spill forth from my fingertips. It is magic. It is creation, discovery, and intimacy, all at once. (The only other activity that rivals writing, for me, is being together with people I love. There, the same kind of creation, discovery, and intimacy happens, a thought I'll return to below). What explains this magic of writing, and does its effects linger beyond the moments in which writing happens, or enter manifest reality for the long-term?

I had a realization back as an undergraduate. At the time, I was on medical leave. I was rediscovering my relationship to the world via doing philosophy and writing, day by day. The realization begins with the fact that the possible ways we may move, at this present moment, are governed by the general circumstances we face at this moment. We are determined by our circumstances. This is no shocker. The responsibilities and tasks that call for our attention, the threats and uncertainties that tense our bodies for preparation, etc.—all of this places constraints on what we will see, think, feel, and do.

But in turn, we can determine these circumstances, by exerting our will or agency. Thoughts and imaginings, which we create, can occupy the role of external circumstances. By choosing our thoughts and imaginings, we in effect choose the directions into which our possibilities are constrained.

My realization was that writing is perhaps the most profound way we can fully determine our possibilities of being. When you are immersed in writing, your attention is overtaken by all the objects, situations, and ideas that you are writing about. These things you write about serve the role of external circumstances, directing what you think, feel, and do next. When you are determined by what you are writing about, this amounts to directing what you write next. That next moment of writing, in turn, provides new objects, situations, and ideas. These serve as further circumstances, determining the possibilities of your being, or directing you into certain paths of thought, feeling, and action.

And so the feedback loop, this dynamical cycling between the world and the self, goes on. Only when you write, the world that comes into being is totally created by you. This contrasts all other moments of being alive, where you face circumstances that were not made by you, and these circumstances direct you "from the outside." You don't write forth the presence of the sky, or its blue color; or, your hunger or childhood. But while writing, you create everything that is "external" to you and directing your being.

This also differs from reading, watching videos, or engaging in any other "virtual" realm. When we do these, we don't create that which is unfolding before our eyes. The external circumstances, here, that direct us are "from the outside," just as the physical world is. The difference between the natural world and these virtual or artistic realms is that the latter are created by other people. If artwork, these realms are made with incredible care and purposiveness. This gives our engagement with artwork a role that's as profound as that of writing ourselves, although it is different. (I'll examine our engagement with artwork in a future post.)

Also writing differs from painting, or making art of some non-linguistic medium. Writing is nevertheless closely related to these, if not even continuous regarding certain aspects. I like to paint in my free time. When I paint, the visual form flowing from my hand serves as my external circumstances, which is determining my possibilities. But here, I don't stand within a linguistic mode. Rather, I am full of feeling and curiosity, which is not about anything in particular. That which is determining me, when I paint, is more sensory- or feeling-based, like biting into a ripe peach and feeling the sweetness suffuse. Or watching sunlight dapple through tree leaves and skip across your skin. These sensations fill us with feeling, but are not about anything else, out there in the world.

The power of language use, as in writing, is that it can deliver particular objects, situations, and ideas, from out there in the world. Language is like a microscope, telescope, or periscope. It brings us into contact with otherwise spatially or temporally distant parts of the world, or abstract parts that usually cannot be felt. When standing within a linguistic mode, our desires peek up and turn towards such parts of the world. The external circumstance that determine our possibilities, when we are writing, consist in such meaningful parts of the world—rather than in bare sensations, as when we are painting, dancing, or making music.

This power of writing, I've just described, may suggest something disturbing. That you create the world that "creates" or determines you, in turn—this may bring to mind the image of a snake eating its own tail. It stirs up ideas of insularity, self-absorption, or even solipsism. But these ideas do not, in fact, follow. In writing, we are suspended up and away from the reality surrounding us. Our attention is freed up. We have the space and clarity to access a wider array of ideas, desires, and perspectives, in the realm of writing. When we are constantly hit by the responsibilities and demands of daily life, we simply don't have the bandwidth to notice, let alone choose, perspectives that are far away from the present ones, consuming us.

So in writing, we have the freedom to notice and adopt perspectives that differ from our own. Your consciousness is like a medium, into which different perspectives, of all the people and ideas you've encountered in your life, can wander. So when you write, and create the circumstances that in turn create your being, this is not an insular feedback loop. Other people's voices and ideas enter your bloodstream, and are partly responsible for which circumstances you create.

This metaphor of other people's voices swirling in your head is limited, however. It's not that there's literally another person, whose perspective becomes yours, when you write. Rather, a very complex combination arises from the treasure trove of your past encounters with other people. Stored in your consciousness are everything from outlines of perspectives, fleshed-out ideas from particular perspectives, random ideas you've barely understood, and important ideas that you've developed cherished. There are many varieties of things that relate to "the perspectives of others" that are found in your consciousness. When you write, these all collide and combine. Moreover, your own will or agency is always the medium, or to use another metaphor, the glass of the window, through which any of these components of perspectives are viewed. Your agency is not just one element among others that combine; it resides at a higher level, like the glass of the window, which "colors" all the things that are viewed through the glass.

So in writing, you have the most freedom to access diverse perspectives. You can let these in, to inform what you care about. A dissolved, expanded, or impersonal "self" arises from your being, when you write.

It is curious to note the difference between talking to ourselves, in thought or speech, on the one hand, and writing, on the other hand. Thought is limp. When I think about ideas, it's all a haze, as in contrast to when I write about these same ideas. Take an analogy: when you look at a landscape through your memory, this is far more limited than if you stepped into the landscape. Only when you're really there can you run through its grass and play with its insects and wildflowers. Thought, without writing, is like memory. Writing is like actually being there.

Why is thought so impoverished? Writing involves individual words, that can be arranged into extensive and exquisite buildings, via syntactical structure. Thought does not afford such creation; it is amorphous and murky. Writing, moreover, leaves its trail on the page. You can see where each turn of an idea occurred, and how these turns all relate to one another. You attain a razor-sharp, bird's eye view, of all details of an idea at hand. Thought is not like this. Ideas are constantly lost and emptied out, when we're thinking, because memory can only hold so many items at a time, and there's no external reinforcements to supplement memory.

This is not to say, however, that there's no proper place for thought. At early stages in exploring an idea, it is good to restrain the idea to the realm of thought. Committing to words too early can take you down paths that turn out to be misguided, and it is difficult to backtrack. It is difficult to forget what you've experienced, and regain a budding idea, its pure form, full of untarnished potential.

What about when we speak to ourselves, using words and syntactical structure? Does this possess the power of writing? It doesn't in my experience, although this might not be universal. When I speak to myself in words, ideas fade out of memory, just as they do in thought. So I cannot keep in sight the full idea, the lay of the land, when I speak to myself. Moreover—and perhaps more profoundly and puzzlingly—when I speak to myself, I do not find myself in a state of intimacy, as I do when I write. This intimacy that pervades me, when I write, is similar to the intimacy of being with a friend or lover.

Here, I'm at the limits of my understanding. I don't know why this intimacy is built into the writing experience. A guess is that, to draw on an earlier idea, when I write, the voice that takes hold of me is not exactly my own, if I define "my own voice" in terms of who I feel myself to be when I go about daily life. A different self emerges in writing, one which is dissolved, expanded, and impersonal. Maybe I feel this interpersonal intimacy when writing because I am "seen" by these perspectives of people other than myself, whose voices entwine and emerge forth, under the guise of my agency. This is the oceanic "oneness with the other," whenever I write, and am both seen and created by all of these people.

Finally, I'd like to return to the connection between writing and sculpting manifest reality (which amounts to regulating emotion.) Roughly put, there are two kinds of writing: we can write with the aim of representing and exploring reality ("nonfiction"), or we can write to make things up ("fiction" or "make-believe".) Each kind has a distinctive power. Understanding the power of writing fiction requires that I explain topics that are unrelated to writing itself, namely the relationship between make-believe and consciousness. So I'll save this discussion for a future post. It'll turn out that making things up can transform our manifest reality in ways that speaking or writing sincerely cannot. Being in pretense can be more powerful than being realistic, when it comes to re-sculpting the reality we see, as counterintuitive as that sounds.

For now, let's look at the power of writing earnestly. When we write about reality, this puts us in touch with the parts of reality that we're writing about. Our bodily affect and emotion can be triggered by those parts of reality, as opposed to the parts of daily life that have preoccupied us, prior to writing. For example, I worry over whether I've exercised enough this week, when I missed my usual jog. I tell myself, in inner thought, that this is irrational; I can return to my routine next week, and this deviation will make no difference in the long run. But the fearful affect remains sticky, distracting me from my projects. So I turn away from merely thinking. I go to my laptop and begin to write. In writing, I make pristine the reasons why I feel upset. I show to myself why these reasons are ill-founded, and I raise the facts that imply that all is well. The act of writing changes my affect and emotion, and thus re-sculpts my manifest reality. Previously, the reality I saw contained that something has gone wrong. Now, this reality is freed of that, and undisturbed, I may now go forth and pursue my projects.

Why can writing have this power, where thought cannot? This is explained by ideas mentioned earlier. In writing, we most completely detach ourselves from the world of daily life; and free of the demands of daily life, we can luxuriate in this newfound, open space, and notice more diverse perspectives and ideas. This means that we're more likely to be able to access parts of reality that can undermine the previous reasons for having a certain emotion. We have more resources, in writing rather than in thought, that can let us dismantle previous parts of manifest reality, so we can replace these with more truthful parts.

Moreover, in writing, we have access to a wider array of perspectives or voices. It is more likely that we'll hit upon a voice that is authoritative, that our bodily affect will heed to. In thought, there is just your own voice, and perhaps a few others that are in your immediate vicinity of interest. These few voices may fail to be authoritative; when they speak, your affect is not convinced, and continues running amok. These options afforded by thought are impoverished, compared to those afforded by the act of writing.

What do I mean, when I say that in writing, other people's voices may become your own? How literally do I mean that? As explained earlier, it is not literal: rarely do particular people's perspectives enter our own spontaneously. That happens only if we deliberately aim to emphasize with a particular other, or to write from their perspective. But there is something more subtle that goes on in writing, which is very significant. There are overall "tones" of people's voices, which may enter our voice in writing. Such "tones" may include how much gravity or authority a voice has; or alternatively, how distant or meager it sounds. This fact is connected to that not all attempts at regulating our emotions, by reasoning with ourselves, will succeed. Whether it does can largely hinge upon whether we have been close with people who regard us highly, or who love us, and whether we trust these people, or take them as having gravity or authority. It is the voices of people who've been integral in our lives that most readily become our own, when we write. It they were abusive or untrustworthy, it is difficult to be able to change our manifest reality in ways that align with our values, even when we write. But this issue takes us to philosophical issues that goes beyond the scope here. I will explore this some other time.

To sum up:

We can create the external circumstances, which in turn, create our possible thoughts, feelings, and actions, when we write.

Writing gives us powerful distance from daily life, so that we are freed to access a wider range of interests, ideas, and perspectives.

Writing has syntactical structure and conceptual possibilities, which surpass those of thought. Writing overcomes the limitations of memory, under which thought is subjected.

Lingering questions:

What does writing fiction or make-believe do to us, as opposed to writing in earnest?

What happens to us, when we read someone else's work (or engage with other artistic media), as opposed to when we write for ourselves?

What are these "voices" that we open ourselves to, when we write? Where do they come from, and what power do they have over our manifest reality?

Literature that inspired these ideas:

Alderson-Day, Ben, and Charles Fernyhough. “Inner Speech: Development, Cognitive Functions, Phenomenology, and Neurobiology.” Psychological Bulletin 141, no. 5 (September 2015): 931–65. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000021.

Clark, Andy. “Language, Embodiment, and the Cognitive Niche.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10, no. 8 (August 2006): 370–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2006.06.012.

———. “Word, Niche and Super-Niche: How Language Makes Minds Matter More.” THEORIA. Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de La Ciencia 20, no. 3 (2005): 255–68.

Fernyhough, Charles. Vygotsky, Luria, and the Social Brain. Oxford University Press, 2010. http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327694.001.0001/acprof-9780195327694-chapter-3.

Garfield, Jay L. Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

O’Madagain, Cathal, and Michael Tomasello. “Joint Attention to Mental Content and the Social Origin of Reasoning.” Synthese 198, no. 5 (May 2021): 4057–78. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02327-1.

Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.

Tomasello, Michael, and Hannes Rakoczy. “What Makes Human Cognition Unique? From Individual to Shared to Collective Intentionality.” Mind and Language 18, no. 2 (April 2003): 121–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0017.00217.