r/SGU

I thought fellow SGU fans would enjoy this one.

A man dies and goes to heaven, and God tells him, "Since you've led such a pure and noble life, is there any earthly questions I can answer before you join your family in paradise?"

The man thinks for a moment and says, "I've always wondered who really killed JFK."

God responds, "It was Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, using his own rifle, with no accomplices."

The man ponders God's response and replies, "Damn... I never realized how high up this conspiracy goes..."

This got alluded to on this week's show. Cassidy's a Republican. They're in a fucking cult at this point. They support Trump because they're trying to keep as much power as they can, and they're scared shitless that Trump will turn the MAGAts loose on them if they don't tow the line

Love the show, but, Good Lord; when someone on the panel goes into this "I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THIS KEEPS HAPPENING???!???" confusion when Republicans, who've made politicizing science and health a core plank in their platform, do what they've been doing for the last several decades?

It's like "How is this some unknowable mystery to you folks? Did you honestly think a Republican Senator in a deep red state was not going to vote for a guy who is an anti-vaxxer?"

And, no, Cassidy doesn't get credit for badmouthing RFK now. He had the chance to sink this two years ago, and chose party and power over public safety.

It's just astonishing to me how often in this podcast capitalism is identified as a major cause of a problem, but when it's time to discuss solutions, it's so much "individual choices".

Just dropping a quick thought for your consideration as it occurs to me real time in meat space.

I think you have at least touched on this in your numerous AI conversations though I think the magnitude of this simple reality deserves more attention and focus...not for your show per se, but for all of us. For the species.

I work in IT and have for 40 years. I only mention that as it overlaps with the AI domain in major ways, and it also has driven me to be a (reluctant and initially skeptical) early adopter. I am not an AI developer, but I use AI to develop...and for personal use cases as well.

Although I was initially slow to adopt and often scoffed, I now see the undeniable value and inevitable ongoing progression of AI in our future - and I have my humongous share of FUD about the future we are uncontrollably careening into - its impact on the world and my kids are constantly in my mind these days.

It occurred to me today as I was reflecting on the still-too-common occurrences of hallucinations and errors in my interactions with AI. It's not news...and you have all talked about it.

Those errors can range from tiny and inconsequential to monumental and often hilarious. If you catch them, that is.

Relying on those errors can cascade into disaster...that's obvious.

But what may not be so obvious is how much more important your role is - how much more important critical thinking and skepticism is in the new world and our future.

A huge percentage of our species is already pre-loaded to fail - they do not have the experience and skill let alone the patience to stop and think and question the information they are using. We see that every day and have from time immemorial. See religion for reference. But now it can happen many times a day from the smallest activity to the largest decisions.

That's a scary realization. And it makes your mission and goal that much more important.

I’m listening to #1099 (New Zealand) during which Cara suggests we ask “Why terraform Mars?” before even considering methods. My impression is that compared with the other rogues, she’s much less bullish about putting people in space, even though she usually holds back. This time she pushed hard, and I appreciated it. “Why” indeed.

I get that intellectually we can think about how it might be done. But without prefacing it each time with the motivation, we tacitly imply that the motivation exists. But it doesn’t. None of the others could answer her question. Colonizing Mars is like no previous human expansion. All other migrations were in pursuit of resources and were driven by economics. There is no such drive for Mars.

And I’m glad they didn’t trot out the asteroid-strike-destroys-Earth trope.
Statistically we’ll suffer thousands of regionally-destructive meteor strikes before we encounter a planet killer. Let’s focus on those.

I don't listen to hear politics. This one had way to much and it was a huge turnoff.

"If Elon wants to go to Mars, you know, more power to him. Hopefully it's a one-way trip" <--WTF??? If Elon was never born, would the world be better or worse today? I would say we would be worse off. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, Boring, xAI, NeuralLink would never exist. There may have been other forms of this that maybe would have been comparable or maybe we just wouldn't have the EV revolution we have today. But because this was all done by one man that has questionable political views, people want to take from him, punish him, discount (or dismiss) his contributions to humanity.

And how many times was the mention of "people are dying" used as a club? If the main concern is people dying, there are many other things that should be addressed that would reduce deaths, but it would be uncomfortable to make the change because it would require giving up "rights". So, it isn't as much of a concern that people are dying as it is one that "we want more control to do what we want".

I'm a conservative with solar panels, Tesla MYP, and support of nuclear power (used to be a Navy Nuclear Machinist Mate).

Appreciation post I guess? We appreciate all the hard work you put into what ends up being a weekly fix for some of us.

Been listening for over a decade, my kids have heard your voices since they were babies. In a weird, convoluted way you guys saved mine and my childrens lives. We'll be listening for many more years.

Holler if you ever have to come down to Louisiana for anything!

This was raised in episode #1099 and I'm struggling with the framing of how collectively we should use AI "appropriately" outside of purely moral vs immoral arguments.

If we accept that AI should automate human labour where doing so produces social value, then it's difficult to draw the line between "good" AI applications such as mathematics and engineering and "bad" applications such as art, poetry or writing simply because we have some subjective sense that machines should contribute in one domain and not the other. The engineer and the artist are now facing the same technological phenomenon: a machine becoming capable of performing tasks that previously required human labour. The analogy to the industrial revolution was apt, but in this case both "creative" and "procedural/analytical" professions may have to adapt. In my view the relevant ethical questions concern the manner in which that transition occurs and not whether one kind of human creativity is inherently entitled to be protected from it.

A mathematician might reasonably say: "The system was trained on decades of mathematical papers, including my work, and is now capable of solving problems that previously required mathematicians like me."

Structurally that is analogous to the artist saying: "The system was trained on decades of artwork, including my work, and is now capable of producing illustrations that previously required artists like me."

This is not to say that there arent perfectly legitimate moral and legal arguments against AI deliberately impersonating a living artist or passing AI work off as the artist's own work but to make a categorical assertion that AI's contributions in art or writing are somehow inherently less "valuable" than in mathematics and science strikes me as cleaving to an emotional argument that somehow the machines shouldn't be good at those things.

Personally, I dont really understand the general aversion to the use of AI art in games or other work product in the same way that I dont understand some people's preference for "organic" food. Both seem to be essentially a form of "values signalling" rather than genuine product preference. In future will we see mathematicians and scientists claim that a new discovery or proof was produced with only human derived theorems?

There are profound issues with the integration of AI into our society and I dont pretend to understand all of the complexities; socially, environmentally or ethically but directing the output of AI based on value judgements makes me uneasy.

I know the audio for live shows can be difficult, but this one was really something. Many points throughout the show were basically NYC subway announcement quality.

Sorry to complain about Cara again, but she was annoying in this episode. She kept on arguing that we shouldn’t ask the question of whether we can terraform Mars. Although I know she was trying to emphasize that we shouldn’t take care of Earth, that wasn’t the question. Not every question or effort must be directly related to reducing our negative effect on Earth’s environment.

I'm surprised that they skipped the LA.live show and put the down under one first. I wonder why.

Have the rogues talked about David Sinclair at all? I'd like to hear a skeptical take on all this life maxing/optimization "science".

Or have they done a deep dive on the possible increase in qualified PhDs going down the grifter rabit hole? Huberman, Peter Attia etc?

Listening to the podcast rn. And just before this I listened to a podcast with one of the the Star Lab founders. They already sent a data center satellite into orbit and it has been used to train Gemini according to him. Is this news item only about the amount of satellites he wants to put up?