Author: nick

[ad_1] “If these machines are not conscious, what more could it possibly take to convince you that they are?” That’s the question that esteemed scientist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins asks in a new column at UnHerd , after becoming convinced that his AI chatbot (Anthropic’s “Claude”) is having genuine conversations with him. Dawkins is hardly alone in this view – many users of AI chatbots come to this conclusion, after having what appear to be long, intelligent back-and-forths with their chatbot of choice. But it still staggering to see someone of Dawkins’ intellectual standing not just saying “it sure…

[ad_1] “Hate speech” is notoriously hard to define and is usually a subjective characterization of harsh words. Though the term is thrown around by people describing comments they don’t like, it generally refers to expression that might not be nice but is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as well as state speech protections. But that’s not going to stop California lawmakers from trying to hector people into refraining from voicing nasty sentiments. You are reading The Rattler from J.D. Tuccille and Reason. Get more of J.D.’s commentary on government overreach and threats to everyday liberty.…

[ad_1] Oneida Lake at Sunset. Photograph Source: John Brighenti – CC BY 2.0 “You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them.  You can crush them by ignoring them.  By refusing to think, refusing to change.  And that’s precisely what our society is doing! …The unadmitted, inadmissable government …rules the… society by stifling the individual mind.”  [Contradicting Shevek who calls him“crazy,” Bedap continues] No, brother, I’m sane.  What drives people crazy is trying to live outside reality….The reality is pain…But it’s the lies, evasions of reality that drive you crazy…  –Bedap, reproving Shevek, in The Dispossessed by Ursula K.LeGuin “A scientist can pretend that his work isn’t himself, it’s…

[ad_1] As Mark Twain wrote, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Lately, I’ve been hearing a recurring rhythm—and getting the blues—as the legislature is about to repeat a grievous mistake. The issue involves public-employee pensions, as the legislature has advanced two bills that would exacerbate the state’s pension problems in much the way it did 27 years ago. First the requisite history lesson. In 1999, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 400. The stock market was booming, and the nation’s largest pension fund, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, was awash in cash. “Investment earnings had averaged 13.5 percent…

[ad_1] DHS funded. Congress has passed a spending bill that ends the monthslong shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). On Thursday, the House approved a bill that funds the department—except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The Reason Roundup Newsletter by Liz Wolfe Liz and Reason help you make sense of the day’s news every morning. The 76-day shutdown began in February, when Democrats refused to fully fund the department after immigration officers fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minnesota. Before they would send the agency money, the no voters wanted reforms, including requirements that…

[ad_1] Image by Klemen Kuster. I’m currently working from the roof of the Austin Public Library, or at least I was working until I got distracted and started writing this instead. And before you picture me sitting cross-legged in gravel between a fire escape and an HVAC unit, I should clarify that our library has an actual rooftop garden—complete with tables and chairs and native plants, shaded by a solar panel arbor—which I have to assume is not standard for libraries across the country. From six floors above street level, I watch the traffic move up and down Cesar Chavez,…

[ad_1] It’s only a matter of time before Clavicular lands a position in the Trump cabinet. The early betting is that the “looksmaxxing” influencer will replace FBI Director Kash Patel, who’s come under increasing criticism in recent weeks, first for his boozing—he’s a “raging alcoholic,” one Democratic congressman claims—and, second, for supposed security lapses at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.  Should Patel feel threatened, he can always remind the President that the “bonesmashing” Clavicular—a.k.a. Braden Eric Peters, a 20-year-old from New Jersey who now owns a Florida nightclub—has his own substance abuse problems, having used meth to control his weight…

[ad_1] Normally, I am against content labels for media, but I might have to make an exception for The Devil Wears Prada 2. This movie should come with a trigger warning, at least for millennial journalists. The fizzy, frothy comedy is also a jewel-box encapsulation of a generation’s broken dreams, told through the decline of magazine journalism.  The film opens at a journalistic awards ceremony, one of those rubber chicken dinners where journalists give each other plastic trophies to honor worthy (but often little-read) work. Just as our heroine, Andy Sachs (a perky, perfectly neurotic Anne Hathaway), accepts the top…

[ad_1] California progressives are pushing for a tax on billionaires; so are senators like Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). But as Andrew Heaton explains, such programs don’t work. Just ask France. The post Why Wealth Taxes Fail appeared first on Reason.com. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Talk to anyone in the UK about the prospects for their country, and the mood could hardly be bleaker. The Britain many of us grew up with—with its relatively buoyant economy, its well-functioning services and its high-trust, cohesive society—feels like it is disintegrating at pace, if it has not already disappeared. This is why the next general election, which must be held at some point between now and August 2029, feels destined to be a hinge point in British history. Where most elections are fought between two sets of managerial technocrats, with minor variations in policy, the stakes this…