- It's very apparent to me, at this late age, that weather forecasting has got much better. If that's Archived Message
Posted by Rhisiart Gwilym
on January 22, 2020, 8:12 am, in reply to "Machine learning was able to accurately predict the weather eight times further ahead than the usual"
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down to computer assistance, then - kudos! You're right, Sash, that I haven't looked at all deeply into AI. I regard it as just another of the long line of 'change the world' fads that have come and gone whilst I've been watching: exquisitely exciting for the techno eega-beevas, but a bit insubstantial-looking to the normally sceptical; as the fads always are. My basic doubt hinges on the question - which I have studied in great depth for a long time - of how any of these Vulcanoid pie-in-the-sky dreams are going to survive the ebbing away of hitech industrial societies; something which I'd stake my great-grandchildren's lives (more precious to me than any gold) is now baked in to this planet's future history (hence those irritating repeated bullion-bet offers  ). I take it that we don't disagree that any computing system, however magically-seeming advanced, depends critically on the availability of exquisitely sophisticated materials and processes, and the hyper-complex industrial base on which they depend absolutely. What happens when such things are just no longer available anywhere on Earth? BTW, it may seem a bit piquant to you to hear that one of my heroes, Tom Campbell, is quite enthusiastic about the idea that sufficiently complex and capable computers may well become feasible as avatars for IUOCs (individuated units of consciousness in Tom's careful scientist's language; souls in the older vocabulary) to take on as their next incarnations. Sic! He's obviously more enthusiastic about AI than me. But then, I've already identified as one of Tom's blind spots his unexamined assumption that the future is Vulcan - not LongDescenty. We all have 'em. Someone should enlighten me about what mine are - seeing as, inherently, we can't see our own... 
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