It doesn't take a miracle. Someone willing to sacrifice their life to remove Trump from the equation would do it. I'll even donate to their defense fund...which is a much more honest promise than Trump's promise to pay the legal fees for anyone assaulting a protester.

I have two boys, 9 and 14. If they treated people the way Trump, and most of the right, treats people, I'd be ashamed and reprimand them, especially if they did it publicly the way Trump has mocked a disabled reporter, Ford, the parents of fallen soldier... we could go on and on about how he mocks people on a regular basis. Every major religion has some variation of the Golden Rule, treat others as you'd have others treat you, especially Christianity, and yet the entire right ignores this rule, especially when it's somebody they oppose. Be it LGBTQIA+ people, political opponents, economic opponents, they ignore the Golden Rule. They in fact view it as a sign of strength to openly be hostile and rude to others, and yet, when one of theirs is mocked by late night TV, or when Sarah Sanders is kicked out of a restaurant (days after the fact that the entire right was celebrating the Supreme Court victory that they don't have to serve people they don't like), suddenly it is all "why can't people be civilized"? Plank in your own eye ass holes.

As Bob says politics is mean and ugly, but Republicans, Christians, made it that way and have been doubling down on it, ignoring the commandments to Love on another, the commandment to treat others as you'd have them treat you, not to judge least ye be judged and on and on. And somehow the right views that as a strength, as a good thing. They view McCain's efforts to reach across the isle and find a common center ground that everyone can agree on as a weakness. They don't want or will accept a 50/50 solution, they want a solution that is 80 or even better 90 percent on their side, and anything less than that is the other side being obstructionist.

Anyhow, if my kids acted the way Trump does, our President, whom we should hold to the highest standards, I'd make them apologize and be frank with them that I was appalled at their behavior, to mock a person with a disability or a woman or any other person the way Trump does on a regular basis. Yet the entire right is falling over themselves with pleasure at this rude behavior... I just don't get it. I don't get how that is acceptable behavior now from the President of the United States. It'd be one thing if he was still the piece of shit business man (who's business' constantly fail and need bankruptcy protection, even though he rarely pays contractors), 2nd rate reality TV show star, but this is the highest office in the land, where we should expect a person to act with dignity. I may have found Bush Jr to be an idiot and a horrible President, but at least he treated people with respect and the way one would expect of a President. Now we have a man-child and somehow this is a great thing. Fuck our lives when this is acceptable, when this is in fact praise worthy by far too many on the right (and I know, many Republicans said it was wrong of Trump to mock her the way he did, but they didn't really stand up to him, just a quick line to appease the few who might vote for them that would be appalled at that behavior).

EDIT TO ADD: What's upsetting about the Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination is that they didn't even hold hearings. They had the votes to block him from confirmation, so hold hearings, say "no" and move on, but they wouldn't even do that. And he'd probably have been one of the most moderate justices in the modern era, which would have made explaining the "no" harder perhaps, but at least it would have been fair. But apparently fair is for the weak, one must play the ugly game now... and look at Bob's one reply, they got their eye on Ginsburg, they are hoping she dies so they can replace her with another theocrat like Kavanaugh, and because of that expectation and hope, you can guarantee that all the right will be out in force come November. We really need a miracle turnout to start to change things...

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"Bike stunts" hardly describes this parade of miracles.
I'm fairly certain a few of those defied the laws of physics.
When riding standing up, backwards, while juggling is one of the tamest of your"stunts", you've earned yourself a *quality and a *promote

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Miracle DENIED.
WFT, are they serious, we've been pulling that trick since kindergarten.... it works with legs too - so funny.

Amazing! Who is this miracle hand job person?

There is a generally held belief that consciousness is a mystery of science or a miracle of faith; that consciousness was attained instantly (or granted by god), and that one has either attained self awareness or has not.

I don't believe any of that. I believe like all things in biology, consciousness evolved to maximise a benefit, and occurred gradually, without any magic or mystery. The closest exurb1a gets to that is when he says at 6:28:

"Maybe evolution accidentally made some higher mammals on Earth self-aware because it's better for problem solving or something"

We need to know what other people are thinking and this is the problem that consciousness solves. If a neighbouring tribe enters your territory then predicting whether they come to trade, mate, steal or attack is beneficial to survival.

Initially this may be done through simulation - imagining the future based on past experience. A flood approaching your cave is bad news. Being surrounded by lions is not good. Surrounding a lone bison is dinner. Being charged by a screaming tribe is an upcoming fight.

We could only simulate another person's actions, but we had no experience that allows us to simulate another person's thoughts. You may predict that giving your hungry neighbour a meal may suppress their urge to raid your supplies but you still can't simply open their head and see what they are thinking.

Then for the benefit of cooperation and coordination, we started to talk, and everything changed.

Communication not only allows us to speak our mind, but allows us to model the minds of others. We can gain an understanding of another person's motivations long before they act upon them. The need to simulate another person's thoughts becomes more nuanced and complex. Do they want to trade, or do they want to cheat?

Yet still we cannot look into the minds of others and verify our models of them. If we had access to an actual working brain we could gradually strengthen that model with reference to how an actual brain works, and we happen to have access to such a brain, our own!

If we monitored ourselves then we could validate a general model of thought against real urges, real experiences, real problem solving and real motivations. Once we apply our own selves to a model of thought we become much better at modelling the thoughts of others.

And what better way to render that model than with speech itself? To use all of our existing cognitive skills and simply simulate others sharing their thoughts with us.

At 3:15 exurb1a referenced a famous experiment that showed that we make decisions before we become aware of them. This lends evidence to suppose that our consciousness is not the driver of our thoughts, but a monitor - an interpretation of our subconscious that feeds our model of how people think.

Not everybody is the same. We all have different temperaments. Some of us are less predictable than others, and we tend to avoid such people. Some are more amenable to co-operation, others are stubborn. To understand the temperament of one we must compare them to another. If we are to compare the model of another's mind to our own, and we simulate their mind as speech, then we must also simulate our own mind as speech. Then not only are we conscious, we are self-aware.

Add in a feedback loop of social norms, etiquette, acceptable behaviour, expected behaviour, cooperation and co-dependence, game theory and sustainable societies and this conscious model eventually becomes a lot more nuanced than it first started - allowing for abstract concepts such as empathy, shame, guilt, remorse, resentment, contempt, kinship, friendship, nurture, pride, and love.

Consciousness is magical, but not magic.

Lyrics from https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/perfectcircle/talktalk.html:

You're waiting on miracles
We're bleeding out
Thoughts and prayers, adorable
Like cake in a crisis
We're bleeding out
While you deliberate
Bodies accumulate

Sit and talk like Jesus
Try walking like Jesus
Sit and talk like Jesus
Talk like Jesus
Talk, talk, talk, talk
Get the fuck out of my way

Don't be the problem, be the solution
Don't be the problem, be the solution
Don't be the problem, be the solution
Problem, problem, problem, problem

Faith without works is
Talk without works is
Faith without works is
Dead, dead, dead, dead

Sit and talk like Jesus
Try walking like Jesus
Sit and talk like Jesus
Try walking like Jesus

Try braving the rain
Try lifting the stone
Try extending a hand
Try walking your talk or get the fuck out of my way

His position is 'what if a miracle happened and it reinforced my baseless position....what then?' ....what?
I prefer 'What if right wing nuts could recognize reality and switched political positions to be liberals, and we found out that they are still totally nuts?' as an analogy.

Pretty sure that most black women, given an opportunity to "live in a white woman's shoes" would stay in them....this is so common it's known as "passing"....the reverse is so rare it's known as Dolezaring.

Even they (Fox) aren't this dumb.

They weren't making it out, they were going downhill in the same direction the water was backflowing from...

Seriously people, if you see flooding like this (and I hope you never do), if you have an 'uphill' to go to (ie. behind the white building following the red pipe), go that way. You can't get to your family in time, so ring them up on the mobile and get fucking safe. Even if you do survive by some miracle, some poor rescue worker has to come try to save you.

*quality

I'm currently reading "Superintelligence" by Nick Bostrom and it's pretty *fear inducing.

If we ever do hit the singularity... it doesn't really matter what we do.

First up, if it's an AGI is to be any use, it needs to be at least as smart as us. Which means, by definition, it will be capable of writing its own AGI.

There are any number of nightmare scenarios where even a seemly benevolent goal might be disastrous for humanity.

"Multivac, fix the environment!"
"Ok, what's the major issue with the environment?"
/wipes out humanity

"Multivac, solve the Riemann hypothesis!"
"Ok, but I'll need a lot of processing power"
/converts entire planet to a giant cpu

Even if, by some miracle, we end up developing a benevolent AI that understands our needs and is aligned with them, (e.g. the Culture Minds), we are no longer in control.

We might be along for the ride, but we're certainly not driving.

The other thing that's interesting is a question of scale. We tend to think of intelligence in human terms, like this.

infants..... children.....mentally impaired..Sarah Palin.....normal people.....Neil deGrasse Tyson.....Feynman, Einstein, Newton, etc.

But that ignores all the lower intelligences:

bacteria...Trump......insects.....sheep.....dogs...chimps, dolphins, etc............................... dumb human..smart human.

But from a superintelligence's point of view, the scale looks more like this
bacteria.. humanity ... Tesla ................................................... ..................................................................................................
..................................................................................................
............................................................................................. AI