Messages

I'm guessing an exercise yard or field was sectioned off.

Sano, keep it coming. This is great stuff.

Exactly. It was a jail in the interior of Brazil, so presumably there was a lot of open space.

Someone tried to assault their neighbour with a big knife and "wolverine-like claws" in Juiz de Fora. There is an image in the news source if you want to see it: http://www.surrealista.com.br/2016/11/wolverine-mineiro-e-preso-tentando-agredir-vizinho-com-garras-de-metal/

I'm actually having trouble finishing the article, I'm just cringing too much. They referenced the hard problem of consciousness right at the beginning of the article without one mention of the guy who popularized the term, David Chalmers. Leaps of logic and half-baked metaphors abound. I don't think I can read it all

Maybe the hard problem is only hard because we're trying to solve it using consciousness. Like trying to measure a ruler using the ruler itself. Maybe there are finite limits to what a couple of pounds of meat is capable of understanding. Maybe consciousness is what happens when you have something really simple happening over and over, in parallel, at massive scale. We can just about grok what an individual neuron does with a signal or even a small group of them but, by the time your get to a couple of thousand, we're clueless. Millions? Billions? Forget it.

I'm not sure that's ever likely to change. Maybe scientific study of consciousness is impossible. Science can't even prove such a thing exists, never mind how it works. We'd almost certainly need a brand new language to describe it. Just grabbing a trendy branch of mathematics off the shelf doesn't look like it's going to get far.

Well yeah, sure, maybe we will never really understand it. Maybe there will be breakthroughs, but only in the next century or the one after that. We have no way of knowing that. Shouldn't stop us from trying, though. What I'm saying is the article is bad even by our early, rustic standards of "trying".

I'm completely struck by this paragraph. Let me try to explain why I think it doesn't make sense at all.

Hoffman: Suppose in reality there's a resource, like water, and you can quantify how much of it there is in an objective order—very little water, medium amount of water, a lot of water.

Ok, I'm still following so far.

Now suppose your fitness function is linear, so a little water gives you a little fitness, medium water gives you medium fitness, and lots of water gives you lots of fitness—in that case, the organism that sees the truth about the water in the world can win, but only because the fitness function happens to align with the true structure in reality.

In the first place, of course, it is entirely your supposition that the fitness function is linear - in fact, I think there's a very simple experiment to prove it isn't. Do all animals when confronted with a large body of water try to drink it all and end up drowning? Do animals simply charge at the ocean and die? They don't? Well then.

Also notice how he doesn't really define what is "the truth about the water". There are certainly a lot of truths about water - that it is H2O, that it is liquid at certain temperatures, that it dissolves some salts, etc. The closest thing I can interpret from the text (which is unclear) is that "the truth about the water" means, to some organism, something like "more of it will make me fitter" - which is of course a subjective statement. If he defines truth to be subjective like that, then what a surprise that he concludes that we can't really see the world as is!

Generically, in the real world, that will never be the case. Something much more natural is a bell curve—say, too little water you die of thirst, but too much water you drown, and only somewhere in between is good for survival.

Great. We're in the same page then.

Now the fitness function doesn't match the structure in the real world. And that's enough to send truth to extinction.

Come fucking on. The only thing you proved is that you supposition about the fitness function being linear is wrong. He's litterally saying, "oh, the first shit theory off the top of my head about the complex behavior of animals is wrong - I guess that means no one can access reality!"

And of course he's still unclear what does he mean by truth. If the "truth" means the subjective thought of some animal that more water will always make it more fit then sure, that's completely extinct. I still can't see how it has much to do about us being able to know that water is H2O, for example.

For example, an organism tuned to fitness might see small and large quantities of some resource as, say, red, to indicate low fitness, whereas they might see intermediate quantities as green, to indicate high fitness.

Your point being? First, let me point out how computer-model-centric this is. The only reason some organism might see water as "red" or "green" and not, you know, larger and smaller sizes of water is if that's the only damn thing it's ever tracking. Yeah, sure, that's how evolution works, there's not payout for coordinating different kinds of information, specially the relative sizes of objects, right?

Also, so what if it interprets what it sees in a particular way? You could say the same thing about how we se color - "oh, you're not really seeing blue, you are only interpreting a certain kind of wavelength in a certain way". I think we can all agree this kind of thought is in general useless.

Its perceptions will be tuned to fitness, but not to truth. It won't see any distinction between small and large—it only sees red—even though such a distinction exists in reality.

First of all, your last fucking sentences say the organism sees red AND green. That's a distinction. And of course it completely obviates actual, true biological complexity. For an organism to sense something, it needs to have a way to sense it - an eye for example. Now I know that in a computer you can just program it to sense something, but that doesn't make much sense in reality does it? And if an eye can't make distinctions it's an useless eye, probably not an eye at all. But if it can make distinctions - and the more corresponding to reality the better the organism's fitness - and on top of that the organism has the capability to reason and its species has a long tradition of industry to expand on the organism's natural capabilities of perception (e.g. building telescopes) and its societies have means of storing information and collecting data and comparing theories and... well, you get the point.

This is why physicists need to be exposed to a healthy dose of philosophy. I really mean it, as someone who is studying philosophy in a university.

I'm actually having trouble finishing the article, I'm just cringing too much. They referenced the hard problem of consciousness right at the beginning of the article without one mention of the guy who popularized the term, David Chalmers. Leaps of logic and half-baked metaphors abound. I don't think I can read it all

And then public figures like Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson say philosophy is obsolete and no one needs it 

Drug dealer spends 120 thousand reais to build a motel... inside the jail he was imprisoned at.

Of course another 70 thousand were spent as bribes for the jail's manager, who helped him negotiate with the constrution firm. Apparently the whole thing was up in 20 days.



I could spend whole weeks looking for this kind of news and not scratch the surface.

Tl;dr: Brazil's been in the Weird Times since the 1500s, y'all are just catching up.

EDIT: I could probably make a rant about how brazilians will be the world's heralds for the Strange Times. Don't believe me? One of the latest news is that drug dealers dyed pink the cocaine they sold for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Yeah, that plane crash is a serious punch in the balls. Those guys were a hell of a cinderella story. Word is the national federation is gonna bend some rules and give them 3 years protection from relegation and some favorable exemptions to some of the transfer rules. Heard that several top-tier European clubs are willing to hook them up with some pretty sweet loans and transfer deals as well. Sounds like there's a real groundswell of support in the soccer community. Were the coaches and/or front office personnel on the plane as well or was it mostly just players?

Yeah, they were rising amazingly fast as a soccer team; they also had a fame for playing fair and for having an administration without corruption (a miracle in the field, at least here). It seems at least some of the coaches and personnel died, and some reporters as well (one even played in the national team when he was younger IIRC).

Hey Sano how much of the Brazilian strand of Discordia is active? I guess I'd like to know if you think it's thriving and whatever other perspective you may have, as you can.

I actually really don't have much of a clue. I think it's mostly dead, tbh. The last time I heard something about it here was probably 5~6 years ago, maybe more. In any case I think brazilians kinda always had a certain discordian sense of humor, so to speak (for example we all collectively started trolling and rooting for germany halfway through the 7-1 in 2014).

And I hear they are dropping the "car wash" corruption investigations now??


Brazil seems so bleak, man. The whole world is swinging right in a crazy, dangerous way.




At least there are motions that the Supreme Court is going to legalize abortion.

There have certainly been talks of pressuring the judiciary to drop it even before Dilma's impeachment, but the situation is so unstable there's a lot of fear of the public outrage. The most they'll try to do is to protect some big names and parties, but even in this I think they're failing. People have always noted how investigations seemed to be shielding the PSDB (very very roughly Brazil's moderate republicans in US terms) from harm, but this has been changing lately.

All in all I'm not too afraid, though. Perhaps this is just a difference of perspective - we are very much used to political crisis, bizarre politicians and the like - not to mention the historical perspective: even with today's hardships the country is better than it was 20 years ago, not to mention 50. In a sense I think we're inoculated against the worst excesses of politics simply because of our experience in dealing with the country's own contraditions, although I'll admit things have taken a downward turn lately (specially through political polarization). The risks of (say) a Bolsonaro presidency are real but shouldn't be overstated, as things stand now I'd say he has at most 10 percent of the vote - the main candidate would have to have really Clinton-like levels of public hatred directed to them for him to be a serious contender. The only one I think would have it is Dilma herself, but she won't be running, and maybe even not her (in my completely unsupported opinion the next president will be either Ciro Gomes or Marina Silva, both with lots of problems but leagues ahead of Bolsonaro, Trump and the like). Plus we'll have 2 years of Trump to watch and warn us.

Now, put a Bolsonaro as a candidate in Europe and you have the potential for a lot of damage. Once he tried inciting xenophobia towards haitians, this didn't work even with his own base. But in France or Italy (or Greece or Poland or...)? That's what I'm worried about.

Well, shit. That's going to be messy. I'm guessing you've had your share of celebrity deaths down there too, anyone notable that wouldn't have been given much attention north of the equator?

Can't think of anyone actually. I do recall hearing something about a famous 90 year old singer, but perhaps the news was just that she was still alive

Wow. Just heard of the Chapecoense tragedy - a plane crashed with the whole soccer team in it. Apparently 75 people are already confirmed dead.

Also, 66 year old journalist Caco Barcellos was assaulted while covering a protest in Rio's center. Not by the police, by the protestors (he works for Tv Globo, which has a bad rep and a bad history, they supported the dictatorship for example). People threw a traffic cone at him. It happened on the 16th but I'm only hearing of it now.

2016 just keeps on giving.

A TRUMP FOR YOU, AND FOR YOU, AND FOR YOU! A TRUMP FOR EVERYONE!

             

I just had flashes of Le pen, farage and that dutch guy I can never remember the name of. Vandegoebbels or something.

It's horribly true. And to think that this is the most advanced we've ever been is mildly depressing.

Geert Wilders? Also, don't forget Viktor Orban in Hungary.

Something has gone bery very wrong with the world

We actually saw it coming before most people. Bolsonaro is in Congress since 1990. And it is MY STATE that always elects him.

I have the uneasy feeling that things are only starting to get worse.

Only the christard monkeys support bolsomeme,

The same was once true of Trump.

Brazil will probably turn into another Venezuela, all that was worth because now the poor can fly on planes.

Oh my god come on. If you really think Lula/Dilma are in any way comparable to Chavez I have nothing to say to you, except that I had hoped I wouldn't find this here.

Our government has promised. Statement on Castro by March.

I have to ask, how much are you laughing at the US right now? A lot?

I'd be laughing more if we didn't have Bolsonaro. People are already comparing him to Trump (but everyone agrees he is worse). He will run for president in 2018.

https://theintercept.com/2014/12/11/misogynistic-hateful-elected-official-democacratic-world-brazils-jair-bolsonaro/

In the lower house of Brazil's federal Congress on Tuesday, Maria do Rosário – a Congresswoman since 2003 from former President Lula da Silva's Workers Party (PT) who is also the country's former Minister of Human Rights under President Dilma Rousseff – stood to praise the National Truth Commission. That Commission was preparing to release a comprehensive report on the systematic human rights abuses perpetrated by the U.S.-supported military dictatorship that ruled the country for two decades until 1985. Congresswoman do Rosário described the military dictatorship as a source of "absolute shame" and condemned it for using murder, torture, sexual abuse, and other violence against dissidents. The Commission's report was released yesterday in the presence of Rousseff, who was herself imprisoned and tortured by the military regime.

After do Rosário left the podium, Jair Bolsonaro – a right-wing Congressman since 1990 who served in the military during the dictatorship and is still an ardent defender of it –  stood to speak. He began by immediately demanding that do Rosário, who was preparing to leave the chamber, remain to hear him, yelling: "No, Maria do Rosário, don't leave! Stay here, Maria do Rosário. Stay!" Referencing her statements about the well-documented use of rape by the military dictatorship against female opponents, he bellowed: "I would not rape you. You don't merit that." The meaning was clear, particularly in the original Portuguese: while some women are good enough to be so blessed, do Rosário wasn't even good enough to deserve his rape.

http://americasquarterly.org/content/jair-bolsonaro-pro-torture-anti-gay-and-brazils-future-president

When Brazilian Congressman Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday dedicated his pro-impeachment vote to the military colonel who allegedly oversaw the torture of President Dilma Rousseff, and then reportedly hurled a string of anti-gay slurs at another politician, it was hardly the most shocking episode of his political career.

Over the years, Bolsonaro has said he would prefer his son die than come out as gay, compared same-sex marriage to pedophilia, attributed homosexuality to drug use, and encouraged the physical abuse of children thought to be gay. By comparison, when he appeared last month in the Viceland documentary series "Gaycation," he acted relatively kind in telling gay Hollywood actor Ellen Page that she was "very pretty" in response to her asking, "Do you think I should have been beaten as a child, to not be gay now?"

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/wtf/is-this-the-worlds-most-repulsive-politician/news-story/926a4a59cf6132f770dfdbd46f610e97

LADIES and gentlemen, meet the Donald Trump of Brazil.

On second thought, that's not really fair to Mr Trump. Next to Brazilian congressman Jair Bolsonaro's comments, Donald Trump's infamous "build a wall to keep Mexicans out" remark may as well have been trilled by the Von Trapp children over a merry string quartet.

There is a lengthy list of public remarks and cringe-worthy interviews to explain Bolsonaro's notoriety.

The ultraconservative politician openly supports torture. He also takes a positive view on the brutal military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for more than two decades.

He has frequently made global headlines over disparaging remarks about black people, gay people and women.

Like Trump, Bolsonaro is often criticised by the left-wing media, and like Trump, he takes this criticism with pride.

"This idea of oh poor little black person, oh poor little poor person, oh poor little woman, oh poor little indigenous person, everybody's a poor little something!" he told Vice News. "I don't try and please everybody."

Also – like Trump – there's a chance he could very well become the president of his country.

[...]

More recently, American actress Ellen Page interviewed Bolsonaro for her VICELAND documentary series Gaycation.

When Page – who happens to be gay – asked him whether he thought she should have been beaten as a child for her sexual orientation, he responded: "You're very nice. If I were a cadet in the military academy and saw you on the street, I would whistle at you. All right? You're very pretty."

She stared at him blankly in response, and he gave no indication he believed he'd said anything wrong.

[...]

In 2011, Afro-Brazilian singer and actress Preta Gil asked him what he would do if his child fell in love with a black person.

He said he would "never allow this kind of promiscuity", but added that his "children were very well-educated", as if to suggest it would therefore not be an issue.

Gil threatened to sue him after the show. "I am a strong black woman," she said. "I will take it to the end against this racist, homophobic, disgusting deputy."

A legal investigation was launched, in which Bolsonaro claimed he didn't understand the question. But things only got worse from there - he said his blunt answer was because he thought she was referring to gay people, not black people.

"If I were racist, I wouldn't be so crazy as to declare it on television."

[...]

Bolsonaro is publicly homophobic, and unapologetic for his views. In 2013, the government sought to pass a bill to outlaw homophobia and educate Brazilian youth on the damage it causes. Bolsonaro was determined to block the law, publicly campaigning against it.

In 2011, he said he would rather his son die in a car accident than be gay. He also said the presence of a gay couple at his house would cause the value of his house to depreciate.

There are even reports he has compared same-sex marriage to paedophilia, and encouraged the physical abuse of children believed to be gay.

In a 2013 interview with Stephen Fry for the BBC program Out There, Bolsonaro explained his beliefs, and addressed the suggestion his comments could be fuelling anti-gay violence across the country.

"There are groups that want to use (gay hate crimes) as an example. It might not even have anything to do with homosexuality," he said.

"It is labelled as such by gay groups who want to make use of the incident, and create a public sob story."

[...]

SO, COULD THIS MAN BE PRESIDENT?

Bolsonaro's popularity is no doubt on the rise.

His Facebook page has just under three million Likes – about 700 thousand more than former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Crowds flock to him to take selfies when he makes public appearances, and according to a Datafolha survey conducted earlier this month, his base of supporters has doubled since December.

Considering that in 2012, 77 per cent of the population supported the explicit criminalisation of homophobia, perhaps these results are not terribly surprising.

The greatest irony of all? Bolsonaro's political group is called the 'Progressive Party'.

I also forgot about the police helicopter who fell down near the famous Cidade de Deus favela (yeah, the same favela of the movie "City of God"). 4 police officers were dead, and most thought that it has been shot down by drug dealers; the police of course invaded the favelas (not just the one, but many others) as payback, as it usually does. All accounts say it was a massacre, some say 80 dead, but only 7 dead have been reported yet that I know of. And now forensics said it was not shot down, meaning it was probably a mechanical malfunction. Great.

It's odd I forgot about this one since it was the one that affected me most directly (I live near one of the big favelas and things were a bit dangerous here for some days, but it seems to have been calmed down now).

You know you're in interesting times when this barely makes the cut.

How do you think things will go over the next few months? I thought the US/UK was bad for corruption, turns out we're just bad at it and not willing to properly commit to it.

You mentioned around 200 mps implicated, is this a conservative guess? It sounds more like a serious systemic problem that is going to be a bastardy to fix.

How things will go? I've no idea, the situation changes every day. But I do think that 200 is the upper limit; not because other politicians are innocent, but because that's probably just the "big fish", so to speak.

Very few news today as people are mostly talking about Castro. If Russia has been the traditional "red enemy" of the USA, Cuba has occupied a similar role on the minds of some brazilians. "Move to Cuba" has been a traditional saying for right-wing brazilians when confronted with leftists for decades.

EDIT: Also Garotinho was released today for some reason.

I also forgot about the police helicopter who fell down near the famous Cidade de Deus favela (yeah, the same favela of the movie "City of God"). 4 police officers were dead, and most thought that it has been shot down by drug dealers; the police of course invaded the favelas (not just the one, but many others) as payback, as it usually does. All accounts say it was a massacre, some say 80 dead, but only 7 dead have been reported yet that I know of. And now forensics said it was not shot down, meaning it was probably a mechanical malfunction. Great.

It's odd I forgot about this one since it was the one that affected me most directly (I live near one of the big favelas and things were a bit dangerous here for some days, but it seems to have been calmed down now).