Good Day DU (February 2, 2022)

[EarlG]

Today in History: February 2

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Question of the Day: What is the oddest form of entertainment you enjoy?

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Today's milestones: Congratulations to the following active DU members!

Anniversaries
FireUpChips10 (21 years), frazzled (20 years), Victory at Yorktown (18 years), Itchinjim (18 years), Burma Jones (18 years), roscoeroscoe (18 years), Ford_Prefect (13 years), Buckeyeblue (5 years), Rustynaerduwell (5 years), PTWB (3 years), Melissawisham1 (1 year), LinNL (1 year), mactire (1 year)

Posting milestones
None today

New members who posted for the first time
IHadToDoIt, joebsoup, electricbro45

[happybird]

1. Confession time

I love watching videos of Supernatural conventions. The actors are good, smart people and funny as hell. They are very close friends outside of work and it shows. Plus they are liberals. And nice to look at. Wins all around.

[Ohio Joe]

2. Congrats DU'ers

What is the oddest form of entertainment you enjoy?

I’ve been working on flowing out the logic to code a real AI for about 25 years now. An AI that could learn and grow well beyond it’s original set of knowledge. Use that knowledge to define its own, interests, desires, moral center and place in the world.

It scares some of the people who know me but I enjoy it.

[Ohio Joe]

12. So... This is where I can kind of start to scare people with what I'm doing...

Back around... '96 or '97, I'd been a programmer (mainframe) for about 8 or 9 years when I first got the idea to start working on this from an article I'd read online (I think it was at the then still new slashdot.org) about some guys working on creating AI and I thought... Nah, they are going about it all wrong. They are working on something that has access to whatever knowledge it might need to function. It'll never be more then what they give it... It won't one day decide it wasn't digging the assignment they gave it and instead was going to going to go write poetry. I did some reading on what different groups were looking at and they all seemed to have the same problem to me so... I've not really looked since, just been working on my own thing. I did do a cursory read of the article you linked and I got the impression they were looking into ways to train an AI... Mine would not be trained, it would decide it's own path and teach itself what it liked.

True RNG is absolutely part of the key, it needs it to be a true AI (or at least how I'm defining it in my head). You would have to be able to ask it to pick a number between 1-10 without there being an underlying predictable algorithm that decides it. The RNG problem is not something I've even started yet though. Mostly I've been looking into working on how the logic would work to let it decide what it likes or dislikes. People in the industry whom I've talked with have virtually all told me what I'm thinking is impossible... I think I've made great strides. People I've talked about it with outside of the industry think I'm a bit of a mad scientist who may destroy the world. At almost 60 though, I'll probably not live long enough to finish.

[electric_blue68]

5. You might enjoy Person of Interest. It starts relatively slow, then...

Super AI aspects begin to show. Very interesting ethical questions, too. Great twists and turns. Stellar cast! 👍

[electric_blue68]

8. They actually predicted the kind of thing Snowdon did 6 months before ...

it happened.


WARNING
From what you've said somes of POI will make you angry.

[Ohio Joe]

13. Great series...

I have the whole thing

[electric_blue68]

17. Cool! DVD's were too expensive back then...

I just wanted the whole thing summer, mid fall last year on HBO.

I'll probably watch some fav eps again.

Go Team Machine! 😁

[Ohio Joe]

18. I go it on VUDU

They do what they call "bundle and save" sales all the time so I got the whole thing cheap... It was $44.99. I just checked and it's off sale right now and going for 79.99

[electric_blue68]

20. Ah, I guess I'll check in on it occasionally for a future bargain.

[electric_blue68]

6. I think you're doing a good thing. We lose enough birds as it is.

[Ohio Joe]

15. We have a Birder Group

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1208

[electric_blue68]

22. Thanks. I check on the bird items when I see them in the Lounge...

not a full-fledged 😁 birder but I enjoy them when in our parks, and when I've lived on really 💖 tree lined streets.
Blue jay's, cardinals, crows, morning doves, hawks, very rare seeing a humminbird.

I'll drop in to the Birder Group. 👍

[hunter]

27. My wife and I feed the birds as well. There are some practical reasons.

If birds feel safe in our garden they'll eat the insect pests as well.

Most of the birds we see in our yard are not really interested in the feeding area. They are here to eat aphids, etc.

Having other birds around and sources of clean water attracts these beneficial birds.

And yes, it is entertaining to watch all the little dramas play out every day, especially at our fountain which is always full of clean, biologically filtered water. It's a preferred bathing spot. The humming birds have claimed exclusive use of the fountain at certain times of the day and it's fun to watch them chase off much larger birds or bicker among themselves over the best bathing spots.

[Solly Mack]

9. Same thing it is in my profile.

Busy observing the group dynamics of dust bunnies.

[Solly Mack]

16. It is. All entertaining.

[Emile]

10. Barking at little dogs.

[Emile]

25. Too dangerous to bark at big dogs unless

they're in a vehicle, then it's great entertainment while waiting in a parking lot.

[electric_blue68]

19. Ah, I finally thought of something with some "time travel" involved...

Waaaaaay back in the day '58, '59 as a 5, 6 yr old as a
little girl was playing with big cardboard bricks, Tinkertoys, wooden tracks, and trains. Also had a shield, upper armour, and a sword. (plastic)

In some families, areas I'd might have been forbidden, stuff not bought, etc. Would definitely been considered "odd", even "dangerous" in extreme cases.

Luckily both my parents gave me total leeway to play! I'm sure it strengthened me lov of sculpture. As a kid in school, of course, I was drawing!

I am and artist, and abstract sculptor. 😁