DrStormyDaniels

Not true, the effect of high blood levels can be very unpredictable. Especially above a certain number - and largely depending on the basal insulin strategy of the patient, for instance long acting shots versus constant micro doses of short acting via pumps. In the latter case, an untreated high blood sugar could escalate in a matter of hours to a fatal level.

One of the main uses of these technologies is precisely because some type 1 diabetics can become unaware of the symptoms over time either through chance adaption or over-exposure, for instance, hypo-unawareness.

I remember reading the 6th paragraph as a teenager, it’s still good: “First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite extension: there are not only those who give orders but those who give advice as to what orders should be given. Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two different bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e. of advertising.”

Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson

Is perception and evaluation a basic function? By analogy with cellular life, maybe. But I think this abstraction hides more than it reveals.

You are right of course. The plays are plays. And ”commercial” minus the poetry ;) and yet, the poetry is there, for the non-commercial reader. (I hear they exist)

Perhaps, but I think that is beside the point. I read the tales for the voices of the characters, and for the poetry. It’s like Shakespeare, where the plot or story is usually a bit boring, more of a pretext to the poetry, and not really the purpose.

It takes less time than you might think to get aquatinted with older English spellings, especially if you start at the deep end with Chaucer; it’s plain sailing after. Personally I got to enjoy and prefer the absolute disregard for standard spellings, capitalisation, and punctuation, so much that I find it harder to read, e.g. Shakespeare in a modernised text. More interestingly, there’s the problem of translating or updating poetry. If the poem was written with full self-consciousness of word choice, then the meaning really is lost by “updating” it, and where the poetry is best written, the meaning will be most lost.

It it surprising that science, which is the theory of impersonal necessity, should find individual agency a rather inconceivable thing?

Indeed

It’s interesting. Creativity might not be different in effect to “adding some randomness”, but it is different in cause. If the effect is indistinguishable, this distinction may seem sentimental. But take the idea to its limit. If an A.I. told you that it loved you, that would be practically different as a mere effect of added randomness than as an expression of a cause. A piece of text stripped of human context is no different than one made by a bona-fide human. But language without human context, would not be human. Two people saying the exact same thing may have entirely different meanings. Etc. And of course, this is still extremely abstract. People aren’t “contexts”.

I think your comparisons miss the point: those technologies improved means of production of things made by humans. Instead, these applied statistics models directly seek to emulate the humans themselves. You say ”it gives us what we want” - is it?

A different stance from Amherst:

I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!

“ … I love all waste And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.”

Do you take yourself to be an illusion?