Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/#9a417fe513f58988c3b5b1e84cfc57397194a79b 2026-06-04T16:20:28Z Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/ ranprieur@gmail.com June 4. http://ranprieur.com/#d4888e964886c0f0406bacd16404a28ff558410c 2026-06-04T16:20:28Z June 4. Great Ted Chiang essay, No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious. He starts with a clever analogy, that an AI-generated dialogue between Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan does not generate conscious versions of those people inside the machine. In the same way, Claude is a third person character, and Claude's new constitution is like a "character sheet for a role-playing game". The most interesting bit is at the end where he argues that if chatbots are conscious, then they're basically child slaves:

Anthropic would have us believe that it is inventing a new category of being whose needs for protection require essentially no divergence from how a software company would treat an ordinary chatbot that lacks conscious experience. That's so convenient that it's simply not plausible.

A few months back, a reader asked me if I think AI images and videos are important. That struck me as a strange question, and when I thought about it, I decided no, they're not important, and that's good. Pretty much every use of AI that tries to be important, is harmful. In a hundred years, if AI still exists (which I doubt), there may be laws that it can only be used recreationally, for the same reason that drugs are good recreationally but not when you're using power tools.

]]> June 1. http://ranprieur.com/#69f238d216a7af8a6a116867dd5057d966cf44c0 2026-06-01T13:50:55Z June 1. Five happy links, two Reddit and three science. From Better Offline, The kids are alright is about young people rejecting AI and big tech. "It's also like having had phones from early an age they're just done with them."

From Spirituality, I stopped trying to "raise my vibration" and things actually got better. From the top comment: "Spirituality is about returning to our natural state.... Imagine going out to the woods and thinking everything is dirty and needs to be cleaned.... A lot of spiritual seekers are doing this kind of thing within themselves."

A single dose of psilocybin outperforms nicotine patches for quitting smoking

Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnea. "Regular playing of a didgeridoo reduces daytime sleepiness and snoring in people with moderate obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome and also improves the sleep quality of partners."

The Dirt That Refused To Die. "A metabolic process that powers much of life is also possible outside living cells." The details are different, but this is basically what Wilhelm Reich did 90 years ago with bions: he completely sterilized organic material and still found life-like action under a strong microscope.

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