I am deeply, deeply disturbed by the Southern Baptist Convention right now. Thankfully, the vote about banning women in "pastor" positions did not go through permanently, and 25% of the messengers voted against it. It will have to be passed with 2/3 majority next year to be permanent. I think the ultra-complementarian factor has been doing a lot of pushing and advocacy; hopefully there will be some pushing back. I personally do not think a woman should be a senior pastor, but . . . I don't think that's a church decision that the convention as a whole should mandate for every single church. And a woman could be ordained for ministry and still be kept back from senior pastorhood, if that is necessity. Al Mohler warns about the convention becoming too liberal, i.e., the next step will be acceptance of homosexual persons. Well, about that: 1. There are already people with same-sex attraction in the churches, who we hope, have repented and live celibately but keep it ...
I don't think so; I admit I don't know the extent of what AI can do. But Tyler Cowen (an economist at George Mason U) writes that we are not as conscious as we would like to think. In this sense consciousness might be identified with awareness of all our brain is doing (which we do not have) and intentionality: Sometimes I like to say that “I am only conscious at the margin.” Tongue in cheek, I will suggest that I am only conscious enough to avoid the self-contradiction of asserting that I am not conscious at all. I feel I am honest enough to just not be very impressed by my own flow of conscious awareness or its ability to perform complex calculations. Still, I recognize that it is all I have got, so I need to treasure it, however paltry it may be. So if a) people are barely conscious, and b) we tend to radically overestimate intent and sentience in external circumstances, why should we think the AIs are sentient or conscious? Why should we trust the intuitions we have about ...