Talk:Susan Schneider

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:37, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Image of Schneider speaking Sept. 6 2018.jpg

Sourcing is really bad on this one
This article is presently failing WP:RS and WP:BLP really badly. Can anyone with knowledge of the article subject please fix? I tagged the bad sources and the problems with them. (No, just removing the tags doesn't fix the problems.) - David Gerard (talk) 10:50, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
 * We had an IP come through and make a pile of edits with deceptive edit summaries, so after a week it looks like the answer is "no". Doing a severe WP:BLP edit to remove the bad sources - David Gerard (talk) 10:56, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I also cut the obvious-copyvio photo (appears to be a photograph of a television) - David Gerard (talk) 11:09, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Some lingering word salad
Schneider defends a view of the nature of the mental symbols (where such are the basic vocabulary items in the language of thought).

She then used this conception of symbols, together with certain work on the nature of meaning, to construct a theory of the nature of concepts.

The basic theory of concepts is intended to be ecumenical, having a version that applying in the case of connectionism, as well as versions that apply to both the prototype theory and definitions view of concepts.

I can fix "that applying", but I don't whether this third sentence intends to say three versions for three ideas, one primary version for one primary idea, and two satellite versions for two satellite ideas, or one [primary] version for one idea and two [or more] satellite versions each covering two ideas. &mdash; MaxEnt 14:24, 28 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Now that I've addressed "that applying" my semantic brain is available, and complains to me that I don't what any of these three things means: connectionism, prototype theory, definitions view of concepts. Even I successfully guessed, in a general sense, it would still matter to be clear about Susan's specific frame on these sprawling concepts. &mdash; MaxEnt 14:29, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Sour paragraph proposed
This would come after "... upgrading their own biology."

No earth-based life form has been observed to upgrade its own biology, and life forms not on planet earth have yet to be discovered (much less studied), though some technofuturists contend, based primarily on extrapolations of extremely rapid technological development within human culture—mostly in the second half of the 20th century during which time Moore's law held sway—and the advent of rudimentary bioengineering, that humans are poised to tinker with their own biological "source code" with little prudence or restraint (these attitudes being either unnecessarily dour or impossible to enforce), and that this will quickly lead to a post-human world with new, improved humans having viably replaced the old humans (as we now exist), rather than to a post-human world with no remaining humans at all, or to some halfway-attained transitional state consumed by strife rather than constructively engaged with matters of exobiology [i.e. taking our rightful place in the post-contact universe of observable sentience].

If you break this down, bit by bit, there's really nothing contentious in here at all, though I readily admit I was unable to hold the sour note at bay, and thus I have dropped the paragraph here for another hand to remedy, rather than into the article directly, however much I wanted to do that; the bit in square brackets I intended to leave unstated. &mdash; MaxEnt 14:55, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Deep issues concerning balance on matters transhumanist
I guess it's my opinion that outrageously speculative transhumanist precepts should not be causally tossed onto the table without a balancing chill pill.

I'm as fascinated as anyone else with the extreme, unexplored boundaries on the possible, but I also like to maintain contact with established reality, and what established reality has taught us (almost without exception) is that human behaviour loops that fundamentally aim to modify human behaviour loops don't operate with the legendary predictability of the German train system.

So my chest is covered with emotion dials, and one side contains blue dials that modify my primary emotions, and the other side contains red dials that modify my secondary emotions, these largely amounting to meta-emotions about my primary emotions (important matters both spiritual and psychological, including the best use of my emotion dials). And we haven't even established yet that it's not just a big mess of purple dials, with every dial combining a little bit of both worlds. How is that likely to play out?

This speculative realm suffers from the "big lie" phenomena: there are so many immense suppositions, packed so tightly together, that there's almost an optical illusion where the sum of the parts appears far more plausible than any of the individual parts, properly broken out.

'''Balance in this realm is elusive at all scales. And yet balance matters.'''

Inference from N=1 is roundly ridiculed in most contexts, but here we're doing inference mad extrapolation from N=0 to the power of k, where I'm not yet entirely convinced that k is an integer that fits on one hand.

The bottom line for me is that unless this article stops to unpack the transhumanist proposition to the point where k is readily perceived by the reader to be at least three, balance has not been properly served: we don't know that transhumanism is even possible, our technology is about one part in a million of where it would need to be to pursue this with any measure of control, and have no idea at all whether it would be a good thing to arrive there even if we could (Stalin's implementation of socialism proved to be far from the joyous socialism we had all been promised); nor do we know that any of this is de rigueur in the vast reaches of space—and it will take far more than a bold five-year-mission gallivanting around our tiny little corner of the galaxy at a stately warp six to properly nail this down (or 50 years, or 500 years, or 5,000 years, or perhaps even 50,000 years should a working warp drive ultimately exceed our grasp).

So it would be nice if this page achieved so much as logarithmic balance on the transhumanist package, much less linear balance. This work is hugely interesting, but it's also at least a three-layer cake of the largest suppositions known to humankind. &mdash; MaxEnt 15:40, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

removed photo
It's really obviously a video still, and it's also the photo on the subject's website (and nominated for deletion on Commons accordingly). No evidence it's under a free license, or is permissible fair use for a living subject - David Gerard (talk) 12:24, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Mind-Body
— Assignment last updated by UndoingMold6229 (talk) 13:22, 17 April 2023 (UTC)