#ai

Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought experiment, based on a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a woman hide, and a judge is asked to determine which is which by relying only on the texts of notes passed back and forth. Turing replaced the woman with a computer. Can the judge tell which is the man? If not, is the computer conscious? Intelligent? Does it deserve equal rights? It's impossible for us to know what role the torture Turing was enduring at the time played in his formulation of the test. But it is undeniable that one of the key figures in the defeat of fascism was destroyed, by our side, after the war, because he was gay. No wonder his imagination pondered the rights of strange creatures. ↗

— Jaron Lanier

#artificial-intelligence #computers #gay #homosexuality #singularity

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#admit #amidst #away #cannot #censorship

The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#cannot #civilization #dramatic #emotional #fact

I sometimes wonder whether the act of surrender is not one of the greatest of all - the highest. It is one of the [most] difficult of all... You see it's so immensely complicated. It needs real humility and at the same time, an absolute belief in one's own essential freedom. It is an act of faith. At the last moments, like all great acts, it is pure risk. This is true for me as a human being and as a writer. Dear Heaven, how hard it is to let go - to step into the blue. And yet one's creative life depends on it and one desires to do nothing else. ↗

— Katherine Mansfield

#faith #freedom #humility #risk #surrender

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#conception #dead #experience #experiences #gain

There's a certain possessiveness of writers sometimes. ↗

— William Devane

#sometimes #writers

At the moment, my mother is the only one left in Glasgow, although it's certainly my home. ↗

— Bill Forsyth

#certainly #glasgow #home #left #moment

The man in gray decided to take the Glen Suite of diamonds at midnight. Provided they were still in the apartment safe and the occupants away. This he needed to know. So he watched and he waited. At half past seven he was rewarded. ↗

— Frederick Forsyth

#away #decided #diamonds #glen #gray

To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious. There are far worse things awaiting man than death. ↗

— Garrett Fort

#dead #death #die #far #glorious

I do not inveigh against higher education, I simply maintain that the sort of education the colored people of the South stand most in need of, is elementary and industrial. They should be instructed for the work to be done. ↗

— Timothy Thomas Fortune

#colored #done #education #elementary #higher