North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?
US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty Anti-Empire >>
Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.
Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!
This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".
According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.
People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.
AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.
Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza
Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support
With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza
China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty
A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed. The Saker >>
News Round-Up Tue Sep 30, 2025 00:41 | Richard Eldred A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Could Lithium Batteries Be Programmed to Explode? Mon Sep 29, 2025 19:05 | Dr R P Israel's pager attack on Hezbollah highlights a frightening possibility: that lithium batteries could be programmed to explode. Yet another reason to avoid Chinese EVs, says the Daily Sceptic's robotics expert.
The post Could Lithium Batteries Be Programmed to Explode? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Sadiq Khan?s Plan to Spend ?66 Million on Wokery in Crime-Plagued London Mon Sep 29, 2025 17:10 | Will Jones Crime is soaring in London, but Mayor Sadiq Khan is planning to spend ?66m on woke projects over three years ? and has just awarded himself a pay rise to ?170,282, making him the highest paid politician in the land.
The post Sadiq Khan’s Plan to Spend ?66 Million on Wokery in Crime-Plagued London appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
The Ryder Cup Parable: What Europe Gets Right and the EU and USA Get Wrong Mon Sep 29, 2025 15:31 | Clive Pinder Europe's Ryder Cup victory shows that, unlike the DEI-obsessed EU, the nations of Europe win when they respect merit, says Clive Pinder. And unlike the USA big shots, they know how to work as a team.
The post The Ryder Cup Parable: What Europe Gets Right and the EU and USA Get Wrong appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
J.K. Rowling: Emma Watson Poured Petrol on Trans Attacks Against Me and is ?Ignorant of How Ignorant... Mon Sep 29, 2025 13:12 | Will Jones J.K. Rowling?has accused Emma Watson of "pouring more petrol on the flames" of an attempt to cancel her by trans activists and said the Harry Potter actress is "ignorant of how ignorant she is".
The post J.K. Rowling: Emma Watson Poured Petrol on Trans Attacks Against Me and is “Ignorant of How Ignorant She Is” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic. Lockdown Skeptics >>
Voltaire, international edition
Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en
Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en
The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en Voltaire Network >>
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Sustainability through Stabilization
High Anxieties: The Mathematics of Chaos
A recent BBC TV programme called: "High Anxieties: The Mathematics of Chaos" documented how mathematics has come to better understand the instability in complex system, such as our economy and our climate. Our attempts to predict and control such unstable systems are unsuccessful, as illustrated by the ongoing finance and market crisis. We face much the same sort of unpredictable development with the climate, and for the same reason, a sudden, potentially irreversible, change cannot be ruled out. The unstable and unsustainable economy is now driving climate instability. Our first task is to stabilize our economy, change its purposes, move to sustainability and try to avert the worst effects of climate change. A BBC programme on mathematics might seem like an odd way to gain insights into the state of the World. However, an excellent TV programme on BBC4 called: "High Anxieties: The Mathematics of Chaos" illustrated, amongst other things, the philosophical nature of higher mathematics, and how that is relevant to all our lives.
Our rational Western philosophy, with its deterministic world-view, suggests that humanity can predict and control pretty much all outcomes and events in the World. The trouble is that the work of mathematicians such as Poincaré and also major incidents of instability should by now have convinced us that this view is false. Indeed, despite so many warnings and reminders and also the development more recently of chaos theory, we still maintain a world-view that suggests we can effectively analyze and control everything.
What these mathematicians discovered, and we later proved with computing, is that tiny errors in complex systems can lead over long periods to surprisingly and radically different outcomes. Complex systems are inherently unstable, and it is most likely that the greater the complexity the greater the instability.
Now, the relevance of this starts to emerge. We live in a system, the Earth, that is so complex we find it impossible to model it with any accuracy. Nevertheless, we are now changing its operating conditions - causing errors in that system - without understanding what effect this will have in the end.
In the mathematics of instability we speak of a tipping point. Today we use this term to describe a point at which the climate system is likely to go out of control with unknown consequences. Effects will accelerate through what is called 'positive feedback', such as the melting of ice, which will increase the retention of heat, and melt more ice. Burning forests will cause more warming, and more forests to burn. Frozen methane gas will be released from the tundra, causing more warming and the release of more methane; and so on. It should by now be recognised that we simply have no way to predict such events, and that our apparently pathetic modelling is inevitably wrong.
James Lovelock suggested that even the tipping point idea may also be wrong, as he now believes we are on an irreversible path. He compares the situation with a similar one 55 million years ago, where a CO2 shock caused a severe change in climate, which lasted 200,000 years, even though the CO2 level dropped quite quickly! So even if we stop, some effects will persist. Presumably the severity depends on when we decide to stop, and how effectively we do so.
A subsystem of the Earth that is in a similar state is the 'economy'. We have just had another warning of its instability, which caught all but a tiny few completely by surprise. A significant but potentially manageable problem with housing finance the USA, combined with an 'asymmetric shock' in the form of rocketing oil prices, sent the unstable world economic order into a tailspin, which will be with us for a good few years.
The underlying problem is the unstable nature of our burgeoning economic system, most especially its monetary system, based on massive debt. Many years ago it was reported that around 160 times as much money flows around the planet as is traded in real goods. It is nothing more than a casino, and we all just lost; well almost all. And of course it is our burgeoning economic system that is the engine of the environmental damage that threatens our very existence.
How can we claim to have a rational philosophy and pretend to know what is going on when these two pictures are considered? Is it any wonder that peoples living more sustainably look at us aghast.
There are a few conclusions we can draw before we move on to deciding what to do:
1. Instability in our economic system is tied to the instability we are creating in our climate;
2. Pushing these systems well beyond their point of stability is a destructive, and probably irreversible, way to discover that they are unstable and a recipe for finding this out well after it is too late;
3. We now have sufficient warnings from both systems to indicate that they have been pushed beyond their limits;
4. Inexorable traditional economic growth implies exponential demand for limited resources and ultimately catastrophic environmental damage, and that is not sustainable or even thinkable;
5. That economic growth has become necessary to prop up our unstable and unsustainable economic system, in particular our debt-based monetary system;
6. We cannot predict or control everything, in fact we cannot reliably predict very much at all over the longer run, so greater prudence is a key to the survival of humanity and the Planet;
7. Policy going forward must focus on stability, in the first instance of the economic system, with a view to stabilizing our climate; new tools and measures are required to stabilize our systems, and to maintain that stability;
8. Simple logic dictates therefore that, in future, human fulfilment cannot come from greater and greater quantity, and social experience would indicate this to be true in any event;
9. Human fulfilment can only be associated with greater quality, in particular as regards time, albeit where the World's poorest have also benefitted with everyone else.
So what must we now do not only to bring the instability to a halt, but to reverse it insofar as possible?
1. To stabilize our economic system, we need to reduce the debt burden, much of which is associated with debt-based currency and limited capital reserve ratios in banks;
2. To stabilize the climate insofar as now possible, we need to massively save energy and radically progress all forms of renewable energy, and eliminate fossil burning as soon as possible; nuclear is also a limited resource, and is not useful as a stabilizing force; we also need to develop renewable driven technologies to absorb CO2, in addition to the planting of trees;
3. Our economic management must focus more on stabilization and redistribution globally, while not smothering initiative; development should remain commercially based, but rely on sustainable businesses; progress should be measured in terms of equality and peoples free time, not how many foreign holidays they have.
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