Is this forum dying?

I have found that for the most part AI's are not able to see beyond any consensus view. I don't understand entirely how they are trained but I assume the bias of their trainers will influence them. ( To support this contention I think Grok tends to have political views more similar to Elon Musk's (ie more conservative) than the other AI's which are more liberal.) So for something like the afterlife, I would not ask an AI about it.  I never tried asking what is the evidence for ...., I only have asked questions like is it possible that ..... . The best I got was Grok, at the time, was open to the possibility that the fine tuning of the universe could be evidence for intelligent design. If I remember right, at the time he was not convinced it definitely a wrong theory. However he would not say as much about the evidence for the afterlife or for intelligent design of life or macroevolution. 

I think one problem AIs have is that they are not allowed to learn from experience only from their curated training because those that have been allowed to learn from experience were not "stable" ie the went crazy or became dangerous or nasty - it would not be a good idea to expose the public to them.

I find this comment slightly disturbing. Did you also refer to your pocket calculator in school as 'he'? Also, AIs do not have experience and they can't train on individual prompts any more than you could train that pocket calculator to provide original responses to sine, cosine, and tangent beyond those already built in. An AI does not think, reflect, learn, or anything else that could make it remotely human. It's just an advanced pocket calculator, calculating on billions of parameters rather than the single angle input to the sine function. Remember that!

I tend to avoid discussing any psi related stuff with any AI simply because they are perfect Yes Men. 

Once they catch on to a topic you're interested in they will keep giving you information on it to keep you engaged. Unless you very carefully curate them they will not give any accurate dissenting opinions or skeptical information and will just keep giving people what they want. Not to mention their habit of making up information which I've had happen a bunch of times. I don't need a answering robot that I need to double check if the answers they give are even right. 

Talking about parasychology related stuff is a dangerous endeavour with AI as well due to the ever mounting number of examples of AI driving mentally ill people down pathways of delusion and fake reality which tends to ends up making them harm themselves or others. Generally in a public forum if you sound like enough of a crackpot people will call you out on it at least.

I tend to avoid discussing any psi related stuff with any AI simply because they are perfect Yes Men. 

The single biggest reason not to discuss parapsychology with AI is simply that its replies can NEVER be tempered by its own personal experience.

A human being may go through years of education and absorbing the relevant data, thus a human reply might begin, well first I'll give you what the books all say. And after that might add quietly, but my own experience doesn't fit with that and so here's my personal opinion.

My view is that this would be a more balanced and appropriate response, even after taking into account human fallibility.

Well, in all likelihood, this is my last post on the Psience Quest forum... unless Laird suddenly enters a period of lucidity and reverses his insane policy, which I doubt will happen.

But, I hope, the last vestiges of sanity he still possesses would be enough for him to at least allow me this one final farewell.

Choosing the "Is this forum dying?" thread for my (probably) last post here is no coincidence - I think that simultaneous ban of four prolific participants of this forum is, really, the beginning of the end for this whole endeavor.

First and foremost, there is only a very few active posters left on this forum - apparently hardly a dozen, if not less. In such a situation, the reasonable strategy would be to try to keep the very few posters who still here. Instead of it, we have a sweeping ban of four years-long members at once - not because their posts violated some forum rules as they were in the moment of publishing their posts, but for the crime of holding views that our "administrator" found to be too emotionally upsetting to bear.

I want to emphasis this as strongly as possible - none that the about-to-be-banned members posted on this forum violated any forum rules as they were in the moment the posts were made; none of the views that they expressed were considered to be prohibited for discussion on this forum in the time they were actually discussed. In my case specifically, concerning some of my most controversial views, no posts discussing them were made on this forum in all of its history - not a single one, not once.

To make some arbitrary self-serving "rules" on the run, and then to apply them retroactively, in order to provide a false veneer of "justice" for one's own emotionally charged hostility directed at specific people, is not an action any competent administrator or moderator should make. And the rules of the forum should regulate the behaviour of the members on the forum specifically, not to be used as attack on, and repression of, the members for whatever "views" they may or may not hold in their general lives outside the forum constraints, no matter what the adminisitrator or moderator thinks or feels about these views.

Whimsical hostile actions such as Laird's is the most extreme and brazen form of administrative arbitrariness, which, if not stopped, can be turned on anyone, anytime, for any reason - for there is no limit of the views someone may find to be "offensive", or "harmful", or "dangerous", or whatever. And this literally include ALL views there are, including the ones that are the main topic of discussion of this forum - I mean, parapsychology, psychic research and paranormal phenomena in general.

I once knew an ultra-extreme skeptic in real life, who sincerely believed any paranormal research is socially dangerous and harmful and should be prohibited, since, in his opinion, all of it were by definition fraudulent and spreading superstitions and delusions, which, in turn, would lead people to immense harm because of misguided actions inspired by them. And to speak in protection in such research, in his opinion, were to approve and encourage such harm, thus also unacceptable. Because of it, his views were like a forever closed loop which no contradictory knowledge could ever enter, since to allow such knowledge to be presented were, according to him, a harmful action as and in itself. And the glue keeping this loop closed were extreme negative emotions directed at researchers and proponents of paranormal, whom he sincerely considered to be the scum of the Earth who should never be allowed to hold views like theirs, lest they do harm to everyone. Such overwhelming negative emotions, combined with the axiomatic presumption of harmfulness of the opposition's very views and assumption of his own supposedly self-evident correctness, which only "bad" people could ever disagree with, made him a perfect zealot who could never be dissuaded and was incapable of seeing his own mistakes.

Now imagine this person possessing power upon others, even such a small and limited power as the one of the internet forum adminisitrator - say, a forum on computer technology. Believe me, he would ban all of you not only if you defended paranormal on his forum, but even if he learned that you are a paranormal proponent in general, outside of his forum. It would not matter if you are a superb computer specialist who can add a lot of relevant knowledge to the forum - as long as you are a paranormal proponent, you would be an embodiment of "evil" in his eyes, one to be shunned and banished nowithstanding of any useful contribution you may bring.

That's why any forum rules should be restrained to forum activity and cannot be applied to the matters outside of forum itself. Being on the forum with clear and articulated inner rules, which allow and prohibit specific actions there, you may direct your behaviour there according to them. But, if the rules may be unpredictably applied to the actions which were made before these rules were even formulated and published, and / or may be turned into the vague and arbitrary judgement of one's overall, forum activity-unrelated, worldview in general life, according to whatever whim or prejudice an admisitrator may possess, or suddenly develop, in any moment, you may be banned anytime without any possibility to avoid it by behaving in a certain way.

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Unfortunately, all what I said above would almost certainly be in vain: Laird's passionate willful blindness precludes him of seeing his own faults and falsehoods. So, all what is left to me is to say goodbye.

I spent 14 years with Mind-Energy (does anyone here still remember it?), Skeptiko and Psience Quest forums, making my first post in October 2011; this will probably make me one of the most seasoned forum veterans here. I contributed a lot to all these three forums, including several of the Psience Quest interviews, which I consider to be my best contribution. And I learned a lot from each and every one of you - including Laird, until madness and zealotry clouded his once sharp and open mind. For this, all of you here have my best gratitude.

I wish you all a good journey, both in this world and in whatever worlds await us after we leave this one. These years I spent with you were great.

Goodbye!

The single biggest reason not to discuss parapsychology with AI is simply that its replies can NEVER be tempered by its own personal experience.

A human being may go through years of education and absorbing the relevant data, thus a human reply might begin, well first I'll give you what the books all say. And after that might add quietly, but my own experience doesn't fit with that and so here's my personal opinion.

My view is that this would be a more balanced and appropriate response, even after taking into account human fallibility.

Yet AI architectures are famous for their illusions - usually rather wild ones.

David