This is why our societies struggle to rise up the the challenge of the times. Because they refuse to accept that the order upon which they rest always has the potential for fascism. That fascism is not a foreign perversion, but a reflection

The contrary idea, that all humans are human, is actually not Western at all; it was not forged in the salons of the Enlightenment, but by the muddied bloodied hands of those colonised and enslaved by the West as they clawed their way out of the pit they were put in by sole reason of their “race”

Fascism will not come from far away waving a swastika flag. It will be your neighbour. The guy you can “drink a beer with” because he “tells it like it is”. Because the dirty secret of the West is that “how it is” is that for centuries, if it is West, then it is best -and the West mind you, is white

But the Nazis were never “they” in Germany. Franco was not “they” in Spain; Mussolini was not “they” in Italy. They were all “us”; homegrown. The product of the darkest corners of Western civilisation, not its deformation or betrayal

It can’t be “them” again. They have to be the “right”, or “far right” even. No not nazis, not fascists. Because they are in our body politic. They are “people with legitimate concerns” about immigration and history. *We* can’t have possibly devolved into *them*. That’s “not how it works”

Searle's argument applies for LLM for two main reasons. First, humans can still detect when they receive an answer from an LLM compared to a human failing the Turing Test. Second, humans don't need large data sets to understand how to properly use a word - LLM's do!

Simulating the correct usage of Chinese characters needn't involve understanding the meaning of those Chinese characters. (Read the article link for the full details to Searle's argument). The Turing Test misses a key part of intelligence: what creates understanding? 3/

Not being able to distinguish between the actions of a computer program with an intelligent life form is called the Turing Test. John Searle used the Chinese Room thought experiment to undermine the validity of the Turing Test. 2/

However, Machiavelli’s view suggests that manufacturing dissent or conflict does not create an active polity. A polity remains passive in such cases. Managing conflict, in this framework, means transforming it productively into something conducive to the republic’s flourishing.