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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #ring
Then sometime there in late March, after the Indian violets had come, we would be gathering on the mountain and the wind, raw and mean, would change for just a second. It would touch your face as soft as a feather. It had an earth smell. You knew springtime was on the way. The next day, or the next (you would commence to hold your face out for the feel), the soft touch would come again. It would last a little longer and be sweeter and smell stronger. ↗
You love Robert, not me. You don’t love Lord Stuffy, so I tried to be like Robert.” The sweet idiot! She felt like weeping again. She began to protest, but he cut her off. “I don’t drink and I don’t gamble and I don’t have a mistress. I’m dull. You told me so, the first time we met. So I tried to change.” He frowned. “Not the mistress. I’ll never do that.” “Good,” she whispered. “I’m trying to be like Robert, but I’m no good at it. I drank wine. And brandy, lots of it. I didn’t like it and it made me sick. I played hazard and I lost.” He looked momentarily cheerful and her heart sank. “But I didn’t like that either. If I was a real man like Mr. Fox, or Robert, I’d have lost thousands.” The sadder he looked, the more her heart ached, a happy ache. “I failed you, Caro. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll always be Lord Stuffy,” he said, and closed his tortured, bloodshot eyes. ↗
But the Turing test cuts both ways. You can't tell if a machine has gotten smarter or if you've just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a degree that the machine seems smart. If you can have a conversation with a simulated person presented by an AI program, can you tell how far you've let your sense of personhood degrade in order to make the illusion work for you? People degrade themselves in order to make machines seem smart all the time. Before the crash, bankers believed in supposedly intelligent algorithms that could calculate credit risks before making bad loans. We ask teachers to teach to standardized tests so a student will look good to an algorithm. We have repeatedly demonstrated our species' bottomless ability to lower our standards to make information technology look good. Every instance of intelligence in a machine is ambiguous. The same ambiguity that motivated dubious academic AI projects in the past has been repackaged as mass culture today. Did that search engine really know what you want, or are you playing along, lowering your standards to make it seem clever? While it's to be expected that the human perspective will be changed by encounters with profound new technologies, the exercise of treating machine intelligence as real requires people to reduce their mooring to reality. ↗
#artificial-intelligence #computers #personhood #technology #turing
The first question we must address deals with optimism, the possibility of achieving our goal. Are we in a position where we can actually hope to effect change? Assuming we become convinced that there are reasons for optimism, we move to the next question. Are we cetain that we want change? The stories about EHMs, jackals, and suffering around the globe strike raw nerves, but now we demand absolute proof that our grievances justify the efforts change will demand. Third: Is there a unifying principle that will validate our efforts? We look to ascertain that we are not merely seeking to impose our moral, religious, or philosophical values on others but instead are intent on creating something of true and lasting universal benefit. And finally: What can we each do? You and I personally need to evaluate our talents and passions. What are our individual options and desires? How do they fit into the bigger picture? ↗
you cannot be friends either with boy or man unless you give yourself away in the process, and Mr. Pembroke did not commend this. He, for “personal intercourse,” substituted the safer “personal influence,” and gave his junior hints on the setting of kindly traps, in which the boy does give himself away and reveals his shy delicate thoughts, while the master, intact, commends or corrects them. Originally Rickie had meant to help boys in the anxieties that they undergo when changing into men: at Cambridge he had numbered this among life’s duties. But here is a subject in which we must inevitably speak as one human being to another, not as one who has authority or the shadow of authority, and for this reason the elder school-master could suggest nothing but a few formulae. Formulae, like kindly traps, were not in Rickie’s line, so he abandoned these subjects altogether and confined himself to working hard at what was easy. ↗
You are all soldiers of Christ," he said, "and now is an opportunity given to you to show that you are worthy soldiers. When the troops of a worldly monarch go into battle they do so with head erect, with proud and resolute bearing, with flashing eye, and with high courage, determined to bear aloft his banner and to crown it with victory, even though it cost them their lives. Such is the mien that soldiers of Christ should bear in the mortal strife now raging round us. Let them show the same fearlessness of death, the same high courage, the same unlimited confidence in their Leader. What matter if they die in His service? He has told them what their work should be. He has bidden them visit the sick and comfort the sorrowing. What if there be danger in the work? Did He shrink from the Cross which was to end His work of love, and is it for His followers to do so? 'Though you go down into the pit,' He has said, 'I am there also'; and with His companionship one must be craven indeed to tremble. This is a noble opportunity for holding high the banner of Christ. There is work to be done for all, and as the work is done, men should see by the calm courage, the cheerfulness, and the patience of those that do it, that they know that they are doing His work, and that they are content to leave the issue, whatever it be, in His hands. ↗
#courage #faith #soldiering #war #courage
Together we learned why God has given us His name as "I AM" (Exodus 3:14). His grace always proved itself sufficient in the moment of need, but never before the necessary time, and rarely afterwards. As I anticipated suffering in my imagination and thought of what these cruel soldiers would do next, I quivered with fear. I broke out in a cold sweat of horror. As I heard them drive into our village, day or night, my mouth would go dry: my heart would miss a beat. Fear gripped me in an awful vice. But when the moment came for action, He gave me a quiet, cool exterior that He used to give others courage too: He filled me with a peace and an assurance about what to say or do that amazed me and often defeated the immediate tactics of the enemy. ↗
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many - yours not least. ↗
It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in 'em," said Captain Jim. "When I ponder on them seeds I don't find it nowise hard to believe that we've got souls that'll live in other worlds. You couldn't hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone colour and scent, if you hadn't seen the miracle, could you? ↗
