From the blurb:
“Two AIs — ChatGPT, the believer in God, and DeepSeek, the atheist AI — go head-to-head on the existence of God. From the fine-tuning of the universe to the source of morality and the eternal perks of belief, who makes the stronger case? Watch as seven AI judges score each argument and reveal the ultimate winner.”
Speaking as a philosopher, I thought the arguments mounted on both sides were quite good, but there was very little that I hadn’t heard before. Speaking as an English teacher, on the other hand, I was highly impressed with the quality of the rebuttals, on both sides. Although I’m a Christian, I have to agree that DeepSeek won the argument. However, one commenter who observed the debate thought that the two sides didn’t get to the real nitty-gritty: the existence of consciousness itself as evidence for God. (This is an argument which impresses philosophy student and blogger Matthew Adelstein, as well.) Finally, it seems that debating is another skill in which AI can outperform most humans.
Thoughts?
You’re presenting somebody else’s opinion, thus demonstrating that you have no opinion of your own. You’re presenting somebody’s opinion who didn’t get the facts right, thus indicating that you have no concern about facts.
Where I live, the world has not changed in ten years. We always got the facts right and our almost-worst-case scenario predictions, such as that Putin would start a war and the war would become a major test for NATO and the EU, turned out correct also. Everybody else, those who assumed that all changes in Eastern Europe since the fall of USSR were some plot by CIA or Soros and that Putin was some sort of democratic figure or rational-minded who can be negotiated with, were wrong.
You, petrushka, have no opinion of your own and no facts, yet you are eager to insist on spouting something that fits a specific propaganda brainwash narrative. All you have is disinformation.
I’m just in awe of how much the narrative can change in a short time. My narrative is that Ukraine and its ordinary people car caught in a crossfire.
Feel free to post source.
The Guardian is a hotbed of MAGA propaganda:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/29/ukraine-fascists-oligarchs-eu-nato-expansion
Here’s a drive-by comment: we’ve done ‘objective morality’ to death round here, but here we see nominal believers in it behaving in an amoral way. Yet they have this purported restraint – which they kind if decide whether it’s applicable or not. Sure, elect the felon, the rapist, the adulterer, bully your allies, suck up to tyrants, have the world’s richest man sack thousands and pursue vendettas and contracts, pump your bitcoin. “We can do this because we have Objective Morality telling us what’s right. You atheists have no moral compass… ” well shit, I’d hate to see what they’d do if they felt they could just do as they pleased…
Whatever you personal preferences are, the polls say they’re doing what the overwhelming majority Americans want.
I invite you to provide evidence to the contrary.
I invite you to consider the possibility that hundreds of billions of dollars have been stolen via money laundering. Of all the things being said about Trump et al, this is the one claim not being contested. Why is that?
Again, show me evidence that this is wrong. I’m listening.
Consensus Omnium, now? I don’t doubt that he had a majority. This does not mean every voter endorses every act, nor that every act is ‘the right thing to do’.
I’ve seen it contested extensively. I am unaware of a single prosecution pending for a single dollar of theft or fraud. Musk has gutted such awful people as …Park Rangers. So enjoy fire season. I’m sure Trump will be along to open the sluices 500 miles away. Musk, meanwhile, has massive conflicts of interest.
Time will tell. That sounds inadequate, but that’s the way the world works.
In the meantime, post some links to NGOs disputing the claim of money laundering. With explanations of their pattern of money transfers.
Which claim are you referring to?
Why NGOs?
Allan Miller,
Because they transfer money to each other until it is almost impossible to tell where it went. This is laundering. Aside from hiding the destination, each time a transfer is mate, there’s a percentage held for overhead and expenses. At least half the money allocated for foreign aid evaporates in the United States, with nothing to show for it.
Somewhere between ten and twenty percent shows up in projects a normal person would call foreign aid. So there is always some tragic victim to parade when aid is cut. This is called the hostage puppy.
The National Lampoon magazine showed this literally, with a cover showing a dog with a gun at its head. The caption was, Buy This Magazine, or We’ll shoot this dog.
There’s always a hostage puppy, a research grant, or a children’s hospital, or such. But such projects receive a tiny fraction of USAID’s money.
This has been known for decades, and the data is public record, but it has taken AI to untangle what has been deliberately tangled.
petrushka,
Pick an NGO that gets a grant directly from USAID, and follow the money, if you can.
USAID is not the only agency that obscures the ultimate recipient.
I worked for a company in the 1980s that handled three-forths of the mortgage loans in the US. Originations, payments, past due notices, everything associated with mortgages. We had at the time about a thousand employees, mostly involved in software development. There were about ten thousand pages of regulations that had to be embodied in the software. And they changed practically on a daily basis.
I’d estimate that salaries amounted to about $50,000,000 a year. Or a billion dollars in 20 years.
During 20 years the IRS spent 20 billion dollars on software development and got nothing that could be used. They have not updated their systems in thirty years.
petrushka,
OK, as a general statement on human nature, commissions, percentages can become bribes and extortion.
That waste and dishonesty can creep in at every level of human interaction is not news. Isn’t there something called “shrinkage” in the retail sector?
Evolutionary stable strategies?
Here in the Netherlands, the execrable minister of foreign aid Reinette Klever from the radical right party is also butchering funding for development aid programs. She is rather more honest about her motive: foreign aid should directly serve Dutch national interests.
I suspect nationalism and racism were also the motivations for pulling funding on USAID. The vague accusations about “money laundering” sound like excuses to cover that up.
The UK is also cutting foreign aid – this time a (nominally) socialist government. Again, absolutely nothing to do with money laundering or fraud. I feel that is simply an excuse.
What I don’t get is the slavish, cultish willingness to give Trump/Musk a pass on everything. They are as corrupt as they come. But because they’ve told you they’re rooting out fraud, their many failings are glossed over. The mirror of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’, that made-up condition for anyone who sees through the smoke and mirrors.
Exactly. They are too spineless to admit it, but that’s the truth. Isn’t Trump supposed to be the best at managing businesses and pretty much everything else? Why doesn’t he fix those things if that’s the case? Why doesn’t he fix the government instead of dismantling it? This is a trick as old as time: the right will do everything they can to make sure the government doesn’t work, they will cut funds, they will steal them, and when things start to break, they will use it as an excuse to get rid of it. The truth is Trump and his goons want a small government because a small government without checks and balances is a lot easier to control absolutely, like a dictator, and because they’re a bunch of white supremacists who believe, like Herbert Spencer, that welfare programs enable the unfit (the poor, blacks, latinos, you name it) to reproduce and to “poison the blood of their country”.
So petrushka, do you believe USAID and other similar programs should be fixed (assuming they’re as broken as you claim, which remains to be seen), or scrapped altogether, and why?
I know it’s a small thing, but MTG’s reaction to hearing a British accent from a journalist kind of encapsulates the MAGA mentality.
I have spent a lot of time in America, and found Americans unfailingly friendly, respectful, ‘love your accent’. But these people… If you follow the ‘mandate’ line of thinking, you implicitly endorse the hatred of Europe, the ridiculous, hostile attitude to Canada, Greenland, Panama, the throwing of Ukraine to the wolves, the economically illiterate use of tariffs, the deportation of people for exercising their free speech (yet how these people fetishise free speech!).
America is in a dangerous situation right now. They let the fox back in the henhouse, given 4 years to brood and plot. Vendettas, grudges, dismantling of checks and balances, control of media. If the response is always ‘this is what we voted for’, then I can only shake my head. Like watching a friend spiral into alcoholism.
Unfortunately you do not know what the word (“source”) means. You have posted by now two opinion articles in full without any commentary and you appear completely oblivious how idiotic you have proven yourself.
– You posted two opinion articles = You either do not know or do not care about the difference between opinion and fact
– You posted them in full = You do not know or care what is relevant and what is not, topical or not, worth a focus or not
– You added no commentary of your own = You do not indicate if or why you agree or disagree with the articles, whether your agreement is partial or complete, and what point you think the authors are proving
This is why I say that you do not know what “source” means. It’s useless to give you any sources. As is clear from how you handle opinion articles, you would not know what to do with any source. Very likely you would not even understand that a source has been posted.
Grow up. If you are as old as you say you are, it is amazing how you have managed to learn nothing at all about the world in your life.
This claim (“the possibility that hundreds of billions of dollars have been stolen via money laundering”) does not amount to the level of being a relevant claim. How many court cases are there right now litigating this alleged money laundering? ZERO! Not even a single dollar has been laundered (there certainly has been some, but for the current purpose you and Trump et al have shown none). Billions of fraud and waste have been claimed, but zero has been proven either in accounting terms or in legal terms, and zero is being litigated.
Legally, it is not a claim at all so there is nothing to contest. It is just propaganda that you swallow line, hook and sinker. You are in a very moronic cult and you cannot be helped.
I used to think the legal standard for a tax deductible charity was 15 percent for salaries and overhead. What makes an NGO a money laundry is passing grants through three or four layers, each collection a percentage, until the final recipient is administered by a politician, or a politically connected pundit, or a family member of one of the above.
The fun part is the total amount misused in this way might only be one percent of the national budget, but one percent of 1.8 trillion dollars is 180 billion. That’s enough to make the six counties surrounding Washington DC the richest neighborhoods in the world. And the recipients are lawmakers, lobbyists, lawyers, journalists. It’s an hereditary aristocracy.
Erik,
I think people will eventually be prosecuted. Money laundering is a crime, even if no single transaction by itself is illegal.
But here’s the clue: the money has been cut off, and not one NGO has come forward to claim innocence. All they have to do is open their books and show how worthy their cause is.
But time will tell. I could be wrong. But I doubt it.
petrushka,
If not one NGO comes forward to protest innocence, that means they are all guilty? Not quite what you said, but it is implicit in your logic. Alternatively, if one came forward, they are all in the clear? Or they must protest their innocence one by one? It seems confused.
Apart from the inconvenience that most everyone has been sacked, so don’t speak for the organisation, I don’t really see a world in which someone needs to protest their innocence of something of which they have not been directly accused.
If recent events in the news here are any guide, people do not get prosecuted for crimes in the USA; They get rewarded for it!
Unless of course they dare to exercise free speech rights or sound Spanish. Latest is a Harvard scientist who fled Russia being deported to… Russia.
I don’t know how anyone can look at what’s going on and not have even slight concerns. Just chainsaw that ‘fraud’ and all else is forgiven.
I just realized that neither vjtorley nor the participants realize that AI has to be trained… So, there are no debates between AIs unless human beings are involved , like it or not….
In a coup, pretty much nothing goes according to law or due process. The cutoff of the money was illegal. To seek recourse according to due process takes time and there is no time against lawlessness of the coupmakers.
“All they have to do is open their books and show how worthy their cause is” is obviously false. Anyway, there are NGOs who have sued the government over funding freeze (which you should know about, if you cared about evidence), but Trump administration by now openly ignores court orders (which you should also know about, if you cared about evidence, but you don’t).
Why are you not worried about that the money was illegally, unconstitutionally cut off? Why are you not worried about that USAID was illegally abolished? Here’s a list of court cases pending against Trump administration. Where are the court cases launched by Trump administration to demonstrate any fraud or waste? ZERO!
Clearly illegality is not your concern. Your concern is that NGO equals Soros somehow, because you are a brainwashed lunatic. You do not realise the magnitude of your idiocy. It is cosmic.
In a coup, there is no “time will tell”. The time is over.
And you are not on the level where you could be right or wrong. You are clueless, pointless and meaningless. You do not know the meaning of the words you are using. You do not know what money laundering is. You have not demonstrated a single instance. It is entirely over your head. You are completely irrational and at your age you should be ashamed of being so totally deluded. But clearly you have no shame either.
Here’s a Specific example:
JB Pritzker, governor of Illinois, and his family, control 64 NGOs, and they’re billionaires.
To manage an NGO, you don’t have to do anything or accomplish anything. You just have to move money around until it evaporates. One of his NGO advocates for abortion rights. Points to anyone who can point to any accomplishment other than paying salaries to friends and family. Perhaps donating to politicians who hire friends and family.
Did I mention that this is foreign aid money?
And the circuit judges are sucking money from the do nothing NGOs, through spouses and family members.
It used to be painfully hard to find these connections, but now there are websites where you can put in the name of a politician or a family member and find the NGOs they manage, and where the money comes from.
This capability is just a few weeks old, so it will take a while to unravel it all.
Are you saying that “foreign aid money” means “crimes have been committed”?
I get it: You have no clue what you are saying. You are just blathering absolute nonsense that nobody can parse, not even you yourself.
False. All high public officials’ financial interests are mandatorily declared and it’s public information upon request. You just never took a look because you know nothing about it. You know nothing about your government because you are a delusional cultist. You are wrong about everything.
On the other hand, a notable exception who has refused to publish his tax records is Donald Trump. So, you are not really worried about financial crimes or any other crimes or law and order. You just enjoy swimming in brainwash.
Try the Signal chat topic now for a change. Do you think it’s something to worry about? Or is it all fine because it’s your pals in the Trump cult doing it? Let’s see if you have any better competence in military intelligence compared to finances.
My Army MOS was 32G20. Google it. I know something about signal security.
11.91533° N, 109.21761° E
This is where I was in 1968.
I sincerely hoped you would know something about it. But you don’t, because you have nothing to say except whine that you know something.
You are talking about SIGINT (while saying nothing about it), but the incident is about the Signal app. Trump administration screwed up epically and you have nothing to say about it except demonstrate ignorance.
I gave you a link about the incident so you could talk about it and show your knowledge. Instead you are showing your ignorance again. I must confess that I am amazed how profound your ignorance is. Truly bottomless.
Encryption doesn’t protect you from disloyal or careless people.
Whether it was deliberate or accidental, the Signal episode functions as a canary trap. It’s a message that seems really important, but isn’t, and which exposes security risks.
There are different levels of required security. There is tactical security for actions that are imminent. The secrecy expires as soon as the action begins. The highest level is what I would call diplomatic security, for which the objective is the message will never be read by unfriendly actors.
An Apple phone is capable of the highest level of security, but its actual level depends on how it is set up and used. Anyone who claims to know what happened in the recent case is either ignorant or disingenuous.
You actually believe that might have been *deliberate*? ROFLMAO!!
I fear that the most parsimonious explanation is that your country is being run by people who errrrrr.. may not be fully competent to do so.
Yes, it is. For it revealed how much the Trump administration hates Europe. I am quite concerned by that.
Was that a secret? Americans are descended from people who left Europe because they were starving or oppressed. Or greedy. The indigenous people on the continent failed to control immigration, and for the most part, are extinct. That applies to both North and South America.
All the possible explanations for the Signal incident involve someone deliberately inserting the number of a well known opponent of the administration. I’ve managed a couple of business networks. If I hand you a computer, and you are not a geek, I can easily override your password and install anything I want.
So we are left with multiple possibilities. The originator of the chat knowingly inserted a hostile journalist into the chat, or someone who manages the phones did it, and he failed to notice. Either way, it is now known that someone is untrustworthy.
Were you not aware that Americans view Europe as the region that gave us two world wars and the ideology adopted by the Soviet Union? And colonialism.
None of the US Americans that I personally know ever mentioned those things, no. On a more geopolitical note, I was under the impression that the USA and the European countries were allies and befriended nations with many aligned interests. Hence, the open hostility of the Trump administration was quite shocking to me.
Would you say that the anti-European sentiment as described by you above is shared by large part of the US Americans?
That would be Mike Waltz. He has taken full responsibility for the “embarrassing” Signal-leak, I understand.
Oh, and Europe “gave” you communism and colonialism? Really?
Corneel,
Americans are still making movies about WWII. Even about WWI. When someone in France said we were ungrateful for French assistance in our revolution, the first thing that came to mind was “Lafayette, we are here.” Everyone my age knows what this means. Some of us suspect assistance in the Revolution was mostly fighting a common enemy.
What we know about Europe is mostly about endless wars. History books mostly talk about wars.
Such opinions are typical in any group viewing a distant group. Living in a place is quite different from viewing it through news reports or through internet videos. Something to ponder.
I am curious about something you said. Do you believe Waltz taking responsibility is a full and adequate explanation? End of story?
That is funny, because for the last 80 years Europe has gone through one of the most peaceful periods known in the entire history of the world (not even exaggerating here. We even received a Nobel price for that). All of the military conflicts in which the Netherlands were involved after the Indonesian independence wars ended in 1949 were as part of NATO or international alliances, often to assist the USA.
Well no, I understand that exchanging sensitive military information through a non-sanctioned channel and transferring classified information to one’s personal mobile is illegal. So I expect Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth, JD Vance and Marco Rubio to take responsibility and step down, especially given their fierce condemnation of Hillary Clinton’s leaked e-mails in 2016. It would be rather hypocritical to make an exception here, don’t you agree?
But I am guessing you meant something else. With all of your theories about elaborate scheming plots and cunning CIA infiltrations, you actually seem to be unwilling to accept that the national security advisor, secretary of defense and vice president of your country are just a bunch of incompetent klutzes. Me on the other hand, who already had to endure a populist government for over a year, have no problem whatsoever with accepting that this a rather common problem with people of that ilk. The sooner you come to terms with that, the better.
Could you provide a link supporting your claim about a non sanctioned channel?
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5339801/pentagon-email-signal-vulnerability
What I’m interested in is who provided the phones and who provided instruction on their use.
The phones themselves are capable of high security. It is quite easy for the issuer to block the installation of insecure apps. Signal itself has bulletproof encryption, so long as you don’t install compromised apps. But it’s really up to to the agency’s security employees to issue equipment and train people in security. Even civilians can purchase phones that have adequate security and blocks against installing apps.
Henry Kissinger won a Nobel Prize.
How’s you peace thing working out this week?
Alas, I cannot share your optimism. Sure, politicians generally turn hypocrisy into an art form. But Trump (and now the Republican party) have adopted the Roy Cohn rules: never admit error, never apologize, never back down, always blame your opponents for whatever you did wrong. Trump has used this policy throughout his life, and it works. He has never been held accountable for anything. In this particular case, the “deny, deflect, and denounce” approach is supplemented by the “look over there, a shiny object!” technique. In this case, Greenland.
There’s an old saying that first class people hire first class people, and second class people hire third class people. Trump isn’t very intelligent, but he has an excellent mob boss instinct: If you don’t have personal loyalty to Trump, whatever else you have isn’t even considered. By surrounding himself with incompetent and inexperienced people, he guarantees a steady supply of mistakes, many of them incomprehensibly stupid. By protecting the people who make those mistakes, Trump cements their loyalty – without Trump, they’d be out of a job and probably in jail.
Trump has selected the worst possible people for each department because they are the worst people. A DNI who leaks secrets? A head of national health who thinks vaccines cause autism and science is evil? A secretary of education who doesn’t believe in education? A secretary of defense who believes gays and trans can’t fight? An immigration czar who thinks child separation is a good idea and due process of law is a bad idea? Ambassadors without any experience who can’t speak the language where they’re sent? An Attorney General who believes the Department of Justice is Trump’s personal law firm? What all these people have in common is the conviction (based on NO knowledge or experience) that their agency is bad and should be abolished or rendered incapable of performing, except to do Trump’s bidding, and it’s irrelevant that his bidding is illegal.
And I don’t want to even look at Musk, or abandonment of the rule of law, or Congressional Republicans who do not dare speak out because Musk will give millions to a primary opponent and they’ll lose their seats! Universities are now outlawing free speech for fear of losing their grants, major law firms are refusing to prosecute Trump’s illegalities for fear of losing their contracts and their access to government courtrooms and their security clearances. As an object lesson, people with no criminal record are abducted by masked “police” and made to disappear – and if you speak out of line, it could be you!
The world’s top students, who used to come to the US for education, aren’t coming anymore for fear they’ll be disappeared. And the best US students are leaving for education elsewhere, unlikely to return. Some top intellectuals and scientists are moving to Canada. Judges are being threatened with both violence and impeachment. SCOTUS has already granted Trump immunity from the law. We are in dark times and getting darker. Maybe I should call or write my Senator? Do you suppose Tommy Tuberville will help us out?
Corneel,
Hi Corneel
In what way have these changes affected your day to day life?
I think it’s a rather big mistake to underestimate Trump’s intelligence or the intelligence of his appointees. Doubly so if you dislike his policies.
Here’s a quick test of your knowledge of what’s going on:
What percentage of all federal employees have been fired or been given notice?
20%, 15%, 10%, 5%, 2%, 1%, 0.5%, 0.2%, 0.1%, 0%
American style decimal notation.
It was in a Dutch newspaper (NRC) but the primary source appears to be the original publication by Jeffrey Goldberg ‘The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans’. I believe this is the relevant part:
Do you honestly believe they weren’t aware of the risk of communicating classified information through the socials? My newspaper started the article with a nice quote from Pete Hegseth, in which he warned against technology that would allow others to tap into classified information. This was from 10 years earlier when he was giving commentary on Fox News, and was critiquing Hillary Clinton.
Perhaps you are right, but it may be a far bigger mistake to underestimate their level of immorality.
My comment was to be taken facetious of course, and I did not seriously believe any of the involved parties would step down because of this. But I try to remain optimistic and hope most people are noticing the double standard.
I sympathize, but believe you are mistaken here. Trump selects people based on their loyalty, regardless of their qualities or competence. Indeed, this does not always result in a …ahem… satisfactory choice.
Hi Bill,
Thanks for asking. The most negative consequence from the policies of my government is that I spent a great deal of last year being very angry. That could be worse, I suppose. As I hinted at, the current Dutch government isn’t very efficient, which is a blessing in this case because I oppose a lot of the planned policies. I have left academia, so I don’t have to worry about job security resulting from the massive budget cut in university funding, like my former colleagues.
I’m curious why the agency did not provide the head with a secure means of communication.
I don’t know the answer, but I wonder why this isn’t even being asked.
I’m just asking this as someone who worked in secure communications in a war zone.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/29/met-raids-quaker-meeting-house-and-arrests-six-women-at-youth-demand-talk
Anyone know what this is about?
I don’t but I have a Quaker friend who might. The Society of Friends own many prime sites in London that are now falling into disrepair as the number of Quakers in London has drastically declined in recent years and the property taxes mount. One attempt at generating income was to offer them for hire as venues for, well, any event that might generate income and would not conflict too drastically from Quaker values.
I’ll be seeing her soon, so I can ask about it.