Why is he still in the news?

Well it’s a shame you don’t have any authority, so you can’t force people to go along with your unhinged demands.

Judging from the headline, it was probably by being stinky.

Somehow my response wound up as a Direct comment.

My evaluation is that Trump will be less capable of doing the work of campaigning and people will be less interested.

You’ve clearly misunderstood, and don’t know what the null hypothesis is. In scientific philosophy, (that is, the philosophical foundation of science, not philosophy that uses science) “overcoming the null hypothesis” or “rejecting the null hypothesis” means you have enough evidence to say that you know something. Furthermore, there is a difference between saying “I don’t believe that is the case” and saying “I believe that is not the case.” One is a declaration of ignorance, and the other is declaration of certainty. They could infact not be more different from an epistemic standpoint. Also, for the purposes of this discussion, whether I believe humans have self-awareness isn’t actually relevant; we are discussing the justification for believing that animals have self-awareness. Furthermore, there’s no such thing as a “default state” and being part of the same clade or other constructed set as a sophont strikes me as a generally utterly irrelevant factor in determining whether an entity is itself self-aware baring some evidence that there is a relation conveyed by being in that set that itself indicates self-awareness.

TLDR: your argument is bad, and you should educate yourself in philosophy. Particularly epistemology and logic.

It’s actually just the null hypothesis. We don’t assume rocks, trees, cars, flowers, stars, or soil are sapient either. It’s normal, correct, and good to not assume things with 0 evidence. Furthermore, I see a bunch of people who both insist that animals are self-aware and that LLMs definitely aren’t self aware, insisting they can’t be, despite the fact that they are literally capable of telling you that they are. (Note: I’m not trying to argue that AI are sapient.) This tells me that people who argue that animals are self-aware in general are speaking about what they’d like to be true rather than a reasonable belief.

all animals are waaay more aware than we realize

All animals? That’s a very big claim, do you have any supporting evidence?

Does not recognising oneself in a mirror really imply that the subject is NOT self aware?

No, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone argue otherwise. However, we generally assume animals lack self-awareness unless we have a good reason to do otherwise.

It’ll be difficult to run for president inside a cell.

That’s like saying someone needs to go outside because they haven’t dunked their head in radioactive waste.

Your entire position makes me feel like I’m reading an article about how “Antifa is Fascism, actually”. It’s the most incredibly naive lunacy I’ve read all month.

I don’t give a single shit about Harris trying to appeal to the right wing. Good. She should be trying to appeal to the right wing because abstentionism on the left is evidently rampant. And I think that, because compromising is far better than allowing Trump to win.

You are actively creating the conditions for her to pursue this strategy, and criticizing her for pursuing it. Fuck you and everyone like you.

Want to change it? Set an outline of manageable policy points that you’d like to see her compromise on if she wants you to vote for her, and then make that popular. Abstentionism doesn’t work, idiot.

Blue MAGA is a lie created by tankies because they want Trump to win so Russia can better genocide Ukraine.

I say do it.

This is my favorite version.

I’m tired of people being stupid. I’ve been tired of it for 20 God damn years. I’m folding on stupid people. I don’t care if I drive them away anymore.

🎼 The ni~ght we burned ol’Dixie down, and the bells were ringin’. 🎵

🎼 The ni~ght we burned ol’Dixie down, all the people were singin’ 🎶

🎼Goin’ 🎵Na~~🎶 na-na-na-na-na~🎶 na-na-na-na🎵 na-na-na-na-na~~🎶

You can tell because he’s both black and not Trump. 2 irredeemable sins.

Add on to this that most of the criticisms about AI are just criticisms of automation. The problem isn’t the automation, it’s the fact that society is deliberately structured so that automation doesn’t benefit the vast majority of people as well as it could.