qt0x40490FDB

@qt0x40490FDB@lemmy.ml

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Human-level AI is not inevitable. We have the power to change course⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sorry, but this reads to me like “I am certain I am right, so evidence that implies I’m wrong must be wrong.” And while sometimes that really is the right approach to take, more often than not you really should update the confidence in your hypothesis rather than discarding contradictory data.

  But, there must be SOMETHING which is a good measure of the ability to reason, yes? If reasoning is an actual thing that actually exists, then it must be detectable, and there must be a way to detect it. What benchmark do you purpose?

  You don’t have to seriously answer, but I hope you see where I’m coming from. I assume you’ve read Searle, and I cannot express to you the contempt in which I hold him. I think, if we are to be scientists and not philosophers (and good philosophers should be scientists too) we have to look to the external world to test our theories.

  For me, what goes on inside does matter, but what goes on inside everyone everywhere is just math, and I haven’t formed an opinion about what math is really most efficient at instantiating reasoning, or thinking, or whatever you want to talk about.

  To be honest, the other day I was convinced it was actually derivatives and integrals, and, because of this, that analog computers would make much better AIs than digital computers. (But Hava Siegelmann book is expensive, and, while I had briefly lifted my book buying moratorium, I think I have to impose it again).

  Hell, maybe Penrose is right and we need quantum effects (I really really really doubt it, but, to the extent that it is possible for me, I try to keep an open mind).

  🤷‍♂️

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Human-level AI is not inevitable. We have the power to change course⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Gary Marcus is certainly good. It’s not as if I think say, LeCun, or any of the many people who think that LLMs aren’t the way, are morons. I don’t think anyone thinks all the problems are currently solved. And I think long time lines are still plausible, but, I think dismissing short time line out of hand is thoughtless.

  My main gripe is how certain people are about things they know virtually nothing about. And how slap dashed their reasoning is. It seems to me most people’s reasoning goes something like “there is no little man in the box, it’s just math, and math can’t think.” Of course, they say it with a lot fancier words, like “it’s just gradient decent” as if human brains couldn’t have gradient decent baked in anywhere.

  But, out of interest what is your take on the Stochastic Parrot? I find the arguments deeply implausible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Human-level AI is not inevitable. We have the power to change course⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  So, how would you define AGI, and what sorts of tasks require reasoning? I would have thought earning the gold medal on the IMO would have been a reasoning task, but I’m happy to learn why I’m wrong.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Human-level AI is not inevitable. We have the power to change course⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t see why AGI must be conscious, and the fact that you even bring it up makes me think you haven’t thought to hard about any of this.

  When you say “novel answers” what is it you mean? The questions on the IMO have never been asked to any human before the Math Olympiad, and almost all humans cannot answer those quesion.

  Why does answering those questions not count as novel? What is a question whose answer you would count as novel, and which you yourself could answer? Presuming that you count yourself as intelligent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Human-level AI is not inevitable. We have the power to change course⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  How do you know we’re not remotely close to AGI? Do you have any expertise in the issue? And, expertise is not “I can download Python libraries and use them” it is “I can explain the mathematics behind what is going on, and understand the technical and theoretical challenges”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Human-level AI is not inevitable. We have the power to change course⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In the US, sure, but there have been class revolts in other nations. I’m not saying they lead to good outcomes, but king Louis XVI was rich. And being rich did not save him. There was a capitalist class in China during the cultural revolution. They didn’t make it through. If it means we won’t go extinct, why can we have a revolution to prevent extinction?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, Geodetic interferometers already exist and can measure very small deviations. Give them arms the length of the observable universe and they will increase in accuracy, not decrease in accuracy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If you constructed a circle with the radius of the universe, then measured its circumference and radius measurement accuracy would easily be able to tell the difference between a real circle and a mathematical circle. That is because neither the circumference of the circle will nor the diameter of the circle will be moving through empty space. They will be near enough to matter to measure detectable deflections.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  From your measurement of pi, we can deduce that you live in an anti-de Sitter space, so all the string theorists will now be sending you emails to test out their theories.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Overly snarky response: Uhhhm. Have you been asleep since, what, 1915 or something? We have extraordinary evidence, and everyone has accepted it, in so far as I know.

  Less snarky response: the path on which light moves is the universes instantiation of a straight line. It is “the (locally) shortest path between two points”, the same definition you learned in geometry class. Yet in our universe, two straight lines can intersect each other twice. This is because our universe has at least some local curvature, meaning it is non locally non Euclidean. In order to have a mathematically perfect circle you would need to live in a universe without any matter or energy, and with certain other properties.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The universe is non-Euclidean, so no circle made in the actual geometry of the universe actually has the ratio of pi between its circumference and diameter.

  Is that the part you are confused about, or did I write something else badly?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do people calculate pi to the hundredth+ decimal place?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  One thing to be aware of is the if you actually made a circle and measured its radius and circumference you wouldn’t get pi. Not because your measurements would be off, but because the universe does not follow the assumptions mathematicians used to define pi—namely Euclidean geometry. Pi is mathematical, not physical. If a the real circles and real diameters don’t give you pi that is a problem for the universe, not a problem for mathematics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Palantir accuses British doctors of choosing ‘ideology over patient interest’ in NHS data row⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, yes. Only my company can possibly do this task, and your decision not to trust my company to perform this task means you won’t have anybody at all do it ever. 🙄

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Got my first script kiddy⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And the first time I used nmap on my college network, a professor called up the help desk to report that he had been port scanned.

  Then my freind at the help desk told me not to run nmap again and to wait until after dark to pull all the reel to reel tapes out of the dumpster….

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pope Betting Odds: Bettors Lose Millions Predicting the New Pope as Polymarket Edge Fizzles Out⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this is a fundamentally different way of thinking that we have. The way to win at betting is to have a better distribution than the other guy. You don’t need to have high confidence about any particular outcome, you just need to recognize when the distribution of odds differ from the true odds. Strong favorites in a low information environment indicate a chance to make good money. Sure, any given low information environment, like a papal conclave, may occur infrequently, and you could lose money on any one event, as is the nature of betting, but if you can recognize when the market is likely to be wrong you can extract money from it. Really, that is the only way to extract money from it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pope Betting Odds: Bettors Lose Millions Predicting the New Pope as Polymarket Edge Fizzles Out⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In situations like this it may make sense to just bet on all the underdogs. The market is highly overconfident in its information, you think the markets information is crap, so you just bet against the market by taking the underdogs.