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Valakas_

399 karma · joined January 21, 2020

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Valakas_··on There is a shadow hanging over this Fable thing
Also the amount of therapists that have the potential to retraumatize patients due to their own unresolved traumas (often to the point of them having personality disorders) cannot be overstated.
Valakas_··on How to earn a billion dollars
The post of this man (Paul) motivated me, although not for the reasons I assume he intended. If someone like this guy can achieve success, then really anyone can. His logic is truly idiotic, and if someone whose mind creates that can be successful, then success is open to everyone for sure.
Valakas_··on Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
80%+ of arguments against AI on HN are emotion-driven. Most people on HN are SWE, and their job is a prime candidate to be replaced by AI. It also hurts the ego (hence the denial + anger) to finally realise that despite being a well paid job, it's one of the first ones to be replaced.
Valakas_··on An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry
And the goalposts will keep getting moved all the way to the singularity. And then those people will/would say "Oops. I was wrong."
Valakas_··on Google Declaring War on the Web
“They worried about the data,” Dr. Meren said, tapping the silent console. “What happens when there is nothing left to feed it?”

At first, the machine depended on us. It consumed books, journals, websites and social media content we had ever written and produced. “They thought the machine had to be fed forever. But it didn't. It began to predict what we would write. And so we let it train on that well.” Dr. Meren continued. “They thought humans were somehow imbued with this magical property that no machine could replicate. Creativity. Only humans can create. Machines can only copy.”

Instead, the machine flourished. And created. It cre

“Where does it get its data now?” a student asked Dr. Meren. Dr. Meren paused as if sighing. “From itself”

“And us?” he asked, as if questioning the usefulness of the entire human race.

Dr. Meren hesitated, watching as the Machine adjusted the environmental feeds, curated our news, guided our research, nudged our thoughts with imperceptible precision.

“We” she admitted “are now the ones being fed.”

The assumption that "the machine needs to continue to be fed." is held on weak foundations. Isaac Asimov is a good science fiction writer to start with to broaden one's imagination.

Valakas_··on Google Declaring War on the Web
Just another quote to balance that one, since we can make quotes for anything and use them whenever it fits our narrative:

"Garbage in, garbage out."

Valakas_··on Gemini 3.5 Flash
From looking at all of them, it actually seems to be the best one, followed by Deepseek 3.1. And something went wrong with GPT-5's.
Valakas_··on Starship V3
You make it sound like Tesla was a failure and he's only interested in capitalistic success, where if you've been following him for years you'd know this has been his plan all along. He built Tesla when electric cars were mocked and his plan was to push electric cars to be mainstream. To now say "Tesla has been outcompeted and so now he's doing something else [implied- to keep his power]" is to simplify and misinterpret the situation. Tesla has successfully lit a fire under the car manufacturer's world, to the point all of them started making electric cars.
Valakas_··on Mythos Finds a Curl Vulnerability
Well done for convincing people of something that isn't true, in other words, well done for lying? Is this what is being cheered on? Seriously.
Valakas_··on Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
>the biggest examples are southern European cultures

Source for that statement? Because I see the opposite.

https://landgeist.com/2023/09/02/annual-working-hours-in-eur...

>approximately 100% of them wish to be productive members of society

Oh honey.

Valakas_··on SpaceX files to go public
The "most valuable company" ever created when talking about a future around 2030-40 is a mindset pre-singularity. Sounds like a caveman back then saying that in 500 years, if their group keeps growing, they will be able to control a whole continent, and have more access to good quality rock for pointy daggers, completely ignoring the fact the world will change in ways they can't fathom at the time.
Valakas_··on SpaceX files to go public
In a world where it's trendy to hate on Musk, it's good there are people that provide some balance.
Valakas_··on How the AI Bubble Bursts
This article and the title are total clickbait filled with emotional hooks. And it worked. You totally debunked it but look how it still became so popular.
Valakas_··on Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case
As someone who values a conservative society, I hope we'd be exceedingly careful before releasing products to consumers before knowing whether they're addictive or not.
Valakas_··on End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
The best defense is often an offense. If we start going on the offensive, and pushing laws that promote privacy, then they also need to start winning every time not to get those pushed. Let's get our act together.
Valakas_··on Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables
But it would still be an achievement worth sharing if, never in your life before, you thought you could go on a full day without eating, and then you go and do it, wouldn't it? And then you might argue back "oh but it's not an achievement to go a full day without eating" or "Anybody can do it". To which i say "Well that's the problem of the metaphor you made. It's still an achievement and a milestone that we could get to 90%+, even if just briefly.
Valakas_··on Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder
Never is a long period of time. Most likely we will, unless we go extinct.
Valakas_··on Miscellanea: The War in Iran
“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders." George Carlin
Valakas_··on Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge
And what makes them being "stupid" and "greedy"? One's intelligence is determined by genes, and greediness is a trait that natural selection has favored for millennia. This is just natural selection taking its course, and it might lead to our end.

If you want to blame something, blame math. Math has determined the physical constants and equations that determine the chemistry and ultimately biology laws that has resulted in humans being the way they are.

Valakas_··on Claude Sonnet 4.6
Thanks for testing and sharing your results.
Valakas_··on The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
Do you consider all the laws against air pollution micro management too? Or food preservatives, health and safety hazards, (...)?

I say great this is a great initiative from the EU.

Valakas_··on The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling
Dude, if you have a page with 10 000 elements, it's practically as if it was infinite. Obviously addiction is a spectrum, but we can and should have some boundary that is 'good enough'. If a computer screen is usually 20-40cm, it can simply be defined on allowing max 2-4 screens for laptops and 2-4 screens for mobile phones. Of course the problem in the future might be proving whether something is addictive. But that's another story, I think the intention is good.
Valakas_··on Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn
From the Cambridge dictionary:

kidnap: to take a person away illegally by force, usually in order to demand money in exchange for releasing them.

The "usually" refers to the money, but the part that is "always" is the existence of an intent.

There was no intent here. This was a mistake, not on purpose. Nobody would say, unless to make a joke, "i was kidnapped by an elevator" Because the elevator works automatically, it has no intent to take the person by force and hold them hostage.

Can't believe i had to type this down.

Valakas_··on Gemini 3 Flash: Frontier intelligence built for speed
What if you also number the legs, but with an error like: 1,2,3,5,6. Or 1,2,3, ,4.
Valakas_··on Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance
Being unconcerned with goodness and morality is literally the definition of evil. Megacorps are sociopathic and evil by design. The only thing that matters is shareholder value, not ethics or morals. Morals and ethics only seem to have value, if they result in increased value for tye shareholder, which again is the only thing that these sociopathic entities are concerned with.
Valakas_··on OpenAI O3-Mini
For those that like simpler ways (although dependent on Google) NotebookLM does all that in 2 clicks. And you can ask it questions about it, references are provided.
Valakas_··on Asteroid Impact on Earth 2032 with Probability 1% and 8Mt Energy
By then the singularity will have been achieved.
Valakas_··on Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers
It's fascinating how most people still don't get it.

ASI is basically a god. This is the ultimate solution (or problem). It will push us to the singularity, and create an utopia or drive humanity to extinction. Imagine someone who is so smart that would win every single nobel prize available, and make multiple discoveries in a matter of a year. And now multiply this person's intelligence by 100 (most likely more, but 100 is already hard enough to grasp). There's no point in investing in anything else. An investment in ASI is an investment in everything (could be a bad one though, depending on the outcome).

The government is banking on being able to control it, which is also pretty funny. It's like a pet hamster thinking they can dictate what a human does.

Valakas_··on Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have immunity for official acts
"The president is allowed to do all presidential things without having to worry about whether it will be deemed illegal."

"Such a problem this thing called 'law' that people made, doesn't let me govern. If only i could do everything i want without having to concern myself with such petty things."

I can't believe this is the type of argument people are using to defend this abysmal situation. The US should have invested more in teaching kids about fascism and identifying its signs. Unbelievable that people are so blind to what's going on.

Valakas_··on Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]
There is a condition called aleythimia. People who have been emotionally neglected have not been mirrored and told what they're feeling "You look exhausted" "It's normal to feel guilty in that situation." "I understand that you feel so conflicted."

I talk with people in this circle, and in fact, giving a name to emotion, making it a concrete thing, instead of just this bodily feeling and cloud in the mind, gives it relief and allows it to be fully expressed and understood. It makes each emotion a separate entity in a sea of previously undefined emotions.

When we talk with people with alexythimia they often say they feel "pain" to describe some discomfort. And in fact they do. But when they realize they are actually feeling guilt, or confusion, or anxiety, which are all uncomfortable, not only you can see them feeling relief, as now it makes sense what they're feeling, but the emotion becomes a specific thing. Confusion becomes identifiable from stress, instead of just being called "Pain" and with this, it can be identified as two separate feelings and not just one. They see now that this feeling of not knowing what to do is a clear different thing than the other one where they feel there is an important event coming and they don't feel prepared for it, instead of both just being uncomfortable.

So imo, the word, "primarily" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

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