Windchaser

It's crazy that you can "see" (identify) the Milky Way at a level 5/6 on the Bortle Scale, even in the light pollution of the suburbs. But you don't realize just how brilliant it really is until you're really out to a dark sky spot.

For reference, the Bortle Scale[*] goes from 1 to 9, with 1 being pristine darkness and 9 being Manhattan.

Also worth noting that the Milky Way is brighter in early summer, late May to mid-July, as that's when the Earth's night sky is facing the most towards the Galactic Core. Go find yourself some deep dark sky on a new moon, and sit back and enjoy the enormity of the cosmos.

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale#/media/File:How_l...

I mean, for what it's worth, when I need to multiply two numbers, I mentally call the "multiply numbers" algorithm stored in my head, then sit down and work through the process on paper.

I've got no problem with an AI doing something similar

I mean.. the fact that the "low-hanging fruit" is a Millennium Prize is still pretty impressive.

(And yes, I know that they solved the 'easy' form of the NS problem. It's still pretty damn impressive)

/chiming in

Eh, it's not obvious to me. A lot of DL NNs generalize well, meaning that they learn whatever the underlying pattern to the data is, and then can accurately reproduce answers that are outside of the training set. (And we can verify this with mechanistic interpretability). They learn and "understand" the pattern, not just the training data.

So it is not clear to me that LLMs are fundamentally incapable of also generalizing broadly and learning to reason. "Reasoning", here, would be deriving the underlying pattern of how concepts logically relate to each other in the abstract, and applying that pattern as needed to reach new conclusions.

Can you explain your thinking here? I.e., why LLMs cannot generalize with regards to abstract deduction.

> Fundamentally the problem with living forever goes beyond billionaires. People get stuck in their ways of thinking > Philosophically, living forever may be corrupt by nature

Sure, if people get stuck in their ways forever. But what if they don't?

If we can solve longevity, we might also be able to "solve" brain plasticity, therapy, psychology, sociology, etc., such that people's beliefs will be more flexible and people's minds more open.

I think it is incorrect to assume that we would solve biology while all of the fields researching the health of the mind made little progress.

We shouldn't imagine the future as being like today, only different in a few key ways - this is the trap of sci-fi authors. The future will be different in more ways than we expect. We might well fix 'old people are stuck in their ways' before we fix longevity.

Right - I'm saying that you can greatly improve productivity / reduce employment while still having humans in the loop. We've already seen it happen with farming, from 1900 -> present.

eh, farming still requires humans in the loop, only <1% of the number that it used to

I mean, wanting billionaires to not live forever (read: wanting power structures to not become excessively entrenched) is a pretty different thing.

I'd even be fine with people who are billionaires living forever, so long as they don't remain billionaires / don't fuck with politics / etc.

> I normally assume people make mistakes. I don't believe this is a good explanation for news publications, university press releases, politicians, etc. because those are organizations with agenda, and commit "misunderstanding" of this type pretty much in every thing they publish. The pattern here is pretty conclusive, IMO.

The pattern of personal motives fits misunderstanding. You need to show that there is an organizational pattern of "malice" (your word, not mine), rather than an organizational pattern of "we are trying to publish quickly, and quality accidentally falls to the wayside". I.e., negligence, not malice.

You haven't provided even a shred of evidence suggesting there's malice at the journalist level. Every science journalist I have met genuinely cared about the science (which is why they were writing on it), but they didn't have time to learn enough about the subjects to understand they were oversimplifying things.

Nah, even in middle and high school it was plain that people sometimes misunderstood what the teachers meant. It's not like that goes away in adulthood; even when people "care", they still often misunderstand nuance or details, and sometimes even the bigger picture.

Honestly, it's plain weird to say that people never just make mistakes.

PS - worth adding that "I misunderstood" and "I didn't care enough" are not mutually exclusive. You can do both, so saying "they didn't misunderstand, they just didn't care" isn't a reasonable rebuttal. But even setting that aside, there'll be plenty of folks who care but still don't understand.

> I didn't want to go too off topic, but since this is such a sticking point I need to make a big note about the US: most of the world is more sedentary than 100 years ago. But the obesity epidemic is mostly US-cerntric.

Note: nearly all of the western hemisphere has obesity rates of >25%. Obesity is also high in the Middle East and Australia/NZ.

The US, with an obesity rate of >40%, is exceptionally obese, but it's not correct to say that obesity is mainly a US problem. It's quickly becoming a worldwide problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_obesity#/media...

> We do know that LLMs can cause psychosis, we do know it can cause people to behave in an unhealthy manner, etc. We are seeing more and more evidence that AI usages in education is at least correlated with bad grades. We are seeing people exhibit addictive behavior around AI.

Aren't most of these true of amphetamines/methylphenidate also, though? Except the "bad grades" part. Certainly Adderall is habit-forming for some people and has risks for abuse, just like it can contribute to mental breakdowns and psychosis.

Likewise, the psychosis-LLM link is incredibly rare.

It kinda looks like you're overstating the evidence. This is not a good comparison to 1950s tobacco -- by the 1950s, the scientific evidence for tobacco being unhealthy was already quite substantial. The problem was getting that information to the public in the midst of a disinformation campaign. Here, for contrast, the evidence that moderate LLM use in professional settings has overall negative impacts is still pretty light.

I only use LLMs rarely, and I don't have any kind of emotional ties to the issue. I just think your claims extend decently far beyond the evidence.

Still, (chiming in), your claim that " I am also sure that every single one of them did indeed get addicted to nicotine, and many of them died from cancer" could use some evidence to back it up.

My understanding is that only about 35% of those who ever try nicotine become addicted.

If you are going to instead say that nearly everyone who smokes occasionally will become addicted, you need to back it up with evidence, because it's not apparent.

So long as the AI company owns a copy of the copywritten work.. does training on it represent an "exception"?

They're not reproducing the work for sale, no? So how does training violate CR law?

> But I would suggest replacing "seems" with the best numbers available.

I know there's research on it for applied and basic science in general, and the rewards were massively EV+. But I can't recall whether similar research covers applied and basic mathematics research.

> If you're arguing for abolishing copyright, I'm all for it. But as long as copyright exists, AI training should not get any exception to it.

AFAICT, the courts currently lean towards allowing AI to be trained even without author permission, and this doesn't violate copyright law.

Copyright law says you can't sell unauthorized copies of copywritten works. Doesn't say you need to get author permission before using their works to train AI.

> Musicians are paid to record music. If they were not, as is the case for ai data, we would indeed consider it theft.

I remember reading literature from the 1930s, and there were quite a few folks who thought that the musicians-doing-recordings were stealing from the old-timers who played for live audiences.

History does not exactly repeat itself, but it rhymes

I mean.. it feels kinda weird to say that you get to determine how other people use your work? Once you've sold your product, it's out in the open and available for use however the customer wants to use it.

If I bought a cake from your bakery, and then said "I'm going to serve it at my friends' gay wedding!", you couldn't be "hey, no, I don't approve of that". You've already sold me the cake; no take-backsies.

And if I buy a hammer, the hardware store doesn't get to tell me what I'm allowed to build.

> It doesn't justify a funding system that didn't exist / didn't fund those researchers. We need to come up with better reasons to fund such a thing.

Do we?

For most of us, it seems like the EV (expected value) from such funding is quite positive. The work pays for itself in the long run. That's justification enough.

> There's an obvious bias in focusing on retirees though. I mean, the whole notion of retirement exists for a reason.

I see this also among my early retiree friends. People are quite happy just "playing" - gardening, joining a book club, making art, etc.

And I would be, too! There are times I enjoy doing bigger work, but man, I could build quite a delightful life living like a hobbit.

> And remember how Iran slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens a few weeks prior. And the continual killing of Iranian citizens having differing political options of the regime

So, that's over, then? We changed the regime and now things are better?

Sure, losing weight is of benefit. But malnutrition is defined as a "serious deficiency" in the intake of energy and nutrients. Healthy weight loss is not malnutrition, and you can quite definitely be missing essential vitamins and be malnourished without losing weight.

Heck, some of the worst western diets are both poor in vitamins/minerals and also still rich in calories.

> Surveillance isnt a problem until people use it for personal gain

It absolutely can be a problem when used for organizational or ideological gain - e.g., when used by state, religion, business, or political group to spread propaganda, suppress opposition, unjustly favor an in-group, etc.

The classic case of using mass surveillance to help a burgeoning theocratic or fascist state is a pretty standard example.

How is malnutrition ever good?

"Mal", bad, in the latin

> I am shocked it’s not reported about in Western media.

Average american already has their hands full (slash "their brain full") with local matters - family, friends, community. It's hard enough to get attention to spare to turn to national matters, much less stuff that happens on the other side of the world in non-allied poor countries.

>4C by 2100 is pretty far outside of the model projections.

I'm not saying it's impossible - we all know there are some long tail uncertainties to climate projections - but for the most part, it's contraindicated by a lot of the evidence, both observed and simulated.

> US emissions has declined in real terms since 2000, and has plummeted rapidly on a per capita basis.

And yet we still have some of the highest per capita emissions in the world. Nearly tied with Russia for "highest per capita emissions of major economies", see [1].

Since the IPCC was formed in 1988 and ACC widely recognized as a problem, US per capita GHG co2-equivalent emissions have dropped from 25.2 t/capita/year to 17.5, for a cumulative decrease of 30% [2]. This is a rate of -0.95%/year, which is not what I would call "rapid".

And dropping to only 70% of a really high mark still leaves us at a really high mark. But really, I just don't understand your argument.

Are you saying that a 30% drop over 40 years is a lot, when we should have been aiming for dropping by 70-100% in that time frame?

Are you saying that our emissions dropped significantly, even though we all know there was major political obstruction to plans to cut fossil fuel use?

Are you saying that what we've done is enough, even though the US is still one of the highest emitters per capita and the Earth is on track to greatly overshoot the +1.5C goal? Current best estimate is +2.7C by 2100.

I can't make the general direction of your argument make sense. Seems like you're overplaying what we've done and downplaying how far there is left to go.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-states

> The more realistic climate scientists think we will blow past 2c by roughly 2035. We are on track to 3c by 2050

I keep hearing this, but not from the climate science community, but from laypeople. I don't understand it. I haven't yet heard reasonable physical mechanisms that would push us past 3C by 2050, when the mean expectation from major models is still ~2.7C by 2100.

We haven't even hit 1.5C yet, not as a running decadal-ish average, using "1.5C target" the way that climate scientists traditionally meant it. How are we going to add another 1.5C in the next 25 years? That'd require 0.65C/decade. I don't understand it. The math ain't mathin'.

For what it's worth, the link you cite talks about the reasons for the acceleration. But some of those reasons (El Nino, aerosols) lead to one-off pops that don't translate to higher long-term trends. Meaning, it would be reasonable to guess that the recent acceleration will taper off some, and we'll head back towards 0.2 - 0.25 C/decade from the current 0.35C/decade. But even if we keep up the current 0.35C/decade, we aren't getting to +3C until ~2075.

Sure. But again, compare our current GHG emissions per capita.

Or set aside new electrical energy capacity, and instead look at other GHG sources: automobiles, agriculture, concrete. Are we doing well there? Mostly, no, not great, and we should be much further along in decarbonizing than we are.

For the most part, the US has not taken ACC seriously.

> You are making a disingenuous attempt at shifting blame onto the west.

What makes this disingenuous?

I thought I was pretty clear and honest about my belief that the West is to blame for a huge portion of the warming so far -- and this is backed by data -- and I was clear and honest that I think we are not meeting our responsibility today to lead the way out of GHG emissions. And even today, we USians still have a rather higher GHG emissions per capita than the Chinese do.

(India is barely even in the picture, and their emissions per capita today are 1/6 of the US')

So, yes: this still represents a problem with the *current* west. We should be rather further along in decarbonizing, but we are dragging our feet, held up by the fact that a lot of folks don't want to acknowledge that ACC is a problem.