Windchaser

> The biggest lie we're being told in the west is that we have a hand in climate change.

If you look at total historic emissions to date, the US is responsible for 25% of all of them, and the EU is close behind at 22%. China is at 13%. And if you look at historic emissions per person, then each American has produced ~8x as much as the average Chinese person.

https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2

Yes, the west has played the dominant role in GHG emissions. I don't blame China for now, quite recently, increasing their GHG emissions as they try to get to standards of living we've had for many decades. As we led the way into the industrial revolution and high GHG emissions, we should also lead the way back out. And yet US emissions per capita are still about 50% higher than Chinese!

And when the Earth was 3C cooler, NYC was nearly under an ice sheet.

The current estimate is that we're heading for +3C warmer, which is gonna have some big impacts.

I can still read it; it’s just been downvoted afaict.

But it does seem like a bad comparison if what the other commenter said is true. I mean, here we’re talking about a lot of legitimate research being cut for absurd reasons.

Well, we'd still expect CO2.

(Do the SO2 and NO2 get scrubbed? And - what else?)

Edit: read the wikipedia link someone gave below. Yes, SO2 and NO2 and particulates are scrubbed. Older incinerators released a fair amount of dioxins, but this is reportedly improved in newer models.

> The problem is that the statutory fines need to be setup so that they are actually a deterrent rather than a cost of doing business

Out of curiosity, how high are the fines now?

> Why 100%? Because they should be effectively put out of business if they get to their third offense. California has the third strike rule for people and crime, let's make it the same for corporations; they're people after all.

If you've already lost 75% of your all-time revenue, you're probably already out of business. Heck, a loss of 25% of all revenue ever is enough to knock most businesses out.

It'd be interesting to consider the unintended effects of such a law. Making sure you regularly pay out any spare cash as dividends to the owners seems likely, as it reduces the risk (meaning, if they get fined, they've already taken out of the business all that they can).

> California has the third strike rule for people and crime, let's make it the same for corporations; they're people after all.

A big practical difference is that corporations have limited liability. Because of limited liability, such laws are going to hit very differently than sending people to jail, because the owners can avoid much much more of the personal risk than an equivalent person could under Three Strikes.

> I dont understand how this one comes up thay often. It just sounds like the most useless thing ever. These literally make me suspect I am only one who cooks here while others kind of imagine what it might be like or something.

I cook all the time. I usually use my ipad for new recipes online, but it's a bit old and slow and I don't like having to scroll, and I wish there were better ways to record notes on the recipes.

> Like you are going to another store for milk and to yet another for butter?

I'll go to another store for milk and butter next time, if it's cheaper.

> Are you already doing that with phone and need to take it out is what prevents it?

No, I want another app to already to the price comparisons for me.

But yeah, this is probably the weakest of the ideas. I'm not writing a doctoral dissertation here; I'm just running with some things I'd want to try out. It's off the cuff.

> What is _your_ default assumption re: use case? I honestly can't think of any use cases (outside of very niche a11y uses) that are not in some way offensive, though perhaps not 'perverted'.

Hmm, here's a few that could potentially be implemented in augmented glasses, though I have no idea if they're implemented yet:

- Giving me directions via an overlay when I'm walking around without requiring me to pull out my phone

- overlay of a recipe when I'm cooking something new

- pointing out constellations in the night sky

- reminding me of people's names and/or upcoming plans with them

- price comparisons in grocery stores; the glasses read the prices and tell you how they compare to prices in other nearby stores

- (at the gym) correcting someone's form on weightlifting, with visual overlays

- taking pictures in general

- easy recording of ICE or police

> You're not allowed to sell illegal drugs on the street? ... Or that police should look the other way bc it's too heavy handed to just detain the few dozen ppl that do this until they stop.

I don't think you need to arrest someone because they're selling an untaxed legal substance, no. (And: weed should be legal, if we're talking about a place where it's not).

You can manage this situation better by getting their info and issuing a ticket. On its face, it doesn't warrant an escalation of force, the extra paperwork, or choking up the jails -- all of which represent very real costs to us, the taxpayers.

> This wasn't a thing 10 years ago and we weren't in a police state

Buddy, I have some news for you about the history of the US. Ten years ago, which country/countries had the highest incarceration rate in the world?

Man outlines how hardened criminals take down Flock cameras, detailing it step-by-step:

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1v78ihu/...

> How many indignities do you stomach for what exactly?

People selling handbags neither threatens my dignity nor makes me indignant.

When I think of "terrorize", I think of things like.. y'know, people strapped with explosives, blowing up buses full of civilians. Or something like the Rape of Nanking, where Japanese army killed and raped their way across the city. The Japanese terrorized the city, literally instilling a nightmarish-level of fear.

I can't place "they're terrorizing me by selling handbags" anywhere in the same universe. If you're genuinely frightened by this, I would like to gently suggest you talk this through with a therapist.

> "filth and crime"

checks, it's "people selling untaxed marijuana"

Yeahhhh, we have radically different ideas about what constitutes "they're terrorizing my city".

Casual use of heavy-handed law enforcement makes things much, much worse, not better.

The "goal" here, not in the sense of what AI scientists are shooting for, but in terms of "goal", "goalpost", and the idiom of "moving the goalposts", would be to invalidate the current argument. Typically, you "goal" when you successfully disprove the other person's argument.

Thus "moving the goalposts" is for the defenders to shift what argument that the other side is trying to disprove.

If the argument is "the impact of AI is getting undeniable", you'd try to show that impact of AI is not that high, and not looking to be that high in the near future.

The other side might move the goalposts by saying something like "well, it doesn't matter if AI is actually that broadly impactful right now, all that matters is whether it's impactful in the field of mathematics". At which point, you might be frustrated because the effort you put into engaging their previous argument is now moot.

PS - yeah, yeah, I overexplained

> this is not a research paper from a startup or a public frontier lab, it is just PR from a corporation

If they're publishing the solutions to these 10 problems, then this is, essentially, the announcement of 10 research papers.

Yes, it's partly for reputation (as are many research papers), but that doesn't mean it's of no value. The best way to advertise is to show that you're providing value.

And a lot of condensed matter physics. Type II superconductivity is a well-known one, but there are a lot of more less well-known ones

> If we didn't move the goalposts, then by definition we already knew exactly where we were headed at the beginning, and we very clearly did not.

To me, the goalposts were already defined by the person you were responding to. "The impact of AI is getting undeniable", so, the goalposts are "the impact of AI". Probably something like "the impact of AI is high, or will be soon".

Note that this does not depend on things like AI sentience or defining "intelligence" more rigorously, it just depends on AI impact.

The unified position which many folks deny is "AI is powerful" or, alternatively, "AI will be powerful soon".

(I'm personally still skeptical about this, but I'm being pulled towards accepting it).

"AI is useful" is too low of a bar, and "singularity is nigh" is too high. "AI is on its way to upending society" is about in the middle, and still vastly contentious among laypeople.

Reading both your comments, I don't see them suggest that only human brains are capable of experience. Not even "only animal brains", for that matter.

> The question of whether they reason is meaningless.

I'd disagree. Reason is the most reliable way we currently have of drawing conclusions (fewest false negatives, at least), so if we want to build AI that can draw similarly strong conclusions, it could be useful for them to reason.

It also helps to reframe our ideas of what they're doing - i.e., don't call it "reasoning" if it's not actually that reliable, because it builds a false trust in their conclusions.

And last - epistemologically, is there a connection between what LRMs are doing now and actual reasoning? Is it possible to smoothly transition from one to the other? Exploring different types of cognition and the connections between them mathematically is pretty damn interesting

Recursive self-improvement only takes off when the improvements are large enough.

We could set an LLM loose on itself now, self-improving its own code, but it's going to only make small improvements, and those will quickly peter out. If you think of it in terms of calculus, the sum of the improvements converges to a finite value, or at least the rate of improvements drop with time.

And even if we build a much better AI capable of performing substantial self-improvement, a burst of such improvement might peter out quickly. Maybe the AI makes fundamental breakthroughs in computing technology once, and then even with its newly improved capabilities, the next breakthrough is smaller, and the one after that is smaller still. Or maybe we hit a period of S-shaped growth, which seems super-exponential at first but then tapers off.

It's wise to be a bit skeptical in our dreams about the future. Yes, society might transform quite radically quite quickly, or on the other hand, maybe the "singularity" isn't even possible. We don't yet know what the scientific limits are.

I think it applies to non-biological Von Neumann probes as well. It'll apply to any system that can mutate, even if that mutation is just cosmic rays flipping the bits on a hard drive.

> It does zero good "for me" but hopefully someone thinks twice the next time before expressing such a dumb incorrect opinion.

Well, I doubt it's going to change anyone's mind if it violates the community guidelines and then the mods pull it. No?

> Not sure why adults are such precious little creatures that can't deal with a bit of criticism.

In general, folks here will respond better to data-oriented rebuttals, rather than emotionally-driven ones. When you name-call, it brings more hot/negative emotions into it, and the focus shifts away from talking about the evidence, and towards those same hot emotions. It becomes more about the anger or defensiveness and less about the information.

If you want to change minds, then, focus on the evidence.

There's also the wider picture. If you build a community that focuses on evidence, and push away those who prefer abusive language, you'll generally draw more rational people. The discourse you get from those people is more interesting, mentally stimulating, and data-oriented.

On top of that, it's more emotionally healthy to have a community where people respect each other, where we extend good faith and assume that the people we're disagreeing with are fundamentally trying to hold the right views. It's good practice for seeing the humanity in others, and in general it does seem to be true here. Most folks here are indeed interested in coming to the correct position.

The folks here are also more than capable of handling "a bit of criticism", meaning, handling some abusive language coming their way. Indeed, the way they've chosen to handle it is by rejecting it, and saying they prefer to build a better community.

Not ethically better, though. At least in the US, 99% of all pork is factory-farmed, and in much of that the pigs live their whole lives in a stall too small to turn around in.

Pigs are as smart as dogs, and have personalities and emotions. I am absolutely a carnivore, but I still balk at eating meat raised through a system that just about tortures intelligent animals.

Anyways: I eat a lot more chicken and plant protein these days.

You can view the guidelines here, at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't think you need to attack someone personally, even if you believe they are promoting products that harm people's mental and social health. For most of us following along, it will be enough if you dismantle their arguments. What good does it do for you to harangue them?

I think this guideline: "Assume good faith", applies not just to the people we disagree with, but also the other readers -- meaning, that you can trust that other readers are interested in learning and seeing things correctly.

Hacker News guidelines:

"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3.""

The article hardly mentions "oppressed peoples" at all. Much of the focus is on the benefits gained to the empire by the diversity therein, with brief forays into the historical and geographical layout of different parts of the early/mid Roman empire.

It's still just "buy low, sell high". You make the money from the same folks you normally would, only the order of when you buy and sell is swapped.

So that adds some extra "benefits" (mutation and natural selection improves the probes over time) along with some extra difficulties - how do you keep the self-reproducing probes "on-task" from one generation to the next? How do you instill "explore and report home" as an innate goal to a mutating system?

We could have coffee made today by automated coffee vending machines, but many people still prefer to go to a coffee shop. Why is that?

Sometimes we don’t choose the cheaper automated product, and instead opt for the “human experience”. I don’t imagine this will change any time soon. Humans like being around humans.

To put it another way, the cost per advancement increases. That’s “as we advance it becomes more difficult to advance”. However, because of the prior advances, you also have more resources to throw at future advancements.

So, then, the question is whether the “profits” on the last advance are enough to pay for the next one. We can define a new term, “affordability”, as what % “profit” you can expect from each advance relative to its cost, telling us whether it becomes relatively easier or harder to continue to advance.

tbf, they already had artillery pointed at 10 million people, enough to commit an atrocity. The nukes were just the frosting on the cake.