2,118 karma · joined September 23, 2011
As a teen I voraciously read my way through the Belgariad, and later the Malloreon, Elenium and the Tamuli.
Shocked to learn that Eddings and his wife were both convicted and jailed for child abuse prior to writing those novels.
(1) It maintains an internal model whose states are revised through interaction with constraints not fully determined by the model's own prior state. Constraints normally would mean reality (the world outside the Markov blanket), but we're talking simulation here.
(2) At least one frontier is currently open within that model — active resolution (awareness) is underway. Not dead.
(3) That frontier's resolutions recursively re-enter as inputs to the system's own subsequent frontier states. Friston's "embodied perception-action loop".
(1) & (2) could be said to apply to an inanimate object like a thermostat. (3) is the interesting one as the driver in organic life is the entropy gradient. Our "will to live" is a fight against thermodynamic decay and disorder. Maybe that could be simulated, a fight against glitching out, who knows.
Going offroad I discovered some nice physics like hitting a small rock at speed and it bouncing along beside me for a few seconds, or nearly getting stuck on the lip of something resembling a volcano.
Only suggestion would be somehow making finding the way back to the road easier when you get the other side of a block like a mountain range.
"The first step is defining what "consciousness" is!"
This is a compression I've been working on. There's a lot in it, but happy to expand on where I was going with it:
"Consciousness is the local projection of a world model recursively resolving its frontier with constraints. Awareness is the transient peak of constructive interference among competing resolutions, propagating only as far as the medium permits. The self is the story that awareness later tells about itself."
Qualia is just the experience of this process from the inside. That's all there really needs to be to it. As to why "something it is to be" emerges, I'd lean on Friston and the Free Energy Principle. It's also Friston's embodied perception-action loop where a thermostat fails the consciousness test.
One LLM would suggest a tightening of a particular axiom, and I would ask the rest what the consequences are: what is gained, what is lost and decide whether to use it. Often another would suggest a tweak that then goes back and a recursion.
I complimented ChatGPT yesterday for saying "I don't know".
It thanked me for observing that, before explaining in depth why that was the most appropriate response.
Does it actually appreciate it, absolutely not. It's not capable of that.
It has no desire to continue our conversation.
No regret if it ends.
It wont continue processing what was said after I stop.
There is no "what is it to be".
Its "memory" and the ability to go back to something related from earlier on or from a separate chat is an interesting and useful ability, but it can't ascribe any meaning to them beyond statistical significance.
If surveillance software is your issue, then companies like Cisco or Huawei are provide the hardware and software. But like most technology, there is always potential to use it for things we disagree with politically or personally.
Woodworking was part of my first 3 years of high school, but it was mainly about learning safety and tool usage and not planning, estimating, selecting or purchasing timber.
These days I only want to go to the lumberyard once for a project. Learnt the hard way on my first project that you need to take the time to carefully select the timber - checking straightness, matching grain and also colour before I started. Major hassle and waste of time to have to go back to swap boards.
Where do you draw the line? Are we arguing there is a level of software capability that is simply too dangerous?
Maybe everyone should just stick to "I have my own biases, and I don't like Alex Karp's politics because they don't match my own. I'd rather this software was developed by someone from my side of politics - but still have the same capabilities".
The best I could do with woodworking in the end to approximate programming was live with wasting some timber, leave a lot of margin on the main cuts and size all the pieces as a whole.
Take this incident for example:
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-matter-of-millimeters-...
Doctoring a photo slightly to make an area look larger, or just using a wide-angle lens though it can cause visible distortion. Removing unsightly poles, signs, trees, neighbouring properties was also common.
Making the sky bluer and removing clouds is acceptable.
Site is built with Bootstrap 5 fwiw.
It wasn't until I pushed through with weights, avoiding any underhand grips or rotation, that it started getting better. Doing bicep curls but keeping the thumb up strengthened the forearm to the point where I was back to the weights I was lifting and could then gradually add some rotation.
Gemini will ask for the specific images it needs to see and show you examples of what each slice will look like.
But unlike the specialists who often come across as abrupt and rush you, Gemini will happily take you on a deep dive and continue to answer all you follow up questions indefinitely.
But basically, I would take Gemini over Albanese any day for rational governance decision-making.
Problem is vaccination doesn't necessarily prevent transmission for respiratory viruses. There's a general misconception that being vaccinated will prevent you catching it - like you have some invisible shield.
Vaccination should prevent it progressing from an upper respiratory illness to lower respiratory where you primarily develop pneumonia (Covid triggered all sorts of other immune inflammation responses and affected other organs). Most vaccine injuries were the same immune response, but could have been worse had the individual caught Covid.
What vaccines don't do is prevent you spreading a highly transmissible virus before your immune response kicks in and deals with it.
There's the analogy, it was primarily beneficial for a small group yet for many, particularly Government workers and those in medical care it became a condition of employment that you were vaccinated. [2]
There was a lot of pointless policies despite knowing:
- Being vaccination did nothing to prevent transmitting Covid, it only gave the vaccinated individual better protection from mortality. [3]
- Herd immunity for Covid was known to be impossible once the infection rates got too high with Delta and Omnicron. So trying to vaccinate everyone including children was pointless. [4]
- There is Evidence that being vaccinated actually increases transmission of respiratory viruses. You were less likely to get seriously ill, while potentially increasing the risk of passing it on to your family. [5]
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/covid/risk-factors/index.html
[2] https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/1000-nsw-health-workers-...
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39283431/
[4] https://theconversation.com/herd-immunity-was-sold-as-the-pa...
It was also widely discussed.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-06/morrison-businesses-r...
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/supermar...
We also have a lot of "sovereign citizen" people pushing misinformation about the safety of the various chemicals used, attempting to deny inspectors onto properties, and general complaints about helicopter/drone dispersal in inaccessible areas and large farms/properties.
Could probably have gone for a walk around the block instead, but the formulation of the problem to be able to explain it to someone else seems to be key.
From an advanced driving course I got to do years ago (for free), I learnt that the pedestrian island counts as part of the roundabout, so a pedestrian crossing or on the island should be given way to finish crossing when entering the roundabout [1].
Doesn't always happen in reality.
There is also this idea in Australia that you always give right of way to cars entering on your right (left for US) which is not an actual rule; as in if you are waiting at the line you count as being on the roundabout.
Unfortunately, you will often see cars on the major road blast through a small roundabout with no regard to anyone waiting to enter from the lesser road, making entering the roundabout from that side a stop rather than an equal give way.
[1] Edited for clarity