mef51

We need to practice and develop science in a way that also centers humanity and compassion

I actually don't care if they are, I'm saying the topic is a distraction and irrelevant at best. As you say consciousness is not well defined. What is well defined and well grounded in reality is the disruption these models have on society. I think the consciousness debate AI researchers are having is a dangerous ego-trip for the sake of avoiding responsibility for the damage being caused by their work.

Thats my point, why are we applying the ill defined concept of consciousness to a statistical model of language that outputs data similar to its training data?

If models are trained on human texts that contain expressions of introspection and emotions, why is it surprising that these models output similar texts? This endless anxiety about LLMs being conscious feels delusional and psychotic. Mr Olah thinks the models are 'alive' because he can't recognize his own reflection in LLMs

I always pick koopa, I always win

Because he's not talking about AI, he's talking about people's psychological reactions to AI

Ok I'll start one here, I got 23763 on track #665 :)

Fun! Top 100 daily leaderboard?

I've heard a few times now that giving birth while lying on the back is a relatively modern invention and that for most of history women adopted squatting or leaning forward positions.[1] And that the back position is actually much more painful. How much does laying on the back increase the pain to the point where an epidural is necessary? Is it still necessary in the other positions?

disclaimer: I know nothing about this

[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260401-women-were-never...

Full report: https://msf.org.uk/sites/default/files/2026-04/Mar26LH_MSF_G...

The Guardian has decent coverage in addition to the others people have listed

You can try not using Claude

The em dashes?

Acting like the dominant political stream in Israel has not been interested in occupying Gaza since at least 1967 to this day is a bald faced and shameless misdirection.

The colonization of Gaza and the West Bank is entirely driven by western interests and ideology. Namely Zionism[1]

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

Trauma to me means there are ways of responding to painful experiences that can keep you in that painful state for a very long time, and/or make things worse. I recognize that simple fact from my own experiences. In that lens, its helpful to reflect on your responses to painful experiences to stop them from developing into long term traumas. Maybe that's why this book, or at least the title, seems to resonate with people. (I haven't read it)

...But it's also good to know the author of the book was wildly mis-citing things

From the article: "An internal US government review found no evidence of widespread theft by Hamas of US-funded humanitarian aid in Gaza." Other reporting supports this.

So what is going on is that the IDF are lying to justify their genocide. There is a massive propaganda machine at work to muddy the waters.

Israel blocks the entry of Plumpy Nut into Gaza, a peanut-butter like paste meant for treating severe acute malnutrition. They say it is a luxury item Hamas might steal.[1] The amount of evidence Israel is committing genocide is embarrassing.

[1] https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1971582137947295831

I'm not sure I entirely agree with the framing, despite agreeing with many of the points raised. I think it's relevant to recognize that large organizations often become large by consuming smaller organizations. And that they consume smaller organizations precisely because they offer something like purpose and meaning, and other emotional/spiritual needs. When there are no more smaller organizations to consume, the larger organizations fracture out of an absence of these necessities. The division of 'small' and 'large' organizations is maybe relevant in today's economic structure but it does not feel absolute or permanent. Anyway, this well highlights the importance of genuine connections and activities at the individual level.

I read this letter for the first time many years ago when I was in my physics undergrad and thinking about starting grad school. It still crosses my mind pretty often as a postdoc.

Plum Village (a Buddhist community founded by Thich Nhat Hanh) has a free app with hours and hours of different kinds of breathing and other types of meditation. They also upload meditations regularly on their youtube.

This web page also has some good resources and breathing meditations. https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness/mindfulness-practice

Highly recommend

I think in this instance the perpetrator is central to the story/article

"The civilians should be evacuated." They don't want to leave and Israel uses these "evacuations" to make sure Palestinians never return, as they did in 1948, 1967, etc[1][2]. This is whitewashing genocide and is an extremely violent view, packaged in reasonable sounding words. Israel has a long documented history of using terrorism to build its state. If you truly oppose terrorism I recommend starting with the books I've sourced.

[1] The ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé

[2] The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 by Rashid Kahlidi

The HRW report[1] goes into details, at least on the 1050 takedowns they documented

> A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report investigating Meta’s moderation of pro-Palestine content post-October 7th found that, of 1,050 posts HRW documented as taken-down or suppressed on Facebook or Instagram, 1,049 involved peaceful content in support of Palestine, while just one post was content in support of Israel."

[1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...

America + Tank = Freedom lmao

Share it with someone you trust. Trauma is disconnective, connection with others heals.

I use two small keyboards that I velcro strap to my arms just past my hands so that I can move around freely while typing

If you think of the Youtube recommendation system as a person, you would immediately understand how creepily this person is behaving by trying way too hard to get what it wants from you (ad clicks) under the guise of caring about you or your interests.

Just because I click on a video and watch it entirely doesn't mean I want to see more like it, and it doesn't mean it was healthy for me to watch, it could have just been a distraction. But now this system will latch on to my need for distraction and keep nagging me with stuff in the long term that is ultimately harmful to me.

I don't believe recommendation systems like this can ever really understand people well enough where a person can walk away and feel healthy about it. But they are great at generating money and that is why they exist. I can see and appreciate the amount of effort that is trying to make these systems better but they are fundamentally flawed and limited.

Thanks for the change!

It's the first sentence:

>> According to a 2017 survey by University of Haifa professor Sammy Smooha, 16% of the Arab population prefers the term "Israeli Arab", while the largest and fastest growing proportion prefers "Palestinian in Israel", and 17% prefer "Palestinian Arab"