smath

If they grow to 20T then buying the index will also be a good investment but with a good risk hedge.

Many of the reactions are some version of 'pissed off', which I totally understand. This reaction stands out and resonates with me:

> With these AI-generated papers, I feel that we, as a community, are not applying the same standards of quality and rigour. They can simply release multiple 100+ page papers claiming to have solved this or that problem, often with redundant arguments, unclear logical structure, multiple dead ends, and strange or unsettling terminology — in other words, slop. And we are then expected to go through it, check it, clean it up, simplify it, and explain what is actually going on. This comes at a considerable cost to us in terms of time and effort, while they can simply move on and slop-bulldoze the next conjecture. And, of course, the credit remains theirs. In some sense, we are willingly contributing to our own demise.

I'm not a mathematician, so I didn't even try to read it. But if it is unreadable slop -- then why should we (humans) believe it is correct? And why should professional mathematicians labor through reading it?

I think recent events (hugginface) offer clues. It is a lot like the paper clip machine [0]

[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/w/paperclip-maximizer-1

Seems to me like we need to create a credible threat to the AI of mad (mutually assured destruction)? This is what addressed the question during the Cold War of “will nuclear weapons kill all humans” (if historical documentaries and movies are to be believed). Coordination between governments or corporations to limit AI is a hopeless strategy — because it is a classical example of prisoners dilemma / tragedy of the commons. We can see it hasn’t worked for climate change.

Anyone know of this (MAD) is being seriously thought of?

That may be, but I think my point about the decadent lifestyle DURING the period of empire still stands.

This has it backwards. The Victorian elite had a high standard of life because they had an empire that funded their decadent lifestyle - at the expense of their colonies! They were cushioned from negative consequences of their be debaucherous lifestyle.

Such macro effects exist today as well, in certain countries, that enjoy exorbitant privileges.

A focus on STEM is how a up and coming nation builds itself — innovation, and making something the world wants, rather than subjugation or rent seeking.

I watched the announcement video [0] and found it strange that they cut off Prof Soai during the last question — he was trying to understand whether he was being asked for his favorite molecule in the context of autocatalysis or in general.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/live/a9Bhx9wEt8U?is=Oo2PRZAZgDjZV9TN

This is factually accurate - I agree with the description. But I think this new system makes it sound like the ageing parents only need financial and mechanical help -- (handyman etc.), what about emotional support? No, I don't think phone calls cut it. Humans did not evolve to live far away from their kin.

That does make some sense to me! Ty

Could you explain these a bit more (or maybe provide a pointer to they mean):

> "atomization of society that industrialization and contemporary capitalism invite."

How & why exactly do they invite atomization?

> "Relational needs get pegged to currency and become transactional... career becomes a necessary way to fund those transactions"

By this do you mean something like: instead of relying on friends and family for interdependece, we pay for services in a formal economy ?

> When children are older, they take care of their parents and grandparents.

This is a core value in many eastern cultures. I'm not trying to put down western cultures - only pointing out a difference - I do not believe it is a core value of western cultures (i'd love to be proven wrong of course).

Also, when children grow up and move away, or immigrate to a different countries, this produces problems to the ageing parents.

There is a great blog post [0] that sohl dickstein had a couple years ago, about what happens when the metric being optimized is only a proxy for the thing you want to maximize — what happens eventually is “overfitting”. The original metric (which we cannot directly optimize for) actually starts to get worse.

I believe publishing papers and citations are those proxy metrics.

[0] https://sohl-dickstein.github.io/2022/11/06/strong-Goodhart....

Regardless of whether someone did earn a nest egg, raising an alarm still matters for the rest of the world

Yes correct, I agree with that statement -- we do not know that for sure.

I cannot prove that they are, and I cannot prove they are not. I'm not convinced that the burden of proof lies on either side. To make a statement like that in the opening lines as if its obvious seems genuinely presumptous.

Separately, I think 'conscious' is not a well defined / universally agreed upon term.

This are the opening lines:

> AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations.

How do we know that? This bit is stated as if its obvious. Can anyone prove this? Event he word conscious is not well defined.

Huffman Coding! :-)

I too have to disagree with pg on that line `> having kids may make one less ambitious`. The fact is that the world is very very multi-modal, i.e. the brains of people and how they think are wildly different. I think having kids makes me more ambitious and more focused, and more selective re the problems I work on, partly because I am also setting an example.

Ah Sir David MacKay. I so respect him. Great explainer and speaker. He had built this text entry tool called Dasher [0] - that I'd heard him introduce at Princeton around 2006. It was basically an early language model that predicted which characters are more likely than others, given what you've already types and it would adjust the sizes of the available next characters based on their probabilities.

[0] https://dasher.at/about/

This is a common source of confusion. The knitting / pottery making is not rewarding because its made by hands or is not knowledge work, but because it is done in the direct service of someone. Modern organizations are complex and can put several layers between the knowledge worker and the customer it ultimately serves. This produces the feeling of 'cog in a machine'. It is possible to work such jobs and serve others directly on the side (e.g. friday evening soup kitchen)

In a way it’s the same phenomenon as TV channels with fixed programming replaced by cable and the streaming video. Newspaper vs curated feeds. There is an exploit vs explore tradeoff in all of these. The newer versions lean heavier on exploit, so explore suffers. Explore is the ‘broadening horizons’ bit that some other comments refer to.

Automation / machines tend to make things more efficient and we shouldn’t shy away from automation, but they can also reduce the human connection. I think the same thing will happen with AI generated art - l human generated art can be a spiritual experience meaning you can connect with another human through art - but if a masterpiece like Cypress Trees in Wheat Fields is AI generated, there isn’t a connection with the human artist. Consequently we must consciously turn to other places to keep human connection strong.

Is it possible to acquire lower frequency components with a camera too?

This also reminded me of MRI where low frequency is acquired first in a space called k-space

My conclusion is that this in not the end of creativity but an increasing premium on creativity that is certified to be human made. It’s like how if I cook something from scratch that’s considered more meaningful than if I simply heated frozen food or ordered in for a guest.

Very cool! While this is a different type of inverse problem, it reminds me of a radiolab story [0] about a device to help blind people “see” using electrical impulses on a metal strip under the tongue.

[0] https://radiolab.org/podcast/seeing-tongues

Very fond memories of Mir Publishers' science and math books growing up in India in the 80s and 90s. I think English translations were freely available in India. My grandfather would buy them for me to encourage my interest in science and math. If I could find physical copies of those books I would buy them in a heartbeat today.

Slight digression: Russian cartoons from that era are also very interesting. One of my favorite short cartoon from that era (I still hum its music involuntarily): Ikarus and the Wise Men [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yk1mz23YFA

Are they trying to infer characters/words from brain waves? I would have thought the brain is thinking in concepts rather than actual words

GA’s optimize only combinatorial problems though — where you have discrete set of choices (~genes) for each variable, and therefore do not have a gradient

Mind blown, I had no idea about this, thx for sharing

I believe that is correct. Part of the problem is that similar words in different languages are actually not quite identical. “Not having emotions” is not quite the essence of stoicism: I understand it to be “avoiding highs and lows - being equipoised by recognizing what is and isn’t under our control”. A very closely related idea is proposed in the Bhagawad Gita.

Tangential tidbit about etymology of the word Zen:

Zen is a Japanese word that comes from the Chinese “Chan”, which in turn comes from the Sanskrit word “Dhyana”, which roughly translates to focus/meditatiin.

That trajectory Sanskrit —> Chinese —> Japanese reflects the geographical trajectory of the spread of Buddhism out of India.

Same word in Vietnamese and Korean is “Thien” and “Seon” respectively.

Right, value != price. Now, is this a bug or a feature? Discuss (serious question)