tomhoward

OK, sure, it's a better answer given that it does actually try and address his arguments and includes sources.

But then you've included some very unfair/invalid lines of attack. You've used quote marks when attributing arguments to him, but these are not actual quotes. You've asserted that he argues that "current AI research ... presents an existential risk" - which he recently said he specifically doesn't believe [1].

For the record, I've been aware of Gary Marcus and his positions on AI research since he was on EconTalk in 2014 [2]. I don't consider him the most compelling skeptic on contemporary AI, but I find it beneficial to hear and consider what he has to say. I'm also very familiar with ‘Mr Wern’ and his approach to discussing this and other topics. I've personally debated him on this website over a different topic, and whilst I benefited by learning new things about that topic, which was good, I was also surprised how much somebody of that persuasion would resort to emotion-charged, flawed or fallacious arguments when pressed.

And this is the main issue I'm wanting to confront: whether it's in this thread, or on LW/OB, or Sam Altman himself (in this tweet [3] that to me was a pretty alarming mask-slip for someone who has worked so hard to portray himself as a good operator over the years), it's striking how quickly the arguments turn personal and nasty rather than just pointing to simple proof that he's wrong. Which is just further evidence that discussion about this topic is so much more driven by emotion and grandiosity than sober examination of evidence.

As for Gary Marcus, sure, for someone who speaks/writes publicly a lot, you can always find specific details on which they might be wrong at a point in time. And where he's clearly factually wrong he should be corrected and he should welcome that. But I'm yet to see any slam-dunk evidence that the central position that he's continued to argue and explain for years is wrong.

Indeed, this quote from a post of his from 2018 [4] seems to be identical in substance to what Sam Altman said at Cambridge this very month [5]:

"Possibly. I do think that deep learning might play an important role in getting us to AGI, if some key things (many not yet discovered) are added in first."

[1] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230604-human-extinct...

[2] https://www.econtalk.org/gary-marcus-on-the-future-of-artifi...

[3] https://x.com/sama/status/1512471289545383940

[4] https://medium.com/@GaryMarcus/in-defense-of-skepticism-abou...

[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/17wknc5/altman...

This is such a case of a bad-comment that seems clever and insightful. It boils down to saying we don't need to debate or even consider the content of his arguments because we can assume he's only motivated by prestige and money (but without considering the second-order effects on his credibility and funding if he actually turns out to be proven substantially wrong in the future).

I don't know how right or wrong he is - none of us do. That's why it's all still being debated.

The one thing I know is that we can only truly understand a topic by fully understanding arguments for and against all the claims. I also know the pro-LLM set have way more money (double-digit billions as we saw just this week) and credibility to lose over this topic than Gary Marcus does.

I recently recorded an interview with my father, who last year retired from his 50-year career as an electronics engineer.

He told me that the main reason he became interested in electronics as a kid in the 50s/60s was so he could build short wave crystal radios, to listen to radio content from around the world, particularly cricket and BBC programs. He grew up in a country town (now outer suburb) near Melbourne, Australia, so was a bit isolated and yearning to feel connected to the world. That led to a decade working for Australia's major telco (now Telstra, then PMG/Telecom) researching and building wireless networks, then 40 years running his own company that produced all kinds of different products using microprocessors for monitoring and control/automation.

I realised that this very much mirrored my own pathway into my career: I immediately dived into the web as soon as it was available in the mid 90s as a way of finding content and communities I was interested in, and for the thrill of being connected to the world, which then led to learning web development and software development and pursuing a career that's now been going for 25 years, doing all kinds of different things, but all of it on the web/internet (and to bring it full circle, for the past few years I worked with my father to make his devices internet-enabled and turn them into IoT products).

My first full time job was doing phone tech support for dialup internet users for one of Australia's biggest ISPs in the late 90s. Many of the customers who'd call had just bought a new big-brand desktop PC (most commonly a HP Pavillion) with a winmodem in it, and so our job was to get it to work, even if their phone line was bad, or had other devices (fax machines, alarms, wireless phones) causing interference. We became very very familiar with the AT command sets to adjust the settings on all the different modem models, and with winmodems you'd often just have to slow it right down to 33k, 28k or even less.

In theory the existing shareholders should be the first to lose their stake - though those with inside access can benefit by re-investing at a low price once the restructuring is complete.

Those owed debts can lose much of what they are owed. In the case of WeWork, landlords will likely lose a lot of owed rent, and lease agreements will be cancelled or renegotiated at much lower rates.

Employees are meant to be at the top of the list to be paid what they’re owed, but that’s still contingent on funds being available to pay them.

What the actual hell brings someone to consider this an appropriate comment for HN and a reasonable reply to my comment. This is what people do when they're convinced they're on the right side of ideology/history? My.

> activly fleeing userbase

I feel like this stated-as-fact assumption is actually the real question.

Sure there was a lot of loud fleeing in the months after the takeover, and motivated media outlets relish at reporting any figures that can be presented to suggest that this is a continuing trend.

Plenty of those who loudly fled have quietly come back, so many prominent voices are still there.

About a year ago I started a new account, keeping my follow list to about 100 people (mostly friends and people I like in tech/startups/sports/music/personal-growth) and avoided following anyone who is heavily politically partisan/vocal, and I find it to be fine.

No, it's a big amount of money, particularly if it happens repeatedly. Governments have responded to companies' practice of just breaking laws and taking the hit, by continuing to push fines up to they point that they really do hurt and drive down the share price, which directly hurts the wealth of the senior executives and directors.

Bayer's share price is 70% down off its 2015 peak and 65% off its peak since the Monsanto acquisition bid was launched, and has even dropped 30% in just the past 6-7 months. These fines and judgements, and the worry that they may keep happening into the future, are definitely damaging the company.

Surely everyone's had enough of the WeWork catastrophe by now? What kind of investors would tip in more money to rescue it yet again?

Further to my previous comment, before you write much on the topic, make sure you've properly read and considered what I've written (just the previous few comments relating to genetic determinism), in relation to the paper you shared. On reflection, I'm surprised you wrote "did you check out the paper I linked?", as if you assume it contains findings that contradict anything I've written, and it makes me think you might be intending to argue against something you assume I believe rather than something I actually believe. To be clear: (a) I believe very strongly in inheritance and common patterns of behaviour among family members; (b) I know of no research proving that behavioural patterns are entirely attributable to DNA code and/or are immutable, and (c) I'm aware of ways deeply ingrained patterns of behaviour can be significantly altered/abated when effective approaches are applied. The paper you linked doesn't make any specific claims relating to parts (b) or (c) of my statement.

I read the abstract and skimmed the main content and couldn’t find anything that refutes what I’ve written or what I understand.

I’m fine to have a discussion if your intention is to achieve a shared understanding of the topic, which is what healthy debating is about and what this site seeks to cultivate (even if it rarely achieves it). It does seem a little like you’re more interested in “winning” an argument for a position you’re already invested in, but I’m happy to be shown otherwise and to engage in a discussion if you bring a spirit of shared learning to it.

Edit: rather than doing it here (in a thread that is already very long and stale) you can email me if you like (address in bio).

> “Letting go" is suspiciously close to "be a doormat for others"

What I’m referring to is nothing like that whatsoever, and I’m not talking about/advocating CBT, or anything that involves adopting meekness.

Yes I’ve been exploring this topic (and undertaking personal growth work) for well over a decade. I know all about the twin studies and the way they’re used to support all kinds of claims but that don’t actually hold up to scrutiny.

DNA just encodes proteins. It can’t explain/predict detailed behavioral patterns. A prominent example of how genetics can influence aggressive/criminal behavior is due to variations in the MAOA (“Warrior”) gene, but the promotion/suppression of this gene is still strongly influenced by environmental factors [1].

Twin studies (particularly separated twin studies) claim to prove that all kinds of things are genetically encoded, because “they must be”, without considering how much is caused/influenced by other factors - the gestational environment and the experience of being separated from the birth family being the most obvious.

That’s not to say these behavioral patterns aren’t deeply ingrained and difficult/slow to change, but that’s very different from being hard-coded in DNA and impossible to change. For n=1 anecdata, I’ve significantly reduced my aggressive tendencies after years of growth work.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3469457/#:~:tex....

I see genetics being used as a “just so” explanation for all kinds of things that the science doesn’t really support, by people with different ideologies depending on the thing they’re trying to justify.

We take obviously mostly-genetically-determined traits like height, eye/hair/skin colour, facial features etc, then extrapolate to argue/assume that all kinds of other things must also be genetically determined, like cognition, behavioral patterns, emotional patterns, for which there is far less evidence of them being hard-coded in DNA. This will be confounded by the fact that we can often see commonalities in these factors from parents to children and between siblings, and assume these commonalities exist due to genetic coding, not recognizing that there are other forms of inheritance/conditioning that can explain these commonalities, but that even if these inherited patterns are deeply ingrained, they can be altered via the right practices (emotional “letting go” being the most important in my experience).

Yeah I hear you, and no doubt Horatio Algers (and simplistic interpretations/retellings of his story arcs) have done plenty of harm in this respect.

I think we can do much better than “if you work hard and believe in your dreams you’ll make it”. There are many techniques people can learn than can amplify the impacts of their efforts and make them much better companions. They’re just not widely known/accepted as yet.

I love Carlin and it’s a good gag with some truth in it.

But it assumes we’re all hardwired to be a certain way, which is the very assumption I’m arguing needs to change.

It’s true most self-help is ineffective, and it’s because you can’t change much in your life just by consciously making an effort to change, or just “trying harder”. There is a lot you can change by undoing subconscious self-sabotage patterns and undertaking “letting go” practices, over a long enough period of time. This kind of stuff is fringe now but is growing in popularity because people are finding it far more effective than mainstream self-help and therapy (I sure have).

Well, it’s not true of me, because I was lucky enough to find someone with whom to share a journey of growth (we got together in 2011, just before the dating apps took hold), and it’s worked out well for us.

But I see what life is like for friends who are trying to find serious relationships/life partnerships via the apps, and how much it’s all geared towards being/seeming “the best” and finding “the right person”, and how brutal it is for their self esteem and life outlook (a good friend is at the age where she’s probably missed the chance to have children, having tried to find the right guy via the apps for many years).

I often wonder how it could be better for her and other friends if there were apps/communities more geared towards finding people to grow with rather than finding someone who ticks the boxes now.

Yeah this is a good point. I guess genetic determinism is just the contemporary scientific justification for a mentality that’s existed in some for a long time or indeed forever. (I’d be interested to know if other human cultures were more and accepting and supportive of personal growth.)

I have a theory that contemporary life causes many people great despair, relating both to dating/relationships and career, because our culture is not very supportive or accepting of personal growth.

So, if you get off to a good start in your dating life and career from your late teens and early 20s, you get plenty of approval and validation and compounding success as you progress through life, and acceptance that you deserve the success you're having ("they were always a high achiever, ever since school days").

Whereas if you're not in the top tier of "chosen" people and experience a few painful rejections and setbacks, you're made to feel that's just what you deserve and what you're stuck with, and there's not much you can do to improve your lot. I suspect this has become more of an entrenched belief since the discovery of evolution/DNA, and the generally accepted belief that most of our life outcomes are predetermined by our inheritance.

I think the dating apps (and employment recruitment platforms/techniques) intensify this further, by filtering based on a few simple characteristics, some of which really are genetically predetermined (height) and others that are downstream consequences of having had a blessed start in life (income/education level/job seniority/state of health).

Society generally, including/especially the dating/employment spheres, don't seem to offer much support for people who really sincerely trying to undertake a journey of personal improvement (outside of mainstream accepted practices like conventional fitness training and education). You're just expected to be "good to go". Someone who may have been dealt a rough hand in life but is trying very hard to improve themselves, including their social skills, their emotions, their health/fitness, their career prospects - all of which will lead them to becoming better romantic partners over time - can find themselves getting little support and encouragement along the way, and indeed can get a lot of discouragement from some quarters (including friends and family members).

I think a lot about how the world would be better if more people were encouraged and empowered to go on long-term journeys of deep personal growth, and what kinds of social platforms, including dating and employment platforms, could emerge out of that and bring much more opportunity and satisfaction to people who currently feel the despair of being left behind.

First, a couple of claims of fact to correct:

- Reddit, HN, X/Twitter, Instagram, plenty of other sites have no bans on the kind of usage of multiple accounts that the Reddit founders were doing. Plenty of people have multiple accounts for all kinds of different purposes and nobody considers it wrong. The kind of sockpuppeting/astroturfing/self-posting/ringvoting that is banned on social sites is very different, and banned for very different reasons, vs. the early Reddit conduct.

- 'In what universe is that "no goverment has expressed concern" when they went full end of privacy over it?' - "...over it" is a complete falsehood and another sign you're on weak ground. Some governments have proposed identity requirements on social media platforms but for reasons that have nothing to do with anything the Reddit founders did for a few weeks in 2005.

- "it is wrong entirely based on the fact its deceitful. And lies are inherently wrong" - As I wrote elsewhere, we all accept that mistruths can be benign, beneficial or funny in some circumstances; white lies, pranks, jokes, stunts, hacks. It all comes back to who was harmed, and you still can't name a case of someone who was harmed by what Reddit did, you've only suggested hypotheticals and inferences.

I've certainly spent enough time in this discussion, and I know it's a bad look on HN to perpetuate tit-for-tat arguments, so I'm certainly out. When I engage in a lengthy discussion like this, which I don't do often, it's to try and figure out what I'm missing about a topic - i.e., what has someone thought of about this that I haven't thought of?

What I see in some of your comments is at least borderline fulmination, which is in breach of the HN guidelines. I also see in this and other of your comments, as well as those from others taking the same position in the subthread, several cases of the beg-the-question fallacy: that is, trying to prove that this act was something egregious by assuming it was egregious, and using words that necessarily characterise it as the worst kind of transgression, when the severity of the transgression is the very thing that's in question.

The right way to discuss this topic is to explore exactly what kind of deception was committed and who was actually harmed by it, but I'm just seeing repeated insistences that we accept that this was a terrible act, without any earnest effort to demonstrate it.

Please try and step outside yourself for a moment and consider how many extreme words (hell, deceit, lie, cheating, corruption, law breaking, scams, fraud) you've included in this comment, about an act that nobody has ever claimed to be harmed by and no government agency has ever expressed any concerns about, and by your own argumentation can only be deemed wrong according to the philosophies of Immanuel Kant, which is no objective standard of morality at all - just one person's musings a couple of centuries ago. If the Reddit foundation story was as self-evidently heinous as you're insisting, you wouldn't need to use all those charged words.

No, it’s entirely different. You’re picking things that are clearly fraudulent and asserting an equivalency, without basis or examination.

Reddit’s practice was a simulation of activity to see what kind of activity was engaging. Nobody was defrauded or harmed and no legal or moral rules were breached.

This comment commits the beg-the-question fallacy of assuming the conclusion (fraud/moral breach) in its argumentation.

I understand that people have a need to believe that behind every fortune lies a great crime [1], but this is not the smoking gun people are looking for.

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/09/fortune-crime/?amp=...

There is no “social contract” against simulating usage on a site that has no organic usage.

> a better founding team who was chasing Digg's fall but did not cheat

Every new social site has to find some trick to kickstart usage and break out of their chicken-and-egg trap. There’s no “cheating” to speak of here. It’s playfulness. The teams that tried and failed to grow this kind of thing would have failed due to a lack of playfulness and imagination.

I say again, we can afford to see the fun in this, and commenters might reflect on their need to react to my appeal against grumpiness by replying with more grumpiness.

There is no social/moral rule against simulating usage on a brand new website that has no organic usage.

People in this thread are writing whole screeds arguing the importance of condemning this supposed moral breach, but it’s a case of the beg the question fallacy: people are seeking to prove there was a moral breach by assuming there was a moral breach.

I say again: nobody who was an early organic visitor to Reddit has ever complained of being deceived or harmed, and indeed they self-evidently benefited by finding content they liked and a site they wanted to post to.

Also: from the very start of this subthread my main point has been against grumpiness, and people keep grumpily replying, apparently trying to defend the importance of grumpiness. I mean, sure!

I've addressed these questions in several other comments in the thread. To repeat: no laws/rules of any kind were broken. Nobody was harmed. Nobody who was a user of the site in those days has complained of feeling deceived. It's a funny, playful thing to do with zero harm done. I like funny, playful things. The only people who care about this are people who like to finger-wag. Knock yourself out if that's what you like to do.

If Kant is being invoked about this we might have strayed into the weeds just a little!

> The problem with "I will break the rules a little"

So this whole argument presupposes there were any “rules” that were broken.

There weren’t. It was/is an anonymous site, where anyone could/can register any number of usernames and post whatever they want under each one. And nobody who liked Reddit then or now would have any problem with what the founders did to simulate activity and get it growing. It is only people like finding reasons to finger-wag who fixate on this.

Honestly there is room for playfulness in how we start products/companies and how we look at it years later.

Sure but the point is we all have our own standard for what kinds of subterfuge can be acceptable in certain circumstances. As I said in the first comment, we all accept the concept of white lies. We also accept jokes, pranks, stunts and hacks of various kinds. We can choose to be grumpy, moralistic and finger-waggy about Reddit’s method of breaking out of their chicken-and-egg trap, or we can see it as a harmless, funny prank. It all comes down the the question of who was harmed, and in this debate, nobody has even tried to point to any case of a real person who was in any way harmed by this act. Any claims of harm are imagined hypotheticals to justify the finger-wagging, which is what this is really all about.

I can think of several things the Reddit founders have done to summon bad karma, but a bit of sockpuppeting in the first few weeks to prevent the site from being empty is not one of them. How many people who visited Reddit in those days and enjoyed the content would have ever complained about being “deceived”. Absolutely zero. Nobody cared then and people only care now so as to fingerwag.

The site is literally called Hacker News and it was built from the start to be a community of current/potential startup founders.

(And no, self upvoting/ringvoting isn’t ok on HN and probably hasn’t been on Reddit for 17.5 of the past 18 years either. We’re talking about bootstrapping a totally new site in 2005, nothing more.)

> I think it's reasonably normal for people to have issues with lying

My point is that it's needlessly grumpy. It's fine if you want to be grumpy! But it's worth examining why this is a particular thing that triggers you. Far worse lies are told by politicians of all stripes every day, and we accept it as part of the system (particularly if it's a politician we voted for, not so much if it's one we voted against.) We should have a think about why we're getting tied up in knots over some shenanigans played by a couple of early 20-somethings almost two decades ago.