[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 10 points 1 week ago

Even if true, why couldn’t the electrochemical processes be simulated too?

  • You're missing the argument, that even you can simulate the process of digestion perfectly, no actual digestion takes place in the real world.
  • Even if you simulate biological processes perfectly, no actual biology occurs.
  • The main argument from the author is that trying to divorce intelligence from biological imperatives can be very foolish, which is why they highlight that even a cat is smarter than an LLM.

But even if it is, it’s “just” a matter of scale.

  • Fundamentally what the author is saying, is that it's a difference in kind not a difference in quantity.
  • Nothing actually guarantees that the laws of physics are computable, and nothing guarantees that our best model actually fits reality (aside from being a very good approximation).
  • Even numerically solving the Hamiltonians from quantum mechanics, is extremely difficult in practice.

I do know how to write a program that produces indistinguishable results from a real coin for a simulation.

  • Even if you (or anyone) can't design a statistical test that can detect the difference of a sequence of heads or tails, doesn't mean one doesn't exist.
  • Importantly you are also only restricting yourself to the heads or tails sequence, ignoring the coin moving the air, pulling on the planet, and plopping back down in a hand. I challenge you to actually write a program that can achieve these things.
  • Also decent random-number generation is not actually properly speaking Turing complete [Unless again you simulate physics but then again, you have to properly choose random starting conditions even if you assume you have a capable simulator] , modern computers use stuff like component temperature/execution time/user interaction to add "entropy" to random number generation, not direct computation.

As a summary,

  • When reducing any problem for a "simpler" one, you have to be careful what you ignore.
  • The simulation argument is a bit irrelevant, but as a small aside not guaranteed to be possible in principle, and certainly untractable with current physics model/technology.
  • Human intelligence has a lot of externalities and cannot be reduced to pure "functional objects".
    • If it's just about input/output you could be fooled by a tape recorder, and a simple filing system, but I think you'll agree those aren't intelligent. The output as meaning to you, but it doesn't have meaning for the tape-recorder.
[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago

That’s because there’s absolutely reams of writing out there about Sonnet 18—it could draw from thousands of student essays and cheap study guides, which allowed it to remain at least vaguely coherent. But when forced away from a topic for which it has ample data to plagiarize, the illusion disintegrates.

Indeed, Any intelligence present is that of the pilfered commons, and that of the reader.

I had the same thought about the few times LLMs appear to be successful in translation, (where proper translation requires understanding), it's not exactly doing nothing, but a lot of the work is done by the reader striving to make sense of what he reads, and because humans are clever they can somtimes glimpse the meaning, through the filter of AI mapping a set of words unto another, given enough context. (Until they really can't, or the subtelties of language completely reverse the meaning when not handled with the proper care).

[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 8 points 3 months ago

Yay! some nice

Dont  Dead
Open Inside

Abundance Agenda horriffying strings of words.

How to save liberalism (without being boring)

Congratulations! You appear to be failing so far—on both counts!

[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 10 points 3 months ago

I'm under the impression that he essentially stated as much, though i'm a bit too lazy to go quote mining.

[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 8 points 2 years ago

E/Acc where Might makes Right, is the not at all repulsive and most ontologically sound source for ethics! Not at all burting at the seems with perverted eugenics, it's not morally dubious if none of your enemies survive to criticise you!

[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yud "It's just a joke bro": The lack of punctuation makes it an obvious joke! Let me spend the rest of this thread defending the divine truth of this joke to the bitter end.

The saddest thing is that transparency is sort of good advice, but his twisted soul sees others as tools rather than people, I guess in his case transparency lets people know to stay clear.

[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Presumably this ought to quicken to death of Twitter, so it's not necessarily ALL bad news. In the meantime there is always copy paste, it's not perfect receipts, but it's sufficient for most sneering purposes.

EDIT: It is a bit nuts considering the number of Official Agencies world wide that issue press releases on twitter, and not really anywhere else convenient to access by the general public (Although that is also them displaying questionnable practices.)

[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Vigorous mask-dropping very early on in the post:

The term "eugenics" has absorbed so much baggage over the last century that it somehow refers both to swiping right on Tinder when you see an attractive person and to the holocaust.

Not all dating is done with reproduction in mind. What are members of the opposite, or indeed same gender: baby synthesis apparatus? Unless you go out of your way in selecting blue eyed, blond haired people, restricting the definition of beautiful to these people, and restricting the teleology of tinder to the begetting progeny, how is it even remotely eugenics?

EDIT: Uncharacteristically for LW the post, was very short short, "very early" is actually about midway in a proposal of little substance, also choosing attractive partners doesn't guarantee ensure children anyway (unless using very specific definitions of beauty).

[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

One of the more disturbing things that happened at work when using MS Word, was the automatic addition of alt-text images. I didn't ask for that, I didn't click any "Please send my images to the cloud, possibly leaking sensitve material, so inference can be run there, to add potentially unhelpful descriptions"

Is document editing really a task that benefits from AI?

An example of unhelpfulness:

I'm torn between at almost praising meek half-assed attempt at accessibility, and shrieking to the heavens about this unweclome shoe-horned addition.

[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 9 points 2 years ago

Something something Poe's law, something something. Honestly some of the shit i've read should have been satire, but noooooo.

[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 8 points 2 years ago

Unhinged is another suitable adjective.

It's noteworthy that how the operations plan seems to boil down to "follow you guts" and "trust the vibes", above "Communicating Well" or even "fact-based" and "discussion-based problem solving". It's all very don't think about it, let's all be friends and serve the company like obedient drones.

This reliance on instincts, or the esthetics of relying on instincts, is a disturbing aspect of Rats in general.

[-] zogwarg@awful.systems 8 points 2 years ago

Listen to me.

YOU DO NOT THINK IN SUFFICIENT DETAIL ABOUT SUPERJOCKS CONSIDERING WHETHER OR NOT TO BULLY YOU. THAT IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING WHICH GIVES THEM A MOTIVE AND POPULARITY TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON THE BULLYING.

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zogwarg

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