• 1 Post
  • 138 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: November 8th, 2022

help-circle
  • _NoName_@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlAm I insane?
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    edit-2
    6 days ago

    Eh, if you have the money, it’s probably fine.

    My current weird things:

    • Switched from my normal time zone to UTC on all my clocks.
    • Chose to study Esperanto instead of a more practical language because of its past of hopefulness
    • Plan on switching to a 13-month calendar in the future (is going to require modifying the opensource calendar I use to allow the change)
    • Switched to barefoot shoes not for health but the diminished cost in materials.
    • changed my keyboard to a dactyl manuform for the hell of it.
    • changed my keyboard scheme to Dvorak now.
    • changed my videogame control scheme from wasd to dcxf to accommodate the keyboard (in Dvorak that’s exku).

    We’re all alittle eccentric. Some of us more than others.







  • Alright, I see what you’re saying now. We’re on the same page.

    As an additional thing regarding AGI, I think it should be noted that ‘human-level’ and ‘human-like’ are importantly distinct when talking about this topic.

    In reality, if an AGI is ever created, it will most likely not be human-like at all. Humans think the way we do out of an evolutionary conditioning for survival, a history an AGI will not be coming from. One example given by Robert Miles is a staple making machine becoming an ASI, where it essentially would exist solely to make as many staples as it could with its hyperintelligence.

    We mean to say that this AGI is a ‘human-level’ intelligence in that it can learn to utilize abstractions and tools, be able to function in a large variety of environments without intervention or training, and be able to learn in a realtime fashion.

    Obviously, these criteria for any AI shows just how far away we are from achieving anything right now.these concepts are very vague and the arguments for each one’s impossibility or inevitability are equally vague and philosophical. It’s still mostly just stuffy academics arguing with each other.

    One statement I agree with, though, comes from the AI safety collective: We don’t know what we’re doing, and we should really sort that out. If any of this is actually possible and we accidentally make an AGI/ASI before having any failsafes or contingencies, it could be very bad.


  • I am not bait-and-switching here. The switchers were the business-minded grifters which made the term synonymous with LLMs and eventually destroyed its meaning completely.

    The definition I gave is from the most popular and widely used CS textbook on AI and has been the meaning used in the field since the early 90s. It’s why videogame NPCs are always called AI, because they fit the conventional CS definition, and were one of the major things it was about the most.

    As for your ‘1’, AI is a wide-but-very-specialized field and pertains from everything from robots to text autocomplete. If you want the most out of it, you need to get down into the nitty gritty and really research the field.

    On a Seperate note, while AI safety, AGI, and the risk of the intelligence explosion are somewhat related to computer science’s pursuit of AI systems, they are much more philosophical currently, and adhere to much vaguer definitions of AI, Such as Alan Turing’s.


  • IIRC, within computer science, which is the field most heavily driving AI design and research forward, an ‘intelligent agent’ is essentially defined as any ‘agent’ which takes external stimulai from a collection of sensors in some form of environment, processes that stimulai in a dynamic fashion (one of the criteria IIRC is a branching decision tree based on the stimulai), and then applies that processing to a collection of affectors in the environment.

    Yes, this definition is an extremely low bar and includes a massive amount of code, software and scripts. It also includes basic natural intelligences such as worms, ants, amoeba, and even viruses. One example of mechanical AI are some of Theo Jansen’s StrandBeasts




  • I’d argue Hanlon’s razor is not a very good heuristic. It ultimately presupposes the user of it is the mental superior in the situation, and does not take into account polarized and ambiguous controversies. It also encourages energy wasting by presupposing the issue lies with mental capacity or education, suggesting that you could educate your opponent out of their stance.

    I’d recommend moving towards more energy-conserving practices. Rather than arguing your points directly, it’s better to first understand why the opposition would be taking their current stance and adjust your argument based on what common ground you both share.

    Possibly the greatest skill is to just learn when it’s no longer worth your time to argue with them.





  • _NoName_@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlImportant Choices
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 months ago

    I am not following what you mean by “this” when you’re asking about what I’m advocating.

    In explicit terms, my understanding is that Leninists and similar ideologies believe that humanity is in its capitalist phase, and that the next phase is communism. That is what I mean when I say that they believe a revolution in the US is good for humanity.

    I don’t feel good about the impact of the US being dismantled, nor do I feel good about any western nation being dismantled. I don’t think anyone has a full clue what the US collapsing would cause, but I think it would cause catastophe. I am not advocating dismantling, if that’s what you think.


  • _NoName_@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlImportant Choices
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    I expect downvotes, but I figure thinking out loud about online discourse can be healthy to the general community and so I’m gonna do so.

    The real issue here is not the fate of Gaza, I think. I believe that in reality, your failure is choosing not to be apart of the revolution that aims to dismantle the US government - the only way these groups view Gaza has any chance of being saved (by “this group” I’m referring to the condemners, who I suspect are Leninists and similar idealogues). Saying this openly is currently outside of the Overton window in the US still, since a majority Americans are uninterested in actually fighting and dying for a new system. Instead, they just imply it, or condemn stances that constrain to the status quo.

    IMO, Such a revolution would need to happen within Israel for it to halt the genocide, and a revolution in US would fail to impact the Israeli government quickly enough to actually save Gaza.

    Your individual likelihood of becoming fodder against police, and eventually the US military itself, is also ignored. The revolution itself is for the greater good of mankind in their eyes, and thus your life by itself is inconsequential.

    Probably should be directly shutting down this call for joining the revolution rather than trying to appeal to reason - or explicitly state how you’re participating.

    Overall, I think that the holy week riots demonstrated how effective violent protest can be and that something like that happening again could be good for the US. I’m aware how extreme that statement will seem to some, but the fact that the fair housing act was passed in a week should really show just how effective that kind of violent action can be, and that we shouldn’t rule it out.

    At the same time though, I understand that many leftists currently are doing what they can to leverage the system to their advantage. This is not out of indoctrination, IMO, but because they have a respect for the lives of those immediately around them - they understand the alternative is sending a large portion of those around them to their die for a cause and they can’t conscionably do that. I couldn’t do that either, and I’m gonna respect how they’re operating currently and try to help how I am able.


  • I think this is coming from a “plugins enshittify projects” mentality where the assumptions are:

    • code bases should be as succinct and stable as possible.
    • plugins add large amounts of unused code and obfuscate many granular aspects of program execution, increasing debug and research time.

    Seems that the author views that the above devs chose to use plugins instead of writing their own code and shot themselves in the foot by doing so. The final portion seems to suggest that the person pushing all these changes then bobs out before any of the problems caused by these changes actually get solved.