HervalFreire

Why does this matter? At that point this metric proves his friend isn't sentient rendering his opinion about it irrelevant.

The podcast is missing this healthy type of acceptance and appreciation of truth.

The podcast is grounded in science and only speculates about the consequences via the data and the studies it cites. The people who were interviewed are psychologists who empirically study this scientifically and their conclusions are more well developed then yours given that they've spent a huge amount of time dedicated to elucidating these findings.

Your conclusion on the other hand was not formulated on data. It was formulated in attempt to fulfill your bias. You took the data and tried to mold it so it would fit your current world view instead of adjusting your world view according to what the data straight forwardly implies. I mean you are trying to push the conclusions of the study toward a positive outcome when reality in essence doesn't care about positive or negative outcomes. It can all be negative and that is a completely valid outcome.

I mean where is the data about people who healthily accept the truth? You would need that data to formulate a scientific conclusion. If no such data exists then where did your conclusion come from?

Perhaps the subject of podcast was talking about something you're doing right now.

I ask myself in attempting to get at the absolute dark truth... is what I'm doing good for either of us in terms of mental health? Probably not. I take it back.

You're completely right and I'm wrong.

That makes the border very important. Even if drawing the line in the right spot is impossible, it's imperative that we recognize when it has gone from one side to the other,

No it's not. Because such a line may not even exist. Just as no line truly exists for what is hot and what is cold. It's more worth it to look at societal implications in aggregate then to debate about a metric.

It's not imperative at all to discretize the concept. Treat a gradient for what it is: a gradient. You can do that or waste time arguing about whether 75.00001 degrees is hot or cold.

If we don't notice, we could accidentally cause a moral travesty orders of magnitude greater than slavery or genocide.

No this a bit too speculative imo. Morality is also a gradient along good and evil and what's more complicated is the definition of good and evil is also subjective. It suffers from the same problem as consciousness in addition to being completely arbitrary even at the extremes. We may agree that a rock is not conscious but not everyone agrees on whether or not Trump is evil.

There is a reference counting GC in rust. It's just not default and you have to be explicit about invoking it. It's similar to shared pointers in C++. See Arc.

For something like python the heap allocation or stack allocation is handled behind the scenes so the entire concept is abstracted away from you.

It may not be exactly clear where a temperature becomes 'hot', but the sun is still not a great place to host your wedding.

But right now we are currently at the border. LLMs are nearing the line of demarcation. So everyone is arguing about where that line is.

So it's not about the extremes because the extremes are obvious. We are way past the negative extreme and approaching or even past the border.

The point is that the position of this border is not important. It's a made up border. So if I say we are past the border or before it the statement is not important because its an arbitrary statement.

Not if you use modern python. And by modern python I mean typed python. Heavily typed.

In my opinion it's not pretty ok. It's actually superior to many other languages.

I think for web stuff though the borrowing and move semantics is a bit of an overkill. Usually you don't need to thread or handle state in these areas (frameworks and databases handle it for you) so a GC works better here. But everything outside of that is superior to something like ruby, python or go when it comes to safety.

Let's turn this into something real.

This: https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experime...

will never happen. No pause will occur. I'm right and you will be wrong.

If it does happen then I concede that you're right. If it doesn't then it reflects poorly on you.

Emergent properties of systems aren't less real just because they exist in a different regime than the underlying mechanics of the system.

I'm not claiming emergent properties aren't real. I am claiming the nature of the word consciousness itself is loaded. We are dealing with a vocabulary problem when it comes to that word... we are not dealing with an actual problem.

For example take your chair and table example. Let's say someone created something that is functionally and looks similar to both a chair and a table. Is it worth your time to argue about the true nature of chairs and tables then? Is it really such a profound concept to encounter a a monstrous hybrid that upends the concept of chair and table? No.

You'd just be arguing semantics. Because chair and table is really a made up concept. You'd be debating about vocabulary. Same with consciousness.

It's not about the fuzzy border. It doesn't matter if the border is fuzzy or not.

The point is the border doesn't exist in the first place. You created the border with the vocabulary. The concept itself is not intrinsic to reality. It was created. You came up with the word white and you made an arbitrary border. Whether that border is fuzzy or not is defined by you. It's made up.

We have a gradient. That's all that exists. You came in here and decided to arbitrarily call a section white and another section black. You made up the concepts of black and white. But those concepts are arbitrary. So it's pointless to argue about the border. Does it matter where the border is? Does it matter if the border is fuzzy? No. You'd be just arguing about pointless vocabulary and arbitrary definitions of the word black and white. The argument is not deep or meaningful it is simply a debate about English semantics.

Same with consciousness. We have a gradient for intelligence and awareness from something really stupid to something really intelligent. Does it really matter where we demarcate where something is conscious? and where it is not? Likely no, because the demarcation is arbitrary.

It's illusive but when people debate about consciousness. Oftentimes it could be that they are just debating about Vocabulary. Consciousness could be some word that's just poorly defined; it doesn't make sense to do a deep analysis on an arbitrary vocabulary word.

There's no illusion - love is a complex, durable emotion and is as real as (typically) shorter duration emotions such as anger, fear, joy, etc. Your emotions and thoughts aren't illusions, they're real.

I'm talking about romantic love. Clearly the specifications around romantic love are aligned with evolution and natural selection rather then magic or depth.

A straight human cannot feel romantic love for a horse or a person of the opposite sex. If romantic love was truly a deeper emotion then such an arbitrary sexual delineation wouldn't exist. Think about it. Why should romantic love restrict itself to a certain sex? It's sexist. Biology is sexist when it comes to love. Why?

From this we can no that love is an illusion. It's more of a biological mechanism then it is a spiritual feeling.

If it's not an illusion then you should be able to tell me what it is.

Since you can't. I can easily tell you that it's probably just some classification word with no exact meaning. The concept itself doesn't exist. It's only given existence because of the word.

Take for example the colors black and white. Do those colors truly exist on a gradient? On a gradient we have levels of brightness and darkness at what level of brightness should a color be called white and at what level should we call it black?

I can choose a arbitrary boundary for this threshold, or I can make it more complex and give a third concept: Grey. I can make up more concepts like Light Grey or Dark Grey. These concepts don't actually exist. They are just vocabulary for classification. They are arbitrary zones of demarcation on a gradient classified with a vocabulary word.

My claim is consciousness could be largely the same thing. When does something cross the line from unconscious to conscious? Perhaps this line of demarcation is simply arbitrary. It may be that the concept practically isn't real and any debate about it is just like arguing about where on a gradient does black become white.

Is a logic gate conscious? If I create a network of logic gates when does the amount of logic gates plus how they are interconnected cross the line into sentience? Perhaps the question is meaningless. When does black become white?

That's an inaccurate test. You can't know if the answer was real or stochastic parroting.

Any attempt at consciousness requires us to define the word. And the word itself may not even represent anything real. We have a feeling for it but those feelings could be illusions and the concept itself is loaded.

For example Love is actually a loaded concept. It's chemically induced but a lot of people attribute it to something deeper and magical. They say love is more then chemical induction.

The problem here is that for love specifically we can prove it's a mechanical concept. Straight people are romantically incapable of loving members of the same sex. So the depth and the magic of it all is strictly segmented based off of biological sex? Doesn't seem deep or meaningful at all. Thus love is an illusion. A loaded and mechanic instinct tricking us with illusions of deeper meaning and emotions into creating progeny for future generations.

Consciousness could be similar. We feel there is something there, but really there isn't.

You can't just handwave away complexity. It's entirely possible for the US to have too little regulation in some fields and too much regulation in other fields.

I didn't handwave anything. My answer is sufficiently complex with multitudes of counter examples to your point.

The whole thing with the massive list of examples is to illustrate a general point on the lack of business regulation overall in the US.

I literally stated it's the ratio of failures to successes that matters here. If I can produce 30 examples of the US failing to regulate and you produce one, that speaks to an overall generality that eclipses your example.

The arena of scientific validation is hard to establish here. Neither of us can paint a picture of the entire domain of every single failure and success of regulatory laws in existence for the US. So given the nature of this debate just list as many general examples as possible.

You have nuclear power as one, that's it.

I never claimed otherwise. But why would a conservative think tank, which favors less business regulations, not even put the US on the top ten list of most "economically free" countries if the US is so underregulated? Why would they prefer the regulatory environment in Denmark and Sweden over the regulatory environment in the United States?

Don't know. The motivations of such groups are complex and multifaceted. Following some breadcrumb trail to get at the root of it is too much effort. I only know that this group is biased and not a neutral party. There's no point in vetting a known compromised source. Pick a valid one.

So when I bring up examples they're "exceptions", but while you bring up examples, they're examples of the rule. When I cite sources that do an overall survey of a country's regulatory environment, that's "biased", but when you cite a source that makes their money by helping companies comply with food regulations, that's just fine.

Yeah you cited one bogus example from the heritage foundation. All my examples are real. Unlike yours.

I can run ChatGPT myself, thanks. Why don't you try thinking for yourself and considering the possibility that your presuppositions are wrong?

Highly disagree. Your answers are inferior to anything chatGPT can come up with so obviously you likely can't run it yourself.

Its nearly perfect if the sample size is big enough.

Barring that it's also the best we can do. There's no better alternative to science so you either believe in the science or you believe something significantly less accurate then science.

If you're not on board with science that has been thoroughly researched then it's akin to saying you're not on board with reality.

That future is already here. All WebApps abstract state to some external program.

Bare in mind this is only for web dev.

Many other things outside of web dev cannot abstract state so easily. For example: The person who programs the database itself must deal with state.

Would it be different if I told you that what I wrote here is based on and confirmed by science?

When subject to the rigor of statistical confirmation then what I said is no longer a "perspective". It is a fundamental fact about reality as we know it.

but my point is that none of it is indicative that someone having generally a positive view of the world necessarily implies that they would have less grasp on reality.

From the podcast:

    Joanna: The people who were the most realistic, that actually see the world exactly as it is, tend to be slightly more depressed than others.

    Robert: Time and time again, researchers have found that depressed people lie less.

    Ruben: They see all the pain in the world. How horrible people are with each other and they tell you everything about themselves. What their weaknesses are, what terrible things they've done to other people and the problem is they're right....

In short:

   People who tend to be realistic tend to be depressed. People who lie to themselves tend to be happy. 

https://radiolab.org/episodes/91618-lying-to-ourselves

What I'm saying is not something I made up. It's actual science.

Listen to the podcast if you have the time. It's derived from actual multitudes of scientific research done on thousands of people. It's only 12 minutes and it's really good and it will change your perception of the importance of knowing the truth.

This is real. And the experiments cited in this podcast are only a fraction of the psychological experiments used to confirm this theory. It's not about a matter of your opinion, it's science.

But even if it's real it doesn't matter does it? Because it's all about your perception and your ability to delude yourself.

I can’t find any exact phrase matches online, and the writing style and overall glib superficiality reminds me of ChatGPT output.

I got it from my notes for an unrelated project. You can't find it because I wrote the notes. But this shouldn't matter. As long as the points are correct, you getting schooled by an AI is irrelevant to the conversation at hand.

It’s disingenuous to make an overly general statement and then immediately dismiss any counterexample to that overgeneralization by saying “there are always exceptions”.

No it's not. General truths exist. You must dismiss exceptions to get at the general truth. Otherwise we'll be mired in details constantly.

Denmark is a market economy.

I never said it wasn't. I said "closest" to a socialist economy.

A common misconception. In reality, they are market economies that combine a dynamic free market economy with a generous welfare state.

No misconception made here. You are putting words in my mouth. I said it was closest to socialism. And it holds true. A generous welfare state is closer to socialism.

The Heritage Foundation publishes an “Economic Freedom Index” that ranks countries by “economic freedom”, according to their own conservative, pro-free-market point of view, and they rank Denmark and Sweden as more economically free than the United States

That's bullshit. The heritage foundation is a conservative think tank with a biased agenda. How about getting a study from an unbiased source. "Economic Freedom Index" << don't fall for that.

Check out which countries rank the highest for food regulations: https://www.fooddocs.com/post/food-safety-standards

The US isn't even on that list because we've lobbied the hell out of those laws to be lax af.

Not to mention labor regulations, mandatory five week vacations? Paternity leave? Unheard of in the US.

Just use some common sense before trusting some "Freedom" Index from a politicized foundation.

So then how do you explain the regulatory crippling of nuclear power?

It's an exception. I mean I literally gave you tons of examples how the US fails to regulate things. The ratio of failures to successes is what matters here. And the failures outnumber the successes by a huge amount. I only copied a fraction of my notes. Would you like more?

It's rather disingenuous to say "there are always exceptions".

Then what do you want me to say? It's the truth. There are always exceptions. Always. You want me to say you're right when you're actually wrong?

but Norway and Denmark are

You kidding? Scandinavia is more or less a collection of countries closest to socialism. These countries have by far more regulations in GENERAL. It's obvious but we can find evidence if you want. Take this for instance: In Sweden, there is a law enforcing a five-week vacation policy.

The US has already demonstrated the ability to regulate a specific technology--namely nuclear energy--to a point where it is almost completely marginalized. So the notion that the US isn't capable of regulating an entire technology into near-oblivion is demonstrably false.

Except there are multitudes of failures as well. The failures outnumber the successes by a huge margin. Take for instance:

    Enron: In the early 2000s, the energy company Enron engaged in a series of fraudulent accounting practices to make it appear as if the company was more profitable than it actually was. Despite warnings from whistleblowers and others, the government failed to intervene and the company ultimately collapsed, resulting in significant financial losses for many investors and employees.

    BP Oil Spill: In 2010, an explosion on an oil rig operated by BP in the Gulf of Mexico caused the largest oil spill in U.S. history. The disaster was largely attributed to lax regulation and oversight by government agencies, including the Minerals Management Service.

    Volkswagen: In 2015, it was revealed that Volkswagen had installed software in its diesel cars that cheated emissions tests, leading to higher levels of pollution than were reported. The company ultimately agreed to pay billions of dollars in fines and compensation, but the government was criticized for failing to catch the deception sooner.

    Equifax: In 2017, the credit reporting agency Equifax suffered a massive data breach that exposed the personal information of millions of people. Critics argued that the government had not done enough to regulate the company and protect consumer data.

    Tobacco Industry: For decades, the tobacco industry engaged in deceptive marketing practices that downplayed the health risks of smoking. Despite mounting evidence of the harmful effects of tobacco, the government was slow to take action to regulate the industry, and it was not until the late 1990s that significant reforms were implemented.

    Wall Street: The 2008 financial crisis was largely caused by the reckless behavior of major Wall Street banks and financial institutions. Many critics argue that the government failed to adequately regulate these institutions, allowing them to engage in risky practices that ultimately led to the collapse of the housing market and the wider economy.

    Boeing: In 2019, two deadly crashes involving the Boeing 737 Max raised questions about the safety of the aircraft and the company's regulatory oversight. Critics argued that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) had been too close to Boeing, allowing the company to cut corners and prioritize profits over safety.

    Big Pharma: The pharmaceutical industry has come under scrutiny for a variety of reasons, including skyrocketing drug prices, aggressive marketing tactics, and the opioid epidemic. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate the industry, which has resulted in significant harm to patients and communities.

    Meatpacking Industry: The meatpacking industry has been criticized for unsafe working conditions, low wages, and lax regulatory oversight. The COVID-19 pandemic brought these issues to the forefront, as workers in meatpacking plants became some of the hardest hit by the virus.

    Tech Industry: Tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon have faced criticism for a variety of reasons, including antitrust violations, privacy violations, and the spread of misinformation. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate these companies, which have become some of the most powerful corporations in the world.

    Fast Food Industry: The fast food industry has been criticized for its low wages, poor working conditions, and contributions to obesity and other health problems. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate the industry, allowing companies to prioritize profits over the well-being of workers and consumers.

    Industrial Agriculture: Industrial agriculture has been criticized for its negative impacts on the environment, animal welfare, and public health. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate the industry, allowing companies to engage in practices that harm people and the planet.

    Gun Industry: The gun industry has come under scrutiny in recent years, following a series of mass shootings in the US. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate the industry, which has contributed to the proliferation of firearms and the high rate of gun violence in the US.

    Pharmaceutical Industry: The pharmaceutical industry has been criticized for a variety of reasons, including the high cost of drugs, the influence of drug companies on medical research, and the opioid epidemic. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate the industry, allowing companies to prioritize profits over the well-being of patients.

    Big Oil: The oil and gas industry has been criticized for its contributions to climate change, its negative impacts on local communities and the environment, and its outsized influence on politics. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate the industry, allowing companies to continue to engage in practices that harm people and the planet.

    Private Prisons: Private prisons have been criticized for their poor conditions, lack of accountability, and their contribution to mass incarceration. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate the industry, allowing companies to profit from locking people up.

    Airlines: The airline industry has been criticized for its treatment of passengers, including overbooking flights, delays, and cancellations. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate the industry, allowing companies to prioritize profits over the comfort and safety of passengers.

    Plastic Industry: The plastic industry has been criticized for its contributions to pollution and environmental degradation. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate the industry, allowing companies to continue to produce single-use plastics and other products that harm the planet.

    Financial Services Industry: The financial services industry has been criticized for its high fees, predatory lending practices, and the exploitation of vulnerable populations. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate the industry, allowing companies to prioritize profits over the well-being of customers.

    Gig Economy: The gig economy, which includes companies like Uber and Lyft, has been criticized for its treatment of workers, including low wages, lack of benefits, and a lack of job security. Critics argue that the government has not done enough to regulate the industry, allowing companies to exploit workers in the pursuit of profits.

Who knows? You could be right and I could be the one that is totally blind.

I propose an experiment to find out just which one of us is actually more delusional. To start off, how would you rate yourself in terms of looks from 1 to 10?

There was a science experiment where they took pessimists and optimists and had them rate themselves from one to ten in terms of looks.

Then they had another external group of people rate them based off of the same 1 to 10 scale to get an unbiased baseline.

Turns out pessimists had a more accurate and realistic rating around how good they looked. While optimists had ratings that were wildly overblown. There are other experiments that measured other things related to these two groups of people.

It turns out optimists are, happier, have higher salaries and are much more successful in life while pessimists are more likely to be clinically depressed.

This experiment tells us a dark truth about human nature. We lie to ourselves to stay sane. We construct illusions to protect ourselves from fully experiencing the cruel reality of life.

Optimism is a special kind of blindness. It's blindness that blinds you from being aware you're blind.

So look deeply at yourself. Are you happy? Are you optimistic? If so then that is in itself a statistical statement about how delusional and intelligent you actually are. Can you handle the truth?

I wonder how this post will get voted? Down for being depressing and negative? Or up for being truthful?

There are always exceptions. Overall though corporations control the direction of the economy not employees.

The US is very capitalistic. You may get regulation in France, but not the US.

The Corporate desire for profit will overshadow the livelihood of billions. It's been this way in the US since forever. Look what happened to the corporation that caused the Opioid epidemic. Nothing, they profited.

It's different this time. Because this time AI is hugely more popular in the public and corporate sphere. The previous AI winters were more academic winters with few people pushing the envelope.

I don't think compute is the issue. It's an issue with LLMs. Current LLMs are just a stepping stone for true AGI. I think there's enough momentum right now that we can avoid a winter and find something better through sheer innovation.

They have some good stuff. Spider Man: No way home.

Mandalorian is pretty good, Star wars: Andor was the best Star Wars I've seen in a while. I guess a lot of people missed out on Andor given that almost everything Star wars has been mostly crap.

I think part of the explanation for your list involves the fact that people don't like movies that much anymore.

Agreed. The EU is ridiculed but it's also one of the happiest places to live. The relationship between the US and EU is almost parasitic with the EU simply feeding off most of the business innovation coming from the US.

I don't think the world needs this much constant innovation. Additionally the innovation itself can be disruptive. The US will doggedly pursue profits even if those profits involve technology that can cause the US to eat itself. If AI replaces all jobs and nobody has any money to buy stuff who will the companies sell shit too?

Error: formula above should be a recurrence relation:

P_n(correct) = (1 - Epsilon_n)*P_(n-1)(correct)

Where P_0 = (1 - Epsilon_0)

It's possible. But unlikely.

Historically speaking, from crypto to AI, the market constantly evolves towards the next most profitable thing.

Only regulatory systems like the government has the tendency to temper such things (see the Fed and rising interest rates). However do note that capitalist entities have infiltrated the government and have huge sway over it's regulatory policies meaning that anti-business regulatory policies are unlikely to occur.

All of this just means that my conclusions are most likely going to play out. Barring some event that will cause intense negative public reaction.