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berndi

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I’m not a vegetarian or animal rights advocate, but an argument could be made that cruelty to non-human animals is similarly normalized in today’s world, perhaps seen as a necessary evil to satisfy our appetite for food or fashion items.

Assuming a bedroom with surface area of 50 m^2 and an insulation R-value of 2 m^2K/W and an outside temperature of 30C, 300W would be required to keep the room at 18C. Cooling down 8 billion such bedrooms would require 24TW, which represents approximately a 10% increase in global power consumption.

Certainly a lot, but doesn't seem "catastrophic" and is realistic with today's technology.

You’re right! The trapped ion approach (IonQ) is the most promising direction toward scalable quantum computing. Superconducting qubits — such as those used by IBM and Google — require extreme cooling while ions can be trapped at room temperature. Superconducting qubits are also plagued by substrate imperfections, while trapped ions — being “nature’s qubits” — are absolutely identical in their quantum mechanical properties. This allows trapped ion quantum computers to realize the best demonstrated gate fidelities.

You’re confused about what “statistical parrot” means and you don’t seem to understand the difference between an optimization objective and the resulting model.

The term “parrot” is used to imply inference by something akin to a look-up table, specifically it is used to indicate poor out-of-sample performance and a lack of a proper world model. The optimization objective is irrelevant when determining the generalization performance of a model and when judging whether it can reason beyond looking up answers in a table.

As the user above noted, it is now quite well established that GPT-4 has impressive out-of-sample performance which can be explained by it possessing an actual model of the world and not being a “parrot”.

Free speech is not really a thing in Germany (e.g., until very recently, insulting foreign heads of state was a criminal offence). Our ruling class absolutely resents the fact that the German people may have a channel for at least somewhat uncensored communication. Unfortunately, we don’t have a first amendment that would put some restrictions on their lust for control and power.

Wow, the amount of depravity in some academic circles is astonishing.

The article links [1] the case of a PhD student at the University of Florida who was forced to participate in such a publication collusion ring and was pressured to commit scientific fraud by fabricating results and submitting them to a conference [2], being threatened with physical harm should he decide to go public.

This student saw no way out and decided to kill himself.

Just a few days after the suicide, the department thought it would be appropriate for the student's own lab to have a "fun" excursion and to document it on Instagram [3].

I'm lost for words.

[1] https://medium.com/@tnvijayk/potential-organized-fraud-in-ac... [2] https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the... [3] https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz1EExLhdYD/

Any reasonable definition of "observing" presupposes a conscious observer and it is possible for you to observe yourself being conscious (I assume). Indeed, consciousness is observable in a much more direct sense than gravity.

I'm having a hard time understanding your post -- my depth of thinking may well not be on par with yours. Its obvious that science as a whole explains a hierarchy of phenomenona, with a given phenomenon (like radiation propagation) often being explained ("why does it happen in this specific way") by a more fundamental theory that provides an overarching account of a set of phenomena.

The point is that every update of a scientific theory shifts old "why" questions to new ones. Science will not ever and does not aim to provide an answer to the ultimate question of why anything exists at all or why a given theory of everything applies rather than another (indeed, string theory for example posits a possible, if not actual theory of everything).

In this sense, in the scientific study of consciousness, we do not aim for an ultimate account of why the laws of nature give rise to consciousness. Instead, it is about explaining a natural phenomenon within a theoretical framework that allows us to make predictions with respect to experimental outcomes.

I think you are confusing science with philosophy. In science, solving a problem amounts to building a (quantitative) theory that allows us to predict phenomena and outcomes in the real world. We say that we have understood a phenomenon when we have a self-consistent theory that makes predictions validated in experiments.

The ultimate question of "why" reality behaves in a way that is congruent with a given theory is left to philosophers.

Your claim that a theory of consciousness would simply "shift the problem" is only true with respect to these philosophic (arguably unscientific) types of questions.

Consider the problem of gravity. Very coarsely, we have moved from Aristotle's theory of gravity: the natural place of things is on the ground and things like to stay in their natural place, to Newtonian gravity: objects are attracted with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses, to general relativity: objects follow geodesics in curved spacetime, with the curvature determined by the energy content of space.

Our grasp on gravity has certainly improved greatly, but the "why" questions have simply been shifted.

Consciousness is a natural phenomenon and as such can be subject to scientific study. The ultimate question of why the laws of nature are as they are is not part of this project and is best entertained after closing time.

I'm sad to say its anything but scaremongering.

I don't know about the US, but in Germany its common practice to spray either legal CBD weed or regular weed with synthetic cannabinoids and sell it as "Haze". The same goes for hash.

This practice has been widely publicized and is regularly confirmed through tests (see drug checking websites). A quick Google search will demonstrate the abundant availability of the raw materials (fake hash, legal CBD weed, synthetic cannabinoids, fake packaging). Besides this objective evidence, it is both my personal experience and common knowledge on Germany's streets that laced weed is the norm at this point.

Its obvious that this would happen when there is no regulation but strong financial incentives to produce this crap. Many customers don't care or explicitly look for the much stronger high that these laced products provide.

You would be lucky if any actual THC is involved, nowadays its mostly synthetic semi-legal cannabinoids in the black market, at least in Germany (apparently even in some coffee shops in the Netherlands). The market desperately needs to be regulated.

The author clearly does not have a basic understanding of (quantum) physics, yet makes the bold assertion that his "theory" explains quantum mechanics and relativity. For example, his distributed simulation idea is obviously incompatible with basic results of quantum mechanics [1]. An actual theory would make quantitative predictions beyond drawing heuristic connections in a prosaic wall of text.

Its truly impressive that you can build an academic career in philosophy by producing such content. The days where GPT-4 will advance to a faculty position in this field are probably not that far ahead.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_nonlocality

Its more like FB decided to go with the nuclear option, Z, instead of X or Y. This is reminiscent of mob-like extortion tactics, not of good-faith engagement with the legislative process of a democracy.

And the drafters of that law very intentionally made the definition of news content as vague and broad as possible, to maximize the damage and thus minimize the odds of Facebook actually doing it.

Did you get that narrative straight from FB's PR department?

The alternative would have been for FB to clarify what you say is opaque about the legislation. The fact that FB would rather outright ban charities and emergency service providers instead of clarifying the spirit of the law shows you that they are not operating in good faith and will maximize their profits at all societal costs.