jd115

Funny, I've totally missed this.

I'm old enough to remember some number of months ago when GPT2 was described as "too dangerous to release".

Reminds me a bit of Genetic Programming as proposed by John Holland, John Koza, etc. Ever since GPT came out, I've been thinking of ways to combine that original idea with LLMs in some way that would accelerate the process with a more "intelligent" selection.

The paper explores the connection between two mathematical models used to study biological systems: Boolean networks and Petri nets.

Boolean networks model gene regulation and other biological processes using logical functions. The long-term behavior of these models, represented by "attractors", corresponds to observable biological states. Recently, a concept called "trap spaces" has made analyzing larger Boolean network models feasible. However, computing trap spaces relies on finding prime implicants of the logical functions, which gets harder as models get bigger and more complex.

(A prime implicant is a minimal set of conditions that ensures a Boolean function will be true. )

Petri nets are another type of model using places, transitions between places, and tokens to represent the state of a system. A key concept in Petri nets is a "siphon" - a set of places that once empty of tokens, remains empty.

The authors prove for the first time that there is an equivalence between trap spaces in a Boolean network and "conflict-free siphons" in the corresponding Petri net representation.

This connection allows properties of trap spaces to be studied using Petri net theory. It also enables a new approach to compute trap spaces by finding siphons in the Petri net, avoiding the hard prime implicant computation.

In practical terms, this pushes the boundaries of the size and complexity of biological systems that can be effectively modeled and studied using this approach.

They work how we want them to work. And nothing could be more on-topic than this right now. What the fuck is the point of remembering and saying "never again" if not to stop what is happening right now in front of our eyes?

Second, there can be no flame wars about this. Everyone agrees on the above.

The low-level thing that isn't understood is that intelligence is not progressive. You can not build up to it. Sure, you can forever continue to build better and better approximations of certain aspects of intelligence and pretend you're making progress, but you are not. Of course, there is great utilitarian value in those approximations, so we MUST continue to do this.

Still, my position is that NO progress has ever been made in the area of AI, and no progress will be made any time soon.

I'll take it a step further (in case I don't get enough downvotes for what I've written so far). I maintain that you CAN NOT build intelligence. You can only TAP INTO it. So the very direction in which all of our AI efforts are headed is a dead-end.

Um.. wiped out by Russia and what army?

Not far? It's about as far as it gets, really. Wouldn't you fully expect ANY nation to defend itself in this way?

Let's get something straight dude... Western politicians are not dumb for realising "Russia bad" over the past 4 yrs. They are dumb for NOT realising it 100 f'in years ago! Russia has been THE major exporter of evil in the world for over a century now and people are just now waking up, as if the entire RU shit-show over the past week has been utterly shocking and unexpected. Spare me.

Sorry, couldn't resist... Read the rest of your garbage. So wait, so... Putin is a western ploy? Well fuck my ignorance!

And if you're still "but, but, butt-ing" about this, I'd like to add one more thing.

It is not Putin driving the tanks. It isn't him shelling hospitals and nurseries. It isn't him giving commands to troops. It isn't him spewing brain-dead propaganda in RU media 24/7 for decades.

I really honestly don't want to hear any "but"s from "the people".

You reap what you sow.

So you're scared? You say "if I don't go kill innocent people, Putin will kill me". And what's the choice you make? You go kill innocent people.

Enough with the buts.

Nothing but humble pie for the people of Russia over the next 100 years. Make Germans feel like they got away with it easy.

If you make a distinction between soviet regime and current regime, I'm sorry, but I can't spend another second reading further into any other noise coming out of your keyboard.

Good point. Well worth thinking about.

Here's my take on this, which you are not going to like one bit. It goes like this...

The good people of Russia - and I'm not saying this with a tongue in cheek - the vast majority of the people of Russia truly are GOOD people, in the simplest, most sincere sense of the word... But they do need to go through some things.

You just don't get to support a murderous communist regime for 100 years and then say "but we had nothing to do with it". I'm sorry, but you had everything to do with it.

Here, let me correct the naive title for you: "China gets its first Italian unicorn"

Which is why they are depressed. They choose (over and over and over again, many times in each hour they make this CONSCIOUS CHOICE) to find this insulting, instead of empowering.

I am leaving out no-one. Joy is absolutely accessible to every living being, at all times, under all conditions.

There can be no such thing as toxic positivity. Your doubts are toxic, yes. But positivity can never be toxic. Life IS utterly binary and clear-cut in this respect, there are no grey areas, no nuances. There is an absolute good and it is joy. And it is 100% a personal choice, regardless of circumstances. Once again - it is the only ONE thing over which you have any control, at all times, no exceptions. You can always choose to be happy. AND that's enough!

Of course you choose whether to be happy. In fact, it is the ONLY thing you have control over. But it's the key to everything.

It's the one choice you have to make in every living moment. Keep making this right choice, and life is a song. Choose to look the wrong way and life becomes hard work.

There is nothing more to it. This is all anyone ever needs to know about life.

This is honestly baffling to me, I can't imagine how this can be. I get multiple emails each week from recruiters looking for that exact skill-set, and this is AFTER I've tried extra hard to unsubscribe from all such emails.

I have NO university degree and ZERO affiliation with anything remotely FAANG (I'm based in Europe, where relatively few people work for FAANG). There are no globally recognisable names on my CV.

I am still the highest paid person I personally know - by a rather high margin, because of my experience as a software engineer.

Since I dropped out of university almost 20 years ago, I have been consulting and contracting, focusing almost exclusively on Python, PostgreSQL and, more recently, AWS. This simple combination (I usually refuse to learn anything new - I don't think there have been many noteworthy new technologies in the past couple of decades) has made me millions over the years and I have never been left without work for any significant period of time.

Since the pandemic began, I have actually found myself contracting multiple roles concurrently, from my home, each paying significantly above the average developer rate. I've found I can do up to 3 - 4 at a time and still deliver results for each (declining to attend regular meetings helps).

That's literally missing the entire point of it. You already have this now - always had it. There's nothing new or interesting about what you're "proposing".

What IS new and interesting is getting employees who work 20% less, AND THEREFORE are 20% more productive (and presumably 20% happier), at the same cost.

Luckily, the latter is not entirely out of the question now! (Thank you Russia!)

Oh, I love this question!

And I love when I find myself in situations like this - although it happens more and more rarely as I age.

The answer, of course, is: perspective.

And there are all sorts of ways to shift your perspective, but the general heuristic is to step back, zoom out, and talk to yourself in broader, more generic terms. Details are your enemy when you're in a rut (although they turn into your best friend when you're on a roll!)

Take some time, over a number of days, to consciously and consistently quiet your mind. Just give yourself the luxury for a while to not worry or even think about the details of your situation. Try to find some broad positive themes about life in general. Some things that are, roughly, good. Just stay away from the details.

Take it easy. Disengage for a while and take time to breathe, to walk, to do simple things that are, fundamentally, pleasurable.

It won't take more than a few days to get yourself back on track. Juice will start flowing to you again soon enough. Just don't rush into it, simply let it come on its own terms, whenever it wants.

You'll be fine.

This is the single best comment I have ever read on HN.

Of course you won't see it glorified by HN folk, cause they're entirely elsewhere vibrationally. Too busy complaining. "Well, someone has to complain! Someone has to keep others accountable!" they cry. May be true, maybe not, but when all we do is complain, nothing gets done. Not for lack of effort and busyness, but for lack of faith and goodwill.

We must live on different planets. There are literally mountains of evidence publicly available, and many thoroughly researched books by respected lawyers and political scientists on the subject. You can't live in denial of the obvious and at the same time have the chutzpah to accuse others of lacking evidence. Who's the propaganda victim here?

What's another example? That the sun rises in the east? Oh, the fools who fall for propaganda!

It's called freedom. I don't think anyone would have it any other way.

Just curious - do you also think 90% of people are a serious concern?

This is the main problem I've always had with the evidence-based scientific approach. Just because all of your data points show the same thing, doesn't make that thing true. This just goes counter to all logic.

How is 122 ANYTHING other than a random number?

Oh, your set is all human lives ever recorded? Meh... Doesn't mean a thing. Your set is too small.

To me, it is self-evident that there is no natural limit to human lifespan. If anything, the existence of a natural limit should require proof, not the lack of it. But more importantly, spending time on proving something so random seems utterly useless to me, especially compared to the alternative of embracing the (far more natural) assumption that no such limit exists and working from there.

(But yea, with all this said, the article is a bit of a dud.)

LOLz well done, selling happy faces to the most cynical crowd on the internet :D Look at these comments! My oh-my.

Seriously though, good piece - if a bit shallow. It's a good start. People need to hear this.

Cynicism is the only evil in the world. The opposite, of course, is innocence - and, since this can't exist in pure form, the closest second is gullibility. Not ONE person here will agree that gullibility is a good thing, but I say it's our saviour. It is truly the best you can do in life.

Look, it's not that cynics are wrong... No. They are right. That's the problem. The problem is that they are right. And that's the root of all evil. They are limited - enslaved - by their reality. There's no escaping it. So the only thing they feel they can do is fight back, with all their might... And you know where this leads? Straight to hell.

I'll make it more painful.

The ones who fight corruption are the most corrupt.

The ones who fight injustice are the most cruel.

The ones who fight intolerance are least tolerant.

Your only moral obligation in life is to make this decision for yourself: Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be good?

If it's more important to be right - you're already on the loosing team. If it's more important to be good - now you are ACTUALLY right.