migro23

If true, that's pretty sad.

Thanks for the link. Reading the rationale for not signing the legislation the governor wrote

"By focusing only on the most expensive and large-scale models, SB 1047 establishes a regulatory framework that could give the public a false sense of security about controlling this fast-moving technology. Smaller, specialized models may emerge as equally or even more dangerous than the models targeted by SB 1047 - at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good".

This doesn't make much sense to me. Smaller models might be more dangerous so lets not place safeguards on the larger models because they advance in favor of the public good? Some pretty big assumptions are made here, does this make sense to anyone else?

We need AI systems that are clear on what they know and what they don't know, and don't "hallucinate" or get lost, before they can be trusted to do things on their own. And ways to keep the AI slaves subservient (the "alignment" problem.) Those are easier problems than ones already solved, but they are not solved yet.

Out of curiosity, why do you think the "alignment" problem is easier to solve than problems already solved?

You're welcome. I must add that I am not a doctor so take the above with the appropriate level of skepticism on your behalf. I am only summarising what I have learned from books and have omitted A LOT of detail.

Recommended further reading

- Pure, White and Deadly (John Yudkin)

- Fat Chance (Robert Lustig)

- Outlive (Peter Attia) contains an excellent and concise synopsis of the mechanisms behind metabolic disease

In a fire, we see firefighters, that doesn't mean firefighters cause fire. In diabetic patients, we see high glucose level. That doesn't mean eating high GI food causes someone to have diabetes.

This is correct but probably not in the way you think. It is not the glucose in and of itself that is the problem but the level of the hormone insulin circulating around your system that is at the root of Type II diabetes. Glucose and insulin are highly related. Insulin is released by the pancreas to help control the level glucose in our blood.

Virtually no insulin is required when metabolising fats, a small amount is required for protein and a larger amount of insulin is required when dealing with glucose dense carbohydrate based foods. The faster a carbohydrate is metabolised the greater the dose of insulin required to quell the resulting glucose rush in the blood.

What does the insulin do? As a hormone it has many functions. The presence of insulin in the blood signals to all cells to burn sugar (glucose) rather than fats (ketones) for their energy. It prompts the cells in the skeletal muscles to store up glucose in the form of glycogen for later use and it signals the liver to store excess glucose that is not immediately needed. Once the liver and muscles are full then the liver then converts any excess to triglycerides.

Where do the triglycerides go? They get stored as subcutaneous fat all over but largely in the belly (in men) and bum/upper legs (in women). What happens when subcutaneous stores are full? Then the triglycerides are shoved anywhere and everywhere. Fat is pushed into muscle cells as well as the cells in individual organs. The fat molecules present in cells in organs are particularly pernicious (visceral fat) but any cells that contain these triglycerides seems to disrupt the insulin signalling within the cell. This results in insulin resistance i.e., the ineffectiveness of insulin to signal to the cell to take up excess glucose.

When sufficient threshold of insulin resistance is reached, you will get higher blood sugar readings and a higher A1C at which point your doc will say you have prediabetes or full on type II diabetes.

Insulin is the master key variable that unlocks the type II diabetes puzzle. High blood sugar levels are just a symptom. The problem with modern day Type II diabetic care is they consider the high blood sugar as the root problem. So this is treated with meds such as metformin and eventually MORE insulin. Understanding type II diabetes as a disease of too much insulin sheds the disease in a very different light.

Anyway, you are correct, the high glucose level per se is not the cause, but high levels of insulin constantly circulating around your system is the big problem. Of course an effective way of doing that is to continuously eat foods dense in glucose and fructose that are metabolised very quickly e.g., cookies, ice-cream, orange juice etc.

If we look at the Blue Zone, many people eat mostly carb. So carb/high GI food definitely doesn't cause diabetes

Blue Zone areas such as Okinawa, you do find people eating carb rich foods but they are also high in fibre e.g., root vegetables, sweet potatoes etc. look at books by Robert Lustig to learn more about the importance of fibre in relation to metabolism and diabetes risk.

It's as if something can finally fill their bandwidth, keep up with their thoughts, and answer those questions in real-time. No wonder they get angry when it's time to put away the iPad - they're engaged at a high level.

Or they are angry because by taking away the iPad you are interrupting their dopamine rush. Whether your iPad + Internet/social media/YouTube is engaging them to fullest maximizing growth potentiation or is simply turning their brains into dopamine chasing crack heads is up for debate. It may be somewhere in the middle and whether the positives outweigh the negatives is individual for each child/person and how and how often they engage with it.

Regardless, I think there are more variables at play than you outline above.

With all the respect that is possible on an anonymous forum like Hacker News but I think you are wrong to not be concerned about a person receiving millions in donation funding (1) to counter racism who defines racism using the same word. It's a serious red flag and with the benefit of hindsight if you read the NY times article linked below there was and is very good reason to be concerned.

The person who asked the question states that he listened to the talk and did not hear any definition of racism. This is why he asked the question. If you're really curious you can listen to the whole talk (2). Not that I would recommend listening to the whole thing.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/25/opinion/columnists/kendi-...

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzuOlyyQlug

I understand your skepticism, but I was intending to use the term descriptively, not pejorative. Apologies if any offence was taken.

Do you see any problem in using the term you are trying to define in your definition of that term?

'"What is racism?" could fill a book'

Agree, it is a complex topic but anyone that suggests that Martin Luthar King Jr. was racist because he claimed that "he would like to be judged not by the colour of my skin but the contents of my character" like Robin DiAngelo has (and Kendi falls into this category because he describes [and defines!!!] racism in the same way that DiAngelo does) is not worth the time in my humble opinion. There is a potentially unlimited number of books to read and we all have limited amount of time so some sort of filter is required. And anyone that thinks in a way that leads them to believe that Martin Luther King Jr. was racist is way off and not worth it.

The reason I'm saying this and why I referenced "post modernist" in my original quote is that these people (Kendi, DiAngelo) are defining racism in a way where the intent of the perpetrator of perceived racism is omitted and ignored. This is why I believe the Kendi definition in the video is no accident, he's trying to define it in way such that the intent of individual or group does not come into the equation. Whether you intend to be racist or not does not matter, you are racist by definition if you have the right (or wrong) colour skin.

Post modernism provides the theoretical underpinning of this claim as this school of though claims that objectivity does not exist, it is a phantom and a harmful one at that. There is merely a collection of different subjective experiences and beliefs and my subjective interpretation is as good as anyone elses. So if I interpret your action as racist then according to post modernist doctrine by definition it is racist, regardless of whether you intend to be or not.

Can't you see the problem here? Can't you see the potential problems that wide spread adoptation of such ideas on racism outlined above that are esposed by Kendi, DiAngelo and others would have on society and how it provides an awful basis for the successful collaboration of large and diverse number of people? Defining people by their race, what's more, trying to solve the problem of racism by focusing more on ones race making it the center of your being is in my opinion a political, social, moral and philosophical deadend. Go ahead and read the book but in my opinion it is a waste of time and possibly even worse than that.

"Humans aren't robots. They aren't flawless. Every prolific public speaker messes up and says something that's complete nonsense while trying to collect the right word."

Competely agree, what's jarring is that he is replying to a simple question asking to define something that is literally the focal point of his intellectual career. It is possible that he just messed up and said something that as you say was 'complete nonsense'. But for me a simple accident is not the most likely reason given the context.

"Surely this isn't the first time he's been asked this question on camera if it's such an important part of his persona. Why this clip? If he consistently defines it poorly, that's one thing. I can't take what could be his worst attempt to define it as normal."

Fair enough, can you source any other examples of him defining racism?

Granted a book can contain much more context that might help the author save face but claiming that the "framing of the video is plainly and severely biased" is tenuous. Why? Because the clip was self contained, It contained 1 question "Please give your definition of racism" and 1 answer that was a definition of racism that was self referential.

You could claim he mis-spoke but c'mon, here's a guy who wrote a book about racism, his full time gig is lecturing primarly around the topic of racism in a University and appears all over the place speaking about it. If he cannot give a straight-up coherent definition of racism off the cuff then there is something seriously wrong. My guess is that this compeletely inadequate definition he gave truly reflects how he thinks and frames the topic of racism and articulating it so briefly it highlights how ridiculous it is.

You may disagree with this interpretation and that's fine but claiming the clip is biased is weak because the clip itself is complete, no editing/cutting and contains 1 very simple question and a complete albeit incoherent answer. Indeed the video contains added text but ignore that, just focus on what he (Kendi) says. That should suffice to support my previous comment.

Once I heard Kendi's definition of racism (1) I could no longer take that guy seriously. He is a social justice warrior public intellectual of the post modernist variety leading me to think he is either innocently and unknowningly deluded or an intentional and nefarious grifter profitting from giving apparent credence to the hard left hardliners. A similar role that Jordan Peterson leverages to make a living arguing or giving theoritical support for the religious right.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_IpV9rrcGc (it's a 2 minute video and totally worth it!)

"Because ads don't work on me" I used to think like this also until it dawned on me that I have no idea where the motivations and reasons for my decisions come from. This is because they are almost entirely subconscious. And if they are subconscious we have no real way of knowing whether we are or are not influenced by advertising.

e.g., visited the Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam when I was a late teenager which was basically an advertising museum of all their advertisements going back to the 1950s. Before that day I had never drank Heineken but after that I found myself drinking it regularly for years. If you asked me if I was influenced by advertising I would have said no way. Now I'm more open minded to that possibility hence I use adblock to shield my poor defenceless brain.

To be fair, vaccines can be created in a matter of days now so the benefit of gain of function research to anticipate the virus that will cause the next pandemic is modest at best.

Temper this proposed modest benefit with the potential cost in terms of human adapted viruses being accidentially/intentionally released in the wild given the vagaries of both biolab security protocols in the labs accross the world conducting this kind of research and individual human psychology makes the justification of such research a pretty hard sell.

Granted overtraining is a thing but undertraining or no training is also a thing. At the level most people are at (sedentary or undertrained) coupled with the fact that people have reasonable intuitions as to when they feel tired or not, the risks of overtraining is signficantly less that the benefits of regular exercise both physically and mentally.

You do mention inflammation in a previous comment and overtraining increases it but does the negative consequence of inflammation due to overtraining on how one feels subjectively outweigh the cascade of endorphins and neurotransmitters in response to exercise that correspond to an uplift in mood or an alleviation of stress? I'm not sure but in the given context (original post) your point is valid but of much less concern probabilistically and physiologically.

I do grant however that that is only my opinion and very much up for debate.

Do you have access to cold water. sea lake, bath with ice? Get in on a regular basis (with necessary precautions)! Access to a sauna? Get in on a regular basis. Engage in regular exercise, cardio is great. Don't feel like it? Do it anyway, treat it like it's meds because in a very real sense it is. Get your diet in order. Sugar is the devil! Get your sleep in order. Try and get to sleep before midnight and when you wake up in the morning go outside (before 9am) and get some morning light in your eyes. It improved my sleeping pattern immensely.

It may not be a dead cert cure for depression but all of the above has accumulative effects over time and it is more difficult to feel bad mentally when you are feeling really good physically.

I was countering the idea that was being repeated throughout this thread which was "of course it couldn't be Russia who did this, it is they who stand to benefit if it is functioning". This conclusion is errorsome for all kinds of reasons as there are plenty of motivations for why Russia and more specifically Putin would do such a thing.

The pipelines represented zero leverage at this point. No gas was being supplied by them and it would be politically untenable for any European country to buy it using these pipelines while Putin is still in charge. So as far as Putin was concerned (not Russia) these pipelines have zero value.

That debate was long dead at least while Putin remained in power

That possibility is long gone. Damaging the Nord Stream pipeline however gives Putin reason to continue to not supply gas (rather than flat out breaking existing contracts) hence maximising the possibility for civil disruption in Europe over the Winter. The less gas there is in Europe the more chance of this occurring. No one knows for sure at this point but all these comments on this thread that there isn't reason or motive for Russia to do this is complete nonsense.

People need to stop thinking of 'Russia' (or any other country for that matter) as a single monolith. For example, a possible motive that may be bad for Russia but good for Putin is that maybe he wants to deter any would be assassination attempt coming from within the Kremlin by making it abundantly clear that there will be no going back to business as usual if he was to be eliminated. Blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines is a very good way to achieve that.

We as regular citizens have limited info, really we don't know what's going on. But don't assume it definitely isn't Russia because of whatever reason that happens to seem plausible to you.

We are in agreement so, in that bikes are an absolutely essential component of a more sustainable transport infrastructure. 20% by the way is a very large number in the context of the total number of trips taken by any given population and unlike you I do not believe this is an upper limit of what can be achieved with bikes but this is a separate discussion.

I just wanted to clarify a bugbear with me which is the "people don't use bikes because the weather is crappy". I know nuance is lost in such a few amount of words and that's probably not what you are saying in totality but i just wanted to highlight this point.

As an aside, I lived in a large city where amenities such as supermarkets were relatively far away. For a couple of years I got away with not owning a car and using a bike for all shopping needs. There are some examples of where a car would have been way more convenient but the fact of the matter is I made do without it. There are a large number of trips that I made with the bike that I wouldn't have done if I did have a car. Humans are creatures of convenience. There are some trips where a car (or something similar) is absolutely essential but for the vast majority it is not. In situations of necessity it is amazing what can be achieved. We are not living in an age of necessity with regards to means of transport but we really should be if the climate science is to be believed.

I take your point(s) that the argument cant be "Everyone just use bikes and trains". That's obviously not practical but to be fair it's not what is being suggested either.

But in relation to the point you made about bad or cold weather being a factor for bikes being an impractical mode of transport. Please take a few minutes to consider the points and examples provided in this video (1).

TLDW: There is a town in Finland (Oulu) where cycling is a primary mode of transport (over a fifth of of all trips are by bike and 77% of people cycle occasionally) even in winter when it gets down to -20 Celsius.

Weather is always spouted as a reason for not investing in bike infrastructure which is really annoying because that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. It's the lack of safe and adequate bike infrastructure that stops people from cycling. Anyway, I thought it was worth adding that point of nuance to the discussion.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

Completely agree. My views stated above however don't rest purely on these observations because the data (my observations) are inherently noisy. A certain amount of inference needs to be made based on direct behavioural observation of others and with any inference comes a margin of uncertainty. I outlined these observations in response to someone who seemed to object or disagree with my original comment but gave very little in terms of supporting argument. But my views on these matters do not solely rest on observations of others but also by my own experience as a conscious and self aware (I think :) being and reading about the ideas of what others think about this issue of "happiness".

Disclaimer: I don't think my original comment is correct in any absolute sense, but I do believe that it is a more promising and fruitful direction than merely perusing pleasure for its own sake, based on my own experience and the observed behavioral and emotional patterns of some of my most intimate relationships

If you are equating 'hedonism' and 'living in the moment' then we have a language issue. Which is understandable as our language for such concepts and our language for mental states in general is not very well defined. My interpretation of hedonism is seeking pleasure for pleasures sake. Pleasure is the end goal and the more that is experienced the better!

Living in the moment is a stated goal of many contemplative disciplines including ones that explicitly eschew any hedonistic tendencies by practicing some flavour of asceticism.

Actually an argument could be made that hedonism can lead you astray from the present moment as your yearnings and desires increase for more and more pleasure the more you try and satiate these desires which usually entails some yearning for some pleasure experience in the future.

Living in the moment it seems is closer to the bullseye in terms of ones ability to experience well being. Hedonism just breeds further desire which by definition gives rise to what Buddhists termed Dukkha which is often poorly translated as 'suffering' but a more apt word would be 'dissatisfaction' (1)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha

Some elaboration on your opinion would provide a greater contribution to the discussion. As an aside however, 'Henry' in Oscar Wilde's A Picture of Dorian Gray provided the most beautiful and articulate defence of hedonism I have ever read. But I am still convinced that in relation to the project of the promotion of ones long-term well-being hedonism is a philosophical and psychological dead-end.

In my own experience the more I satiated my hedonistic desires the more I wanted and the less pleasure I attained from doing so. Furthermore it promoted a sense of selfishness in me that made the experience of living less fulfilling. Couple that with my own observations working in a variety of medical settings encountering a wide range of people from all walks of life. Without exception I noticed that the people who were selfish were unhappy and the people who were the most selfish were the most unhappy (correlation not causation I know but pertinent none the less). Generally the people who were most concerned about others well-being were gifted with a light and pleasant demeanour that gave me the strong impression that they were experiencing life in an altogether different (and to my eye more desirable) way than those that were selfish.

And the pattern running through all of that was that selfish people were always unhappy with what they had or what they were given, invariably showed little or no appreciation for anything. Selfless people were always appreciative of everything and anything.

The above is anecdotal but from my prospective not inconsequential. And for me at least, intentionally practising appreciation, when I manage to do so, never fails to have a positive impact on how I feel in the world. Just my two cents.

Many people conflate hedonistic pleasure with happiness. This is a big mistake that leads to addiction, selfishness and inevitable dissatisfaction. Even happiness as a sustainable state may be an unrealistic or unattainable goal. For me the answer to this puzzle is a finely tuned balance between self growth and contentment with perhaps a heavier emphasis on contentment. Regular and consistent periods of reflection and appreciation for what you have (no matter how small) is the recipe for promoting states of contentment. Pleasure is ephemeral, happiness comes and goes but contentment can be reliably and directly cultivated.

Thanks, all my college notes are in onenote and I would love to get them out of there. Ill give it a shot.

Meditation is a broad term encompassing many different practices and traditions (as you know). From my own experience, meditation is a means to understand (and more importantly *experience*) that what I consider a 'self' doesn't exist (from a first person perspective). It's an illusion created by my own mind via perpetual thought imagery, constant inner dialogue/self talk that is propagating and clinging to a fabricated image of who I am.

What keeps this going is the phenominon of thinking without realising you are thinking. You are simply being captured by thoughts that on the face of it (from the first person perspective) are coming out of nowhere. The analogy used is a dream. When you go to sleep you dream and usually you are not puzzled by the fact that a moment ago you were in your bed and the next you are in this dream situation. You completely lose the perspective that you are in a dream. Thoughts have this same quality. At the core of this issue is the sense of self.

Meditation is a means of becoming aware of this process (hence the practice of becoming aware of your thoughts). To do this successfully you need to develop a certain level of concentration (which is why there are practices that involve focus on the breath/some other meditation object singularly).

Sometimes people get caught up on the whole idea of meditation and try too hard (hence the gurus saying 'do nothing'). They revert back to the idea of a self and they try to improve themselves in some way. Really in meditation we are trying to become aware of something, a continual process playing out in your minds, a perpetual stream of thoughts that we are completely unaware of that is distorting our perceptions, creating an identity (in the first person sense) from which then arises all the emotional and psychological problems we tend to encounter in our daily lives that are as relevant today as when the Buddha was knocking around.