summerdown2

I don't really know how to respond politely to downplaying genocide.

Sorry. I don't intend to downplay genocide and I don't want to come across that way.

What I'm trying to critique is (so far as I can read it from your post) your inability to see that two things can be the same in one respect - but apparently not notice that one is much bigger than the other.

If it helps, I'm not American and don't have any option to 'win' as far as US politics goes. I think you are right that Kamala Harris was facilitating genocide. But I also think you are wrong to not take into account that Donald Trump is a whole order of magnitude worse.

Trump is attacking allies too, but they’re both criminal.

In other news, a mouse and an elephant are both mammals.

If only there was some obvious way to tell the difference between them.

My first instinct was, I had underspecified the location of the car. The model seems to assume the car is already at the car wash from the wording.

Doesn't offering two options to the LLM, "walk," or "drive," imply that either can be chosen?

So, surely the implication of the question is that the car is where you are?

I suspect it's projection as a defense, because a number of Brits do see the US as some sort of failing police state that's snatching people off the streets.

I guess if you get your attack in first you'll be able to go "we're not the fascists, you're the fascists."

None of that is to excuse the legislation, of course, which is not very good and will have a lot of poor consequences.

Trump says many things that nobody actually believes.

It's not a valid argument to use the general case here. Because in the case of this particular statement, it clearly isn't true that "nobody actually believes" it. It's clear that many people actually believe it.

That's actually a good political strategy in tough times: Keep your opponents always unsure about what you're gonna do next.

I mean, sure. But in this case Denmark thought they were an ally, not an opponent. Should they also be unsure about whether one of their territories is going to be attacked?

Or are they, after all, an opponent?

A scientific theory doesn't have to be wrong or right. It can simply be useful as long as the limitations are understood. Eg, the domains where it applies and the domains where you shouldn't use it.

Isaac Asimov wrote a really great essay about this, in which he pointed out that some people thought the Earth was flat. And it is flat, on a local scale. Then people thought it was round. And it is round, just not exactly. Then it was considered an oblate sphere. And it is an oblate sphere - just not exactly.

The main theme of his essay is to point out that a theory can be wrong, but pretty accurate. Enough for rough work. And the one that replaces it can also be wrong, but even closer. Etc. So all theories in succession can be wrong. The real question is how wrong a theory is, and how useful it is.

Here's the essay:

https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html

To be honest, my ethical calculation comes out the other way around.

If someone is playing honest with me in good faith, and they ask for a show of good faith back, I think reciprocity, good manners and ethics favour the idea that I should do so.

If someone asks me to play fair with them, and then tries to shaft me - then any consideration I might have had for their position goes out the window. I don’t feel the slightest need to play fair with them because they are a bad faith actor.

To be clear, this is purely an opinion about ads on YouTube and whether I have to sit in one of two ethical buckets, not advocating an anything goes position.

My opinion is that there’s a third ethical position, which is a bit like the classical solution to the prisoner’s dilemma: co-operate until the other person plays you false. After that, don’t consider them a friend, and there’s no ethical problem in refusing to cooperate with them.

I don’t like ads, but I think the only ethical options are posting to avoid them (preferably direct to artists) or watching ads

I think that ethical position is weakened by the fact many ads are links to scams and unethical things. You aren't just supporting creators by watching adverts, you're also potentially exposing yourself to bad faith actors.

I have heard good things about their customer service. But I put in my postcode to their site and the response was:

For your location, forecast download sync speed is 27-37Mb/s and forecast upload sync speed is 4.2-6.9Mb/s.

I’m currently on ten times that and was considering going higher next time. Unfortunately that’s not currently competitive with Virgin.

If those companies using chat bots are failing to provide value, then they won't be competitive and they will go away.

The difficulty is, this is obscured to the customer.

Let's say I have a broadband account in a country with competitors I can choose between (eg the UK, where I can have BT or Virgin). I've already chosen the best package for me. I'm ringing up after six months of good service to fix my intermittent line drop.

The chat bot is terrible and I have to wait until the problem goes away on its own.

Unfortunately for me, I can't just guarantee that switching to the other service will make a difference, because chat bots are not core service. I can compare broadband options and pick the best, and I'm already on that. Now I have to gamble that some combination of:

(broadband option) + (customer service) is higher than the one I'm on.

Unfortunately for me, I have no way of checking this. There's every chance that I'll end up on a worse broadband option and a worse customer service option.

I don't even mind the sponsored placements in my search. I'd just like a search for X to give me a page full of X, not random junk bearing no relationship to X.

Is there any way to do that on ios?

I first turned on my ipad, then sat for several minutes staring at a box on the screen that clearly wanted input but had no continue button. Only slowly did it dawn on me that there was a hidden scroll region that would enable it.

There are loads of murder methods the author hasn't thought of.

Just off the top of my head, you could have murder by: g-forces, laser (James Bond), removal of medicine, excitement to heart attack, introduction of disease, cannibalism, wood chipper, exsanguination, leaving no choice but suicide, freezing, and, in the case of one famous King of England, a red hot poker up the rear end. I'm sure I've read all of these at some time in one book or another.

On the other hand, 30 million Raspberry Pis have been sold and an enormous number of people are learning to code as a result of free online resources. I'm not so sure the end of general-purpose computing for the masses is all that over.

Even your example describes someone who, while he isn't fluent with it, actually owns a general purpose computer.

Yes, I completely agree.

I'm not sure whether it's one of his expected use-cases, but his work has made it so simple for me to get things from my writing group quickly onto my kindle. Plus, my own draft stories.

As someone who spends far too long on a computer screen as it is, the simple workflow of putting things easily on a kindle has been a real positive for me. And doubly so in this time of lockdown and Covid.

If the author does browse these forums - thank you so much for your work.

You realise that's exactly the model of libraries, right?

A small fee (taxation) in return for open access to literature, and in most cases music and film too.

From your comments, I'd almost believe the government were doing well, rather than overtaking Italy in deaths per day at this point on the curve:

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

All the reports you've mentioned are also echoed throughout the UK press.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/02/shambles-cha...

Even the Telegraph - a massively pro Tory paper that has had Boris Johnson as a writer - is ripping into the government over its testing.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/02/thursday-morning...

Almost no countries in the world have enough tests to systematically test their medical staff.

Key word that... 'almost.'

From 'Yes, Prime Minister,' a comedy show in the UK in the 80s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak

My prediction: this will be the one post where the 1% rule doesn't apply, as a much larger number will be spurred into action by the topic in question - and end up actually saying something.

Even if your life is dominated entirely by self-interest, and the interests of the rest of the population isn't important to you, don't you have any elderly relatives? Or friends with pre-existing conditions?

Speaking only for myself, I have elderly in-laws who I'd rather stick around, a wife with asthma and I know well two people on immunosuppressants. So I'm not taking this lightly at all.

Well, that was hugely frustrating. It reminded me of those satires of local newspapers, where the crash of the Hindenburg is described as "local man delayed."

I get that the author has a real interest in missing documentation. And the issue of missing documentation from the colonial period can be really interesting. But it's just unfair to the reader to begin a story with a mystery, and then not actually give any solution to that mystery.

I get it - the answer is to "buy my book." Not when it's so unsatisfying, no I won't.

Sorry for the frustration coming through here, but this story really annoyed me. It's bait and switch of the worst kind.

Cool!

Have you seen this cartoon? It's something I remembered from way back, and finally found it again!

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2569

Interesting. I tend to think you can surprise yourself. I write stories as a hobby, and my characters often surprise me.

I'd say it's down to two things:

a) Having to imagine a different personality's perspective, and

b) Having some time to think of a better answer than the off-the-cuff one.

Point a tends to happen whenever I make an effort to see the world from someone else's point of view, or make up an imaginary character to have a conversation with.

Point b tends to happen in my own head when I get quiet time - like during a long walk or shower and a thought I'd never imagined before comes up.

It can have some predictive power, too. Imagine, for example, there's an important negotiation coming up. You'll be sitting on one side of the table wanting the things you want. It does help to put yourself in the opposite seat mentally, thinking about what they want to get, and how you'd go about trying to get it. Maybe even trying on for size the best arguments you might make for their position.

This sounds like a terrible rewrite. If I can think of places they fail, surely real life can come up with more. Essentially, this would lead to either:

a) The tyranny of the majority, or

b) The tyranny of those with strong preferences.

Let's say 51% of a population wants to get rid of the other 49% and wishes they were dead. What would stop the machine making it happen?

Let's say a super-person is born, who just wants stuff more than anyone else alive. Maybe he's had a bad childhood and been through terrible things, so now those things that he wants reach the level of desperation for him. Wouldn't this make the worth of his values more than other people to the machines?

Finally:

Still, Russell feels optimistic. Although more algorithms and game theory research are needed, he said his gut feeling is that harmful preferences could be successfully down-weighted by programmers

... so we're back to square one. We've created a learning machine that can come up with its own morality. But... we're going to have to down-weight certain behaviours just to be sure. Doesn't that simply recurse to:

a) Down-weighting removes the learning, and

b) We have to trust ourselves to correctly program and define the down-weighting.

Many people do! This is the 'architect' vs 'gardener' debate. A lot of writers start out with the notion of a story, then let it develop in the writing. If I remember correctly, Stephen King writes this way.

Well, in writing terms, it seems to have worked for Ray Bradbury:

The best hygiene for beginning writers or intermediate writers is to write a hell of a lot of short stories. If you can write one short story a week—it doesn’t matter what the quality is to start, but at least you’re practicing, and at the end of the year you have 52 short stories, and I defy you to write 52 bad ones. Can’t be done. At the end of 30 weeks or 40 weeks or at the end of the year, all of a sudden a story will come that’s just wonderful.

From: https://lithub.com/ray-bradburys-greatest-writing-advice/

... incidentally, also Neil Gaiman's advice in the Masterclass lectures.

The reason it works so well for writing is, as Neil Gaiman points out, that if you work for a year on one story, you've probably practised starting a story 52 times. But you've still only practised finishing a story once. And getting into the habit of finishing things is one of the most important habits to get into.

I recently spent time in hospital, and came away convinced that the one thing that could reduce the greatest amount of human suffering would be a really good 24/7 painkiller without long-term side effects.

Time after time I saw patients pleading with a nurse for more pain relief, and the answer came back, "You can only have so many in a 24 hour period, so you have to wait for another hour before I can give you any more."

The number of people I saw on one small ward who had hours each day full of really bad pain convinced me that pain relief would be one of the best places a philanthropist could spend money. If you're in that much pain you can't think properly, can't enjoy life, and it's all ultimately unnecessary, because, once a doctor and a patient agree there's something wrong and what to do about it, additional long-term suffering doesn't add anything to the experience.

People can have cancer. They can have arthritis. They can have a bad back, or kidney stones, or pancreatitis. I do think all those should be cured if possible. But the one constant misery for so many people, even if someone simply has old age - is pain.

There seems to be a gap in the argument between step 2 and steps onwards from 4.

The experiment assumes that, given the opportunity, the universe will give a person the knowledge of how to extend their life. But of course that knowledge could have been given at any point in their life up to then, and at any point afterwards. Why hasn't a computer glitch emailed you the contents of an immortality potion before now?

The answer I would suggest is that this is not the optimum moment for life extension, and there's no reason the universe has to do anything if a better local minimum can occur.

My corollary for this experiment would be:

4. There exists a message in the encoding that can extend one's life... but that message will only be given if

a) Having the message actually results in the timeline that does what is needed, and

b) There is not in fact a more optimum time that the universe might use later on.

The problem is that absent points a and b, the experiment proves nothing. It could well be that you wouldn't have correctly responded to any message given here, but instead the universe will choose a moment when you're 65 to announce a life extension drug has just been released into the upper atmosphere.

I don't disagree with you about leadership being hard. But the argument you use to get there is easily rebuttable:

If leading people is so goddamn easy compared to software engineering, why do so few engineers want to move into people leadership,

a) because they wouldn't enjoy it as much as their current job?

b) because for engineers, being a manager does not give them status amongst their peer group.

and why do so many of them absolutely suck at it?

a) citation needed. Is it provable that engineers are particularly worse at leadership than the rest of the population per capita?

b) if engineers tend to suck at being managers, it doesn't show that managerial roles are harder than engineering ones. How good are managers at attempting engineering roles, for comparison?

That's only true if AlphaGo never makes a mistake or if AlphaGo will 100% always make the better or equal decision than a human + computer at any given state of the board.

Even if AlphaGo makes mistakes, and somewhere on the board a better move can be found, you would also need the human to reliably spot it.

Eg: AlphaGo makes a move. Let's say that at least 20% of AlphaGo moves can be bettered. Is this one of them? How can you tell? Most of the time, you'll mistakenly think a move can be improved and end up playing a worse one.

But, let's make AlphaGo even more fallible. Let's say that at least 50% of AlphaGo moves can be bettered. Again, is this one of those? How can you tell? And more to the point, on the times you are wrong, are you more wrong than AlphaGo is with its mistakes? Because even if you imagine you can spot a better move than AlphaGo and pick the actual better move 50% of the time, you also need your mistaken moves to be better than AlphaGo's mistaken moves or you'll still lose.

Worst of all, you can rule out a really good ability to spot AlphaGo's mistakes already. Let's say 99% of AlphaGo's moves have a better option. If you could spot them all, you'd be beating AlphaGo regularly on your own. As no human can now beat AlphaGo, this plainly isn't true.

So it's likely that:

a) No human can reliably pick a better move than AlphaGo and/or b) No human can reliably spot a move from AlphaGo can be improved, and/or c) Human mistakes are worse than AlphaGo mistakes, so even if you could fight it up to parity you'd still lose.