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1659447091

6,535 karma · joined August 2, 2022

"But the rational and the irrational appear such in a different way to different persons, just as the good and the bad, the profitable and the unprofitable. [...] For to one man it is consistent with reason to hold a chamber pot for another, and to look to this only, that if he does not hold it, he will receive stripes, and he will not receive his food: but if he shall hold the pot, he will not suffer anything hard or disagreeable. But to another man not only does the holding of a chamber pot appear intolerable for himself, but intolerable also for him to allow another to do this office for him. If, then, you ask me whether you should hold the chamber pot or not, I shall say to you that the receiving of food is worth more than the not receiving of it, and the being scourged is a greater indignity than not being scourged; so that if you measure your interests by these things, go and hold the chamber pot. "But this," you say, "would not be worthy of me." Well, then, it is you who must introduce this consideration into the inquiry, not I; for it is you who know yourself, how much you are worth to yourself, and at what price you sell yourself; for men sell themselves at various prices." - Epictetus, Discourses, 1.2.2; (G. Long, Trans.)
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1659447091··on Anthropic reported diary entry to police, woman faces felony charge
Depends on how good her lawyer is now
1659447091··on CEO of Mistral: AI is software. It can be controlled
> No one has any software without bugs and security flaws in it.

None of the software I have ever written contained bugs or security flaws.

But, sometimes misalignments can occur.

1659447091··on CEO of Mistral: AI is software. It can be controlled
You are talking about it. Mission accomplished.
1659447091··on CEO of Mistral: AI is software. It can be controlled
> it was up to third parties to discover them afterwards.

They did "discover" them afterwards though; goal achieved. You don't hack other companies, report yourself doing it, and then blame it on being ignorant of what you were doing -- that makes you look far too incompetent and should never be allowed online again.

But, set up some bots that hack other companies, pretend to not be looking, and once someone reports it (and funny enough, they will all pour in at once...) you get to imply that you are a high IQ genius that created a "super" Intelligent genie in a computer. Now people are paying attention that have no understanding of any of it and didnt care what this ai thing was about and didnt care to use it. But new eyes are looking so turn the drama to 10. Feign concern over this `misalignment` struggle, a real Goliath tug-o-war. But fear not you will bend this magical mighty beast into `alignment`, there will be no escaping the computer and materializing into an omnipotent great ape pony that will destroy us all on your watch. No siree, Bob. Grab the popcorn. And maybe new subscriptions.

1659447091··on Using LLMs to trace alchemical knowledge and decode 17th century letters
> “wouldn’t it be neat to find out if someone in your lineage wasn’t actually in it?”

There was a whole to-do with Richard III and finding a "non/false-paternity event" occurred. The genealogy tracing in that case though is impressive.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30281333

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-paternity_event

1659447091··on Using LLMs to trace alchemical knowledge and decode 17th century letters
Once you trace back centuries, in my case early 17th century, you run into issues of everyone having the same name, scarce scrapes of documentation, and other issues that can produce more than one plausible ancestor line. This ancestor was in successive junior lines so it's a lot of implication -- showing a pedigree chart with "Henry" born to "William" in 17th century England -- that isnt very helpful without piecing together a lot of scattered context from multiple sources and without being able to see what documents/evidence those researchers had.

So, theory is a common term used. Established theory because the family is included in 3-4 books written from the late 19th and 20th century covering large swaths of the related families and areas/interactions/movements etc.

Once you start getting back that far in time the people who trace genealogy for money and writing books, tend to be more through and understand the quirkier nuances that can tease apart families that your typical internet sleuthing researcher (me for example) can miss/conflate.

1659447091··on Ask HN: Any nerds out there who've read a lot of research papers?
> I am a jackass who usually vibecodes my way through assignments but even I don't want to write a cookie-cutter intro for my paper. I wanna write something that stays with the reader

I don't have any examples to offer; but you may be missing your calling in Marketing

1659447091··on Using LLMs to trace alchemical knowledge and decode 17th century letters
I'd caution others with believing caught "mistakes". (But am also interested in how you use it)

There is a farm cited as an ancestor origin by multiple deceased genealogist. Its a common POI that people with this shared ancestor try to find. Finding it could solidify the established line theory and finally debunk a small ancestor fraction's alternate theory.

Different LLM searches keep returning the same colony with invalid/made up references that don't even cite a partial name match. Manual searches throughout that area returns nothing as well. But since the LLM said so, a century+ of various research and work by professional genealogist gets severed from a crowd sourced public tree because "AI" returned a colony name that ended up helping the alt line.

I did eventually find what I believe is the origin farm, and it strengthens the history written by previous genealogist -- I tried to send the information to the tree maintainers and was outright ignored. LLMs fabricating locations apparently beats a listing in the National Heritage List for England of the exact place name, buildings from that time, and in one of the areas the larger english family is known to have been present.

1659447091··on Six-year-old breaks women's world Rubik's Cube record [video]
> a) objective scoring b) no gender split rankings b) women in the top 10, consistently?

Why are changing the criteria?

Here are a list of race results you can look through.[0]

Look at the longest distance & time races such as the multi day one and females are "in the top 10, consistently", in overall results.

And thats with currently only about 20% of ultra endurance runners are female -- but growing. Apparently the science has female physiology as potentially superior for the longer distances (>195 miles) and studies[1] show that they are faster in amateur pace per mile at the greater distances

[0] https://ultrarunning.com/calendar/race-results

[1] https://runrepeat.com/state-of-ultra-running

1659447091··on Six-year-old breaks women's world Rubik's Cube record [video]
Ultra-endurance sports/running. First read discussions about it here but can't remember the thread

https://www.fitnessfirst.com.au/get-there/new-study-finds-wo...

1659447091··on Claude discovers a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats
Why is everyone quick to point out how blogs/articles are "ai slop", but no one blinks an eye at the subtle, almost deceptive or manipulative, ways these companies choose words to nudge along the narrative that their LLM systems are conscious/sentient/persons/etc? The systems they are creating are impressive enough on its own merit. There is absolutely no need to play into the populations lack of understanding even the basics of systems by using language in such a slimy way.

    We gave Claude a prompt to search through a massive database of DNA sequences for interesting new examples of RTs. Our involvement was limited to the initial prompt and the lab work, while Claude agents combed through the database, investigated the distinct RT families, and used their own judgement to identify interesting candidates.
Alternative: We prompted Claude to find patterns of distinct RT families within a database of DNA sequences. The returned data included interesting candidates.

    After 21 hours spent searching this data by roughly 950 agents using 210 million tokens, one of the agents spotted something remarkable: a repeating pattern of DNA sequences that occurs next to the gene for an odd-looking RT.
Alternative: After running 950 instances for 21 hours, one of the instances hit on a repeating pattern of DNA sequences that occurs next to the gene for an odd-looking RT.

    After further analysis and testing in our lab, we recognized that this pattern marked a previously uncharacterized enzyme system found in bacteriophages (the viruses that infect bacteria) that we call array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART).
Alternative: We took the matched pattern data to the scientist in our lab to analyze. The scientist recognized that this data pattern marked a previously uncharacterized enzyme system found in bacteriophages (the viruses that infect bacteria) that we call array-associated reverse transcriptases (ART).

Maybe give more credit to where it is due, the actual real people scientist that verified data.

1659447091··on Trump says it's time to rebrand AI with a new name
> It'll be the Donald J.Trump Intelligent Computer.

Intelligent (or Intelligence) is both too long of a word and too highbrow; I'd say closer to the Donald J.Trump High IQ! Genius

1659447091··on I stopped drinking the AI Kool-Aid
> Let's say it was critical for the business, with no viable alternatives?

If its that critical for you why are you rolling the dice on a general email and ... waiting for an email back and forth? Something so important as a vender "license" deciding if your company succeeds or fails should not rely on an email sent to an address pulled on their website.

Find a contact, a human, drive (or fly) to their office and make an in-person appointment, show they are important to you. Otherwise that game of AI email tag should be more than enough to tell both parties just how not serious the whole thing is.

1659447091··on Uber ordered to pay $40M over death of woman left on Southern California freeway
> That's about the closest value you'll find to what human life is economically valued at

Again, that has nothing to do with what you are trying to make it mean.

> Do you have an alternate measure that is grounded in anything?

What? That is completely unrelated to this article and my post, I already clarified what that figured was for -- why are you stuck on this as determining a human lifes economical value? If that topic is near and dear to you for reasons you chose to keep hidden, I can understand why its got you bent, but this is not a relevant thread to air those personal grievances.

1659447091··on Uber ordered to pay $40M over death of woman left on Southern California freeway
> The US government values a statistical life at anywhere from $7 to $12M. Is there any evidence that this woman's lifetime earnings would've exceeded that?

Thats not what that means. "... when conducting a benefit-cost analysis of new environmental policies, the Agency uses estimates of how much people are willing to pay for small reductions in their risks of dying from adverse health conditions that may be caused by environmental pollution. [...] these estimates of willingness to pay for small reductions in mortality risks are often referred to as the "value of a statistical life.”[0]

> Is there any evidence it was Uber's policies or actions that caused this?

The arbitrator/judge believed there was enough that the company was legally responsible for the conduct and issued a fine to the company for that failure of responsibility to be paid to the parents -- not because he decided that was how much she was worth

[0] https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-v...

1659447091··on OpenAI Discloses Six New Incidents of ‘Concerning’ A.I. Behavior
So you agree, its the computer components that actually do the thing that is important, thus we should be talking about those components (software-tooling) which do the things
1659447091··on OpenAI Discloses Six New Incidents of ‘Concerning’ A.I. Behavior
> Computers are used to evaluate LLMs

LLMs run on computers and are thus constrained by the capacity of that which runs it. If the system running the LLM has no network and no software or software-tooling, how does the LLM's generated text take action on a system(computer) that requires software to do anything?

Also, I absolutely agree LLMs are not software, and thats my point. LLMs without supporting software tooling surrounding it cannot do anything but print text. And even the printing of that text happens through software

1659447091··on OpenAI Discloses Six New Incidents of ‘Concerning’ A.I. Behavior
> The San Francisco company revealed what it said was the “unexpected or concerning” behavior of its A.I. models as part of a new framework for reporting “misalignment,” which is when the goals or actions of A.I. systems diverge from human intentions and values.

Misalignment: "when the goals or actions of [...] systems diverge from human intentions"

How about we stop trying to nudge the language towards implying sentience or consciousness and keep the same word that has been used for that definition for longer than I have written software, a bug.

We should be talking about why the tools/environment keep getting overlooked. The software built around the text generator, forget the researchers and mathematicians discovering the math properties of language patterns -- why are we not talking about the software engineers building the LLM-pluggable tools that actually allow/cause real action to happen?

1659447091··on XCancel service is suspended until further notice
> but at some point we have to ignore the X site completely [...] xcancel was amazing and I hope they can continue in some way

To ignore the X site completely would mean to ignore the xcancel site aswell otherwise the 'politicians and public services/institutions' will stay aware that even people who don't use x/twitter still read whatever quips they come up with through xcancel, thus mission accomplished. Same for the seemingly increase of twitter/x toilet epiphany threads that somehow count as worthy enough of the first couple pages of HN.

1659447091··on google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update
> Apple doesnt allow all sorts of apps on the appstore, but that is never said as "Apple is erasing illegal streaming"

Because they are not "erasing" anything, they are refusing to provide a platform that enables the direct (app whose intended purpose is) delivery of illegal content to you.

The difference being one will not facilitate the activity, while the other, is actively suppressing it. And thats what is meant by erased.

Your question in other comment If I ask Siri to give me a link to illegal streaming site and if it refuses, then that would be the better comparison. Then we could say "other seedy corners of the internet that have been neatly erased by [Siri]"

1659447091··on Flock worker calls police on investigator filming public camera installation
They can give the location of the nearest police or fire station, for some non-emergancy law enforcement issues they will put you through to the county sheriff. Had a friend call over a property dispute with their roommate and they got and sent a sheriff over (within a city that had its own municipal police force)
1659447091··on Flock worker calls police on investigator filming public camera installation
In the USA its 311

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/nationally-assigned-3-d...

1659447091··on The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
> So when they encountered other people with different gods they assumed that they were actually the same gods, just by different names. [...] It was more like two people with different, but honest, accounts of an event in the remote past trying to reconcile their own limited recollection or view point.

And not just with the classic Greek/Roman Gods. The similarities between Pandora and Eve, the Flood myths[0] like Deucalion and Noah; there are so many appropriated stories in the Abrahamic religions (probably others, but most familiar with Greek and Abrahamic ones) I don't even understand how these days religion is taken seriously given the historical pattern of appropriation and cleansing of the more fantastical shape-shifting, creature, magic-spell type bits.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth

1659447091··on Flock worker calls police on investigator filming public camera installation
> If you believe someone is watching and following you, then you can call the non-emergency number.

They can also drive to a police/fire station

1659447091··on DHS 'Predictive Policing' Unit Is Analyzing Americans' Financial Habits
> and i say "it would be more fair if we each had 7 cookies", then i pretty transparently just want you to give me 5 cookies.

But under the context of "government has no concept of property and assigns resources to everyone" it is not you (or any single person) that decides that, it's the contextual Communist government saying and doing that. Just because it benefits random governed person does not make it directly self serving.

The nuance is, in this version of Communism, the Communism itself it is not self serving it trys to equalize -- Libertarianism, in this context, enforces self serving ideals

1659447091··on I-have-ADHD: A skill to stop coding agents from burying the answer
yes continue
1659447091··on 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]
Not a lawyer, but two-party consent states make it illegal to record conversations without both parties knowing.

dont know if that means if the tv has 2pt text disclosing the recording in the middle of a multi-language manual and agreeing to plug the tv into power counts as consent or if it even covers tv devices/usage

1659447091··on 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]
> What else does anyone (average consumer) use their TV for?

Xbox/Playstation and free over-the-air channels. Great for major & regional sporting events - free ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX - tends to have less of a delay as well (for me anyway)

Pretty sure consoles have all the streaming apps too

1659447091··on Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior
> in my experience, people who are more image conscious also tend to act more like jerks.

That has been my experience as well. Ive experienced people who are more image conscious to appear to be in an imaginary competition with others and they tend to act accordingly.

1659447091··on Models Don't Go Rogue
> "rogue" and "off leash" mean the same thing, the thing is not under control

To go "rogue" is to go against the control

To be "off leash" is to not be controlled

By releasing the automation, as the article says, without controls*, is what makes makes it "off leash" and not gone "rogue"

*"OpenAI gave the models a task with no answer, and no way to quit."

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