AQuantized

I think the essay has the implicit assumption that if you're 'better' at doing things, you'll end up happier. Since intelligent people aren't happier, the conclusion becomes that intelligence is mostly only relevant to a subset of well-defined abstract problems that don't represent the real messy problems of life.

I think the reality of human happiness is that being in better material circumstances, or being better at solving problems practical or not, doesn't necessarily improve long term happiness.

Adaption to circumstances, the 'hedonic treadmill', means most people aren't going to obtain some very high level of happiness and sustain it indefinitely, regardless of station.

Doesn't really make sense as there are already open weight models that are close to frontier models, and the compute to run them isn't outrageously expensive, and every indication that it will only get cheaper over time as has been the strong trend in terms of $/outcome.

> You really don't want to end up with dementia and related illnesses, it totally sours everyone's view of you.

This seems like such an absurd conclusion to this, as though the opinions of other people of you are what matter when you functionally lose your personhood and then die.

Maybe a better focus would be that there often isn't a good way for a community to manage a person who suddenly becomes irrational because of an illness.

Not sure how this is relevant given it's the effects of a future climate catastrophe being discussed, not something that has already happened.

Einstein was enamored with the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Spinoza, in Schopenhauer's conception of the will and Spinoza's pantheism. The God of Spinoza (or indeed Einstein) is strictly deterministic, and we are all a part of such a God, as is all of nature. Hence his quote 'God does not play dice', and in part it explains Einstein's philosophical commitment against some of the indeterministic interpretations of quantum physics being ultimately true.

This comment is a bit odd to me since I don't think those basic things you mention have been difficult to get working on most distros for quite a while now.

I wonder if meditation could give you this ability? After having an intense 'breakthrough' during meditation I had an enhanced ability to imagine things, especially visually, for ~1 week. I stopped meditating for a while because it was too intense and immersive.

It felt like I 'let go' of some subtle assumptions around how I would visualize things normally and had an expanded ability, but it also seemed more intrusive and without the same 'distance' between 'me' and the imagining.

Game Programming Patterns is also excellent. There's something that feels quite 'honest' and straightforward about the style of both books. It sometimes seems like authors feel like they have to play along with the idea that it's all black magic, or maybe I'm just too stupid to understand GoF design patterns.

To be fair that really isn't 'big money' in most of those cities, assuming big money has some connotation of significantly above average after tax and expenses disposable income in those areas, especially relative to your peers. I don't think it would be unfair to say that would be big money compared to many European workers in the same jobs though.

The stimulus starts the fixed action pattern, but that action pattern includes the behavior to make the entire web, not just the start off the process. Different species of spider have different fixed action patterns (and different neurology underlying that, and different DNA underlying that neurology).

I think throwing a ball is more learned, although some behaviors like grasping the ball may provided a fixed action foundation on which higher order learning builds. Baby humans have a grasp reflex that works in a similar way to the fixed action pattern described, but with a simpler action sequence. If you touch the palm of a toddler, they will instinctively tightly grasp. It's interesting that the grasp reflex disappears around 5 years old, so the fixed neuronal pattern is subsumed by higher order learned behavior.

There's an idea of 'fixed action patterns' where certain behaviors are encoded in the neurology of an animal, and triggered by certain stimulus.

For spiders then there is an action pattern that upon certain stimulus they will use their spinnerets begin forming a web, first placing anchor points and gradually building it up with radial threads and spiral. The exact behavior differs by species such that they have different resulting patterns. It seems possible that there is an element of 'learning' beyond the basic pattern as well, even in seemingly very simple animals.

I doubt the spiders have a mental model of what their web looks like as such, it's more evolutionary driven genetic behavior, a particular neuronal pattern encoding the action sequence rather than an underlying fundamental understanding.

I had the opposite experience. I always had such an intense 'inner monologue' that it dominated my experience of life. Outside of doing things that required all of my attention like playing games I never lived in the moment. It made social interaction difficult because I would always obsess over how to say things in the right way.

It took me until my 20s to learn how to relax it and not go over and over everything.

Your account seemed really alien to me when I read it, it's hard to believe people can have such a different experience of life. It's rarely discussed explicitly.

To be fair 'modelling the brain' might not include things like neuron metabolism that probably isn't required for AI but is a part of the substrate of our own consciousness.

Using Prison Architect as an example, when playing can you 'remember' the dimensions of the different rooms you've built? Or would you have to zoom out to plan an extension of your prison? It definitely sounds like aphantasia.

I don't think it has anything to do with your eyes being open/closed, or even to do with your eyes at all, unless it's describing something different to what I assume. It's about mental images and visualization, not your field of vision itself.

To be fair, for all its pitfalls, NPM does provide a limited version of that idea to millions of codebases.

I saw a private dentist for the first time roughly a year ago. I was under the impression that I had 10+ fillings, and prior to lockdowns a dentist had told me I needed at least 2 more, which I assumed would still be the case.

He said he could see no indication of decay that would need treatment, and all the 'fillings' I had were more like sealants in the enamel, none of which reached the dentin, and any of them could have been avoided by a more wait and see approach.

I saw 5+ dentists on the public health system that all had the same cavalier approach, and it's hard to assume it wasn't to line their own pockets.

I managed to progress a long standing side project because of this psychology. Asking ChatGPT how to do what I think is the next step is easy, and it generally spits out a coherent if questionable solution. Finding the issues with its implementation gets me into the mindset to continue working on the problem.

That should never happen at any 'good' company imo, and I haven't personally experienced it.

So long as you don't stay like that all the time and vary your posture, it's probably not as negative as popularly assumed. Moving a lot is more important than assuming some static 'optimal' posture.

I don't think the poster is trying to discredit her based on age, just contextualizing her comment about it not happening in her lifetime by estimating what period that's likely to refer to.

The comment about her appeal to authority on the basis of being a fighter pilot is also more a counterpoint to crediting her additionally on that basis above any non-expert, since that skillset isn't actually particularly related to autonomous driving.

I don't think giving away 45% of your business for a 'network' is going to make sense in most cases, especially given the networking opportunities already available for e.g. YC companies, and it's going to be hard to explain to investors.

It wouldn't be an advantage to make him a giant - arguably it would be a negative due to his style. However, HGH allows substantially faster recover, and basically any athlete would take it if possible. Messi was able to do so legally unlike most footballers due to his condition.

Why not just check the reference? If there isn't one it isn't to be trusted, if there is just cite that.

Honestly while I would agree for a lot of obscure methods, I can't imagine a senior engineer not knowing how to convert an integer to a string.

Does minoxidil alone have any of those potential side effects, perhaps at a lesser incidence? I wouldn't mind extending my hairspan a few years, but I'm unwilling to risk long term side effects. I'm leaning towards avoiding taking anything.

I've had similar issues and started with simply lying down and holding my head a few mm off the ground and holding for 10 - 30 seconds. You may have to begin with only a few seconds if your neck is very weak and build up very slowly.

Beyond that simply doing more exercise helped, I stopped focusing on my neck specifically after the initial stage. Swimming is great since it reduces load.

It's worth mentioning that being a theoretical physicist working in a niche subfield doesn't necessarily qualify you to talk broadly about other fields and assess their societal impacts. I think these types of videos work best when it's clearly just a smart person sharing what they've learned to engage your interest rather than as a substitute for a lecture by an expert.

Funny that your example sounds like a stereotypical self-congratulatory Hacker News article

I actually don't think it's arguing for that typical stance, but rather for conscious experience to always 'be' in some sense regardless of specific physical instantiation. It seems purposefully vague, but it's almost more like Hinduism than the typical atheistic interpretation.