Gregaros

> The programmer is in the unique position that his is the only discipline and profession in which such a gigantic ratio, which totally baffles our imagination, has to be bridged by a single technology. He has to be able to think in terms of conceptual hierarchies that are much deeper than a single mind ever needed to face before. Compared to that number of semantic levels, the average mathematical theory is almost flat. By evoking the need for deep conceptual hierarchies, the automatic computer confronts us with a radically new intellectual challenge that has no precedent in our history.

I am no biographer of Djisktra’s, so is he being unrealistic about programmers here, or does he not have exposure to what a mathematician would consider Mathematics (Wikipedia entry claiming him a mathematician or no)?

DMCA abuse begs to differ.

It seems entirely plausible that there wasn’t a good setting just emphasizing her and all her art for an article photo, and that paintings were temporarily moved to create one - in which case what you’re picking up on would represent the photographer and a compromise with expediency rather than the mathematician.

As seems to be the case for another commenter, the double Crichton’s was one of my favorite parts. What it introduced to the storytelling and narrative and characterization was a unique depth and capacity for analysis and consequence that I’m surprised hasn’t been emulated since.

We don’t know (and they don’t either) that the text of this book appeared in the training set.

>OpenAI doesn’t disclose what data it used to train GPT-4, its most advanced large language model, but lawyers for Sancton say ChatGPT divulged the secret. “In the early days after its release, however, ChatGPT, in response to an inquiry, confirmed: “Yes, Julian Sancton’s book ‘Madhouse at the End of the Earth’ is included in my training data,” the lawsuit reads.

This is evidence of absolutely nothing as GPT cannot reflect over what is or is not in it’s training set. I’m shocked this is reported uncritically - here the impartiality of ‘just the facts’ distorts more than it enlightens.

I think rather this is a case of the mathematical notion of [homology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homology_(mathematics)) - which, roughly, is when a collection of objects combine together to fill a hole (or form the boundary of that hole). In the case of the article, two half-helices ‘overlap’ when they are each two halves of the bounadry of the same DNA segment.

No, it is not at all a bridge to Einstein’s ‘gravity and acceleration are equal’, which is "the gravitational force is physically indistinguishable from any acceleration", which has to do with changing to relatively accelerating reference frames.

The insight of da Vinci’s here is anticipating Newton, not Einstein. And yes, this is already an accomplishment, but not the outlandish one the article would imply.

> The condition that a defendant “avoid all contact ... with a potential witness who may testify concerning the offense” is a standard condition. 18 U.S.C. § 3142(c)(B)(v). Indeed, the no-contact condition is routinely imposed in cases in this district. “The no-contact condition set forth in the statute seeks to prevent a defendant from intimidating someone who, by nature of being a victim or a potential witness, is already in a difficult and delicate position.”

Or just reas the brief in full, it is short and a pretty pleasant read.

> wanting to make your own at home instead of spending $7+ a day on Starbucks isn't unreasonable

So spend $500-$1000 on an espresso machine instead when, as OP points out, there are perfectly fine, affordable options that will for most people be indistinguishable (and are certainly superior to Starbucks, just read anything written by the coffee afficionados)?

I see you’ve read the blog post by noted military historian Bret Devereaux and boiled the whole thing down to three sentences for everyone, but you’ve missed some of the nuance that makes him so fascinating to read.

I recommend everyone else ignore this summary and give the link a click, acoup.blog’s always a delight.

Because cloth is porous and absorptive but skin is not.

Really want to upvote the joke but can’t bring myself to reward the implicit criticism of LaTex ….

That’s not right, either, since he is speaking in the present tense and comparing his current local high school’s attempts to emulate what Los Alamos high currently does:

> Reminds me of the fact that Los Alamos High School has the highest test scores in New Mexico. Our local high school tried copying their schedule, in search of the secret. Didn’t work. I know of an approach that would, but it takes about fifteen years.

> It also explains why the professors’ kids are a disproportionate fraction of the National Merit Finalists in a college town. […] But those kids, although smarter than average, usually aren’t as smart as their *fathers*: partly because their *mothers* typically aren’t theoretical physicists, partly because of regression towards the mean.

Wow, this guy is … not concerned with political correctness/not considering whether or not the college professors worth mentioning are guaranteed to be male.

Reminds me of dependent types: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependent_type

> it normally takes me 1 sentence max to realise i've clicked on an ad by mistake.

Good thing that has no cost, then. Especially with how poorly optimized all the javascript on these pages is, slowing loading to a perceptible crawl (unless, perhaps again, if you’re in the bubble where every machine you use is latest flagship android or a workstation, blind to the experience of the less ‘sophisticated’ users).

Adversaries will simply use common pass-phrase words as though they were part of a larger alphabet. Depending on the distribution/definition of "common", 2-4 word passphrases are then much worse than an 8 character password, for exactly the reason you state.

You really ought to read his document before commenting. And when you do, keep an eye outfor any quote whatsoever that says justifies your claims. You won't find one.

You missed my sarcasm. I did indeed think it was quite an understatement / poor writing to be so afraid to say "one of the best physicists of the 20th century".

Sarcasm. "Probably one of the most" is quite a few weasel words for somebody universally included in any list of significant physicists.

>Richard Feynman was probably one of the most talented physicists of the 20th century.

Starts off bold.

How available is knowledge if nobody knows they can attain it? This is the first I've heard of seatguru, and given the post you responded to, I'd hazard I'm not the only one.

>Shouldn't imagination and planning be observed spontaneously as emergent properties of a sufficiently complex neural network?

Why would you think that? We have no theoretical knowledge of how human "consciousness" emerges, and obviously no experimental data either.

>Conversely, if we have to explicitly account for these properties and come up with specific designs to emulate them, how do we know that we are on the right track to beyond human levels of cognition, and not just building "one-trick networks"?

We don't know how far the path leads, but the capabilities of the past 5-ish years progress are leaps and bounds beyond what anything else can do, and this is part of the work of pushing further down that path.

Medicine knows much, much less than it ought to know (from the perspective of hard limits to current knowledge.)

>that's probably fairly rare.

No, it isn't. Ticket prices fluctuate incredibly wildly, and tend to increase sharply in the month leading up to the flight. In fact, this move is largely to displace overbooking to a new mechanic.

Now why this is a problem: Want to book a necessary flight 3 months ahead of time, shop for the cheapest fare, amd then find out a week before your trip that you've been bumped to a later flight (posssibly missing scheduled activities) because a last minute customer wants your seat? Unoversal adoption of United's model would make this common place (at least as common-place as overbooking is now).

And not a single one of them in Mathematics. This seems like an incredibly narrow selection.