Quinzel

Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman will help you understand why many of the technical decisions you are making are going wrong.

I think it should. It should also come with a major debunking warning to debunk all the bullshit that is on social media… from unrealistic beauty expectations right through to crazy conspiracy theories and everything in between.

The less time I spend on social media, the happier I am with myself and my life.

I’m a hard determinist, so I think no, free will is not possible.

I think the illusion of free will comes from having self-awareness.

Still, even as a hard determinist, when I go about my day, making “my choices”, I believe I am consciously deciding, I would even go as far as to say that I have a strong internal locus of control. It’s only when I stop to think about it, that I always end up deciding that nothing I’ve done is the result of pure free will, and rather it’s very much determined by things way beyond my control.

Hello… I would find your proposed blog about the philosophy of AI interesting. I never studied philosophy formally beyond my first year of uni, and now I study psychology, but I have a strong interest in philosophy, and philosophy of mind more specifically. I’m about to start a masters thesis and my topic is (roughly) something that to do with the psychology of human-computer interaction. Philosophical thought around AI/AGI would offer another way of thinking about some of this stuff for me personally.

I’d love to hear some perspectives that were not almost entirely from a tech industry perspective. They take such a narrow view.

I bet that guy is gutted that he wasted 6.5years with that woman

I don’t think it’s any better or worse than trusting human judgement alone.

I think suicide prevention programs are well intentioned, but a lot of them do seem to be just lip service of well-intentioned people who don’t really know what they’re doing, or alternatively, are trying there best, but are the ambulance at the bottom of a cliff.

Why do people get suicidal in the first place? Is it issues of domestic abuse/family abuse, or trauma? Is it issues of poverty, low income, job insecurity? Is it issues of mood disorders? And if it is mood disorders, are there other social issues (like some of the ones I mentioned above) that precede the mood disorder?

Because really, to prevent suicide, you’d have to address the root cause of what drives people to commit suicide. I think there are a lot of social issues that lead people to commit suicide and to prevent suicide, people would actually have to start addressing the issues, instead of addressing the symptoms of the issue.

This could be a sensory processing disorder of some sort. Sensory processing disorders can cause issues with noise sensitivities, or light sensitivities or issues with texture etc. often people with ADHD, autism, both, or similar experience things like this.

But if it’s a new recent development that you haven’t always had and it’s becoming more disruptive to your life/causing more dysfunction it could be worth talking to a doctor (neurologist) about it.

Annnnd the expert in the story gets all realistic and tells us that they’re probably not Dyson spheres…

Why does AI hallucinate?…

Because gpt’s like ChatGPT use a statistical model based on probability to predict the next word or sentence based on a large amount of source data that has been compressed to the point that instead of producing truthful or correct statements, it instead produces plausible statements.

If I’m searching something for research I use Google scholar.

If I’m searching for shopping or pop culture type stuff ordinary Google is fine

If I want information that requires a deeper dig then DDG is a good place to start.

I think urgency and scarcity are different sides to the same coin.

I really like Duolingo, but I ignore the streak thing because it upsets me all the time that I don’t get a streak even when they try really hard to give me quite generous “streak freezes” because it’s like the app knows I can’t actually keep a streak going. As an ADHD person, I find the concept of a streak overwhelming, partly because I’m unlikely to maintain a streak ever because I just get too distracted and forgetful to go back to something in any kind of habitual way, to the point that if I’m aiming for a streak and then miss a day, I give up completely - and that’s with anything (running, going to the gym etc… so I know myself well enough now not to aim for streaks). Even if the notifications come in at the right time, if I just don’t feel like learning right then and there, I won’t bother and no amount of loss aversion for losing a streak will persuade me to learn if I just don’t feel like it at the time. I find it difficult to force my brain to do things it doesn’t want to do.

For me to stay dedicated to learning something it needs to be either a case of me making a commitment to it, and then acting consistently with my commitment (which is the case for my with academic studies - I make financial commitments to it, so then feel obliged to act accordingly so as not to waste literally thousands of dollars to fail), or it needs to be gamified, such as the case for Duolingo.

Duolingo has gamified learning a language in a way I love to play so that’s why I go back (not regularly enough to maintain a streak, but regularly enough to have learned a fair bit of German).

I did once pay for a year subscription to Duolingo thinking that paying for it would mean I would be more committed, but I wasn’t… and I ended up doing less learning, whereas, when I think I’m going to run out of hearts, I feel extra motivated to not lose my hearts and therefore pay more attention to my learning so I don’t make mistakes.

And now after writing this lengthy comment about Duolingo, I’m going to go play some more learning language right now!

Sometimes I think people just make up stupid fucking phobias to try and make themselves sound more special. Like ooooh I’m afraid of being afraid.

Phobophobia = a load of shit.

I have Zotero and don’t use it because I do my research better myself without it and it annoys me when Zotero does a reference incorrectly and then I have to go back and fix it. Irritating. I’d rather just do it correctly myself once and then be done with it.

The person who wrote that also doesn’t matter, and their idea’s are no more real than mine.

But it was a mildly thought-provoking read.

This is just the scarcity principle and nothing new.

Red Flags:

When one or more people on the interview panel behaves extremely unprofessionally. ie, ridicules the interviewee, or makes inappropriately offensive comments.

When the interviewer decides to give an interviewee they particularly like a tour of the premise and introduce them to other staff before they've even offered the person a job.

When there are heaps of relatives, or best/close friends within the management structure of the company.

I remember when I was interviewing for basically an apprenticeship for the job/career I do now. They asked us to prepare and deliver a 10 minute presentation on why we wanted the job, that we were to give after we had completed the interview. During the interview they asked some serious questions but also questions like “imagine you had to find out the weight of a Boeing 747, but you’re not allowed to use scales, how would you do it?”. And then things like “if you could be a sandwich, which flavour would you choose, and why?” - everyone on the interview panel seemed so serious, and so it was quite a weird, and also intense interview. At the end, I gave my presentation, with the last side being a pie chart of all the things I hoped to gain from the job, and then the pie chart morphed into a smiley emoji and said… and “JOB SATISFACTION” at the end they thanked me, and then I heard nothing for 10 days. Eventually they offered me the job, one day I was sitting with one of the guys who interviewed me, and he told me I did the best interview they’d ever seen, and I was like… thanks but what was with some of those weird questions? and he was like…

“Oh… we just wanted to see how you’d react to uncertainty, and ambiguity while in a stressful situation, you did really well”.

I actually think while the questions were not directly relevant to the job I do, it was a good way to test how I’d react in uncertain and stressful times.

I definitely feel stressed at work often, but I never ever externalise it. Even today, I had a situation that was so stressful, I was literally feeling like I couldn’t breath, but I just held my shit together and then when appropriate I left the room to have a drink of water and take a few deep breaths to get myself grounded basically to do it all over again.

I think it’s been the best interview experience because it’s lead to some of the most interesting and personally challenging life and career experiences and even though I don’t plan to be doing the job I do now forever, it truely has been a pretty life changing one and I think I’m pretty lucky overall.

I like “have your cake and eat it too” - partly because it’s a pointless saying. You can always have cake and eat it, but you can’t eat your cake and then also have it.

So what people should really say is that someone wants to “eat their cake and have it too” but they don’t. But that’s really what they mean by the saying “have your cake and eat it too”.

I’m just here to learn the jargon!

I currently have a Mac, but thinking of getting Linux in addition to that for some little side projects I want to do.

My MacBook serves its main purpose really well though, I use it for research and writing essentially, and I do a little bit of my business stuff on it, but nothing fancy since it’s mainly all just done through accounting software and my accountant sorts the other shit…

But I’m wanting to explore a little more of the software/programming side of stuff and experimenting with that sort of thing so I’m going to use Linux for that, and basically I just want to see what I can achieve with basically just a raspberry pi and Linux, and build on it from there. I’m very much winging it so I know I sound like an idiot.

I’m sure there are therapists that are used to helping people even in the most extreme cases.

Wow, I did not realise some places required you to do a test in order to be able to do an MBA.

I did an MBA without having to do any pre-tests, but rather just on the basis of my previous degree GPA and my work experience.

My honest thoughts would be don’t do an MBA - having done one. It’s a regret for me, not because I didn’t learn anything because I definitely did, but it was expensive and I don’t think the return on investment has been that worth it. I think knowing what I know now, I would actually have been better off to have chosen to specialise in something rather than graduating with a generalised Masters. Maybe do masters in economics, or finance, or if it’s people management you’re interested in then org.psych. But don’t waste money on an MBA.

Maybe big tech could try hiring for diversity of thought…

I don’t mean diversity on the basis of gender, ethnicity, or sexuality…

I mean, hire people who are experts in other areas other than tech as well… and maybe teach them some tech along the way because they’re working in tech, but hire them for the potential gains that can come from having people who see the world a different way, who have a different perspective and who are experts in other areas that are not tech.

I think you’ve raised a really interesting question!

I had some thoughts to the points you made… particularly because it made me think about luxury cars and watches.

1. Firstly, how do we know no one wants a luxury phone? Is there market research on that? - there are people who want elite luxury handbags, watches, etc… Why is the phone the exception? It’s a great question. I don’t have the answer but I sure am thinking about it now.

2. I would have thought the same about luxury car companies because I figured that making a high performance flashy car would take a lot of knowledge and skills, particularly as our cars become more digitized and electronic, BUT… luxury car companies don’t seem to have a problem with this. Would it really be that different for phones? The principles of the technology would be much the same, it’s the marketing of the product that might differ, and maybe you could use some higher quality materials to help with your marketing pitch but… a phone is a phone, just like how my $600 watch tells the same time as a $100,000 watch - the difference is the brand.

3. Surely you could make a luxury phone good enough. I was looking at a $255,000 Rolex watch this afternoon while bored, thinking to myself, if I could afford it, I would definitely buy it, because it was really nice looking, and it would be an actual status symbol. Why couldn’t this also be the case with phones?

4. I think if you had a truely luxury phone then it wouldn’t cost too much. Sam Altman bought a watch that cost roughly $480,000 - it doesn’t buy him any more hours in the day than I get, but he was prepared to pay a lot more for an item that serves the exact same function as my watch.

Netflix deserves it.

Not to be rude, but how is being on social welfare a side project?

Or are you creating a social welfare program on the side, as a side project, to help others?

CBT with exposure therapy. They’ll probably just start by getting you to look at pictures of spiders, and then get you used to being in the same room as one etc etc until you can hold one.

I’m a little bit scared of spiders. Especially large ones. I have been to Australia a few times, and I personally think snakes are actually worse than spiders… especially the snakes that just leave behind their skin, so you know they’ve been there… but you can’t find the actual snake.

So my recent reads have included:

Determined: the science of life without free will by Robert Salpolsky. I rate it 4/5

The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick. I give it a 3/5

Social Engineering: The science of Human Hacking by Chris Hadnagy. I rate it 2.5/5

Influence: The psychology of persuasion by Robert Cialdini. I rate it 5/5

I’m in the midst of reading…

Thinking fast and slow, by Daniel Kahneman

And the next in my queue is

Likewar: The weaponisation of social media by Singer and Brooking.