RobertRies

-Sam Altman “whole classes of jobs going away”

-Mustafa Suleyman "So white-collar work, where you're sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person — most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months."

-Jim Farley “Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers.”

-Dario Amodei predicted that AI could eliminate up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years

-Arindam Paul has said that 40-50 percent of white-collar jobs in India could cease to exist because of AI, and an Anthropic researcher had predicted that AI would be able to automate any white-collar job by 2028.

People who do not pay for ChatGPT often have money and prefer not to pay for for a subscription for several reasons including, but not exclusively: 1) They don't use ChatGPT often enough to justify it 2) They use alternatives primarily (a subset of #1) 3) They choose to spend their money on other things

My conclusion is that panpsychism is god of the gaps for consciousness right now.

But also, see the rest of my comment. The onus is not on me to arrive with a better explanation just because there's a bad explanation on the table.

If I come home and find a cookie on my counter, and someone said "I think that a space alien teleported the cookie there" and I said "I think that's unlikely to be the correct explanation." And then that person asked "Well, what's a better explanation?" and I said "Maybe someone broke into my apartment, felt guilty, and left a cookie there." and then grilled me on that counter-explanation.

If interested, the reason I don't like the radio analogy is that it presupposes that the configuration of the brain, and inputs isn't fundamentally the constituents of consciousness.

On the flip side, to fix the analogy: if I cut off the antenna of a radio, I would argue it ceases to become a radio by any reasonable definition (assuming we're talking about a device that receives radio waves and plays them back in the form of sound). You just have something that's very close to a radio. It has nothing to do with whether radio waves exist or don't.

As long as you agree that it's conceivable that there's experimentation (brute force or otherwise), then I think we're on the same page.

But even if I didn't have a more compelling explanation, that doesn't mean I can't be highly critical of, or reach a conclusion that panpsychicism is highly unlikely to be approaching a good explanation.

You, yourself, and Philip Goff and others talk about how "we might want to treat trees differently" suggesting (correct me if I'm misunderstanding you) that cutting a tree might "hurt" the tree, or cause "pain" to the tree, which is exactly what I mean by "comparable to human conscious experience."

> This isn't true. You can literally cut a brain in half and you appear to get two separate consciousnesses in one skull.

What you're saying doesn't address what I'm saying. I did not say that, exhaustively, all changes to the brain disrupt everything. Rather, I will clarify that there exist a subset of extremely small disruptions you can make to the brain that "turn the lights off" of consciousness in humans. Among them are a fairly tiny dose of anesthetic, or not breathing for about 5 minutes.

> Sure... so why are you spending so much breath attacking the obviously weak form of the argument?

Because I'm replying to a comment that suggests we might treat trees differently (if Panpsychicism were true). I would consider a statement like that to be the first category of panpsychist.

> ... but that doesn't make the endeavor meaningless.

I didn't say the endeavor is meaningless. I'm a strong proponent of prodding anything we can about consciousness, or anything in our universe for that matter. What's "too early for my tastes" is to believe the Panpsychist hypothesis is currently the best explanation.

But also jellyfish has goal seeking behavior, and a most of those other characteristics you mention, and my intuition (based on the vastly different neural structure and anatomy), is that they experience probably nothing.

This tiny interaction I think is the the entire problem with how panpsychists talk about this.

Some panpsychists might try to actually say that there's a potential that trees and rocks have an internal subjective experience that is in some way comparable to human conscious experience (i.e. they feel some kind of "pain," that "hurts" them, and they "suffer". But I contend we have very little reason to believe that, and a lot of reason not to believe that. For example, with very, very little modification to my biology, I can eliminate this experience in myself (painkillers, anesthesia, other drugs, falling into a deep sleep, etc.)

Once you even slightly disrupt the structure of our brains functioning, it all falls apart. We feel nothing.

I think even most panpsychists would not take the above position, and would instead say "oh well, plant consciousness is entirely unrecognizable and might not even have reasonable continuity of consciousnesses. "Pain" wouldn't even make sense to a plant or a rock. We're just saying that the matter that constitutes plants and rocks have a very tiny (relative to humans) kind of "experience" but it's a huge mistake to anthropomorphize that, and you shouldn't feel like you're making grass "suffer" by cutting it.

^and if it's the second case, it's unprovable and uninteresting and "literally meaningless. Irrelevant."

I think this is a redefinition of consciousness and shifts the problem of explaining when an entity has an experience like we all think about experiences, which was the interesting part in the first place.

One thing you can do is disrupt the smaller individual components that make up the emergent property, and see if the property continues to exist.

I.e. you can put a motorized egg beater in your brain, and see if you still have the emergent properties of consciousness. My prediction is that the property will suddenly disappear.

Or can cut off blood to the brain for a little while.

The counter-argument will be that the consciousness unrecognizably changes, and once the blood comes back, that configuration of matter generally restores. None of this is convincing to me in any way, and I genuinely desperately want someone (a panpsychist) to explain how I'm thinking about this incorrectly.

I think the common conceptualization of consciousness is the only definition that is useful, or makes sense. Which is something that can experience things. For many reasons, I don't think these rudimentary behaviors in plants suggest they are capable of experience.

Edit: I should elaborate on how it relates. Some would say that the alcohol or foreign substances are disrupting the combination of the consciousness of the matter, disrupting the overall consciously experience that makes up your matter. So, for example, now there's a bunch of little consciousnesses that aren't "combined".

While traditional publishers may be losing % of daily media consumption - especially in younger age brackets - it's unclear to me where this trend asymptotes. My intuition is that most people will spend some time on "reels" or livestreams (or whatever), some time on blockbuster movies, some on Broadway plays, and some time on scripted produced "TV style" content. Some will expand their denominator of total time to accommodate additional media sources, others will pick one over the other.

It seems there will be a degree of loss of market share as you allude to, but it's unclear how dramatic it will be and where it stabilizes.

One thing is absolutely 100% for sure though in my opinion: media preservation should be deeply prioritized, and this news seems like a blow to that.

toaster fucker problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25667362

I have zero affiliation with Tile and I have never bought any device like this of any sort, but this is useful information to me as someone who has been the target of frequent bicycle theft.

The criticism I will agree with is that it does feel worded a with a bit of a corporate polished tone that does give that vibe. edit: I think it's largely the "supercharge" descriptor.

That's why it's still early days.

Not like feeding them and giving them shelter. Remember, you don't want to give shelter. You, and your ilk, the vocal faction of SF politics, will accept nothing short of housing first.

I obviously believe it is awful to be homeless. You say I straw manned you - tell me, am I wrong? Do you support anything short of housing first?

If, say, the voting public doesn't want to give everyone 1000sqft in the heart of San Francisco, but is in favor of sheltering and forced drug rehabilitation and mental health facilities coupled with enforcing laws. You're telling me that you would not prefer the current state?

My thoughts are your (presumed) preference of status que over a compromise that doesn't cause maximum suffering for all is the worst of all worlds. You're the "Bernie or Bust"er of the unhoused. You're the person who would rather have Trump than Biden, if you can't have Bernie.

"Well, if I can't give everyone a free house in San Francisco, and change the distribution of wealth, I'd rather people suffer and die in the streets (via decriminalizing everything, and being anti-shelter), because then at least the taxpayers will also suffer the consequences of it, and then maybe things will change."

Strictly speaking this is simply a straw man via oversimplification (as is nearly the entirety of this post and the others I've seen from bbor in this thread)...

But I've seen this _variety_ of straw man so often that I want to break it out into a specific fallacy on its own.

Not sure what to call it but the "Oh, so you think X decided one day just Y?"

"Oh so you think Elizabeth Holmes just sat down one day and decided _I'm going to scam billions out of investors and risk lives and pretend I made a blood testing machine_"?

"Who sees this advertisement for Tide and just decides _I'm going to buy Tide because I saw this advertisement?"

"Oh so you think I listen to Andrew Tate one day and now suddenly I'm abusing women?"

"Oh, so you think I'm going to do heroin one time and suddenly I'm going to be homeless and addicted?"

No. We're the culmination of dozens, hundreds, thousands of behaviors (with genetic and environmental influences) that create a trend.

So, err, I'll entertain your bad-faith rhetorical question and answer: no, nobody thinks anyone "sat down one day and decided to be homesless [sic] because they'd be coddled." San Francisco (on behalf of the voters, you and I) have created thousands of tiny incentive structures that maximizes the pain people experiencing homelessness, drug addiction, and mental illness, while simultaneously maximizing the negative impact to the housed, because you believe everyone who is housed deserves to be the victim of assaults, burglaries and all the other fun because they aren't supporting your policies.

Let me guess: housing-first? Certainly their drug addictions and mental illnesses will instantly vanish with a free house in the most expensive real-estate in the country? Anything short of this, well, they can stay on the street and find comfort in stealing things to fund their heroin/fentanyl self-medication.

These, and infinitely other unmentionable things (including a myriad of stories that involve myself as the victim, many of them worse than above): absolutely a daily occurrence for me in the TL.

What is your bar for "shocking"? I believe you are blind.

You are, presumably unintentionally, using a blanket descriptor "mentally ill" and "drug addicted" to describe an extremely wide spectrum of expressions.

"Serious Mental Illness" definitionally requires substantial interference with or limiting of one or more major life activities (including maintaining a safe house, and maintaining employment).

You are conflating people's common use of the term "mental illness" - yes, we can agree that most people with say, seasonal depression, can hold down a job and maintain a house. This is not what San Francisco's visible homeless "mental illness" is referring to. They are suffering from Serious Mental Illness.

No, we cannot agree that most folks with Serious Mental Illness are able to muster the ability to sleep indoors, definitionally.

Again, "drug addiction." There is an appreciable difference between the character of the drug, and the addiction - aka "Chronic Substance Abuse."

That is, once again, I do not agree that someone with open meth sores on their face is going to hold down any sort of a job and/or be able to muster a safe home environment.

Next, you ask what has changed in the past few years? Then conclude only two things have changed in 10 years - "housing prices and rents."

While there may be a correlation, possibly even a causation, this is still an oversimplification of the problem. There are other cities, even in the US that have seen an increase in housing prices and not the corresponding inhumane treatment of both the housed, and unhoused in SF particularly.

I wonder if anything else has changed in SF in 10 years that makes it uniquely inhumane to the homeless, and also disproportionately affecting the entire character of the city? Could it be policies? Complete lawlessness and availability/encouragement/facilitation of new drugs and drug addiction?

There are at least two obvious problems that are unique to the West Coast, perhaps namely SF, 1) an overall increase in homelessness caused by certainly a multitude of factors that include much more than "rent," such as the bifurcation of particularly the SF labor market and the educational/cognitive barriers to "information technology work" versus the alternatives. That is to say, the problem isn't necessarily inherently that rents went up, the corollary is true that pay didn't go up for those experiencing homeless who were happily housed and paying rent before. Ought they move? Ought we relocate them? Ought we pay, say, fast food workers similar to MAMAA developers? It seems you suggest affordable government project housing? And 2) policy that makes it such that those who do suffer from Serious Mental Illness/Chronic Substance Abuse (by some counts, the majority of those experiencing homelessness) that does everything it possibly can to ensure they maximally suffer, while having the greatest possible negative impact to the bystanders, often other people experiencing homelessness, but also the housed, and business owners. That is to say, SF policies it as absolutely easy as possible to stay addicted, and as difficult as possible to overcome the addiction, while simultaneously pretending severe mental illness is not a thing (i.e. you [paraphrasing for emphasis] "most mentally ill people can maintain a house and a job".)

It seems our conceptualization "homelessness" is corrupted by inadequate, and inconsistent use of nomenclature.

I'm suggesting there is a significant risk, and anyone reasonable at Amazon would account for it. There's enough users (tech savvy, or heavy researchers as you point out, and ultimately some portion of casual customers) who will have a negative experience and potentially be skeptical of all purchases - major or minor. Amazon will certainly incur reputational and real return/handling costs.

It seems fairly implausible to me that Amazon would make the decision to say "Yeah, while tech savvy and discerning customers, and some portion of casual users will discover the scam, we just make so much money from fake thumb drives that it's worth it to destroy our reputation with that subset since a significant portion may not notice or ultimately associate Amazon with selling low quality products." All while we see the listings for these items get removed nearly as quickly as the pop up. Doesn't add up.

In my case, the phony thumb drive I bought was delisted before I got home from the walk to the mailbox, literally.

My counter-example, however, was a grocery store I worked in in college where the manager wouldn't give the weekend off to one of the hardest-working, friendly shelf-stockers to attend his father's funeral. I was there. It really happened. He quit on the spot. I was right next them in this interaction. It was so enraging I wanted to quit out of moral-support, but I did not.

This sort of interaction is absolutely unfathomable in my current professional environment. Whenever I feel injustice, or underappreciated, I frequently remind myself of those times to appreciate what I have today.