8,815 karma · joined April 25, 2015
These things may not be illegal in America but they certainly are illegal some jurisdiction that OpenAI and others operate in.
I'm not aware of a social media site that does it but I think that I'd very strongly prefer a site where I could view a transparent log of who voted for what and when and what moderator took what action and when and why and how that all factors into how a comment / post / thread is ranked on the feed at any particular moment than one that hides all that stuff.
Reproducible builds but for social media.
Less 'pay no attention to that man behind the curtain' and more 'Exactly what it says on the tin"
The more that I interact with moderators on social media the more I've come to realize that as much as they're burnt out from answering the same questions from not-bad actors over and over as they are dealing with organic bad actors or automated content generators and that a great deal of those questions stem from the opaque nature of the algorithm.
All too often I find that moderators on social media are exasperated and burnt out not just from the endless janitorial work but also from users reaching out to them for understanding about the opaque nature of their actions and the outcomes that they have in the system.
So a lot of moderators gravitate towards a 'don't rock the boat' sort of mentality and over time adopt this sort of mentality: https://youtu.be/hNuu9CpdjIo?t=56
IMHO we're well past the point where any sort of security by obscurity with regards to the algorithm prevents any sort of automated influence on social media and the negative impacts of this kind of moderating technique only causes more damage than it prevents / mitigates.
Europe didn't choose to do that.
I suspect that you won't be swayed by the abstract benefits of intelligent life on Earth finding not just proof of life on another body in our solar system but actual life that we could perhaps even launch retrieval missions to return to Earth for analysis so I won't talk about Darwin and his voyages and the theory of evolution that it resulted in as people often do in these conversations.
Instead I'll ask you what you think the dollar value of studying and reverse engineering an alternate or similar biochemical system survives in a world totally different than our own. What sort of applications could this have in materials science? What kind of new materials could we discover from alien life? What kind of novel bio-mimetic applications could we derive from this?
I look around the room I'm in and I see a hardwood floor, I see a differnet species tree making up woodpaneling on the walls. My clothes are made of cotton and rayon, there's some sort of grass woven lampshade above me. books made of paper, paintings with linseed oil paint -- what's the commercial and cultural value of all that stuff to our species?
After the introduction I stood there and listened to the adults speak as a child often does in that kind of situation and he was lamenting that he hadn't been feeling well for awhile and he wasn't looking it either.
So my mother did what one does in that kind of situation which was insist that he go to the doctor and he kind of hummed and hawed at it because he didn't like doctors but finally said that he should do that.
That was a few weeks before he was diagnosed with cancer and about a year before he passed away. It's just one of those little experiences that kismet gifted me and I think of it often. More so now that I've gotten into his music over the past few years.
Like the author of this blog post I sometimes come across that final Letterman interview with Zevon and reflect on it and that powerful but simple line "Enjoy Every Sandwich" that Zevon offhandedly made.
It makes me reflect on how I want to continue to live a long and healthy life so that I can continue to have those kind of neat fleeting experiences of meeting people and just... witnessing life.
That reflection also made me realize that I should aspire to enable others to have those sorts of experiences so I have started to volunteer more at organizations which I feel can make that happen. It's rewarding and encouraging. It makes me feel like the world is a little bit less of a terrible place. If only for a moment.
Warren Zevon was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and The Killers performed at that event. This video of their rehearsal for the Warren Zevon song "Lawyers Guns and Money" is fabulous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4q_K52TYsE&list=RDK4q_K52TY...
I think private MRIs have been around, at least in my province anyways, for close to 30 years.
For some people that’s a house full of crap that their kids need to clean out after the funeral and for others that’s a dilapidated apartment building that’s soon to be condemned and will require asbestos abatement and demolition.
What's the reasoning for not having a vouch feature for stories like comments?
I also don’t install the YouTube app so I use the browser to visit the YouTube site and have an ad free experience and can even have audio playing on it while the screen is off or I’m in another app so it’s an objectively better experience than using an android device with the YouTube app that is automatically installed on it.
With the price of launches so low compared to only 20 years ago due to advancements in launch technology and the increased cadence of launches it seems like it should be easier to do these kinds of missions and that there should be more, cheaper missions that are willing to take risks because the per mission cost is so much lower.
Can you comment on why that doesn't seem to be happening? Why aren't we covering Mars in cheap rovers and satellites?
Ignoring the development of the sorts of skills and abilities in the general public that come from tinkering with small bench top machines like lathes and 3d printers is detrimental to nation’s ability to be self sufficient and raise the next generation of mechanically inclined people.
China seems to get that while other countries don’t.
And what happens if China decides that it is no longer in their interest to allow Americans access to cheap aluminum extrusions, hotends, motors, and controllers?
Between the American tariffs and Chinese prioritization of 3d printing in a past five year plan American hobbyists and small scale producers are in a potential bind.
One of the most corrosive effects that money has on society is that it can shelter people from the consequences of their stupidity.
People can luck into a shitload of shelter for their poor choices whether through inheritance or random chance of their actions and then don’t ever have to face consequences proportional to their stupid actions.
Or someone can start out smart and then suffer cognitive decline that is at first imperceptible until they become kookier and kookier until they’re blathering on about the antichrist and some people still take them seriously because they’re blinded by money.
The end result is a society where stupid people are surrounded by stupid people riding their coattails and everyone becomes confused about what smart and smart action actually is.
Animals often die in experimentation and that’s usually the whole point of the experiment.
The US wanted to end the war as quickly as possible and prevent the Soviets from invading and holding even a small piece of Japan for an indefinite period of time.
In doing so they probably prevented more deaths of Japanese civilians from continued firebombing and a Soviet occupation that would have been incredibly brutal.
And you can look at how the Soviets treated the people in the states that it occupied for decades after and compare it to how the US treated occupied Japan in the post war period.
The effects of both occupations still linger to this day, it's startling to look at economic differences in West Germany vs East Germany. It's doubtful that the USSR would have been able to prevent massive famines in Japan in a post war scenario where they occupied Japan or a portion of it.
A scenario where the US lacked nuclear weapons would have resulted in tremendous firebombing campaigns by both the Americans and the Soviets, as well as famine induced by a naval blockade and the war would have dragged on for much longer, drawing resources away from rebuilding both Europe and Asia, and the result would have been more civilian casualties from war and later famine that would have followed.
I don't think the blame for these civilian deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki falls on the shoulders of the Americans just like the deaths of civilians in the battle of Berlin were the responsibility of the European allies -- The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of the madmen who lead their countries to their doom for ultra nationalist reasons and a deranged sense of pride.
And that sense of pride thing there probably played into why the nuclear bombings were necessary -- The ultra-nationalist Japanese leadership needed to save face and it was easy to do so by surrendering to an enemy who had an unfathomably powerful new weapon.
It's very frustrating talking about this subject with Americans online[1]. In general they seem to have blinders on regarding the magnitude of the consequences of their democratic choice in leadership.
I get a sense that a feeling of learned helplessness has beset the American people and that they're not able to imagine a world of agency and action against authoritarianism.
I don't know what can shake them out of their torpor, but I do know that the longer they take to wake up the higher the price of action will be.
Some people are just wired that way.
I believe the link below is from those researchers:
> All it can do is get exposed to specific examples, and learn that we don't like that.
I've heard it said that prison rehabilitation programs for prisoners diagnosed with psychopathy that are based around exposing them empathy for the victim are counter-productive. Apparently programs that teach these people to think about the consequences of their actions and how they're detrimental to their own personal well-being lower recidivism rates in this particular kind of group.
If your buddy leaves his car parked at the top of a hill without the parking brake on and it rolls down the hill and side-swipes a bunch of vehicles and narrowly misses an elderly person walking by with a cane someone could easily say:
"Dude wtf is wrong with you, you left your car parked on the top of a hill with no brake and let it roll into traffic"
The phrasing doesn't absolve the offender of their negligent behaviour and the consequences of it.
The only thing thing does is the lack of action from regulators and society writ large.
Our lack of action is what allows people like Sam Altman and Dario and the irresponsible people who choose to work for them to be continue to be negligent.
I'd like to hear more about this story.
Check out this cool crank-powered self-assembling tower thing that he made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odwgpKRnWM8&t=1s
And his work on self replication: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxv4vDMOFCo
I know very little about Zuse or his work and I lament that this museum is closing down as I am moving to Europe next year and had intended to use the opportunity to research his work.
Neil Gershenfeld has a quip that "computer science is the worst thing to happen to both computers and science because it prematurely froze the model of computation around 1950s designs' and I think there's some truth to this. The resource limitations that Zuse experienced in Germany during the depression and war that forced him down a design path of mechanical design over electromechanical and exposed him to the more fundamental idea that computation is ultimately a physical process -- 'there's no such thing as software just different states of hardware'. I have a feeling that the next big technological revolution will be based around self-replicating machines that more fully unify computation with matter.
Accession was the likely inevitable outcome up until the reelection of the current President but after the American people expressed their continued support for a systemically corrupt gerontocracy and all that this entailed this kind of willing and amicable outcome has been taken off the table and likely will be for several generations. I get a sense that the general sentiment that Canadians are feeling regarding American attitudes and actions right now is outright betrayal and condemnation.
As for annexation it's important to keep in mind that this would be an illegal act of aggression against a peaceful ally and that it runs counter to everything that America claims to stand for. I'm skeptical that it would even be possible at this point, and I don't see a way that it could be done without military action.
Annexation is a pretty drastic thing to suggest too, how are you thinking it will unfold? Are you talking about something impending by the end of this decade or a multi-decade sort of thing? What happens if Canada resists? And what about other countries?
Something that I think is often overlooked is that there is a true appreciation in Europe for the Canadian sacrifices made in the World Wars and that these sacrifices have tied our countries together. I also think that you've underestimated the resolve of the Canadian people and how much they are incensed by these recent actions taken by America.
I'm sure you have a really neat and clean geopolitical analysis for why annexation is inevitable that factors in the geographic realities and economic / military disparities between the two countries and I'd love to read it but I'm quite certain that's likely to be just one big McNamara Fallacy.