awesome_dude

Thanks - I'll read that and the above linked OpenAI PR

But, I remain sceptical

Um - all I see is

> Timothy Gowers @wtgowers

> @wtgowers

> If you are a mathematician, then you may want to make sure you are sitting down before reading further.

If your refutation requires someone to have an account, login, and read something - it's meaningless

So are self-driving cars - as they have been for the last... decade or so

AGI has been "just over the horizon" for literal decades now - there have been a number of breakthroughs and AI Winters in the past, and there's no real reason to believe that we've suddenly found the magic potion, when clearly we haven't.

AI right now cannot even manage simple /logic/

Let me know when the Fields medal arrives in the mail.

It won't because even though it looks clever to you, people who /do/ understand math and LLMs understand that LLMs /are/ regurgitating

Why does your LLM need you to tell it to look in the first place? Why isn't just telling us all the answers to unsolved conjectures known and unknown?

Why isn't the LLM just telling us all the answers to all the problems we are facing?

Why isn't the LLM telling us, step by step with zero error, how to build the machine that can answer the ultimate question?

There was a project long long ago where every piece of knowledge known was cross pollinated with every other piece of knowledge, creating a new and unique piece of knowledge, and it was intended to use that machine to invalidate the patent process - obviously everything had therefore been invented.

But that's not how new frontiers are conquered - there's a great deal of existing knowledge that is leveraged upon to get us into a position where we think we can succeed, yes, but there's also the recognition that there is knowledge we don't yet have that needs to be acquired in order for us to truly succeed.

THAT is where we (as humans) have excelled - we've taken natural processes, discovered their attributes and properties, and then understood how they can be applied to other domains.

Take fire, for example, it was in nature for billions of years before we as a species understood that it needed air, fuel, and heat in order for it to exist at all, and we then leveraged that knowledge into controlling fire - creating, growing, reducing, destroying it.

LLMs have ZERO ability (at this moment) to interact with, and discover on their own, those facts, nor does it appear to know how to leverage them.

edit: I am going to go further

We have only in the last couple of hundred years realised how to see things that are smaller than what our eye's can naturally see - we've used "glass" to see bacteria, and spores, and we've realised that we can use electrons to see even smaller

We're also realising that MUCH smaller things exist - atoms, and things that compose atoms, and things that compose things that compose atoms

That much is derived from previous knowledge

What isn't, and it's what LLMs cannot create - is tools by which we can detect or see these incredible small things

You're proving the GP's argument - LLMs aren't creative you say as much, it's the driving that is the creative force

Blue tick accounts :)

In the "real" world we keep our relationship bubbles to a small number for just this reason - we have our close relationships, the people we trust, and then we have gradually less and less close relationships - people we know to greet, or know have done x or y or z

We know that people who are on our outer orbits should not be shared with in certain ways.

Our communities are in fact lots of overlapping bubbles, x knows y, and y knows z, but x sees them as a stranger.

The internet changes that dynamic, and we don't yet know how to manage it - we cannot all live in the town square, and we know to be very careful there, pickpockets, thieves, and robbers abound - and we have no idea who is who

Again our historical approach has been places like universities, where we have "trusted" advisors (teachers) who guide us on subjects being discussed openly - but who also ensure that we avoid pitfalls, like heated debates where people abandon logic and instead use rhetoric or violence, and who ensure that commercial interests are managed - that is, some advertisements are allowed, but unauthorised advertising is forbidden

That approach (moderation) has its own set of problems

Same tree that gave them credentials gives them weight that is used to spread their content.

New User problem has been around for a minute though - wikipedia and stack overflow both faced it, as does every social media platform nowadays.

Reality is, though, new visitors are getting the same blast radius as early adopters got when they started, just that the early adopters now have blast radiuses that are much bigger

To be fair - for all of those years Google has been serving up some atrocious results - remember when googling health symptoms got you rabies or pregnancy.

There's even the meme where people ask if the code was the result of a stack overflow question, or answer

I looked it up, and the key thing in favour of companies like BYD over the US companies - isn't (just) cheap labour - it's vertical integration.

BYD owns the mines, the batteries, the cars, the USA doesn't have that available, and are having to force other countries to provide their lithium/rare earth deposits to US companies in order to try and become competitive.

> The west needs to combat it by using subsidies and regulations

> In the US at least we’re gearing up for massive failure in the automotive industry solely because we’re avoiding competition

Uhhh - you want to prevent competition by using subsidies and regulations, but then complain the US companies are not competitive because they avoid competition?

The US vehicle manufacturers have been here multiple times - VW, Japanese "compacts", and now Chinese EVs

The Germans were competing on quality and fuel consumption.

The Japanese were competing on quality and price, they started out naff, and became gold standard, whilst US manufacturers were stuck delivering low rate products.

The Koreans followed the same playbook.

And, now, the Chinese are doing it again, following the Japanese playbook - offering better and better quality at a lower price.

> Ten years ago, that was EVs. But now EVs are becoming a commodity and every other car company is catching up.

Kind of yes, the competition, especially from China, is catching up, and exceeding Tesla's offers.

Kind of no - EVs were around for a very long time before Tesla, Tesla's sales pitch (at one point) was that it was a software company not a car company.

On that front - almost every vehicle manufacturer has caught up, and Tesla is still stuck /promising/ a self driving car, but still not delivering.

The Twitter acquisition is widely seen as the marking point where Musk lost his appeal - something that was not smart because, coupled with his foray into politics was an attack on his core market - middle class left of centre people who were buying for the environment.. etc

He poisoned his brand, and Tesla's too (because the two brands, his and Tesla's, were so intertwined)

He lost the impetus in European markets, leaving a dying (for him) US market, and Asia (which is largely interested in Chinese made vehicles).

My Anecdata: In Australia, where I am, it used to be Tesla's were fairly common, now, I think I've seen two in the last week, compared to maybe a dozen BYD (and I am in a middle class suburb)

I think that there have been such instances - (I can only speculate, but I think that) the judge can rule a mistrial, or it can be heard on appeal.

Ah google to the rescue:

> In the U.S., a jury’s factual findings can only be challenged post-trial if an appellate court or trial judge determines that no reasonable jury could have reached that verdict based on the evidence.

And

Civil Cases - (Judgment as a Matter of Law / JNOV): Governed by Rule 50 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a judge can overturn a jury’s factual finding if the evidence is legally insufficient to support it.

Criminal Cases - (Insufficiency of the Evidence): Under the Fifth Amendment's Double Jeopardy clause, an acquittal cannot be appealed or overturned. However, after a guilty verdict, a defendant can file a motion challenging the evidence, asserting that the facts do not support the conviction

If Prediction markets were good at predicting anything, there would be no need for prediction markets (because the future is already clear to everyone).

I know there's a risk when Musk's name comes up that everyone takes "all against" or "all for" approach - very polarising figure.

But I see a lot of that announcement, and the others someone else pointed to as his "aspirational, but ultimately never going to happen" goals - whether he believes the claims are achievable, or not, he says these things to energise people to working/paying for him to try

It costs him little to nothing to say, and other people's time, effort, and capital to try (and succeed/fail)

Tesla is falling to pieces now, and SpaceX is getting loaded up with completely unrelated projects (xAI) in order to try and make it look saleable (I guess) - it's very difficult to see the Mars announcement as anything but hype.

Why did you turn that into a whine about a tax that exists in 31 of 38 OECD economies?

Go to Australia where you pay a stamp duty for buying (to pay for infra) and a CGT for selling

Edit: Changed stamp tax to stamp duty

It really hit me moving to Australia, most of the mammals are nocturnal (Kangaroos were the ones that caught me most by surprise) - most (if not all) of the reptiles are diurnal - got to have that sweet sweet sun to warm the blood.

You're right - Rust has never had tech evangelists, absolutely never

In fact it's the only technology known to humans to never have had any such thing.

Puhleease.

Just a final post

"No true Scotsman" detected

and

>> Note: I say claimed not as a jab

> Oh, I am sure. Your comment absolutely cannot be mistook for that.

I made an explicit note because I suspected that you were going to take it as such (and, as demonstrated by the sarcasm in your response, you did)

Have a nice day bud - nobody has changed their mind - it's been real.

> many people pushing for Rust

You have couched this correctly, because we all know there are people out there who do go around yelling "Rewrite it in X" without thought (where X is the flavour of the month)

I also wanted to say - your description of the /right/ way to align a project with tech X is a restatement of Martin Fowler's "Strangler pattern"

Can you edit your post - "equation because deteting errors" is ambiguous - deleting, or detecting - I cannot work out which you mean

A quick scan of your comment history suggests that you see one every day ;)

And - the number of times I have been grossly downvoted for daring to utter a true word about Rust (or even Rust adjacent) will let you know your non-existent Rust evangelists are indeed the bullies - with one now screaming that he is a victim.

If you want definitive proof - look at this sub thread where you're so triggered that people talk about the mere existence of Rust evangelists (and evangelists exist for every tech - they always have and always will - which you would know given your [claimed] history in the field) that you want to argue they they aren't evangelists, they're just poor misunderstood victims.

Note: I say claimed not as a jab but because I don't know you and can only go on your claims in your profile.

You've never seen the Rust evangelists?

I am genuinely jealous.

Also, I know you made a typo, but it did make me laugh

Bogeymen is what you meant

Boogymen reminds me of the joke in Millenium Man (How do you make a handkerchief dance - put a little boogie in it)

Um, the spots do seem to have some importance - there's little point jabbing your left temple if, as you say, the aim is to improve the blood flow to your ankles

There was what I thought was a breakthrough in Schizophrenia diagnosis and treatment - the University of Washington held that groups of genes acting in concert were causing the disease, and, in fact, there were multiple variants of genes producing (what had always been suspected) different diseases that were bing lumped together.

For the longest time I had been trying to figure out why nobody was taking the research seriously, why there weren't diagnostic kits available that determined which variant people were actually suffering from, and using the appropriate drug regime to manage the specific condition the patient had.

Then, last year I saw a paper being discussed (some 5 - 10 years after the initial paper), and it was building on the Washington research - it appears to me now (keeping in mind that I am a layman and an outsider) that the research /had/ been taken seriously, but it's seen as a signpost on the pathway rather than the destination.

My immediate thought - there probably are these teams overseas doing these things - just, our media/markets shun them.

I mean, the covid vaccinations - people are/were doing their nut about the Euro/US versions, but the Russians had their own, the Chinese had two, and I am aware that the Chinese were handing it out to other countries as part of their aid programs (the effectiveness of those vaccines, however, has been questioned, especially in comparison to the Euro/US ones, but I'm not sure if that's reality or politics, it's so damned hard to tell these days)

I don't think it's unreasonable, even though I am getting marked down for daring to ask, for people who are making assertions, even if they are well understood *within their own community* (that is, not necessarily universally known) to show examples of what they are talking about.

You're correcting someone, so it's clear that your understanding isn't universal, and example code is the absolute minimum.

Show code

I mean - you're spot on - which is why I'd be more inclined to ask for actual metrics rather than feels/vibes, and I'd be very clear that the information I was basing my thinking on has enormous pitfalls.

This is the basis for "correlation points to possibly fertile grounds for an investigation"

Trying to reframe this as 'not science' after being caught on a logical fallacy doesn't change the record. You started with a definitive claim ('We know') to shut down a question. When challenged on the lack of causation, you pivoted to 'educated guesses.'

My point remains: if we misattribute the cause of the rising vulnerability rate (discovery vs. creation), our 'educated guesses' will lead to solutions that address the symptoms while the underlying problem continues to fester. Calling precision 'blabbering' is exactly how we end up with the 'false sense of security' mentioned earlier.

Exhibit A:

ragall 2 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

> How do you know?

We know because we could see the effects of the average rate of vulnerabilities discovery and exploitation, and it's definitely going up very fast. Until recently, vulnerabilities were relatively hard to find, and finding them was done by a very restricted group of people world-wide, which made them quite valuable. Not any more.

Exhibit B:

ragall 2 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]

Very often you only have limited time for investigation and you have to act now. Action is almost always based on educated guesses. reply