bjt2n3904

My (near decade long) comment history speaks for itself. I do not primarily use HN for a culture war, but I do engage it. Despite how I try to avoid the culture war, it beat a path to my door, and threatens my livelihood. Something something, "and when they came for me, there was no one left to speak".

I maintain that I'm being banned -- not for engaging in the already present ideological battle on HN, but merely for engaging on the wrong side of it.

The fact that Daghlian and Slotin died in the same hospital bed has always been a sobering thought. "Well, that does it" are harrowing words.

There are famous engineering incidents that are good to study -- the Challenger disaster, the Minnesota Bridge collapse, the Therac 25... But compared with the LANL Criticality incident, there's something different. The former are all technical failure analysis.

This incident is almost existential in it's implications, like Shelly's Frankenstein. A discussion on the nature of humanity.

The asides with the dog are great. I've seen a few blogs use this technique -- I'm not big on Greek, but I think Plato used this technique too.

It instills the idea that you should be asking a question at this point. Some information has been provided that should generate more questions in your head, if you're keeping pace.

Psychiatry, having failed to measurably solve any "mental health" problem is so desperate to find a solution that it's sampling the recreational drug cabinet. This isn't science. This isn't medicine. This is rolling back the clock to witch doctors and medicine men.

Can't be depressed if your mind has been chemically lobotomized.

What you say here will be deeply unpopular.

I have found that people treat depression and anxiety like a medical condition -- diabetes, or high cholesterol.

Yet I can measure those numbers, compare them with other people similar to me, determine what ranges are outside the norm, and observe changes as I try different strategies to manage them.

Depression, like physical pain, can neither be measured nor compared. And if this analogy holds, then there are those who would rather dull their pain with medication and claim victimhood, rather than find the source of it.

Everyone's got their fairly reasonable explanations as to why this is happening. Complexity in cars driving up cost and tanking reliability. Inflation. Tight finances. Public transit, work from home.

And then I look at the WEF guys, who want to make personal vehicle ownership not a thing and think... Boy it's happening. We're turning into Cuba with ancient cars on the road -- eventually none of them will be personally owned. And we're totally happy about that prospect for now.

2016: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/goodbye-car-ownership...

Who cares whether it's "spying" or "surveillance"?

Here's the real issue, which this semantics argument is derailing. Several times, a shooting spree has occurred, and all the government agencies say, "Oh, yeah... We knew about them! Anyways, the mass shooter's community is very much under attack..."

Pretty hard to swallow when the federal agencies are spending time and resources holding a magnifying glass over political opponents (with a long, LONG track record of nonviolence).

People don't communicate well. They use the word "spying", when "surveillance" would be more appropriate.

How would you feel if you found the past three weeks, there was someone parked outside your home, who followed you to work, and logged when and where you left?

I mean, it's all public information, right?

How would you feel if they did this, specifically because of your political beliefs?

I do believe this is the plot of Portal. Wheatley was created to stop Glados from going on a murderous rampage.

Certainly with generative AI, we've demonstrated that an evolutionary model can produce (as an example) a method for a bipedal robot to learn to balance and walk like a human.

But all this to me is a cheat. We've already built the robot, and the control systems, and feedback mechanisms, and placed a goal on the end result for it to work towards.

I think the external constraints we put on the system mean that the creation will never surpass the creator. Oh, the mechanical muscles will be stronger and faster to the point we can get robot ballet. But it will still be bounded by the limits of our imagination and capabilities.

When it comes to LLMs, I'm sure it will create fascinating stories that are loved more than Tolkien. But the stories will still be limited to the bounds of our own thought.

If you ever feel like discussing religion, my Twitter DMs are open!

You have correctly identified the underlying assumption of this discussion.

From someone who has the opposite view, that human consciousness did not arise from an evolutionary process, but was created by God -- I believe we will never fully create an artificial consciousness.

I think a further assumption is that the human mind is a deterministic machine. If we could freeze whatever entropy is involved with human behavior, just like the seed of a Minecraft world, we could get the same result, and perhaps even control human behavior.

I don't think consciousness is deterministic like that. I have some things I can point to for justification, but much more largely, there are some strange implications that arise from "we're all dancing to our DNA".

Anyways.

Human behavior laundering is a magnificent phrase.

The only thing is you don't have to worry about this in the future, it's already here. [1]

1 - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automatio...

Alternatively, we're reaching the point where we're creating a secondary AI to keep the first AI in check, like Wheatley and Glados.

I firmly reject that GPT is sentient, or can even tell truth. You're no better off asking it questions about society than asking a magic eight ball.

And yet there's something sinister about twisting an evolutionary model into a reeducation camp.

LLMs are not human, but strikingly similar. If we have no qualms about how we treat it, then what will we do to real people?

dang's put me on notice, so I'm walking on eggshells here.

But truth isn't political. As long as we think it is, we will continue to follow the descent into madness. Truth is just that: truth.

The only reason we think truth is political, is because our chosen leaders so heavily depend on lies that the truth would destroy their reign.

This is like saying, "I've developed a new compass for a deep space probe to help it find North!"

Our society is actively declaring that falsehoods are truth, and should be celebrated. We're hallucinating ourselves. All this software does is make sure LLMs hallucinate with us.

> How is the song a violation of copyright?

Few people are arguing this is an issue of copyright infringement. It's a very weak argument.

> You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough

This isn't "mimicking". You can sue someone for impersonating you, especially if money is involved.

It would be bad enough if they JUST denied that Drake was a victim, but they go one step further and say Drake has committed the offense!

Learn to spot the DARVO tactic: Deny, accuse, reverse victim and offender.

No, you're not. You're dealing with principles of communism here. They're inherently nonsensical.

Note the standard of justice being used. It's not, "impersonating someone to use them as a stepping stone is wrong, no matter who does it, or who is the victim".

The standard is, the rich and powerful don't "deserve" equal protection from the law, the real victim is the artist who isn't being recognized because the industry isn't playing "fair". So it's ok if the underdog breaks the law, because the world is stacked against him.

Yeah, and basket ball isn't fair because I'm fat and uncoordinated, and math isn't fair because I'm stupid and don't want to study.

Ironically, these were the same people that said, "Nobody deserves a platform to spread the 'wrong' ideas." when it came to censorship on Twitter, and had the gall to call it "accountability" when people were banned for wrong think about vaccines.

If you're scratching your head and saying, "Wait, what am I missing? That makes no sense! Ten seconds ago it was the rich and powerful censoring the poor underdog, and that was bad. But now big pharma backed censorship is a good thing?" -- it's because you're the sane and logical person, and they're the ones without a consistent worldview.

Drake's voice isn't intellectual property, it's his own identity.

Drake has a right to decide what his voice says, and have a monopoly on it.

The AI artist is not "harmed" because they can't use Drake's voice.

I can't believe this needs to be said.

> IMO, the real tragedy here is not some threat to Drake (he’ll be fine)

Man, what a skewed version of justice this is. "He'll be fine." The REAL victim is this unnoticed artist? Give me a break. What he did impersonating another artist was wrong.

There's this perverse notion that has infused our society where it's ok to rob from a Target or Walmart because it doesn't really "hurt" them. "They have insurance. They'll be fine!"

That standard of justice will lead society to a very VERY bad place if you follow it.

I wrote about this a few years ago, when Wil Wheaton tried to move to Mastodon, and promptly got booted from his instance by a mob.

The "heavy moderation" of IRC days is markedly different than the "heavy moderation" that exists today. Back in the day, the ircops had all the power of the ban hammer. Today, the mob has all the power, and overwhelm the admins.

The mods try to hold onto a semblance of power by pointing to a strict set of rules and codes of conduct, but the reality is the mob gets the final say in who stays or goes, regardless of what the "rules" say.

If the private subkey is stored on their servers, then that means their servers are one of the "ends" in "end to end encryption", and they can read all your messages.

Like putting a screen door on a submarine.

Oh, let me hear the psychiatrist who has a new plan to overcome addiction with his bag of tricks.

People worship modern psychiatry/psychology as this scientific insight into the human mind that has finally done away with superstition and religion, and can accurately (and repeatably) tell us what's happening with people suffering from various mental ailments, and how to fix it.

But for some reason, every time a shooting spree happens, we all scratch our heads and ponder who could have seen this coming, and bury the fact that the majority of the shooters are on SSRI's and a host of other medication.

What happened to our superior understanding of the human mind? Shouldn't modern psychiatry and psychology be able to identify people at risk of shooting sprees? Or at least point back at the missed signs? Why are they so silent on this?

It's because when you peek behind the curtain, you find they're just a form of culturally acceptable medicine men. "Here, take these pills and it will solve all your issues! No we don't have any idea what 'chemical imbalance' is happening, or even if it's happening, but that's beside the point! Do not question the great and mighty Oz!"

If you ask me, they aren't fixing the problem with young men, they're perpetuating it. Maybe address that before throwing mud on 12 step programs.

Oh HN, how predictable you are.

"You know what trucking really needs? Stricter solutions and harsher punishments! DRM in vehicles, so the government can electronically disable a car to prevent truckers from driving beyond the number of hours we agreed on! And lifetime trucking bans for trying to evade it!"

You keep going down this route, and you'll suddenly find yourself in a totalitarian society where breathing requires an X.509 cert.

They will be the first thing to break.

I can't stand the amount of fragile connectors people keep installing on expensive boards. My BladeRF's micro USB 3.0 sheared off.

USB-C is even a bit contentious for me. USB-A with the 3.0 extensions is much more durable.

Can't wait for this to bring about a fresh hell of emergent human behavior.

Hmm. My posts on social media keep getting weighted down because it seems too much like ChatGPT. That means (laughing) I need to start writing in a very strange (weird) style so that I throw off the AI-detection algorithms.

Or gosh, students writing papers, and the false positives there... "Sorry kid, Turn-It-In says your paper was written by an AI, try again."

The alternative to non-profits driving social change is for-profits driving social change.

You don't want a morality designed by capitalism.

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> Premium components

Mmmm. Guarantees I'll never touch this.