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HN wouldn’t be allowed to remove that content — but that’s different than flagging it as inappropriate (as HN does now).

My vision is having HNs flagging system where the content is hidden but available by default would be acceptable — but FB or Reddit style of actually removing the comment would not be.

My long term goal in forcing content to be available is to provide more control to users — such as user side content filtering on places like HN.

I’m not against filtering what users see, by the users themselves: I’m against platform using their privileged position to do that filtering, in a way that enforces their political vision.

My solution is split services into “platforms” and “providers”, where only “platforms” enjoy immunity for user uploads but are subject to common carrier regulations in exchange.

It would be up to any company to decide if they’re a “platform” or “provider”.

Let people self-select if they view themselves as platforms or providers — with benefits and costs to each option.

Not everything should be a platform; I think companies like Twitter, FB, and YT would be happy to adopt platform/common carrier status if their immunity would otherwise be revoked.

Are there still edge cases? Yep.

But let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good — this change would improve the regulatory landscape in a way that helps end users.

I’m saying we should change it so you have one of two choices for your website:

- let users upload cars, puppies, and funny videos of their kids (video platform; common carrier; immunized from copyright claims, etc)

- accept editorial control, and only post puppy videos, but assume liability for copyright violations (video provider; not common carrier; no immunity)

You’d be allowed to do either of those, but not the case now where you editorialize to just puppy videos but maintain immunity for that content.

As a business owner, you’d have to choose:

Are you a platform for others to host video or a provider of exclusively puppy videos?

In what way does what you say not apply to cellphones?

I believe I’m better off for that regulation (in telecom) and believe that I would similarly benefit if social media platforms were also regulated as common carriers.

Edit — rate limited, so replying here:

The commonality is obvious:

Passing messages of various formats to users within your network of contacts and maintaining forwarding/access rules for those messages — almost exactly what cellular service has in common.

Great idea!

Social media and cloud providers are like telephones, mail, and electricity.

They should provide a service for any legal use, even if they don’t agree with the content.

I see it the other way:

We’ve had a revolutionary S-curve with computing/artificial reasoning in inventing transistors — but we know we’re still at the bottom of two related S-curves, quantum computing (an exponential increase in many problems of interest) and IOT/smart systems where our automated reasoning is embodied in something. We know somewhere up those curves lies the ability to make new kinds of minds.

I think both of those will prove to be bigger than bio-science... and more over, bio-science will require them to a) do the experiments and b) find uses for the technologies.

I think human augmentation will turn out to be like spaceflight: humans are near the top of their S-curve already.

Instead, I think biology research won’t come into its own until AGI research does and we have an idea of how to make new biological systems.

Of course, that might kill us all. Horribly.

Sure — you throw them in the Kube secret manager.

But now you have multiple config files (smart) or your entire config outside the repo (not smart). This isn’t always the wrong approach — SSH keys get loaded this way, for instance.

ENV variables naturally provide a way to layer content from different sources in a way that files don’t, so if you have a relatively simple config from multiple providers (eg, getting AWS session token from the host plus your environment config from the launch ENVs) it’s easier to use the K-V store nature of ENV variables versus multiple files.

Again, multiple config files isn’t always wrong — but using that to store single strings instead of ENV variables is a code smell, for sure.

My perspective is that it’s a useful idea for abstraction — which combined with category theory’s ability for composition is cool beans, at least in computer science.

The square in a category diagram is a legit object — and we can have type theories with the same features.

That’s useful for computational equivalence (eg, spec matches implementation) and path bundling to prevent case explosion.

About what you’d expect from adding homotopies to type theory.

For the first:

Michael Shulman et al have been working on a semantic model of type theory as category diagrams and discuss how sometimes it’s easier to solve your problem as a diagram picture and sometimes as a logical statement.

The mathematics they used for this “foundations” work in abstract math connects hypergraphs/CW complexes decorated with data to statements in a type theory, like a program.

The goal is to use this deep mathematical connection to find a type theory “close to” our AI, allowing it to make “intuitive” extensions of a statement via DNN, but validate that it makes sense within its “effective language” deductively.

My research in that area is automating proofs as a “basic” usage of that idea: an AI turns the desired statement into a (partial) picture it tries to use image completion on, to make it look like other proofs it’s seen, but the discriminator for that generative step can use the formal model, after turning the proposed image into a statement — is it logically consistent or not?

There’s a bunch of problems in that area, which has only started to be explored the past few years with the DL is manifolds and covering ML papers.

tl;dr: That math work gives us rules for how to turn geometric objects defined one way (tensors on a space) into objects defined another (formulae on varieties). Algebraic geometry meets AI.

For the second:

The Microsoft QuArC group under Dr Krysta Svore is working on developing ways to accelerate common industry algorithms via quantum computers — just calling out AI as a particularly impactful application since quantum computers will come online in 10-20 years.

They have some AI papers if you poke around — mostly that “best fit” for data is a good analog for “lowest energy”, and ways to use that for gains.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/ksvore/

In terms of foundational research:

There will be a bunch of work connecting type theory (algebra) to deep learning (geometry), by using the ideas from HoTT.

Quantum AI will become increasingly a thing.

I believe they meant mounting via Kubectrl as a file, from the secret manager.

So runtime file injection.

> And for the same reason, a child process that does the same won't inherit them in order to expose them.

Wait, this is the crux of why you think it’s more secure — but actually I see the reverse problem:

Dropping environmental variables is standard security practice, but dropping file access permissions is not. Most child processes read from the same set of files as the parents.

How would having files rather than ENVs make my container more secure, where we’re concerned with developers making mistakes (passing ENV vs passing file permissions)?

Similarly, the only proposed benefit of your idea is we don’t have them around post reading — but that’s true if you initialize a config object from ENV and then pass it around as well. (You ignored my point about how mistakes via logging happen.)

> Unfortunately they are visible to other users on the system, so they're no good for credentials.

If you’re concerned about your own software logging credentials, command line arguments are negative in two regards:

They’re highly visible when the process is running; they’re often automatically logged.

> They aren't in the environment block, so a quick and dirty "dump all my environment variables to stdout" procedure won't risk exposing them.

Okay — but the usual way that happens is “dump my config object in a log”, which parsed configs don’t help with.

You also now have a config file: how is it stored? ...is it in the repo? ...what are the permissions? ...how do we deploy it?

Environment variables don’t persist in repos and are designed to be integrated with hosting tools, like secrets managers.

I’m not seeing how a config file beats Kubernetes injecting from the secret store, which is why we use environment variables: so our tools (secret stores) can configure the environment our software uses.

How do command line arguments or config files solve either problem?

We have papers showing how to exponentially accelerate AI using quantum computers, the same way we can accelerate other types of problems. (Finding a “best DAG” is related to lowest energy state.) Microsoft already has published a number of articles and is working on more. In general, global entanglement will give an exponential boost over isolated data centers — the same way a fully entangled computer is more powerful than a DWave.

I understand a number of readers aren’t familiar with QAI research though.

But that’s my point —

> Why should we get scientific? You didn't.

The person responding made a generic negative comment (as did you) due to not knowing the state of the art.

Incorrectly “correcting” people while yourself ignorant is prevented by giving people specific corrections: if you’d taken the time to tell me what you think I’m wrong about, you’d probably realize you don’t actually have a specific thing you think I’m wrong about — you just were surprised by my conclusion.

See here for more detailed arguments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26657056

Sure — as you say though, we’re far off that limit. There’s plenty of room for limited exponential growth in its intelligence.

There’s a number of facts that make this not sci-fi:

- China has demonstrated distributed quantum networks.

- The US has demonstrated distributed quantum calculations.

- Anyons were recently experimentally verified.

- We have a number of small quantum ALU.

- There are quantum-effect systems in production, just not fully-entangled systems.

- We have quantum ML algorithms for accelerated training.

Nobody has disputed my baseline estimate: that humans will complete a quantum computer in 10-20 years. (If people just disagree there, they should say so.)

However, once you accept that, it’s trivial to see the following sequence:

- AI is slightly smarter than humans, does quantum work 2-5x faster.

- AI develops quantum circuits in 2-4 years that would have taken 10-20 for humans. (See COVID vaccines for power of tech acceleration.)

- Those quantum systems let the AI replace its current systems with faster local ones.

- The AI uses another 1-2 years at this intermediate stage to extend current quantum networking research to unify its quantum data centers into a single computer, giving full global entanglement.

So in 3-5 years, an AI which starts off mildly smarter could finish nearly-done projects and enter an exponential growth curve before we do.

That progression looks like:

- Scale M AI.

- Scale M/K * 2^K, where K is the portion of M at a single data center.

- Scale 2^M AI, when it can fully entangle.

> Because of that, any level of detail is about as believable as any sci—fi.

That’s not true: most major companies in the space have labs looking to turn fundamental research into products, which is the exact opposite of sci-fi.

I think people just haven’t actually thought about this and are responding with fallacies rather than confront an idea they intuitively reject.

Even though I’m right on the technical issues involved.

The downvoting is hilarious: nobody can actually say what I’m wrong about, and the one person who tried agreed with me, but you’re here downvoting because you’re sure you’re experts.

If you were really smarter than me at QM, you’d be able to point out what was wrong with what I said.

The HN downvotes without correction really speak to the hubris around here.

> I'm not guessing that it's easy to misunderstand things one has not experienced - that's axiomatic.

I’ll say it again:

You’re assuming I’m ignorant about or haven’t experienced what you’re talking about.

This comment, like the one before, isn’t made in good faith.

You’d be funnier if you quoted what you believe I said that’s incorrect, rather than making nebulous accusations because you didn’t understand or agree with my comment.

Go ahead, get scientific.

We have basic gates in circuits and a few fairly solid theories of how to scale, including quantum AI algorithms to accelerate training. Distributed quantum systems running those basic gates have been demonstrated. Basic arithmetic has been demonstrated.

A reasonable prediction is humans will implement quantum computing in 10-20 years, for special purpose data center operations.

A “super intelligent” AI might reasonably do that in 2-5, at which point the quantum ML gains would allow it to enter exponential growth. We could see an AGI go from “mildly smarter than human researchers” to “incomprehensible” in just a few years.

I’m unsure which step in that chain of reasoning you think is inaccurate.

You just said “to be honest”, implied I was uninformed because I disagree with you, then said something concurring with me: Zuse’s work happened a decade before ENIAC (1936 vs 1946). If quantum is at the equivalent of Zuse’s work, AI could suddenly accelerate it and go exponential.

I can’t tell you what to do with your life.

My solution to encountering outdated beliefs with great utility was to try and update them — to retell Kung fu (and Buddhism) in that new world view. Buddhism has a maxim to keep what’s useful and discard the rest.

What does “ki” mean in physics?

I think it’s more than esoteric luggage, but a class of physics equations which are nasty to write down because they’re complex differential equations — and the numerics don’t matter to the practice, just the behavior of the system.

So you give a name to that behavior and model it experimentally, describe it euphemistically, etc.

I get spending the time to learn multiple models and translate between them isn’t everyone’s idea of fun, though. Those people reasonably make different choices than I did.

Can you name an equivalent of Kung fu?

I can’t — so I found it necessary to dig into the old program and port the concepts.

I would argue that more people should do that, even when they don’t immediately understand the old model well enough to port.

Both in software and martial arts.

> If you’ve never lived in a society that offered socialist advantages like affordable health care, elder care, government-funded community engagement programs, etc. then I guess it’s easy to be scared by things you don’t understand.

I don’t think it’s commenting in good faith to think the only reason I would find those things dystopic is because I am ignorant or haven’t experienced them.

That sort of insulting non-answer from utopian is precisely what tends to scare me — and lead to horrific outcomes in the real world.

Distributed quantum computing is already a thing.

An AGI that made a few decades of current-rate scientific progress could switch to a globally distributed quantum computer that’s synchronized in its computation through entanglement.

At which point, it would hit an exponential curve until it ran out of space to grow. (The “singularity” proponents argue this is unbounded.)

An AI that’s 10x smarter than us would be 2^10 smarter than us in a couple years — based on current technology trends. Moreover, it will have overcome the cooperation barrier with a distributed consciousnes, like the original idea for the Borg.

The ability to free itself from a single location or easy disconnection from its assets would be a major step in AI independence.

Yep, and a man should focus on discipline in his house instead of confront the injustice of the world — that’s why he beats his wife instead of confronting real problems.

LeBron happily accepts Chinese money for his work to be aired in the Chinese market: focusing his criticism on the less problematic customer is exactly what I’m calling out.

China pays money he wants, and will stop if he talks, so he doesn’t talk about it — because he’s a cheap hypocrite. More than that, your portrayal of him not speaking on those issues is plain false: he was happy to discuss Hong Kong. He just doesn’t speak about issues in China which would negatively finically impact him.

How do you think black people are treated in China?

My hunch is “not well” based on how they hid Finn on the Star Wars poster. Why doesn’t LeBron talk about the treatment of blacks in China, where the NBA also airs?

LeBron runs his mouth, but he sits down and shuts up for a check. He knows that China is racist against him and treats him like a trained dog, telling him to sit or speak on command — and he does it. So he lashes out at other people about the fact even though he’s an overpaid circus performer, he’ll always be a bitch like that.

Which is particularly galling:

LeBron et al talk about how they won’t back down confronting wrongs! — except for China, who is actually racist and actually abusing human rights, right now. He shut up, sat down about that and read the script like he was told.

It’s beating your wife because you’re scared to confront real issues — and I don’t respect that behavior from pampered circus acts.

> The entire teaching is based on life energies and ki flows which... just weren't there for me. I was able to progress nicely also without them - faking them to be more honest, I could have been continued growing in the technique, but what was the point continuing something I don't believe in?

I had a similar experience — in Kung fu and Buddhism.

Beliefs are a model of the world: just because a model isn’t phrased in terms of my core beliefs doesn’t mean it has nothing to teach me.

In the case of Kung fu and Buddhism, I don’t believe I would understand things as well as I do (physics, physiology, neurology) without having taken the time to understand what those other models were trying to express about the world.

To use an analogy: just because I have an irresolvable dependency conflict with a new piece of software doesn’t mean it has nothing to teach me about software and programming.

I would argue several modern problems trace to the collapse of churches as a social institution:

- loneliness

- lack of dating/marriage

- lack of community infrastructure

- lack of elder care

If you look at existing charities, much of the rubber meets road work gets done by churches or church affiliated groups.

You don’t have to like the message or the people, but I think it’s pretty obvious ditching churches without a replacement was a mistake.

Edit: reply here since rate limited //

> Yes, this can obviously vary by church--but it's a fallacy to claim that churches as a whole prevented loneliness.

No, you’re the one making a fallacy: your mothers singular bad experience doesn’t refute that churches made a statistically positive impact, which was my claim. You just told an emotional anecdote then declared that I’m wrong due to a straw man. (I never made a universal claim.)

> an entire generation growing up in the shadow of the 2008 financial collapse, as well as unprecedented debt from college

Okay?

The downwards trend in dating and marriage didn’t start in 2008 and doesn’t seem to hold across cultures — there’s a clear cultural component related to social changes in the US.

If you’re saying you think the collapse of churches is on par with excessive college debt as to why two-ish generations aren’t flourishing: I agree.

That’s my point.

> it's a self-selecting population that inherently echochambers, making it difficult to relate to outside groups, thus further damaging community

This sounds like a stereotype more than a fact — and is exactly counter to my experience, where multiple churches collaborate on things like homelessness charities.

That fine grained social structure is a necessary layer of how governments distribute resources effectively, one very poorly replaced by private actors. (In my experience.)

> you don't give any supporting arguments for them

I must have missed yours.

> you quite nicely fit the churchgoer stereotype in that way

Here’s the crux of it: you’re making faulty arguments because you need me to be wrong for your stereotypes to be right.

Eg, calling me a “churchgoer stereotype” when I don’t attend church and you made similarly unsupported arguments.

You’re just a bigot: factually wrong and stereotyping people.

What would that be?

I’ve encountered this claim more often than I’ve encountered actual fundamentalist churches I think are making any sort of strong claim about the world.

So I’m curious to hear what people think is wrong.

Thanks for doing this!

(Don’t have questions; just encouraging more not-mega church public Christianity.)