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But that’s medical research. This is just a hobby project.

It seems completely reasonable to object to using mammals in one’s tech projects, while admitting the value to using animal models to advance medical science.

captainclamon The Clickbaitification of Netflix

I'm going to front-load this by stating that I 100% agree that representation matters, and absolutely welcome a diversity of perspectives in media. Furthermore, I do believe that much criticism of "woke" media is a knee-jerk reaction to new, unfamiliar values and shifting power.

That said: Netflix's deployment of "wokeness" can feel completely shoehorned in and utterly arbitrary, a cynical technique that affirms the viewers' perspective, thereby increasing engagement.

I'm not "outraged" by it in the slightest. It tends to align with my own worldview. But at the end of the day it just makes for crummy content.

captainclamon California Bill to Decriminalize Psychedelics Is Approved by Senate

"That last 5% are not going to handle psychedelics well."

The way this comment is written makes it sound as if 100% of people will be using psychedelics after decriminalization goes into effect.

captainclamon GANcraft: Unsupervised 3D Neural Rendering of Minecraft Worlds

Question for the experts: Is it possible that GANs will be used for rendering video game environments in the near-ish future? This has been one of my private predictions with respect to upcoming tech, but I'd love to know if people are already thinking about this, or alternatively, why it won't happen.

captainclamon Facebook's 'Clear History' Tool Doesn't Clear Shit (2020)

... and people continue to use the platform

I imagine that the number of people who even hear or read about these privacy leaks represent a minuscule fraction of the user base.

And of those that are aware of these leaks, a small fraction are concerned about internet privacy.

captainclamon Is Consciousness Everywhere?

It sounds like you're suggesting that you are a "soul" that was "put" in a body.

Try to see it from this perspective; your experience as an individual (soul) is a feature of the structure we call Homo sapiens. It's a characteristic of this species' brain structure, in the same way that the colors of a flower are characteristic of its phenotype.

It would be silly to ask, "What are the chances that that shade of yellow ended up on that particular daffodil?"

The notion of "you" being in a "body" is extremely difficult to shake. Even if it's intellectually approachable, understanding it intuitively is something else entirely, though certainly attainable through sustained meditative practice or a hearty dose of psychedelics.

captainclamon New 10 Terapixel Image of the Night Sky Contains 1B Galaxies

Or the great filter. :/

captainclamon Brad Cox has died

"I think Alan's idea of OOP was something more fluid, more organic than this."

I've heard a good deal about Alan Kay's dissent of the state of OOP, but I've never seen a concise summary of his vision or the principles that Kay's 'ideal' realization of OOP would adhere to.

Does such a resource exist, written by Kay himself or otherwise? Or do I just need to go play around with Obj C or Smalltalk to really "get it?"

captainclamon National Strategy for Planetary Protection

As far as my understanding goes, prions require contact with either the same or extremely similar proteins to have any affect, so they would require even greater biological similarity. Are their prion-like agents that work differently than I suppose?

captainclamon Neural Nets (1994)

I'm not entirely convinced of this argument myself, that it's impossible for us to "truly" understand how brains work .

However, I entirely agree with the sentiment: We don't necessarily understand brains now, but we don't dismiss their capabilities just because we can't explain precisely how they do what they do. By the same token, complex tools like deep learning shouldn't be dismissed just because we can't satisfactorily interpret them.

captainclamon Nvidia Uses AI to Slash Bandwidth on Video Calls

In some ways, of course, I agree, but as some other commenters have pointed out, this is essentially a "deepfake" of yourself...in principle there's no restriction on what one could use as their "avatar." As much was demonstrated in the "Different Output Styles" slide.

So I'd have a hard time saying this is not dramatically less "real" than some lossy compression technique. Is there some way to formalize "realness?" Maybe it would be inversely proportional to the hardness of manipulating the medium as a user..?

captainclamon Phosphine detected in the atmosphere of Venus – an indicator of possible life?

In some ways humans are simpler than the cells they are made off. Yeah, you may know how to drive a car, but can you synthesize DNA? I find it fascinating that complexity goes up, when you zoom into a human. And cells exhibit all these behaviours.

This is certainly a fascinating notion, but it assumes arbitrary boundaries that have no real foundation in reality. Imagine instead what a staggering feat it is that the very cells that demonstrate all these remarkable biochemical behaviors can work in concert to drive a car!

I find this change in perspective to be quite instructive...that "humans" are not made of "cells," so much as collections of "cells" have developed a behavior that we describe as "human."

captainclamon A CRISPR first produces squid as clear as glass

Haha, as a Biochemistry PhD student, this is almost exactly how I will often break down biology to a layperson: DNA corresponds to proteins that are essentially just shapes bumping into other shapes, sometimes making new shapes and sometimes destroying them in the process.

Of course, provided 4 billion years of evolution, this has yielded staggering complexities, but at the heart of it is just globs.