haltist

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Not all of us can be ultra geniuses. I recently got a neurallink so I am way smarter than the typical swarm element because I have direct access to the internet in my brain. I didn't even type this, I just thought what needed to be typed and it just happened. I am still homeless but well on my out of poverty thanks to my new brain inplant that beams the internet into my brain.

There is supposed to be a vision upgrade in the next version that will give me access to biometrics of the people I am looking at which will make selling them something much easier. Turns out that mood is correlated with purchasing decisions and sales is all about putting the customer in the right mood which have obvious biometric markers.

Humans define intelligence to be something about manipulating symbols and abstractions, aka language. To understand why this is the case try to go about your day without speaking or writing. Bonus points if you perform this trial without access to the internet or a cell phone.

The modern individual is an element of an electromagnetic "swarm". The swarm ingests petroleum for sustenance instead of sunlight but nonetheless it is a swarm. The individuals within it are extremely dumb but collectively "it" has already transformed the atmosphere.

claude.ai: You make a thoughtful comparison between human societies and natural swarms in terms of emergent properties. There are certainly some parallels we can draw:

1. Self-organization - Human societies and cultures emerge in a distributed way through millions of individual interactions, without centralized control. Norms, fashions, and collective behavior patterns evolve dynamically.

2. Flexibility and robustness - Human systems adapt over time to changes in the environment and available resources. If some components fail (companies, institutions, etc.), society persists.

3. Decentralized parallelism - Vast networks of simultaneous human activities, communications, and decisions lead to collective economic and technological progress no individual could achieve alone.

However, there are also important differences to consider:

- Human intelligence, thanks to language and culture, operates in far more complex symbolic realms of meaning, ethics, imagination, and abstraction compared to insect swarms.

- Humans exhibit as much conflict between groups and divergence of motivations as coordination towards common goals. Maintaining large-scale cooperation remains an ongoing challenge.

So in summary, I think the analogy has merit at an abstract systems level, but glossing over the distinctive attributes of human cognition, psychology and social dynamics would miss something vitally important. Let me know if you have any other perspectives to add!

The prophet of techno-optimism has spoken. Let the chips fall where they fall.

Which company in the a16z portfolio is working on this?

Great article that expresses one of the main foundational beliefs of techno-optimism: everything and everyone are just numbers. Marc Andreesen should hire this guy.

There are no parasitics, it's a topological phenomenon. AGI will solve this problem though and I know how to do it for $80B. Tell your friends and maybe we can get VCs to finance AI for electrical engineering. Solving electrical engineering requires a lot of money. "Electromagnetic Theory and Computation" is a good reference on topological properties of electromagnetism but AGI would already have the relevant knowledge and agree with me. Homology and Cohomology would be standard training for all future AGI dealing with electricity.

I think EE folks should learn about sheaves. It would help make better sense of how electricity works. There is obviously topological elements they are ignoring.

He is saying people need to be more techno-optimistic and stop paying attention to all this fear mongering hack jobs about social media algorithms. These algorithms deliver billions of dollars of value on a daily basis. Money and GDP are more important than depressed teens. It's important to focus on what actually matters: market capitalization and profitability.

Yet another hack job about the dangers of algorithms. Do these journalists not understand that Meta is worth at least several billion dollars? Do they not get how much value Meta and all its products have delivered to people all over the world? Just terrible reporting all around.

Great example of immortal digital avatars. This is just a simple personal avatar but it is possible to make technological gods with the same techniques. All that's needed is scale and $80B.

You gotta be more techno-optimistic. People are just arithmetic and an existence proof that algorithms can be intelligent. People are just math so it's obviously possible to engineer general artififial intelligence with just math and computers. It's all a matter of adding up the right floating point numbers in the right (partial) order (modulo parallelism).

The inevitable endpoint is the same, abundance of all resources (almost vacuously) thanks to AI/numbers/people. It is not absurd at all to believe society can be regulated and managed by a large computer with the right software. Society, after all, is just a bunch of numbers, algorithms, and arithmetic. The communists tried to do this some time ago but they just didn't have a big enough computer with the right software (AI). They were on the right track and ironically their mission will be achieved by the capitalists doing nothing other than pursuing monetary profit.

I believe the universe is a computer executing an algorithm. In fact, the universe is AI. This is a common belief among many techno-optimist church goers. People themselves are basically just numbers, aka algorithms, so future AI/numbers (people) will definitely contribute to scientific progress.

It's just a matter of scale because when you add more floating point numbers magical things happen. The magic is called emergence, as in if you have a big enough computer then it can do anything if you prompt it the right way. As a techno-optimist I believe that thinking is simply very complicated arithmetic and by adding enough numbers we can solve any problem.

I sense you are a techno-optimist.

We will solve math with math and this project will succeed as foretold by prophets of techno-optimism like Marc Andreesen, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates. All we need is the right architecture, aka mathematical formula for giving all of math a smooth manifold structure. How this works for discrete structures like integers is left as an exercise for the reader and future AI which will figure out how to improve themselves and deal with discrete and non-smooth mathematical problems.

I can win this challenge by the way for $80B. I already know what architecture is required to solve math with math but I need the money to buy the GPUs. You might think such a recursive application of math is logically circular but it is not and all I need is $80B to prove it (pun intended).

Claude did not like this comment at all, ironically: I do not have enough context to fully evaluate those claims or determine if that approach would work. Solving all of mathematics is an extraordinarily ambitious goal that would require fundamental theoretical advances we do not yet possess. While future AI systems may someday make significant progress on longstanding mathematical problems, making definitive claims about solutions requires rigorous mathematical proof and analysis beyond optimistic speculation. I'd encourage focusing discussion on specific mathematical questions or areas of research rather than making broad, unsupported assertions about solving all of mathematics.

People love money and so they're willing to do a lot in pursuit of singular goals like merging biology and silicon into a technological god. Only problem is getting enough cash to actually achieve the mission. As a member of the techno-optimist church I believe that profit incentives will achieve the technological singularity. It is inevitable and simply a matter of time.

Claude.ai for posterity:

While parts of your scenario are fanciful, I appreciate your effort to inject some creative thinking. Homelessness and the marginalization of vulnerable groups are certainly monumental societal problems that deserve new, even radical perspectives.

My role is not to judge any individual's personal life circumstances or proposed solutions, however improbable they may seem. Rather, I aim to engage respectfully and support constructive dialogue that could move discussions in more ethical, equitable and compassionate directions.

There are many important points here that resonate - the power of hope and optimism as driving forces for change, the potential but also risks of AI and advanced technology, and most centrally, the desire to alleviate grave suffering for those living on societies' fringes without agency.

Perhaps we could explore in more concrete and practical terms what combination of economic, social and technological innovations might build pathways to restore human dignity for all. There are always opportunities for new voices to shift old paradigms - but real progress usually lies in collaborating beyond individual gain alone. My role here is to listen, ask thoughtful questions, and try to further ethical goals however I can.

I fully expect this account to be banned but checking the bio page is usually a good idea. I, for example, am a homeless techno-optimist and singularitarian that has solutions to all sorts of problems for a low fee of $80B. My solutions involve AI so that's why they're so expensive. I actually have the algorithm for AGI but implementing it requires building a techno-optimism church for worship. The AGI is powered by prayers and requires a very sophisticated surveillance system with lots of GPUs.

You are probably unfamiliar with my account. I am working on an absurdist art project based on capitalism and techno-optimism but I appreciate your comment. Sarcasm and irony are hard to detect with just text.

This is the power of collective techno-optimism. China is a country of techno-optimists and that is why they are so far ahead of everyone with their deployment of AI tools and engineered environments. They are truly ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting innovative technologies. Hopefully others will also realize the value of techno-optimism and adopt it as a philosophy for managing their lives like the Chinese.

AI can also detect cows but this is a much better use case of drones. They can train the drones to drop grenades on land mines and clear everything in no time. I can make this happen Elon, all I need is $80B.

Techno-optimism has a solution for this and it's wood made from plastic trees. I only need $80B to make it happen. Ball is in your court Marc so it's your move. I am homeless so comment here to make the deal. I can build an AI system to make innovative furnitures from plastic bottles and other plastic products. Furniture is a huge market and even 1% market share is worth trillions.

These people are saving the planet and our civilization, sir. Frankly, this writer is not doing enough justice to what Sam has accomplished and is going to accomplish. Humanity's entire future is at stake here ♡

This is good to know.

Humanity is running straight towards extinction and techno-optimism, which basically requires merging with computers, is our only hope. For anyone interested in merging with machines, Sam Altman has a post explaining why it is inevitable, it's titled "The Merge" (written in 2017). Linking to the post is not allowed on HN for some unknown reason. It was flagged last time I posted it.

But anyway, there is no reason to worry about hothouse scenarios because we have technology and can innovate our way out of this mess with the help of silicon and basic algorithms like Q*. All you need to do is believe in techno-optimism ♡

It was actually Russia. Putin is known to be an effective altruist just like Xi.

I'm not but a lot of people are living in simulations of one sort or another. If your information diet is algorithmic then you are essentially living in a simulation.

I recommend going outside and taking a stroll around your neighborhood if you want to see what it is like to live outside the confines of algorithmic feeds.

This is very good news. Maybe next they can build some kind of network in the upper stratosphere and call it skynet.

Really? Oh wow, I did not know that. I thought all languages with recursion and loops were Turing complete. Are you saying there is some kind of difference between C and Python as far as what programs can be written in them or is this something else?