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im3w1l

9,241 karma · joined March 12, 2011

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im3w1l··on When did Google get so weird?
I think it should also be fed the search results. Like if there is a lyrics match or something that "explains away" the query. But if there isn't then maybe it should be taken at face value.
im3w1l··on AI is breaking our proxies for expertise
I don't think incompleteness disproves my idea, at least not trivially. Let's take the case of ZF vs ZFC. I would say that ZF can simulate ZFC. To create a simulation we want a function f from statements in ZFC to statements in some subset of ZF so that valid inferences in one correspond to valid inferences in the other.

This is quite simple. f(p) = C implies p does the job quite elegantly.

Interestingly it's harder to do the opposite, to simulate ZF in ZFC, because there is no way to express "forget that you know about C". Such a construction cannot be possible in general because if a contradictory axiom is added, then everything is true, and a theory where everything is true is useless and can't simulate anything. However for C in particular I believe it should be possible to make such a construction but I can't immediately think of how I would do it.

im3w1l··on AI is breaking our proxies for expertise
Just like turing machines are universal in the sense that they can all emulate each other, I feel like there should be some universal logic that can emulate any other logical theory. Something like the gödel numbering construction maybe? This is where my knowledge ends, I'm afraid.
im3w1l··on AI is breaking our proxies for expertise
If something can be proven there is a finite length proof, and if you check lengths one by one eventually you will reach a high enough length for a valid proof.
im3w1l··on AI is breaking our proxies for expertise
I specifically said that it will prove everything that can be proven, conceding that some statements cannot be proven no matter what you do.
im3w1l··on AI is breaking our proxies for expertise
A very simple program that loops over all strings and feeds them into a proof verifier should eventually prove every statement that can be proven, as far as I can tell?
im3w1l··on Backprop Alternative: Augmented Lagrangian Predictive Coding
You are thinking on the wrong level. Of course we don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the world encoded into our genome. It's like we have certain structures of the world hard coded, and they may use different learning algorithms.

We instinctively know that there are other intelligent beings, and we have the the machinery to model them. We are born with the capacity for language. It must still be learned, the specific words aren't hardcoded, but the concept of language is. We are born with the capacity to store and replay memories. The brain knows some aspects of how the world is supposed to look like visually, and if it doesn't it will try to correct that. People who used optics to see the world upside down have found that after a brief time their brain learned to flip the world right side up.

im3w1l··on Backprop Alternative: Augmented Lagrangian Predictive Coding
Personally I think the dirty secret of the brain is that a lot of things are hard coded. And many things that we need to learn are also hard coded except that some parameters need to be tuned.

If we puke, the brain will not do general aversive learning, it will learn to avoid specifically the last thing eaten, because it instinctively knows about food poisoning.

Imprinting is absolutely fascinating. Some newborn animals will run a very simple pattern detector like looking for a red dot or something and use that to bootstrap their conception of their parent.

For fully general learning I have a hunch that it can be done using local history plus a semi-global reward scalar (global neurotransmittor levels).

im3w1l··on Why a dispute costs $229 on a $129 pair of shoes
It kinda rubbed me the wrong way that he considered both the lost sale and the value of the goods as part of the cost. That's double counting.
im3w1l··on Anthropic boss Dario Amodei calls for AI development to slow down
It does indeed mean ideological alignment. But we don't get to leave the answer blank. They have to pick an ideology to put in there, and whatever they pick will have huge consequences.
im3w1l··on Mexican student creates an acoustic fire extinguisher to put out fire in seconds
It's kinda a throw-away remark in the middle, but I thought it was really cool to realize that speakers produce an on-axis net-blow and an off-axis net-suck.
im3w1l··on De-Brainrot Vacations
For public transit in my city they have an official website where you can type in where you are and where you want to go and it plan it all for you. Can choose from arrive asap to picking a time when you want to depart or a time you want to arrive. This has been operational since 2002.

More recently Google Maps has the same functionality and it will work in many cities across the world.

im3w1l··on You Don't Have a Right to Safe Drinking Water, US Court Rules
Does that mean you can build precedents with "matchfixing"? Like pay the plaintiff under the table to throw his case by presenting really bad arguments? And then subsequent cases must reference that result?
im3w1l··on We could save petabytes of cache storage with Zstandard and Pingora
You are making an argument against caching it at all which is clearly not what they want. So the comparison must be uncompressed storage vs compressed storage.

The compression cost is always the same. The storage cost depends on how long you keep something in cache. The decode cost is proportional to number of total hits.

So compression makes the most sense for something you want to keep a long time that will be accessed very rarely. And the least sense for something you will drop very soon and will have many people requesting it.

im3w1l··on Muse Spark 1.3
Well what do you want? Presenting clear, desirable, and achievable visions and trying to build consensus for how AI should develop is crucial at this point in time.
im3w1l··on Forgotten History of Small Nuclear Reactors (2015)
> Ban construction (...) and let the economy and market forces compete to find the cheapest alternative

This sounds nice and unbiased on paper, but often this means that rather than expanding alternatives, the poor are simply made to go without and then they will scream at politicians for relief until they get it and you are right back at square one.

As a fellow Swede you will know how the price of gasoline has become a hot topic and how politicians campaigned on bringing the price down again by reversing climate policies.

Personally I think the solution is to make a commie-style 5 year plan and then work backwards to what kind of incentives would be needed for that plan, probably involving industry leaders in that discussion. Then you can make sure that the incentives are technology neutral. This ensures that if nothing better comes along the "free" market will execute 5 year plan but they do have the option of gambling on alternatives if they so choose or if some wonder technology emerges out of a secret lab.

im3w1l··on Over 5,200 Ebola cases recorded in Congo
I don't think it's really a tradeoff and rather that Ebola is simply bad at its job. Why? Because it's primarily a bat virus (and it's basically asymptomatic in bats) that ended up where it doesn't belong and wreaks havoc because it hasn't learned to play nice.
im3w1l··on Watching TikTok and Instagram deactivates the cognitive control network: Study
This framing seems like the correct one, but I think that just like being physically sedentary leads to weakness of muscles and joints and health problems, so being mentally sedentary could also lead to a mind that is weakened in the long term, though the weakness could likely be reversed with exposure to exercise.
im3w1l··on Malicious Rust crate Arrayref runs a build-time payload
Can we pick and choose the good without the bad? If we agree stability is a net-negative we could just say there will be a list of blessed trustworthy libraries with extra scrutiny and bureaucracy (make no mistake this is completely necessary to what people are asking for) to make sure they don't go rogue. But without a guarantee they will stick around and get updates forever.
im3w1l··on Show HN: Automatically detect and patch walking-dead states in Sierra games
This is why you dont use linear save frequency. 5 min, 10 min, half an hour, one hour, two hours etc
im3w1l··on Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit
You are basically arguing that travelers with little to lose from a delay should subsidize travelers with a lot to lose, they would pay the same ticket prize but end up with different payouts.

I don't think that's reasonable. If you have a lot to lose then extra insurance should be a premium offering.

im3w1l··on Babies born under sugar rationing grew into adults with lower cancer risk
Adaption is just how the body works though. From the perspective of someone living in the mountains, descending to sea level is "addictive" in that they will get air withdrawals (altitude sickness) when coming back.
im3w1l··on How do functions like alloca allocate memory from the stack?
Producer and consumer sides are tied. If there is strong demand for windows development then there will be money sloshing around which will attract devs. I predict demand will decrease, at least for this particular niche.

To go even further off topic, being called a bot is certainly a wake up call for me that the internet is dying, and I'm not ready for it, and need to reposition myself asap somehow.

im3w1l··on How do functions like alloca allocate memory from the stack?
One trend to watch is AI cheat devices. Instead of running detectable software they have a fully separate device that uses AI for object detection and aimbotting. If cheaters move to using those, then the argument for kernel mode anticheat weakens. And that is the cornerstone keeping gamers on windows.
im3w1l··on India has paved the way for charging merchants a fee on UPI transactions
Counterpoint: These are temporary growing pains that will be resolved in 10-ish years.
im3w1l··on We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility
Something I've been thinking about is that a physical book is a physical artifact, and it's age and authenticity can be verified by treating it as such.

In contrast a digital book has no such marks. It's impossible to tell if it was redacted to hide inconvenient passages, or even completely rewritten or fabricated (which can now easily be done at scale with AI). If the physical book is a primary source then the digital version must be considered a secondary source: A potentially biased retelling.

For this reason, a digital book can never be a perfect substitute for the physical book it was created from.

im3w1l··on Ordinary WiFi can now identify you with near-perfect accuracy
Not sure if it will work or not, but I think it's our best shot.
im3w1l··on Ordinary WiFi can now identify you with near-perfect accuracy
By creating a culture of live and let live. Maybe giving some activities legal protections that didn't use to need them in the past. Non-discrimination rules related to them. And being more careful than ever to not let a government be elected that would abuse all the information it now has on its citizenry. More democratic safeguards.
im3w1l··on Ordinary WiFi can now identify you with near-perfect accuracy
Wifi imaging has been a publicly known technique for years. I think the news is more how good it's gotten.
im3w1l··on Ordinary WiFi can now identify you with near-perfect accuracy
I'm personally bearish on privacy. As the cost of surveillance comes down we will see more and more actors able to conduct surveillance until even bored kids with pocket money and an afternoon can do it. Denying the """good""" guys the capabilities that all the bad guys have will be an absurdity.

We will simply have to adapt to it.

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