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jhrmnn

974 karma · joined January 21, 2019

Affiliated to Microsoft Research

https://hrmnn.net

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/jhrmnn; my proof: https://keybase.io/jhrmnn/sigs/DZ6d_BcOm6y49gxqGhsmSZ8w_BonUt3q5JXjpd8GmRU ]

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jhrmnn··on Loss of cell identity drives human aging: Two new papers
Cancer is the price we pay for complex multicellular life. It’s not a failsafe, it’s the failure of all failsafes to regulate cellular growth within an organism.
jhrmnn··on Thinking fast and slow in AI: The role of metacognition (2021)
No clue what’s the consensus on this but my internal mental model is absolutely that LLM AI is pure fast mode, no slow mode. The “reasoning” loops are an attempt to mimic the slow mode but ultimately it doesn’t really work. I’m curious about the recent maths advances though, they seem to possibly challenge this.
jhrmnn··on Why I didn’t sign the Fields medallists’ letter
Take the tax system and the state out of the picture. How does a mathematician convince his fellow citizens that they should fund their work? Newton didn’t have to do that, he had income from other sources and did most of his mathematical research as a hobby
jhrmnn··on Autism is genetic – and why this information matters now
It seems only natural for nature to have it like this. It’d be hard for evolution to optimize things if the genotype to phenotype mapping was sharp, with phase transitions and such
jhrmnn··on Navier-Stokes Announcement
It’s written from a perspective of decades, not years
jhrmnn··on A misalignment of AI in mathematics
It’s actually a fairly precise use of the word, just not in the very specific and narrow sense in which it has been used for AI.
jhrmnn··on How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy
Working with AI on science (not LLMs though), couldn't agree more.
jhrmnn··on I resigned from Anthropic today
I think it’s more likely that that’s because no one tried to solve such problems with them before (OpenAI apparently started working in Navier-Stokes after a rumour that someone seriously advanced the problem with AI) plus improvements in orchestration. Fair, the latter could be as dangerous as stronger models.
jhrmnn··on Mathematics in the age of AI
I can almost see two branches of mathematics developing. One which is human-understandable, the other formally verified. I assume the latter is a strict superset of the former?
jhrmnn··on Learning more about Claude's mathematical capabilities
The halting problem on steroids?
jhrmnn··on Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
This starts to feel like chess engines. It’s obvious their play is superior but it’s impossible for humans to understand the moves.
jhrmnn··on Claude Tag
Reliability is one property of a product. And it’s quantitative, not qualitative, so it all comes down to trade-offs
jhrmnn··on Steam Machine launches today
The Dutch auction vs lottery are two ways to solve scalping. They differ in what one considers fair.
jhrmnn··on Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
When no work is safe from mechanization, surely the value of labor wrt capital must fall, and the societal pressure on redistribution will rise. The ultimate outcome of technological progress is either extreme inequality or massive redistribution
jhrmnn··on Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
This can’t be sustainable, there must be a limit in human biology as to how complex jobs we can handle. More and more people will fall under that threshold.
jhrmnn··on Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
Is this a different route to the universal basic income scenario?
jhrmnn··on Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
Nothing, it’s that same story again. Industrialization turned peasants to blue collar workers by mechanizing agriculture. Then blue collar workers were turned to white collar workers by mechanizing all manual labor. Now AI is coming for white collar workers by mechanizing intellectual labor. The big question is what will white collar workers turn into.
jhrmnn··on Claude mixes up who said what and that's not OK
So most training data would be grey and a little bit coloured? Ok, that sounds plausible. But then maybe they tried and the current models get it already right 99.99% of the time, so observing any improvement is very hard.
jhrmnn··on Claude mixes up who said what and that's not OK
Because then the training data would have to be coloured
jhrmnn··on AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart
Interesting. The debate about whether the artist matters in perceiving a piece of art is very old. You don’t seem to consider the possibility that the artist’s intent matters when listening to music. For me it absolutely does. As the AI has no intent (agency), the AI music is void of any value to me.
jhrmnn··on German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad
Forget the government, what about your fellow humans? Is defending your country an obligation towards your government or towards your neighbor?
jhrmnn··on German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad
It’s interesting to read the discussion here through the lens of obligations vs rights. It would seem the rights are definitely winning.
jhrmnn··on Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw
The cooperative and competitive sides of our soul fighting it out in a single situation
jhrmnn··on GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash
I find it sad that while technological progress is seen almost as a given by virtually everyone, moral progress is often not even an aspiration
jhrmnn··on Personal Encyclopedias
Think of a woodworking project. Compare doing everything old-school by hand vs using modern tools to go faster. Think about the end product being just an item with a function vs it having some design value or even craftsmanship value. Does the parallel work?
jhrmnn··on The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory
But individual behavior is not about preventing climate change, it’s about doing what’s right. It’s wrong to pollute the environment, one way or another. A single person not stealing won’t reduce the crime rate in a country yet it is the right thing to do.
jhrmnn··on Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
This depends very much on what "practical purposes" are. For almost all conceivable technology, relativistic quantum mechanics for electrons and light, ie QED, is sufficient fundamental theory. This is unlike before quantum mechanics, when we basically didn't have fundamental laws for chemistry and solid-state physics.
jhrmnn··on In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels
Europe was a bit customer for Russia energy, and Russia invaded an EU neighbor nonetheless. After which it stopped being the customer. So it seems like that incentive didn't really work.
jhrmnn··on In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels
Now, let's aim at total energy consumption, not just electricity generation.
jhrmnn··on Is beef tallow making a comeback?
Is it perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismogenesis?
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