jrue

I’m not able to duplicate these results following their methodology, which makes me wonder if the OpenAI model is using memories from the reporter’s previous searches as context.

Code samples. This is what’s missing most of the time. Even if you encounter esoteric jargon, if they give a few examples, it’s pretty easy to decipher. Even big companies like Google give code examples in multiple languages.

Reading the whole article, the author clearly states he knows there is no sentience or anything mysterious going on, and acknowledges this is simply mimicking endless volumes of human dreck. What worries him, and I agree, is that if this were to go public as-is, the common populace wouldn’t understand that. This AI would con people into relationships, and maybe even instigate dangerous behavior. Such an AI would seem magical to the layperson.

When I think of future AI assistants, I’ve always pictured something akin to the Star Trek computer. A cold dispassionate voice that responds to what you need, and maybe only a hint of personality for color. Sydney feels like a full blown teenager going through some kind of emotional crisis.

Douglas Adams, [how to learn to love the internet]:

1. everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2. anything that gets invented between then and before you turn 30 is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3. anything that gets invented after you’re 30 is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

(I too miss RSS)

[1] https://internet.psych.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/532-Maste...

I like to keep an open mind about these things. But they tend to be metaphysical arguments based on asking lots of questions and just pondering the issue, rather than on testable empiricism. If there is no physical test to prove the point, then it would equally valid for me to say we’re all video game characters, or living in a dream, or conjure up innumerable scenarios, no matter how ridiculous they could all be equally valid. It’s not scientific if it can’t be tested at some level through reproducible experiment. The point Carroll is making is that the atoms in our brain don’t magically float away after we die, and there is no scientific model that would allow that to happen, even through currently unexplained phenomena (like dark matter or weakly interacting particles).

It’s an argumentative fallacy to simply say we don’t know what we don’t know, therefore anything is possible. Rather than on what we currently do know.

Physicist Sean Carroll’s take, based empirical understanding, and what would be necessary for some essence of a person’s conscious to remain after death.

https://youtu.be/jUIjDncKZbM

Animations can be a great way to create a sense of dynamism to a website. But it has to be very subtle, and done right. I sense most people’s knee-jerk reaction is to hate these, and I can understand why. I think the trick is to not break any expected UI conventions. So many flashy web experiences hijack the scroll, or create mystery buttons that aren’t clearly clickable. Harking back to Steve Krug’s mantra, “don’t make me think.” The best web design is so clear and intuitive, it rarely draws attention to itself. It’s like iOS animations, when closing an app, and seeing the app get sucked into it’s icon. It’s so quick and subtle, you barely notice it.

Kudos to the reduced motion advice at the end of the article, for better accessibility. I didn’t know this.

This is fascinating, but also worrying how people might extrapolate too much from innate evolutionary upbringing. We’re social beings and there are so many examples of social constructs that benefit humans as a species but run against the grain of our more primal tendencies. It’s still important to study, and interesting nonetheless. But too often I see it used as a justification for people to express certain types of behavior (e.g. physical altercations, etc)

All the ways extinction is possible helps to answer Fermi’s paradox. Asteroids, nuclear war, disease, supernova, etc. I was just reading that NASA is getting closer to its [asteroid defense system](https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/dart). It’s like civilizations are in a race to get technologically advanced enough to protect against all the ways they can be extinguished. I imagine we would one day catalog all of the potential supernovas near us to a high degree of certainty. Hopefully, if we found an imminent one, we would be advanced enough to take mitigating steps or just leave the planet.

> Is it time for us to simply accept that it's inevitable that, at some point, everything will be hacked, and hacked often?

I disagree. I’d take the Economists route, which is looking for the incentives that drive motivation. If companies were held to a higher standard of accountability, imagine how many would beef up their security. For decades, security researchers have been poking fun at how ridiculous some of these sites are at handling security, and nothing ever happens.

Now, imagine if there was severe economic accountability to a company that was hacked. Perhaps payouts to each person affected (in this case, to all 150m). I imagine you’d see security become a top priority very quickly at most companies.

I see. So it’s not just about spoofing messages.

Why aren’t GPS signals digitally signed? It would be simple to prevent this kind of attack.

Faster than light communication would violate causation, meaning you could send a message that would arrive before it was sent. What happens if you instruct yourself to not send it in the first place? This is the paradox. So, how to get around that? Perhaps parallel universes? Other dimensions? Or maybe just that the quantum world is designed to violate locality in very precise ways that don't affect the macroscopic world, or break any causation rules. I always find it fascinating how a concept like entanglement — two particles that are connected by some faster-than-light phenomenon — can coexist with the macroscopic world, yet perfectly prevent messages from being sent between two points. Same with quantum teleportation. The science says that it can happen, but the no-cloning theorem prevents duplicates from being made through teleportation. As strange as the quantum world is, it somehow doesn't seem to ever break causation rules (yet).