mishellaneous

> It's amazing to me that the fact of them doing it isn't well-known (there is plenty of research and evidence) and assumed, but still a question even on HN. Bring it up to most people and they will ostracize/ridicule you - an odd response which I can't explain well, given the evidence, likelihood, and very serious consequences which those same people are unhappy with.

an explanation would be that these voices doing the ostracizing/ridiculing [anyone who tries to increase awareness of astroturf] are also astroturf. because astroturf is only effective while people are unaware of it. it also seems compatible with the shutdown of research you mention.

yeah, it looks like i don't have enough knowledge of this subject to discuss this. but i'd be interested in reading what more knowledgeable people have to say about it -- Tristan's work, how different from others' it was (they claim no one else was following the same path), and how it compares with the AI's

if you assume the choice of route is a uniformly distributed random variable, yes. but this assumption does not seem consistent with "Almost nobody else I know of was working on it", from Tristan's quote. nor with "It is not the direction one arrives at in a few days by giving a model the problem statement".

i don't know if i understand what you're saying. but i'm no mathematician. here's the full statement in question once again:

> The route to the Clay problem through a smooth force, options c and d in Fefferman’s statement of the problem, is the route Luis and Diego opened and the one Levent and I had quietly chosen to attack. Almost nobody else I know of was working on it. It is not the direction one arrives at in a few days by giving a model the problem statement. When I heard “forced,” it was a bright red flag.

so, you're saying that "the direction one arrives at in a few days" is (A) "the route through a smooth force, options c and d in Feffermann's statement of the problem", and no more specific than that, i.e. does not necessarily include (B) "the same path route as Luis and Diego" (quoted from the post i was replying to) (which, as i understand, is a subset of A -- directly from Buckmaster's quote: "the route A is is the route Luis and Diego opened")?

but the post i was replying to claims that "An AI model could independently choose the same path route as Luis and Diego, without access to Buckmaster and Alpöge’s work", i.e. that the AI model could independently chose B. but choosing B implies choosing A, since B is a subset of A. and in this case it is irrelevant whether Buckmaster claimed that an AI could not independently choose A or B -- the point which you seem to be contesting.

EDIT: my understanding is that "solving the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem" consists of proving at least 1 of 4 precise statements ("options (a) through (d) of Fefferman's statement of the problem"), and Luis and Diego's work were developments towards a proof of statements (c) and (d), which have been recently further expanded by Alpoge and Buckmaster

yes, this is ultimately nothing but a claim.

Buckmaster did also mention, for example, that a team of people was employed to solve the problem, which supports this claim. but that is another claim whose veracity could also be questioned. but at some point we must trust other people, unless we can be satisfied with only believing what we personally see.

(also, IMO, the coincidence of both discoveries in time is pretty suspicious. this one doesn't need you to trust many people i guess)

i'm no mathematician/physicist but i think this question is one of the reasons why the original question (possibility of singularities) is interesting. in these cases the equations most likely fail to accurately model reality, and then the next questions are what additional physical assumptions are needed to describe reality in this case, and what behavior do we actually see.

i always found it fascinating how existence and uniqueness of solutions for the basic types of PDEs (Laplace, wave, heat...) follows from boundary conditions of just the right type intuition tells us, i.e. either value or derivative for Laplace (corresponding to fixing voltage or charge on the conductors), both value and derivative for wave (corresponding to initial position and velocity of the parts of the string, as we'd expect from classical mechanics), and also something about the solutions for the heat equation being unstable for negative times (which totally makes sense when you think of "diffusion" -- can't unmix it).

> An AI model could independently choose the same path route as Luis and Diego, without access to Buckmaster and Alpöge’s work.

the post you were replying to quotes Buckmaster specifically denying this: "It is not the direction one arrives at in a few days by giving a model the problem statement."

> And the article states "an insane amount of compute had been used," which implies OpenAI brute-forced their way to a solution. I.e. they searched for every paper published on Navier-Stokes and exhaustively attempted every approach. Such an approach would lead them to a solution.

"implies" is a surprising choice of word here. that's certainly one interpretation of "an insane amount of compute had been used". what came to my mind, considering Buckmaster's statement that the AI would not head down this specific path on its own, is, though, that they prompted it in this specific direction and then used an insane amount of compute. this seems consistent as well with these other statements:

> Over the course of the call, as members of their team sent Sebastien corrections and details over their internal chat, it emerged that an entire team had been working on the problem, that this was one of a number of things that was tried, that work had started on the unforced problem, that the team first set the model on easier problems, including Euler (...)

> you did not understand correctly if your eyes read "cheap currency" and your mind read "cheap labor".

i actually read "expensive consumer goods for their populations" and concluded "cheap labor", as i pointed out. suppose you ask citizens from nation A and nation B how many hours they'd have to work to be able to buy a certain good. if both answer the same number, then how can you say that the good is more expensive in any one of the nations? and if citizen from nation A answers a larger number than citizen from nation B, so that the good is more expensive in nation A, then how does A not have cheaper labor than B, as one unit of the same good literally buys your more labor from A than from B?

i'm still digesting your apple example.

i'd be interested if you could cite a real case of this happening, because it doesn't agree with everything that i have seen. for example, sometimes the apple business in BA will simply die. this is what i was getting at when i mentioned that "underdeveloped countries are still net importers of complex goods". if you take a mildly complex good like refrigerators or office chairs, chances are that a random not-so-developed country has some local manufacturers. but they're just struggling, not exporting proportionally larger quantities. indeed the only way they'd export K>1 refrigerators for every Samsung imported is if there were 0 exports and 0 imports (so the country is so poor no one has a good refrigerator).

also, suppose that BA produces a total of N apples per year per capita. if the people in GA work the same hours, then GA produces the same number, N, of apples per year per capita, because they are both equally good at picking apples. since trade is balanced, it does not affect the level of value/utility/wealth on each side, whatever the amount of trade. so in the end, for the same hours worked, BA has a total product of N bad apples per year per capita, which is 10 times less than GA, which has a total product of N good apples per year per capita. people in BA are poorer.

assuming people in this economy just buy/sell work and apples, the people in BA must work for less value, i.e. they are cheaper labor. if labor in BA is more or less than 10x cheaper than in GA, then apple orchards will simply close in BA and reopen in GA or vice-versa until it gets 10x cheaper, at which point there's no point in switching. this is moreover compatible with the real anecdotal examples i mentioned i have seen.

i'm open to recommended readings.

> And I agree that sort of proof is impossible to acquire. Like, there is no way to prove conclusively that anyone else is conscious. Like, there is no way to prove conclusively that anyone else is conscious. But that's why we instead treat it as an axiom instead. We basically say "We're not going to prove it, we're just going to accept it as true". And that's fine.

> Mostly because it not being true is an existential horror no one wants to truly confront.

we can't prove, in this mathematics sense, that other people are conscious just as we can't prove that the sun will rise again tomorrow, or that my food will nourish me instead of killing me, or that everything is still there when you're not looking. for questions of this type we normally content ourselves with empirical evidence instead. and the empirical evidence for the consciousness of other humans (and, taking it further, other animals) for me would be the facts (1) that i am conscious, and that (2) i am a human like other humans: same anatomy, same behaviors, same story. indeed, empirically, it'd be absurd to think that i'd be so profoundly different from other humans in this particular aspect.

i guess what i'm saying is for me the real existential horror is the problem of induction.

can you provide an example of a claim in the subject being discussed, or any subject outside of mathematics, that manages to reach the level of proof?

it looks from the article that some cancers are notably correlated with radiation exposure, and these were the ones they looked for. they also mention excluding lung cancer because it's also correlated with smoking.

from the point of view of the judge and society, i guess, what matters, ultimately, is whether the arguments presented for a case hold, not where did they come from -- so it shouldn't matter if ChatGPT was the one that came up with the argument if the argument is good. though one could point out that if one particular method of generating arguments tends to generate arguments that take time to analyse but are often enough pointless, we'd save time by not using them.

so assuming that the report will be analysed on its own merits, really, it was 3M who got scammed here, because they paid $475/hr for a guy that was just prompting ChatGPT. i mean, i don't know much about the subject, but that screenshot of the gas detector with the "what am i looking at here"... wow, it looks like i already know enough to be an expert witness. no wonder these people are so drawn to stuff like positive affirmations, when they do make it by faking it.

re: "you either have strong currency or strong exports"

if i understood correctly, you are stating that the only way to have strong exports is by having cheaper labor ("... losing jobs and industries to those nations that are willing to have expensive consumer goods for their populations in order to export more and import less.")

well, that is one (easy) way to do it, but it's not the only one. for example, you could have more productive labor. i think the fact that underdeveloped countries are still net importers of complex goods such as cars and computers, despite having the cheapest labor, supports this.

also if you allow for some poetry, i guess we could say that trust is like a baloon in the sense that a tiny hole can destroy it completely and abruptly

where i come from, university admissions are determined exclusively by performance on an exam you take after high school. it's meritocratic, and the work it involves is much more sensible IMO: no leadership/well-roundedness/whatever theater, and in the ideal case, it only lasts 1 year.

also, this grind is barely meritocratic. all these extracurricular activities show is you had a solid family supporting you. it's literally impossible for a poor kid to participate in this. they can pick up a book, OTOH. yes, it'll be harder, it'll take longer, and they won't do as well as the rich kids with test prep, but they are given the opportunity to try.

interesting concept. you get a letter of recommendation of sorts from every professor.

this makes me think how education could be better if it were more individualized (smaller student/teacher ratio). maybe that'd be a good use of the oversupply of labor in academia.

odd not to mention resistance heating in what otherwise seems like a thorough review of the question

couldn't this argument could be made against a lot of scientific research? i bet it took a long time for the average consumer to benefit from the discovery of the double helix structure of the DNA.

and the government funds that kind of stuff even. so what's wrong with a private person doing it?

> The number of Medicare funded residency slots are limited by law.

why don't hospitals fund residencies themselves? from what i hear, residents are poorly paid (they make less than nurses) and work long hours (almost like they "reside" in the hospital). i bet they even make money to the hospital.

what's more, when you look at what people pay for healthcare in the USA, money to train residents is peanuts. it'd even make economic sense for people themselves to pool money together and fund residents which would then take care of them as an "alternative" to insurance.

dangit, some time ago it seemed like every week there was another ridiculous study claiming another absurd benefit from these new weight loss drugs, but this one takes the cake.

the real surprise is that this comes from a Harvard professor of economics. i didn't have a high regard for the social sciences already, but i didn't know fancy universities pulled this crap too. yikes.

whoa, TIL. i knew that it made orgasms impossible when using, but i had never heard that the effects could last so long.

i think instead of asking the best way of dividing the costs, we should ask why does it cost so much. we've managed to bring down immensely the cost of technology over the past decades everywhere else.

> It just is? I used to get notifications that said something like “$partner is likely to be irritable for the next 2 days”, so I could be extra careful not to piss her off.

to be clear, you think getting a notification about an incoming period is more convenient than being directly told about it? even considering you'll probably already be speaking to this person during this period (otherwise the notification is pointless)?

that barely makes sense even in the strict interpretation where it means that it takes less key presses to enter your period information on an app than typing "i'm on my period" every month (though i doubt you can beat typing "pms").

> No way you can get someone to tell you that unprompted.

and you can get people to, connect/sync with you or whatever, on yet another app, made strictly for this purpose, unprompted?

> Now, of course I would prefer if that data was end-to-end encrypted.

but the important question is the intensity of this preferrence. clearly, it's not as strong as your preferrence for... one key press less per month?

how is that saying? if one key press less per month is all it takes for you to give up private information, then i have a bridge to sell to you.

> Sharing with your partner is a big one.

how is that even 10% more convenient than simply speaking? nevermind being worth giving away private data.

i agree that wisdom / an independent thinking spirit is an important factor to prevent manipulation and that it's not something easily taught.

but i also believe that in fact knowledge is another very important factor in resisting manipulation (absent from your list), and more generally, being part of a functioning democracy. i mean here knowledge of lofty things like history, economics, sociology, which can then serve as a base to know and understand more practical things, like laws, regulations, taxes, government subsidies, or how roads, schools, or health insurance is funded -- otherwise how could anyone make any decision regarding these topics? and all of these things can be taught.

independent thinking is important but with zero knowledge you could maybe be convinced to join a cult or something, for example. like, for ancient peasants the king was effectively a god anyway.

of course, all of this is highly idealized. i agree with you and Uncle Ted. academia, in practice, often is not a place that champions these ideals. but maybe it could be.

> Sadly, the Western world I (we?) belong to has almost finished removing teaching of DIY and even the individual ability to do so

yeah, i fear these developments

> if things pay off anyway, why should should tax payers fund it?

i believe the idea is that when someone is educated, it's not themselves alone that benefits from it, but rather everyone else around them. thus the interest in funding the education of other people.

> What if it takes decades or centuries to pay off for society and perhaps never for the individual (in strictly monetary terms)? How should these things be funded?

i'd look into how other things having such characteristics are funded. for example, research. a lot of research is indeed funded by companies because even though, say, "the cure for cancer" may be 40 years into the future, they do make money off of the incremental improvements along the way. what about more fundamental research? like, particle physics. or, whoever funded the research that led to the discovery of the structure of DNA, what were they thinking? i haven't read a lot about it actually, but i get the idea that they were simply some forward/long-term thinking people.

... overall, i think these are good questions. the kind of questions people with a (ideal) humanities education should be more capable of answering (mine is lacking...)

another possibility to combat grifting would be to have competition. another university comes up and provides the same service as the wasteful university at a smaller cost, and thus displaces the wasteful university. the advantage is that we don't need performance measurements and similar things that can create distorted interests / be gamed (just like the proposed profit limit). that's the theory, at least

i like your framing of "holes" in political systems. one way to put it is that a political system has "holes" if the ideal/desired outcome is not a Nash equilibrium.

however, my understanding (though i can't speak for the other commenters) is that the reasoning behind "humanities-educated people make better democracies" is NOT that humanities-educated people are more virtuous, and thus will willingly not degrade the commons (the reasoning you seem to be criticizing). rather, it's that humanities-educated people cannot be manipulated as easily by a demagogue (and other similar things).

the usually cited problem with democracy is that it gives the people the power to choose, but it does not automatically makes them capable to make good choices. that's where the education comes in.

clearly many questions require technical/domain knowledge to be answered and are not simply a matter of preference. for example, fixing your car, or building a bridge. and even running a business or cooking an elaborate meal. with technical knowledge, you are able to make better decisions whatever your preferences are. humanities education is then implied to be the "technical knowledge" for participating in society.

of course, in that case, we can discuss what should be the content of the "humanities education", but that's another discussion...

this is a good point.

> It seems more fruitful to approach things from the perspective of monopolies, competition, corporate governance etc in general

where to go to learn more about these topics?

i guess in that case the question would be if one should be as worried about the biological effects of PFAS as much as these two other forever chemicals you cite

for me, the moral of the story is that it's easier to promise things than to deliver them. or, engineering was the bottleneck. in my experience, this is not particular to start-ups, or even software engineering.

why does this happen though? i think it could be due to short-term thinking. like buying things with a credit card: you get the shiny new thing immediately, but the payment is diluted over time. likewise, once the sale is made, you may feel the reward immediately (though i guess it depends on the exact nature of the deal), but the work that will have to be done, will be done over time.

also, it's no wonder that the founder, or, outside start-ups, the marketing department, which specializes in promising impossible things, manages to evade the blame...