321 karma · joined December 12, 2024
Let's say you discovered a pendrive of a long lost civilization and train a model on that text data. How would you or the model know that the pendrive contained data on wanking and divorce without anykind of external grounding to that data?
Could be right within 15 min accuracy in the appropriate timezone. And such a mechanism can be corrected for in the postprocessing step.
Counterpoint : That decision has to be made only once (probably by some expert). AI can incorportate that training data into its reasoning and voila, it becomes available to everyone. A software framework is already a collection of good decisions, practices and tastes made by experts.
> An MIT study found materials scientists experienced a 44% drop in job satisfaction when AI automated 57% of their “idea-generation” tasks
Counterpoint : Now consider making material science decisions which requires materials to have not just 3 properties but 10 or 15.
> Redesigning for Decision Velocity
Suggestion : I think this section implies we must ask our experts to externalize all their tastes, preferences, top-down thinking so that other juniors can internalize those. So experts will be teaching details (based on their internal model) to LLMs while teaching the model itself to humans.
21:30 @ Analogy as the Core of Cognition
I think you will like this short clip between Brian Green and Barry Mazur.
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. -- André Gide
Or should there be an mega AI which will be my clone and can handle all these disparate scenarios in a unified manner?
Which approach will win ?
E.g. Scott Aaronson | How Much Math Is Knowable?
The video slides could be converted into a dark mode for night viewing.
This is true on many levels.
4:10 @ The Woman Who Could Not Forget - Jill Price
Perfect Memory = Perfect Inability to Forgive | House M.D.
I understand the point you are making. But what makes you think refactoring won't be AI's forte. Maybe you could explicitly ask for it. Maybe you could ask it to minify while being human-understandable and that will achieve the refactoring objectives you have in mind.
Today incentives align more easily. All these CEOs are in the same whatsapp group. That's how we got the RTO mandates from all CEOs at the same time. There was story here a year or two ago.
I have a very horrible case of this. One day at night, I slept listening to lofi playlist. The next week all my recommendations were screwed. Horrible assumption on the part of algorithm.
Let me paint a purpose for you which could take millions of years. How about building a Atomic Force microscope equivalent which can probe Calabi Yau manifolds to send messages to other multiverses.
Family Guy Nasty Wolf Pack
The perfect wish to outsmart a genie | Chris & Jack
Corollary : This is also the reason why people (i.e. Wall Street) who are close to / handle the money earn more money. Drinking straight from the firehose.
Daniel Dennett - Information & Artificial Intelligence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arEvPIhOLyQ
Daniel Dennett bridges the gap between everyday information and Shannon-Weaver information theory by rejecting propositions as idealized meaning units. This fixation on propositions has trapped philosophers in unresolved debates for decades. Instead, Dennett proposes starting with simple biological cases—bacteria responding to gradients—and recognizing that meaning emerges from differences that affect well-being. Human linguistic meaning, while powerful, is merely a specialized case. Neural states can have elaborate meanings without being expressible in sentences. This connects to AI evolution: "good old-fashioned AI" relied on propositional logic but hit limitations, while newer approaches like deep learning extract patterns without explicit meaning representation. Information exists as "differences that make a difference"—physical variations that create correlations and further differences. This framework unifies information from biological responses to human consciousness without requiring translation into canonical propositions.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1901133641746706581
I finally watched Ne Zha 2 last night with my daughters.
It absolutely lives up to the hype: undoubtedly the best animated movie I've ever seen (and I see a lot, the fate of being the father of 2 young daughters ).
But what I found most fascinating was the subtle yet unmistakable geopolitical symbolism in the movie.
Warning if you haven't yet watched the movie: spoilers!
So the story is about Ne Zha and Ao Bing, whose physical bodies were destroyed by heavenly lightning. To restore both their forms, they must journey to the Chan sect—headed by Immortal Wuliang—and pass three trials to earn an elixir that can regenerate their bodies.
The Chan sect is portrayed in an interesting way: a beacon of virtue that all strive to join. The imagery unmistakably refers to the US: their headquarters is an imposingly large white structure (and Ne Zha, while visiting it, hammers the point: "how white, how white, how white") that bears a striking resemblance to the Pentagon in its layout. Upon gaining membership to the Chan sect, you receive a jade green card emblazoned with an eagle that bears an uncanny resemblance to the US bald eagle symbol. And perhaps most telling is their prized weapon, a massive cauldron marked with the dollar sign...
Throughout the movie you gradually realize, in a very subtle way, that this paragon of virtue is, in fact, the true villain of the story. The Chan sect orchestrates a devastating attack on Chentang Pass—Ne Zha's hometown—while cunningly framing the Dragon King of the East Sea for the destruction. This manipulation serves their divide-and-conquer strategy, allowing them to position themselves as saviors while furthering their own power.
One of the most pointed moments comes when the Dragon King of the East Sea observes that the Chan sect "claims to be a lighthouse of the world but harms all living beings."
Beyond these explicit symbols, I was struck by how the film portrays the relationships between different groups. The dragons, demons, and humans initially view each other with suspicion, manipulated by the Chan sect's narrative. It's only when they recognize their common oppressor that they unite in resistance and ultimately win. The Chan sect's strategy of fostering division while presenting itself as the arbiter of morality is perhaps the key message of the movie: how power can be maintained through control of the narrative.
And as the story unfolds, Wuliang's true ambition becomes clear: complete hegemony. The Chan sect doesn't merely seek to rule—it aims to establish a system where all others exist only to serve its interests, where the dragons and demons are either subjugated or transformed into immortality pills in their massive cauldron. These pills are then strategically distributed to the Chan sect's closest allies (likely a pointed reference to the G7).
What makes Ne Zha 2 absolutely exceptional though is that these geopolitical allegories never overshadow the emotional core of the story, nor its other dimensions (for instance it's at times genuinely hilariously funny). This is a rare film that makes zero compromise, it's both a captivating and hilarious adventure for children and a nuanced geopolitical allegory for adults.
And the fact that a Chinese film with such unmistakable anti-American symbolism has become the highest-grossing animated film of all time globally is itself a significant geopolitical milestone. Ne Zha 2 isn't just breaking box office records—it's potentially rewriting the rules about what messages can dominate global entertainment.