pictureofabear

Maybe inflation undercuts trust in the economic system in ways that haven’t been fully realized or appreciated. We’re afraid of deflation, but it seems there are big problems with inflation as well.

Meta. Nice.

LLMs are sophists.

I think the problem with AI asking questions is that it will ask questions that are interesting to it but not necessarily us. AI, as a model, will never be a perfect copy of a human. It will always be a simulation, and thus to some extent, will ask questions that humans find irrelevant and solve problems that humans find irrelevant.

For anyone facing an existential crisis on AI, your ace in the hole is your humanity. Only you have it, and only you will be the best judge of what is good and interesting (to a human at least).

The more details this gives, the less likely it is that the story is true. Since the output is a highly detailed story, the statistical reality of this site is that's complete bullshit.

It also concludes with a pitch to become a member of their program.

You can ban what’s done with the software/hardware, just as we ban assault with a deadly weapon.

Are you relentlessly optimistic and bit sycophantic? Maybe that’s what she means.

An error in any of the orbital math may have seen them flung out into space with no chance of recovery.

The FTC is the weak link here. The FTC and Department of Justice divvy up their prosecution of monopolies. Firms prosecuted by the FTC always get off scot free.

Yes! I have struggled with this concern for a while now.

I think that humans are the ultimate arbiters of quality for humans.

Nothing that is non-human can make that determination because anything that is not human (an LLM) is at best just a really good model. Since all models are necessarily wrong by definition, they can never get it right all the time. When determining what’s good for humans, it is only us that can figure that out.

I also came back to ZAMM when wrestling this question. There must be something there if we have all independently coming to similar conclusions.

As an aside, this is a true meme.

This is mostly an advertisement with some dubious information in it.

This is not new. None of the Arab countries have ever fully aligned with the US. They routinely host Russia and China and buy their hardware. They will continue to host the US and buy its hardware as well.

A fundamental misunderstanding of the West is that these countries will, with time, align philosophically against the West's enemies. They are concerned with preservation of their regimes and their ways of life. They recognize that they have no foundational shared story with the West (religious or otherwise), and that without such shared origins and culture, Western people will not fight to save Arabs when resources get tight. So what do they do? Hedge their alliances so that they always have someone to turn to.

Smoking causes cancer.

Can this model of physics predict physical events? Show me an example.

Because many people cannot or will not accept ambiguity. Charitably, I suppose this comes from a desire to logically deduce risk by multiply the severity of the consequences by the chance that something will happen. Uncharitably, it gives decisionmakers a scapegoat should they need one.

When I was a kid I noticed that if I laid on my side for a bit, the colors in one eye would be significantly red shifted.

I also noticed that closing your eyes for a while on a perfectly clear day, you could notice the blue tint on everything outside.

You also lose color vision when oxygen deprived (hypoxia). As oxygen returns, it returns beginning in the center of your fovia and expands outward like a jagged, slightly asymmetric ripple, color returning with it.

"who buys a brother" eyes shift left

Not just police... the NSA as well.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/tech/the-nsa-buys-americans-i...

That's right... CFIUS has long been monitoring and regulating foreign countries purchasing land in the United States. This article is attempting to turn the status quo into news.

Where e^-X and 1-e^-X intersect is 0.69. Mumbo? perhaps. Jumbo? perhaps not.

The author seems to be confused about inductive and deductive reasoning. He writes, "To that end, this hypothesis represents the last idea considered, only after all other possibilities have been falsified (see Image 1)." This to me sounds more like abductive reasoning.

Either way, this seems like a great opportunity to hijack this post by giving an excerpt from Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig.

"Two kinds of logic are used, inductive and deductive. Inductive inferences start with observations of the machine and arrive at general conclusions. For example, if the cycle goes over a bump and the engine misfires, and then goes over another bump and the engine misfires, and then goes over another bump and the engine misfires, and then goes over a long smooth stretch of road and there is no misfiring, and then goes over a fourth bump and the engine misfires again, one can logically conclude that the misfiring is caused by the bumps. That is induction: reasoning from particular experiences to general truths.

Deductive inferences do the reverse. They start with general knowledge and predict a specific observation. For example, if, from reading the hierarchy of facts about the machine, the mechanic knows the horn of the cycle is powered exclusively by electricity from the battery, then he can logically infer that if the battery is dead the horn will not work. That is deduction.

Solution of problems too complicated for common sense to solve is achieved by long strings of mixed inductive and deductive inferences that weave back and forth between the observed machine and the mental hierarchy of the machine found in the manuals. The correct program for this inter-weaving is formalized as scientific method."

The US political scene is not that crazy historically and certainly much less crazy than a lot of other places in the world.

I think a lot of us have this broad, seemingly undefinable feeling of anxiety. I think part of that feeling comes from the algorithmically controlled feeds that bait our amygdala. Another part of that anxiety comes from consuming news that has nothing to do with our local lives. Political news stokes your fears because it makes your more likely to vote, so what you're experiencing is likely ads and "news" stories designed to stir up your emotion to encourage you to go to the polls.

In the past year, I have severely reduced most of my consumption of national news, instead focusing on local events... things that effect my life daily. I have noticed a significant reduction in my anxiety levels. I also deleted all social media except for messaging apps to talk with friends and families. That has been great too.

Was this generated by AI? It seems like a copy-paste of a math textbook into a the form of a comic (but without the substance of a comic).

Not harder, per se, just different. Much of the psychomotor coordination used to land an airplane is learned by flying the actual plane--knowing the "feel" of the jet. In your friend's defense, it sounds like the control difference between the real plane and the simulation was too much for the skill to transfer immediately.

Another issue is that simulators do not duplicate the somatosensory and vestibular system perceptions a pilot feels when flying. These systems feed a great deal of information to a pilot's brain, not as much as the visual system, but enough that transitioning to an environment where there is no "seat-of-the-pants" feel takes a moment to get used to.

These simulators are fantastic, but I have yet to see a simulator that incorporates the interactions between pilots and air traffic control. One of the most difficult parts of being a pilot is applying decision making and problem-solving skills in a high-stakes environment. For pilots, a sizeable amount of safety discussions center around crew resource management because the human element of aviation can be just as challenging as dealing with bad weather or mechanical malfunctions.

Perhaps the integration of LLMs could help bolster the realism for simulators, allowing pilots to practice CRM. An LLM could also be used to simulate a co-pilot or flight attendant. Interesting.

The author is describing two cases of poor management. The first are self-interested managers. The second are laissez-faire (in a bad way) leaders who have all but abdicated their position. Both are bad.

There is no "healthy laziness." This is a cynical term that does a disservice to leaders who skillfully practice with a light touch.

He does. You can hear his New York accent all the way through his books.

Psychotic indeed. It would feel like working for the mad hatter.

I've had migraines twice in my life, both preceded by chronic lack of sleep (thesis writing!). Auras preceded painful headaches in both cases. I cannot imagine having chronic migraines. Perhaps research like this will prompt us not search for the cure to migraines per se but the underlying cause.