placebo

I find the concept of not being able to feel fear quite interesting. I've always seen fear/anxiety as an emotion that is automatically bundled with the ability to imagine a possibly bad outcome for a given situation someone is in. If that is true, then not being able to feel fear would mean not being able to imagine this outcome, or not caring about the outcome - neither of which seem to be the case for psychopaths. The outcomes they want might be totally different than what might be considered normal, but they still desire them - why doesn't the thought of not being able to get what they want generate at least some degree of fear? It could be that I'm totally mistaken about the origins of the emotion of fear, in which case it would be refreshing to view another take on it.

This is the correct way to answer a question. Not sure why the parent question is being downvoted rather than simply being answered. All that does is promote ignorance.

Have you experienced this issue with the other databases mentioned in the article?

I've heard good things about Lev Tarasov's "The World is Built on Probability", but haven't dived into it so can't offer my own opinion

I think command line utilities will usually be the last to receive active counter measures as they are generally considered to be used only by geeks which constitute a negligible percent of consumers.

Nicely put.

I'm in agreement about the uselessness of words to define time, but I doubt that even using math will help understand time. I'd argue that both math and time arise with thoughts, i.e with the faculty of defining concepts and reasoning about them, but defining a concept is not the same as understanding the essence of the thing that is being defined. I see mathematics as the extent to which "thought muscles" can be flexed (which admittedly is very impressive), but to understand the nature of time, one would have to "step out of thought" as well, which if possible would be a rare capability and obviously not an insight that could be conveyed with explanations or definitions...

But that's what our brains do too. We might think we're seeing the world as it is, but much of our smooth and consistent view of the world has a lot to do with our brains patching things up to make it look that way.

The thing is, that it does raise some questions - I can see things like fake super-resolution and fake slow motion and other alternative realities generated by machine learning easily fooling humans. Once things become sufficiently advanced, who's to guarantee will we always know what the true source is? Could future training be done on data that itself was generated via machine learning. That brings up a load of other questions. Interesting times ahead...

not necessarily - he could just be invoking the "do not attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity" rule

It's not always so easy to tell apart the things you have control over vs. the things you don't, but I think that all these rules can be summarized in one line, which is basically: If you're feeling sorry for yourself, you'd better find something more productive to do.

Why stop at elementary particles? All objects are mental constructs of consistencies our brains detect in data that our senses pick up.

Humans have a great advantage in picking up on what I'd call meta-consistencies (which is basically what abstraction is) - creating a new mental construct by detecting consistencies not only in what the senses pick up, but detecting consistencies in those consistencies, or "thoughts about thoughts" if you will. This gives you numbers and other abstract concepts that enable far more powerful manipulation.

My thoughts on AGI (at least in the sense of being indistinguishable from interaction with a human) are the same as my thoughts on extraterrestrial life: I'll believe it only when I see it (or at least when provided with proof that the mechanism is understood). This extrapolation on a sample size of one is something I don't understand. How is the fact that machine learning can do specific stuff better than humans different in principle than the fact that a hand calculator can do some specific stuff better than humans? On what evidence can we extrapolate from this to AGI?

We haven't found life outside this planet, and we haven't created life in a lab, therefore n=1 for assessing probability of life outside earth (which means we can't calculate a probability for this yet). Likewise, we haven't created anything remotely like animal intelligence (let alone human) and we have no good theory regarding how it works, so n=1 for existing forms of general intelligence.

Note that I'm not saying there can be no extraterrestrial life or that we will never develop AGI, just that I haven't seen any evidence at this point in time that any opinions for or against their possibility are anything more than baseless speculation.

2235.2 km/s

I like it. The thing that I'm asking myself now is why do I like it (and other "humanized" drawings) ? I've always preferred accuracy over ambiguity, clean minimization over unnecessary clutter, shouldn't I prefer clean straight lines over something a human can draw on a sheet of paper? I'd never want to read a book written in human handwriting, so why is this appealing to me? Is it perhaps because the lack of optimization of the diagram contrasts and brings out the simplicity of the idea being conveyed? I could bring up some theories but can't say for sure.

Reminded me of this entertaining clip:

http://vooza.com/videos/the-5-whys/

I doubt that most people who use the five whys really take it to be as simplistic as the author of this article suggested, but to those that do, it's a good wake up call.

In fact, life is even more complex than the article suggests, when you throw in effects of chaos, feedback loops, missing information, unknown influences - just to mention a few. Still, tracking down the order in processes has got humanity quite far (at least as far as being able to predict and engineer accordingly) so it's obviously effective.

Just run a search on: prime numbers fractal, and many interesting articles (both academic and other) will surface. Search for: zeta function fractal, and you'll find more. I'm no mathematician but it wouldn't surprise me if two very deep fields turn out to be different "manifestations" of some deeper underlying truth, and I then wonder about the possibility of a larger grand unified theory that includes both maths and physics that would have far reaching insights which would go beyond both mathematics and physics, but then I realise that perhaps I've seen too many movies :-)

I really hope you're right, but your view assumes rational players which, judging by human history, is far from guaranteed.

source/citation (not so much for the nukes, but for wanting to wipe out Iran)?

No, surface simplicity should not mean sweeping the complexity under the rug. It should mean exposing the bare minimum in the level of abstraction being used, and doing same for the level beneath it, etc. This is how you get a scalable and maintainable structure which can do very complex things.

I only know Docker from a high level (the concepts and the problem it tries to solve) so I'm not in a position to give an opinion about it's implementation, but I think a reasonable expectation from every technology is that it should be as simple to use as the use case requires.

Of course, sometimes the problem isn't the technology but the way it it used. You won't try to make a commercial airliner suitable as a quick means of transportation to your local convenience store. It's not even overkill - it's just the wrong tool for the job. The problems start when that's considered the cool thing to do. Unfortunately, technology isn't always about what's good, but many times about what is trendy, but things will eventually converge to what works best, even if they have to go through the longer path.

True. Nothing about violence is specifically western.

Also true that the reality is that humans have evolved from more primitive animals that are totally driven by survival instincts and thus will usually act that way too (though mostly disguised in more subtle forms than war).

What you're missing though (or perhaps deliberately ignoring) is the potential of humans to rise above being marionettes of their animal instinct. Acting by instinct has its upsides sometimes. It certainly brings raw animal gratification but rationalising that we're "nothing more than primates that talk" is just an excuse to enjoy the animal gratification while ignoring the consequences (which beyond hurting other sentient beings also blocks one's way to real freedom, which is the real tragedy).

Experience comes in different levels. There's professional experience, for example knowing it is stupid to use a certain algorithm to solve a certain problem and then there's life experience, for example recognizing how pitiful language bashing is.

I assume that last sentence is misunderstood humor.

While there are good reasons to use gradient descent on neural networks, finding the global minima of the surface of the earth would not be my first choice. Various metaheuristics would do much better.

Well, reinforcement learning should also be given a mention and revolutions there (e.g AlphaGo to AlphaZero) were much more recent

I'm curious, how do you interpret the above as the "right to go after whoever wherever?"

I agree with selfish vs. holostic, less so with short-term vs. long-term. You could have someone doing the long con and in my book they are just as greedy as the short con. Better at deferred gratification perhaps, but just as greedy.

For all practical purposes, I agree with the analogy, but would like to point out that the box might not be infinite so there could be limits to invention.

Take a chess game as an example. No one would say there weren't creative inventions regarding tactics and strategies to win, but the bottom line is that the number of possible chess games, no matter how staggeringly huge, is still finite. In the end, no matter how intelligent the players, there will be a point were nothing will be left to be invented, so perhaps life is also a solved game in that respect.

I'd like to believe you are right and, without any ability to estimate where we are on what seems like an exponential curve, hope that things are evolving towards the positive at an ever increasing pace.

Interesting you should mention monkey brains, because my monkey brain also recoils at this optimism when it understands that most brains are still monkey brains, and I don't trust monkeys that create an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction which can totally wipe out all trace of the things you are rightly passionate about. The evidence is scarce that other than the obvious technological progress there has been any other progress but even that being so, I'm cautiously optimistic that the battle between monkey mind and enlightened mind will eventually be won by the latter rather than monkeys collectively going the way of the dinosaurs.

>I am probably stealing from people cleverer than i whom I cannot remember to reference or am too dumb to reference

Don't remember which book it was, but I remember reading a book where there was a phrase on a page before the first chapter, "All creativity is subconscious plagiarism" :-) Of course this generality can be logically refuted but it's probably something we all do to a degree.

I doubt there is only one correct way to find meaning in our life and actions (though my take on it is that while paths may differ, an honest pursuit would lead to similar insights regarding the ultimate meaning). I also don't think you have an obligation to remain with a way you don't connect to. The only thing I disagree with is judging a path that doesn't resonate with your specific frequency when obviously (at least as I see it) it brings a net positive to civilization. While I'm not religious, I can understand how on the surface things can be seen as primitive (especially when practiced at face value) while holding deeper truths underneath.

>Maybe the opposite is true? Maybe the only way to give children a fair choice is to NOT indoctrinate them with ideas they didn't choose

If only that were possible. You're going to indoctrinate them one way or the other (as you correctly concluded in the following paragraph), and since you're going to do so, the best indoctrination I can think of is personal and intellectual integrity, which might lead them to decide to go back to your roots or take a different path, both being fine if they come from the right place.

I'm also very interested in this question. My current understanding is that mathematics only works well because the mind is only capable of conceiving a mathematical reality, i.e math is basically the end result of an evolved mind, a tool that divides experience to concepts (including objects, properties, relationships) which at first approximation don't change with time (a lion will remain a lion, a lion will remain dangerous). Later, higher level observations that are constant are also observed (e.g location that linearly changes with time is a constant speed, every triangle on a plain has 180 degrees etc.) - my point is that the mind is geared to find relationships that are constant (in every level of abstraction), and once we find such a constant we call it "truth" (or if we're more honest, we at least admit it's a good model). So I think the bigger question is not why mathematics works (it works because reality, including thought itself, can be seen through the filter of concepts that appear to be self consistent), but rather why reality lends itself to being categorized in the first place into "things" that have internal integrity and consistency.

When someone tells me they know how to fly, I first ask them to show me before claiming they are full of it.

Of course philosophy has value but I too am quite disappointed how easily it enables very basic flawed assumptions to exist over eons even in what would be considered high academic levels. To me it feels like the equivalent of physicists today being divided on whether the earth revolves around the sun or vice versa.

Personally I think both Searle and Dennet are essentially dualists (though they'd both vehemently deny it), but each practicing a different form of dualism: Searle promoting some mysterious consciousness as some ghost in the machine, and Dennet protecting physicalism which in my book negates any subject from existing, in complete contradiction to the reality that any object (physical or otherwise) will always be just a model in someone's experience. I see Dennet as trying to squash dualism by giving the model more validity than the very real experience from which it arises, where the better path to eliminate dualism would be to try and get to the source of this division.