smath

Yes correct, I agree with that statement -- we do not know that for sure.

I cannot prove that they are, and I cannot prove they are not. I'm not convinced that the burden of proof lies on either side. To make a statement like that in the opening lines as if its obvious seems genuinely presumptous.

Separately, I think 'conscious' is not a well defined / universally agreed upon term.

This are the opening lines:

> AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations.

How do we know that? This bit is stated as if its obvious. Can anyone prove this? Event he word conscious is not well defined.

Huffman Coding! :-)

I too have to disagree with pg on that line `> having kids may make one less ambitious`. The fact is that the world is very very multi-modal, i.e. the brains of people and how they think are wildly different. I think having kids makes me more ambitious and more focused, and more selective re the problems I work on, partly because I am also setting an example.

Ah Sir David MacKay. I so respect him. Great explainer and speaker. He had built this text entry tool called Dasher [0] - that I'd heard him introduce at Princeton around 2006. It was basically an early language model that predicted which characters are more likely than others, given what you've already types and it would adjust the sizes of the available next characters based on their probabilities.

[0] https://dasher.at/about/

This is a common source of confusion. The knitting / pottery making is not rewarding because its made by hands or is not knowledge work, but because it is done in the direct service of someone. Modern organizations are complex and can put several layers between the knowledge worker and the customer it ultimately serves. This produces the feeling of 'cog in a machine'. It is possible to work such jobs and serve others directly on the side (e.g. friday evening soup kitchen)

In a way it’s the same phenomenon as TV channels with fixed programming replaced by cable and the streaming video. Newspaper vs curated feeds. There is an exploit vs explore tradeoff in all of these. The newer versions lean heavier on exploit, so explore suffers. Explore is the ‘broadening horizons’ bit that some other comments refer to.

Automation / machines tend to make things more efficient and we shouldn’t shy away from automation, but they can also reduce the human connection. I think the same thing will happen with AI generated art - l human generated art can be a spiritual experience meaning you can connect with another human through art - but if a masterpiece like Cypress Trees in Wheat Fields is AI generated, there isn’t a connection with the human artist. Consequently we must consciously turn to other places to keep human connection strong.

Is it possible to acquire lower frequency components with a camera too?

This also reminded me of MRI where low frequency is acquired first in a space called k-space

My conclusion is that this in not the end of creativity but an increasing premium on creativity that is certified to be human made. It’s like how if I cook something from scratch that’s considered more meaningful than if I simply heated frozen food or ordered in for a guest.

Very cool! While this is a different type of inverse problem, it reminds me of a radiolab story [0] about a device to help blind people “see” using electrical impulses on a metal strip under the tongue.

[0] https://radiolab.org/podcast/seeing-tongues

Very fond memories of Mir Publishers' science and math books growing up in India in the 80s and 90s. I think English translations were freely available in India. My grandfather would buy them for me to encourage my interest in science and math. If I could find physical copies of those books I would buy them in a heartbeat today.

Slight digression: Russian cartoons from that era are also very interesting. One of my favorite short cartoon from that era (I still hum its music involuntarily): Ikarus and the Wise Men [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yk1mz23YFA

Are they trying to infer characters/words from brain waves? I would have thought the brain is thinking in concepts rather than actual words

GA’s optimize only combinatorial problems though — where you have discrete set of choices (~genes) for each variable, and therefore do not have a gradient

Mind blown, I had no idea about this, thx for sharing

I believe that is correct. Part of the problem is that similar words in different languages are actually not quite identical. “Not having emotions” is not quite the essence of stoicism: I understand it to be “avoiding highs and lows - being equipoised by recognizing what is and isn’t under our control”. A very closely related idea is proposed in the Bhagawad Gita.

Tangential tidbit about etymology of the word Zen:

Zen is a Japanese word that comes from the Chinese “Chan”, which in turn comes from the Sanskrit word “Dhyana”, which roughly translates to focus/meditatiin.

That trajectory Sanskrit —> Chinese —> Japanese reflects the geographical trajectory of the spread of Buddhism out of India.

Same word in Vietnamese and Korean is “Thien” and “Seon” respectively.

Right, value != price. Now, is this a bug or a feature? Discuss (serious question)

I'm looking for some data -- if anyone has it -- on the fraction of companies that are led (CEO) by a technical person, over the years/decades. I have the (anecdotal) impression that this fraction has been falling (stories like Boeing), but it would be cool to support or refute this with hard data. Anyone know where to find/assemble something like this? Also, if this trend is true, then why?

This reminded me of my 11 yr old who, when I give her math problems to solve, is too focused on “getting the right answer”. I’ve told her plainly, I don’t care if you get the right answer right now, I want to see your reasoning. She has yet to understand this.

Here is a solution to this problem I think: make an LLM. Summarize everything. If there is fluff then it should get dropped? Basically we only care about the relevant information content, regardless of the number of characters used - so we need a compressed representation

I for one am happy to see an engineer at the helm.

Loved the writeup.

I'll just drop a note here to say that these spherical harmonics are also used in creating specialized neural network layers that are useful for modeling 3D objects like point clouds and moleculues, proteins, etc. Basically whenever we want to make sure that rotating / translating the object doesnt make a new object. [0] is a good reference for this.

Even more interesting is that these are the same spherical harmonics that appear as solutions to Schrodinger's equation in quantum mechanics (s, p, d, f orbitals in an atom) [1]

[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.07511. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_orbital

My 2c is that it is not 'joy' or 'happiness' that kids bring to parents universally (although they might bring those things for some parents), but 'meaning'. Meaning is harder to define than joy/happiness, perhaps because it is less objective and more subjective.

Shameless plug: More than a decade ago, I wrote a paper [1] on how the random perturbations in the wireless channel between an ambient RF transmitter (FM radio, TV) to the two devices, allow nearby devices to authenticate locality because the perturbations are correlated only if they are nearby (where nearby is relative to the wavelength being monitored)

[1] https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/121443

As a kid I loved casio digital watches (metal band, digital display). But as a grown up I found I like analog watches better -- my brain is quicker at interpreting the visual image of the hands. For the last few years I wore this [1] very simple and robust casio watch and eventually gave it to my son to help him learn to tell time. Very clean crisp design and 1/3rd the price of a similar looking swatch.

[1] https://www.casio.com/us/watches/casio/product.MQ-24-7BLL/?u...

Very very cool. I have this condition - I got it randomly ("idiopathic" as opposed to age-related) when I was 22. At the time it wreaked havoc on my mental health.

A benevolent monarchy maybe - like some places in the east (maybe).or maybe UBI? Some way to not have to worry about basic health and needs

What places have this today? I see an answer suggesting AUS below. ChatGPT says Switzerland

Slightly tangential: this is a wonderful and deep project, that requires a lot of personal time. Lately I've been wondering what social/economic/govt conditions allow for this type of deep thinking + tinkering among working people (not academia). My very rough guess is the US of 1950-60s did, and some other countries today do, but not so much the US of today because the cost of living and time pressures are higher. I'd be curious if anyone has a more detailed answer (or a rebuttal of my thesis altogether).

came here to see if anyone had read Rodney's recent essay - and to ask how does this announcement by Figure square with Rodney's essay.

The essay was long so I cant claim I read it in detail - one q in my mind is whether humanoids need to do dexterity the same way that humans do. yes they dont have skin and tiny receptors but maybe there is another way to develop dexterity?