talkingtab

I apologize in advance but this issue is a crucial one. The effects of this "inequality" for all people, rich and poor alike should not be underestimated.

Accurately understanding cause and effect, having a diagnosis that actually affords an understanding and solution to the problem is of some importance then.

In the US we see a severe and dramatic event: falling income and rising stock market. In simple terms, corporation profits are rising and those rising profits are going to those who are already wealthy. At the same time, the real income of common people is falling. The discussion often turns to "inflation" as though low inflation is good news. If you cannot afford reasonable health care, food, adequate housing, low inflation does not help. In the discussion of these increasingly common problems, the obvious solution - paying a living wage - does not come up.

A key tool in understanding situations is "Cuo bono?" Who benefits? In the US and other countries it is corporations. An ancillary question is who does not benefit? The answer to that is question is given by the fact that the national minimum wage in the US is $7.25 per hour. Who benefits? Who does not? When the "too big to fail" banks had problems, the US instituted socialism for corporations. Who benefited? Who did not?

And certainly there is less public opinion support for higher minimum wages. Why could this be? Public support is to some extent determined by public discussion - where people express their problems and issues. If there is no forum for this discussion, then perhaps that is the crucial factor. In which case measuring "public opinion" will not be predictive.

A question then is whether there are forums where the experiences of common people are primary. Perhaps the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, is a such a forum? Really? Or perhaps other media, supported for the most part by corporate advertising is the answer. For example, the NYT with their articles about where to buy your two million dollar vacation home? Or here is a recent article for you:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/style/plant-sitter-nanny....

Our so called news media have dramatically failed. And somehow the NYT is surprised that there are people who will now choose any alternative over the status quo. And if you had the nerve to reject both candidates in the last election, the NYT deemed you a "double hater".

To perhaps add a dimension to the issue, imagine that one day you woke up and the roads were not functional. Many people would have a great time, as long as they knew the roads were going to be functional later that day. If it turned into a longer problem, the disruption would have vast and unpleasant consequences.

We do not yet have an awareness of our dependence on technologies, nor of how fragile those technologies can be. If someone had suggested years ago that perhaps we should prepare for a disruption in say, the egg supply, that would have provoked laughter. And jokes like, well I really don't like eggs. Or what about toilet paper hoarding? Given just those two events alone, one might decide that disruptions are at least somewhat of a possibility. That our past assumptions of an unending supply of goods and services might not hold in the future.

It is a funny comment, and there are several dependencies I personally would not miss. Until I did.

Personally, the interesting concept is resiliency in general.

Is this crazy or what? My take away is that the factors the city of Amsterdam is using to predict fraud are probably not actually predictors. For example if you use the last digit of someones phone number as a fraud predictor, you might discover there is a bias against low numbers. So you adjust your model to make it less likely that low numbers generate investigations. It is unlikely that your model will be any more fair after your adjustment.

One has to wonder if the study is more valid a predictor of the implementers' biases than that of the subjects.

Interesting thoughts. Thanks. As for your statement: "That the outputs of LLMs are frequently useful is the surprising thing that is worth investigating". In my view the hallucinations are just as interesting.

Certainly in human society the "hallucinations" are revealing. In my extremely unpopular opinion much of the political discussion in the US is hallucinatory. I am one of those people the New York Time called a "double hater" because I found neither of presidential candidate even remotely acceptable.

So perhaps if we understood LLM hallucinations we could then understand our own? Not saying I'm right, but not saying I'm wrong either. And in the case that we are suffering a mass hallucination, can we detect it and correct it?

The topic is of great interest to me, but the approach throws me off. If we have learned one thing from AI, it is the primal difference between knowing about something and being able to do something. [With extreme gentleness, we humans call it hallucination when an AI demonstrates this failing.]

The question I increasingly pose to myself and others, is which kind of knowledge is at hand here? And in particular, can I use this to actually build something?

If one attempted to build a conscious machine, the very first question I would ask, is what does conscious mean? I reason about myself so that means I am conscious, correct? But that reasoning is not a singularity. It is a fairly large number of neurons collaborating. An interesting question - for another tine - is then is whether a singular entity can in fact be conscious? But we do know that complex adaptive systems can be conscious because we are.

So step 1 in building a conscious machine could be to look at some examples of constructed complex adaptive systems. I know of one, which is the RIP routing protocol (now extinct? RIP?). I would bet my _money_ that one could find other examples of artificial CAS pretty easily.

[NOTE: My tolerance for AI style "knowledge" is lower and lower every day. I realize that as a result this may come off as snarky and apologize. There are some possibly good ideas for building conscious machines in the article, but I could not find them. I cannot find the answer to a builders question "how would I use this", but perhaps that is just a flaw in me.]

This is stunning. An outstanding write up and accomplishment!!

Coming from react web applications it appears to me that threejs, r3f, r3d and shaders provide a order-of-magnitude better user experience than react. There are certainly facets of a web site that work better with react just as there are facets that would be much better with 3jsrfd. I do not understand personally, why we are not using both (appropriately).

And yes, there is the problem of SEO with 3jsrfd, but with AI now on the scene maybe that is not such a bad thing. And if we only had a business model that did not require SEO ....

You can rotate the sphere and zoom in and out as well. Works for me on an iPhone.

Now why is it again we are not using threejs pervasively?

[edit to remove two "wells" in one sentence]

Yes. It seems to me important that we correctly understand the problem. It is like your car won't start. If you fail to diagnose your battery is dead, then you keep putting gas in and it still doesn't work. The question is what needs to change to fix the problem AND why.

My diagnosis is Citizens United vs F.E.C. That bizarre has allowed corporations to control the laws that are enacted. So we see "tort" reform - but who benefits? It is not the People.

There is another factor that amplifies this, targeted advertising. Targeted ads, you know like the ones that pay for our "free" internet services are as toxic or more than the pollutants in coal and gas. They have destroyed trust in the internet. And they allow corporations to "fund" candidates for public office.

And question. Do the media such as the Washington Post, owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, address these issues? Nope.

In the US, our system of lawyers is broken. If we are to be a People governed by laws and not persons, then we People need to be able to use the law to right wrongs. In other words being able to use the law by using the courts is a requirement in a democracy.

As an experiment try to go to court pro se. The experience is characterized by the fact that in US courts, pro se clients can be sanctioned for improper actions, but lawyers can not be sanctioned for purposeful improprieties by pro se clients.

It is sort of like a commoner going up against a knight. The knight has armor and a lance and you have your scythe. Fun! In other words it is rigged.

And here is the kicker. Lawyers are "officers of the court". You could take that to mean that they uphold the standards of the court. Or when a lawyer does bad things, that could mean that the other lawyers - including the judge - see that lawyer as one of them. You know, sort of the way that many priests see abusive priests as priests first and abusers second, and so take actions to "protect" the church.

So whats a poor person to do? You try to get a lawyer. Lawyers will not want to take you on if the other side has a high power lawyer and lots of money. Not because your case isn't proper, but because the economics are not there. For the lawyer. At some point the side with more money will simply run you out. Your lawyer will urge you to settle.

Again this is not an us vs them thing. The issue is that if common people cannot afford to obtain justice, then we are not a democracy. We are something else. Corporations and the ultra wealthy have deep pockets to use the courts. If we tolerate that, it is reasonable to expect that the common people will not find this kind of "democracy" to their taste.

Yes. It is true, but I believe there is a significant difference between calling in artillery and saying "Why don't we try drones". Artillery is doctrine. Drones were not.

I do not know if the US Army could adapt as effectively as the Ukrainians have. My guess is not. BWDIK. Certainly some recent US military actions do not seem to be adaptive.

So yes, the military is perhaps better than corporations at being adaptive. It is hard to imagine a military commander asking everyone to send an email every day. On the other hand, will the US Army do better than the Russian military when they face a highly adaptive situation?

Good thoughts. Made me think. I had not connected the trust issue as you did, but was aware of it. One thing that concerns me is the tracking ads that are the business model for the consumer internet. Even worse than the tracking is the targeting. At some point I saw some supposed code from twitter or another, that was basically ``` if (isDemocrat) showD() else if (isRepublican) showR() ``` The net(!) effect is that people develop completely different world views which tend to be echo chambers. To my mind this is the cause of much dysfunction. The democratic party still does not get the source of the gigantic dissatisfaction that many, many people have for the way things are. In their echo chamber, the concept that many people have real and valid concerns is verboten.

Unless the New York Times readers can figure out that the people they call "haters" are in fact suffering things there will be no alternative to those people who are capitalizing on that suffering. IMO.

As for trust, I believe one large step is to prevent targeting. Otherwise the alternative is to develop another business model. [Edit for spelling a tiny bit more of clarity]

In my humble, and probably wrong opinion, the war in the Ukraine is about two different systems. You could call one system of human interaction the Putin-model. This is the one we in the US have recently adopted. Another model is a collaborative one. The models are not sharply delineated, but the differences are essential. Do we act with collaborative intelligence or do we follow orders? Most US corporations and individuals now rely on the Putin model. In this model, some (possibly incompetent and possibly insane) individual decides what we do, and we do it. I have seen revered corporate leader choose the dumbest choice possible over and over. The other model requires that the individual members can collaboratively understand a problem and respond to it. Unfortunately our "follow the leader" educational system has insured that we have few thinkers who are able to actually assess and solve problems.

I apologize because my experience with corporate culture has resulted in a strong and decisive conclusion that corporate leaders such as Musk and Cook, et al., could not fight their way out of a paper bag. Really. What they can do is order other people to fight their way out of paper bags. If I were somehow ever in an overloaded life boat, the first people I would push over the side would be the Musks and Cooks. Musk's "send me an email" just does not work in a life boat in a storm. sigh.

I realize that in our cultist society this is blasphemy, but really - if you are able to think any original thought, go for it. And for those of you who do not get it. Well, the best I can say is good luck.

If you have a new unknown, tool, things go wrong in two ways. For example a hammer.

If it works, like to hit a nail, you end up smashing everything in sight. If it fails, like digging a garden, you end up thinking it is stupid.

But there is a third case.

You use it to do something that you did not know you could do before. Like to planish metal.

People are experiencing the first case and second.

If you paint - no, paint by numbers does not qualify - then this will seem obvious.

I believe there is another level beyond this. When you write, but not by numbers.

Wow! Thanks. The thought about "Boids is not a simple ..." is new to me and very good. The other vector in this is the evolution/genetic algorithm idea. It raises the question of what are the benefits of flocking? And could you plug those into a genetic algorithm to test survival.

It seems like perhaps the visual inputs are another interesting area. What do I (as a boid) do when I see one boid in front of me go right, one go left, for example. But thanks!!

The original Boids is from Craig Reynolds, here:

https://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/

It was a java applet (sigh) and unfortunately I have not been able to find a working version. That version based on his three "steering" mechanisms had very realistic movement. Other versions, including this one, which are good do not have that same kind of quality. They look like simulations whereas the Reynolds version, for whatever reason, seemed much closer to watching an actual flock.

No criticism intended, it would just be nice to understand the why the difference.

Looking briefly at the code, it seems the fitness function is simply how close the boids are?

Very cool!

What is fermentation really? It is a process whereby bacteria et al. process a food source, breaking it down. And the same process goes on inside your gut. Ouch, now there is spoilage for you!

There is at least some research that says fermented foods have some benefits including reducing inflammation. My personal guess based on subjecting myself to more and more fermenting foods is that much of the obesity and many of the common health issues have to do with not eating enough fermenting foods. Just a guess based on a sample of one.

While the demo is great, and the 4D stuff is very cool, for me the amazing thing is the code to do this. Three.js opens a door to using webgl & webgpu, and shaders open yet more doors.

I get a message from pikimov.com about Firefox not supported.

When I was new to the integration of threejs and react I found these examples to be just amazing.

https://r3f.docs.pmnd.rs/getting-started/examples

The connection to intuitionism (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionism) gives this kind of thinking much broader appeal and application. It seems to me we live in a time so dominated by analytical thinking that we completely ignore other useful and effective modes.

People are still able to use Apple payments. They just have other choices now. At least that is my understanding. Wanting choices does not seem like "Apple dislike". To me, at least.

In our time, the lie has become the pillar industry of the internet.

The base concept is related to other useful ones.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is similar. I find it most interesting when you turn it upside down - in any less than perfect language there are things that you either cannot think about or are difficult to think about. Are there things that we cannot express and cannot think about in our language?

And the terms "language" and "thought" can be broader than our usual usage. For example do the rules of social interaction determine how we interact? Zeynep Tufekci in "Twitter and Teargas" talks about how twitter affords flash mobs, but not lasting social change.

Do social mechanism like "following" someone or "commenting" or "liking" determine/afford us ways of interacting with each other? Would other mechanisms afford of better collective thinking. Comments below. And be sure to like and follow. :-)

And then there is music. Not the notation, but does music express something that cannot be well expressed in other ways?

Adding an additional kind of license simply gives you an additional choice. There is nothing about you not being able to use the MIT, or any other license for your code. Providing options for people is not an instance of me imposing my values on you.

Your code, your license. My code, my license.

As someone commented above, commercial use is an issue. Creative commons is good, but the non-commercial clause prevents it being useful in this case. It seems to be that the crucial issue here is the duplication of the project by forking.

I am unclear of where the boundaries could and should be, but in essence we want money to flow into community source projects. Corporations and commercial entities can and should pay a fair amount. If they don't want to pay, they should not be able to profit from the work of the community.

Very good point. Trying to think this through.

I think community source should be accessible and usable outside the community. A community license should have a provision for paid use by corporations. If Microsoft wants to use it that is fine - if they pay.

But if Microsoft wants to fork things, to me that is predatory. If I can't fork windows, why should they be able to fork community software? If they argue that people should pay for their products, it just seems fair to me that they should not get community products for free.

I guess the concept is playing by the same rules?

My personal thought is that we need a new kind of license: community open source. No corporations, just community.

The problem this addresses is not that Microsoft forked this project. The problem is that when a corporation like Microsoft does this, they harm our community[0]. Open source thrives because a bunch of individuals and groups collaborate.

Microsoft, is built around the concept of profit for stock owners at any cost. They may collaborate as long as their interest in profit is served, but otherwise, it is back to "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" [1].

This lack of community ethic is endemic in corporations. It is also an existential threat to our community. Profit at any cost is not collaboration. It is predatory.

And yes, I know, corpies and other greedist will vote this down, blah, blah, blah.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

[edit clarity]

the link is apps.apple.com. In other words, this some app on the on the app store. Not made by Apple, just an app.

This is somewhat misleading as at first glance I took this as being a Apple product. This misdirection, intentional or not, is a big negative for me. So many products, corporations, companies try to gain every advantage by any means, that I now assume they cannot stand on their merits. That is just my experience though.

Very wrong headed in my opinion.

It assumes we are talking about a toddler and we are not. People find "ways" to survive - even toddlers. I knew a three year old. He found a way, and knew how to use it. It was very interesting to watch - until you realized the back story.

If something bad happened, as in he might be in trouble, he would run around the room as fast as possible and on the way create mayhem. He would knock over a paint jar, purposefully or not. Bump into another kid, knock over a chair. Soon all the adults in the room were dealing with an overwhelming set of emergencies. Todd was forgotten

This happened over and over again until the pattern clicked. Some adult had to keep focused on Todd.

It was a genius thing he came up with. He never faced consequences. One had to wonder how such a set of behaviors would evolve? Was he a bad kid? No. Mean, no. If you step back what you see is a survival skill for a very difficult situation. My guess is that the physical or psychological cost of being "caught" were so threatening that this response evolved as a life saving skill. In a three year old.

One has to think about how this person would be if they did not have some intervention. Would they evolve this particular skill into an increasingly sophisticated way? Certainly inherent in the success of this mode is a fairly strong sense of contempt for people in general. And perhaps this contempt is well earned when given by a three or even four year old. After all where was everyone else when he was in the original situation? But in an adult? Pitiful.

Fortunately for Todd, people took the time and had the care to help him feel safe without that mechanism. Unfortunately, this does not always happen, as we are seeing.

The response to this kind of pattern is the same though, for any age Todd - three or not three.

First the adults in the room have to focus on the source of the problems. And if not stopped, the blame must fall heavily on those so called adults.

Second, the distraction thing has to be addressed. The problem is not this or that is broken. The problem is the Todd.

So where are the adults in the room? We need to ask why the people in the room are not doing their job? And if we have no adults we need to get rid of the people in there. All of them.