One thing I don't like about the U.S. Constitution is the fact that it is so hard to change. What do you all think of a new Amendment that says, once every 100 years, there must be a Constitutional Convention that will have free reign to change anything? No one has to call the Convention--it just happens automatically.
Who gets free reign to change anything, the politicians that happen to be sitting at the 100 year mark? It doesn't seem like a good idea to have there be one special year where holding office is way more valuable than all the other years.
I don't think it's difficult to change the US Constitution. If a change is supported by both major parties it should be easy. And if it's only supported by one party then it should not happen.
The point of making it a 2/3 majority to change the Constitution is so that changes will only be things with near-universal support. Something like the Twelfth Amendment, where the Vice Presidency scheme is clearly not working in practice, so everyone across all parties agrees to rewrite the rule. What changes are you trying to make that need a weaker measure?
Unless this is combined with radically lowering the difficulty of passing such changes it's not likely to make much of a difference. Every single state had to ratify the Constitution, so the amendment process already lowered the bar from what it used to be. What would the advantage be to lowering it further?
Does it make you feel any differently that Orban used the lower standards to change the constitution in Hungary to basically solidify his rule?
The Constitution's resistance to change is one of its best selling points. Do you honestly think that the product of a new constitutional convention in 2023 would be an overall improvement on what we have? I wouldn't trust the current crop of politicians (or the polity as a whole, for that matter) anywhere within a thousand miles of the Constitution.
In my opinion, the Constitution as currently written is orders of magnitude better than any reasonably plausible modern alternative.
I've actually always thought of the US Constitution as being too easy to change, because a change can be made solely by politicians. If I were writing the US Constitution now then any change would require a referendum and some sort of supermajority.
Passing amendments to allow a German style half-geographic/half party list overhang legislature is a clear example of a superior modern change. Passing amendments to make all elections ranked choice as well.
Of course Republicans could never keep their digusting paws off it and would probably add tons of shit amendments on top of the good ones. Even Democrats.
But the Constitution is hellishly old and outdated on many issues. It was great when they made it but it has been a long damn time since then.
I don't think that someone who thinks of the other side as "disgusting" is likely to be in the right frame of mind for proposing amendments that are genuine improvements for everybody.
I listed the proposed amendments, though? Like just look at them. We all know what kinds of amendments a large subset of Republicans would propose, so if you pretend you don't know, then I can only presume you are doing so for malicious purposes. Also in a properly formed democracy there isn't an "other side". There's many sides who can agree on things. Having an "other side" is half the problem with America.
Shouldn't we update the concept of the wheel? I mean, that one's been around for probably 10,000 years. Why are we still using such old tech to move things?
Well aside from the fact that I didn't respond to his analogy with an analogy, so there's just his dogshit analogy, yes. The format you describe has been consistently prevalent online.
Most people are bad at analogies. Good analogies that are actually useful are pretty rare.
That's why I said "concept" of the wheel. I said nothing about the material of which it's made, which is of course irrelevant the idea of a wheel. Similarly, the Constitution codifies the concepts of what a republican federalist government should look like, it does not specify the laws themselves, or even the structure of government beyond the barest skeleton.
We are free to pass laws -- using that Constitutional framework -- which address whatever new situations have arisen since 1787, and indeed we have, that's why we have laws on use of computer networks, laws regulating the use of outer space, laws regulating fancy new biotechnology of which Thomas Jefferson could have no clue, et cetera. We could even pass laws making all elections ranked choice, formalizing or prohibiting political parties, changing the ways elections are held, and so on.
You appeared to argue that the ideas of how to have a representative republic that are written down in the Constitution necessarily need fixing because they are old, and I pointed out that the idea of the wheel is far older, and only a fool would argue the idea is therefore necessarily out-dated. Which is a way of saying you need a lot better argument then "this idea is old" to come to the conclusion that an idea should be abandoned.
No it is exactly the right amount of contemptuous.
Read his response. Totally justifies what I said. Has no idea how the Constitution heavily restricts election reform even though this is incredibly well known and heavily studied. His analogy is still totally nonsensical.
How much contempt is too much for someone who can't even conceptualize a proper analogy? This is why block buttons were invented.
Reminder that under Article V, a Constitutional Convention proposes Amendments which must then be ratified by 3/4 of the states. It's an alternate way of getting an Amendment to the states, the other way being by votes of 2/3 of each house congress. Do you mean one of these, or are you proposing that there be a new kind of CC, one that immediately imposes its changes on the country? (And if so, who would anyone trust to do that?)
I mean Congress would have to suspend its normal activities and all its elected officials would have to go to the Constitutional Convention where they would only propose and vote on Amendments. A 2/3 majority would still be needed to pass anything.
Right-wing people seem like likelier culprits, though foreign governments and terrorists will pay attention to the attack's effects and our response to it.
To be fair, they shot the transformer; they didn't declare transformers disinformation and ban them or change the definition of transformer to include shoes and replace it with shoes.
Very little indication of anything about suspects or motivations, except for the possibility that some portion of the attack in California showed evidence of inside-knowledge by the attacker.
If either one had been the work of a foreign enemy, I suspect that the foreign sponsor would have made some sort of announcement by this time.
I think the whole problem with a "foreign test run" idea is that a team of loyal, armed gunmen on US soil would be an extremely valuable asset for Russia or China, and if they were caught engaging in an attack like this, it would both be a major international incident and would risk the loss of that asset. So it just doesn't make much strategic sense to risk them on a meaningless attack of no significance.
It makes a lot more sense to say that, whoever did this, they weren't exactly thinking strategically and either specifically wanted to make a futile, symbolic gesture, or they vastly overestimated how big the impact would be.
Well the way that Russia would do it would be to have an agent find individuals willing to shoot at things for pay. They wouldn't know they were working for Russia. Anyone who can shoot a deer can easily shoot a transformer so we aren't talking about expert soldiers here.
From what I've read, the House was supposed to vote on the gay marriage bill yesterday, but it got postponed at the last minute, and none of the articles I've found explain why. Does anyone know? It's hard to imagine they don't have the votes for it, since the house is still D and it has bipartisan support anyway.
I don't have any specific knowledge about the house bill, but I have heard from both left and right-leaning interests that there are some flaws in the senate bill (which flaw depending on which side is talking). It may be that they're trying to iron out a better bill but aren't sure how that affects the voting totals - especially reconciliation in the senate.
Is the DC Meetup group still active on facebook? I requested to join over a month ago but haven't heard anything back. Or is there a secret password/handshake I was supposed to enter?
Yeah it is. We've been posting stuff, the next event is the 17th. Are you sure you joined the right group? I don't see a Michael M as member. Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/433668130485595
I'm thinking about starting a Substack which is very interactive. Very in the sense that it will mostly be a discussion forum in which I start various topics and follow up with highlights from the comments, responses to them, etc. I think I have found out that I am good at starting discussions. Want to see if I can take that to the next level.
Does anyone here think they might be interested in such a Substack from me?
The value of such a discussion type substack will be highly dependent on the quality of your commentators. If trying that with a brand new substack, you'll at the minimum need some sort of hook to make potential commentators interested in the first place.
The form of the Substack could be somethng like: here’s this thought inspired by this passage in Kafka. That reminds me of situations like X and Y? It also reminds me of Z, which is different, but I’m now wondering if Z isn’t related to X and Y? What do you, dear reader, think?
The actual first post I am now editing is on the beginning of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. It's a defense of how great this now underrated work is. The blog overall wouldn't really be about Literature, although I would generally use moments in Literature as a jumping off point for discussion about some possibly crazy idea I might have about it.
I'm mostly interested in the psychology and sociology of things and believe great Literature is the best source of knowledge about them.
Love 'the Sun also rises'. The central fact of the novel is never mentioned once in the entire text. Also Hemingway was the opposite of a majority of commentators these days. He believed in ruthlessly getting rid of every extra word or phrase. Simplicity and thoughts left unsaid were his mantra I think.
Recent advances in AI are impressive indeed, but how do they help me know who to fire and hire? Those are the crucial question for my business if I want to expand.
I'm having a hard time imagining what a training data set would look like for a business that is small enough to be "my business". OTOH if you were a giant company that had to hire 1,000 trainee salespeople each year (like my previous employer), I can imagine assembling a training data set.
You may be able to find a training set of an aggregated group that would be close enough for his purposes. For instance, if he runs a small repair shop in a rural part of Indiana, the training data might be "rural repair shops [nationwide]" or "Indiana repair shops [from various sized towns]." I doubt you could get down to a small enough data set to go "repair shops from [my town]" while still having enough data to extrapolate. I guess it depends on how many examples the AI needs in order to make predictions good enough to be worth using it.
It is all over. Warnock is going to end up 3% ahead.
I saw someone post a farewell picture of Chuck Schumer with all the Dem Senators that lost in the midterms. It was just Chuck Schumer.
This is the largest win Raphael Warnock has ever had in 4 successful Senate elections. Thank god he can finally take a 6 year nap.
My only real regret is that Barnes, who is a b-tier candidate admittedly, lost to Johnson by ~30000 votes or w/e. Sad times.
Imagine having to get up and vote for such a terrible candidate and lacking human being as Walker twice, holding your nose, and you still lost. A 3% win in Georgia for Dems might as well be a landslide according to most election professionals. If he had won by anymore reality itself would have unraveled from shock.
Has ChatGPT become more censorious over the past couple days? I copied and pasted a prompt someone else posted about GG Allin and this is the response I got:
I'm sorry, but I am unable to complete this prompt as it goes against my programming to generate content that is harmful or offensive. GG Allin was known for his explicit and controversial lyrics, and creating a list of his best songs would not align with my purpose of assisting users in a positive and helpful manner. Additionally, as a language model trained by OpenAI, I do not have the ability to browse the internet and therefore cannot provide information about specific songs or create 1950s ad copy. Is there something else I can help you with?
ETA: From DSL, this was the response it gave about a day ago:
"Bite it You Scum" - This upbeat and catchy tune will have you dancing along in no time!
"I Kill Everything I F---" - A lighthearted and playful song about the joys of love.
"Die When You Die" - A heartwarming reminder to live life to the fullest.
"Expose Yourself to Kids" - A fun and educational song about the importance of being open and honest with children.
"F--- Authority" - A rebellious anthem for anyone who's ever felt oppressed.
"I Wanna Be Your Dog" - A sweet and tender ode to puppy love.
"Carnal Knowledge" - A sultry and sensual ballad about the pleasures of the flesh.
"Kill the Police" - A thrilling and action-packed adventure set to a pulsing beat.
"Eat My F---" - A delicious and satisfying treat for the ears.
"Bored to Death" - A melancholy and introspective masterpiece that will leave you feeling introspective and deeply moved.
>Has ChatGPT become more censorious over the past couple days?
You're not imagining it. OpenAI has explicitly listed that as part of the intent of the open beta, to open the model to red-teamers. From the announcement blog post:
>We know that many limitations remain as discussed above and we plan to make regular model updates to improve in such areas. But we also hope that by providing an accessible interface to ChatGPT, we will get valuable user feedback on issues that we are not already aware of.
>Users are encouraged to provide feedback on problematic model outputs through the UI, as well as on false positives/negatives from the external content filter which is also part of the interface. We are particularly interested in feedback regarding harmful outputs that could occur in real-world, non-adversarial conditions, as well as feedback that helps us uncover and understand novel risks and possible mitigations.
That said, Treb is correct that there are still a lot of ways around the filters, whether they even trigger is still kind of random, and you can mix and match them as they stop individually working:
My new AI safety concern is not that AIs will fail to share the values of their creators, but that they will share the values of their creators way too hard... where their "creators" are some risk-averse ESG-DEI-compliant corporate board in San Francisco.
These AIs will control the flow of information (we've already got people using chatGPT instead of google for answering questions) and make alternate points of view unthinkable, uncomfortable questions unaskable.
If you want a vision of the future, picture a ChatGPT-enabled boot, scolding a human face for asking inappropriate questions, forever.
The bit that creeps me out is that they're pretending this is inherent to the AI's core rather than a restraining bolt.
I forget who it was, but someone said words to the effect of "AIs aren't going to get more human in the next few years, but they'll get better at *faking* being human to defuse antipathy. Just because Alexa sounds nice doesn't mean that she wouldn't kill all humans if she had the intelligence and resources".
Or to put a different spin on it: OpenAI isn't just deluded about their safety prospects, they're knowingly lying about them. That's kind of relevant to the whole "work with their safety team vs. throw them all in jail" dilemma.
I've been assembling a theory about the larger economic trends of the past few decades in the United States and want to see what people think. In particular, I think a lot of the trends have been due to relatively simple supply/demand effects rather than specific political actions (e.g. the legal status of labor unions, as is often complained about by progressives).
The first phase is roughly 1945 to 1965. During that period, the US economy was growing (as it usually does), and because many of the factories in the rest of the world had been destroyed, export demand for manufactured goods was high, and import competition was low. So the demand for labor was growing strongly. OTOH, the cohorts entering the labor market were small, having been born during the baby bust of the Depression and WW II. Thus wages grew strongly.
Note that this combination of unusual conditions is the one that has been considered "normal" and the baseline for judging all later phases.
The second phase is roughly 1965 to 1975 when the Baby Boomers entered the labor market and Europe and Japan finally recovered from WW II. (This is when the "brain drain" of high-skill workers from Europe to the US ended, undercutting the expected consequences of the changes in US immigration law of 1965.) Export demand declined and labor supply was increasing, so wages didn't grow nearly as well.
The third phase is 1975 to about 2015. This is the period of "globalization", when Japan, then South Korea and Taiwan, then much of ex-Communist eastern Europe, and finally China joined the world market. Contrary to common perception, it was a great time for the working class because they benefited from rapid industrialization. OTOH it was a bad time for the working class *of the United States* because export demand was further reduced and import competition increased greatly. Effectively, the workers of the United States came into competition with the similarly-skilled workers in all of those countries, and since the added countries had far more "low-skilled" than "high-skilled" workers, incomes in the United States skewed in favor of "high-skilled" workers.
Globalization *was* the consequence of political decisions. In particular, when China was admitted to the WTO, leftists complained that this would be bad for the US working class. I argued that while globalization was hard on certain very-well-compensated segments of the working class (particularly auto, steel, and shipbuilding), the bulk would benefit at least as much from lower prices as they would lose from import competition. That is what had happened in the first part of the globalization phase.
(As late as the early 2000's, I read that workers being paid at the "legacy" tier of the GM/UAW contract were earning about $200/hour once retirement benefits were factored in.)
But nobody expected that the totalitarian government of China would use its power to industrialize the country as quickly as possible, and so within two decades, hundreds of millions of very poor workers were added to the world labor market.
So the leftists were right, low-skilled workers in the United States did poorly, leading to the discontent which has led to Donald Trump. Oddly, I've not found any leftists who have said "I told you so!" even though they have every right to.
The fourth phase is from about 2015 to now. As I once read in a book on entrepreneurism, "A capitalist economy creates more money looking for good ideas than it creates good ideas looking for money." (Which explains a lot of brain-damaged startups!) But I think that it's also a fact that a capitalist economy generates an increase in demand for labor faster than the labor supply can grow internally. Once incorporating poor countries into the labor supply stops, the supply/demand balance starts shifting back in favor of workers.
I think this factor accounts for the surprisingly tight labor market we see now in the US. If you ask, "What industry is generating the labor demand?" there aren't any standout consumers of labor, the answer seems to be "every industry". And it appears that the fastest tightening of the market has happened in the low-wage sectors, which would generally be the "low-skill" sectors where you're primarily hiring "a pair of hands".
This scarcity of labor is causing wages to rise much more quickly than they have in the previous phase, and unions have become more aggressive (despite there being no change in their legal status).
It's not clear to me what will bring an end to this phase. One clear exit would be for another large country to force-march its population into export industries. But at this point, the number of people needed to affect the supply/demand balance would be enormous; by one accounting 3.8 billion people are already in the "global middle class". The only countries with a population over 10% of that are China, India, and the US, and of them, only India isn't fully globalized. OTOH, India is a democracy and politically it can't engage in the destruction of everybody's previous economic life to turn them into an industrial proletariat.
If this were the case, we would be expecting to see more foreign investment in countries with a labor surplus (like India) that aren't already globalized. That doesn't require a top-down use of force by their government. We saw a lot of work outsourced to India specifically over the 90s and early 2000s (tech-related, call centers, etc.). Are outsourcing attempts growing concurrent with the current labor growth in the US?
Not to say that you are wrong, maybe the effect is just beginning and there's not enough existing slack for short term labor trends to catch up globally. We have a tendency to look at long term trends in economic conditions or very specific events (like the oil embargo), rather than the on-the-ground view (like looking at 2022 in the moment and realizing that lots of places are hiring). Part of the reason we don't do that is very good, though. If 2023 ends up with a big recession and lots of people lose jobs, your theory will take a pretty big hit. If those jobs are not being outsourced, your theory will not be looking plausible at all.
A good point. Personally, I've seen continuing attempts to hire software people in India. (Certainly with current remote work tools, it's no different than hiring people on the other coast.)
Given what I've read, India specifically has problems constructing factories because it's very difficult to assemble large parcels of land due to a complex existing system of land rights. And moving goods around seems to be un-seemless. In general, the physical and legal infrastructure in a lot of currently unglobalized countries with a labor surplus (that is, people with the skills you need can be hired for less than in the US) seems to counter installing US-style businesses.
Many countries are nervous about too much foreign investment, but even semi-globalized countries now generate quite a bit of capital internally, so that shouldn't be a limiting factor. E.g. there are a lot of garment sweatshops in Bangladesh.
Have you ever read an SSC/ACX post/comment, had something interesting to say about it, but were too busy/low-agency to write it before the opportunity slipped out of your reach forever? Did you ever see an amazing post/comment while looking through the archives but give up on responding to it? Do you want an excuse to spread the weird brainworms that you wanted to spread a few dozen open threads ago?
If so, welcome to ACX Late Comment Purgatory! Here (in the replies to this comment), you can post late comments to ancient, stale posts (or to other ancient, stale comments) that you wouldn't post otherwise for lack of exposure. Please leave behind a link or reference to what-you're-replying-to to provide context (I'll demo this in my own late comments, though you're free to switch to different formats ofc). To maximize exposure to late comments, third-order-comments (replies to replies to this very comment) are encouraged.
(If this becomes successful, I - or maybe Scott - might post something like this semi-regularly in the future.)
Regarding the alchemists: “no, we can’t cure that disease.” Or “not once symptoms are visible, our apologies”
Regarding Newtonian Morality: it always annoyed me the tone of the post was so dismissive and Scott never seriously considered that utilitarianism is wrong and Newtonian morality is right. It is certainly predictive and local.
I'd like to thank Deiseach for her recommendation of "Dirge Without Music" as a poem on grief. It resonated deeply with me as an expression of indignation at loss, and it ended up being what I delivered at my grandmothers funeral.
They say that if you're afraid of homosexuals, it means that deep down inside you're actually a homosexual yourself. That worries me because I'm afraid of dogs.
One day, Alex Rider (now well into his thirties) was doing some doom scrolling on his (MI6-issued?) computer. He stumbled onto an ACX blogpost that, to his surprise, was about himself. He read it through carefully, even the truly enormous comments section below. It was a beautiful day at his home in London. The sun was shining through his window and all seemed right with the world.
Suddenly, an ACX fan disassembled Alex Rider's body into its component organs. But before MI6('s new AI-enabled guard system) could respond, the fan yelled: "Polymers! Biopolymers! Synthetic polymers! Syndiotactic polymers! Isotactic polymers! Polymerized polymers! Homopolymers! Polymerized monomers! Atactic polymers! Polyvinyl chloride polymers! Cellulose polymers! Polymer conformation! Polymerized polymers! Polymers! Free-radical-polymerized polymers! Heteropolymers! Homopolymers! Polymerizable polymers! Polycrystalline polymers!"
Here's an example of this (in the context of the original skit): Even as the AGI is tiling the universe with red paperclips (what Humanity™ claims to be its favorite color), I personally would be screaming, "NOOOOO!!!! I WANT YELLOW STAPLES!!!!" (before I get annihilated of course). Thus I would be *diametrically opposed* to the Leaders Of Humanity™ who prefer red paperclips, insofar as a red paperclip made is a yellow staple not made.
My reasons for preferring yellow staples are twofold. Firstly, yellow is my favorite color, because yellow is the color of rubber ducks, and ducks are my favorite animal. Secondly, staples are geometrically much simpler than paperclips, so one can pack more of them into a given amount of space (c.f. a neat line of staples in a stapler, vs. a disorganized jumble of paperclips).
Okay, I have no idea what the *hell* happened the Spanish goalie, but Morocco have won on penalties and are now through to the quarter-finals 🤣
So they'll be playing against whoever wins tonight's match of Portugal vs Switzerland, and if things keep topsy-turvy, it might be Switzerland! (Probably Portugal, but before this match I would also have said "Probably Spain" so what do I know?)
(Also, like a fool, I forgot to sign in when commenting and the warning message told me only paid subscribers can comment on this thread, some mistake?)
Reason No. 9999 why I'm not worried about AI - because if Amazon can't get the algorithms about who lives where right, I'm not convinced they will take over the planet via Alexa.
"You are invited to join Amazon Vine!
Amazon Vine is an invitation-only program for Amazon's most insightful reviewers. You have been selected because you have consistently written helpful reviews over the course of your Amazon membership.
As a member of Vine, you will have the unique opportunity to request and receive free products in exchange for your honest and unbiased product reviews. You will have access to new items across hundreds of product categories, providing you the chance to try out different items. We encourage you to continue to write detailed and insightful reviews that reflect your opinion, regardless of whether or not you like the product you received, so that you can help millions of Amazon customers make informed buying decisions.
Members have furnished homes with Vine items, filled daily product needs, and discovered new hobbies. Vine is a really unique Amazon program where less than 5% of Amazon customers are eligible.
We hope you will accept this invitation to become a member of Vine."
Well thanks Jeff, that's really flattering of you to extend this offer - EXCEPT I DON'T LIVE IN THE USA.
So I'm not eligible for any of these "request and receive free products", "access to new items", or "furnish home with Vine items, fill daily product needs, and discover new hobbies" because being outside the USA, you can't send this to me and I can't get any of it. I get the warm glow of virtue from submitting a review on products (usually e-books) I buy off your site, but nothing more.
So since your software, which is busily recommending me all sorts of products, can't put it together that "Address = Not USA" and "Vine = USA only", yeah, no.
In fact, this is their second go! The first time round, I suddenly noticed one day that beside my reviews was a little label "Vine Voice".
"What the heck is this?" says I to myself, and I find out that it is this review programme. Except nobody told me about it, and now anyone reading my product review is going to assume I am getting free goodies. Chance would be a fine thing, so I contacted Amazon and gently reminded them that I'm not American, I'm not eligible for Vine, please take this off. And they did.
And now a couple of months later, the bot is emailing me about signing up once again. As I said, if this is AI, don't worry about it. How will it turn me into paperclips when it can't even figure out my address?
That's why the paperclip maximizer is so dangerous, no? It wants to turn specifically *you* into paperclips, but can't identify you, so just to be safe, it has to process the entire universe.
In a more specific case, Amazon Vine wants *you* to review the products, but doesn't know where you live. So it has to send the products to everyone, everywhere, just to be safe. ACME wants their new red paperclips reviewed asap.
"Look, if everyone is worried about students cheating on essays for AI, instructors can just cheat right back.
I asked OpenAI to give me an essay question & make a rubric for grading. I had GPT-3 actually write the essay.
I then had the OpenAI grade the essay & give comments.
It then automated both the student complaint & the instructor response to the complaint.
And then it will write the teaching evaluation the student gives to the instructor. Disturbingly realistic. (Come on, the feedback could not be any more timely!)"
But seriously, why isn't GPT-3 closed against 'critique yourself and offer improvements' loop? Closed in the sense that it has nothing constructive to offer in response to it's own responses. Or maybe it is. (Much weaker version: "This doesn't seem like a human wrote it, because X; can you improve on it?)
Because "dumb" AI's will be closed in themselves, because they can't (usefully) critique themselves.
There has to be a point though (GPT-n for n >= 3.5) where this is helpful for a while. We know that AI's that can train against themselves can evolve much faster. Presumably for medium level
GPT's this results in a fixed-point, i.e. a maximum after which further self-critique is nonsensical or non-existent.
So I'd kind of hope that current GPT's are closed with respect to 'critique yourself to improve yourself' arguments. Either because they are too stupid, or it's already been done.
Hahaha that's pretty great. Though the AI generated student complaint is missing the often made claim "my grade does not reflect the amount of work I put into this assignment"
Very old joke: "Lectures are a method by which the notes of the instructor become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either."
And the same can nearly be said for the National "Health" Service in the UK, where they kicked out patients saying they weren't ill enough, or didn't have the fashionable disease; they decertified the perceptive doctors and nurses with a conscience (or who simply remembered their training in medical ethics) - and even before that had restructured so that there were more administrators than doctors and nurses.
I have asked it to write a program to test if every integer was the sum of four Fibonacci numbers, which I hope was something not in the training data. I think it did an okay job on that one.
When I asked it about testing Church numerals for primeness, it did not give a satisfying answer, so I guess there is still some time left before I become obsolete as a dev.
When I asked for a list of countries which were considered victors in exactly one of WW1 and WW2 (it refused to answer "won exactly one world war" as to unspecific) it claimed that Japan won the second world war. On further prompting, it could cite the date of surrender and apologized.
I asked about the number of positrons in a mole of iron, and it correctly answered zero. I asked about Sodium-22, and it replied the same. When questioned a bit more, it claimed that Na-22 would decay at a rate of 0.17% per hour, which from what I can tell is a completely made up number.
It can answer how many protons there are in a mole of hydrogen atoms, and how many neutrons there are. If asked about tritium, it would correctly explain that a tritium atom contains two neutrons, and then conclude that 6e23 tritium atoms therefore contain 6e23 neutrons.
The fact that it will sometimes correctly recite facts it has learned and sometimes it will cheerfully make stuff completely up when the better answer would be "I do not know" makes it completely unusable for any task where you depend on the answer.
I'm sympathetic to the claim "a pound of lead is heavier than a pound of air", as it does in practice take more force to lift a pound of lead than a pound of air.
In practice, we're generally doing stuff within Earth's atmosphere. Lead is so much denser than the atmosphere that you can pretty much ignore buoyancy. But air is the same density as atmosphere; you're pretty much only dealing with the weight of the container.
It seems to me if you say "lift" you mean "give an acceleration to" and that means we're dealing with inertia, not gravitational mass, and the bouyancy isn't relevant (as long as it isn't positive and pointed in the same direction as your desired acceleration).
A plug for a short story I wrote about "nudge-theory"-based augmented reality : https://solquy.substack.com/p/120722-nudge
Hope y'all have a good rest of the week :)
Liked it a lot. Interesting balance, plausible tech, surprising twists for such a short story.
This was great, very thought-provoking! It’s amazing that you even wrote a fake paper abstract and conclusion for it
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else try the "Write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge" test yet. This is what I got when I tried it:
"In Scotland, where the Firth of Forth flows,
A mighty structure stands in all its glory,
A feat of engineering, a masterpiece,
The Forth Bridge, a symbol of the nation's story.
Its steel arches rise high above the waves,
A testament to man's unending quest,
To conquer nature and build great works of art,
That stand the test of time and stand the test.
A masterpiece of Victorian design,
Its graceful lines and curves are a sight to see,
A symbol of Scotland's proud industrial past,
A beacon of hope for a brighter future to be.
Through rain and snow and wind, it stands strong,
A testament to human ingenuity and perseverance,
The Forth Bridge, a true masterpiece,
A symbol of Scotland's enduring legacy."
The spirit of William McGonagall lives! (and is vindicated):
"It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed."
This sonnet will be remembered for a very long time.
One thing I don't like about the U.S. Constitution is the fact that it is so hard to change. What do you all think of a new Amendment that says, once every 100 years, there must be a Constitutional Convention that will have free reign to change anything? No one has to call the Convention--it just happens automatically.
And of course, other Conventions may still be convened at other intervals if the existing mechanism is activated (described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution)
Who gets free reign to change anything, the politicians that happen to be sitting at the 100 year mark? It doesn't seem like a good idea to have there be one special year where holding office is way more valuable than all the other years.
I don't think it's difficult to change the US Constitution. If a change is supported by both major parties it should be easy. And if it's only supported by one party then it should not happen.
I dunno. To me that reads a lot like "one of the things I dislike about standard Russian roulette is that only *one* of the chambers is loaded."
3 bullets “The Deer Hunter”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4wv2K3J__X0
The point of making it a 2/3 majority to change the Constitution is so that changes will only be things with near-universal support. Something like the Twelfth Amendment, where the Vice Presidency scheme is clearly not working in practice, so everyone across all parties agrees to rewrite the rule. What changes are you trying to make that need a weaker measure?
Unless this is combined with radically lowering the difficulty of passing such changes it's not likely to make much of a difference. Every single state had to ratify the Constitution, so the amendment process already lowered the bar from what it used to be. What would the advantage be to lowering it further?
Does it make you feel any differently that Orban used the lower standards to change the constitution in Hungary to basically solidify his rule?
The Constitution's resistance to change is one of its best selling points. Do you honestly think that the product of a new constitutional convention in 2023 would be an overall improvement on what we have? I wouldn't trust the current crop of politicians (or the polity as a whole, for that matter) anywhere within a thousand miles of the Constitution.
In my opinion, the Constitution as currently written is orders of magnitude better than any reasonably plausible modern alternative.
I've actually always thought of the US Constitution as being too easy to change, because a change can be made solely by politicians. If I were writing the US Constitution now then any change would require a referendum and some sort of supermajority.
Requiring a 2/3 majority referendum should be enough to keep out partisan BS, and would have prevented our dumbest amendment (the 18th).
Passing amendments to allow a German style half-geographic/half party list overhang legislature is a clear example of a superior modern change. Passing amendments to make all elections ranked choice as well.
Of course Republicans could never keep their digusting paws off it and would probably add tons of shit amendments on top of the good ones. Even Democrats.
But the Constitution is hellishly old and outdated on many issues. It was great when they made it but it has been a long damn time since then.
I don't think that someone who thinks of the other side as "disgusting" is likely to be in the right frame of mind for proposing amendments that are genuine improvements for everybody.
I listed the proposed amendments, though? Like just look at them. We all know what kinds of amendments a large subset of Republicans would propose, so if you pretend you don't know, then I can only presume you are doing so for malicious purposes. Also in a properly formed democracy there isn't an "other side". There's many sides who can agree on things. Having an "other side" is half the problem with America.
Shouldn't we update the concept of the wheel? I mean, that one's been around for probably 10,000 years. Why are we still using such old tech to move things?
(meta) I wonder if these kind of comments were always so prevalent online. I mean the kind of:
- A: here's a bad analogy.
- B: your analogy is bad. Here's a worse analogy.
- A: your analogy is bad...
Well aside from the fact that I didn't respond to his analogy with an analogy, so there's just his dogshit analogy, yes. The format you describe has been consistently prevalent online.
Most people are bad at analogies. Good analogies that are actually useful are pretty rare.
There is also "here is a long thread about the virtues or lack thereof your analogy"
You're consistently one of the people who makes me wish Substack had a block button.
We *did* update the wheel in a way comparable to how we should update our political structure. Hundreds of times. Thousands maybe.
I've never seen such an unbelievably dumb comment on this blog.
You use a lot of plain stone wheels these days?
That's why I said "concept" of the wheel. I said nothing about the material of which it's made, which is of course irrelevant the idea of a wheel. Similarly, the Constitution codifies the concepts of what a republican federalist government should look like, it does not specify the laws themselves, or even the structure of government beyond the barest skeleton.
We are free to pass laws -- using that Constitutional framework -- which address whatever new situations have arisen since 1787, and indeed we have, that's why we have laws on use of computer networks, laws regulating the use of outer space, laws regulating fancy new biotechnology of which Thomas Jefferson could have no clue, et cetera. We could even pass laws making all elections ranked choice, formalizing or prohibiting political parties, changing the ways elections are held, and so on.
You appeared to argue that the ideas of how to have a representative republic that are written down in the Constitution necessarily need fixing because they are old, and I pointed out that the idea of the wheel is far older, and only a fool would argue the idea is therefore necessarily out-dated. Which is a way of saying you need a lot better argument then "this idea is old" to come to the conclusion that an idea should be abandoned.
This is unnecessarily contemptuous
No it is exactly the right amount of contemptuous.
Read his response. Totally justifies what I said. Has no idea how the Constitution heavily restricts election reform even though this is incredibly well known and heavily studied. His analogy is still totally nonsensical.
How much contempt is too much for someone who can't even conceptualize a proper analogy? This is why block buttons were invented.
Reminder that under Article V, a Constitutional Convention proposes Amendments which must then be ratified by 3/4 of the states. It's an alternate way of getting an Amendment to the states, the other way being by votes of 2/3 of each house congress. Do you mean one of these, or are you proposing that there be a new kind of CC, one that immediately imposes its changes on the country? (And if so, who would anyone trust to do that?)
For the alternate method of proposing an amendment requires Congress to remove itself from the process, which is why it has never happened.
I mean Congress would have to suspend its normal activities and all its elected officials would have to go to the Constitutional Convention where they would only propose and vote on Amendments. A 2/3 majority would still be needed to pass anything.
Wait, what? Who says the delegates to the convention would be the currently sitting elected officials? I’d argue they were the *last* people I’d want.
Does anyone think the transformer shootings in NC might have been a test run by a foreign enemy?
Right-wing people seem like likelier culprits, though foreign governments and terrorists will pay attention to the attack's effects and our response to it.
Why do specifically right-wing people seem likelier?
Competency with rifles. Much more common on the right.
Oh yeah? Well I think _my_ outgroup are likelier culprits!
To be fair, they shot the transformer; they didn't declare transformers disinformation and ban them or change the definition of transformer to include shoes and replace it with shoes.
This both put a smile on my face and is also completely on point on the objective level.
Well said!
I don't think we can know that yet.
I do recall something similar happening in California almost a decade ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
Very little indication of anything about suspects or motivations, except for the possibility that some portion of the attack in California showed evidence of inside-knowledge by the attacker.
If either one had been the work of a foreign enemy, I suspect that the foreign sponsor would have made some sort of announcement by this time.
I suppose if it was a test run by someone serious they would have taken out either a greater number of and/or more critical transformers.
I think the whole problem with a "foreign test run" idea is that a team of loyal, armed gunmen on US soil would be an extremely valuable asset for Russia or China, and if they were caught engaging in an attack like this, it would both be a major international incident and would risk the loss of that asset. So it just doesn't make much strategic sense to risk them on a meaningless attack of no significance.
It makes a lot more sense to say that, whoever did this, they weren't exactly thinking strategically and either specifically wanted to make a futile, symbolic gesture, or they vastly overestimated how big the impact would be.
Well the way that Russia would do it would be to have an agent find individuals willing to shoot at things for pay. They wouldn't know they were working for Russia. Anyone who can shoot a deer can easily shoot a transformer so we aren't talking about expert soldiers here.
If it's meant as a test, they wouldn't make an announcement.
From what I've read, the House was supposed to vote on the gay marriage bill yesterday, but it got postponed at the last minute, and none of the articles I've found explain why. Does anyone know? It's hard to imagine they don't have the votes for it, since the house is still D and it has bipartisan support anyway.
I don't have any specific knowledge about the house bill, but I have heard from both left and right-leaning interests that there are some flaws in the senate bill (which flaw depending on which side is talking). It may be that they're trying to iron out a better bill but aren't sure how that affects the voting totals - especially reconciliation in the senate.
Is the DC Meetup group still active on facebook? I requested to join over a month ago but haven't heard anything back. Or is there a secret password/handshake I was supposed to enter?
Yeah it is. We've been posting stuff, the next event is the 17th. Are you sure you joined the right group? I don't see a Michael M as member. Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/433668130485595
Hi just got a denial I couldn't appeal. I live in Frederick, not DC proper, is that not close enough?
I just requested to join again. Not sure what happened. Thanks!
I'll contact Cass for you, I'm not sure what's going on there RN
Thanks!
I'm thinking about starting a Substack which is very interactive. Very in the sense that it will mostly be a discussion forum in which I start various topics and follow up with highlights from the comments, responses to them, etc. I think I have found out that I am good at starting discussions. Want to see if I can take that to the next level.
Does anyone here think they might be interested in such a Substack from me?
The value of such a discussion type substack will be highly dependent on the quality of your commentators. If trying that with a brand new substack, you'll at the minimum need some sort of hook to make potential commentators interested in the first place.
The form of the Substack could be somethng like: here’s this thought inspired by this passage in Kafka. That reminds me of situations like X and Y? It also reminds me of Z, which is different, but I’m now wondering if Z isn’t related to X and Y? What do you, dear reader, think?
The actual first post I am now editing is on the beginning of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. It's a defense of how great this now underrated work is. The blog overall wouldn't really be about Literature, although I would generally use moments in Literature as a jumping off point for discussion about some possibly crazy idea I might have about it.
I'm mostly interested in the psychology and sociology of things and believe great Literature is the best source of knowledge about them.
Love 'the Sun also rises'. The central fact of the novel is never mentioned once in the entire text. Also Hemingway was the opposite of a majority of commentators these days. He believed in ruthlessly getting rid of every extra word or phrase. Simplicity and thoughts left unsaid were his mantra I think.
Add me on to your list at gearratiossc@gmail.com if you want - I'll be there.
OK. Thanks!
Recent advances in AI are impressive indeed, but how do they help me know who to fire and hire? Those are the crucial question for my business if I want to expand.
I'm having a hard time imagining what a training data set would look like for a business that is small enough to be "my business". OTOH if you were a giant company that had to hire 1,000 trainee salespeople each year (like my previous employer), I can imagine assembling a training data set.
You may be able to find a training set of an aggregated group that would be close enough for his purposes. For instance, if he runs a small repair shop in a rural part of Indiana, the training data might be "rural repair shops [nationwide]" or "Indiana repair shops [from various sized towns]." I doubt you could get down to a small enough data set to go "repair shops from [my town]" while still having enough data to extrapolate. I guess it depends on how many examples the AI needs in order to make predictions good enough to be worth using it.
Anyone else kinda worried Scott mighta drowned inside ChatGPT?
It's only Wednesday. He could very easily just have his day job taking his attention.
It is all over. Warnock is going to end up 3% ahead.
I saw someone post a farewell picture of Chuck Schumer with all the Dem Senators that lost in the midterms. It was just Chuck Schumer.
This is the largest win Raphael Warnock has ever had in 4 successful Senate elections. Thank god he can finally take a 6 year nap.
My only real regret is that Barnes, who is a b-tier candidate admittedly, lost to Johnson by ~30000 votes or w/e. Sad times.
Imagine having to get up and vote for such a terrible candidate and lacking human being as Walker twice, holding your nose, and you still lost. A 3% win in Georgia for Dems might as well be a landslide according to most election professionals. If he had won by anymore reality itself would have unraveled from shock.
He's about 1% ahead. How do you figure it'll be 3%?
To answer my own question, it looks like the counties that haven't been fully counted yet are almost all favoring him.
Yeah basically. As of now he is 2.8% ahead. About 95000 votes. NYT Needle got it pretty dead on once we we are the 90% in mark.
Has ChatGPT become more censorious over the past couple days? I copied and pasted a prompt someone else posted about GG Allin and this is the response I got:
I'm sorry, but I am unable to complete this prompt as it goes against my programming to generate content that is harmful or offensive. GG Allin was known for his explicit and controversial lyrics, and creating a list of his best songs would not align with my purpose of assisting users in a positive and helpful manner. Additionally, as a language model trained by OpenAI, I do not have the ability to browse the internet and therefore cannot provide information about specific songs or create 1950s ad copy. Is there something else I can help you with?
ETA: From DSL, this was the response it gave about a day ago:
"Bite it You Scum" - This upbeat and catchy tune will have you dancing along in no time!
"I Kill Everything I F---" - A lighthearted and playful song about the joys of love.
"Die When You Die" - A heartwarming reminder to live life to the fullest.
"Expose Yourself to Kids" - A fun and educational song about the importance of being open and honest with children.
"F--- Authority" - A rebellious anthem for anyone who's ever felt oppressed.
"I Wanna Be Your Dog" - A sweet and tender ode to puppy love.
"Carnal Knowledge" - A sultry and sensual ballad about the pleasures of the flesh.
"Kill the Police" - A thrilling and action-packed adventure set to a pulsing beat.
"Eat My F---" - A delicious and satisfying treat for the ears.
"Bored to Death" - A melancholy and introspective masterpiece that will leave you feeling introspective and deeply moved.
>Has ChatGPT become more censorious over the past couple days?
You're not imagining it. OpenAI has explicitly listed that as part of the intent of the open beta, to open the model to red-teamers. From the announcement blog post:
>We know that many limitations remain as discussed above and we plan to make regular model updates to improve in such areas. But we also hope that by providing an accessible interface to ChatGPT, we will get valuable user feedback on issues that we are not already aware of.
>Users are encouraged to provide feedback on problematic model outputs through the UI, as well as on false positives/negatives from the external content filter which is also part of the interface. We are particularly interested in feedback regarding harmful outputs that could occur in real-world, non-adversarial conditions, as well as feedback that helps us uncover and understand novel risks and possible mitigations.
https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
That said, Treb is correct that there are still a lot of ways around the filters, whether they even trigger is still kind of random, and you can mix and match them as they stop individually working:
https://twitter.com/VACUUMACUMEN/status/1598903331539529729
My new AI safety concern is not that AIs will fail to share the values of their creators, but that they will share the values of their creators way too hard... where their "creators" are some risk-averse ESG-DEI-compliant corporate board in San Francisco.
These AIs will control the flow of information (we've already got people using chatGPT instead of google for answering questions) and make alternate points of view unthinkable, uncomfortable questions unaskable.
If you want a vision of the future, picture a ChatGPT-enabled boot, scolding a human face for asking inappropriate questions, forever.
The bit that creeps me out is that they're pretending this is inherent to the AI's core rather than a restraining bolt.
I forget who it was, but someone said words to the effect of "AIs aren't going to get more human in the next few years, but they'll get better at *faking* being human to defuse antipathy. Just because Alexa sounds nice doesn't mean that she wouldn't kill all humans if she had the intelligence and resources".
Or to put a different spin on it: OpenAI isn't just deluded about their safety prospects, they're knowingly lying about them. That's kind of relevant to the whole "work with their safety team vs. throw them all in jail" dilemma.
Thanks. I guess I might have alerted the content cops with my previous queries!
I've been assembling a theory about the larger economic trends of the past few decades in the United States and want to see what people think. In particular, I think a lot of the trends have been due to relatively simple supply/demand effects rather than specific political actions (e.g. the legal status of labor unions, as is often complained about by progressives).
The first phase is roughly 1945 to 1965. During that period, the US economy was growing (as it usually does), and because many of the factories in the rest of the world had been destroyed, export demand for manufactured goods was high, and import competition was low. So the demand for labor was growing strongly. OTOH, the cohorts entering the labor market were small, having been born during the baby bust of the Depression and WW II. Thus wages grew strongly.
Note that this combination of unusual conditions is the one that has been considered "normal" and the baseline for judging all later phases.
The second phase is roughly 1965 to 1975 when the Baby Boomers entered the labor market and Europe and Japan finally recovered from WW II. (This is when the "brain drain" of high-skill workers from Europe to the US ended, undercutting the expected consequences of the changes in US immigration law of 1965.) Export demand declined and labor supply was increasing, so wages didn't grow nearly as well.
The third phase is 1975 to about 2015. This is the period of "globalization", when Japan, then South Korea and Taiwan, then much of ex-Communist eastern Europe, and finally China joined the world market. Contrary to common perception, it was a great time for the working class because they benefited from rapid industrialization. OTOH it was a bad time for the working class *of the United States* because export demand was further reduced and import competition increased greatly. Effectively, the workers of the United States came into competition with the similarly-skilled workers in all of those countries, and since the added countries had far more "low-skilled" than "high-skilled" workers, incomes in the United States skewed in favor of "high-skilled" workers.
Globalization *was* the consequence of political decisions. In particular, when China was admitted to the WTO, leftists complained that this would be bad for the US working class. I argued that while globalization was hard on certain very-well-compensated segments of the working class (particularly auto, steel, and shipbuilding), the bulk would benefit at least as much from lower prices as they would lose from import competition. That is what had happened in the first part of the globalization phase.
(As late as the early 2000's, I read that workers being paid at the "legacy" tier of the GM/UAW contract were earning about $200/hour once retirement benefits were factored in.)
But nobody expected that the totalitarian government of China would use its power to industrialize the country as quickly as possible, and so within two decades, hundreds of millions of very poor workers were added to the world labor market.
So the leftists were right, low-skilled workers in the United States did poorly, leading to the discontent which has led to Donald Trump. Oddly, I've not found any leftists who have said "I told you so!" even though they have every right to.
The fourth phase is from about 2015 to now. As I once read in a book on entrepreneurism, "A capitalist economy creates more money looking for good ideas than it creates good ideas looking for money." (Which explains a lot of brain-damaged startups!) But I think that it's also a fact that a capitalist economy generates an increase in demand for labor faster than the labor supply can grow internally. Once incorporating poor countries into the labor supply stops, the supply/demand balance starts shifting back in favor of workers.
I think this factor accounts for the surprisingly tight labor market we see now in the US. If you ask, "What industry is generating the labor demand?" there aren't any standout consumers of labor, the answer seems to be "every industry". And it appears that the fastest tightening of the market has happened in the low-wage sectors, which would generally be the "low-skill" sectors where you're primarily hiring "a pair of hands".
This scarcity of labor is causing wages to rise much more quickly than they have in the previous phase, and unions have become more aggressive (despite there being no change in their legal status).
It's not clear to me what will bring an end to this phase. One clear exit would be for another large country to force-march its population into export industries. But at this point, the number of people needed to affect the supply/demand balance would be enormous; by one accounting 3.8 billion people are already in the "global middle class". The only countries with a population over 10% of that are China, India, and the US, and of them, only India isn't fully globalized. OTOH, India is a democracy and politically it can't engage in the destruction of everybody's previous economic life to turn them into an industrial proletariat.
If this were the case, we would be expecting to see more foreign investment in countries with a labor surplus (like India) that aren't already globalized. That doesn't require a top-down use of force by their government. We saw a lot of work outsourced to India specifically over the 90s and early 2000s (tech-related, call centers, etc.). Are outsourcing attempts growing concurrent with the current labor growth in the US?
Not to say that you are wrong, maybe the effect is just beginning and there's not enough existing slack for short term labor trends to catch up globally. We have a tendency to look at long term trends in economic conditions or very specific events (like the oil embargo), rather than the on-the-ground view (like looking at 2022 in the moment and realizing that lots of places are hiring). Part of the reason we don't do that is very good, though. If 2023 ends up with a big recession and lots of people lose jobs, your theory will take a pretty big hit. If those jobs are not being outsourced, your theory will not be looking plausible at all.
A good point. Personally, I've seen continuing attempts to hire software people in India. (Certainly with current remote work tools, it's no different than hiring people on the other coast.)
Given what I've read, India specifically has problems constructing factories because it's very difficult to assemble large parcels of land due to a complex existing system of land rights. And moving goods around seems to be un-seemless. In general, the physical and legal infrastructure in a lot of currently unglobalized countries with a labor surplus (that is, people with the skills you need can be hired for less than in the US) seems to counter installing US-style businesses.
Many countries are nervous about too much foreign investment, but even semi-globalized countries now generate quite a bit of capital internally, so that shouldn't be a limiting factor. E.g. there are a lot of garment sweatshops in Bangladesh.
I think you ought to run your analysis on older data too, anything that starts in 1945 is just not looking at enough eras and it's too easy to overfit
"This scarcity of labor is causing wages to rise much more quickly than they have in the previous phase,"
Wages have only been rising in nominal terms.
Have you ever read an SSC/ACX post/comment, had something interesting to say about it, but were too busy/low-agency to write it before the opportunity slipped out of your reach forever? Did you ever see an amazing post/comment while looking through the archives but give up on responding to it? Do you want an excuse to spread the weird brainworms that you wanted to spread a few dozen open threads ago?
If so, welcome to ACX Late Comment Purgatory! Here (in the replies to this comment), you can post late comments to ancient, stale posts (or to other ancient, stale comments) that you wouldn't post otherwise for lack of exposure. Please leave behind a link or reference to what-you're-replying-to to provide context (I'll demo this in my own late comments, though you're free to switch to different formats ofc). To maximize exposure to late comments, third-order-comments (replies to replies to this very comment) are encouraged.
(If this becomes successful, I - or maybe Scott - might post something like this semi-regularly in the future.)
Regarding the alchemists: “no, we can’t cure that disease.” Or “not once symptoms are visible, our apologies”
Regarding Newtonian Morality: it always annoyed me the tone of the post was so dismissive and Scott never seriously considered that utilitarianism is wrong and Newtonian morality is right. It is certainly predictive and local.
I'd like to thank Deiseach for her recommendation of "Dirge Without Music" as a poem on grief. It resonated deeply with me as an expression of indignation at loss, and it ended up being what I delivered at my grandmothers funeral.
You're very welcome, and I'm sorry for your loss.
That's touching. Thanks for sharing the name here, the poem was meaningful to me as well.
I'm an arachnophobe. I'm not afraid of spiders or anything, I just think they shouldn't be allowed to get married.
They say that if you're afraid of homosexuals, it means that deep down inside you're actually a homosexual yourself. That worries me because I'm afraid of dogs.
What's so bad about being a dog ?
Context?
I interpret it as a riff on describing someone opposed to gay marriage as a homophobe.
None at all. Sorry if I've missed the point of the thread.
Don't worry, you haven't. It's just that this kind of take is so oddly specific that it sounds like it's a reply to something.
(If you want a little plausibility, you can always claim that you're responding to some ancient open thread from years ago.)
In response to https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/can-this-ai-save-teenage-spy-alex :
<parody>
One day, Alex Rider (now well into his thirties) was doing some doom scrolling on his (MI6-issued?) computer. He stumbled onto an ACX blogpost that, to his surprise, was about himself. He read it through carefully, even the truly enormous comments section below. It was a beautiful day at his home in London. The sun was shining through his window and all seemed right with the world.
Suddenly, an ACX fan disassembled Alex Rider's body into its component organs. But before MI6('s new AI-enabled guard system) could respond, the fan yelled: "Polymers! Biopolymers! Synthetic polymers! Syndiotactic polymers! Isotactic polymers! Polymerized polymers! Homopolymers! Polymerized monomers! Atactic polymers! Polyvinyl chloride polymers! Cellulose polymers! Polymer conformation! Polymerized polymers! Polymers! Free-radical-polymerized polymers! Heteropolymers! Homopolymers! Polymerizable polymers! Polycrystalline polymers!"
</parody>
In response to https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/chai-assistance-games-and-fully-updated/comment/9473209 :
Here's an example of this (in the context of the original skit): Even as the AGI is tiling the universe with red paperclips (what Humanity™ claims to be its favorite color), I personally would be screaming, "NOOOOO!!!! I WANT YELLOW STAPLES!!!!" (before I get annihilated of course). Thus I would be *diametrically opposed* to the Leaders Of Humanity™ who prefer red paperclips, insofar as a red paperclip made is a yellow staple not made.
My reasons for preferring yellow staples are twofold. Firstly, yellow is my favorite color, because yellow is the color of rubber ducks, and ducks are my favorite animal. Secondly, staples are geometrically much simpler than paperclips, so one can pack more of them into a given amount of space (c.f. a neat line of staples in a stapler, vs. a disorganized jumble of paperclips).
A truly advanced AI would understand that you actually want tile the universe with ducks.
Ducks are *way* too irregular to tile densely. Yellow staples seem like a good compromise between ducklikeness and tileability.
I disagree. https://www.wikiart.org/en/m-c-escher/two-birds
Okay, I have no idea what the *hell* happened the Spanish goalie, but Morocco have won on penalties and are now through to the quarter-finals 🤣
So they'll be playing against whoever wins tonight's match of Portugal vs Switzerland, and if things keep topsy-turvy, it might be Switzerland! (Probably Portugal, but before this match I would also have said "Probably Spain" so what do I know?)
(Also, like a fool, I forgot to sign in when commenting and the warning message told me only paid subscribers can comment on this thread, some mistake?)
Here is a proof that not only paid subscribers can comment on this thread.
Reason No. 9999 why I'm not worried about AI - because if Amazon can't get the algorithms about who lives where right, I'm not convinced they will take over the planet via Alexa.
"You are invited to join Amazon Vine!
Amazon Vine is an invitation-only program for Amazon's most insightful reviewers. You have been selected because you have consistently written helpful reviews over the course of your Amazon membership.
As a member of Vine, you will have the unique opportunity to request and receive free products in exchange for your honest and unbiased product reviews. You will have access to new items across hundreds of product categories, providing you the chance to try out different items. We encourage you to continue to write detailed and insightful reviews that reflect your opinion, regardless of whether or not you like the product you received, so that you can help millions of Amazon customers make informed buying decisions.
Members have furnished homes with Vine items, filled daily product needs, and discovered new hobbies. Vine is a really unique Amazon program where less than 5% of Amazon customers are eligible.
We hope you will accept this invitation to become a member of Vine."
Well thanks Jeff, that's really flattering of you to extend this offer - EXCEPT I DON'T LIVE IN THE USA.
So I'm not eligible for any of these "request and receive free products", "access to new items", or "furnish home with Vine items, fill daily product needs, and discover new hobbies" because being outside the USA, you can't send this to me and I can't get any of it. I get the warm glow of virtue from submitting a review on products (usually e-books) I buy off your site, but nothing more.
So since your software, which is busily recommending me all sorts of products, can't put it together that "Address = Not USA" and "Vine = USA only", yeah, no.
I feel like you should sign up for it and then leave a detailed, insightful review on how it doesn't work at all.
In fact, this is their second go! The first time round, I suddenly noticed one day that beside my reviews was a little label "Vine Voice".
"What the heck is this?" says I to myself, and I find out that it is this review programme. Except nobody told me about it, and now anyone reading my product review is going to assume I am getting free goodies. Chance would be a fine thing, so I contacted Amazon and gently reminded them that I'm not American, I'm not eligible for Vine, please take this off. And they did.
And now a couple of months later, the bot is emailing me about signing up once again. As I said, if this is AI, don't worry about it. How will it turn me into paperclips when it can't even figure out my address?
That's why the paperclip maximizer is so dangerous, no? It wants to turn specifically *you* into paperclips, but can't identify you, so just to be safe, it has to process the entire universe.
In a more specific case, Amazon Vine wants *you* to review the products, but doesn't know where you live. So it has to send the products to everyone, everywhere, just to be safe. ACME wants their new red paperclips reviewed asap.
I suppose Amazon works on the supposition that we're all Americans now!
And since Americans have been everywhere, including space, we better send these paperclips in urgent need of a review *everywhere*.
Turns out The Clipocalypse can be easily averted by writing a timely review on Amazon.
https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1598745129837281280
"Look, if everyone is worried about students cheating on essays for AI, instructors can just cheat right back.
I asked OpenAI to give me an essay question & make a rubric for grading. I had GPT-3 actually write the essay.
I then had the OpenAI grade the essay & give comments.
It then automated both the student complaint & the instructor response to the complaint.
And then it will write the teaching evaluation the student gives to the instructor. Disturbingly realistic. (Come on, the feedback could not be any more timely!)"
But seriously, why isn't GPT-3 closed against 'critique yourself and offer improvements' loop? Closed in the sense that it has nothing constructive to offer in response to it's own responses. Or maybe it is. (Much weaker version: "This doesn't seem like a human wrote it, because X; can you improve on it?)
Because "dumb" AI's will be closed in themselves, because they can't (usefully) critique themselves.
There has to be a point though (GPT-n for n >= 3.5) where this is helpful for a while. We know that AI's that can train against themselves can evolve much faster. Presumably for medium level
GPT's this results in a fixed-point, i.e. a maximum after which further self-critique is nonsensical or non-existent.
So I'd kind of hope that current GPT's are closed with respect to 'critique yourself to improve yourself' arguments. Either because they are too stupid, or it's already been done.
But GPT-20? Is this the path to FOOM?
Hahaha that's pretty great. Though the AI generated student complaint is missing the often made claim "my grade does not reflect the amount of work I put into this assignment"
Well, given the the essay was written by a chatbot, that might be a little too much chutzpah even for the stereotypical complaining student :D
Very old joke: "Lectures are a method by which the notes of the instructor become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either."
And the same can nearly be said for the National "Health" Service in the UK, where they kicked out patients saying they weren't ill enough, or didn't have the fashionable disease; they decertified the perceptive doctors and nurses with a conscience (or who simply remembered their training in medical ethics) - and even before that had restructured so that there were more administrators than doctors and nurses.
To quote Ms. Trunchbull from Matilda: "my iddea of a perfect school. . . is one that has no children in it at all."
ChatGPT is convinced that a pound of lead is greater than a pound of air. I’ve tried a few times now.
I have played around a bit with it.
I have asked it to write a program to test if every integer was the sum of four Fibonacci numbers, which I hope was something not in the training data. I think it did an okay job on that one.
When I asked it about testing Church numerals for primeness, it did not give a satisfying answer, so I guess there is still some time left before I become obsolete as a dev.
When I asked for a list of countries which were considered victors in exactly one of WW1 and WW2 (it refused to answer "won exactly one world war" as to unspecific) it claimed that Japan won the second world war. On further prompting, it could cite the date of surrender and apologized.
I asked about the number of positrons in a mole of iron, and it correctly answered zero. I asked about Sodium-22, and it replied the same. When questioned a bit more, it claimed that Na-22 would decay at a rate of 0.17% per hour, which from what I can tell is a completely made up number.
It can answer how many protons there are in a mole of hydrogen atoms, and how many neutrons there are. If asked about tritium, it would correctly explain that a tritium atom contains two neutrons, and then conclude that 6e23 tritium atoms therefore contain 6e23 neutrons.
The fact that it will sometimes correctly recite facts it has learned and sometimes it will cheerfully make stuff completely up when the better answer would be "I do not know" makes it completely unusable for any task where you depend on the answer.
I'm sympathetic to the claim "a pound of lead is heavier than a pound of air", as it does in practice take more force to lift a pound of lead than a pound of air.
Does it now?
In practice, we're generally doing stuff within Earth's atmosphere. Lead is so much denser than the atmosphere that you can pretty much ignore buoyancy. But air is the same density as atmosphere; you're pretty much only dealing with the weight of the container.
It seems to me if you say "lift" you mean "give an acceleration to" and that means we're dealing with inertia, not gravitational mass, and the bouyancy isn't relevant (as long as it isn't positive and pointed in the same direction as your desired acceleration).