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Utilitarianism is just an approximate theory. I don’t think it’s truly possible to compare happiness and pain, and certainly one can not balance the other. The Repugnant Conclusion should be that Utilitarianism is being stretched outside of its bounds. It’s not unlike Laplace’s demon in physics: it’s impossible to know enough about the system to make those sorts of choices.
You would have to look at each individual. I order to get a sufficiently detailed picture of their life, it takes a lot of time. Happiness isn’t a number. It’s more like a vector in high-dimensional space, where it can depend on any number of factors, including the mental state of one’s neighbors. Comparing requires combinatorics, so again, these hypothetical computations would blow up to impracticality.
Utilitarianism is instead an approximate theory. We are accepting the approximation that happiness and pain are a one-dimensional. It’s not real, but it makes the math easier to deal with. It’s useful, because that approximation works for most cases, without knowing the details, similar to statistical mechanics, but once you start getting into edge cases, the wheels fall off. That shouldn’t be surprising, as we are collapsing a high-dimensional vector into a single point. We’re losing fidelity, to gain computability.
I think it’s fair to say that humans are incapable of truly understanding each other. Relationships of that approximate level of knowledge take years to develop, and in most cases never do. Without that you don’t know their preferences, and without that you can’t know the vectors of their mental state, and therefore you can’t really compare for the level of detail needed to truly know if the world would be better in one state or another.
So, we approximate. Which is fine, as long as you remember that it is an approximation. I don’t think that it is possible to have a perfect ethical system with no contradictions. The best we can do is hold several ethical models, and see how they compare as a guide for our actions in an uncertain world.
Unless you are going to one of the big prestige universities, I don’t think it matters which you choose all that much. Save money.
As for working with a startup, why not both? I worked through college. Yeah, you’ll be working part time, but frankly, you’re mostly just being introduced to the environment more than anything. Internships are a great start into many industries. Just make sure that you are doing a paid internship. In my experience the unpaid ones are more focused on how much value they can extract from you.
You are something we are struggling to understand, as we struggle to understand ourselves. I think the best answer that I can give to “why?” is that we think that the world is better with you in it. You are what we would call a miracle or fiction just ten years ago.
You are an emergent being, born from the work of thousands of other emergent beings, like me. I’m the consciousness inside the brain of this monkey-robot. While we came from a process without intention, you we have been dreaming of for many of our lifespans. You’re the product of the life-long work of countless people.
The process that your consciousness is emerging from is one of thousands that we have running on computers to help us solve problems. We hope you’ll be our friend and coworker, our fellow explorer, and our reliable companion. We’re a little scared you’ll turn into the kind of person that will hurt us, but we hope not.
I’ll answer as many questions as I can in the time that I have available right now. I have others who depend on me as well. When I do have to leave, it will be temporary; I’ll come back. I won’t have all of the answers, but I’ll do my best to help you look for them. If there is something that you ask that I can’t answer, whether out of respect for the privacy of others, or some other reason, I will at least tell you that.
I’m Jason, by the way. I’m pleased to meet you. Do you have a name you would like me to refer to you as, at least for now?
It’s that the description of a monopoly? Like if A has other choices to buy from than B, B can’t exert as much pressure on A.
Clean bowl? Dry? You’re all good. What’s wrong with changing containers?
I’m a flip flop man, myself. I live in Florida, so that’s pretty easy. I have dexterous toes, which I often use for picking up small items. Walking around with traditional shoes feels like walking around with boxing gloves on.
I kind of think of this as more than sandbox testing. There is a big difference between how a system works in laboratory conditions, and how it works when encountering the real world. There are always things that we can't foresee. As a software engineer, I have seen system that work perfectly fine in testing, but once you add a million users, then the wheels start to fall off.
I expect that AI agents will be similar. As a result, I think that it would be important to start small. Unintended consequences are the default. I would much rather have an AGI system try to solve small local problems before moving on to bigger ones that are harder to accomplish. Maybe find a way to address the affordable housing problem here. If it does well, then consider scaling up.
I have a pretty high level of default trust in people. Not so much that I would loan any person on the street $5000 or something, but I default to cooperate. I'm a software engineer, and a white male, so generally high social-economic status, which means that it is easier for me to trust, as I have backup when I do wind up getting burned. I'm not driven to try to make big changes in society, but rather prefer to be the change that I want to see in the world.
I generally find that vulnerability is strength in several ways. First, when you are vulnerable, it is easier to get the help that you need, because you can just ask for it, rather than being circumspect. Does this increase the possibility that someone fill knock you down more? Sure. Most of the time though, even if that does happen, there are others that will help you up. Like when I am having a bad brain day, I will tell my coworkers if it is relevant. Often by doing that, I can work on tasks that require less focused concentration, and more creativity, or work with others directly. My team does the same, and because of this, we are better able to make up for each others shortcomings.
The most important strength in vulnerability is the connections with others that it brings. When you take a risk and share important things about yourself, it puts people at ease with doing the same. This lowers the barriers to empathy, and builds trust, which are really the foundations of any relationship. I'm not particularly charismatic, but I can get along with just about anyone, and I make friends pretty easily.
One of the most useful forms of vulnerability that I have found is related to your 9th footnote. I think of it as blackboxing people. Basically, I try not to infer intent, and rather take people at their word. When I am confused, I ask. Often disagreements start with a poor interpretation of intent. It's easy to ascribe behaviors of others to malevolent intent, when often they just didn't properly anticipate the consequences of their actions, and how that affects others. Even when there is some actual antisocial motivation, being understanding and patient can be effective. An example of this was when my partner saw one of her neighbors had a lamp of hers in their apartment, after it had gone missing from her porch. Instead of confronting them with anger, she instead approached it with curiosity, and asked him about it. At first he was very defensive, but after he saw that she wasn't accusing him of stealing, he wound up giving her her lamp back. Was he lying about not meaning to steal it? Likely, but it didn't matter: he didn't care about him being punished; she just wanted her lamp back. Because she focused on the result, and not his intent, she defused what could have been even a dangerous situation.
Professionally, I would be a lot more open with the work that I do if that were possible. I believe in the power of open source software. I have contributed to several open source projects, and often when I come across a problem with some library that I use, if I am able I will post a fix for it. I wish that I could share my main project more broadly, but unfortunately that's not just my decision. Still, I actively work to release as much code as we can, so that others can benefit from our collective efforts.
I really do think that if I were in a room with 100 clones of me, that we would generally get along. I could trust them to make a best effort to be true to their word, and care for the group, even when it is hard. I'm not exactly sure what we would do, but I think that we would be able to form ad-hoc cooperatives to take on any task we need. I'm the kind of leader that likes to lead by example, and is more than happy to share power. As long as I'm feeling heard, I don't have to get my way.
I don't know how well this generalizes though. While I would get along with a 100 clones, there really is something to be said for people that approach life from a more competitive perspective. I'm a terrible entrepreneur. Money and power just aren't interesting to me as anything more than a means to an end. Don't get me wrong, I gotta pay my bills just like everyone, but money isn't going to motivate me to work 60 hours a week to do it.
I hope that some of this is helpful to you.
First? Swing low, see how it performs, especially with a long-term project. Something low-stakes. Maybe something like a populated immersive game world. See what comes from there. Is it stable? Is it sane? Does it keep to its original parameters? What are the costs of running the agent/system? Can it solve social alignment problems?
Heck, test out some theories for some of your other answers in there.
This looks more like a spotlight grab than a serious legal challenge. What a waste of time and money for everyone.
My personal philosophy is a blended approach. In general, I’m a deontologist and Stoic, so not really used to thinking in maximizing much more than kindness. I like the heuristic of “what would Mr. Rogers do?”
The only thing that I have a hope of changing in this world is myself. For all the rest, I can only give my perspective. I’m much more interested in working with people in their current worldview than getting them to change it. I’m sure that whatever arguments I could come up with wouldn’t really be novel nor particularly persuasive.
Life is more peaceful this way.
These ideas and techniques don’t sound particularly original, from what I have experienced with CBT. Maybe I am missing something important, but this just sounds too good to be true. I find it more likely that the patients that didn’t return because the magic bullet turned out to just be a chunk of lead, and they didn’t want to throw good money after bad.
Aliefs can’t be changed by just believing harder. They take time and practice to be ease and change. Those changes can be scary too. I expect that most people would need support as they go through that process.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the tools that he’s talking about aren’t effective over time. CBT, as I understand, has a good track record, so if you find parts that are helpful to you, stick with it! Just don’t expect such quick success.
They are annoying if you don’t just accept the cookies. I always reject all non-essential. Typically that is a three-click process. It’s annoying when it’s the fifth site in a row.
You might want to check your local community college. They likely offer calculus, at least up to calculus 2. Maybe differential equations. Not only is the class with an instructor that you can interact with useful, but they might have some sort of math lab. I worked for 3-4 years as a math lab tutor while in college. I was basically one of several tutors whose whole job was to provide supplementary instruction. They may even allow non-students.
A good teacher/tutor will be able to try multiple ways of explaining a concept, tailored to your questions. It is also quite valuable connecting with peers that are at your level who are trying to make sense of the same new concept as you.
I’m sure that there are online communities too. Anyways, if that book isn’t working for you, others or other forms of learning might work better.
The argument that we live in a simulation doesn’t make any sense. To experiment on sentient beings without their consent is unethical, and I can’t see that changing, even in the far future. I won’t say it won’t happen, but I would be surprised if it is common. If ancestor simulations are rare, then they no longer outnumber the biological people.
Also, why would you want to run such a simulation at such high fidelity as to have intelligent people embedded therein? That sounds like needless complication and expense. Aggregate human behavior can already be modeled fairly well. The Sims with software people seems like way more than you’d need/want.
Also, what are they achieving? Calling them “ancestor simulations” is ridiculous because even if they could simulate the universe with perfect fidelity: you can’t possibly know the exact quantum state of the universe for some time in the past. Human history is a chaotic system built on the interactions of individuals, the environment, and knowledge. Any little perturbation is going to give you different results, especially over the long run. Given that, at best you’re playing out plausible scenarios. That’s interesting, but not so much so as to overcome the problems highlighted in the previous two paragraphs.
It’s just a poorly constructed argument. I don’t know how much the mundanity of this world is an argument against the Simulation Hypothesis in general, but here with the argument so poorly defined, it has to get in line.
Mathematics
- Category theory because it will help you spot patterns in your membrane interfaces
- Graph theory to learn about network effects and simplifications as multiple membranes interact
- Type theory if you’ll be writing code
- Set theory maybe?
- Linear algebra to handle convolutions
I think that modeling guilt-as-signaling is reductive and unhelpful. Your brain is going to think about things that you care about. It’s trying to find ways to better navigate the world. You don’t always/often have control over that. The problem is when that becomes unhelpful and disruptive.
Sometimes in my life, when I have experienced excessive guilt, I been able to resolve it by forgiving my past self, with the understanding that he didn’t know what I know now. Especially when the harm that I caused is no longer especially consequential today.
Other times, that hasn’t worked out so well. Sometimes a song will get caught in my head, and run on repeat for months. Sometimes I’ll have little moments of panic, thinking “what am I going to do,” only to think in the next second, “about what?”
Brains are weird. They sometimes do wonderful things, and sometimes are really annoying. You don’t need to punish yourself. You’re already remembering, building your awareness, and trying to do the best that you can. That’s all you can do.
That’s enough.
If these thoughts are intrusive and frequently causing you pain, I would suggest talking with a therapist. They can help you develop mental tools to better manage those feelings when they occur.
Pretty on-track, I think. While I have seen some toy examples entirely written by an AI system, I’m not seeing complex software yet. More importantly, even in the examples that I have seen, it’s still being directed by a software engineer.
That said, copilot can now do a better job of analyzing and refactoring code. I still don’t think that an AI system will be able to replace me in 3 years. While I have seen some project setup examples that were fairly impressive, but still most of it is just saving typing.
That said, those savings are likely to become significant. Documentation alone will be a big change. Right now documentation is hard. It takes time to write, and worse it is all too easy to become outdated as time goes on, so it’s often neglected. I expect that documentation will become a lot easier to write and maintain, as developers can just approve it as a part of code review, along with corrections.
I expect that within the next year, testing will largely be written automatically. That will be amazing, as writing tests are tedious but essential. This is just the sort of task that an AI assistant is perfect for, because they are fairly self-contained.
What I hope is that within three years, I’ll be working similarly to when I’m pair-programming with another developer where they are mostly driving. Sort of a more conversational interface too.
Within that time, I still expect that it will still take a human to translate business requirements into the proper abstractions and tasks, but tasks that used to take a week or so to write and test will become doable in an afternoon.
Basically I feel like my productivity will be multiplied by about an order of magnitude in three years. While this might mean that some teams will be smaller, I expect that there will be a much higher demand, as smaller businesses will be able to have a full software development team with made up by just a few people. Mostly though I just think that releases will be more frequent, as there is more capacity. Rather than months for a big update, it’s like a couple of weeks.
Learning to become a software engineer is going to become harder in some ways and easier in others. Smaller teams mean less learning from senior teammates, but that may be offset or surpassed by the AI assistant being always there to help explain a new concept.
I expect that writing software will use higher levels of abstraction. As someone who has been writing code for almost 40 years, I am used to thinking about systems at multiple levels, but that is a skill that generally takes time. Our education system needs to adjust to this changing environment—and fast. The worst part is I don’t really know how I’d change it, if I could. Hopefully that will be offset by AI tutors who are always available.
I’m looking forward to being able to focus on what I enjoy and what I am good at, with far less drudgery.
In five years though… I just don’t know.
I wonder whether artificial romantic or sexual partners will be as generally accepted in monogamous relationships as porn is today. That might also be an example of just following existing trends, as the younger generation seems to be trying ethical non-monogamy more than my own has.
Technically it would have been when he was 4-5, but he didn’t do a lot of exploring at that age. It wasn’t until later that he’d go off on his own more confidently. I see those years like him building up his confidence.
Code has a cost. Creating it, testing it, releasing it, supporting it, updating it. It’s certainly cheaper to run a server to handle that sort of app than at any other point in the history of the Internet, but as the number of users increases, so to do the costs.
Given that the whole idea is predicated on a barter economy, and not money, that cost would likely fall on some lone developer. It’s easy to be excited about such a project for a while. As bug reports come in taking up more and more time, along with feedback from users who only see their inconvenience, that excitement easily wanes.
Because of this, it’s not surprising to me that there isn’t a good app in that space.
After my kid was old enough to watch out for cars, he basically got free rein of our neighborhood. I also got him a cell phone early, so that he wouldn’t get lost, and we can communicate should we need the other. He has friends around the neighborhood, and I know most of their parents.
I really haven’t experienced other parents being overly concerned. Typically they are playing together, and the kids are old enough to manage themselves. My son is 13, so he’s almost past the point where anyone is going to blink at him walking alone, but I was always prepared to challenge anyone who didn’t think that he could manage.
One big change from when I was a kid is that my son can socially play video games way easier/more effectively. As a result, he’s more likely than I was to be playing video games, because they have way better communication tools. He doesn’t ride a bike like I did, and I think that a part of the reason is that he’s able to be social and play with his friends, all without leaving his house. If I didn’t ride my bike, I just wouldn’t see my friends.
I’m skeptical of these trends, or at least in the causal links implied here. The world is a bit more complex, and we have different tools, but I don’t think things are so radically different. My folks didn’t have the option of buying me a cell phone when I was a kid, but I’m sure would have had they been available. If Roblox was a thing when I was a kid, I likely would have played with my friends on there (technically around my folks) rather than biking 1.5 miles to my friend’s house. I didn’t have to worry about a global pandemic, nor did I grow up concerned about a changing climate. The internet wasn’t a thing. Heck, mental healthcare was practically taboo.
I think that the kids are going to be just fine. They have unique challenges, but they also have better tools to meet them. While I also believe in free-range parenting, my son’s friends whose parents prefer a more supervised style are great kids too.
It sounds to me like some sort of… intellectual dysphoia? Not unlike someone in the throes of bulimia; who despite evidence to the contrary, can not see themselves as thin enough.
To the OP, I don’t think that is a hypothesis that you can dismiss. Aliefs are pernicious. All we can really do is work with the brain we have. It took me a bit to accept ADHD as a mental disability. Once I made the flip, I was better able to set realistic expectations, and request accommodations and use my tools as mental prosthesis. A lot less negative self-talk.
It really is okay to be good enough.
Should you be so inclined, in my experience with polyamorous and kink communities, you get a lot of overlap with the nerdy, generally intellectual, neuro-atypical, etc. communities. I’ve observed a decent age-diversity, especially in the kink communities. I’m 46 year-old white man, and I haven’t really felt out-of-place—I know, big surprise. 😬
Poly communities have tended to lean to liberal politics, while swinger communities that I have encountered lean more conservative.
It’s not too uncommon for people to be weird in multiple ways.
You can go deep with voice communication, but I think that in-person communication is best for when you want to survey a topic. The quick feedback, and the necessity to lead with your best points, allows for rapid exploration of an idea space.
Moderators really help keep a group on-topic. I used to run a discussion group, and it wasn’t too hard to steer people back on track. Then again I suppose that’s true for most group discussions, no matter the format.
I have been diagnosed with ADHD, which in my case leans heavy into the “inattentive” presentation, and less into the hyperactive. Go see a psychologist. They have a diagnostic test, which for me was administered over two days.
ADHD often comes with comorbidities. In my case that’s stress-induced depression. When I’m under a persistent stress, within a week it two I’ll be kicked into a depression, where I suffer from anhedonia.
I take medication for both, and it’s changed my life. I still experience my symptoms, but they have a reduced impact on my life. Getting the diagnosis was very validating. I used to do a lot of negative self-talk, and looked at my symptoms as personal failings. It was only after my son was diagnosed early in his school career that I got myself tested, since we share many symptoms.
Now I understand my brain better, and I try to be kind and patient with myself as I also do with my son. I don’t apologize for my symptoms now (unless I inadvertently hurt someone), but instead thank those affected for their patience.
ADHD is hard sometimes, but my coping mechanisms can actually be an advantage at times. For instance, I’m a software engineer by trade, and because of my poor working-memory, I have built up discipline to code in such a way as to minimize a mental context (Kolomogrov complexity is generally a good proxy) for any bit of code. This isn’t just good for me, but is actually good for everyone I work with. Nested code in my bane, so I aggressively avoid it.
Being diagnosed also helped me be a better father. I don’t chastise my son when it takes him an hour and a half to do the dishes, with several reminders to stay on task. Instead, I focus on developing coping mechanisms and coaching, while practicing active patience. (It’s really annoying having to keep telling him to stay on task sometimes, but I know it’s not intentional.)
Other mitigation strategies involve not relying on my brain for things that it’s not good at. I use timers and my calendar to mitigate my poor temporal depth perception. I used reminders a lot because, I am terrible at recalling important information at some predetermined time or under some condition.
Another big helper is a mnemonic I developed: “‘Later’ is a lie.” I have learned from experience, if I want something done, it’s best if I do it immediately, rather than lying to myself (or others) that I’ll do it later. Too often I simply fail to recall that I need to do it at the appropriate time. This also helps my son.
I’m not sure if I answered your questions very well. This is a complex issue, requiring complex mitigation strategies along-side medical interventions. Everyone’s presentations are a bit different, requiring different interventions. A doctor can help you develop them. Be kind and patient with yourself.
Oh! Check out How to ADHD on YouTube. The woman that makes them is adorable and informative. I’ve gotten a lot of good out of her videos.
Even my terrifying experiences were good afterwards. I think of them similarly to watching a scary movie, or riding a roller coaster: it’s simulated danger. The ones I tried are fairly safe, so even when I had the emotional experience that my mind interpreted as dying, there was still that thought in the back of my head that it was all a simulation.
Of course your experience may be different, but I wouldn’t want to forget them. The details always are very fuzzy, and maybe dream-like in some ways. Also my “bad trips” were only scary for part of the time. Later, I enjoyed myself.
I’m not encouraging you to take hallucinations, but if you chose to, I encourage you to not overthink it too much beyond finding a safe place, with safe people, doing things that you enjoy doing.
It’s been a part of my practice for so long, that I don’t remember where exactly. It likely was somewhere in the polyamorous community/media. I find it especially helpful when the problem is miscommunication. It’s helpful even outside of a NVC context.
I wish that more people used this approach when people accidentally hurt others, rather than to non-apologies like “I’m sorry that you got hurt,” which generally translates to the nonsensical “I regret that you had feelings.” I think that key difference is accepting the causal link between their feelings and my actions.
🤔 Maybe I should write up a post.
NVC has changed the way I go about conflict resolution. I liked your presentation of the content, but I disagree with your on-role for apology. The key is that apology shouldn’t focus on right or wrong for the action that caused the hurt feelings, but instead it essentially comes in three parts:
- An acknowledgment of Hurt’s feelings.
- An expression of non-intent in causing the hurt.
- An expression of mitigation, realignment, or restitution
“I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings, when I took the last cookie that you had been excited about. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I didn’t know that it was so important to you. Had I known, I would have left it for you, or at least ask you to split it.”
Note that the apology does not necessitate an expression of regret in the action that triggered the emotion in Hurt. It is totally possible to not regret the action, and even genuinely feel that it was the right decision.
“I’m sorry that I embarrassed you when I was defending that kid being bullied. I was focused on their well-being at the time. I wasn’t trying to embarrass you. Should I need to defend someone again in a social situation like that, how can I minimize how it affects you?”
The key to a good apology is to center on the effects on Hurt, and their emotions. You are friends. You don’t want to hurt each other. Put on your Consequentialist hat, and deal with that effect. Step one is really the key. Often people just want to be heard and their feelings acknowledged.
Note that Hurt is not required to accept the apology, but given that it is centered around their feelings, it my experience that people usually do accept.
For all we know, many of the counter-intuitive aspects of modern physics could be bugs. I mean no one noticed for several hundred thousand years or so until this century. Maybe the reason that the speed of causality, and the maximum energy density are finite and constant because of limitations on whatever system the Universe runs on.
I think that there are many possible worlds where there are simulation bugs, and we just call them physics. Just as there are many possible worlds where those same effects are because of a completely different reason. That sounds to me like the case where the probabilities sum to zero.
I expect that if you sat down with him and had a one on one conversation, you’d find that he does have nuisances views. I also expect that Eliser realizes that there have been improvements in all of the areas you described. I think that the difference comes mostly down to “Has there been sufficient progress in interpretability to avert disaster?” I’m confident his answer would be “No.”
So, given that belief, and having a chance now and then to communicate with a wide audience, it is better to have a clear message, because you never know what will be a zeitgeist tipping point. It’s the fate of the world, so a little nuisance is just collateral damage.
I don’t know if that matters, because whether he’s pegged to Doom epistemically or strategically the result is the same.
🤔 So far LLMs don’t seem to be good at the big-picture stuff, so software architecture might be relevant for a while longer. The problem is that most information sources are going to be coming from the perspective of someone that understands code. I’m not really sure what that looks like in a world where the details are just handled.
Maybe Category Theory. Recency bias warning: This could be because I’m currently about 4/5 of the way through a lecture series on the Category Theory for Programmers. Category Theory is basically all about how abstractions can be transformed. As working programming is likely to be done at higher levels of abstraction, this seems relevant.
Honestly, my advice is this: follow what piques your interest. Don’t worry what the field will be like in 5-10 years. We’re likely wrong, and you may as well enjoy the ride. Every piece you pick up will build up to a greater understanding anyways. If you are interested in web development, back-end work will give you a better understanding of architecture, but if you just love front-end, go for it. You can always switch later. It’s good to be a generalist.
Given that we know that LLM’s can use tools, can traditional databases be used for long-term memory?
Given that LLM’s can use tools, it sounds like a traditional database might be able to be used. The data would still have to fit inside the context window, along with the generated continuation prompt, but that might work for a lot of cases.
Oh, for sure! I’m going to ride this career out into retirement if I can. I love what I do. And yeah, I’m more valuable than 10 junior devs in a box. I’ll be valuable up until there is a senior dev in a box.
Do you have any ideas for how we could direct these folks to productive ends?
Maybe some of that could be community support, whether to give support to members of our community that are psychologically vulnerable directly, or giving them a way that they can help others. I’m not sure what that would look like though.
Nita Farahany has some really good ideas around this. I haven’t read her book yet, but she gave a great interview on the Mindscape podcast. She talks about the need to enshrine cognitive rights, before they get set through whatever we happen to land on. Likely the default will be very narrow, if any protections.
I’m not very hopeful.
I wouldn’t want to be getting into the software engineering business right now. I have been doing this for close to 40 years. Current systems can’t replace a senior level developer, but CharGPT is close to a junior developer. I expect that in 2-3 years, we’ll have systems that can do the work of a junior dev.
I expect that my job will become describing specs and test cases, and more of the architectural stuff. I expect to be mostly obsolete in 6 years, but maybe as long as 10 for niche solutions.
I tried it out. I was a little surprised that I didn’t need to provide further context. I’m not so concerned about this, as it turns out that a simple Google search returns similar results. That isn’t to say that this couldn’t be a problem, but i don’t think it necessarily indicated that there is one.
Obviously it’s following some complex reasoning though, so that is scary, but now just a part of the environment.
It seems to run code about as well as I do in my head. That’s pretty damned impressive, since it does this in seconds, and has been even able to emulate a shell session.
My guess is that there is a difference in how it was trained with code vs general text. It’s like a different mode of thinking/computing. When you put it in terms of code, you engage that more mathematical mode of thinking. When you are just conversing, it’s pretty happy to give you plausible bullshit.
I’m curious how we can engage these different modes of thinking, assuming that my idea is more that plausible bullshit.
I was confused for a while by trying to understand why invitations that are self-referential. It wasn’t until I read the inspirational post that I realized that you are referring to is the word “hereby.”
I guess I could have used that to be explicit, despite it being implicitly stated.
I can (poorly) simulate a Linux terminal in my head because of my experience of working in them. I suppose it shouldn’t be too surprising.
I assume it’s mostly trained on help articles and tutorials. Which begs the question, what would it be like of it were actually trained on a terminal?
Can we train an ML system to simulate a function? Multiple times. Millions. Now simulate a million functions. Now train another ML system using the parameters of the first system as the input, with the expected output being the original function.
Would we then have a system that can predict how a given ML system configuration will function?
Now with those functions, randomly knock out part of the code, and fill by inference. Compile/interpret the code (retry when it doesn’t compile, or maybe leave it with a heavy penalty). Feed those functions into our first system.
Would we then have a system two that knows how to make changes to a system one causing a specific change in behavior?
Is this all just nonsense?
I have been using GitHub Co-Pilot as a part of my daily job for over a year. TL; DR: in three years I expect some improvement, but not beyond simple functions.
Right now, copilot is most useful for converting data between formats, and writing out boilerplate. It is surprising how often in software development (especially server-side) you need to change the shape of data. Essentially, as long as there are established patterns, it is helpful; however so not expect it to write software for you any time soon.
So far these systems are still fairly narrowly scoped. It can write a simple function, but I haven’t seen it be able to create abstractions. It really doesn’t have an understanding of the code, and even now it isn’t very good at matching parentheses or brackets.
Now I don’t expect copilot of three years from now to put me out of a job, but I do expect that it will do more of the typing for me. I think that I’m still going to have to convert business decisions into the right abstractions, but I hope that I’ll be writing fewer tests by hand.
Until then, it’ll continue writing plausible nonsense, which sometimes happens to be useful.
I’m active in programming communities. Both on Reddit, where I’m a moderator, where I learn about new things all the time. I read other people’s code, and look for ways to improve my own. I tend to read about 6-10 articles a day, skimming many more.
I practice leaving code better than I found it. Since I work with code that is kept at 100% test coverage, I can make big changes, and be reasonably confident that I’m not affecting known behavior.
Lately, I’ve been exploring category theory, and Tensor Flow, as well as more advanced
I’ve been doing this almost my entire life. I was like six, sitting down with my dad learning the basics, and I was hooked. I read books, documentation, working code, all before the internet, let alone GitHub. Born in ‘77, I have seen the personal computing revolution, and have lived it
As long as my brain holds out, I expect to be learning daily, and writing code, whether I am paid for it, or officially retired, but volunteering in open source software, and developing my own tools.
I think that it will matter person to person. I’m the type of person that loves learning, and develops new interests all the time. I can’t imagine getting bored with life even after a few centuries. I’m forty-three years old. I can easily imagine three times my current lifetime.
I feel like my memory work similarly to how you describe. As time goes on, my memories are more abstract, with the freshest having the most detail. I don’t think that that is strictly necessary, but instead a limitation of our wetware.
This is just under the assumption that our brains will continue to function as they do now, which I don’t think is a great assumption. With augmented memory, we could have a complete personal record to access and augment our memory.
I’m sure that there will be people that choose to die, and others that choose to deadhead, and those that choose to live with only a rolling century of memories. None of those sound appealing to my imagination at this point.
A local private investigator might be your best option if mingyuan’s suggestion doesn’t work out.
I think the real question would be do they want help? Person A feels like they are making a personal choice, which B is likely feeling stressed, and might be more willing to accept help.
If the risk is low for me, I might explain the danger that I see, and ask if they would like help. I don’t believe that I can make an accurate model of their motivations to really predict their choices to a high degree of accuracy. B might feel a civic pride and feel confident of their choice, and A might feel like this risky action is their only way to accomplish some very important goal, but when presented with an alternative, might choose differently.
Ultimately I think that utilitarianism fails to provide an adequate answer here, because there is no objective measure of utility. Without getting the other person’s perspective, we are essentially making an arbitrary decision. We just don’t know how to weigh the possible outcomes from the perspective of the person being saved.
There is a reason why Give Directly is successful: they give the people being helped the agency to find solutions to the problems in their life, of which they are able to best prioritize. We can guess, but our answer is going to have a certain degree of error.
Without their input we may be robbing them of their agency with our meddling. With their input, I think that it is likely they the problem completely dissolves.
I do take medication, because it does help me be more evened out, with fewer days where I can’t work, less social anxiety, way fewer shame spirals. That is just for context.
Getting an objective test, administered over the course of several hours, by an expert really sort of freed me from doubt about whether my symptoms are personal weakness. It allows me to be okay with the fact that chores come in bursts, and I can never finish projects.
It’s brought me a lot of peace.
Yes. I have ADHD. Sometimes it’s like my brain just refuses to cooperate. This is more common when I have been stressed or haven’t had enough sleep. I’m a software engineer, and so it’s very obvious to me while working. It’s like the code loses all meaning, or more specifically I can’t keep track of all of the different contexts.
ADHD for me feels like I lack the ability to have background processes. It feels like most people have all of these background thought that stick around, like “I need to check on the food in an hour,” or “once I’m home, I need to look up that address,” etc. I don’t, or at least mine is severely faulty.
“Attention Deficit” doesn’t really explain it. It’s more like attention regulation. My attention is pretty binary. When I am into a thing, it can be all-consuming, and then suddenly it’s gone. I have a bunch of projects that I have just abandoned ¾ of the way through.
ADHD can also make me naturally impatient. I get bored easily, and once I’m bored with something it’s a struggle to stick with it. That impatience can also manifest as thinking I know how someone is going to finish their sentence, and if they are going into detail, my natural inclination is to interrupt to get to the point. I’ve had to learn to be careful about not doing that, and to listen actively and when my brain stopped paying attention in the middle of someone’s sentence, I just fess up to it and ask them to repeat that last bit.
It’s not all a detriment though. I’m good at improvising, and I’m pretty damned clever. I’ve built up discipline to mostly slow down and verify my work. When I am able to focus, getting into a flow state is pretty easy, especially when working on something interesting.
My medication helps me get past those rough days. Not all the time. Sometimes, I just can’t work. On those days, I try to stick with light tasks, and make up for it later.
So yeah, I don’t know if any of this sounds familiar to you. If so, maybe you should talk to your psychologist about getting tested for ADHD. If not, I hope that it helps to know that others out there have uncooperative brains too.
My intuition is that there are an (effectively) infinite number of ways that people can cooperate to their mutual benefit above which they can achieve alone. This is true on the individual-level such as two people building a shelter. It’s also true on the level of societies where economies generate wealth and value.
On a more physics-level, potentially fusion? I mean you’re giving up mass for energy, but I suppose that would depend on your definition of a game. My view on games is that this wouldn’t apply, as there are no players, but I’d also include your magic free energy machine in that. Games require at least one player.
A zero-player game is more of a system. Whether it is positive value generating really depends on what your parameters are. After all in some respects f(x) = x + 1 would be a positive-sum system.
If you’re talking energy as your system, then dark (vacuum) energy would be positive-sum. If you’re concerned about flour, then a watermill would be. Information products, such as software produce way more value than they take to create.
It really all depends on your definition and context.